Yvgenie

11

A ring of salt, her father had said, and Nadya had done that as quickly as possible, around her, around Sasha, around the spotted horse, too. But she had not been thinking about firewood when she had been drawing the circle, and the fire was getting desperately low. She added leaves. She stood up and broke off overhanging twigs, and a branch and broke it up and saved it back as long as she could.

But the fire began to die. And the spotted horse made a soft, anxious sound. That made her think that she might have been fatally foolish, that with the fire grown so small, whatever was out there dared come closer and closer, and if the light did not even reach the bushes she would have to go out I here totally in the dark.

She had to do it. She took the knife from her boot and went out of the circle, breaking branches with cracks that sounded frighteningly loud in the hush about her.

Something hissed at her, right at her feet. She jumped, clenching her knife, and all but fell over her own skirts, seeing two round gold eyes looking at her.

It was the Yard-thing. Babi. Babi stared at her and growled and she very carefully backed away, taking her armful of wood and her knife back into the circle.

Babi turned up there, too. Pop. Babi crouched down his head on his paws and showed white, white teeth while she fed sticks into the fire and wished, please the god, that Sasha would wake up soon, and not be angry with her about being left—and that the Yard-thing would not decide she was a threat and bite her hand off.

Please.

Babi barked at her. And vanished. She sat there with her knife in her hand and her arms around her knees and waited, shivering despite the fire.

Sasha would not be angry with her. Sasha would not be angry with her. She had waited all her life for some ill-wish that would make her slip on the stairs or catch a fish-bone in her throat or even just take a fever—the silly knife was only because nobody took her seriously, the guards never took her orders, the guards and the servants would never listen to her if she was in danger, and at least if she had the knife she had something, if only against whoever might break into the house the way Pyetr Kochevikov had done.

Except he had not broken in, she believed that part. She believed everything else. Her uncles had snatched up the silver and the gold and her mother had gathered up her jewels and her best clothes and when she had come to say goodbye—because Yvgenie had said he would take her where people would forget who they were—her mother had said go where she liked. Go where she liked—and no truth even then.

She wiped her face with the heel of her hand, angry, dammit, for that, for all the years of lies, all the years of modest, lying virtue that had made her afraid of this and afraid of that, most of all afraid of—

Sasha’s eyes had opened. He was looking at her. He went on looking at her and the breath froze in her throat.

Anything he wants, her father had said.

He moved his elbow, and pushed himself up to look around. “God. Pyetr?” He staggered to his feet to look about firelit woods, and at her, with an accusation that made breathing difficult.

He remembered her father riding off into the dark, she remembered him telling her, Take care of Sasha… Tell him—you don’t have to tell him. He knows things like that. Just take care of him. He doesn’t remember to do that himself…

“Oh, god,” Sasha said, and she got up, she had no idea why, except he was in a hurry, and she could think of nothing but gathering things up and getting on the horse, whose name was Missy, and finding Pyetr before something found him, please the god—

Sasha was packing up his books. He said, “How long has he been gone?” and she answered, “A while,” shivering inside, because she realized then he was making her think of things, and he was sorry. He wanted her to forgive him and she did, she had no choice. Dammit!

“Please.” He cast her a look of purest misery. “I think I wished you here, I could have wished you born and Pyetr to trouble for all I know, and please excuse me, I’m not used to being near ordinary people, except Pyetr.”

Her father knew how to listen to him and answer him with just thinking, her father was a brave man with no fear of him, or of half the things else in the world he should be afraid of. Like vodyaniye. Like wizards and his other daughter and the rusalka who had taken Yvgenie…

“Please,” he said faintly, aloud, and she saw herself standing there with a knife in her hand, while he was standing there with his hands full of ropes and packs, and wanting her not to stand in his horse’s way, please, so Missy could reach him, so they could be moving. Something might have wanted Pyetr to go alone. Pyetr had had that notion from the beginning. And Pyetr had so little defense against the people he loved. Please be out of the way—and do what he asked— right now. Please.

Day came creeping through the tangle of branches, with the distant muttering of thunder—decidedly not the sound a man wanted to hear, with wizards involved. Pyetr dipped his hands in cold water, splashed his face and wiped his hair back for the moment it would stay out of his eyes, rocked onto his knees and sat with his eyes shut a moment, while Volkhi drank.

Not the wisest thing to do, perhaps, going off the second time alone, but in coldest sanity he did not think that surprising the mouse or ’Veshka with Nadya in his company was the best idea right now. Jealousy, hurt feelings, he had seen enough, even between his wife and the daughter he had known all her life.

And if an unmagical man had gotten any wisdom about magic after all these years, or about the hearts of wizards, there seemed only one way to put a stop to craziness when wishes got out of hand, and that was to put himself squarely in their way.

Sasha, Eveshka, Ilyana. Do what you like. But I’m not on anyone’s side. I won’t be. Don’t think it.

A second splash of water. The air was cold. But he and the old lad had been moving, and he had hurt his hand somewhere, add that to the account of an aching shoulder and aching bones. Nothing against nature, Sasha would say.

But, god, what else have we done in this woods?

Third splash of water. He shut his eyes and let the water run down his neck, numbing the fire in his shoulders and the ache behind his eyes. There was no constant pull and push here, no knowledge turning up unasked—it was quiet, truly quiet, except the wind in the leaves.

At this distance from aggrieved parties the man in the middle could draw a few sane breaths and try to think how many sides there were to this affair—

No one’s side. Not even excluding Chernevog’s. Or the boy’s. Or my other daughter’s. None of you and all of you are my side. And I’m all alone out here—any wish that’s ever let loose about me has its chance. Even Chernevog’s. Mouse, you chose him. If you want him and you want me, and he wants that boy—magic’s got the best chance at me it’s had yet.

I do hope you love your father—because he’s going to put himself where he needs help, mouse, he’s going to do it until you notice.

If you want things to be right, mouse, and you want your own way, you’d better want the right things. Can you possibly hear me?

No? Then I’d better be moving. Fast as I can, mouse. I was right in the first place. Maybe Sasha can’t catch up with me this time. Maybe it’ll be up to you. What do you think of that, mouse?

I do hope you think about that.

It was less and less effort to hold the silence: it seemed to be holding itself, now, and it had a lonelier and lonelier feeling since last night. They had waked this morning under a blanket of new-fallen leaves, and berry bushes, young trees and streamsides of bracken and silver birch gave way to shaded solitude, aged beeches and oaks far rougher and stouter than the trees to the south—perhaps, Ilyana thought, they had come to the end of the woods that they knew—at least, despite Yvgenie’s warnings, they had gotten, if not further than others’ wishes had ever been—at least well away from any place wizards who knew her had ever been. Perhaps that was the silence. But one hated to break a branch here. One felt fear—whether that it was something in the forest itself or whether it was only the unaccustomed stillness.

But when she wanted Patches to go a little more carefully Bielitsa brushed past her, finding a way through the thicket that her magic had not found. It was surely Kavi guiding them again, she thought, and set Patches to follow the gently winding course.

“Not a friendly place,” she said when he stopped and gave her the chance to overtake him. She had pricked her finger moving a branch aside, and sucked at it. “Can you feel it?”

“It was never friendly. I knew we were close last night. I didn’t know how close. We might have reached it… But something’s wrong.”

Absolutely it was Kavi now. He slid down from Bielitsa’s back, bade her follow and led the way afoot, a long, difficult passage in among aged, peeling trees. Not a wholesome place, she thought to herself: the further they went the more desolate the place seemed, until at last nothing near them was alive. Thorn-bushes broke with dry crackling, the moss went to powder underfoot, trees stood ghostly pale, bare-trunked.

“Kavi,” she said, “Kavi, stop. There’s nothing good here.”

He looked back at her, so pale, so frighteningly pale and afraid.

“There’s nothing alive here,” he said distressedly. “It’s dead.”

She thought, Is this what he meant, that it was wrong to wish a place where wishes weren’t? Is this that place?

It’s as if wishes fail here, as if you can pour them into this place, and nothing gets out—

But Kavi was leaving her, going deeper into this place. She was sure it was Kavi now, sure it was Kavi who ignored her pleas and kept going—

It was surely Kavi who led Bielitsa into a ring of dead trees, to a stone slab that might have been nature’s work—or not. She pushed her way past a fragile thorn-branch and led Patches through, as Owl came close and lit on the ground before the stone—the same place, god, her father and the sword: it was that stone, it was the place where Owl had died.

And standing all about them, huge trunks, peeling bark, white wood, like trees but not. Nor standing as trees would grow, wind-trained and orderly. There was disarray here. There was randomness.

“They’re dead,” he said, faintly, distressedly, “they’re all dead, Ilyana.”

She looked about them, seeing in the peeling trunks the likeness of empty eyes and the whiteness of bone. She wanted Babi with her, please. She wanted anything alive, besides herself and Yvgenie and the horses, because nothing else here was. She wanted anything magical and wholesome— because magic had gone from this place, magic had died here—not well, or peacefully.

Kavi sank down on the stone as if the strength had gone out of him, too—and she felt alarm, thinking: A rusalka’s magical, isn’t he? as Owl flew up to perch by him on the stone. He took Owl on his hand and said, faintly, “They wanted me to bring you here. But it’s too late now.”

“Bring me here? Why? Misighi’s my uncle’s friend. Misighi could come to the house—they don’t need anyone to bring me to them. If they wanted me to come here, they could just have asked, couldn’t they?”

He only shook his head in dismay, and for a moment, a very small moment, there seemed hazy edges about him, Kavi’s shape and Yvgenie’s.

“He’s afraid,” Yvgenie said. “He—” Yvgenie’s blurred shape got up from the stone and looked into the woods, shaking his head slowly, once and twice. She tried to eavesdrop, and caught only images of Kiev, and Yvgenie’s father, und a hallway at night where men gathered and talked of murders. He recalled a stairway, and towers and walls, and leading Bielitsa out into the dark, out the gates of Kiev—

Yvgenie said, looking around at the sky, the dead leshys. “The falling suns. The moons and the thorns. This is the place. He had to bring you here—to them. They wanted him to. He slept for years here. But he forgot and it was too long, it was much too long. He was only a boy—and leshys don’t understand little boys. —God it’s all full of dark spots—”

“Don’t say that—” Oh, god, a stupid wish, when he was desperately trying to warn her. She wanted out of this place, she felt the life going away from him and Owl as if he was bleeding it into the stone and the ground, the longer he stayed here. “ Come away.”

He shook his head, with the most dreadful memory of fear, and thorns, and a confusion of suns in the sky. OwI dying, struck by her father’s sword.

She came and took his hand, wanting Patches and Bielitsa to stay with them: his fingers were cold as winter. “Don’t argue with me, please, Kavi, it’s not good here. It’s not safe, Kavi, please listen. Something terrible happened in this place, and it’s dead, and you can’t be near it any longer, Kavi please, let’s get out of here, let’s go on!”

He stood still, resisting her pulling, and gazed out amour the trees. “It’s there,” he said faintly, and she looked, and saw nothing but dead leshys and dead brush.

“What’s there!”

“Where I was buried. Where I died. Across the river…”

The cold was spreading from his hand to hers. She held on, she wanted him to leave this place, with all her mind she wanted it, and pulled at him, made him walk, that direction, any direction, if that was all he could want—as long as it was out of this place. Please the god it was out of this deadly grove.

She wished Bielitsa and Patches to follow them. They left the stone behind, they re-entered the maze of thorns. She was colder and colder—her fingers could not even feel his, now.

“Please, a little further, a little further—”

Thorns scratched her arms, caught at her skirts and at him and at the horses. Then something cold brushed against her, Something flitted through the brush ahead, and following it with her eye she saw it take a path she had not realized was there. She fought through the thorns and saw the way through, if only she could reach it. “There,” she said. “There! There’s a path, do you see?”

Babi turned up, at Missy’s feet as they went, and Sasha was only half glad of that. “The dvorovoi,” Nadya said, the instant he appeared, trotting beside them as they rode, and he said:

“I’d rather hoped he was with Pyetr.”

Nadya held sometimes to his belt, sometimes to his waist— at the moment it was the former, but a fox darted from cover and Missy made a little toss of her head, and immediately it was the latter, tightly.

“Only a fox,” he said. “Missy’s never trusted them since—”

Since he had thought shapeshifters or the like might use that form, and most unfortunately told Missy.

Nadya’s arms stayed where they were. She had never ridden a horse, she was thinking, she had never even left the walls of her house and her garden—

Nor seen a fox, nor a bear nor any wild creature. Considering that, she was very brave.

And reconciled to Pyetr, at least she knew certain things that made her understand him—Sasha most earnestly tried not to eavesdrop, and all the same caught embarrassed and embarrassing thoughts about him while they were riding, which, god! were no help at all to a wizard trying to think. One could hardly tell her not to have thoughts like that: the limit was the eavesdropper’s, or his concentration: she was all unaware and innocent. She was thinking—how he felt so strong, although he was hardly taller than she was; how he must ride horses and do things other than magic; how just thinking about him—

—made her feel—so entirely different than poor Yvgenie, who was handsome and kind and brave and everything any reasonable girl could ever want—but no one had ever looked at her and made her shiver all the way to her toes the way he did when she had looked him in the eyes. She had no idea even when she had begun to feel that way, except last night she had finally believed her father was telling the truth, and therefore that her father’s friend must be everything he seemed to be—

It was not her idea, the god help her, he had done it with his stupid, selfish wishes that had nothing to do with this girl—Pyetr’s daughter, for the god’s sake—had wanted for herself. He had done one damnably wrong after the other since they had left home, he had completely lost the train of his thoughts last night, blotted an entire page he could not recall in entirety, spilled all but a few pages worth of ink, and now with Nadya’s arms about him he could not even remember the straight and the whole of what he had been thinking when he wished himself asleep. Something to do with the mouse—something to do with Nadya, that simply would not come clear to him, or that had not even been that urgent, only leading up to some brink he dared not cross.

Dammit, he knew now how to do real magic, he had discovered the truth old Uulamets had hid and he could let fly a wish that would surely make the mouse hear him—or bring rains clear to Kiev.

But he could not believe in his own wisdom any longer, he knew the scope of his mistakes already, and how did one wish belief back, when belief was central to the wish?

The great magics were always easy—to someone in the right moment, at the exact moment of need—and always impossible, to someone who did not expect the result.

Make up your mind, Pyetr would shout at him. God, he wanted to. But what was fair to wish, with Pyetr’s daughter involved? Leave me alone?

Go love Yvgenie Pavlovitch?

He had no idea where that might lead her either—to harm, in this woods; to heartbreak and disaster, if Yvgenie was dead; to disaster for all of them, if she provoked the mouse to jealousy and foolishness. Everything wrong seemed possible, and the only wish that made sense—was not fair, dammit, simply was not fair to her. What in the god’s name could he do with a girl who had no idea of wizards or magic and no idea what she could expect of him?

The ground dipped and rose again. Nadya caught hold of his shirt, and of him, thinking of bears and wolves, of bandit and dreadful walking houses, and thinking over all it was better than the four walls of a garden in Vojvoda, if she was eaten by a bear out here it was better than that—she would never go back, never, never, never live like that. She feared for Pyetr, she wished she had been worth enough to go with him, she was glad enough they were going, and if she was any help she was willing to try—

(”Tell me, what would you have done if your father had decided you shouldn’t be on the streets, and locked you in The Doe’s basement?”)

(”I’d have—”)

Damn, it was like listening to Volkhi.

She had a knife. She had stolen it. Her father had thought it was stupid, but all the same it was better than having nothing. She understood her father going off the way he had. She was glad Pyetr was her father and not some dead old man she had never met—all in one night she had a father who would take his sword and go off into the dark after to rescue a daughter and a young man he hardly knew from rusalki and ghosts, and would her uncles, would her uncles ever dare?

(Her uncles had gathered up the silver—knowing the killers were coming. Her mother had packed her jewels, and told her, when she had come upstairs to announce, with a lump in her throat, that she was going with Yvgenie, “Go where you please.”

Damn them, Sasha thought. And remembered something too painful, nights in the stable when something had gone amiss in the tavern and he had realized his aunt and uncle were talking about being rid of him. He had tried (because he had known then that wanting things was deadly dangerous) not to have an opinion about the matter. Even if he had nowhere to go. Even if he tried to love them. He only worked the harder the next day to please them—

And here he had the most beautiful girl he had ever seen with her arms close about him, thinking, the way Pyetr would jolt him into thinking that it was all right to want things like Pyetr’s staying alive, that it was all right to want to get Pyetr’s daughter back and Yvgenie back— No!

Dangerous, that thought. But she thought it. She want it of him, she expected him to do it, for the sake of a brave young man she owed her life to—no matter he had spent the night lying senseless and no matter he could not find thread of his thoughts—she believed he could do it, wrapped her arms about him and believed the way she believed in the world beyond her walls.

Dangerous for a wizard, dangerous as walking a roofline drunk, dangerous as a rusalka’s kiss—

Don’t be a fool, he told himself while they rode. But for a few drunken instants he had believed in it, too, and thought—Yvgenie. Life and death. Death in life. Yvgenie’s the instability.

Yvgenie’s the stone that moves the hillside. Wish him to our side while his life lasts. Is that wishing against nature?

Thorns stood like walls on either hand, braced by tall dead trees, and Yvgenie walked, following Ilyana, following Owl who glided in bands of sunlight and shadow on gossamer white wings. Owl was back, since the leshy ring, and Yvgenie told himself that should be a hopeful sign, but his heart could not quite believe it: I dreamed this, he thought. Or I’ve been here before. And from time to time he glanced over his shoulder, expecting the wolves of his dream.

“This is wrong,” he said. “Ilyana, this isn’t the way to go. Ilyana, we’re losing the horses—”

“They’ll follow,” she said. “Come on! They’ll follow us once we get through.”

“Through where?” he protested. But his voice came from faint and far away, and the daylight seemed colder and grayer with every step. “Ilyana, look ahead of us. There’s nothing living.”

“It’s further to go back,” she protested. “It can’t be that much further through—I can feel something ahead of us—”

He reached for her hand, to compel her if there was no other way—take the strength she had and carry her back to the horses; but she evaded his touch, wishing no so strongly it stung. “Kavi, I can help you, there’s a way back, I know there is, my mother died and she’s alive again, she had me, didn’t she?”

“At whose cost?” The ghost wrapped itself about him, cold, wary, and protective against her magic. “And what will we be then? Come back, don’t go any further.”

“Kavi, Kavi, come on!”

He flinched as a sudden cold spot swept through his middle. Another grazed his shoulder, and became a wolf and a second wolf, walking tamely ahead of them, creatures of gossamer and pallor, like Owl, wending their way through thorny hedges mat parted, simply moved, to let them through. White wisps streamed and wove through the thorns of the hedge like serpents, and he began to hear a voice saying, Ahead is where you belong. Here’s the rest you’ve deserved. Here are all the answers to all the questions you ever asked…

Another cold wisp swept through him, and another, stealing life and warmth. “Ilyana!” He caught a branch to hold the hedge apart, scarcely feeling the thorns. “Ilyana!”

But more branches closed between them as she turned to look at him.

“Kavi!” she cried, trying with bare hands and wishes to unweave the tangled thorn boughs. Ghosts streamed like snakes about them, thicker and thicker. He shoved his arm through the thorns to draw her back through, leaned against the branches, almost touching the tips of her fingers—but the cold spots shot through him more rapid than his heartbeats, and the weakness he felt now was its own warning that he dared not touch her if he could.

“Kavi!” she cried. But he clenched his hand just short of her fingers and drew his arm back. “Kavi, stay with me, we’ll find a way through—”

“I can’t,” he cried, and tore and fought through the thicket away from her, blind and breathless. He would have killed her just then, the way he would kill the horses if he found them in this desolation: he would draw the last life from the ground, draw it from anything in his path. He drew it instead from the stubborn thorns, fended brittle branches away from his arms and ran, fainting from cold and weakness—heard the voices of wolves amid the wailing of the ghosts, and, glancing over his shoulder, saw them coursing after him, slow and pitiless as nightmare.

Something had shifted. Sasha felt that much: an essential pebble had moved, somewhere. But as to how things were falling now—he was blind and numb with terror, resolved not to let his fear reach beyond him, or do more harm than he might already have wrought with his wishes.

God, Pyetr, hear me. The boy’s in trouble. Chernevog is. I did something I don’t understand—

Nadya whispered, “What’s wrong?” Missy had stopped, abruptly, standing with her ears pricked and a shiver going through her shoulders. Within his awareness, Nadya was trying not to be afraid: she had known the world outside her walls must be dangerous, but she had chosen her course, she was with a wizard she was sure could fight the invisible dangers and on a horse with strength to carry them through the tangible ones. Dear fool, Sasha thought, feeling her arms about him, dear young fool, nothing of the sort-But it made him sure all the same that he had imminently to do something. Pyetr would tell him so exactly that way. Though he did not have Pyetr and his sword and his good sense at his back, he had a lost boyarevna armed with a kitchen knife and a faith only the young could have, a faith he so desperately—

—O god!—wanted for himself.

Thickets gave way to green again, to scantly leaved trees struggling for life, and sunlight that blinded and did not warm. Yvgenie slid on a muddy edge, sat down hard on a bank of a cold spring-fed rill with his heart pounding for fright, as if a mouse could drown in that water that soaked his leg—but it seemed to him he had been on the verge of another fall, and drowning, and that the bank where he lay and the sunlight shining down on him were less real than the other shore.

He looked up the hill, thinking of wolves, not sure now that any had been there, not sure that they might not yet come over the wooded hill.

Get up, keep moving, the ghost insisted. He recalled that Ilyana was in some dreadful danger, that he had let her go and lost her and that he dared not go back, because he was dying, he much feared so, dying finally and forever, when he had died truly that night in the flood, in a woods in which the dead did not rest. He wanted not to steal strength; but he wanted not to die, either, or to wait for the wolves, and he hauled himself up on his arms and his hands to try to get his feet under him—with the sudden feeling—perhaps it was the ghost—that there was help to be had, that it was very close now—

An arrow hit the bank, among the dead leaves, beside his hand. He flung a look over his shoulder at riders coming down the opposite leaf-paved slope, and tried to run and sprawled again on the leaves in the weakness of his legs. He rolled over and looked at them as they came—god, they were the tsar’s men, not his father’s; and that made him hope—

Although why they should be here in this woods, he had no notion at all. He only stared at them as they came. He had no strength to flee them, not even to stand on his feet to face them.

They stopped, their captain’s horse standing half astride the rill, the mustached captain looking down at him grimly from that vantage as two others rode across to dismount on either side of him. Their armor and their manner recalled Kiev, and streets, and sane places where the Great Tsar ruled, not wizards. They would kill. They would do anything they pleased, in the tsar’s name. But they might be here on some other cause, they might even be here hunting his hunters.

“Yvgenie Kurov,” their captain said, as the horse took a step closer, looming over him. “Where’s the girl? Where did you leave her?”

“I don’t know,” he said, and the two men on either side of them came and hauled him up by the arms. Why should the tsar care? he wondered. Why should the tsar take a hand in my father’s troubles, or want to find me or her?

The ghost said, Because your father is dead, poor young fool, with his servants, the second wife, and all his house, and they intend no traitor’s heir survive—nor any question of an heir, born or unborn. The Kurovs are gone, the tsarevitch is scrambling for his life, and heads will roll if some pretender comes out of the woods: that’s what I hear in them. I’d not fall afoul of Eveshka’s ill will. But no one told the tsarevitch that, when he tried to switch dice on Ilyana’s father…

He was dazed. Their grip hurt his arms. He found no sense in what the ghost was saying, and the captain of the tsar’s men leaned close to ask him and seized him by the hair, making him look up. “Where is Nadya Yurisheva?”

The name echoed strangely in his ears, recalling— recalling—

—a talk behind the stairs, vows exchanged besides the witnessed ones, with the bride they had contracted for him: they had conspired to try to love each other, his bride behind her walls, himself within his father’s treacheries and the Medrovs” climb to influence. Until someone had whispered the fatal secret, a taint of wizardry—’Where is she?” the captain asked, shaking him, but he saw only forbidding thorns, and ghosts, and the fire and Ilyana writing in her book. He had no idea how he had become so lost, or where he had lost Nadya and fallen in love with a wizard who wanted him for a ghost’s sake— For Kavi Chernevog, who had sustained his life and who with a confidence beyond courage was not afraid of these men, no. Kavi wanted them, he felt it coming—

“Let me go!” he pleaded with them. But the breath and strength that came flooding through his arms was theirs, all the arrogant violence they had brought to this woods. Two horses bolted, free through the woods. Go! he wished them, heard the captain cry, “Kill him!” and shut his eyes and wished not, wished all the horses free: it was his own mortality, that, and the ghost did not fight him on that point. It was too well satisfied with the life it had in reach, and with every gasp of breath came anger at his victims. He had tried all his life not to hate, had kept his father’s wicked secrets, poured all his love into a man whose only passion was cleverness and strength, and fear in the eyes of his dogs and his servants and his sons…

But that was over. They were gone now, his half-brothers were dead, his stepmother must be dead: everything he knew und understood was gone—he was drowning, and he caught at last at what he could. Branches, lives—it was all the same.

Finally he was sitting by the water with breath in his body, warmth where cold had been, and three dead men beside him. He had not intended it, god, he had not set out to do murder—it was the ghost. It was all the ghost—

—Well, well, well, something said, then, that was not harmless, either, that reeked of sunless cold and coils.—A boy. A boy with the smell of my old master all about him. My kind, dear master—is it help you want?

Fear washed over him—he had no notion of what, or why, only that the ghost knew its serpent shape, and that killing had drawn this creature here as surely as rot would draw ravens.

You’ve only to wish me, the creature said. I know what you need. I can supply everything you need.

It shivered up the streamside like a passing cloud. It brought cold where it passed. And stopped where a woman stood, a woman Ilyana’s image.

A woman he had murdered once. And rescued from magic. And lost again forever through his jealousy.

He said, in sudden despair, “—Eveshka.”

And the creature who smelled of dark and murder said, suddenly behind him, “The years do turn. Don’t they turn, old master?”

Something was ahead of them, not the mouse, Sasha thought, and said, quietly for Nadya, who was holding only to the saddle on this level ground:

“I’m hearing something. Someone. I don’t know who.”

“Is it my father?”

He shook his head, gazed through the sunlit forest, along the hills behind them. “It’s—” It was something out of the ordinary, not like the thoughts of deer or the earth-smelling habits of bears. He stood up in the stirrups and looked over his shoulder.

“It’s not near us. It’s north of here. Too far to hear—it feels like someone. Several someones. Like voices you can’t hear. I don’t like this.”

“The ones we’re looking for? Could it be?”

He shook his head. “I want them to ignore us. I want them not to see us.”

“I’m scared.”

“We’ve Babi. Wherever he is.” He reached back a hand without thinking, patted a bare knee with half-felt embarrassment. He did not like the feeling from the woods. “It’s not safe. But I’ve nowhere safer to put you.”

There was a little tremor in her voice. “My father said stay with you.” And she added, “I have a knife in my boot.”

“We don’t want them that close.” He had his own misgivings about putting her afoot and out of his sight—misfortune and magic tending to strike at the most vulnerable point. “Don’t be afraid. Just think about the wind, think about green leaves, that’s the sort of thing Missy thinks about.”

She thought about walking houses and wolves and dreadful wizards. She tried to see the leaves instead, and admire the sunlight: everything was brighter in the woods, the whole world was more dangerous and sharper-edged than she had ever imagined. She thought, I shouldn’t be alive, I shouldn’t be thinking thoughts like this—

Yvgenie rode all the way from Kiev for me—and he’s in trouble and we’ve got to save him; but I can’t even think about what to say when I see him. I never felt with him the my I feel now—I never imagined anybody like Sasha and it’s stupid! I can’t tell whether I’m shivering because I’m scared to death or only because he touched me…

Dammit, he thought, we’re fools, both of us are fools. I can’t afford to think of this girl, god, Pyetr’s in deep trouble out there, the mouse is—I need to talk to ’Veshka right now, and I can’t, I daren’t, because of Nadya.

God, one clear wish—one clear wish and I could break the silence. Two clear thoughts and we all might have a chance; and the girl has me so upset I don’t know my own name.

I brought her here. It’s my fault. Yvgenie is my fault. Or have I been assuming too much all along?

“Where is she?” Eveshka said, demanded everything, and ran through those memories like a fire through dry leaves. He remembered countless faces, he remembered desperation, going barehanded against Draga’s creatures, he remembered dying—and first meeting Eveshka’s daughter by the brook where Yvgenie would die.

He remembered Owl dying and the precarious bridge above the river; he remembered his heart lodged as a guest with Pyetr’s—and knew Eveshka the way Pyetr did, saw her the way Pyetr did, in the sun and the wind, at the helm of the old ferry; he forgave her the way Pyetr did—with the firelight on her face and thoughts in her eyes he could never, ever speak to—

Thoughts like doubt of one’s own life, one’s own right to walk the earth, doubts that echoed off his own wizard-bred despair.

She still remembered loving him. And she hated that. She remembered him wishing harm on Pyetr with no reckoning of Pyetr himself, only his own pleasure in pain and mischief—that was always at the core of what he did and what he chose. He enjoyed mischief. That was who he was. She believed it.

He did not dispute her—but the enjoyment of it he could not now remember, could only recall that he had done it, and knew that of men alive or dead, he regarded Pyetr as his friend: “I never knew anyone who was good, but him, ’Veshka, allow me that much and don’t argue with me now-listen to me!” A pit was at his back: he could recall all life behind them pouring like a waterfall over an edge that gnawed its way closer and closer to the world and this place. He wanted her to see it, he wanted her to understand he had tried to stay with Ilyana.

“ ’Veshka, I love her, I was never supposed to fall in love with her. They wanted me to bring her here, to them. But they’re dead, and I couldn’t stop her—”

“Damn you! You couldn’t face me, you couldn’t come to me with your “bring her to them—” What were you going to do, Kavi? What did the leshys intend with my daughter?”

“To make her safe, that’s all they wanted—”

“Was it? Was it now?” The sunlight dimmed before the dark and the anger in front of him. She would kill the boy, he was sure, kill Yvgenie and him and take the magic he had, she was that strong and desperate to be stronger—rusalka no less than himself, a sink of life as deadly as that place beyond the hedge—

While life and magic poured over that rim and threatened to sweep her and him and everything they loved into itself.

“Eveshka,” he said. “Eveshka, don’t help it, don’t—wish against them—”

“Bonesss,” the vodyanoi said.

The whole world tottered for an instant. Breath failed. But she spun about and stalked away from him, and laid her hand on a bare white trunk.

Something whispered, slithering to the other bank: Don’t trust him, pretty bones. He’s not at all nice. But there is a place that wants him, there is a place that would certainly trade for him, trade for something very, very nice—

It was day. The vodyanoi could not abide the sun—except someone enabled him, except Eveshka was listening to the creature. And who was so foolish, god, who but him had ever been so foolish?

Eveshka rolled a glance at sky and woods, looked at him last, desperate, angry for all the long seasons of cold and dark he had damned her to. She hated him, for lying, for pain, for deception and his theft of her peace and her daughter—

She wanted the strength he held. She took it, in one dizzy rush, that left him on his knees; and wanted him from her sight, now, that was the single grace she gave him, because there was a wisp of life left in him and she would not kill— from moment to moment, so long as she could, she would not kill…

“Run, damn you, Kavi! Runl“

He found the strength somewhere. He fled the streamside, blind, raked by thorns—he stumbled and fell and ran again, mindless, until he found himself lying on dead leaves in the sunlight, watching an ant make anxious progress across a sandy, mold-eaten leaf among other leaves, and stop, and quite suddenly— Shrivel and die.

His heart gave a painful thump. A leaf fell. Another followed. He wiped his mouth with a gritty hand and tried to get up.

Green, untimely leaves showered about him. His teeth chattered with winter cold as he gathered his feet under him and kept going, where, he did not know, except he felt powerless against what moved him —he, Kavi, Yvgenie: the distinction was no longer exact in his thoughts.

He wiped tears that ran on his face, revolted by the chill of his own hand, and slid as much as walked down the face of the hill, gathered himself at the bottom and stumbled further, thinking—the god help him—that if he could only find the horses—they could carry his failing body in more then one sense.

But there was no trace of them, and from Yvgenie nothing but terror and grief. Yvgenie loved the white mare. Ilyana loved the filly. So did he, for Ilyana’s sake. And his living always required murder, it had before and did again, even of what trusted him.

The sun sank below the treetops. In a deeply shadowed passage Volkhi blew and shook his head, and Pyetr shivered for no reason that he could think of—a passing wish, perhaps, either good or ill, if any magic at all could reach him. Volkhi had his head up, smelling something of interest, that much was certain. Pyetr asked a little more speed of him and Volkhi picked up his pace, pricking up his ears and flattening them again, listening and worrying. The mouse? One could only hope. No, god, it was Patches, riderless, with Yvgenie’s white horse behind, coming slowly down the wooded hillside. His heart said hurry; but he rode quietly so as not to startle them, and saw bloody scratches and countless welts on their hides, thorns snarled in manes…

Sasha could easily have asked them the questions he most wanted to ask. All an ordinary man could learn of them was the evidence of a panic flight through thorn thickets: dirt from falls, scratches all over them, and everything Ilyana and the boy owned still bound to the saddles—god, Ilyana’s book was there along with the rest of her belongings. She would never have parted from that—willingly.

He slid down, slipped Patches’ bridle, tied it to the saddle, and sent the filly off with a whack on the rump—home, he hoped, where young Patches understood home to be; or to Sasha, or whatever refuge she could find on their own. He held on to the white mare for a change of horses, swung up onto Volkhi’s back, argued Volkhi and the mare into an uphill track, and rode along their backtrail, not breakneck, but slowly, observing an occasional print of a hoof on soft ground, a snag of white horsehair in brush. The horses had both gotten away clear: life had escaped Chernevog’s grasp, and if it was Chernevog’s fault what had happened, the horses could not have gotten away without magic.

Which could most reasonably mean the mouse—who, being the mouse, might have driven them off for their own safety, if things were going wrong; but she would not have chosen to send them away with the book and their food and their blankets, not unless something had gone very wrong, very quickly, or she had some destination in mind for them. Like her uncle. Like—the god knew. The book might have every answer he needed, which he might know now if Sasha were with him, which, dammit, Sasha was not—nor could possibly be, this fast.

So he was here—for what little he could do: at least whatever he could do was sooner than he could do it at Sasha’s pace; and if the mouse’s wish or Sasha’s was indeed guiding the horses, Sasha might yet get his hands on the book and the answers in time, and ride to the mouse’s rescue.

Or his, if he was on the right track—and by all evidence he was.

Only granting, please the god, Sasha had ever waked up.

“Babi’s left,” Nadya said, and Sasha looked about at her, saying, “What?” so distractedly she was sorry she had said anything. It was getting toward dark, he insisted on walking and letting the horse follow him, and if he was working magic she might just have ruined things.

“No,” he said.

It was very disconcerting to have someone answer her thoughts.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and patted Missy’s neck as they walked. “Pyetr and I do it. I forget. I’m dreadfully sorry.”

“I shouldn’t bother you when you’re thinking.”

“You couldn’t bother me.”

It was an odd thing to say. She was not certain whether it was good or bad. Maybe she was too silly to bother him. Ha uncles called her a damned nuisance when they thought sin was out of earshot. They called her stupid girl—

“You’re not,” he said, and stopped a moment and looked up at her. “You are distracting me. I’m sorry. Please don’t talk to me. I’m trying to think of something.”

“What?”

“A wise wish.”

“Wish us home,” she said.

He had the most distressed look on his face. He stared at her and went on staring. He said, finally, “Home.”

She said, “Mine’s not in Vojvoda. I don’t know where it is but it’s not there.”

He said, “Mine burned.”

“I’m dreadfully sorry—”

“It wasn’t mine, really. Or it was. It didn’t matter. It was just full of papers and things.”

She did not understand. She did not understand how she had troubled him, but she had. She frowned and wondered what she had said so dreadful.

He walked on, and Missy moved with his hand on her neck, at her steady patient pace. She thought, I wouldn’t hurt him. I truly wouldn’t.

“How can a wizard’s house burn? Can’t they stop the fire?”

“Not always,” he said. “I’m dreadful at fires. —God, don’t—bother me. Please! God!”

Her breath seized up in her throat. And he shook his head furiously and laid a hand on her knee, saying, “I wanted you here. I wished you. I wanted—”

“What?”

“A wife. And it’s not fair for us to want somebody. And you shouldn’t think about me and you shouldn’t want to—” He stopped, quite suddenly, then said, “I sound like ’Veshka.”

She felt fluttery inside. She felt guilty for Yvgenie and guilty for being a wicked girl, her mother would call it, and guilty for upsetting Sasha—it was not fair for a boy to risk his life for her and her not to love him, but it was nothing like Sasha.

“It’s a damned wish,” he said. “It’s magical. You can’t help liking me!”

“I do,” she said, feeling very strange inside. “I do, and maybe it is magical. It feels that way. I never felt like this. I never did…”

He stood there staring at her. Missy had stopped quite still.

“What about Yvgenie?” he asked.

She said, hard as it was to say, “We never—” and stopped there, her face gone burning hot despite the evening chill. She said, “I didn’t love him. I said I’d try to. He’s very nice.” The fact was, she had slept in his blanket and he had slept curled against a tree, because—

—because she had been so dreadfully afraid of strangers. Or of lasting mistakes.

“God,” he said, and shook his head and started walking again.

She did not think he was upset with her. She thought quite the opposite. Maybe it was him hearing what she was thinking again.

He stopped Missy again. He looked so dreadfully upset with her. No, not with her. With himself. Because he was not thinking about the things he should be thinking about, he was thinking about himself, being selfish, and a fool—

She shook her head, refusing to believe that, upset because he was upset—

And not, again. Feelings came and went quickly as breezes. It scared her. Except it was magic, and she loved a wizard, and things like that seemed likely to happen in his company.

He said, “I can’t wish you not. I can’t wish you away. It’s not safe. God, what do I do with you?”

She said, “I don’t know.” A nice girl would never think of looking a strange man in the eyes. But she did. She said, shakily, “I’m in the way, aren’t I?” The woods was not where she belonged. Sasha was walking because the horse was tired. He was out of breath, he was sweating, he looked exasperated and worried, and she bit her lip, not going add her tears to his problems. Which went away, the more she felt her eyes sting.

She said, “I’m not scared of you.” It felt as if every fear she had ever had had gone away from her. And anything the woods could hold was nothing to the fears she had lived with expecting murder at any instant, every day of her life, an had found her mysterious wizard and he was the answer, not the danger. She said, feeling very strange, “I think should think about getting my father out of trouble.”

Because that was what he was trying so desperately think about—and if she was an echo, she could at least that to help him.

She said, “I’m scared of meeting Yvgenie, too, but I think you should help the people you need to help, and not worry about me meeting my half-sister, or my father’s wife…”

He was afraid of that idea. She saw it in his face. He gave a small shake of his head and of a sudden the back-and-forth in her thinking stopped, like a sudden silence, as he started Missy moving again.

She said, because she was stubborn, “They don’t scare me.” Which was a lie. But she was trying to make it true She said, on a cold, dreadful thought, “If my father got killed or something because of me—”

He gave her a strange look and she felt colder and colder, thinking about that. Or maybe it was magic again.

He said, “Pyetr’s damned hard to kill.”

And walked ahead of Missy for a while, in a silence she had never heard in her life—not a lonely one. A cessation of his presence, even when he was right in front of the horse. She watched him, as distant from her as he had been close a moment ago, and thought: He’s thinking about my father.

He’s doing something. My father said—he wants things and they happen. Anything he wants—

God, one has to be so careful with him. Careful of him.

Take care of him, her father had charged her. She had thought—until he wakes. But she began to see what her father find trusted to her, and how very much Sasha needed someone he could trust—

Someone as brave as her father, someone not afraid of him—no matter what.

Desolation, ghosts, stones and peeling roots of broken trees, banks of thorns that went to powder in a grasping hand, that was the place Ilyana saw: Owl was still with her—but cast about as she would among the hedges she could not find a way out again, nor, it seemed, could Owl. Ghosts wove pale threads through the hedges and the branches of dead trees, cold to the touch and angry, one could feel it.

“Yvgenie!” she had shouted till she was hoarse, but only the faint wailing of ghosts answered. He was alone with Patches and Bielitsa in a place where life was fading and the result of that she did not want to imagine—Patches had never asked to be taken out into the woods and lost to a ghost. Her father was looking for her, beyond a doubt, and if she had feared her father harming Yvgenie, now it was Kavi harming her father she had to fear. She thought in despair. God, he couldn’t keep up and I wouldn’t listen. I’ve done everything wrong and now I can’t get back again. Papa was right and I wouldn’t listen to him, I thought I knew better—

Something moved in the tail of her eye. A wolf sat there, the one that they had followed into this place. It looked alive, yellow-eyed and with fur mostly white, but touched with gray and buff. Behind it, tongues lolling, sat others, milky-pale as Owl. Those were surely ghosts.

The living wolf got up and trotted away. The others followed it; and Owl glided after.

Dangerous to wish for what doesn’t exist, Kavi had warned her. Now she was on the verge of wanting her uncle to rescue her and most dangerously on the edge of wanting her father, the god forbid she should be so selfishly stupid. Her mother might know what to do, if her mother would even listen to her situation now, of which she despaired entirely: her mother was not inclined to patience; but god, she was in trouble. The leshys were dead. No one had ever told her that such things could happen, let alone that the woods might suddenly change beyond her understanding.

But they had warned her about Kavi. And she had thought it was so simple—as if loyalty and wishes could sustain him She thought, on the edge of tears: Uncle tried to tell me. Hope never seemed dangerous till this. Now I know what it can do to fools that won’t listen.

Ghosts belong here. Yvgenie doesn’t, not yet: he’s not dead and he’s not a wizard. That’s why he could get away and get Kavi out of this place. God, I don’t want to follow these creatures—it’s stupid. But Owl’s going. And if I lose Owl, what other tie have I got to the other side of the hedge?

Mother, I’m listening now. Uncle, I’m dreadfully sorry… Papa, please don’t come after me. Even wizards don’t belong here. You couldn’t—

A ghost poured out into the aisle ahead of her, and shaped itself into a great lumbering bear, white as snow. It looked at her over its shoulder, and its face showed a dreadful scar, as if something had burned it once.

She thought, It’s not just a ghost of a bear, it was a real bear once. Something dreadful happened to it. And what does it have to do with me?

A ghost swept near her, saying, Ilyana, granddaughter, look at me.

She did look. She saw a man’s misty face, fierce and young and very handsome.

It said, You’re my wish, Ilyana. And your grandmother’s. We never agreed, so least one of us has to be right. Your father was no one’s choosing—or he was your mother’s whim. I’ve no idea. I only know he’s made you terribly dangerous.

She was stung by that. She said, There’s nothing wrong with my father!

A raven had joined the ghost, shaped itself out of the mist and drifted with them, on gray wings. The ghost said, Your father is a gambler—but he’s no one’s fool. Your mother is a damned good wizard—and that’s enough to know. —I wish you to make your own choices, granddaughter. Be what you are.

“But you say I’m dangerous!” she protested, seeing the ghost fade away. “Are you my grandfather Uulamets? You must be! Come back! I’m not through talking to you!”

But the ghost shredded apart and streamed away through the hedges. The scar-faced bear and the wolves and Owl went ahead of her, and sometimes the ghostly raven, until through a last screen of thorns she could see what shone so pale and strange, a beautiful palace of curious design, made all of white stones, on a hill girt by thorn hedges laced with ghosts.

The evening light cast strange shadows on the white palace, making odd shadows, making its walls and its towers appear like lace. How beautiful, Ilyana thought, pulling aside a last few thorn boughs. How can anything so beautiful be wicked or dangerous? Kavi was wrong.

Something crunched beneath her foot. She looked down and saw a broken vault of bone—some old skull, buried in the earth. There were more such. Not stones, she thought, gazing up a hill where other such objects lay half-buried all up the hill to the foundation of the palace.

God, no, not stones that made such lacy walls and towers—but bleached and dreadful bones.