The Winter of the Witch
PRAISE FOR
The Winter of the Witch
“Visceral descriptions of battle, an atmospheric sense of place, and some truly heartbreaking moments of loss make this a gut-wrenching read, but there’s ample hope and satisfaction to be found as Vasya chooses her own unique path to triumph.”
—Booklist
“Luxuriously detailed yet briskly suspenseful…a striking literary fantasy informed by Arden’s deep knowledge.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
PRAISE FOR
The Girl in the Tower
“A compelling, fast-moving story that grounds fantasy elements in a fascinating period of Russian history.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Arden once again delivers an engaging fantasy that mixes Russian folklore and history with delightful worldbuilding and lively characters.”
—Library Journal
PRAISE FOR
The Bear and the Nightingale
“Arden’s debut novel has the cadence of a beautiful fairy tale but is darker and more lyrical.”
—The Washington Post
“A beautiful deep-winter story, full of magic and monsters and the sharp edges of growing up.”
—NAOMI NOVIK
“Stunning…will enchant readers from the first page…with an irresistible heroine who wants only to be free of the bonds placed on her gender and claim her own fate.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Utterly bewitching…an immersive, earthy story of folk magic, faith, and hubris, peopled with vivid, dynamic characters.”
—Booklist (starred review)
“[Vasya is] a clever, stalwart protagonist, determined to forge her own path in a time when women had few choices.”
—The Christian Science Monitor
“An extraordinary retelling of a very old tale…A Russian setting adds unfamiliar spice to the story of a young woman who does not rebel against the limits of her role in her culture so much as transcend them. The Bear and the Nightingale is a beautifully layered novel of family and the harsh wonders of deep winter magic.”
—ROBIN HOBB
“Arden’s supple, sumptuous first novel transports the reader to a version of medieval Russia where history and myth coexist.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Haunting and lyrical, The Bear and the Nightingale tugs at the heart and quickens the pulse. I can’t wait for Katherine Arden’s next book.”
—TERRY BROOKS
“Radiant…a darkly magical fairy tale for adults [but] not just for those who love magic.”
—Library Journal
“The Bear and the Nightingale is a marvelous trip into an ancient Russia where magic is a part of everyday life.”
—TODD MCCAFFREY
“Reading Arden’s debut novel is like listening to an entrancing tale spun out over nights in the best oral tradition….Mesmerizing…a spellbinding story that will linger with most readers far beyond the final page.”
—School Library Journal (starred review)
“Enthralling and enchanting—I couldn’t put it down. This is a wondrous book!”
—TAMORA PIERCE
The Winter of the Witch is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2019 by Katherine Arden
Reading group guide copyright © 2019 by Penguin Random House LLC
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
DEL REY and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
RANDOM HOUSE READER’S CIRCLE & Design is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.
Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, in 2019.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
NAMES: Arden, Katherine, author.
TITLE: The winter of the witch: a novel / Katherine Arden.
DESCRIPTION: New York: Del Rey, 2019. | Series: Winternight trilogy; 3
IDENTIFIERS: LCCN 2018038385 | ISBN 9781101886014 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781101886007 (Ebook)
SUBJECTS: | BISAC: FICTION / Literary. | GSAFD: Fantasy fiction.
CLASSIFICATION: LCC PS3601.R42 W56 2019 | DDC 813/.6—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018038385
Ebook ISBN 9781101886007
randomhousebooks.com
Book design by Barbara M. Bachman, adapted for ebook
Cover design: David G. Stevenson
Cover illustration: © Robert Hunt
v5.4
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph
Part 1
Chapter 1: Marya Morevna
Chapter 2: Reckoning
Chapter 3: Nightingale
Chapter 4: The Fate of All Witches
Part 2
Chapter 5: Temptation
Chapter 6: No Bones, No Flesh
Chapter 7: Monster
Chapter 8: Between the City and Evil
Part 3
Chapter 9: To Travel by Midnight
Chapter 10: The Devil in the Oven
Chapter 11: Of Mushrooms
Chapter 12: Bargaining
Chapter 13: Baba Yaga
Chapter 14: Vodianoy
Chapter 15: Farther, Stranger Countries
Chapter 16: The Chains of the Winter-King
Chapter 17: Memory
Chapter 18: On the Backs of Magic Horses
Part 4
Chapter 19: Allies
Chapter 20: The Golden Bridle
Chapter 21: Enemy at the Gate
Chapter 22: The Princess and the Warrior
Chapter 23: Faith and Fear
Part 5
Chapter 24: Turnings
Chapter 25: The Road Through Darkness
Chapter 26: The Golden Horde
Chapter 27: Oleg of Ryazan
Chapter 28: Pozhar
Chapter 29: Between Winter and Spring
Chapter 30: The Enemy of My Enemy
Chapter 31: All the Russias
Chapter 32: Kulikovo
Chapter 33: On the Cusp of Winter
Chapter 34: Lightbringer
Chapter 35: The Starlit Road
Chapter 36: The Army of Three
Chapter 37: Water of Death, Water of Life
Author’s Note
A Note on Russian Names
Glossary
The Lineage of Vasilisa Petrovna
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Reading Group Guide
By Katherine Arden
About the Author
The sea is fair in the storm-shadow
The sky wondrous without its blue
But trust me; on the rock, the girl
Excels the wave, the sky, and the storm
—A. S. PUSHKIN
1.
Marya Morevna
DUSK AT THE END OF winter, and two men crossed the dooryard of a palace scarred by fire. The dooryard was a snowless waste of water and trampled earth; the men sank to their ankles in the muck. But they were speaking intently, heads close together, and did not heed the wet. Behind them lay a palace full of broken furniture, smoke-stained; the screen-work smashed on the staircases. Before them lay a charred ruin that had been a stable.
“Chelubey disappeared in the confusion,” said the first man bitterly. “We were busy saving our own skins.” A smear of soot blackened his cheek, blood crusted in his beard. Weary hollows, like blue thumbprints, marred the flesh beneath his gray eyes. He was barrel-chested, young, with the fey energy of a man who has driven himself past exhaustion to a surreal and persistent wakefulness. Every eye in the dooryard followed him. He was the Grand Prince of Moscow.
“Our skins, and a little more,” said the other man—a monk—with a touch of grim humor. For, against all hope, the city was mostly intact, and still theirs. The night before, the Grand Prince had come close to being deposed and murdered, though few people knew that. His city had nearly burned to ash; only a miraculous snowstorm had saved them. Everyone knew that. A swath of black gashed the heart of the city, as though the hand of God had fallen in the night, dripping fire from its nails.
“It was not enough,” said the Grand Prince. “We may have saved ourselves, but we made no answer for the treachery.” All that bitter day, the prince had reassuring words for every man who caught his eye, had calm orders for the men wrangling his surviving horses and hauling away the charred beams of the stable. But the monk, who knew him well, could see the exhaustion and the rage just beneath the surface. “I am going out myself, tomorrow, with all that can be spared,” the prince said. “We will find the Tatars and we will kill them.”
“Leave Moscow now, Dmitrii Ivanovich?” asked the monk, with a touch of disquiet.
A night and a day without sleep had done nothing for Dmitrii’s temper. “Are you going to tell me otherwise, Brother Aleksandr?” he asked, in a voice that made his attendants flinch.
“The city cannot do without you,” said the monk. “There are dead to mourn; there are granaries lost, and animals and warehouses. Children cannot eat vengeance, Dmitrii Ivanovich.” The monk had no more slept than the Grand Prince; he could not quite mask the edge in his own voice. His left arm was wrapped in linen where an arrow had gone into the muscle below the shoulder, and been dragged through and out again.
“The Tatars attacked me in my own palace, after I had made them welcome in good faith,” retorted Dmitrii, not troubling to keep the rage from his reply. “They conspired with a usurper, they fired my city. Is all that to go unavenged, Brother?”
The Tatars had not, in fact, fired the city. But Brother Aleksandr did not say so. Let that—mistake—be forgotten; it could not be mended now.
Coldly, the Grand Prince added, “Did not your own sister give birth to a dead child in the chaos? A royal infant dead, a swath of the city in ashes—the people will cry out if there is not justice.”
“No amount of spilled blood will bring back my sister’s child,” said Sasha, sharper than he meant. Clear in his mind was his sister’s tearless mourning, worse than any weeping.
Dmitrii’s hand was on the hilt of his sword. “Will you lecture me now, priest?”
Sasha heard the breach between them, scabbed over but unhealed, in the prince’s voice. “I will not,” said Sasha.
Dmitrii, with effort, let go the twining serpents of his sword-hilt.
“How do you mean to find Chelubey’s Tatars?” Sasha asked, trying for reason. “We have pursued them once already, and rode a fortnight without a glimpse, though that was in deepest winter, when the snow took good tracks.”
“But we found them, then,” said Dmitrii, and his gray eyes narrowed. “Did your younger sister survive the night?”
“Yes,” said Sasha warily. “Burns on her face, and a broken rib, Olga says. But she is alive.”
Now Dmitrii looked troubled. Behind him, one of the men clearing away the wreckage dropped the end of a broken roof-beam, swearing. “I would not have come to you in time, if it weren’t for her,” Sasha said to his cousin’s grim profile. “Her blood saved your throne.”
“The blood of many men saved my throne,” snapped Dmitrii without looking round. “She is a liar, and she made a liar of you, the most upright of men.”
Sasha said nothing.
“Ask her,” said Dmitrii, turning. “Ask her how she did it—found the Tatars. It can’t be only sharp eyes; I have dozens of sharp-eyed men. Ask her how she did it, and I will have her rewarded. I do not think any man in Moscow would marry her, but a country boyar might be persuaded. Or enough gold would bribe a convent to take her.” Dmitrii was talking faster and faster, his face uneasy, the words spilling out. “Or she may be sent home in safety—or stay in the terem with her sister. I will see she has enough gold to keep her comfortable. Ask her how she did it, and I will make all straight for her.”
Sasha stared, full of words he could not say. Yesterday she saved your life, slew a wicked magician, set fire to Moscow and then saved it all in a single night. Do you think she will consent to disappear, for the price of a dowry—for any price? Do you know my sister?
But of course, Dmitrii did not. He only knew Vasilii Petrovich, the boy she had pretended to be. They are one and the same. Beneath his bluster Dmitrii must realize that; his unease betrayed him.
A cry from the men around the stable spared Sasha from answering. Dmitrii turned with relief. “Here,” he said, striding over. Sasha trailed, grim-faced, in his wake. A crowd was gathering where two burned roof-beams crossed. “Stand aside—Mother of God, are you sheep at the spring grass? What is it?” The crowd shrank away from the steel in his voice. “Well?” said Dmitrii.
One of the men found his tongue. “There, Gosudar,” he said. He pointed at a gap between two fallen posts, and someone thrust down a torch. An echoing gleam came from below where a shining thing gave back the torchlight. The Grand Prince and his cousin stared, dazzled, doubting.
“Gold?” said Dmitrii. “There?”
“Surely not,” said Sasha. “It would have melted.”
Three men were already hauling aside the timbers that pinned the thing to the earth. A fourth plucked it out and handed it to the Grand Prince.
Gold it was: fine gold, and not melted. It had been forged into heavy links and stiff bars, oddly jointed. The metal had an oily sheen; it threw a shimmer of white and scarlet onto the ring of peering faces and made Sasha uneasy.
Dmitrii held it this way and that, then said, “Ah,” and switched his grip so that he held it by the crownpiece, reins over his wrist. The thing was a bridle. “I have seen this before,” said Dmitrii, eyes alight. An armful of gold was very welcome to a prince whose coffers had been shrunk by bandits and by fire.
“Kasyan Lutovich had it on his mare yesterday,” said Sasha, disliking the reminder of the day before. His eye dwelled with disfavor on the spiked bit. “I would not have blamed her for throwing him.”
“Well, this thing is a forfeit of war,” said Dmitrii. “If only that fine mare herself had not vanished—damn those Tatars for horse-thieves. A hot meal and wine for all you men; well done.” The men cheered raggedly. Dmitrii handed off the bridle to his steward. “Clean it,” the Grand Prince said. “Show it to my wife. It might cheer her. Then see it safely locked away.”
“Is it not strange,” Sasha said warily when the reverent steward had departed, the golden thing in his arms, “that this bridle should have lain in the stable as it burned and yet show no hurt?”
“No,” said Dmitrii, giving his cousin a hard look. “Not odd. Miraculous, coming on the heels of that other miracle: the snowstorm that delivered us. You are to tell anyone who asks exactly that. God spared this golden thing, because he knew our need was great.” The difference between uncanny happenings of the benevolent and the wicked sort was no thicker than rumor, and Dmitrii knew it. “Gold is gold. Now, Brother—” But he fell silent. Sasha had stilled, his head lifted.
“What is that noise?”
A confused murmuring was rising from the city outside: a roar and snap, like water on a rocky shore. Dmitrii frowned. “It sounds like—”
A shout from the gate-guard cut him off.
A LITTLE WAY DOWN the hill of the kremlin, the dusk came earlier, and the shadows fell cold and thick over another palace, smaller and quieter. The fire had not touched it, except for singeing from falling sparks.
All Moscow roiled with rumors, with sobs, curses, arguments, questions, and yet here a fragile order reigned. The lamps were lit; servants gathered what could be spared for the comfort of the impoverished. The horses drowsed in their stable; tidy columns of smoke rose from the chimneys of bakehouse and cookhouse, brewhouse, and the palace itself.