Chernevog

14

Nothing had worked the way it ought, in Sasha’s reckoning: the owl ought not to have died, the leshys ought not to be standing motionless and unhealthy as they were, and Chernevog ought not to be alive—but for the latter fact at least he had only himself to blame. He could not understand what he had done—or why he had not shoved Pyetr’s hand the other way.

“Get up,” Pyetr said, and Chernevog struggled to his feet against the thorn hedge, grasping branches that stabbed his palms with a cruelty that made Sasha wince. Blood came—droplets shaken from the thorns spattered the leaves.

God, I’ve seen this, I’ve seen this, and now it’s happening.

“Move!” Pyetr said, and Chernevog, seeming dazed and lost, went where Pyetr sent him, back through the thorn-hedge maze to the clearing and the stone.

We have to kill him, Sasha thought miserably. Surely that’s the only sane thing to do. Nothing can ever be safe so long as he’s alive.

“Misighi!” Pyetr called to the leshys, who stood all about them, still as trees. “Misighi, he’s awake, we’ve got him, now what in hell do we do with him?”

The leshys gave no answer. Chernevog had knelt by the owl, blood still dripping from his fingers, falling to the ground between his knees—Chernevog wiped his cheek with the back of his hand, looked utterly overwhelmed.

God, this is where it was telling us we’d be, this is what the bannik meant. But he’s not fighting us, he doesn’t act as if he understands anything—

“Don’t put on with us,” Pyetr said, “damn it all.” He had his sword in his hand. Everything about him said he was ready to use it: Sasha wished he would, before Chernevog recovered his wits and wanted their hearts stopped.

But Chernevog looked up, cradling his wounded hands one in the other, his face white with pain, eyes holding only bewilderment.

Pyetr’s sword trembled, rose in a wide, glittering sweep, and with a sudden wrench of Pyetr’s arm, hit the ground at Chernevog’s knee.

“Hell!” Pyetr said in disgust.

Chernevog had never flinched, only looked at them with that terrible lost expression.

“Is he doing that?” Pyetr asked angrily. “Is he wishing at us?”

Sasha said, “I’m not sure.”

Pyetr came back to him, and turned and looked again at Chernevog, the sword still in his hand. “He is doing it, dammit.”

The books, Chernevog’s with them, were all lying out in the brush somewhere—Sasha tried not to think about that. He caught Pyetr’s arm, drew him half about and whispered, “The owl shouldn’t have died, we’ve left my bags out mere, and I’m not sure the leshys are watching anything right now.”

“Let the damn bags stay there! Don’t let’s go off in separate directions like fools, all right? It’s exactly what he’d want!”

“I don’t know, Pyetr. I don’t know! If the owl did have his heart, and it did come back to him— Maybe that’s what the leshys wanted, maybe that’s what they’ve been doing with him all these years—”

“We don’t damn well know what the leshys have done, do we? They’re not talking to us. They’re not looking healthy at all right now, are they?” Pyetr’s voice rose. Pyetr made an evident effort to keep it low. “Misighi’s not the sort to draw off from us.”

“Maybe it wasn’t easy,” Sasha said, “working a magic like that. If they have somehow cured him…”

“Cured him of what? Cure him of life, that would have been some help! What are we supposed to do now, take him home? Let him live in our house, eat at our table, wander the woods and talk to the foxes? Pay social visits to vodyaniye and the god knows what? There’s a shapeshifter loose in the woods! Did Misighi send us that little gift? Did he send us the bannik? Or did Misighi turn the house upside down and lose me in the woods? Where’s ’Veshka, that’s what I want to know! She should have been here ahead of us!”

It was a disturbing lot of questions, all of which nested ominously in that confusion Chernevog occupied in his thinking. “We don’t know how far we are from the river,” Sasha said. “I don’t know. I don’t know about the shapeshifter. Maybe he did send it. Maybe it’s the vodyanoi trying to stop us getting here.”

“Fine. Fine. ’Veshka’s on the river and maybe the vodyanoi’s loose—”

“Pyetr, he has his heart, I really think that’s what happened. He must have sent it away a long, long time ago—and he wasn’t very old, then, he can’t have been, he was a boy when he came to Uulamets and he didn’t have it then. I don’t know what it would be like—but I’m not sure it wouldn’t still be the same as it was then.”

Pyetr looked at Chernevog, scowling. “That’s no damn boy.”

“But his heart, Pyetr,—something brought the owl here and brought us here, and the owl shouldn’t have died.”

“Fine. The owl’s dead. He wants us to feel sorry for him!”

“I don’t feel him wanting anything right now.”

“He wants to be free, is what he wants,” Pyetr said. “He wants us dead, is what he wants, and just because he hasn’t got his wish yet doesn’t mean he won’t if we turn our backs on him. ’Veshka’s coming here—we hope to the god she’s coming here— and we’d damn well better do something about him before she walks into this. I don’t want him trying any of his damn tricks with her!”

“Don’t—”

“—swear. I’ll swear, dammit, I’ll swear—Misighi, dammit, wake up and give us an answer!”

Something happened, then. It might have been a voice. It felt like a reassurance. It felt like a light moving around them when everything outside this grove was dark.

A leshy voice said, “No more, no more strength…”

“No more time… no more. Keep him safe.”

Misighi said, deep as bone, “Trees die. This will not. Take him to Uulamets.”

After which—Misighi stood as still as if he had never moved, as if not even wind could stir him.

“What does that mean?” Pyetr cried. “Misighi, what are you talking about, take him to Uulamets! —Uulamets is dead, Misighi! Uulamets has been dead for three years! Wake up and listen to me!”

Misighi did not move again. The only sound was thunder, the wind moving in the woods—

And the first few spatters of rain.

Owl was dead… he truly could not understand that. Owl was a ball of fluff, a hungry mouth—one had to feed him, one had to keep him in secret—Draga would kill him, else. He had taught him to fly, wished him safe and free and sent his heart where he had thought Draga could never catch it. It was not that many years ago.

But Owl was gone, without his ever knowing Owl was in danger at all—and everything he knew seemed to have changed. Lightnings flickered overhead. He could seize them—if he knew beyond a doubt that was what he wanted. He could free himself if he cared for one thing more than anything. But Owl was gone and Draga was dead and the pattern his own blood made, rain-washed on the leaves where he knelt, was of equal fascination with his warders’ argument about whether it was wiser to kill him. He could have offered his own opinion, but it seemed superfluous: the leshys had given their orders, and he felt—truly, mostly numb now, the pain in his hands a welcome distraction from wishes. He could not gather the pieces of his magic up again. He dared not, and it was the same as being blind.

“Get up,” Pyetr said to him; and he did, caught Pyetr eye to eye for an instant and with all his heart wanted this extraordinary man’s goodwill…

He felt Sasha’s instant intervention—turned his head and for a panicked moment it was Sasha he was looking at, Sasha wishing him helpless and quiet.

Then for no apparent reason things slid into order: he was aware of the ground they stood on, aware of the boundary of nature and magic, and for an instant of utter terror wavered this way and that of that line.

He clenched his hands, courted the momentary pain—he had that much sense left: think of running water when things went wrong: water and stones, no fear, change without change. He caught his breath and his balance then, looked back toward Pyetr—

And in complete simplicity cast his heart in that direction, quite the same as he had given it to Owl—because a man like Pyetr could no more use it than Owl could. He hoped it might appease Sasha—and no one had ever said of Kavi Chernevog that he was a coward.

But Sasha snatched it himself, before he could more than think of his own survival, and sent it back to him with a wish so strong he had no defense. He recalled the moment before he had given it to Owl, and tears came to his eyes—that was what Sasha did to him, while Pyetr said, completely extraneously to everything that was happening— “Find Uulamets! Misighi’s lost track, that’s what he’s done—he’s forgetting things the way I was forgetting!”

Sasha said, distractedly: “I don’t think so. It’s very possible there’s something left. I’d be surprised if there wasn’t a ghost or something.”

“There’s a damn shapeshifter!” Pyetr said. “We met that! No, thank you!”

Chernevog listened to the argument, remembering his house, remembering Uulamets coming to kill him, and how they had fought with magic the old man had all his life abhorred—

(Fool, Uulamets had railed at him, when Uulamets had first caught him at it, when he was a student in the river-house. Don’t you know there’s no creature wants to help you for free? The things that swear they will, want you, that’s what they want, boy, don’t ever think otherwise! Someday they’ll turn on you— at first chance they’ll turn on you, and then you’ll have not a chance in hell, boy!)

It was true—and maybe if early on he had had the old man’s

advice he might have stayed with simple wizardry— and had his heart in Uulamets’ grasping hands instead of where it was now, in himself, causing him pain and threatening his very existence. So very many things might not have happened: Uulamets would not be dead and he might have been, like Eveshka, under Uulamets’ orders, doing forever whatever Uulamets told him.

He thought of that, too. For some chances missed he could be truly grateful.

What Draga had dealt with had ultimately turned to someone cleverer and less indolent and less interested in pleasure and comforts. He had been there, when she had begun to fail.

Now it could find other possibilities, now that Sasha had him helpless as he was and exposed everything he had ever felt and wanted and dreamed of to, the god knew, anything that might happen by. He wanted Sasha to understand the appalling folly of what he had done—he tried, completely honest in what he offered, but Sasha wished him silent so violently and so angrily it stung.

Dammit, he had not had to bear that kind of rebuff since Draga’s time. And this boy did it to him with impunity, refusing to listen, the way he had refused to listen, if he had ever truly had a chance—

“Fool!” he said aloud. “It’s your own lives you’re throwing away!”

Pyetr looked at him anxiously. But he felt Sasha take what else he would say and turn it into silence. He fought that back and forth with Sasha until he knew Sasha would not hear his reasons, nor would he let Pyetr hear him: Sasha doubted everything he would say and every argument he could possibly make, because Sasha knew his own ignorance of magic, and simply had to assume he was lying in everything.

He knew that defense too: it was one he had used when he had been that young and that foolish and that damnably, blindly ignorant, and not Draga nor Uulamets nor even Eveshka had ever gotten past it.

There were broken jars: pottery grated as Sasha picked up his bag: “The god only knows,” Sasha said with a shake of his head, and squatted down to investigate the damage, trusting him, Pyetr supposed, to keep an eye on their prisoner, all this in a leaden, drizzling rain, at the edge of the dying wood. The leaves were almost all fallen now, the wind had stripped the limbs bare: black trees, golden, sodden ground.

No Babi, no horses, and no sign of Eveshka. Pyetr kept his sword in hand and one eye on Chernevog: even an ordinary man knew enough to worry when, in wizardly company, he found himself doing stupid things or omitting to do smart ones.

“A snake,” he muttered, standing guard while Sasha tried to put things to rights, “is still a snake. Whether his heart was in that owl or not, it’s still his heart, and it’s still a snake. —I hope you’ve noticed we haven’t done what we came here to do, I hope you’ve noticed this viper is still getting his own way.”

“Not all of it,” Sasha said, “I assure you.”

“I’d like to know what he’s missed. What do we do, let him loose while we go searching after a damn ghost that’s just as good let alone?”

All this while Chernevog was listening. He was acutely conscious of that. But privacy to speak meant leaving Chernevog unwatched.

Pyetr wanted to go down to the river, he wanted—desperately, on some premonition or someone’s wish—to go down to the river. He said quietly to Sasha, “I’ve got this feeling, I don’t know where it’s coming from…” Chernevog had sat down with his head on his knees and his hands locked on the back of his neck, no longer paying any apparent attention to them—but a cold unease nagged him, a sense of disaster no matter what they did. “I keep thinking we ought to head for the river, however far it is.”

“I think that’s as good an idea as any,” Sasha said.

It was not the kind of answer Pyetr wanted. He wanted the upset in his stomach to go away. “Are you sure it isn’t him wanting it?” he asked. “Look at him over there, pretending he doesn’t hear—dammit, he wants us dead! A heart doesn’t make any difference in that!”

“He can want that anywhere,” Sasha said. “I know what I want right now. I want to do exactly what Misighi said to do.”

“Hunt down Uulamets?” It was stupid to listen to irrational feelings, sudden notions, or chills down the back of his neck. But Pyetr knew where to start looking for ghosts if one wanted to find them, particularly Uulamets’ ghost—and that place was over on the other side of the river, the god knew how far from here, a burned house and a shallow grave. “Conjure him from here, can’t you?”

“I’m not sure I ought to conjure anything—I’m not sure magic’s a good idea right now. They said ‘Take him.’ So we’ll take him where Uulamets is.”

“I don’t like this ‘not sure,’ you know.”

Sasha stood up. “We’ve got no choice, Pyetr—”

“Damn right we’ve got a choice! How in hell are we going to cross the river? At least try calling him here, for the god’s sake! If we go out of here and magic starts working again outside this woods, it works for him too, doesn’t it?”

“It already is working,” Sasha said, in a low voice. “I have this awful feeling—that we need to find ’Veshka. I need her myself, Pyetr, I really need her help—the books don’t tell me everything—”

“God.” He heard the fear shaking Sasha’s voice, grabbed his arm and held it hard. He had loaded too much onto the boy, everything had, for days, he saw that. Sasha was exhausted, white-faced. “Let’s not panic, shall we?”

Sasha got a breath. “I’m not Uulamets, Pyetr.”

“Thank the god.”

“I think,” Sasha said on a second deep breath, “right now, you’d be a lot safer if I were.”

He squeezed Sasha’s arm. “I’ve every confidence in you. You’re doing fine, boy. You’re on your feet, he’s not, you’re doing perfectly fine.”

Several more breaths. “I keep thinking about the boat. I keep thinking that ’Veshka… might look this way right now if she wanted to. But she doesn’t. I don’t know why.”

Now Pyetr’s stomach was truly upset, and he looked narrowly at Chernevog, wondering how far this whole thing went and whether the wiser course was not after all to kill him without warning.

But Chernevog lifted his face just then with a haunted look the match of Sasha’s, and said: “Eveshka’s outside the leshys’ spell. It’s fading. It’s only here, now.”

No more damn sense than any other wizard. “Here,” Pyetr echoed, “what, ‘here’? “ and looking at Sasha: “What in hell’s he saying?”

But at the moment he had two wizards on his hands, both looking off into nowhere and murmuring things like, in Chernevog’s case:

“They haven’t the strength…” And in Sasha’s: “Pyetr, the horses are coming.” An ordinary man just gathered up the baggage and hoped for something very soon to make sense—but he could very well wish the two wizards in question were not unanimous.