Fairy Tale 1 - Firebird by Mercedes Lackey

Author:Mercedes Lackey
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 1996-02-22T07:00:00+00:00

And that was exactly what she was going to do to him; she was near her watery home, and her strength far surpassed his. She had both of his wrists in a grip of steel, and she pulled him toward his death with a grim determination that nothing would shake.

He flung himself sideways, hoping to break her hold on his wrists, and by sheer good luck got his left hand free. He groped inside his coat for his knife and pulled it out, with some of the gelding's tail-hair wrapped around it, and some of his blood still staining the blade. He brandished it at her, not certain if a simple knife could hurt a creature like a rusalka. She cackled scornfully and reached for the dagger, unafraid.

At that moment, the unthinkable happened. Out of nowhere, out of the fog and the night air, a horse appeared—a horse of mist, as transparent as glass, but as real as the thing clutching his wrist. With mane and tail of streaming smoke, the horse screamed a challenge, and the rusalka answered it with a scream of her own. It reared up beside Ilya, pawing savagely at the rusalka, striking at her with sharp hooves made of ice and snaking its head about to snap at her with formidable teeth. Ilya would have known that head anywhere; it was the sorrel gelding! But how?

The rusalka might not fear a knife of steel, but she was afraid of a spirit-horse; she screamed again and loosed her hold on his wrists enough for him to wrench free of her. He whirled and ran as hard as he could back into the forest, away from both the stream and the lake it fed. He stumbled through the brush, clawing his way past branches without regard for his hands or his face. He fell and recovered too many times to count, juniper-branches whipping into his face, not caring whether he was on a trail or not, so long as he got away.

He heard pursuit, but it didn't last very long; as he had hoped and prayed, the rusalka couldn't venture far from her watery home. Still, he ran on; there was no telling what allies among the spirits this rusalka might have. Finally, when his sides ached and his breath burned in his lungs, he slowed and came to a halt in the middle of a tiny clearing.

Moonlight poured down on him and reflected off the snow filling the tiny glade. The chill of winter was back, the snow easily calf-deep again. Had he ever really been in that false-autumn, or had that been as much an illusion as the white palace? There was a flat rock in the middle of the clearing, projecting up out of the snow. He sat down on it and tried to catch his breath. What had gone on back there? Where had the gelding come from—the horse that he knew was dead? It must have been a spirit, but did horses

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