The Fire. Katherine Neville

themes. They’d long been the only primitive or ‘superstitious’ art acceptable to the Communist regime and they adorned everything in Russia, from miniature papier-mâché boxes to the walls of the Pioneers’ Palace itself, where Solarin – with fifty other boys – had practiced his defenses and counterattacks for more than twelve years. As he had had no access all that time to storybooks, cartoons, or films, the Palekh illustrations of these ancient tales had been young Aleksandr’s only access to the realm of fantasy.

      The painting on this banner was one with which he was well acquainted, a famous one. It seemed to remind him of something important. He studied it carefully as he and Xie picked their way around the long line of zealously praying women.

      It was a rendering of the most famous Russian fairy tale, the story of the Firebird. There were many versions that had inspired great art, literature, and music, from Pushkin to Stravinsky. This picture on the banner was the scene where Prince Ivan, hiding in his father the tsar’s gardens all night, finally sights the luminous bird that had been eating his father’s golden apples, and he tries to capture her. The Firebird escapes, leaving just one of her fabulous magical feathers in Ivan’s grasp.

      This was the well-known work of Alexander Kotukhin that hung in the Pioneers’ Palace. He was one of the first generation of Palekh artists from the 1930s, who was said to have hidden secret messages within the symbols he used in his paintings that the State censors couldn’t always easily interpret – though the illiterate peasantry could. Solarin wondered what this decades-old message had meant, and to whom.

      At last they reached the end of the long line of waiting women. As Solarin and Xie curved back to head toward the Vestry, a stooped old woman in a babushka and threadbare sweater and carrying a tin pail left her place in the queue and brushed past them – still crossing herself fervently. She bumped into Xie, bowed an apology, and continued across the yard.

      When she’d passed, Solarin felt Xie tugging his hand. He glanced down to see his daughter extracting a small embossed cardboard placard from her pocket – a ticket or pass to the Palekh exhibit, for it bore the same picture as the banner.

      ‘Where did this come from?’ he asked, although he was afraid he knew. He glanced after the woman, but she’d vanished across the park.

      ‘That lady put it into my pocket,’ Xie was saying.

      When he looked down again, his daughter had flipped over the card, and Solarin snatched it away. On the back was pasted a small illustration of a flying bird set inside an Islamic eight-pointed star, and three words were printed in Russian:

      Reading these words, Solarin felt the blood pulsing in his temples. He glanced quickly in the direction the old woman had gone, but she seemed to have vanished. Then he saw something flicker at the far periphery of the walled fortress; emerging from the copse of trees, she was vanishing again around the far corner of the Tsar’s Chambers – a distance of more than one hundred paces.

      Just before she disappeared, she turned to glance over her shoulder directly at Solarin, and he – who had been about to follow her – halted in shock. Even at this distance, he could make out those pale blue eyes, the wisp of silvery-blond hair escaping from her scarf. This was no old crone, but a woman of great beauty and infinite mystery.

      And more. It was a face he knew. A face he had imagined he would never see again in this life.

      Then she was gone.

      He heard himself speak. ‘It cannot be.’

      How could it be? People do not rise from the dead. And if they did, they would not look the same after fifty years.

      ‘Do you know that lady, Papa?’ Xie asked in a whisper so no one could hear.

      Solarin dropped to one knee in the snow beside his daughter and tossed his arms about her, burying his face in her muffler. He felt like weeping.

      ‘For a moment she looked familiar,’ he said to Xie. ‘But I’m sure I do not.’

      He squeezed her harder, as if he could wring her out. In all these years, he had never lied to his daughter. Not until now. But what could he tell her?

      ‘And what does her card say?’ Xie whispered in his ear. ‘The one with the flying bird?’

      ‘Apahsnah – it means “danger”’ Solarin told her, trying to pull himself together.

      For God’s sake, what was he thinking? This was a fantasy brought on by a week of stress and bad food and miserable cold. He must be strong. He got to his feet and pressed his daughter’s shoulder between his fingers. ‘But perhaps the only danger here is of you forgetting your practice!’ He gave a smile that Xie did not return.

      ‘What do the other words say?’ she asked.

      ‘Byrihgyees pahzhar,’ he told her. ‘I think it’s just a reference to the firebird or phoenix in this picture here.’ Solarin paused and looked at her. ‘In English, it means, “Beware the fire.”’ He took a deep breath. ‘Now let’s go inside,’ he said, ‘so you can beat the pants off of that Ukrainian patzer!’

      From the moment they entered the Vestry of Sergiev Lavra, Solarin knew something was wrong. The walls were cold and damp, depressing like everything else in the so-called Women’s Summer. He thought of the woman’s message. What did it mean?

      Taras Petrossian, the dashing nouveau capitalist tournament organizer, in his expensive Italian suit, was handing a large wad of rubles as a pourboire to a skinny monk with a big ring of keys, who’d unlocked the building for the game. Petrossian, it was said, had made his fortune through under-the-table dealings in the several designer restaurants and nightclubs he owned. There was a colloquial word for it in Russian: blat. Connections.

      The armed thugs had already penetrated the inner sanctum – they lurked everywhere in the Vestry, leaning conspicuously against the walls, and not just for warmth. Among other things, this low, squat, unobtrusive building served as the monastery’s treasury.

      The glut of the medieval church’s gold and jewels were displayed on pedestals in brightly lit glass cases scattered around the floor. It would be hard to concentrate on chess, thought Solarin, with all this blinding glitter – but there was the young Vartan Azov, already seated beside the chessboard, his large dark eyes focused upon them as they entered the room. Xie left her father and went to greet him. Solarin thought – not for the first time – that he would like to watch Xie wipe the board with the arrogant brat.

      He had to wipe that message from his mind. What did the woman mean? Danger? Beware the fire? And that face he could never forget, a face from his darkest dreams, his nightmares, his worst horrors –

      And then he saw it. In a glass display case far across the room.

      Solarin walked as in a dream across the wide-open floor of the Vestry and he stood looking down at the large glass case.

      Within was a sculpture he had also thought he would never see again – something as impossible and as dangerous as the face of that woman he’d glimpsed outside. Something that had been buried, something long ago and far away. Yet here it was before him.

      It was a heavy gold carving, caked with jewels. It portrayed a figure dressed in long robes and seated in a small pavilion with the draperies drawn back.

      ‘The Black Queen,’ whispered a voice just beside him. Solarin looked down to see the dark eyes and tousled hair of Vartan Azov.

      ‘Discovered only recently,’ the boy went on, ‘in the cellar of the Hermitage in Petersburg – along with Schliemann’s treasures of Troy. They say this once belonged to Charlemagne and was hidden – perhaps since the French Revolution. It may have been in possession of Catherine the Great of Russia. This is the first time it has been shown in public since it was found.’ Vartan paused. ‘It was brought here for this game.’

      Solarin was blinded by terror. He could hear nothing further. They had to depart at once. For this piece was theirs – the most important piece of all those they had captured