Chernevog

19

“What in hell was that?” Pyetr asked of Sasha. “That was the bannik! Wasn’t that the bannik?”

“It’s what showed up at the house,” Sasha said.

“It’s him,” Pyetr said. “Is it my eyes, or what’s it doing with the owl?”

“I don’t know,” Sasha said.

“He damned well does,” Pyetr said, and took a new grip on Chernevog’s shirt, wanting answers. “What kind of tricks are you up to, Snake?”

Chernevog said on a ragged breath, “I told you, I told you, and you won’t listen—”

Pyetr shook him. “Told us, damn right you’ve told us—one damned lie after another! Sound asleep, were you? Innocent as morning snow, are you?”

“I’m not lying!” Chernevog cried, and it sounded both desperate and fully in earnest.

Which meant nothing, with wizards. Pyetr shook him a second time, saying, “Bannik, hell! Call it back!”

“I can’t!” Chernevog said.

“Can’t, hell! That’s you. That spook’s you, Snake, don’t tell me it’s not.”

“It’s a shadow,” Chernevog said faintly. “A piece. A part. A fragment…” Chernevog shivered, put a hand on his arm, eye to eye with him in a twilight so deep that his eyes had no center, only dark. “The dead can fragment… That’s what ghosts are: pieces, fragments, sometimes a single notion—”

“You’re not dead!”

“I don’t know what made it, I don’t know why it happened, I didn’t know it could happen and I don’t know where I lost it—”

“Damned careless of you!”

“It’s the truth, Pyetr Ilyitch!”

He worried every time he believed Chernevog. He had memories aplenty to remind himself what Chernevog was, and had done, and still might do; and certainly enough to remind him why he wanted to kill this man; but he could not find the man he wanted to kill, that was the trouble: this one held to him, teeth chattering, and said things like,

“For the god’s sake don’t go on with this tonight. Don’t invite any damned thing that might be listening. Build a fire. Lay down lines. It’s not nature you’re dealing with: put some limits to this, don’t leave it to whatever comes.”

Sasha said, “He’s right.”

“Build a fire.” They were knee-deep in seedlings leshys had put there. “I don’t think we ought to be tearing up any trees, under the circumstances.”

“There’s the bathhouse,” Sasha said. “The furnace will be stone. There’s wood left—at least of the walls.”

“Cinders,” Pyetr muttered, but he was glad enough to hear words like fire and limits. The horses had wandered off from all this shouting, browsing among the seedlings. They both put their heads up and Sasha called to them, “Come on.”

No one, in this place, in this night, had any particular choice about it.

Wizardry helped make damp wood catch, in a furnace mostly intact. Its effect against the smoke was minimal so far as Pyetr could see, but a circle of sulfur and salt around the old walls would stay put against any chance or wizard-raised wind—and such of the walls as still stood, helped against the rainy chill.

Pyetr fed the fire and kept an eye on Chernevog while Sasha was outside the walls including the horses in the circle—bending birch seedlings, tying them with mending-cord, and wishing them well: on the whole, Pyetr approved of birch trees, and leshys, and whatever was alive, as opposed to dead; and particularly whatever opposed the sort of magic Chernevog dealt with.

Chernevog was sitting opposite him, against the fire-scorched wall, knees tucked up. His eyes were open, but he had not moved since he had sat down.

“There’s the canvas,” Pyetr said. “You could wrap in that, you know.”

Chernevog gave no sign he had heard. His thin shirt seemed scant protection against the chill in the mist.

Pyetr chucked a stick in Chernevog’s direction. If Chernevog was thinking of some mischief he had no inclination to let him do it in peace. “The canvas,” he said, “beside you. Or freeze. I’m sure I don’t care.”

He thought about the bannik, or whatever it was, and tried to wonder about Eveshka and what else it had shown them. He listened to Sasha moving around out beyond the walls, in the dark, and thought, Get back here, boy. I really don’t like this.

Chernevog said, suddenly, “I did love Owl.”

It sounded like an accusation. A just complaint, what was worse, but he did not want to argue grievances with the man, not here, where memory was so vivid. He kept his mouth shut.

Chernevog said, “I wanted Eveshka. I ‘d have given her everything she could have asked.”

“Shut up, Snake. You’ll make me mad if you go on.”

“She wanted you. I couldn’t understand that.”

“I can.”

Chernevog said, “I wish I’d done differently by you.”

“But you didn’t, Snake, you really made me mad. And you’re doing it again.”

“You want so very little.”

“Sasha!”

He could not get his breath for a moment. Then breath came, and Sasha came running.

“Pyetr?”

“Snake, here, tried something.” He was still short-winded. “I don’t know what.”

“I’m very sorry,” Chernevog said. “You frightened me.”

“ I frightened you.” Pyetr put another stick into the furnace, wanting nothing to have happened, nothing magical to have insinuated itself into him that Sasha might not detect. “Don’t put any damn wishes on me. —Sasha, I don’t know what he was up to, but he did something.”

Sasha squatted and put his hand on his shoulder, but the queasiness in his stomach did not go away. Wishes, he thought, did not necessarily lie in s omeone, they were not there to be bound like a splinter or a bruise. They just waited down the road and pounced when the time came.

“It’s all right,” Sasha said.

“I damn sure hope it is.” He shrugged off Sasha’s hand, not wanting to worry about it. “Did you finish out there?”

“Almost—I didn’t feel him do anything, Pyetr.”

So he was being foolish—if Sasha knew everything that was going on, which he hoped, but he was not sure of: nothing seemed sure, dealing with Kavi Chernevog.

“I’m all right, then,” he said. “Go on, get back to it. We’ve got one Snake in here, we don’t need another.”

Sasha pressed his shoulder, stood up and did something, Pyetr had no idea what: Chernevog put up a hand as if he were about to be hit, and said, “I didn’t touch him.”

“He evidently didn’t,” Pyetr said, reluctantly.

Sasha stood there a moment. Chernevog stared up at him with a hard, defiant expression.

That was a fight going on, Pyetr decided. He got up with his sword in hand and said, “Snake, behave or I’ll cut your head off. Hear me?”

Chernevog did not look at him immediately. Then his eyes shifted slowly to fix on him, and Pyetr felt a sudden light-headedness, a chill against his heart.

The stone floor came up under his knee—the sword clattered onto the stones as he saw Chernevog stand up, and Sasha facing him.

“Chernevog!” he yelled.

“Don’t fight me,” Chernevog said, and even thinking about it was an uphill struggle.

“Damn you,” he said, and did struggle—to reach the sword and pick it up, but it was hard to believe Chernevog meant any harm, to him or to Sasha: Chernevog needed them, and what Chernevog needed was very, very safe.

“Protection enough, your circle,” Chernevog said. “Thank you.”

Papa had not brought up a fool, to go straight up to any strange door and knock. Eveshka sat at the edge of the woods and listened to the silence. Hwiuur had gone somewhere or Hwiuur was lying as still as he could. Of the shapeshifter there was no sign, either—whether her father had ever been with her, or whether it had been that creature all along. Their absence now meant only that they were up to no good; and if the vodyanoi had told her the truth about Pyetr and Sasha being in Chernevog’s company, she had no doubt where that trouble had gone.

She would wish not—excepting it was not a place to be flinging wishes about recklessly or loudly.

Damn, she did not like this strange house under the hill, and she did not like Hwiuur disappearing and she did not like the idea that whoever lived here was—she felt it—aware of her being here.

How not? she thought. Hwiuur would certainly have seen to that.

She locked her hands in front of her mouth, she wanted, as quietly and as carefully as she could, to know what was in that house without having it catch her at it—a small burglary, Pyetr would call it, without touching the door at all.

Ah, someone said to her, there you are.

She drew back, quickly, felt a magic more powerful than anything Kavi had ever used.

It said, Oh, don’t be a fool. There’s no use sitting there in the dark. Come inside. I don’t bite.

She said, Who are you?

But that was a mistake. Curiosity opened a way for it. It said, softly, Your mother, dear. Of course.