The Crown’s Game (8 page)

N
ikolai gasped as the tsar vanished into the rock. It was pure granite, as far as Nikolai could tell. How had the tsar done that? Did he have his own magic as well?

Galina smacked the back of Nikolai’s head, and he had to lunge to catch his shadow top hat before it tumbled onto the dusty ground. “Close your mouth. You’ll swallow an entire swarm of gnats if you keep gawking like
that,” she said. “What part of
bolshebnoie
do you not understand? It’s the mountain that’s enchanted, not the tsar. Now let’s get on with it before the sun sets completely.” She rolled her eyes and marched into the rock. She vanished, too.

The other enchanter—the girl—shrugged and plunged into the mountain, her father mere steps behind her.

Nikolai was left alone outside with the Tsar’s Guard.
Weren’t they going to follow? But Nikolai looked from soldier to soldier, and every last one of them stood staring into the ether, their backs straight but their limbs loose, their expressions entirely blank. Their eyes didn’t even blink.

The magic of Tikho Mountain had suspended them.

“I suppose it’s just me, then,” Nikolai mumbled. It made sense. The Guard was not privy to magic; they were
ordinary folk, and Bolshebnoie Duplo
needed to be hidden from them, just as everything Nikolai did (and the girl and Galina and her brother) needed to be, as well. Nikolai gave the inanimate army one last glance, then dived headlong into the granite.

He emerged on the other side in a cave, with not a scratch or speck of dirt on his shadow frame. His mouth fell open again, and this time, he didn’t
shut it. This was worth swallowing gnats for.

So this is why it’s called the Enchanted Hollow.
The inside of the mountain was not made of rock. It was carved entirely of wood. Smooth, polished, ancient wood, like the inside of a colossal, magical tree.
“Incroyable,”
he whispered as he hurried down a long tunnel to catch up with the others.

The cave walls might have been made of wood, but they
gleamed as brightly as if they’d been composed of amber and agate. Wooden stalactites hung from the ceiling, dripping almost imperceptibly with mineral water, and stalagmites rose from the ground, like honey-colored warriors from a time long ago.

The heart of Russia’s magic.

In fact, the air was so thick with it, Nikolai could hardly move. Although his own power was buoyed by being in Bolshebnoie
Duplo—the magic that was always at his fingertips swelled as soon as he entered the Hollow—he was, paradoxically, also slowed by it. The others walked through the archaic magic undeterred, but Nikolai’s shadow form struggled to push through matter as dense as himself. And
his shadow top hat kept falling off.

The tsar led the way, descending into the caverns with nothing but a small oaken chest
in his arms.
The magic here must protect him,
Nikolai thought. He’d never seen the tsar without his Guard.

Galina floated after the tsar, followed by her brother, and then Enchanter Two. Nikolai propelled himself through the fog of magic, trailing closely, but not too closely, behind the girl. She had a deception shroud around her, but its effect was lost on him, for he already knew who she was.
Nikolai could see her clearly: her red hair, with its single black stripe, tumbling down her back in loose waves like a veil of smoke and flames; her slight shoulders, hunched forward as she ducked beneath a low ceiling in the cave; and her green satin dress, out of fashion by at least a decade but somehow endearing on her, not awkward in the slightest. It could have been improved, however, with
a ribbon around its waist. Preferably in yellow.

If Nikolai hadn’t been on Ovchinin Island and seen what this girl could do, he might have been deceived by her appearance. But like the poisonous lorises Galina had planted in his room three days ago, it was the smallest and most innocent-looking of creatures who were the most deadly.

The party descended deep into the caverns, twisting and winding
their way until they reached a large cave. In it, there was a luminescent tree stump, a throne-like seat complete with wooden stalagmites that rose up to form its back and long flat branches that resembled armrests. Their edges were too gnarled to be man-made, yet too purposeful to be natural. Nikolai shook his head at the
beauty of Bolshebnoie Duplo.

The tsar strode up to the throne and eased
himself into it. The light in the cave brightened, shifting from dusty rose to a pearly pink. He gestured for the enchanters to step forward, and Nikolai and the girl obeyed. Galina and her brother, however, held back.

“I assume your mentors have informed you of the rules and format of the Game,” the tsar said, “but I will repeat them again so they are clear. The Game is a display of skill and
a demonstration of strategy and mettle. The goal is to show me your worthiness to become my Imperial Enchanter—my adviser for all things from war to peace and everything in between.

“The Game will take place in Saint Petersburg, and you will take turns executing enchantments. There is no restriction on the form of magic you choose, only that you do not alarm or harm the people of the city.”

Right,
Nikolai thought.
So no alligators swimming unchecked through the canals.

“Each enchanter will have five turns, at the most,” the tsar continued. “As the judge, I may declare a winner at any point in the Game, or I may wait until all ten plays have been made. Remember, your moves will reveal not only your power but also your character and your suitability to serve the empire. Impress me.”
He looked down at Nikolai and the girl from his glimmering throne. The tsar couldn’t actually see through their facades, but his expectation pierced their shrouds nonetheless. Nikolai shrank a little inside his own shadow.

“To begin the Game,” the tsar said, “we—”

“Pardon me, Your Imperial Majesty,” the girl said. “I have a question.”

Nikolai shifted in place. Was the girl really so bold that
she would interrupt the tsar?

“What is it?” The tsar practically spat the question.

The girl was unfazed in her shroud. Bold indeed. “Why must the Game end in death? I understand that the Imperial Enchanter needs to be the sole conduit of magic, but why can’t one enchanter win, and the other step aside?”

The tsar huffed. “And what would the other enchanter do? Retire to the countryside and
promise never to use magic again? Or move abroad and have no access to Russia’s wellspring? Would you be able to do that? Give up everything you are, in exchange for your life?”

The girl contemplated this for a moment. Then she looked up. “It would not be a life, Your Imperial Majesty, if I could not enchant.”

“Precisely.”

“So you just execute one of us in the end?”

Nikolai gaped. Was she
really questioning the tsar again?

The girl stood with her arms crossed.

The tsar stared at the girl from his arboreal throne and shook his head as if unable to believe she was interrupting again, and doing so to ask about logistics, of all things. He rose from his throne and towered before them. “When I declare a winner, the Game’s own magic will eliminate the other enchanter. Even if, for
some reason, I did not declare a winner after you had each taken five turns, the Game would make the decision for me and extinguish one of you. Russia will have only one Imperial Enchanter to wield the full force of its magic. Understood?”

The girl seemed undisturbed. In fact, she pursed her lips, considering the tsar’s answer.
It’s as if she’s contemplating
the possibility that the tsar’s word
isn’t absolute,
Nikolai thought. The girl was made of daring. Or recklessness.

“I see,” she finally said. “Thank you, Your Imperial Majesty.”

“If there is nothing else . . .” The tsar paused just long enough to glare at the girl, like a challenge to interrupt again. The message was clear that there would be consequences this time if she did.

She didn’t.

“Fine. Then let us commence the oath.”
The tsar opened the oaken chest he had carried into the caverns. A yellowed scroll and a long black quill floated out. The scroll unfurled itself, and both Nikolai and the girl took a step back. The Game was its own living magic.

The parchment hovered beside the tsar, and he read its timeworn instructions. “Bolshebnoie Duplo has been imbued with ancient enchantments that will bind you to the
Game and to Russia. Now, reveal your true selves to me.”

Nikolai glanced at the girl. They would both have to maintain their shrouds but open up the enchantment so that only the tsar could see. He needed to know who his future enchanter was.

The girl looked at Nikolai, too.

Nikolai yanked his gaze away and faced forward. He focused on protecting his shadow veneer—he might know the girl’s identity,
but she did not know his—and allowed a pathway for the tsar to see him.

Would the tsar recognize him as Pasha’s friend? Or not, given that the tsar gave hardly a whit about his son’s social affairs? He cared only to engage Pasha on matters important to his training as tsesarevich.

The tsar squinted as he looked upon Nikolai, as if trying to place him. A moment later, it seemed to click in his
head where he had seen Nikolai before, and he frowned.

“Interesting.” The tsar drummed his fingers on the arm of his wooden throne. And then he cleared his throat and continued as if the presence of his son’s best friend in the midst of a magical battle to the death were nothing extraordinary at all. Of course, it made sense that the tsar would appear unruffled at this turn of events. Certainly
he had encountered much greater surprises in his career. Or perhaps the tsar truly didn’t care that Nikolai was one of the enchanters.
After all, who am I but a common boy who happened to befriend his son?

“Repeat after me,” the tsar said to both Nikolai and Vika as he read from the Russe Scroll.

     
“I hereby swear my loyalty to the tsar,

     
And promise to abide by the rules of the Game,

     
A duel of enchantment, until a winner is declared.

             
To this and all traditions here before established, I commit myself

     
As an enchanter in the Crown’s Game.”

Nikolai and Vika repeated the oath back to the tsar in unison. Nikolai kept his voice even, but hers carried and echoed throughout the cave, as if even in this inaugural moment of the Game, she was already trying
to gain the upper hand.

But Nikolai had little time to think on that, for as soon as he uttered the last words of the oath, a searing heat bit into his skin, just below his left collarbone. “What the—!”
He stopped himself before he let out a string of obscenities in front of the tsar, but not quickly enough to save his dignity.

A pair of crossed wands branded themselves onto Nikolai’s chest
as if by an invisible iron. Even after the branding was over, the scar still glowed red-orange on his skin like live embers. Nikolai bit the inside of his cheek to stave off the pain.

The girl had not protested or screamed or made any sound other than a sharp inhale. Nikolai flushed, both at the heat of the fresh scar and at his weakness compared to this elfin girl.

“Who is Enchanter One?” the
tsar asked.

“I am,” Nikolai managed to answer through gritted teeth, the scar still faintly orange on his skin.

The tsar nodded. “The wands will burn until you have made your first move in the Game. Then they will go dormant as Enchanter Two takes her turn. They will reawaken on your skin once her turn has been taken. That is how you will know it is your move again.

“The wands will grow steadily
hotter the longer you take to execute your turn. As days pass, the pain will become more unbearable. And if too much time elapses—if you dally or for some reason refuse to complete the Game—the scar will eventually ignite and consume you.”

Nikolai shuddered.
Forfeiture by flame.

“Is that how the Game ends?” the girl asked. The tsar didn’t even bother to look surprised that she’d interrupted.
It would be more of a surprise at this point if she didn’t. “Does the losing enchanter combust?”

“Yes. The scar will incinerate the loser of the Game.”

“It will be quick,” her father said quietly. It occurred to Nikolai, though, that it was not the girl who needed assuring but rather the mentor himself.

The tsar nodded curtly. “Your mentors have taught you what they could, and now, as tradition
dictates, and to ensure that your volleys in the Game are yours and yours alone, the mentors will be banished to the far reaches of the empire until a winner is declared. But first, they may give you a parting gift.” The tsar turned to Galina and her brother. “You have a minute to say your good-byes.”

The girl’s father rocked his weight from his heels to his toes, as if he were contemplating
moving toward the girl, but then he rocked back on his heels and stood firmly in place. “Practice every day it is not your turn,” he said to her. “Get enough sleep and enough food to eat. Check our hiding place—you know where it is—if you need money . . .”

“Father—”

He held up his hand. “And wear this. Do not take it off.” He yanked a braid of leather off his wrist and pushed it at her.

She
slipped it onto her wrist, and it immediately tightened itself to fit. She winced. “What is it?”

“A good luck charm, of sorts.” He turned his back to her, visibly swallowing back his emotions. “We will see each other again soon, my dearest.”

The girl touched the necklace at her throat. “I promise.”

Galina smirked in her brother’s direction. Then she snapped her fingers, and a dagger in its
sheath appeared in Nikolai’s shadow hands. “The gift I leave you is a new knife,” she said. “When you find the right occasion to use it, it will not miss its target. Remember all the practice you’ve
received; killing is not so difficult and is the most direct way.”

Nikolai knitted his brow, although no one could see him do so in his current shadow form. He could not bring himself to look at the
girl.