Chernevog

8

Streams were over their banks: trees were down—reason enough to hope Pyetr had settled in to wait out the storm, Sasha told himself, with the dark coming and the rain still falling. His own coat was soaked, his boots were soaked, probably the fire-pot in his bag was drowned, and he had had to leave the road again, edging out onto a flooded log for a bridge to the other bank, holding to willow-wands overhead.

He reached a point he had to jump for it—hit the slick far bank, grabbing for handholds among the new bracken and wishing the roots to hold in the sodden earth—no testing whether his magic was working any more, except the fact that the bracken-fronds held and he did not dump himself into the flood. Such small proofs gave him both hope and fear—hope that his gift still might find Pyetr; and fear that Pyetr’s vanishing from his awareness might mean something unthinkable.

But he was fast running from daylight to a starless, stormy dark, in which he had to trust his wizardry absolutely. He was north of the road, he was sure of that; he kept wanting to know where Pyetr was, and what Pyetr was thinking, and something kept convincing him of direction—but whether that was his wizardry working blind, he had no idea. He had no sense of Pyetr’s existence.

I’m here, he wanted Pyetr to know, I’m looking for you: if you’re safe, don’t leave where you are, just wait for me. He struggled calf-deep through rain-wet fern, brushed thickets that caught at the sword and the pack, in a twilight so deep the fern could mask an abrupt edge, anything. He caught a stitch in his side, kept going, shaking water from his eyes, in the erratic white flicker of lightning.

And in that flickering the fern moved on the hill opposite, rippled in a swift line headed straight for him.

He wished his welfare and drew Pyetr’s sword, for what good it was to him: the disturbance streaked at him and flung itself with considerable weight onto his leg, scrambled with a frantic strength up his body despite his grabbing to stop it, reached his neck and clung there with all its might—a most familiar grip, perfectly reasonable that his wish had not fended it off.

“Babi?” he said, still shaking. “Babi, thank the god, where’s Pyetr?”

It hugged him the harder, burrowed its head against his collar, a most desperate and rained-on Babi, in a dark nearly complete now, except for the lightning flashes.

The rain settled into a drizzle, at what point this interminable night Pyetr had no idea. He thought if he had the strength he would try to gather such weeds and fern as he could and make a pile of it to keep the chill off; but he kept putting that effort off, thinking how cold he already was, hoping for dawn to bring him warmth: very soon now the sun would come, he thought as he clung close to Volkhi’s side, any moment now the sun would come up—it was only the storm clouds making the dawn late.

But when the weather did settle, and the sun had not come, Volkhi shook himself and started to wander out into the open despite the cold sprinkling from the trees. “Whoa, lad,” Pyetr murmured, held him, and Volkhi stood for a while, but restlessly.

So, he decided, he had kept Volkhi warm, and Volkhi could return the favor: he found purchase on the rock with his foot, got the reins and a handful of Volkhi’s mane and shoved himself up to sprawl out flat on Volkhi’s wet back, to travel again in the dark, wherever Volkhi took the notion to go.

East, he reminded himself, trying to draw from his muzzy wits which way that was or what he was doing hi this place, or whether he had only been dreaming about going east and finding a river. He was stiff, he was sore, he could not remember where or why he was riding half-frozen in the woods with no sad nor proper bridle.

But eastward he had a wife waiting for him. A warm fire. Sasha, The Cockerel’s fey stableboy, the one nobody wanted— Sasha was there, too. He could not imagine what they all had to do with each other, but he had a conviction that they were friends—that they all lived together in a house—

Which had a garden, a porch, a bathhouse he and Sasha had built—

His wife had wonderful blond braids, hair like light when it flew free, so much of it she could wrap in it…

She liked blue. She had a favorite gown with leaves embroidered down its sleeves, and petticoats with flowers on their hems. They were spells she stitched, she had told him so. She had a garden, and little plots she tended in the woods, where she grew trees and plants that would not grow in other ground.

But he could not see her face now, except details that would not fit together—and he fought to keep them, even if they did not match what he thought was true any longer, everything he loved slipping away from him faster and faster-He was in a room with Sasha; Sasha was (but that was wrong Sasha could not read) writing something. Sasha had grown up. His face had lost its boyish look—become a young man’s face—

And the river would lead him—

Home, somehow. He knew so little for certain. Things in woods, the old folk said on winter nights, wore their feet backwards and led travelers astray; Forest-things shifted shapes, and Things that looked like trees could move and change a man’s path, leading him to disaster.

How did I get here? he wondered, finding his lids heavier and heavier as he rode—until of a sudden Volkhi shied sideways, came full about under his hand, bringing an old man into his sight—a white-bearded, scowling old man in the lightnings and the crazed patterns of the brush, who looked, the moment Pyetr thought about it, like someone he had known very well, and, crazily, had trouble seeing quite right—

Because he had never in this life looked to see that face again.

“You’re dead,” he said to his father-in-law, as all sorts of things came flooding back to him—the inside of the cottage, the cruel old man with his knives and his damnable singing… the old man whose daughter was a cold-fingered ghost…

“You’re lost,” Ilya Uulamets said, leaning on his staff. “Not that I’m surprised. And here you are. My daughter’s choice. God save us.”

Volkhi was still fretting and trying to turn. Pyetr kept a tight rein, jostled this way and that. His heart was thumping hard from the start the ghost had given him… but Eveshka had died und haunted the river shore, he remembered that: he had seen ghosts, and recalling that his wife should be a ghost ought to pain him, but it seemed only a fact to remember, nothing he should be entirely distressed about. The oddness was Uulamets, who had no business being dead yet… or was; god, he had no idea what had happened and what was going to happen, or what was happening to him now.

“I need to get home,” he said to Uulamets, patting Volkhi’s neck, himself trembling while he reassured the horse, and feeling as if he were doing all this in his sleep, completely numb. “I think something’s wrong. I think something could be very wrong.”

Uulamets leaned on his staff and glowered at him, no less pleasant than he ever had been. Then he said, “Follow me,” and walked away through the shadow.

Volkhi showed no inclination to go. Pyetr argued with him once, twice, before Volkhi started picking his way down the rough hillside, following the old man in the same direction that they had been moving. More bits and pieces started coming back to him—how Eveshka was waiting at home, how Uulamets was dead, upriver, how he had left the house riding and somehow lost himself in the woods… so far lost he had not even recognized his father-in-law for a moment.

That Uulamets’ ghost should come to his rescue did not seem entirely incredible: they had not liked each other, the god knew, but one could certainly believe Uulamets might stay around as a ghost, if anyone would—the old reprobate had never trusted anyone to do anything right, least of all his daughter: Eveshka had abundant reason for her secrecies and her touchiness.

Still, it did seem to him that Uulamets, being dead, should be paler, glow in the dark like a proper ghost, not just show up in the lightning flashes with shadows and all…

Follow me, Uulamets said.

But what did a ghost mean by that, looking more and more solid?

God, he did not like this. “Grandfather?” he said, respectfully.

Uulamets might not have heard for all the sign he gave. Certainly that was no different than in life.

He urged Volkhi to a faster pace at the bottom of the hill, fought Volkhi’s misgivings until they were close at Uulamets’ back.

“Grandfather, do you know what’s going on? Do you know what’s going on back at the house?”

No answer. One naturally expected a ghost to be peculiar-angry, perhaps, especially this one. But there were definitely shadows about this figure which one did not expect in a ghost, except a rusalka when she had stolen a bit of one’s life… or unless, frightening thought, he had somehow strayed over to the ghostly side of things himself in the cold last night and never known it.

He did still have a heartbeat. He felt his chest, to be sure. He felt Volkhi’s warmth under him and he heard the crunch of last year’s bracken under Volkhi’s hooves: if he was slipping over some line, somehow, he damned well ought to have some sense of crossing a boundary. Even if he had frozen in the rain, certainly Volkhi ought to be alive.

He missed ducking. A branch caught him across the face and he clapped a hand to what felt like a bleeding scratch across his cheek. He heard Uulamets’ staff disturb the ground, heard Uulamets’ body move the brush, the same as he and Volkhi did—but Eveshka in her ghostly form could never disturb a leaf. Neither sun nor moon could touch a rusalka—unless she had gotten strength from somewhere… and a rusalka only got it from living things.

Rusalkas were drowned girls, that was what he had heard, drowned girls unhappy with their lovers. Surely crotchety old men only turned into ordinary ghosts, the sort with cold fingers and dead, awful eyes, the sort of ghosts that only wailed and blamed people—not half so dangerous.

“Grandfather,” Pyetr said faintly, less and less sure he knew what he was dealing with.

Uulamets just kept walking; and of a sudden Pyetr was sorry he had called out to what was moving in front of him. He hoped to the god it did not turn around. He pulled Volkhi quietly to a stop, turned his head-Something in the brush crashed toward him, growling, and he ducked flat and hung on as Volkhi shied and scrambled for footing, breaking them uphill through branches, through vines, up a slope too steep, too slick with recent rain—he felt Volkhi start to slide, stayed on somehow as Volkhi veered off on a downward slant. A limb hit his shoulder with numbing force as they passed under, all but took him off Volkhi’s back. Branches whipped at his shoulders. He had no more wish to stop than the horse did, he only saw a way through and steered for that sole black gap in the brush.

A pale shape loomed up in front of them. Volkhi reared, came down again, uncertain, bemazed and still in a way nothing natural could stop a panicked horse.

The apparition held out its hands, saying, in Sasha’s voice: “Pyetr, are you all right?”

Pyetr held on to the reins, shivering as much as Volkhi was. Sasha walked a step closer, making a soft, very welcome sound on dead leaves. But Pyetr reined Volkhi back from him.

“It’s me,” Sasha said.

“I sincerely hope so,” Pyetr said shakily, “because just now it was Uulamets, and I don’t know what’s going on.”

“Babi’s after it,” Sasha said, and shed a sack he was carrying from his shoulder to his hand, then started searching into it. “I brought your coat. Eveshka sent some bread and sausages… “

A shapeshifter could be that plausible, and a shapeshifter in Uulamets’ likeness was surely what he had been dealing with: there had been flaws in Uulamets’ appearance, there were always flaws with a shapeshifter, Eveshka had told him—and he saw none in Sasha.

Sasha came closer, offering him up the coat with one hand, calming Volkhi with the other, and Volkhi stood still for it—that was what told Pyetr who he was really, truly dealing with. He hoped to the god it did.

“Is everything all right at home?” he asked, taking the dry coat, deciding Volkhi would stand still a moment while he let go the reins and put it on.

“Eveshka’s terribly worried,” Sasha said, keeping his hand on Volkhi’s neck. “A bannik came. And we couldn’t find you anywhere.”

Sometimes Sasha’s accounts of events seemed to leave out essentials, especially when a man was having trouble following things in the first place. Pyetr said numbly, “I lost Babi. Then nothing looked right. I don’t know where I’ve been.”

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. Let’s get out of here.”

“Fast as we can,” Sasha said, patted Volkhi’s neck and started walking.

So they were going home. That was quite all right. That was exactly what Sasha would do. That was entirely the way Sasha would talk.

It was still a better sign that of a sudden there came a panting in the dark, a quick pad-pad-pad in the wet leaves beside Volkhi’s feet and Sasha’s—no visible sign of the dvorovoi, but that was Babi, Pyetr had no doubt of it.

Then he began to believe he was safe.

Go home, Sasha wished Babi silently, as they walked along, himself and Pyetr leading Volkhi on this level ground, where they had come on the road again. Go back to the house, let Eveshka know everything’s all right-But, perverse as everything else magical, Babi obstinately stayed with them—for promise of more sausages, or because of some wish, his or Eveshka’s—Sasha had no idea.

“I don’t know what’s the matter with him,” Sasha said. “I don’t know what’s going on. Babi won’t listen, or can’t, I don’t know. Nothing’s worked right, except finding you.”

“Thank the god you did,” Pyetr muttered, and asked, after a moment, “What in hell’s this about a bannik?”

Sasha shook his head. “I don’t know. It showed up just after you left. I don’t know why. I hoped it might help.”

“Help what?”

Sometimes Pyetr’s questions seemed so clear and his own answers so abysmally stupid. “I don’t know. It only showed up, and after that—or about the same time—everything stopped being there…”

“What do you mean—stopped being there?”

“Things. People. They’re there.” He was not even sure how ordinary folk felt the world around them. He had thought he knew; he thought at least he had known once, before he had taken up with Uulamets and started listening to the wizard-gift he had been born with; but lately he doubted he knew anything about ordinary folk. Lately he doubted he understood himself. “Right now it’s—like seeing the trees move and not hearing the leaves.”

“That’s stupid!” Pyetr said, but Pyetr looked worried. “What do you do, eavesdrop all the time?”

“It’s not like hearing. It’s…” Anything he could say sounded stupid. “Knowing they’re there. The way you know (he forest is there with your eyes shut. It sounds like the wind stopping. Quiet. And it’s not like that. Ever. It’s not natural.”

Pyetr gave him a look, Sasha saw it from the tail of his vision; Pyetr said, “So it’s quiet. You couldn’t hear me. I couldn’t make Babi hear me either. Or the leshys. Why? What’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” Sasha said, with his eyes set on the road ahead of them, the confused track through the regrown woods. “A lot of things that shouldn’t. I don’t know everything I should. Pyetr, I swear to you—’Veshka thinks her father left me a lot of things, but that’s not so. She thinks I remember, but I don’t, not—not as if I ever feel her father being there. He’s gone. It’s not like she thinks it is. I can’t make her understand that.”

“I’ve told her. I’ve told her, myself. It’s not you. She’s just worried, she worries about everything—I get myself lost, I start thinking about Vojvoda, the god knows I could have strayed into some damn trap the old man set, and it’s not the first time you couldn’t hear me…”

“It’s not just you. Something’s wrong, I’ve felt it going ever since Volkhi came—”

“Volkhi, Volkhi, what for the god’s sake does Volkhi matter to anything? A horse strays. So what’s going to happen? For a stray horse, the tsar’s going to come?”

“I’m not talking about the tsar. I’m talking about the bannik.”

“I’m sure all of this is going to make sense.”

“I can’t hear the woods,” Sasha said. “I couldn’t find Babi and I can’t hear a thing except ’Veshka when she’s close, I can’t even hear you when you’re right next to me, and it has to do with the bannik, it all started with the bannik, the same as Volkhi coming here.”

“You’re not getting enough sleep,” Pyetr said. “It’s that damn book, you know, those little crooked marks you stay up all night staring at—”

“Things are going wrong, Pyetr, they’re just going wrong!”

“Because you can’t hear the trees.”

“I don’t mean hearing the trees. It’s not like a sound, Pyetr—”

“God. I don’t care what it is. You say yourself once you start doubting you can do something it won’t happen, so maybe you’re tripping over your own feet, did you ever think about that?”

“I think of it.”

“So wish it right again.”

“I do! But there’s nothing I can reach, Pyetr, and the bannik just showed up and I’m not sure I even wanted it myself, I know Eveshka didn’t, and nothing’s right.”

Pyetr put his hand on Sasha’s shoulder, walked with him that way, Volkhi trailing them of his own volition. “Listen. Maybe ’Veshka’s right. Forget Uulamets. Leave his damned book alone. Leave everything a while. Quit trying so hard to think of trouble before it happens. Aren’t you likely to wish it up that way? Forget it. We’ll take the boat out, maybe even sail down to Kiev, you, me, ’Veshka…”

The very thought touched him with sudden panic—all those people, all those wishes and needs weighing on his heart, unstable as things were. Not now. God, not now, and Eveshka certainly could never bear it. Even dealing with two people she loved was hard.

“There’s girls there,” Pyetr said. “Girls who’d think you’re a damn fine catch.”

“No!”

“Life doesn’t go on in a damn book, boy!”

Sasha caught a breath, stopped thinking for a moment, stopped even trying to listen with his ears or his wizardry, so that everything Pyetr said became only sound to him. He had used to do that when his uncle had upset him—go away until his heart was quiet.

“Boy?” Pyetr said, shaking at his shoulder as they walked. “What’s the matter?”

“I just want the woods back, Pyetr, I just want things to go right.” He tried not even to think about Kiev, or the people and the girls and the idea of escape Pyetr was talking about. They frightened him, they brought him to the edge of wishes, and he could not let himself want the things ordinary folk might—Uulamets had made that mistake. And Pyetr would not understand that. Pyetr only let him go after a moment, unhappy and worried, he needed no eavesdropping to know that much.

He said to Pyetr carefully, reasonably, “I want everything we’ve done to hold.”

“It’s going well enough. You found me, didn’t you? I didn’t break my neck. Whatever that was, it was scared of you. It ran. If the old snake’s at his tricks again, we can deal with that, we always have.”

“We got the bannik, and when Eveshka wondered where you were, all it said was thorns and branches.”

“Well, that was the truth, wasn’t it? But it didn’t take any damn prophecy to know that…”

Blood on thorns…

“Did it?”

He was afraid to answer. An answer meant nothing. An answer might change before he could so much as think of it. “Will-be is always moving,” he said faintly. “Everything we do changes what’s going to happen. That’s why banniks don’t like wizards.”

“’Veshka says. At least the last one didn’t like Uulamets— but I can understand that. So we’ve got a bannik. And the forest is quiet and you’re seeing thorn-bushes and it scares you. —You don’t make sense all the time, you know.”

The quiet was absolute.

Leaves on the current, the current stopped…

Waiting…

“Sasha?”

“I want us home,” Sasha said.

“Why? What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know.” He faced Pyetr about and pushed him Volkhi’s side. “I’ll just feel better when we get there.”

Pyetr gave him an anxious look, then swung quickly up to Volkhi’s back and offered him his hand.