Chernevog (v1.2)

by C. J. Cherryh

  But if Kavi was with them, god, the leshys had surely failed, if that was the case, and Kavi might use the vodyanoi, might be using him now. Hwiuur would by no means tell her any straight truth. Kavi was with them—how?

  The scent of smoke reached her, very faint. She said, “Hwiuur, who lives hereabouts?”

  “Oh,” the vodyanoi said, “now are we polite, pretty bones?”

  She wanted to know, unequivocally. But Hwiuur was hard to catch with one intent, or two, or three. He said,

  “If we’re not polite, I’ll leave, pretty. I’ll tell you. Better yet, I’ll show you. Just a little gather.”

  He was moving away from her for a moment. Then she heard something at her left, looked and saw her father standing there.

  “Not so much farther,” he said, this gray, shadowed figure that was no ghost.

  Then it dissolved and flowed down onto the ground, rushing past her like a runaway spill of ink.

  A damned shapeshifter… in her father’s likeness.

  Recent lie? she asked herself. Or a lie from the start?

  She stood very still for a moment. She heard Hwiuur’s slithering progress in the brush, coming from the other side now. It passed behind her.

  “Stop playing games,” she cried. “Hwiuur, damn you!”

  Movement stopped. The whole woods was still.

  But the feeling—the assurance that had been with her from childhood, of something especially, uniquely waiting for her— was with her again in that quiet.

  Perhaps, she thought, Hwiuur had been trying, in his malicious way, to mislead her from what was essential for her to find.

  Or perhaps, in the presence of such malicious creatures, it might mean something utterly dreadful about her childhood longings—that mysterious assurance of special worth somewhere, most private and most central to her heart.

  She walked forward, down a slope and past an old, old tree, found herself facing a strange hill of sod and logs.

  Set in that hill, dim in the last of the light—was a door.

  It was a most uneasy feeling Sasha had as they rode into view of the ruin, and he wondered if Chernevog was somehow to blame for that uneasiness: Chernevog had scared him terribly, going at Pyetr as he had a while back, and he had no idea what was the matter with him since, that had his hands trembling with anger and his heart racing—whether it was Chernevog that disturbed him or whether it was some other abrading influence in this place.

  He was not one to let feelings get away from him, no matter Pyetr’s advice to let his temper go—no matter Pyetr thought him weak and indecisive… he was not Pyetr, he had all but panicked with Chernevog, and he could not ride into this place as Pyetr did, looking as if trouble had better watch out for him and not the other way around. He was frightened, he was angry at Chernevog, and most of all-Most of all he did not really want the meeting they were here to get, which might well prevent it happening at all. He kept thinking, What do I do if the old man does want me?

  “Not much of the place left,” Pyetr said. It was true—ordinary luck might easily have missed the house entirely in the almost-dark, the planting of trees was so thorough. Only the burned beams above the trees showed them where the old building had stood, fire-charred timbers standing stark and washed with rain.

  I’ve seen this, too, Sasha thought, uncomfortably aware of Chernevog’s presence brushing his back. Missy moved at her deliberate pace, constant movement of muscle and bone beneath him: Missy was smelling rain and young leaves and old fire— nothing in the way of dangers that horses understood.

  “Looks as if the leshys flattened what was standing,” Pyetr said. “The big tree in the yard is gone. Trees must be planted right over the grave.”

  “We’ll find it,” Sasha murmured distractedly. He felt nothing precisely amiss about the place, but it seemed far more haunted than the woods, full of memories and old wishes. He said to Uulamets’ ghost, if it chanced to be listening, Master Uulamets, it’s me, Sasha. We’ve got Chernevog with us: don’t be startled—

  “Sasha,” Chernevog said. Chernevog had not held to him in their riding together, had avoided him as much as two people could avoid each other on the same horse, but of a sudden Chernevog touched his arm. “For the god’s sake we’re close enough!”

  “Shut up!” he said.

  The ruin stood in seedlings that made a deep green deception In the twilight, level as if it were some knee-deep lake the horses waded. The dead tree that had stood in the yard was indeed gone, there were only scant traces of a wall and the tumbled foundations, except one wing. They passed the remains of a wall, a charred round ruin where the bathhouse had stood, all half-drowned in infant birch trees.

  He stopped Missy, bade Chernevog get down, and slid off as

  Pyetr did. They were virtually over the grave, as best he recalled it. The light was fast leaving them, the green birches faded to faint, moist gray, the edges of the forest lost in rain, the burned timbers black against the clouds. The only sound was their breathing.

  “Master Uulamets,” he said aloud, defying all that silence. “Master Uulamets?”

  He waited. He wished earnestly for the old man’s good will, he tried earnestly to remember that Uulamets had also saved their lives, and not to hold Uulamets’ motives against him.

  “Damn stubborn old man,” Pyetr muttered after a fruitless time of standing there, during which the horses stamped and shifted and idly pulled leaves off the young birches. “It’s wet, it’s nasty, and he doesn’t like the company. —Come on, grandfather, dammit, ‘Veshka’s in trouble and there’s something using your shape. I’d think you’d like to know that.”

  There was a sudden chill in the air. A wind sighed along the sea of leaves.

  That passed. Sasha let go the bream he had been holding, stood a moment in the quiet trying again to convince himself he truly wanted the old man to speak to him personally.

  He trusted Misighi. That was the only advice he was willing to take where it regarded the welfare of the woods—which was their welfare, too: he trusted that the way he trusted the ground they walked on and the food they ate and the water they drank.

  What harmed it, harmed them; when it was well, they were: that was the bargain they had made—using nature kindly, working with what magic agreed with it—like the Forest-things themselves.

  That was where he had to stand. That was the safe magic.

  “Watch him,” he told Pyetr, and got down his pack from Missy’s back, knelt down and bent back a couple of seedlings to give himself room, searching after rosemary and the herbs he recollected Uulamets using in his spells.

  Chernevog wanted him to stop—a weak, a desperately frightened wish for his attention and his patience to hear him. “For the god’s sake,” Chernevog said, and Pyetr grabbed him by the shoulder, “—it may not be only Uulamets that answers.”

  Doubt, Sasha thought, and stood up and looked Chernevog on the face with an angry suspicion what Chernevog was trying to do to them.

  “Sasha,” Chernevog said, “Sasha, —oh, god—”

  Dark and fire…

  Hoof beats in the dark… inexorable as a heartbeat…

  Eveshka, sitting at a hearth, drinking a cup of tea.

  Sasha felt that sense of presence that had haunted him from home. He turned his head toward it and saw, like a bad dream, the bannik squatting in the charred skeleton of the bathhouse doorway, a dusky, spiky-haired shadow, like a sullen, bored child, staring at the steps beside his feet.

  One did not want it to look up. One did not want to look it in the eyes.

  Sasha thought with a chill. —It lied… it was always his…

  But Chernevog tried to retreat behind them, fighting Pyetr’s help on his arm.

  “No!” Chernevog cried.

  The bannik stood up, frowning at them with eyes like dying ambers. Then it looked skyward, lifted its hand as something filmy white swept down on broad wings to settle on its wrist. The creature folded its wings and stared at t
hem in its own moment of sharp attention. Then ghostly owl and ragged shadow of a boy faded together into the dark.

  19

  “What in hell was that?” Pyetr asked of Sasha. “That was the bannik! Wasn’t that the bannik?”

  “It’s what showed up at the house,” Sasha said.

  “It’s him,” Pyetr said. “Is it my eyes, or what’s it doing with the owl?”

  “I don’t know,” Sasha said.

  “He damned well does,” Pyetr said, and took a new grip on Chernevog’s shirt, wanting answers. “What kind of tricks are you up to, Snake?”

  Chernevog said on a ragged breath, “I told you, I told you, and you won’t listen—”

  Pyetr shook him. “Told us, damn right you’ve told us—one damned lie after another! Sound asleep, were you? Innocent as morning snow, are you?”

  “I’m not lying!” Chernevog cried, and it sounded both desperate and fully in earnest.

  Which meant nothing, with wizards. Pyetr shook him a second time, saying, “Bannik, hell! Call it back!”

  “I can’t!” Chernevog said.

  “Can’t, hell! That’s you. That spook’s you, Snake, don’t tell me it’s not.”

  “It’s a shadow,” Chernevog said faintly. “A piece. A part. A fragment…” Chernevog shivered, put a hand on his arm, eye to eye with him in a twilight so deep that his eyes had no center, only dark. “The dead can fragment… That’s what ghosts are: pieces, fragments, sometimes a single notion—”

  “You’re not dead!”

  “I don’t know what made it, I don’t know why it happened, I didn’t know it could happen and I don’t know where I lost it—”

  “Damned careless of you!”

  “It’s the truth, Pyetr Ilyitch!”

  He worried every time he believed Chernevog. He had memories aplenty to remind himself what Chernevog was, and had done, and still might do; and certainly enough to remind him why he wanted to kill this man; but he could not find the man he wanted to kill, that was the trouble: this one held to him, teeth chattering, and said things like,

  “For the god’s sake don’t go on with this tonight. Don’t invite any damned thing that might be listening. Build a fire. Lay down lines. It’s not nature you’re dealing with: put some limits to this, don’t leave it to whatever comes.”

  Sasha said, “He’s right.”

  “Build a fire.” They were knee-deep in seedlings leshys had put there. “I don’t think we ought to be tearing up any trees, under the circumstances.”

  “There’s the bathhouse,” Sasha said. “The furnace will be stone. There’s wood left—at least of the walls.”

  “Cinders,” Pyetr muttered, but he was glad enough to hear words like fire and limits. The horses had wandered off from all this shouting, browsing among the seedlings. They both put their heads up and Sasha called to them, “Come on.”

  No one, in this place, in this night, had any particular choice about it.

  Wizardry helped make damp wood catch, in a furnace mostly intact. Its effect against the smoke was minimal so far as Pyetr could see, but a circle of sulfur and salt around the old walls would stay put against any chance or wizard-raised wind—and such of the walls as still stood, helped against the rainy chill.

  Pyetr fed the fire and kept an eye on Chernevog while Sasha was outside the walls including the horses in the circle—bending birch seedlings, tying them with mending-cord, and wishing them well: on the whole, Pyetr approved of birch trees, and leshys, and whatever was alive, as opposed to dead; and particularly whatever opposed the sort of magic Chernevog dealt with.

  Chernevog was sitting opposite him, against the fire-scorched wall, knees tucked up. His eyes were open, but he had not moved since he had sat down.

  “There’s the canvas,” Pyetr said. “You could wrap in that, you know.”

  Chernevog gave no sign he had heard. His thin shirt seemed scant protection against the chill in the mist.

  Pyetr chucked a stick in Chernevog’s direction. If Chernevog was thinking of some mischief he had no inclination to let him do it in peace. “The canvas,” he said, “beside you. Or freeze. I’m sure I don’t care.”

  He thought about the bannik, or whatever it was, and tried to wonder about Eveshka and what else it had shown them. He listened to Sasha moving around out beyond the walls, in the dark, and thought, Get back here, boy. I really don’t like this.

  Chernevog said, suddenly, “I did love Owl.”

  It sounded like an accusation. A just complaint, what was worse, but he did not want to argue grievances with the man, not here, where memory was so vivid. He kept his mouth shut.

  Chernevog said, “I wanted Eveshka. I ‘d have given her everything she could have asked.”

  “Shut up, Snake. You’ll make me mad if you go on.”

  “She wanted you. I couldn’t understand that.”

  “I can.”

  Chernevog said, “I wish I’d done differently by you.”

  “But you didn’t, Snake, you really made me mad. And you’re doing it again.”

  “You want so very little.”

  “Sasha!”

  He could not get his breath for a moment. Then breath came, and Sasha came running.

  “Pyetr?”

  “Snake, here, tried something.” He was still short-winded. “I don’t know what.”

  “I’m very sorry,” Chernevog said. “You frightened me.”

  “ I frightened you.” Pyetr put another stick into the furnace, wanting nothing to have happened, nothing magical to have insinuated itself into him that Sasha might not detect. “Don’t put any damn wishes on me. —Sasha, I don’t know what he was up to, but he did something.”

  Sasha squatted and put his hand on his shoulder, but the queasiness in his stomach did not go away. Wishes, he thought, did not necessarily lie in s omeone, they were not there to be bound like a splinter or a bruise. They just waited down the road and pounced when the time came.

  “It’s all right,” Sasha said.

  “I damn sure hope it is.” He shrugged off Sasha’s hand, not wanting to worry about it. “Did you finish out there?”

  “Almost—I didn’t feel him do anything, Pyetr.”

  So he was being foolish—if Sasha knew everything that was going on, which he hoped, but he was not sure of: nothing seemed sure, dealing with Kavi Chernevog.

  “I’m all right, then,” he said. “Go on, get back to it. We’ve got one Snake in here, we don’t need another.”

  Sasha pressed his shoulder, stood up and did something, Pyetr had no idea what: Chernevog put up a hand as if he were about to be hit, and said, “I didn’t touch him.”

  “He evidently didn’t,” Pyetr said, reluctantly.

  Sasha stood there a moment. Chernevog stared up at him with a hard, defiant expression.

  That was a fight going on, Pyetr decided. He got up with his sword in hand and said, “Snake, behave or I’ll cut your head off. Hear me?”

  Chernevog did not look at him immediately. Then his eyes shifted slowly to fix on him, and Pyetr felt a sudden light-headedness, a chill against his heart.

  The stone floor came up under his knee—the sword clattered onto the stones as he saw Chernevog stand up, and Sasha facing him.

  “Chernevog!” he yelled.

  “Don’t fight me,” Chernevog said, and even thinking about it was an uphill struggle.

  “Damn you,” he said, and did struggle—to reach the sword and pick it up, but it was hard to believe Chernevog meant any harm, to him or to Sasha: Chernevog needed them, and what Chernevog needed was very, very safe.

  “Protection enough, your circle,” Chernevog said. “Thank you.”

  Papa had not brought up a fool, to go straight up to any strange door and knock. Eveshka sat at the edge of the woods and listened to the silence. Hwiuur had gone somewhere or Hwiuur was lying as still as he could. Of the shapeshifter there was no sign, either—whether her father had ever been with her, or whether it had bee
n that creature all along. Their absence now meant only that they were up to no good; and if the vodyanoi had told her the truth about Pyetr and Sasha being in Chernevog’s company, she had no doubt where that trouble had gone.

  She would wish not—excepting it was not a place to be flinging wishes about recklessly or loudly.

  Damn, she did not like this strange house under the hill, and she did not like Hwiuur disappearing and she did not like the idea that whoever lived here was—she felt it—aware of her being here.

  How not? she thought. Hwiuur would certainly have seen to that.

  She locked her hands in front of her mouth, she wanted, as quietly and as carefully as she could, to know what was in that house without having it catch her at it—a small burglary, Pyetr would call it, without touching the door at all.

  Ah, someone said to her, there you are.

  She drew back, quickly, felt a magic more powerful than anything Kavi had ever used.

  It said, Oh, don’t be a fool. There’s no use sitting there in the dark. Come inside. I don’t bite.

  She said, Who are you?

  But that was a mistake. Curiosity opened a way for it. It said, softly, Your mother, dear. Of course.

  20

  “Sasha?” Pyetr was saying, “Sasha?” and patting his face, saying, “Damn you, let him go,” —to someone else, Sasha decided. Then he realized that Pyetr was holding his head off the ground and the person Pyetr was talking to was Chernevog, who sat comfortably at their fireside.

  Pyetr rested a hand on Sasha’s shoulder, said, in a low voice: “ I don’t know what he’s up to. He’s got his book, he’s got yours and Uulamets’, and I couldn’t stop him. I’m sorry.” Pyetr sounded terribly distraught, as if it were his fault—and that was in no wise just.

  Sasha asked, “Are you all right?”

  “So far.”

  He made the effort to sit up, winced as the ache in his head became stabbing pain and found himself leaning on Pyetr’s arm, everything gone dim again.

  “You hit the ground hard.” Pyetr said, continuing to support him, which, the way everything was spinning, was more than welcome. But the ache eased when he wished it: it should not have, Chernevog being free—and free of what… his addled wits suddenly realized. He looked into Pyetr’s anxious face, saw lines of pain unlike him.