The Queen of Dreams

Things should be getting easier for Katerina "Kat" Dashkova. The former princess of the Russian empire wields considerable sorcerous powers, has learned to control the unruly prophecies in her head, and is a member of the Transcendental Society—a group dedicated to protecting the ideals of the Enlightenment from the tyranny of the supernatural—under the leadership of a quasi-immortal Benjamin Franklin. Except the god Veles has laid claim to her former homeland of Russia, and unless she can stop him, the world will be his next conquest. To reach Veles, Kat and Ben must travel through the realm of dreams in Baba Yaga's hut—a transdimensional craft owned by a trio of dangerous witches. The hut will help them reach their destination, but it contains dangers of its own, things that even the hut's mistresses have forgotten. Things that only need a little magic—or the whiff of prophecy—to escape.

Chapter One

The plague doctor mask fit firmly around the outline of my face, cupping against my chin and my rounded cheekbones. The edge of the eye holes tickled my lashes, and I had to blink a few times to clear it away.
From the other side of the awkwardly contoured room, Morwen Hightower addressed me in a tone meant for troublesome servants, "You can't use that mask."
It was a blessing that my face was covered, or she might have seen my withering glance. Then again, my opinion of her might not have registered against her disdain. Since Morwen had appeared three days ago in Franklin's estate, she had said only a few short words to me, speaking primarily to Ben.
At first, I'd been pleased to see Morwen since my efforts in the hut had banished Neva—the part of the Baba Yaga triad that had attempted to kill me—and I'd been worried it might have prevented the others from returning. Morwen Hightower was pledged to our side of the war between Perun and Veles.
The triad was composed of three different aspects of the same person, each from a different universe. I'd met Morwen Hightower first, though we hadn't known we were on the same side and I'd temporarily eliminated her when I gave her one of her poisoned chocolates.
The second aspect, Rowan Blade, was on the side of Veles—our enemy. Except she and I had gotten along like sisters. Only her mercenary contract with Veles had come between us. I suspected that we would see each other again, and I wasn't sure how that would turn out.
Morwen Hightower, however, had not been pleased to see me, even after Ben Franklin had noted my pivotal role in her release and how her eternal existence had been at risk. Neva, the eldest of the triad, and probably the most powerful, had found a way to cut the other two away, permanently. Only the release of a dangerous creature that I'd come to call the Star Eater had been able to stop Neva, which in turn had allowed Morwen to return.
"Why not?" I asked, moderating my tone.
"I don't have time to explain every detail," said Morwen as she pulled another mask off the wall.
The difference between this Morwen Hightower and the one I'd initially met when she'd first come to Philadelphia was startling. Over two years ago, she'd appeared at my door, as cheerful and enthusiastic as any American, covered in the sheen of a can-do attitude.
Though this Morwen had the same flaxen hair, the same doe-eyed expression, the same green eyes that made men stupid, and a bosom that would make a French whore cry, she was not the same person. This Morwen had more in common with a bottle of rubbing alcohol.
She launched the mask at me, and I caught it without looking away from her, though she'd already moved on to selecting another. The one in my hands was made from a light metal that vibrated softly when I flicked it with a fingernail. The painted surface suggested a blue-green aquatic creature with a wide mouth and jagged, feral teeth.
"It's not for examining," admonished Morwen. "Put it on. We don't have time."
"I—"
"Put it on," she said. "Unless you'd like to wait for Rowan, or Neva. But I don't think they'll take you where you want to go."
"Things might go smoother if you explain," I said, slipping the mask onto my face and securing the ribbon onto the back of my head with a firm knot.
"With your history, you should be quite familiar with wearing masks," she said in a biting tone, her gaze severe.
I couldn't even choke a reply out. Morwen grumbled under her breath, her lips softening. "We only have a brief window to get what we need. I'll explain as I can."
Before I could get another word out, she took the mask in her hands and placed it against the side of my head and started tying it in place. She made a shushing noise when my jaw started to move.
After the second, she grabbed a third mask and placed it on the left side, which wasn't covered. When she finished, she placed three masks on her own head, in the same pattern. Hers were a tiger mask, a bone mask with crimson eye holes, and a festive mask in peacock tones.
Morwen led us through the many halls of the hut to a door that led outside to a thick jungle. The riot of smells in the moist air made me gag a little at first. It smelled like a rotting garden, despite the bright green leaves on the many plants surrounding the hut.
We'd left Philadelphia earlier this morning. Marvelous Morwen's Confectionary and Sweet House had been waiting for us in the empty lot near the estate. In the jungle, the shop had reverted to an ancient hut with knobby chicken legs.
Before we climbed off the rickety porch, Morwen threw me a pair of long leather gloves, the kind a blacksmith uses when handling hot iron. Then she disappeared inside for what seemed like only a few seconds, but had to have been longer, because when she returned, she wore the strange contraption I'd seen her in when I first visited her confectionary.
Except it wasn't exactly the same. The previous version had two large glass bottles containing a white mist inside. The iron and leather scaffolding on her back held ten or twelve smaller glass bottles, each with a different colored gas inside. Along her right arm ran a series of tubes that went into a brass armguard that held a number of brass knobs, ending in a trio of nozzles. On her left arm, she wore the same leather glove she'd given me. With the gear and dusty brown jacket and trousers over black boots—ignoring the trio of masks on her head— Morwen looked like a weathered explorer, ready to take to the trails again. Even her green eyes held that haunted faraway look of a traveler who has seen too much.
I'd worn my black outfit, including the Hessian boots which reached the bottom of my knees. The oestium rapier rested on my hip along with the pistol on the other side. I assumed they wouldn't be necessary since I couldn't hold them with the thick leather gloves.
Morwen faced me and spoke, her words sounding hollow through the opening in the mask. "Before we embark, I must warn you about a few things. First, while the forest looks similar to one from your world, dismiss that fantasy from your mind—they're nothing alike. This is Gallasid, not Earth. It would be like confusing a kitten with a pack of hungry lionesses. Everything in it can and will try to kill you. Second, there are thousands of minor dangers that I can't explain without wasting our window of time, so don't touch anything unless absolutely necessary. There are a couple of major dangers that I will warn you about. The Brutho is one. Imagine an elephant crossed with an iron battleship that can swim through the soft earth. There's nothing you or I can do to hurt or injure it, and our only warning might be a slight vibration in the ground. Might. So if I tell you to run, then run. It's our only chance to survive. The other, and infinitely more deadly foe that we must concern ourselves with, is the Yolgothi. This creature looks like a decaying brown melted candle that stands about a meter high. If you look directly at it, the Yolgothi will infect your mind with a kind of madness. The longer you look at it, the more your thoughts and dreams will be twisted to its way of thinking. Look too long and you'll be driven to insanity."
Morwen paused and took a deep breath, tapping on the masks with the brass trio of tubes.
"That's what these are for. The Yolgothi can't move fast, but they can keep you from moving if you're looking at them. But if they think you're looking at them, they won't move either, because they want you to come to them. The masks will, hopefully, confuse them into thinking we're looking at them, which will freeze them in place so we can move past without being infected."
"So you've used this trick before?" I asked.
Morwen shook her head. The masks clicked. "No. I've never done this before. But we don't have time to acquire what we need the easy way."
"What are we here to find?" I asked.
"A fruit from the Tree of Life," she said. When she noticed my lips opening for a question, she added, "It's necessary for us to attain your Russia quickly."
Morwen dropped off the edge of the porch into the leafy soil below. I joined her, and as soon as I did, suffocating heat rose up from the ground and made me cough.
"Merde. We have to move through this? I feel like I'm breathing a sewer," I said, poking my finger through the mouth hole as if that would give me more air.
"Oh," said Morwen, "I almost forgot."
She slipped off the leather glove and reached into an inside pocket, pulling forth a familiar treat in a tiny paper wrapping.
"Eat this," she said, handing me the chocolate.
When I started to pull off my glove, she took back the treat, unwrapped it, lifted my mask, and slipped the chocolate into my mouth. The explosion of sweetness on my tongue made me swoon. I might have moaned while I savored it and eventually swallowed, cursing the ephemeral nature of chocolate.
I was about to ask what it was going to do when a surge of energy filled me until I wanted to shout. The horrid smells of the jungle melted away, or at least I was feeling so good that they didn't bother me.
When I came to, Morwen was already meters ahead, forging through the foliage. I hurried before it swallowed her up.
As we marched, knocking branches and leaves as big as paintings out of our way, the jungle assaulted us. A swarm of bloodred insects the size of my thumb dive bombed us for a while, occasionally landing on my arm or jacket. I swatted them down, relieved I had the thick protective glove when their plump bodies audibly popped, releasing a crimson ichor.
These were not the only insects that found us interesting. Long spindly fliers bobbed in front of our eyes, purplish segmented crawlers dropped out of the upper branches onto our masked heads, beetles with double wings hissed jets of acid on our boots, and a brown woody ball rolled up like a hedgehog and then burst into hundreds of spiked insects that devoured everything in the area before reforming into the sphere and rolling away.
Despite the suffocating nature of the masks, I relished their protection from the continuous assault. My underclothes were drenched with sweat, rivulets running down my back and legs, pooling in my boots.
After about thirty minutes, which seemed like hours in the smothering jungle, I was reaching to my left to knock away a branch when Morwen turned suddenly. A geyser of flame spat out of the brass tubes on the end of her arm, billowing with crimson tongues and black smoke. A dog-sized creature with fangs that barely fit in its oversized mouth yelped and disappeared into the undergrowth, its singed fur leaving a bad air.
"Thank you," I sputtered.
Morwen made no acknowledgement and continued forward. We marched for another ten minutes before we stopped for a water break. When I moved to remove my mask, she shook her head.
"You shouldn't have let your guard down back there," she said.
"It's hard to keep watch while I'm worried about seeing a Yolgothi," I said.
"Use your peripherals without moving your head," she said.
"What peripherals? This mask makes seeing impossible," I said.
Her green eyes glared out the tiger mask. A gulf of disagreement seemed to stretch before us, right as a dark ribbon moved out of the tree to snake around Morwen's neck.
I lifted my arm and blasted sorcery at the appendage, forgetting about the heavy leather glove. It exploded off my hand as the magic flew indiscriminately in all directions. Morwen's arm came around, pointing the brass nozzles at me. Only the appendage from the trees saved me as it yanked Morwen to the side. A gusher of flame licked past me, singeing the leather coat and laying waste to the undergrowth to my left.
The ribbon-like appendage had Morwen around the neck and was dragging her backwards towards a grove of trees. Her eyes bulged in their sockets. Her gasps were muffled by the mask.
I couldn't see the nature of her attacker, only the thin appendage that had rippled out of the foliage. So I threw the tattered glove down and sent a rolling wave of sorcery past Morwen, hoping to convince the creature to release her. Leaves and branches exploded into confetti as my magic hit, revealing the nature of our opponent.
Suddenly, I wished to be very far from our location. From the dark heart of grove, another set of ribbons undulated forth. At their base, I thought I spied a wet maw smacking with anticipation. I threw another wave at the trees, hitting the roots solidly. The ribbon around Morwen's neck released, and she scrambled towards me.
After checking the nozzles for obstruction, Morwen turned a couple of knobs on her armguard, releasing a white cloud into the tree like a puff of smoke. The ribbons sped towards us unerringly, until Morwen leaned her head back and, with a wet thwack, spat a wad of flame out the hole in her mask. When the spark touched the white cloud, it condensed around the tree like a blanket pulled tight over a bed. The ribbons were pulled back against the tree and nothing moved on the dusted-white grove. The trees looked like they were made of bone.
Morwen tugged on my sleeve, and we hurried from that location. I didn't know how long the creature would be held, and I didn't want to find out.
We went a ways before stopping again. Morwen glanced immediately at my bare hand. Her mask shifted with the implication of a frown.
"What was that?" I asked.
Morwen's gaze lingered on me momentarily, flickering with annoyance. Was she feeling remorse that she'd almost killed me when I was trying to save her? Or was that disappointment that she'd shown her true feelings for me?
Eventually Morwen shook her head. "It doesn't matter. We survived it."
"What did you do back there with the cloud and flame?" I asked.
Morwen smiled beneath her mask, the white of her teeth showing through the hole.
"A trick, and not a very good one. But it worked," she said heavily. Almost as an afterthought, she said, "You know Ben picked poorly when he hired me rather than the others. I'm the weakest of us." She held up her arm with the knobbed armguard and nozzles. "I have to use this to compensate for my lack of real magic. You wield more already, and you've barely learned to use your power."
I didn't know why she was saying this, especially after nearly killing me a few minutes before. Was she trying to downplay her abilities to get me to underestimate her? Or was this a way of apologizing through self-deprecation?
"Everyone has a different role to play," I said. "We are stronger through our differences."
Morwen stepped towards me as if she had something important to say, then froze. A moment later, I felt what had made her stop. The forest floor vibrated through my boots.
I heard the word "Run" a moment before the ground exploded dirt, leaves, and small trees in a wide arc.