Free Sarwat Chadda - Billi SanGreal 02 - Dark Goddess by Unknown Page A

joined the Order. There would be no ceremony, no all-night vigils or prayers. Billi couldn't let Vasilisa go to Jerusalem without making peace.
    She knocked on the door. "Vasilisa? Can I come in?"
    "No."
    The sun had gone down, and the room was in gloomy darkness. Billi turned on the light. Vasilisa sat on her bed, huddled in the corner, holding her knees.
    Billi moved a few stuffed animals aside and sat facing the girl.
    Where to begin?
    "I'm sorry it's come to this, Vasilisa. But it's the only way you'll be safe."
    "I was safe until you came along."
    "We saved you from the werewolves."
    "I wish they'd killed me too."
    "Don't say that." Billi stared hard at the girl. "You don't mean it."
    "They say I'm going to be the new Oracle. What happened to the old one?"
    "I'll tell you about him. Kay was my best friend and I loved him more than anything." Billi stopped. It had just burst out, this confession. She looked down at her shaking hands and clasped her fingers together, forcing them to be still. "There's a hole inside that sometimes feels so big I think I'll disappear into it— but he's gone. He's gone and you're here."
    Their eyes met. They'd both already lost people they loved in the Bataille Ténébreuse. Billi joined Vasilisa in the corner.
    "When I found you, Kay came back. In away. I dreamed of him and he told me he was saying good-bye."
    "Because of me?"
    "The dead should not linger. I should look to the living." Billi smiled at the girl. "That seems like a fair trade."
    "What will happen to me, in Jerusalem?"
    "You'll be taught how to control your powers. Kay was going mad with all the voices in his head. He used to say it was like having a radio on and the dial was always moving but never off. You'll learn how to protect yourself."
    "And become a fighter, like you?"
    Billi inspected her call used hands. All those years of weapons training and punching wooden boards. Hardly ladylike. She scratched her knuckles, then took the girl's hand. "There are a lot of ways to fight, Vasilisa."
    The two of them sat together in the darkness. Outside the window the tree branches scratched at the glass and the old roof beams creaked. Below, Billi heard her father and one of the other knights scraping steel against whetstones.
    "What is that called?" Billi asked, pointing at Vasilisa's Russian doll.
    "A
matryoshka
."
    "Can I look?"
    Vasilisa nodded, and Billi opened up the doll. The next one was equally exquisite. Each flower was delicately painted into the shawl, and the dress's embroidery looked as though it had been done using a single hair. The next doll matched it, and within that was a stone figurine covered in flaking gold leaf.
    "It's beautiful," said Billi. It was a woman, crudely shaped, with a small head and large breasts and hips. Billi had seen statuettes like this in museums. It was a Venus figurine—they were prehistoric religious items, found throughout Europe.
    Billi inspected the stone. The gold leaf had fallen off in patches and the stone beneath was highly polished, like black obsidian. Dark veins of iron ran through it.
    "Babushka said it was the goddess."
    "Baba Yaga?"
    "No, not just Baba Yaga." Vasilisa took back the statue. "Baba Yaga is the Dark Goddess, the Winter Crone. But sooner or later winter ends and spring comes." Vasilisa kissed the statue gently. "My babushka's mother made this and the
matryoshka
dolls around it when she lived in Tunguska."
    "Tunguska?"
    Vasilisa waved at the window. "Out in Siberia." She picked up the gold-covered figurine. "She used to say this was magic. That's why she covered it in gold."
    "She sounds like an interesting woman," said Billi. "What else did your babushka's mother say? Anything about Baba Yaga?"
    "Oh yes." Vasilisa took the figurine and whispered, "Baba Yaga hates us, Billi. For all the damage we've done."
    "What sort of damage?"
    "She wants the Earth back to how it was before men came. She feels the Earth; she feels it like it's her. Every time we dig mines we're