Rusalka

CHAPTER 28

TOWARD DAWN master Uulamets began to let his head sink, drowsing by little moments. Sasha, so tired he thought he would never sleep again, reasoned placidly for a moment that it was only natural, old men did that, and Uulamets had pushed himself hard for a man of any age.

But then in his muddled thoughts he began to worry.

“Master Uulamets,” he said, afraid, still.

“Let me sleep,” Uulamets mumbled, so Sasha hugged himself about the ribs and tried to collect what strength and wit he had left, wondering whether he was right to think of arguing with an old man who needed rest, or whether Uulamets knew what he was doing.

The light grew, diminishing the light of the fire, and Eveshka was standing as she had stood tirelessly all night—but she was so, so faint this morning, hardly more visible than spiderweb as the light filtered through the leaves.

He thought fearfully: We’ve got to do something soon. We’ve got to help her. She’s holding on, but she must be getting weaker. And crazier.

He thought that maybe he could give a little of his own strength to her, not drawing from the forest, not letting her in any wise touch Pyetr: he was not sure then that she could stop; he was not sure that even thinking about it was safe, and he wanted master Uulamets to wake, but he was afraid of bad decisions, and nothing happened.

Suddenly then he felt a little weak, felt his heart give a little ^kip as if it had missed a few beats. He glanced toward Eveshka in panic, forbidding her with all the strength he had. “Master Uulamets,” he exclaimed; and quickly shook Pyetr awake, his head spinning, with only the thought that Pyetr was helpless asleep, and that if there was reason left in her at all she would listen to Pyetr—

“She’s in trouble,” he said to Pyetr, and Pyetr, dazed from sudden waking, rubbed his eyes and looked out across the dying fire.

“I don’t see her,” Pyetr said; Sasha looked.

She was gone.

Pyetr scrambled over to Uulamets and shook him violently. “Old man, wake up! Your daughter’s taken off!”

Uulamets stirred, opened his eyes muzzily.

“Eveshka’s missing!” Sasha repeated. “She touched me and she getaway—”

Uulamets swore and started trying to get up, but Pyetr was already gaining his feet.

“She’s leaving,” Pyetr said, and forced his way through the brush, rapidly no more than a gray ness in the dawn.

“Pyetr!” Sasha called after him and, throwing promises to the winds, wished him back with all his might.

Maybe it was dread of Pyetr’s anger that made him falter. He felt it happen, and knowing that, felt his confidence ebb away. “I can’t hold on to him,” he said to Uulamets, intending to follow Pyetr, but Uulamets seized him by the arm, using him for a support getting up.

“Let’s not all be fools,” Uulamets said.

“Bring him back!”

Uulamets was still holding his arm, and jerked him violently as he turned to go. “I said, don’t be a fool, boy, use what you have.”

“It’s not working!”

“Then you’ve less hope rushing off after them, don’t you? And less than that if we go chasing off one at a time. Get the packs and come on. He’ll find her, surer than I can.”

“I know he will!” Sasha intended to break free of Uulamets, but Uulamets opposed him, he felt it going on, and trembled with the yea and nay running through him. “Stop him!”

“I need the book, young fool! You’ve lost track of everything you’ve done, you don’t know where you are, and you want to go running off without supplies and alone. That’s a fine help you are to anyone. Pick these things up, or do you plan to stand here till we lose him?”

“Bring him back!” he shouted at the old man, but Uulamets was busy holding him, he could not break free and the longer they argued the further Pyetr could get, so he bent and grabbed his pack and Pyetr’s by the ropes while Uulamets picked up his and his staff.

Uulamets led off, as quickly as Uulamets could move, ghostlike himself in the faint dawning, while he struggled with two packs, trying to remember what was in which, and trying to decide if he dared leave Pyetr’s behind, because he could not get both of them through the heavy undergrowth. “Don’t wait for me,” he called out to Uulamets, using his shoulder to shove the limbs aside, all the while feeling cold spots thick in the air about him. “I’ll catch up.”

“Wish to find a way, fool!” Uulamets said to him, and left him to divide his attention between the packs, the branches raking at his face and the cold spots that chilled him to the bone.

Stop, he wished Pyetr. Wait. For the god’s sake call for help or something!

His knees were weak from the theft Eveshka had already made from him and he was rapidly falling behind. He could not handle both baskets: he stopped, teeth chattering, ignoring the cold spots that drifted through him, and dug into Pyetr’s basket—took all the food he could stuff in his own pack, took both blankets, and the damned vodka jug that he was afraid to leave loose in the world. Then he slung his pack to his shoulders and pushed on as fast as he could, shielding his face with his arms and never minding the scratches.

“Don’t trust,” ghostly whispers said; and it suddenly occurred to him Uulamets might not want Pyetr’s safety at all if Pyetr’s dying could keep Eveshka in the world.

“Save yourself,” a voice whispered. “It’s too late for anybody else…”

He caught sight of Uulamets for a moment and made his way past a thorn thicket, in among larger trees.

The old man had stopped, in the deep shadow of the trees.

“You’ll die,” the voices said. “Go back, don’t go any further.”

Sasha struggled through the thicket to his side; and Uulamets abruptly thrust the staff out to stop him, as an earthen edge crumbled under his foot and splashed into water deeply shadowed by the arching trees.

Water, Sasha thought, looking up that arch. Father Sky, she’s gone to the water.

“Pyetr!” he shouted…

A ghost said, faintly against his ear, “Don’t trust her…”

Both feet this time, and the split boot had taken a flood in. If there was water north of Kiev he had not fallen into or stepped in, Pyetr Illitch had no notion where it was.

But the ghosts let him alone, which might be the daylight, he thought: he hoped so, and fought his way along the streamside with increasing surety where she was and increasing certainty she was following the stream.

He was not crazed. He knew he was in trouble, he had left his pack and his supplies, he was less and less certain he knew the way back to Sasha and the old man, and he was virtually sure—in that way that wizards had of making a man know things—that Eveshka was headed straight for Chernevog.

Alone.

After which—

After which, with Chernevog holding her hostage and with themselves entangled in this damned forest, there was no safety—no safety for any of them once it got down to wizardly quarrels, on their enemy’s own terms and their enemy maybe with help of his own—the vodyanoi, for one, and the god only knew what else.

Things were starting to go wrong for Uulamets in such numbers Pyetr had a worse and worse feeling about the odds in Uulamets’ company, although he hoped the old man might at least have resources left to protect himself—and Sasha, if Sasha was standing next to him and helping him. While an ordinary man like himself—

—seemed mostly a distraction and a perpetual cause of arguments.

Pyetr could feel quite sorry for himself if he let himself think about that fact, quite sorry for himself, quite angry and quite resentful of Ilya Uulamets ; but there had been altogether too much of temper and foolishness for his liking, and he did not intend to waste his time on the anger. Perpetually glum, he told himself: and no sense of humor. Maybe wizards had to be like that, but he was not, despite a most ridiculous and unmanly lump in his throat when he thought about the boy and when he slowly figured it out that that had most likely been goodbye back there, for good and all.

He had thought about going back, at first, when he had failed to draw Eveshka back; but he had thought then about his dealings with the old man, realized he was doing no one any good, and reckoned that the old man most probably could wish himself on Eveshka’s track, but that in this matter Pyetr Kochevikov had his own clear sense where she was—and he could perhaps rely on a quieter and less fallible sense in Chernevog’s territory.

So he had a magic of his own, of sorts, something Chernevog might not know and something he doubted even Eveshka herself could escape, if only he could keep his wits about him in this place: he had to, or lose—

—lose what he had until lately mistaken for gold and places; one was that boy back there, and one was Uulamets’ long-dead daughter. Lose them he might, he thought, but not to Chernevog.

Not while he could do anything about it. ill-prepared as he was, he had his sword, the god knew there was no lack of water to drink, and he had learned how to keep himself warm at night and fed from the forest itself, at least sufficient to keep him going.

Chernevog had wizards to worry about. Maybe the vodyanoi had told him there was a weak link in their company: namely an ordinary man; and for all Sasha and Uulamets had sworn he was hard to magic, still, maybe—wizards being a skittery lot—and considering an ill-wish by what Sasha had told him was likeliest to hit right at a weak point—

Namely Pyetr Kochevikov.

That was the way Pyetr figured it, which actually helped the lump in his throat—at least offering him the possibility that Sasha had never wanted to be angry with him, that Sasha might at this very moment be wishing him back as hard as he could—

Would he not?

Pyetr pondered that and wanted to feel it if that was the case: he truly did, even if it hurt. That was far better than thinking Sasha was still angry with him.

Absolutely no, he told himself at once, Sasha would not be angry with him, not to that extent; and he fretted at it, sorted through all the impulses in his heart, trying to find that confusion that wizard-wishing made in him; but he found himself without any ambivalence at all about his own safety—and that would be Sasha’s first and strongest concern.

Maybe Eveshka’s magic had taken hold of him so thoroughly Sasha simply could not get past that sense that guided him. But there were other answers, some of which scared him almost to the point of turning back and trying to find the boy.

No, he told himself, no, and no, for all the reasons that had brought him this far. He had learned about wizards, even Sasha—that a man who tried to figure out why he was doing anything could only get crazier and more and more scared.

So one reckoned the odds once, took a well-reasoned path and left the point of choice behind as quickly as possible, blinding oneself to all second thoughts, to wizard-sent ones and true ones alike.

Just keep walking, he told himself every time doubts occurred to him. If the boy’s in trouble, you’re no help at all going back.

There was no sign as far as Sasha could see, as thoroughly as he and master Uulamets searched the wooded streamside.

No splitting up, Uulamets insisted, foremost of instructions, and with the ghosts plaguing them continually, with the vodyanoi somewhere unaccounted for—Sasha agreed. Ignoring the touches, the whispers, the cold spots, he clambered up and along the stream bank, with ever and again an anxious eye to the water.

About the chance that Pyetr might be under that dark, sluggish stream—he did not want to think about that, he adamantly refused to think about that.

But that wish worked no more than the rest did. He kept calm, and he tried to keep his wits and his eyes sharp as he clambered with the old man along the tangle of branches along the root-choked edge, looking for any footprint, anything, be it no more than a snag of thread in a thornbush; he tried to keep his thinking straight while cold spots went through him at random, tried to know whether his thoughts were all his own or whether someone was wishing him to miss clues and make mistakes; and tried to reason who that someone might be.

He slipped on a root, caught his backpack on a branch that bent and all but flung him in, after which he clung, panting, to a second low-hanging limb—and staring at Uulamets with a thought: Is it you?