Yvgenie

by CJ Cherryh

  A leaf fell onto the paper. Other leaves were falling, some on the ground, a few into the fire, where they flared and burned and perished.

  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. Perh
aps 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 d
amnably 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—