Chernevog

22

Volkhi picked a crooked, trailless course through the young trees, knee-deep in seedlings while the taller, three-year growth was constantly enough to screen anything beyond a stone’s throw from their track.

Find Sasha, Chernevog said. So, perforce, they tried. They tried past noon, and into afternoon, taking a general course westward—Sasha had not been at the burned house, had not, which Chernevog had thought might be the case, gone back to Uulamets’ grave. After that-After that they turned north and west, in the not unlikely case Sasha had gone toward the river, Chernevog said. Chernevog searched with his magic and Pyetr scanned the sunlit, fluttering greenwood with ordinary eyes, looking for a white and brown horse, hoping with half his heart they would find no trace at all, hoping that Sasha was clear away and safe—and fearing he was not. He imagined terrible things—things like Missy felling; or vodyaniye and such lurking in ambush to drag horse and rider down into the brook; or Sasha’s heart just stopping, on a stronger wizard’s wish.

“That’s for easier than will happen to him,” Chernevog muttered at his back, “believe me.”

“Believe you? God… let me go and I’ll find him. Just go back to the house and wait, why don’t you? Snake, I swear to you, if you want him found, if you really, truly do want him found—”

Chernevog said, “If he doesn’t have a chance out there, you have less. Or I would do that.”

“The hell you would.”

“Believe me.”

That was a wish. It smothered thinking for a moment. It suffocated reason.

“You don’t understand,” Chernevog said. “He’s not going to die. That’s not the worst that can happen to him.”

He felt cold through and through, despite the sunlight. He fought believing anything Chernevog said—but sometimes it was so close to his own apprehensions…

“There’s no particular good, no particular evil in magic, Pyetr Ilyitch: one either rules it—or one is ruled; and he’s quite vulnerable. He won’t die, but you’ll wish he had. He won’t be able to. Then you’ll wish you’d helped me with more enthusiasm.”

“Shut up!”

“My friend, be reasonable.”

“I’m not your friend.”

“You’re not my enemy. I assure you, you’re not my enemy.”

“I killed your damn owl,” Pyetr muttered, and pulled Chernevog’s hands loose from his middle. “Keep your hands off me.”

“I’ve no grudges. Owl was very old.”

That callousness turned him sick at his stomach. “Don’t you love anything, Snake? Didn’t you, once? —What do you want, that matters to anybody?”

“Just Owl.” They rode up a slope, Volkhi’s hindquarters bunching in a quick few efforts. Chernevog held to him again— with cause. “Just Owl. And he’s gone. Now you’re in his place. He was fond of mice. What do you want from me?”

“I want you to keep your damned hands to yourself!”

“I’ll love what you love; hate what you hate—I’ve given you that power over me. What more can I do for you?”

That’s a lie, he thought as they rode along the ridge. —Sasha might have done something with his heart, if he could only have gotten it away from me—

“He can’t. It’s much too strong a bond: it’s magical; and I’m far stronger. But it’s true you can command my friendship. Bestow it where you like: that takes no wizardry at all. It’s simply the nature of hearts, when they’re together long enough. You see how much I trust you.”

He wanted Chernevog away from him, he wanted help; he was drowning in Chernevog’s thoughts. He thought distractedly, looking at the trees, Very soon there’s not going to be anything left of me. Sasha won’t trust me if we find him. He shouldn’t. God help me, I’m losing my mind.

“Of course,” Chernevog said, resting his hand on his shoulder “as you probably do suspect by now—it can equally well go the other way.”

Sasha sat tucked up in green shade, beside Missy’s feet, Missy looking quite content to stand with a patch of sun on her back—

Sasha felt it, too, the way he had slowly felt aches in her legs leave and the pain in her gut ebb. It had been hard going for an old horse not used to running and not used to forests.

Eventually the upset in her stomach eased and Missy began to nose the herbage in front of her in some interest; mostly she wanted water, and her chest still burned, and it was not fair she had not been let drink her fill when there was water at hand… but now when she thought of it there was nothing stopping her, so she walked over to the little spring that welled up out of the rocks and drank as much as she wanted. There had been bogles and grabby-things; her ears still slanted to listen for them and her still watched all around at once, from the spring under her nose to, still visible behind her own feet, her favorite person sitting under the tree. Sasha saw himself from that unusual, top-blind point of view, and rode Missy’s thoughts, not remembering where he had come from or where he was going, just watching the thicket around them and tasting the good, cold water.

The whole wood was still. Very carefully he let go that wide vision and that keen hearing, and saw, from the rear perspective, Missy drinking. Then he could move without fearing he was going to run blindly into something ahead, although down and up still felt confused, and sitting upright made him dizzy for a moment.

He had been with Missy for some little time, to judge by the sinking of the sun—the shade was deeper, no direct light at all now in this little water-cut nook where bracken competed with young trees. He had been safe, this while: Missy was not a noisy creature. Missy wanted very little that made a difference in the world.

Missy lifted her head suddenly, pricked up her ears, and he instantly wanted to know what she was thinking—but Missy decided it was only a fox she smelted. Foxes were familiar. Foxes skulked about and were no bother to horses.

Sasha paid attention for a while, and worried Missy: Sasha thought a fox could hide a grabby-thing. Missy found this a disturbing idea, and decided never to trust foxes after this.

But it went away; and Sasha decided not, after all.

There was a danger in sitting like this too long. One could forget what one was doing, either harm Missy with ideas that were frightening gibberish to her; or go a little crazy himself and sit here, the two of them locked together until the next rain waked him or until he wished something truly dangerous for Missy or for himself.

There was danger in wishes of any kind so long as Chernevog might be paying attention in his direction. Chernevog had him far outmatched and Chernevog had Pyetr, and if he thought about what might be happening to Pyetr he could not trust himself to be sane right now, or to do anything reasonable or useful. He had worked very hard to be quiet and to go completely inside himself and Missy, until there was only his own life to worry over: he had drawn that selfishness tighter and tighter and tighter, not watching what Chernevog did, not trying to do anything about it, not wanting to be there—until his not being there suddenly became thoroughly, magically imperative-It freed him—but not Pyetr.

He pulled at his knee, straightened his leg, rubbed feeling back into his numb foot. Wish nothing unnecessary.

Think nothing unnecessary. Do the natural thing. Learn from Missy. Get up, get the baggage, see about something to eat. There were dangers but they were not here, and as long as he wanted only little things Missy would want they might not impinge on Chernevog’s specific wishes; so long as he wanted specific, natural things they might happen, and Chernevog’s widest, magic-driven designs might go skewed around them-that was always the hazard in generalities, master Uulamets had argued in his book: that in natural things nature tended to reassert itself, given any reasonable loophole.

So one moved a pebble. One wished, as simply as Missy, for well-being and supper, things that were, after all, fair— Missy was very much on things being fair, expecting things that ought to follow, one from another; and things that ought to happen in certain ways, on time, and in due amounts.

One wished, among first things, to make amends for keeping bad and scary company and to share this nice sausage he had with someone who had a perfect right to it. He broke off half— he was very sorry about the vodka; that was at the moment in a place he did not want to think about—but there was this sausage, this very nice sausage, because it was only fair.

An alarming row of teeth snatched the bit from his hand. And vanished, together with the sausage.

“That’s a good Babi.” He offered the other half.

It whisked into nowhere, too.

Eyes stared at him, faint, gold, vertically slitted, against green forest shade.

“Good Babi. Wonderful Babi. Brave Babi. Babi, do you want vodka? I think it’s fair we get it back. That’s my jug, and my spell on it, after all, and I think I should have it, don’t you?”

Babi waddled up on his hind legs and crawled up into Sasha’s lap to cling to his coat.

“We can’t just go and look for it,” Sasha said, stroking Babi’s fur. “We need help. I think we’d better get Missy and find the limit and see if we can figure anything out, don’t you?”

Chernevog was not pleased: Pyetr had no doubt at all of that while Chernevog was riding behind him, holding to him, wish-ing at him until he felt his hold on his own thoughts precarious. His own anger and his own grudge against Chernevog had occupied all his attention at the start, but Chernevog kept finding ways past that—little doubts niggling their way into his mind, Chernevog saying, “If we don’t find him, he may not see the morning,” and: “You can’t understand these things, dammit, you don’t understand the trouble he’s in,” and finally, to the point: “Pyetr Ilyitch, you know how he thinks, you know what he’d most likely do. If you don’t find him, dying’s not the worst licit can happen to him, don’t you care? It’s your fault, isn’t it, what becomes of him? He doesn’t understand what he’s taken on. Don’t be a bloody-minded fool!”

“I don’t know anything,” he told Chernevog. “It’s a wide woods—how in hell can I guess where he’d go? You’re the wizard.”

“He’s wishing me confused, damn you!”

“Then how can I resist?”

“Would he wish you in wrong directions?”

He said: “In your company, yes.” And Chernevog: “No, he wouldn’t. He’s a clever lad. It was no little trick to get away in the first place—but that has a certain cost. —I know how he did it. Don’t you wonder? Don’t you wonder how he could leave you and not let me hear him thinking?”

One tried desperately not to wonder. One could think earnestly about breaking Chernevog’s neck, which was hard to think about: one’s thoughts kept getting away; and one could be angry about Chernevog’s nattering at him, but that always led to the same place; and when one came back from half losing one’s mind, exhausted and desperate and still beset, and wrapped about by Chernevog’s arms, one concentrated on the trees or looked at bark and such and memorized shapes in the case that Sasha might rescue him and they might have to backtrack.

But that was useless, too—wizards could find their own way wherever they wanted; an ordinary man was no damn help to anyone… and he kept losing little bits of their trail anyway, moments that he was thinking of Vojvoda, of being hungry and desperate, of things he was not particularly proud of… like what he had done once to pay an innkeeper…

“We all have our faults,” Chernevog said to him. “And the limits of our pride. Some are less fastidious than others.”

He gave a backward jab of his elbow. “Leave me alone!”

It did Chernevog no damage. He was dizzy for a time after that and thought he might fall off the horse, but his body went on balancing the way it knew how to do. He was quite awake: he simply did not remember for the moment how to make his arms move, he scarcely knew how to breathe—

“Let me go,” he said finally, discovering he could speak.

And was back in Chernevog’s house, with Eveshka sitting in front of the fire with her back to him—and he thought, again, No, it isn’t, it isn’t her—I know this dream… oh, god, I want out of this—

He was standing on the river shore, tall trees grayed with morning mist. He saw a far, dim figure coming down the grassy bank, cloaked against the chill.

Eveshka had answered him, Eveshka came walking down from the house to meet him there. Come back at dawn, she had said. I’ll talk to my father.

But there was no hope of reasoning with Uulamets. He knew that. He knew mere was none of reasoning with Draga. If he did what Draga had said and brought her Eveshka, then there was no hope for him, either, mere was no hope in the world for a young wizard who had (Eveshka knew the truth, but not the significance of what she knew) already betrayed her.

She came walking up to him, she put back her hood. She was sixteen, she would die in that blue dress—Chernevog had already made up his mind that he would have to kill her—

“God, no!” he cried, and kicked Volkhi and tried to carry Chernevog off with him, but Volkhi no more than jumped, and he could not even as lift his arm.

“You don’t appreciate your wife’s abilities,” Chernevog said, holding him on the horse. “I did. I asked for her heart and she gave it to me—to give to Owl. To free her, I said—to put it with mine, where it would be safe. And it was. Do you know how I could lie to her?”

He did not. He did not want to know.

“The same way your friend could lie to us. By caring for nothing else in the world.”

Sasha wouldn’t, he thought. He couldn’t.

Dmitri walking away from him in the yard—

Sasha’s not like that, dammit!

He remembered Sasha riding away. He thought how terribly frightened he was in Chernevog’s hands, and how desperate, and how if Sasha could not hold off Chernevog, and Sasha had surely known he could not…

Dammit, Sasha’s doing something, he thought; and wondered, while he tried not to wonder: What can he do that won’t involve magic?

Uulamets—giving Sasha his knowledge at his death, leaving too damned much to Sasha…

God, no! He tore his ragged thoughts toward pain, remembered old Yurishev, who had run a sword through him one night.

That for Chernevog’s eavesdropping. He realized in vivid detail how much it had hurt, falling in the stable—

(Sasha had gotten him to safety, Sasha was resourceful, Sasha would go—where?)

He kicked poor confused Volkhi again and made him ran a few paces, but that lasted no more than the other times; Volkhi settled back to a walk, snorting and switching his tail, and Chernevog said against Pyetr’s ear:

“You’re not my match, Pyetr Ilyitch. Got the old man’s dying bequest, has he?”

He owed Sasha his life, Sasha had risked his neck for him… he said, aloud, biting his lip till it bled, because thoughts kept getting away from him: “Nobody’s ever cared much about you, Snake. I can’t say as I blame them.”

“So where are these friends of yours now?” Chernevog asked. “They ran. He ran. He left you. He’s quite desperate. Where would he go next? Deal with Uulamets’ ghost—alone, with what he already carries? That’s not damned smart of him!”

Eveshka, he thought without wanting to think: he was not even sure it was his thought. He thought, trying to back out of it: But he wouldn’t trust her by herself. He’d—

He tried to move. Chernevog wished him utterly helpless. “I have the books, Pyetr Ilyitch. You know there’s little I can’t find out from them. I’ll find the answers.”

“Given time,” he said, tasting blood. He had this thing slithering about inside him, it was scared and angry, and in his own foolishness he thought about Eveshka’s writing in that book, and Sasha telling him not even another wizard could change what was written there.

I know you ‘II follow me…

It began to mean something more than ominous. She had written it in Sasha’s book… not talking to him at all. To Sasha. I know you ‘II follow me… Like the bannik’s visions—that Sasha said were coming true.

He bit his lip hard, looked at the trees, trying not to think about all the things that might mean. But he went on giving away what, except for him, Chernevog had had no time to find out—maybe no way to understand the way he understood it until he gave it to him…

“Has she spoken to you at all?” Chernevog asked him. “She came north. Why? What do you suppose she was looking for, if not me? You expected her across the river. But I wasn’t her purpose. What would it be?”

“Wonder,” he said though he had no idea either. Chernevog said, distant voice against the sighing of the trees, the sound of Volkhi’s moving:

“Sasha’s to follow her. To what?”

“I don’t know. I’ve no idea.”

I know you’ll follow me. I beg you don’t…

Something had separated them. She had packed quite purposefully, taken the boat—something, the god only knew what, had held her asleep on the river, unable to talk to them…

“That much I’ve gathered,” Chernevog said.

He wondered how much else Chernevog had gathered, how much he had told Chernevog in his lapses from reason. He bit his lip to distract himself, and thought, amazingly clear-headed for a moment, Sasha won’t leave me. No matter where he is, no matter if he doesn’t come back, he won’t have left me.

The woods went curiously blurred. There was a pain in his chest. He thought, That damned well made him mad. I wonder why…

After which he knew nothing clearly. Chernevog held him on the horse, and the cold spot was wider and stronger. Chernevog said against his ear, “Pyetr Ilyitch, for entirely different reasons, I do hope you’re right.”

“You might eat something,” Chernevog said to him—and Pyetr found himself lying on his back on the ground, firelight on the young leaves overhead. He had come up abruptly, he fell back again, mumping his head on the ground, and by the feel of it he had done that before. He looked again and saw Chernevog calmly reading by firelight, Volkhi browsing on the undergrowth.

He really should have done better than this, he thought. Sasha would expect him to have done better than this. His sword, the books, everything…

“Supper,” Chernevog said, and waved a hand toward the baggage, lying the other side of the fire.

He had no choice about that either. He got up, walked over where the baggage was lying, then bent and started to get the pack with their food in it.

But something was sitting on the brush just beyond his shadow, something that stared at him with red-gold eyes.

He froze in mid-reach.

Chernevog moved suddenly, casting his standing shadow beside his.

The bannik, the fragment, whatever it was—hissed; Pyetr scrambled backward, stood up, while the cold spot in the middle of him—grew colder and colder.

It wanted him.

He watched it slowly fade. He took another step back for good measure before he looked at Chernevog—found him nothing but a shadow against the fire; and himself trembling from head to foot, for no reason he could say, except it was him, dammit, it was what he was carrying that the creature wanted.

Volkhi snorted, snuffed the wind, made a small uneasy sound.

“A piece of you,” Pyetr said when he got a breath. “Piece, is it? Dammit, it wants what you gave me!”

Chernevog said nothing, faceless shadow against the fire-but of a sudden Pyetr thought of the house that had burned the bathhouse outside.

He hid there by night, he barred the door—he tried to summon up a magic against Draga—by whatever creature would answer him.

God…

“It didn’t work,” Chernevog said.

Pyetr looked back to where the baggage still lay, next the bushes. It was stupid to think whatever it was might still lurk there—it was their bannik, dammit, it was something Sasha had not trusted, but they had met it before. He walked over and snatched up the jug and the pack Chernevog had asked for, walked back to the fire and said, if shakily,

“Supper, Snake.”

Missy had her misgivings about this trek, in the dark, in a pathless, tangled forest. So did Babi, evidently, who preferred to sit on Missy’s rump or occasionally to clamber around to Sasha’s lap, and never to go on the ground at all.

Sasha half expected ghosts. But none had troubled them; and beyond that he tried not to think at all beyond his narrow concern for Missy and Babi, and the single purpose of finding the boat. He kept to small, immediate thoughts, rode Missy’s senses, and Missy’s memories, which at the moment involved The Cockerel’s nice warm stable at this hour, and apples—only fair for a hard day’s work, Missy thought; but they were here, apples were not likely, and her favorite person thought it would be a good idea to keep walking and get out of this place where he feared bogles and grabby-things.

Missy agreed with that, although she would gladly have had something to eat along the way and she wished she had company.

Which Sasha did not want to think about, damn, he did not.

Babi held to him quite forlornly, and might want him to know things, too, but he never had been able to fathom what Babi was thinking, and he feared to wonder at all deeply about Babi’s thoughts, considering the temptations that posed: thank the god Babi had run away and not made himself available when he had been both desperate and foolish.

About which he also did not want to think, so he thought instead about the vodka and how Babi did deserve it, and how Missy deserved all the apples she could eat, when next he could find some.

Missy put a little enthusiasm into her gait, and wondered where these apples were.

She did, on the sudden whim of a breeze, smell water. Sasha could, on his own, eventually, and Babi clambered down Missy’s mane and Sasha’s leg and dropped down to the leaves.

He hoped Babi meant to stay close. He had a very anxious feeling of a sudden: that was, perhaps, Missy; but it seemed to him he had smelled better places—this one had the flavor of too little light and too much water.

And Babi, wherever he had gotten to, was growling at something in the brush, while Missy slowed her pace, doubtful of this place they were going, which did not smell like what her person wanted and certainly did not smell like the promised apples. It smelled more like old wood and rotten ground, a stable, perhaps, but not a nice one; and Sasha could not tell, riding Missy’s senses as he did, whether it was that bad or whether it was simply Missy’s keen nose.

Babi turned up, a much larger and more imposing Babi, walking along at Missy’s feet, and something plunked into water close at hand—a startled frog, Sasha hoped, and bit his lip to keep from the idea of Pyetr’s sword, which was dangerous to want and the god only knew what he would do with it that he could not do with a stout stick. He regretted the one that was standing in the corner at home, where it did him no good… a stick was a perfectly adequate weapon. A branch would do… except he had no desire to get down to find one.

Another plunk. Another frog, one hoped. Missy felt squishy stuff slipping under her feet and snorted in disgust. She seriously questioned the collective judgment in going farther, nothing here smelled nice, and the dvorovoi thought so, too.

But her person insisted there was a grabby-thing after them that was somehow—here her person grew very hazy—going to get them if they did not go through this place and find the big water.

So she wrinkled up her nose and trod right through the squishy stuff, in water up to her knees—no running on this ground, even though her skin shivered at the smell and the sounds of this place

Willows whispered here. Water sighed. And something groaned and squealed repeatedly as if it were in pain. Missy did not like that sound.

But her person thought of old boards and Missy decided it was. after all a stable, but not one where she wanted at all to stay.

“Babi?” Sasha said, but Babi was off somewhere through the trees, and several things went plunk and splash, while the dreadful groaning went on and on with a curious regularity. He could not hear it with his own ears, but he began to find it familiar, began to hear in it the surge of the water, the groaning of wood against wood.

“Babi?” he asked, wishing the dvorovoi would stay close and with a tiny, unwanted wisp of a wish, wondered if finding the boat meant finding Eveshka.

Dangerous, he thought. Terribly dangerous. He got nothing and wanted nothing but to be Missy for a while, until he could be closer; he was Missy so thoroughly that riding made him very dizzy, and he shut his eyes and let hers do the work leaning on her shoulders and wanting her to keep walking toward the creaking sound, little as she liked it.

Grabby-things, Missy was sure. They were going to leap out of where such things always came from, out of the spot between her eyes she could never see—

She saw a white, huge thing coming out of that spot—a huge, flappy thing, and her heart went thump and her legs did a quick step without her thinking about it; but her person said it was safe, it was cloth on a big thing built of boards, and a nice person had brought it there from a place he knew.

She was not sure about her person’s judgment. It flapped and it groaned and she approached it very carefully—it smelled suspicious.

The boat was snared fast in willows and the groaning was its hull rubbing against broken limbs—it did look spooky, even to his eyes, the sail still spread, veiled in shadowy willow-boughs, the shape of the bow thrusting out of the trees.

It was only wizardry that could have brought it up this branch of the river, against the current, it was only wizardry that could leave lodged it here.

“Babi,” he said softly, slid off and untied Missy’s reins, in the case she had to run in this woods—lapped them about his waist, and wished her to stay here.

She shivered, threw her head, clearly hoping her person did not intend to leave her here long.

“I’ll be right back,” he said, and patted her neck, wanting Babi to take care of Missy. He walked farther then, parting the willow curtains, in among the old trees—old trees, indeed, and alive: this shore was past the desolation Chernevog had worked.

But one did not want to think about him.

He heard Missy make a soft, worried sound. But the groaning of the boat against the willows and the flap of the imprisoned sail was enough to distress her. He wanted Babi to take care of her, and he heaved himself up on a willow limb and walked it to the rail of the old ferry, through black, trailing curtains of leaves.

He dropped onto the deck with a thump very loud to his ears. He walked out near the mast and back to the little deckhouse, stopped and looked around him, listening to the flapping of the sail and the sighing and the groaning that gave the boat a voice.

He wanted to know, then, whether Eveshka had left this boat of her own will—that seemed a safe wish. He hoped there might be resources left—they kept the boat stocked with all sorts of things, even apples, and Eveshka alone could not have used everything or carried everything away.

The deckhouse was the first place to look—not the sort of a cubbyhole he was glad to open up and go poking into in the dark, but it seemed worse to him to wait for morning, while-things went further wrong elsewhere. “Babi?” he whispered, thinking if Missy could, please the god, take care of herself for a few moments, and Babi turned up on deck, then he would feel very much better opening this door.

Babi did not immediately appear, but he had the feeling Babi was listening, at least; and he turned the wooden latch and pushed it open, hoping if something was lurking in there it would make a sound now.

There was only the flap of the sail over him, and the hull groaning. He sank down on his heels so he could see into the dark by reflected starlight, and gingerly reached in to drag out the baskets they kept there.

He heard Babi growl behind him. He hoped it was Babi. He turned on one knee, he heard a watery sound, he looked toward that and saw a great slick darkness rise up, up and up in the starlight, and grin down above the rail with sharp-toothed jaws.

“Well, well,” the vodyanoi said, “young wizard. I was wondering about you.”

Sasha felt into his pocket, after the packet of salt he kept there, and wished—

No. He did not wish for the rest of it. He wished the vodyanoi to keep his distance. He said, slowly rising to his feet, “Hwiuur, what do you think you’re doing here?”

“Waiting,” Hwiuur said. “Of course, waiting. Of course you’d come—but where’s your friend, mmmm?”

“Stay back!”

“Mmmm. A horse. A nice fat horse. I might start with it.”

“Stay where you are!”

“Stay where I am… Where I am is in the river, in my river, young wizard, where you’re trespassing, and all alone, aren’t you, young wizard? The dvorovoi has no power on the water-but you could wish him to try.”

That was a very bad thought. So was the fact that this creature was Chernevog’s—and Chernevog might know exactly where he was.

If it was still Chernevog’s.