Prologue

Dimitry Golitsyn watched the eye of hell slowly shut.

“Why? Why send it back?” he asked, though the sight of the thing, even as it diminished, made him tremble. It was now half the size it had been, a great black cyclone with a heart of crackling white fire. His airship, the Elisha, was poised high above that terrible eye. Around and beyond, the plains of America stretched away, rolling and bare as the steppes of his native Russia.

“Because it is not yet time,” Swedenborg's detached voice answered.

“No. That makes no sense,” Golitsyn snapped, fingering his mustache nervously, watching the storm shrink further. “The dark engines work. You've proved it. We should send them ahead of us, lay waste our enemies from a distance.”

“It is not yet time,” Swedenborg repeated, turning his face toward Golitsyn. The prince shivered again. The sorcerer's face was framed by wild, unbound hair; and he wore a pair of oculars that made him look like some sort of a blind insect.

“Professor Swedenborg, with all due respect, I am the commander of this expedition in matters military. I need a better explanation than that. Why should I waste the lives of my men or trust our untested Indian and Mongol troops when we have that?”

The eye was nearly closed. Where it had passed nothing remained but white ash. Tens of miles of ash. No tree, no living thing, not even bones were left to tell that once there had been life where Swedenborg's dark engine had churned.

For answer, the sorcerer merely turned away, lost in whatever he saw behind those thick lenses.

Golitsyn leveled a frustrated gaze on the third person clutching the bow rail, the metropolitan of Saint Petersburg.

“Your Grace, speak to him. Get some sense from him.”

The priest pursed his lips and stroked his long gray beard. “What is there to say?” he asked. “Swedenborg has the angels. The blessed saints speak to him, not to me. It is as God wills it. But he has shown me glimpses—” The metropolitan shook his head. “It is too much for mortal man, even for the patriarch. That is why Swedenborg is mad. But it is a holy madness.”

“Everyone is mad,” Golitsyn exclaimed. “I am mad. I've betrayed my tsar and led an army into the wilds of America, for what? It's all lunacy.”

The metropolitan raised an eyebrow. “Neither I nor Professor Swedenborg had anything to do with that. You did what you did from lust for power, not from any desire to serve God. Swedenborg's motives are pure. My motives are pure. Yours have never been, and so it is not your place to question us.”

“But how can you be sure? How can you be sure this—this boy we bow to is really the child of God and not the devil? What is our purpose in this limitless desert? What care we for the American colonies, when we could have the empire of the Turk at our feet, the riches of China?

“How can—” He broke off, for Swedenborg was looking at him again. The professor was a soft-spoken, polite, gentle man, and yet the words that now issued from his mouth were clipped and grim, almost another voice altogether.

“Prince Golitsyn, you do not, cannot, comprehend what lies ahead. I can. The American colonies are the last refuge of the godless science. It is where the devil has dug his cave and built his watchtower. It is where he crafts his hideous strength into knives and guns. We are the chosen, the servants of the prophet, the champions of godly science. What more do you need to know?”

“And yet we consort with the ungodly,” Golitsyn argued. “What is godly in the gibbering idolatry of the Mongols or the pagan superstitions of the Indians?” He turned to appeal to the metropolitan. “Surely, Your Eminence—”

“All will come to God,” the metropolitan said. “Though they be pagan, still they have eyes to see. They recognize the prophet for what he is. Indeed, it seems that everyone but you sees that truth.”

“I—” Golitsyn's mouth went dry. Behind Swedenborg, something had appeared. It was the shape of a nude man, a silvery, translucent cloud. It had no face as such, but it had eyes everywhere. They winked and blinked on its palms, arms, belly, thighs. Pale blue and green eyes, all watching him, all seeing the darkness in his heart.

The thing leveled an accusing finger at him, but it was Swedenborg who spoke. “Stay on the path, Prince Golitysn. The apocalypse is done, and the world is ended. Now is only the sorting of things. All souls that do not follow me are damned. The prophet is my servant. Swedenborg is my mouth. The metropolitan is my text. I thought you were my sword. If you are not, I must forge another.”

Golitsyn dropped to his knees. “No. No! I am yours. I just don't understand why we can't use our best weapons, why we must keep them in reserve.”

“Because something remains,” Swedenborg replied huskily. “Something needs to be found. When we have it, there will be no need of the engines at all.”

“Then why—why—”

“You are a sword, Prince Golitsyn. Be content with that.”

It was a command, not a suggestion.

“Yes, my lord,” Golitsyn replied, and bowed again.

Tsar Peter the Great dipped his paddle in the water and gave an exclamation of pleasure as the canoe slid into the stream.

“It's good to be on the water again,” he said. “I've always loved ships, great and small.”

Behind him, the broken-nosed giant named Tug grunted vague disapproval.

“You don't share my love, sir?” Peter asked. “I thought you had been a sailor.”

“Damn sure I was, Peter.” He grunted. “It may be a fine life if y'r lord o' the ship ‘n’ all, but f ‘r a common sailor, ‘s more ‘n half misery. An’ rickets, and scurvy, and the black bellyache. An’ when you finally come ashore, they sell you watered rum and poxy whores. No, sir tsar, it's no life.”

“To each his own. I love the swell of the sea, the feel of a boat. When I was building my navy, I myself went in disguise to the shipyards in Holland and learned the shipwright's art, working as a common laborer.”

“Well, we clean fergot t’ christen this'n when we stole ‘er from the Tonicas. Y’ got a name f ‘r our lady?”

Peter thought for a moment. “The Catherine,” he said softly, “for my late wife.”

The third man in the boat, an Indian named Flint Shouting, said nothing but sullenly dipped his paddle in the water, propelling them along.

They camped that night on a sandy natural levee, and Peter and Flint Shouting built a fire with the sticks at hand while Tug searched for more wood. The Indian went about his task with quiet efficiency. He was a changed man. When first the tsar had met him, he had been a boisterous, talkative fellow, always quick with a laugh and a joke. Now, he might go days without speaking.

“Why are you still with us?” Peter asked him, poking at the fire. “I know you care little for us.”

Flint Shouting didn't answer at first, and after a time Peter didn't think he would.

“I did not always like the people of my village,” he finally said in a surprisingly weary voice. Peter thought there ought to be anger there, or hatred, but it seemed to be mostly just exhaustion. “But they were my people. They did not deserve to be rooted up and burned like weeds. And I brought their killer to them. I smiled, and I told them Red Shoes was a fine fellow, and they let him into the village. And he killed them all.”

“I understand that,” Peter said. “I understand the need for revenge. I thirst for it myself. I have many debts of my own to settle.”

Flint Shouting nodded. “I will kill Red Shoes,” he said softly. “To kill him I must find him. Red Shoes is a Dream Walking, and I am not a magician. I cannot see him. He leaves no tracks, breaks no branches, bends no grass. I cannot find him.” He looked up at the tsar and met his eyes squarely. “But one day Red Shoes will find you. And Tug. And then I will kill him.”

Peter didn't flinch at the icy promise. After all, he, Peter Alexeyevich, had sent the heads of his rebellious Strelitzi guard rolling in the snow. He had ordered his own son knouted to death. However many men Flint Shouting promised to kill and then made good on, it was unlikely he could match Peter's own record.

He clasped his hands together. “I already knew you wanted to kill him. I already knew why. I just wanted to know why you hadn't left Tug and me to do so. So tell me—you say Red Shoes is a Dream Walking. What does that mean? What happened to him? He was once our friend, I would swear it. He saved my life. But your village …”

What had happened at Wichita village was no worse than other things Peter had seen. But he had never seen a whole town murdered by a single man.

Peter was no stranger to the scientific beasts that fools called angels, devils, and spirits—many had pretended to serve him, and his philosophers often showed him their experiments with them. But none had ever made him feel as he had when he saw Red Shoes stride through the huts, leaving flame and death behind him, twisting the necks of children and dogs. Something had prickled at Peter, beyond sight, sound, and smell, some sense that knew a kind of fear that the tsar himself did not.

“I don't know what happened to him,” Flint Shouting said. “I said I am no magician. Maybe a spirit ate him and walks in his skin. Maybe he was always a monster in human disguise, and fooled us for a time. I don't care.”

“But you saw what he did. If you are no magician, how will you kill him?”

For a moment, Flint Shouting's devilish old smile raced across his face again, and years fell from his features. “Carefully, Tsar. Carefully.” Then the frown returned, and he poked at the fire.

That seems to be the end of that, thought Peter. “How much longer before we reach New Paris?”

“That depends. I don't know. A few more days, a month. I don't know this river or its people very well.”

A crash in the underbrush was Tug returning.

“I reckon that'll be enough,” the big man said, dumping an armload of wood near them.

“As warm as it is, we hardly need a fire,” Peter commented.

“’Squitos. Wolves. Snake birds. Fire'll keep the bad things back. Well, some of ‘em.”

“I was just asking Flint Shouting how far New Paris was.”

“Y’ got me. I wish we'd get there, though. It's been too damn long since I had me a drink an’ a woman.”

“Watery rum and poxy whores?”

“Now I'd settle for a piss beer an’ a one-eyed grandma.” Tug grunted. “I reckon we'll get there in a couple o’ weeks, if we get no trouble from the Natchez. Last time me an’ Red Shoes went there, we were pretty welcome. Without Red Shoes …” He shrugged and looked sorrowful. Peter knew that Tug and Red Shoes had been friends for a long time. But Tug had seen the same things he and Flint Shouting had. “An’ what'll you do?”

“Me? Petition the French king. Raise an army. Take back Russia.”

“That same song?”

“It's what I have to do.”

“Why?”

“Because I am the son of Alexey. Because I am tsar. Because I took a nation that was nothing and made it the greatest in the world, and I will not be denied my place in it by warlock usurpers.” He paused for an instant. “Because they killed my Catherine. Because they took my ships.”

“Well,” Tug said after a moment, “New Paris ought t’ be fun, then. Me trying to find a lay that hain't a bowlegged crone, you tryin’ to raise an army—I don't know which of us dreams the bigger.”

Peter chuckled, and they began to talk about what they might find to eat.