How easily the words came to his lips. He wasn't sure if he was aping the radio and television preachings of Protestants or dredging up some half-remembered morsel of the rumors of Orthodox preaching that one could learn here and there in a Kievan neighborhood. Or was it some question on Jeopardy? Whatever the source of his Christian theology, translated into Old Church Slavonic it apparently sounded convincing enough to Father Lukas. Ivan thought that "works of righteousness" was a nice touch, because in European history in high school he remembered that the Protestants were big on grace, the Catholics on works, and presumably the Orthodox were in the works camp, too.

Why had he dodged the seminars dealing with the Church in Russia? Irrelevant, he had thought at the time. The Church was the influence that had made the chronicles of early Russian history so utterly useless, as every chronicler twisted the record to make it seem that Orthodoxy had prevailed at every point. Now he was going to have a crash course in Christianity whether he liked it or not, ending with baptism. The Orthodox didn't do it by immersion, did they? No, surely they were sprinklers.

If only he could get home again, he'd never have second thoughts about marrying Ruth again. The hoops she made him jump through were nothing compared to this.

And yet... he remembered Katerina's beauty as she lay asleep on the pedestal. And again, later, when she entered Taina with a bold, regal bearing. None of this highfalutin royal-wave nonsense like the Queen of England, dignified and aloof. No, she was a princess who knew her people and strode among them without pretense, the first among equals. Not like a politician, desperate to be liked, either. She was as untainted by pleading as by arrogance. She was a formidable woman, and he was supposed to get a baby into her as quickly as possible. It was an intimidating thought. But not an entirely unpleasant one.

That is, as long as he had no choice anyway. And as long as he could stay persuaded that he wasn't being false to Ruth, any more than he was being false to Judaism. It still felt like sophistry to him, to claim that his engagement to Ruth was a thousand years in the future.

"Your mind wanders," said Father Lukas.

"I'm tired from the journey," said Ivan.

"Then tomorrow we'll meet again."

Do we have to?

Ivan wisely kept the thought to himself. But then he thought of a way that perhaps he could avoid spending so much time in Father Lukas's company. "I hate to keep you from your ministry," said Ivan. "Perhaps if Brother Sergei could teach me the basics, and then I could come to you for examination."

"Sergei?" asked Lukas with obvious distaste. "Shall the blind lead the blind?"

"May a man, coming out of darkness, not spend a moment blinking until he is able to bear the light of the sun?"

"I have only the vaguest notion of what you mean, and even that vague notion smacks of Plato rather than Saint Paul. Nevertheless, since Brother Sergei performs his work at best sloppily and at worst not at all, I doubt you would be doing the work of the Church serious injury if you took him from his duties."

"You are very kind, sir."

"Call me Father," said Lukas.

"Father," said Ivan.

Esther saw her son in the still water. His was the only face the water could have shown her, for what other living person was linked to her by blood and love? My Itzak, my Vanya, what is happening to you?

He was dressed in the robe of a medieval monk, and behind him loomed the figure of an old man in priests' garb. Vanya moved his lips. In Russian he said the word Father.

Then an owl flew over the water, inches from her face. Such was Esther's concentration that she did not move, did not screech, though the startlement made her heart race. Nevertheless, the flapping of the owl's wings caused a momentary breeze over the water, rippling the surface. The image disappeared.

She wanted to weep in fury that his face was gone.

In a moment, though, she calmed herself. No need for anger. She knew that he was alive. Wasn't that the purpose of her search? He was not in this world, but he was in some world, and if he was in the hands of Christians, at least it did not seem he was being mistreated. And he was asking for his father. Almost as if he knew someone was watching him, and he wished to speak. She would look again tomorrow night.

7

Conspiracies

King Matfei had wished more than once that his father had not happened to be king when the edict came out of Kiev that from now on only a son of a king, or a grandson through a daughter, could inherit a throne among the East Slavs. He and his father knew this law for what it was, a means for the king of the Rus' to steal the thrones of their neighbors, one by one. They were patient, these Rus'. They had come out of the north, blond men with goods to sell and savage punishment to mete out on those who would not let them travel, buy, and sell as they would. Where the Rus' traded, they settled; where they settled, before long they ruled. And now they would wait, generation after generation, for a king to be childless or daughtered, and there they would be, ready to pounce, ready to claim that the high king of Kiev had the right to appoint a new king—invariably a kinsman of his own—or to succeed to the throne himself.

Matfei's father had been elected to lead his people in war, as kings always were in the old days among the Slavs. If someone else had been king when the law changed, then Matfei probably would not have been elected. Too many other men in Taina were stronger, bolder, wiser. When the new law made him king without election, at first he feared resentment. But the people had been oddly quiescent about the change. As if they were rather proud of having a hereditary king instead of an elected one. Then Father Lukas came along, proclaiming that God chose which men would be born to kings and which to peasants, and therefore it was God who made men kings, giving each king exactly the sons—or the lack of sons—that he deserved. Thus the matter was settled.

Or would have been, had Matfei's sons not died in infancy. Murdered, some claimed, through sorcery. But Matfei had seen their weak bodies, how small they were: one that turned blue and died, having never breathed; one with a twisted spine. Maybe they were killed by sorcery. Or maybe they were just born weak or deformed. Matfei didn't understand such things. It seemed to him that much of what was called sorcery was merely the working of nature. A cow died—did anyone think that cows would live forever?—yet the whispers invariably arose about some old woman gone simple with age who mumbled something that might have been a curse, or some jealous neighbor who might hold a grudge. And so there arose stories about his sons. Nothing was proved.

Though with Baba Yaga as an enemy, the rumors were not hard to believe. Ill things happened before she married King Brat and came to Kiev to infect the world with her malice. She could not be blamed for every bad thing that came along since Brat lost his kingdom and she ended up in Pryava, so perilously close to Taina. But once Baba Yaga had set her heart on getting Taina, the bad things that happened were dire indeed. The failure of the copper mine. Two years of drought. And then his daughter, ensorceled and spirited away, hidden from all eyes until she came home with...

If Matfei hadn't been king, he wouldn't be standing here now in the practice yard of the fortress, watching this long-limbed stranger make an ass of himself with sword and broadaxe alike, knowing that he was appointed by some cruel fate—or merciless enemy—to be the father of Matfei's grandchildren and the leader of his people in war.