Chernevog

10

One could wish a wound to heal, one could wish strain and heat to leave tired joints—but unless one did something both reckless and foolish, that wish had no resources but the body in question—and a body had only so much to spend: it always paid afterward, in profound, watery-kneed exhaustion.

But Volkhi had to stay sound at least to get them away, please the god, and Sasha rubbed Volkhi’s legs down, wishing up new strength in himself and in Pyetr, too, while Pyetr was shutting the door and bringing his packs down. Volkhi, evidently inspired to appetite, ducked his head and unconcernedly cropped a mouthful of something that interested him.

“You ride,” Pyetr said, carrying their several packs off the walk-up, Babi trotting at his heels. Pyetr set everything on the ground and offered Sasha a quick hand up to Volkhi’s back, insisting, “I’ll take second.”

Pyetr was doing very well at the moment, Pyetr was not asking questions and Pyetr wanted no arguments. Sasha took the lift up, settled astride and took the packs Pyetr handed up to him, his own bags of books and breakables, the grain and the blanket-rolls. “I think we should take the old path,” Sasha said. “It’s longer, but you’re right, at least the river can keep us going right, no matter if something tries to confuse us—and there’s at least a chance of spotting the boat that way.”

“The wind’s been out of the south since noon,” Pyetr muttered, shouldering his own packs. “It’s a damned long start she’s had already. —Can’t you do anything? Stop the wind, maybe?”

There had come a sighing in the trees just after the sun had passed its height—just when, while they were walking home, Eveshka must have taken to the river and wished herself up a wind that… he was not sure… might be blowing a little less for his efforts.

“I’ve tried. Weather takes—”

“Time,” Pyetr finished glumly. And then looked alarmed. “She planned this ahead of time? Is that what you’re saying?”

“We don’t know she raised it.” He was pushed to say that. He did not want to say anything else. He wished Volkhi to move, so that Pyetr had to go ahead quickly and open the gate.

“You’re saying—” Pyetr began.

“Don’t,” he said. “Pyetr. Later. Please. Later.”

No need to lead Volkhi, Pyetr had found that out: the boy just wanted, and Volkhi had as well have no rein on him.

Wizards wanted this, they wanted that, and everything moved, horses, people, friends—Eveshka was off to the god knew what, and Sasha first insisted they stay and then insisted immediately, now, in the next few moments, they be off into the dark with a wizard’s clattering pharmacopeia and a load of books—

Which told him nothing except that Sasha had found something in the house that scared him out of good sense, something he did not want to talk about in earshot of the yard or even in the house—whatever banniks had to do with it. And the wind that carried Eveshka away from them had gotten itself together in whatever time it took a wind to gather.

“What’s going on?” Pyetr asked once they were on the downward pitch of the road, beside the dock. “For the god’s sake, what are we running from? What did you find out?”

Sasha said, from Volkhi’s height beside him:

“She did leave us a note. I found it in my book. It should have been the first place I looked.”

Pyetr looked up at him, but against the night sky Sasha was shadow, and out of the dark Sasha’s voice was hoarse and thin, telling him less than it might have.

“She wanted to go looking for you, right off,” Sasha said. “But I didn’t think we should: I was afraid we might be calling you back into something, and she was going to stay and try here while I went looking—”

“You said that already. What else did the note say, dammit? What’s she up to?”

“Finding the leshys. She was worried, the way things were going.”

“Worried about the leshys?”

“About the quiet. So she was going to try from the house…”

“What? Try what? Sasha, don’t make me ask every damn question: spit it out! What did she write? What did she say she was doing?”

“She didn’t say. If she knew, herself, which I’m not sure of.”

“God! Wizards! Then guess, is that so damned hard? Tell me what goes on between you two! I live in the dark!”

“Things don’t go on between us.”

“The hell!” He never wanted to shout at the boy, he never wanted to be unreasonable. He was losing his mind. “Dammit, just give me a guess, give me anything, I don’t care! Tell me what goes on in my wife’s head. And what’s the bannik got to do with it?”

“It showed up just after you left. She called you to come back—but this quiet—”

“You said that! What about the bannik?”

“We both asked it, and it showed us thorns and branches. She didn’t trust it.”

“Showed you thorns.” One resisted the urge to drag Sasha off the horse and shake him. One just kept asking, reasonably, patiently, shivering with the chill of wet weeds soaking one’s legs as they left the empty dock behind and started along the trail, “What do you mean, showed you thorns?”

“It doesn’t really talk when it answers. You see things.”

“So why in hell didn’t we ask it a question? Are we afraid of it? Maybe it showed her something you don’t know about, maybe—”

“It wasn’t the same bannik that used to live there. She didn’t trust it; but you’re right, that’s not saying she might not have gone back in there after I left. She could have asked it something on her own.”

She certainly would, Pyetr thought desperately. Nothing was ever right unless Eveshka did it herself.

“—Or maybe she got an answer from the leshys,” Sasha said. “That’s just as likely. She packed, we do know that. She left around noon, we can guess that by the wind and the bread and all, and I really think she might have heard me last night telling her I’d found you. That’d certainly make her feel better about leaving.”

“Fine! That’s really fine, Sasha!”

“Not because she wanted to.”

“Is that what the note says?”

“It just says she knew we’d follow her and she didn’t want us to—which is saying she knew she couldn’t wish us not to, because she wasn’t that sure she was right.”

“Eveshka doesn’t think she’s right. The river’ll run backward first. Where’s she going?”

“It didn’t say.”

“Didn’t say. Didn’t say. She left you the note, for the god’s sake! She had to have said that.”

“I told you what it said.”

“There’s got to be something else. You didn’t read it right.”

“Writing doesn’t mean everything.”

“Well, it’s damn useless, isn’t it? What the hell good is it if it doesn’t tell you the important things?”

Sasha had no answer for that one.

“I’ll tell you the first thing I want to know,” Pyetr said after a moment more of walking and gathering the bits and pieces of his temper. “I want to know where our old friend under the willow is, and I’ll lay you odds he’s not in his cave right now.”

“I think it might be a good place to look,” Sasha said.” That’s another reason I wanted to go this way.”

“For all we know the damn Thing’s in our bathhouse! The bannik talked about the river, did it? It probably wanted me for its supper!”

“I don’t think it was the vodyanoi. But I don’t trust it. I’m not that sure it’s a proper bannik. They’re supposed to be old. This one isn’t.”

Shapeshifters, Pyetr thought. In the god knew what shape. One could come up to the house in Uulamets’ likeness. Or Sasha’s. Or his. And Babi, who could recognize such things, had been with them. Babi had growled at the bannik, if that meant anything. He slogged through a boggy low spot, keeping his balance against Volkhi’s side. “I’ll tell you,” he said, between breaths and struggles after footing, “you say you daren’t doubt anything. I can, remember? Doubting’s a talent of mine. I doubt everything’s all right. I doubt we know what we’re doing. I doubt we’re going to find anything in the old snake’s hole, and I doubt my wife’s in her right mind, does that add it up?”

“It seems to,” Sasha confessed.

The river trail dwindled to a track under dead trees and degenerated into a brushy bog. Sasha clung to Volkhi’s back, his head buzzing with exhaustion and river-murmur. Time seemed muddled. He wished Volkhi and Pyetr to sure footing where it existed—there was no hope of following Babi, who had no sense about taller folk or obstacles Babi could pop past. Blink! and he was the other side, or halfway up a hill, or wherever Babi wanted to be, puzzled because no one had followed, no matter they were half dead of exhaustion and snagged in thorns.

“Babi!” Sasha called, wishing him to find ’Veshka, if nothing else, go to her, stay with her—but Babi paid no attention. Babi kept coming and going in his usual way, regardless of wishes. And from time to time he turned up on Volkhi’s rump, when the going got damp, to sit until they reached drier ground.

Wrong, Sasha kept thinking, desperately wrong to have come this way: recent rains had made the trail worse than the maze it was. He desperately wished them strength to keep going, wished Volkhi not to take him under branches, wished ways through this maze of dead ends and soft ground where Pyetr swore and stumbled knee-deep in water.

“It’s worse and worse,” Pyetr complained.”God, it’s a damn swamp!”

“I’m sorry,” Sasha said; but it hardly helped now. He called up more and more of their strength, telling himself he was more use on Volkhi’s back than struggling along afoot—he scarcely had his wits about him now as it was, and bit by bit the well-wishing he could do, using up strength and warmth from their bodies, would wear them down to cold and chills; it would kill them if he kept it up.

“I think we should stop,” he said, and let go his wishing slowly, argument enough, he was sure, for Pyetr to feel the truth of it in his bones. But:

“We can make the cave,” Pyetr said.

“The cave! God, we can’t get that far! If we did we can’t deal with him tonight.” He let everything go, and ached like winter in every bone. “I can’t keep us going, Pyetr.”

“I can,” Pyetr said, and took Volkhi’s reins in hand and led him, to Sasha’s dismay. The god only knew what strength Pyetr was going on now, swearing and struggling for footing in the morass he had advised them into, while he sat safe and dry on Volkhi’s back.

“Wait,” he said, wished Volkhi to a halt and slid down from Volkhi’s bare back into ankle-deep water. The baggage came off with him. “God,” he muttered in disgust and heaved the dripping packs up onto Volkhi’s back—but lifting them took more out of him than he expected, and he leaned trembling against Volkhi’s shoulder while his head spun, the whole due of his well wishing suddenly come down on him with a vengeance.

Pyetr walked back, laid a heavy hand on his shoulder, slapped Volkhi commiseratingly on the neck. “We both walk,” Pyetr said in a ghost of his own voice. “Volkhi’s done enough the last two days. Let him carry the packs, that’s all.”

“He can carry you,” Sasha objected, struggling after Pyetr as Pyetr led Volkhi ahead of him. “At least you don’t have to lead him! I can wish him, just let him go!” But even such simple wishes came with difficulty to his muddled wits, confused and scattered like so many birds. “Pyetr, we’re both taking for granted ’Veshka’s being a fool—but what if she’s not? What if she knows something we don’t? Maybe we ought to trust her. We don’t know what we’re walking into. Stop!”

“We’re not assuming anything,” Pyetr’s hoarse voice said out of the dark ahead of him. “We’re going up there to find out, aren’t we?”

Pyetr never had blamed him in all of this; Pyetr had never asked anything of him but answers he did not know how to give, and help he could not find—at least not in themselves any longer;

Pyetr just assumed his wizardry had failed and did not blame him for that either—

“Damn,” Pyetr gasped, and caught his balance, bent over as Sasha reached him, hauling his foot free of some underwater hole or root. He leaned against Volkhi a moment shaking his head and catching his breath in a coughing fit before he began to walk again.

Thorns and branches closing about them, leshys standing still and tall as trees…

Leaves falling in sunlight, a golden carpet on the ground…

Visions crowded in, brighter than the real night around him, filled with omen. Sasha panted after breath, tried from moment to moment to summon up strength where they most needed it. A night might seem to go on forever—but it had an end. This trail did. Only get to higher ground and they could rest, Pyetr surely thought they would get their second wind, Pyetr was that much stronger, he would go as long as he could push himself—

But Pyetr coughed, Pyetr swore in gasps and staggered and hurt himself and said, finally: “Dammit, Sasha, can you possibly give us some help here?”

“I can’t. There isn’t any more. We’ve gotten as far as we can, Pyetr.”

Pyetr just kept walking. Sasha did. His sense of direction was going, and he fended brush from his eyes in one long giddy confusion of hills and branches. He wished Pyetr’s cough to stop, stealing a little of his own strength and Volkhi’s to do it: dammit, he was nine years younger than Pyetr, at least his legs ought to hold up—if only he had spent less of his recent years at the books, if only, somewhere, he had learned to draw on himself the way Pyetr did, the only magic an ordinary man had to keep him going—while a wizard learned only, desperately, how to stop that kind of wish.

A wizard could never want things beyond reason: a wizard could kill someone… He hated his failure. He hated being less than Pyetr. That found a little more strength in his body than he had thought he had. He tried to find advice in Uulamets’ memories—

But he recalled Chernevog’s instead: Nature can’t work against itself. But magic, pure magic, has no such limits.

It took all a wizard’s magic to move so much as a pebble against nature: once or twice in a lifetime, master Uulamets had said, a wizard past his childhood could work a real spell—

If—

If he wished something magical with a child’s simplicity.

Or a rusalka’s ruthless single-mindedness—

God, I do know how. I do know how—

And we can’t, we daren’t, I won’t.

They climbed a bank to dry ground, moved as shadows in a starlit maze of white, peeling trunks, came down again to bog and brush. River-sound grew distant, a faint murmur out of the dark, beneath the dry rattle of limbs in the wind. “You ride,” Sasha urged Pyetr, again, panting for breath, but Pyetr refused— the foot was fine, Pyetr said, he had not hurt himself, he was only glad to get Volkhi to solid ground. “Can’t be that far,” Pyetr said, leaning on his knees a moment. “I don’t ever remember it being this far.”

Sasha thought, We’re not going to find Eveshka tonight. She doesn’t want to be found, she doesn’t want us to catch her.

Not when Pyetr’s with me. If Chernevog breaks free—Pyetr’s the way to her heart. She told me—take care of him. Don’t follow her.

God, I’m a fool! Eveshka, Misighi, hear me!

“We’re being fools,” he called out to Pyetr, but Pyetr said, in a rasping voice, “Is that news? Come on—” and came back and tried to help him, taking his arm, holding to Volkhi’s mane to keep his own balance.

“Damn,” Sasha said, surprised into tears, “dammit, Pyetr!” But he could not say he was right arguing with Pyetr’s judgment: he had no idea any longer what was right or wise. It was Pyetr’s heart drove them both, and it was his own heart muddling up his thinking, he knew that it was: his own heart, his own doubts, his own weakness.

Everything’s going wrong, we’re falling into a trap, my wishes aren’t working. It’s magic we’re fighting—and I’m not Uulamets, I’m not even Eveshka, and I don’t know any more what to do. I can’t even be sure enough to stop Pyetr, Pyetr’s the hardest of us to work on, and maybe he’s the only one of us still in his right mind—

“Damn,” he heard from Pyetr. “Damn! —Volkhi! Stop!” as Volkhi stumbled in water and lurched wildly off and aside, trying to get a forefoot free—

Volkhi made it, on a terrified wish Sasha hardly felt. Sasha stood, gasping after breath while Pyetr got down on his knees in the water, feeling after the leg that well could have snapped.

“Is he all right?”

“He’s all right.”

Sasha clenched chattering teeth, wished the leg sound and wished Volkhi not to be in pain, or tired as the poor creature was—surely Volkhi was worth more than the trees or the bracken, more than foolish hares or any stupid jay. The leshys might not agree: in the leshys’ reckoning they and a nest of sparrows might be equal—but the whole forest might perish, god, the leshys themselves might be lost if a young and ignorant wizard lacked the moral courage or the wisdom to break their rules for their own sake.

He made his wish not wholly rusalkalike, to draw one life till some creature died—but, in the way Eveshka had discovered to do, drew life from everything, all the woods far and wide—

“Forgive me,” he said to the leshys, then, and deliberately widened that theft, wished Volkhi well, wished Pyetr and himself well. Magic flooded strength into them, at least enough to serve.

“What are you doing?” Pyetr asked. “Sasha?”

“Something I can’t go on doing. Something Eveshka would have my hide for.”

Pyetr might not have understood. Maybe Pyetr was too distracted to understand. “God,” was all Pyetr said; and Pyetr did not question the need for it, he only led Volkhi through to better ground and kept walking.

Sasha followed him, aches fading, breath coming, frighteningly easy. The whole forest was there to draw on, all the life they had nursed back into it.

For all their replanting—surely they could steal a little. It was not, after all, for themselves he stole. It was nothing selfish.

The leshys had to understand… please the god they had to understand.

Something glided off through the trees, ghostlike, pale. Eventually an owl called.

A ghost drifted past—one of the shapeless sort, no more than a cold spot.

“Damn!” Pyetr cried, and swatted at it. “Out! Away!”

It made a faint, angry sound. The god only knew what it said. It dogged them for a while.

But ghosts did that sometimes, in the worse places in this woods.

“Papa?” Eveshka said, feeling the change in pitch. The deck tilted sharply and something splashed.

Hush, the whisper said. Everything’s all right.

The old mast creaked against its stays, the rush of water past them grew faster and faster. The ropes hummed, or it was her father singing spells, in his tuneless way.

Remember, the ghost said to her, remember when you were five, and wanted the snow?

She did. She rubbed her nose, tucked up in her cloak and ruefully thought of the storm she had raised, that had piled up drifts high as the east eaves of the house and made the roof creak.

Snow deep and white, snow like a blanket, lying in tall, precarious ridges on the branches, branches that wishes could shake, making small blizzards…

You remember, the ghost said. You do remember. You weren’t afraid of magic then…

Maybe it was a spell on the place, maybe only that their eyes were tired enough to take the ridge in front of them for more dark behind the trees. They had crossed the small ravine and were almost on the slope before the land began to make sense, and Volkhi snorted and Babi hissed at the rotten stench a skirl of wind carried to them.

“It’s the mound,” Sasha said, and Pyetr, slinging his sword around where he could get at it:

“No nicer than it ever was.”

A smell of rot and earth hung about the side of the ridge as they climbed, up and up to a barren top where the south wind blew unchecked. Water-sound whispered to them out of the dark as they walked the crest toward the river, with the hollow, ruined mound on their left, until the ridge ended in a long slope to a flat grassy edge and black water beyond.

“No sign of the boat,” Pyetr said quietly, and after another moment: “I’m honestly not sure whether that’s good or bad. — Is the old snake in his hole down there?”

“I don’t know. But I can’t rely on anything, either. The quiet’s still with us.”

“One way to find out.”

“Don’t even talk about it!” Sasha said. He tried not to draw any more from the trees than kept them going; but when he slacked off his thievery, he felt so cold and weary his knees began to shake. Or the place frightened him that much—the mere thought of the cave down there, and the deep pit on their right, that had been part of the cave once: he wanted to know where the vodyanoi was, and was sure of nothing, as if he had his ears stopped and his eyes shut. “We’d do better to sit up here tonight and wait for daylight. The boat’s not here, that’s all we need to know, it’s all we can find out tonight.”

Pyetr said: “I want to have a word with the snake, myself.”

“Not in the dark!”

“Well, god, he’s not going to come out in the light, is he? You’ve got the salt.”

“I’ve got it.”

“Good.” Pyetr took Volkhi by a shorter rein and started leading him downhill. Babi growled, hissed, then bounded after, a small moving black spot in the starlight.

“We’re not up to it!” Sasha protested; and Pyetr ignoring him: Stop! Sasha wished him, and saw Pyetr hesitate in the same instant, set his feet on the slant and look up at him with a look he imagined as indignation.

“I’m taking from the forest, Pyetr, I can’t go on doing that!”

“You can keep on doing it till we know what we’re dealing with!”

“Not against him! I’m stealing what I’ve got—I don’t know, I can’t hold on to it—”

I find no limit —

“Long enough for questions!” Pyetr said. “Dammit, Sasha, don’t doubt! Isn’t that what you tell me?”

Eveshka ‘s grave, beneath the willow —

I’ve seen this, he thought. The bannik showed me this, god, we’ve arrived exactly where it said we would be.

“What are we going to do,” Pyetr asked, “camp here, go to sleep, not knowing whether he’s here or not—not knowing whether she is, more to the point?”

“I don’t know. Pyetr, I just don’t know, I’m not sure—”

“God. All right, wait here if you want to. Just keep wishing, all right?”

“I can’t!” he cried, feeling everything slipping. But Pyetr had already turned and started downhill, intending to go into that cave below the roots of the dead willow—with the bones and the dead things—

Eveshka’s bones, for all they knew, the irresolvable paradox of her existence—

“Wait!” he cried, plunged into a reckless, weak-kneed descent. Pyetr never so much as slowed down, that was what his wizardry was worth at the moment. He reached the flat strip along the water, seized Pyetr’s arm. “Wait!” he said, and Pyetr was going to resist him until he said, breathlessly, “Let me try.”

“Do it,” Pyetr said. And he was trapped, looking into Pyetr’s face—not up, nowadays. Eye to eye. Pyetr believed in him, Pyetr wanted him to produce thunder and lightnings, the tsar and all his horses: Pyetr, who did not always believe in magic, had an absolute faith in him, at least, and no belief in limits.

Eavesdropping had its penalties. He was trapped, enspelled by a man without a drop of magic. He felt in his pocket to be sure, in all the rain and the stumbling about in the woods, that he still had the little packet of salt and sulfur, while his wits were still wondering why he was doing this and telling him that they both were fools.

But he started walking toward the old willow down the shore— and stopped at once as he heard Pyetr leading Volkhi behind him. Pyetr nudged him in the ribs, saying, this man all Vojvoda knew for wild risks and breakneck escapades, “Go on. I’m here in case the magic doesn’t work. Babi’s right with me.”

Sasha clenched his teeth to keep them from chattering… chill and exhaustion, perfectly natural, he told himself. He was not sure any longer whether Pyetr was wrong, whether he had been right, whether in approaching the vodyanoi with stolen strength they were not doing something supremely stupid. It was certain at least that doubt was fatal: he tossed alternatives to the winds and resolutely wanted the vodyanoi out of his cave as they reached the willow.

“Can you feel anything?” Pyetr asked, and he jumped, losing his concentration.

“Shush!” He waved at Pyetr to be quiet, gathered his courage and, deciding the willow itself might afford him some feeling of the cave below its roots, he worked his way along one large root and leaned against the trunk, almost over the water as he wished down, down into the earth, where the River-thing collected bones and wove his own magic—he could feel that magic, now, dark and snaky and many-turning as its wielder, but he found nothing at the heart of it, as if the dark down there were vacant.

“Hwiuur!” he called to the vodyanoi. “Answer me!”

But there was no response under the bank. He heard the random lap of the river against the roots, smelled the dank breath of the cave under his feet as he balanced there—with very mixed feelings about finding the creature not at home. But the arm that supported him was starting to shake and, with the growing conviction that Hwiuur was not, wherever he was, asleep, he was very anxious to get off his precarious perch and away from the water edge. He pushed away from the trunk.

The tail of his eye caught a shape swinging in the willow branches beside him.

“God,” he gasped, afraid for an instant it was some drowned body snagged there.

It hissed at him, Babi hissed, and Volkhi shied up, as the creature suddenly took on an elbows-out outline, moving spiderlike toward him.

Blood on thorn-branches—

Pyetr’s sword rang free of its sheath. Pottery crashed. Volkhi thundered away along the shore.

Fall of rain… gray sky, gray stone…

Burned timbers… and lightning…

Pyetr’s sword crossed his vision and Sasha put out his hand to restrain him from that recklessness.

Black coils slipping into dark water, flowing and flowing into the deep…

Eveshka sitting at the rail, pale hair blowing in the wind…

The shape vanished from the branches in the blink of a night-confused eye.

“What in hell was that?” Pyetr breathed.

“The bannik. At least—it’s what showed up in our bathhouse. It’s not supposed to be out here. It’s not supposed to do things like this!”

A gust of wind blew willow-strands against his cheek, feathery and chill as the touch of a ghost. He faltered in his balance on the roots, snatched at the branches and immediately let them go—then grasped them again to be sure, while his heart thumped so hard it all but stifled his breathing. “Pyetr, it’s alive. The willow’s alive.”

Pyetr caught a handful of the willow switches in his left hand and let them go again as quickly. “Maybe some green left in the roots,” he said, his voice none so steady either. “Trees do that.”

One prayed the god it was only that—or at least that it meant something good, this life returned to dead branches, to Eveshka’s willow, Eveshka’s dreadful willow—that had been the last thing alive when the woods had died.

“What did you see?” Sasha asked him. “Did it show you anything?”

“No,” Pyetr said. Then: “Damn. Volkhi!”

Sasha looked. There was no trace of the horse but the baggage he had dumped on the grass—in which he held out little hope for the jars of herbs and powders.

The fire-pot at least had survived. And the vodka jug—which, by the one real magic of a very foolish young wizard, had no possibility of breaking or of emptying. Driftwood gave them convenient kindling. They shared a portion of bread and sausages, while Volkhi grazed on the margin at a good distance from the willow and the cave.

“Can’t blame the poor horse,” Pyetr muttered, while Sasha sorted broken pottery among other surviving pots, to tell what had spilled in the bottom of the bag.

Comfrey and their other pot of sulfur and salt—that was the real disaster: one wondered what comfrey did in a mix that repelled River-things.

“Probably,” Pyetr said, “he’s thinking life might be better with ‘Mitri, after all.” He broke a piece of wood in his hands, a crack muffled by the river-sound. “Probably he’s right. —I’m not going to sleep, understand? I don’t want to sleep tonight, in this place, I don’t care if the River-thing’s not at home, it’s not safe here, it spooks Babi, and don’t you dare work any of your damn tricks on me, hear me?”

“I’m not,” Sasha said.

“A wonder he didn’t break a leg out there.”

“He’s all right. Some of our wishes stuck, didn’t they? So it’s not everything that’s not working. We did get here, didn’t we?”

“Whose wishes?” Pyetr asked.

“Fair question,” Sasha said, glumly, and tossed a bit of broken pottery into the river. Splash. Firelit ripples spread.

Pyetr unstopped the vodka-jug, took a drink, stared off into the dark where the tree stood and said,

“We should be out of here. We’re not going to find him—”

“Pyetr, I can’t keep doing what I’ve done, I can’t!”

“You can do it a few damn days! ’Veshka did it for years! Pick on some scrub for the god’s sake—it needs thinning anyway!”

“It’s not like that. It’s not like that, Pyetr, you don’t—”

“Don’t what?”

“You don’t understand. I don’t use magic, I’m not really magical, I don’t deal with it! There’s a difference between being a wizard and being a sorcerer.”

“Nothing’s happened yet!”

“Pyetr, —”

“I don’t understand,” he said. It was a challenge. It was hurt and frustrated expectation. “I feel fine, we can keep walking… “

“And wear ourselves down again. Pyetr, I’ve hedged terribly close—terribly close to something I shouldn’t do—and the leshys won’t like what I’ve already done—”

“We haven’t got damn many choices!”

“Pyetr, I’m killing things!”

That seemed to reach Pyetr. His frown changed, as if he were really looking at him for a moment.

“The vodyanoi’s not here,” Sasha said. “Eveshka’s not. We can’t do anything tonight and I can’t keep us going at this pace if we have to go all the way—all the way north…”

“Let’s say it.”

“Let’s not. — I can steal a little.” Even that promise sent a shiver through his bones. “I can keep us going faster than we might. But I can’t take and take and take, Pyetr.”

Pyetr rubbed the back of his neck, looked up. “All right. All right. But if you could steal enough, just once—once, to make ’Veshka hear you—”

He thought about that. It scared him. He said, still thinking about it, “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

“The leshys?”

“I’m not sure of that either.”

Pyetr shook his head in despair, rubbed his neck again and looked at him with tired, desperate eyes, saying, “No one’s ever sure. No one’s ever damn well sure.”

“I have to be.”

“Then nothing’s damn well going to get done, is it? My wife’s evidently sure.”

“Pyetr, I’m scared. I’m scared it’s all coming undone up there. I don’t know magic. I understand wishes. They only work natural ways. You can’t wish something against nature.”

“Things change that can change,” Pyetr said. A muscle worked in his jaw. “I’ve seen ’Veshka come back to life, I’ve seen shapeshifters run like puddles… Babi, over there. Is that nature!”

“Magic’s different. Like that jug we can’t break. Things don’t always turn out what you’d expect. It’s hard enough to think about consequences with wizardry. Magic just doesn’t make any sense to me. If there are rules I can’t figure them out—Chernevog didn’t find any. Uulamets just said that why you do something has something to do with it, but it doesn’t make any difference, if something like the vodyanoi gets a hold on you, because he’s older and he’s smarter and he is magical. Your body can wear out when I use it the way I was using it. Trees can die. Magic can’t. Magic’s a whole other thing, magic’s that place Babi goes to when he wants to get out of the rain, but it’s where the vodyanoi comes from, too. And if he’s wishing on there and not here when he changes shape, if that’s the way it works—”

“You’re not making sense.”

“Would you bet against Dmitri Venedikov’s dice?”

“No!”

“Well, I won’t use magic on the River-thing, either.”

Pyetr fell silent then, rested his elbow on his knee and a hand on the back of his neck.

Sasha said, desperately, “I’m doing all I can, Pyetr.”

Pyetr nodded, jaw tight. And did not look at him. Eventually Pyetr said, in response to nothing Sasha remembered, “She never plans on anybody else doing anything right. —Maybe when you’re a ghost that long you stop believing in people, do you think?”

“Eveshka loves you.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Pyetr said after a moment, and sighed and bent his head and poured Babi a drink from the jug, Babi leaning expectantly on his knee. The liquid went down Babi’s throat. “I truly don’t know.”

“You don’t know what what means?”

“Her loving me.”

“She does. Of course she does!”

“I had a lousy father. I had lousy friends. Women all over town said they loved me, while they were cheating on their husbands. I don’t know what the hell it means, loving somebody.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“I’m not so sure.”

“Because ’Veshka’s doing something we don’t understand?” This turn of Pyetr’s thoughts frightened him—it was a pain he had never dealt with, this whole mystery of wives, that turned a light-hearted man to hurt and constant worry. He resented Veshka’s hurting Pyetr. He tried not to make judgments. He said, “What’s that to do with anything? We’ve been wrong before. She might be right, do you think of that?”

“I never can make sense of her, you know. She never thinks I understand anything. Maybe she dunks ordinary folk are stupid.”

“She knew we were going to follow her. She knew you would.”

“Is that love—because she knows I’m a damned fool?”

“Pyetr, I swear I don’t know if she’s right or wrong; but I do know that whatever she’s doing, she’s got a reason. She thought she was doing the right thing—”

“What reason? What reason, for going off where she’s got the least excuse in the world to be going? The ghosts, the vodyanoi—she’s no business dealing with anything to do with him, for the god’s sake! Let alone Chernevog! Why in hell doesn’t she turn the boat around and come back and find us if she’s so damn sure I’m following her?”

“She doesn’t want us in trouble. I don’t think she’s being smart in going alone—but I don’t know how she’d get me to go and argue you into staying at the house. You know how that would work.” That came out saying ’Veshka would think him helpless. He tried to patch it. “She’s not in love with me.”

Pyetr drew a long breath and let it go slowly. He said, staring out at the river, “Keeping her heart wasn’t really a good idea, was it?”

Pyetr always managed to get past him—far past him, to ideas he did not himself want to deal with. “It may not have been,” he said. “But you’ve given her a lot, a lot, Pyetr, you don’t guess how much. Wizards are lonely. You make her think of someone besides herself. Uulamets always said—that was what she needed most.”

“Uulamets.” Pyetr said the word like a bad taste in his mouth, and his jaw clenched, making shadow. Pyetr refrained from speaking about the old man, for his sake, Sasha supposed-hated him passionately; blamed him for Eveshka’s faults, but I never brought the matter up of his own accord. The god only knew what it took Pyetr to keep his calm tonight. He had already blundered into sensitive spots, but something had to be said now, while there was a chance to say it so Pyetr would understand it:

“Pyetr, don’t think she’s weak. She doesn’t like to use what she’s got: I think what she’s been through makes it hard for her, maybe in ways nobody understands. But she’s so very strong she was terribly hard to teach. Even her own father was afraid of her.”

“Well, then, we don’t have to worry about her, do we? She’d handle everything. No need of help. We shouldn’t have left the house. We can go back home and sit and wait.”

“Pyetr, you know what the truth is: she’s scared to death for you. Yes, she’s got her heart, and she knows anything that want! her or me is going to go straight for you, that’s why she didn’t just ask me to go, she wants us looking out for each other. She can’t work with people. She can’t even work with me. She gets scared. Sometimes I think—” He had never brought it up. He took a breath and took the chance with Pyetr. “I think maybe she’s scared of slipping back again.”

Pyetr looked straight at him this time, with all his attention. “To being a ghost?”

“To wanting things. To wanting things so much she can’t…”

“She could stop. She did stop. She could have killed me, and she did stop.”

“With you she did, because you were the first person in all the world who made her think of somebody else. But if she weren’t alive, if she hadn’t come back all the way to life and she were with you every day—I’m honestly not sure she could have been that good, this long. I’m not sure anybody’s that strong, not to have a selfish thought sometime, even if you know it’s going to hurt someone—and sometimes if you have hurt someone—if you’ve done something really, terribly awful—your wishes won’t work very well.” He was thinking of his own house, seeing the fire in the windows and hearing the voices. “I can put out fires a lot better than I can wish them to start. And if she’s thinking of using her magic—I don’t think she wants anyone she loves near her.”

Pyetr stared grimly into the fire and took another drink. A big one. Then he capped the jug. “Well, I know what I’m going to do, friend, it’s very simple. No magic. Nothing of the sort. I just want within reach of Chernevog. The leshys had the right idea in the first place. Old Misighi was for breaking him in little bits. I should have helped.”

Chernevog’s own wishes might well have prevented that, Sasha thought; but he kept that unsettling thought to himself; he had poured enough into Pyetr’s lap tonight, and he was not at all sure he had made Pyetr understand him, about magic and rusalkas. He could wish that Pyetr did. But that broke promises— and that wish itself might go astray, Pyetr having no way to feel what it was to have wishes work—what it felt like to wish while one’s enemy wished, fester and fester, until there was no time to think and no time to mend things…

Until the power grew so much and the confusion so great—

Sasha shivered, a twitch of his shoulders. Across the fire, Pyetr settled down in his blankets. Sasha lay back on his own mat and pulled his blanket to his chin, staring up at the sky, and listened to Volkhi moving nearby.

Thank the god most of the baggage had survived.

Thank the god they had Babi with them to guard their sleep. Babi had posted himself between them and the water, as good a watchdog as they could have.

He only wished he knew where the vodyanoi was tonight; and recalling the bannik—why it had come here or why it had power here. Maybe, he thought, the bannik’s behavior was like Babi’s: Babi had no reason to leave a dvorovoi’s duty either, faring off with them about the woods, except that being a wizard’s dvorovoi seemed to make Babi different. Certainly being a wizard’s bannik—might account for almost any odd behavior.

Insoluble by any reason. His thoughts were growing random and chaotic. He worried whether Pyetr had understood anything.

He could still change his mind about what he had said, at least he could wish Pyetr to forget specific things he had said—but that was meddling, too; the god only knew what damage it might do—even put Pyetr off his guard and endanger his life. One could not find a path without a trap in it, and he was scared to the bottom of his soul that he had said things that Eveshka would not forgive and Pyetr might never, ever forget.

God, he did not want to hurt them. Either one.

“Watch us, Babi,” he whispered, before he set his own mind to drift, and deliberately breaking a promise, began to wish them both disposed to sleep…

After which the earth seemed to move and pitch under him like the river.

A ring of thorns…

A cold bed, a hard one—he felt the breeze and knew the touch of sun and moon; was aware of the movement of the stars…

It was the motion of the horse he still felt. It was the dizziness one got from gazing into the heavens—

Sky overhead, blaze of sun through branches, stars glittering through a net of thorns, a long succession of days and nights, careering madly across the heavens…

He sat upright, caught himself on his hands as Babi hissed and barreled into his chest, holding him and burying his head under his chin. He hugged Babi back, still trembling, not wanting at all to think how close that had been.

God, he thought, that was Chernevog, the thorns, the stone, the days and the nights. I’m dreaming his dream.

I nearly did it, I nearly waked him myself… God, I’m a fool!

In the same instant he felt a prickling at his nape, looked toward a sudden sense of presence in the dark at his elbow, fearing the slither of something large and snakelike—

There was indeed a shadow, in which eyes-shimmered gold-filmed red, reflecting firelight. But the shape was human, a spiky-haired, ragged urchin.

What do you want? he asked it, while Babi clung to him and hissed like a spilled kettle. The bannik shifted forward, grinned at him, resting bony arms on bony knees. Squatting there in the likeness of a starveling child, it made a rippling move of its fingers.

Sound of hoof beats… pale horse running under ghostly trees.

What are you? he asked it. Bannik, what’s your name? Are you our bannik—or are you something else?

It grinned at him. Its teeth were sharp as a rat’s. It spread its fingers again.

Spatter of blood on a golden leaf—a single drop, shatteringly ominous…

Perhaps he dreamed that he had dreamed. Now he rode through woods, trees rushing past him, a horse’s pale mane flying in his face. Everything was twilight and terror, and falling, golden leaves. He was not sure where the horse was carrying him, or what pursued them, or where hope was, except in getting away from this place before the light finally failed.

The leaves fell, the sun came and went in patterns of dark and light, following a curve across the sky.

Trees stretched their branches, thorns wove like serpents — and slowed to graceful leisure. Leaves unfurled, more slowly, so slowly finally the eye could no longer see them move.

Then one droplet hung still, still, on the thorn, impaled there…

Eventually it fell.

The next drop gathered. One began to think, if one wished, it might stay a little longer, fall just so.

One would know by that small sign, that one was no longer quite asleep.