Chernevog (v1.2)

by C. J. Cherryh

  “Thanks to you, mama!”

  “He has the morals of a stoat. I did very quickly know he was no child; and of course he swears now I bewitched him into my bed.” Another nip at the thread, another knot, a quick flash of the needle in the sun. “Kavi lies to himself on certain points: in fact he was terrified of me; I made him behave, you see, I could make him behave in those days, and anyone who could do that frightened him. So he became quite charming, quite persistent, quite—well, well, I was foolish, what can I say? And I certainly regretted it. —You see, what Kavi fears becomes evil to him. I became evil. He doesn’t see it that way, of course, he denies there’s any such thing as evil—but I’m certain your father became very evil to him; and possibly you did.”

  “And you sent him to us!”

  “My dear, I didn’t know all this then. I certainly didn’t know he’ll come back and try to kill me. I once thought your father might have done something to him—that was my instant judgment. But over the years I’ve come to understand the way Kavi thinks—and everything is very reasonable, if you stand where he does. He’s the only one right; anything that protects him is right; any position is right if it serves him at the moment. Do you want him to be moral? He will be, as quickly as he can understand what you want—he won’t feel safe until he’s modeled himself quite on your design. And he’ll use it to destroy you. Do you know—” She tied off, replaced the needle in its cushion, looked up with a frown. “I never was disposed to believe a child could be born the way he is. I always thought Lenki mishandled him—and perhaps being pushed to the point he’d killed her—broke something in him; or maybe something essential to humanity fell away from him while he was living like an animal in the woods. But over the years I’ve come to believe something got to him while he was still a baby, something found him—I don’t know how, I don’t know what—”

  She truly did not like to hear this, but she was all but afraid to breathe, fearing her mother would stop talking down this track and close off what she knew: it was so hard, sometimes, to talk coherently about magic—perhaps that there were no words to compass it; or that certain things—believing her father for a moment—did not want to be talked about…

  “—but I’ve come to wonder if he was any boatman’s son. I’ve come to wonder very seriously if he isn’t… what we talked about, you know—doubly gifted…”

  She stopped talking then, gazing off into the woods. Eveshka felt her heart racing, thinking, Dammit, she wants to scare me.

  “… or maybe it was Malenkova. Malenkova was a terrible woman. She taught both your father and me. That’s where we met, in her house.”

  “What happened to her?” Asking (hat was like lifting a heavy weight. It was a question that did not seem to want to be asked. “Is she still alive?”

  “I don’t think so. But then—one never knows.” Her mother looked distracted, blinked, reached for the needle and a new thread. “I’ve asked myself… if there’s any remote chance Kavi was hers.”

  “She was an old woman!”

  “You’re very old, dear—in some people’s reckoning. So am I. And I’d put nothing outside possibility with her. Even—though I much doubt it—that Kavi’s your half-brother.”

  Oh, god! Eveshka thought, thought of Kavi in the cellar, Kavl stopping her at the shelves in the back—

  “I certainly didn’t think that when I was sleeping with him,” Draga said.

  “You mean he might be yours?” Eveshka asked.

  “No, no, dear, your father’s. Your father and Malenkova—”

  “My father was only a—”

  “Young boy? Not mat young. He ran away. Malenkova let him, I suspect. Sometimes she just grew careless. Sometimes she had reasons. Eventually I escaped, and we were lovers. But Malenkova poisoned everything we might have had. Your father had become very bitter. He’d become so afraid, so unreasonably afraid—of having a child… “

  Eveshka felt her heart beating so mat she feared she would faint. What was inside her suddenly seemed real, and destructive of everything she most wanted.

  “There was a year or so I didn’t see Malenkova at all. She was like that—you lived in her house, the very house Kavi had, the one that burned… and you did what she wanted; then she would be off in the woods somewhere, I suppose, for months at a time. But the god help you if she came back and there was any least thing wrong. She was a terrible woman. I don’t know how old she was. Your father—you understand, he looked his years, well, at least—he looked appropriate for them: But he was letting himself age when I joined him. He said—he said, I remember it very clearly—I don’t plan to live forever. He wouldn’t use magic on himself. He didn’t. He’d cut his finger— he’d just let it bleed. I think Malenkova made him a little crazy. And I never, never thought he’d go so crazy when I had you. I tell you, dear, I was terrified—I was terrified he’d drown you when you were born. I thought he’d done that… I was lying in bed, he took you away—and I got up and I tried to get you back. But I couldn’t. I was afraid he’d kill me in the state I was in. I wasn’t thinking very clearly. I was afraid of him. I ran away. That’s where all the grief started. Maybe I should have stayed and fought him for you. But maybe I would have died.”

  “He said you tried to kill him.”

  “I did try—I meant to, if it would have saved you. Sometimes a mother doesn’t think very clearly. I was glad, at least, to know you were alive, I was able to spy a bit, you see. And your poor father—I can say that now—” A knot. A small laugh. “You did run him ragged. His idea of bringing up a child… was simply to prevent you doing magic.”

  Filings fell into place, then, papa always wishing at her…

  “And you being a wizard-child on both sides… of course what he was doing to protect nature from you was completely un natural: he could only stop you with magic that scared him to work. I think he finally realized how crazy mat was. He didn’t know really what to do. And for all the harm he did, now, I can lot give him a great deal. Malenkova did terrible things to him. She dealt with deep magic. With sorcery, if you want to call it that, though there’s no real distinction except in degree. And if he truly was Kavi’s father—”

  Her mother stopped talking. New flowers chained across the wool, one after the other.

  “Mother? —If he was Kavi’s father?”

  Half a flower more. “Well, the time doesn’t work. Although—” The needle stopped. “I don’t put anything beyond Malenkova. Her magic had no rules.”

  “Why? Why would she want a child?”

  “Dear, I don’t know she did—for any reason anyone would like to talk about. She’d—”

  “Mama?”

  Her mother’s lips went to a thin line. She crushed a petal. “If that was so,” her mother said, slowly, “then he’d be exactly what you are—wizard-born on both sides. More than that: your father discouraged you from magic; but Kavi—”

  There was silence. Eveshka waited, watched her mother think and almost eavesdropped, she wanted so badly to know.

  “If Kavi was hers,” her mother said, “he was conceived for a reason: she was careless—but never in something that inconvenienced her. She was terribly powerful. I can’t even explain to you what she did—but she wanted to get into the magical, she wanted to go into that realm herself—and I’m far from sure all her absences were into the woods, if you want the truth.”

  “What would she do with a child?”

  “As I said, the time doesn’t work. By years. But that’s not saying time is the same there. As a matter of fact, I’ve very strong suspicions it isn’t. And I’m not sure where Malenkov is.”

  “God, mother.”

  “One has time for very strange thoughts in a hundred years I’ve turned it over and over and over—what happened, why happened—where Malenkova is. And how Kavi was so—damnnably precocious. That’s why I want you here. That’s why you mustn’t leave and go running off to fight him on your own. You’ll lose. And I’m very much afraid—v
ery much afraid that there’s something in the magical realm with an interest in this world. You have to understand—that’s never been true. But it may be, now. To tell the truth, I don’t know why you were born. I don’t know if you’re what magic’s arranged to counter Kavi Chernevog—or whether you’re something magic’s made to be his match—to bear a child we don’t want to think about.”

  Eveshka stood up abruptly, cold to the marrow. Her mother looked up at her, the sewing crumpled in her lap.”Don’t panic You mustn’t panic, ‘Veshka. Do you understand me? I want you to listen to me. Don’t make any wishes right now, not about you, not about me, not about your husband, certainly not about that baby—think about flowers, ‘Veshka, think about flowers… “

  Flowers with thorns. Flowers red as blood…

  “’Veshka!”

  She caught her breath. Her mother stood up and took her by the arms, looked her in the eyes. “’Veshka, dear, you and I, understand me? You and I… against Kavi. Your father made you afraid of magic. You mustn’t be—or neither of us has a chance.”

  22

  Volkhi picked a crooked, trailless course through the young trees, knee-deep in seedlings while the taller, three-year growth was constantly enough to screen anything beyond a stone’s throw from their track.

  Find Sasha, Chernevog said. So, perforce, they tried. They tried past noon, and into afternoon, taking a general course westward—Sasha had not been at the burned house, had not, which Chernevog had thought might be the case, gone back to Uulamets’ grave. After that-After that they turned north and west, in the not unlikely case Sasha had gone toward the river, Chernevog said. Chernevog searched with his magic and Pyetr scanned the sunlit, fluttering greenwood with ordinary eyes, looking for a white and brown horse, hoping with half his heart they would find no trace at all, hoping that Sasha was clear away and safe—and fearing he was not. He imagined terrible things—things like Missy felling; or vodyaniye and such lurking in ambush to drag horse and rider down into the brook; or Sasha’s heart just stopping, on a stronger wizard’s wish.

  “That’s for easier than will happen to him,” Chernevog muttered at his back, “believe me.”

  “Believe you? God… let me go and I’ll find him. Just go back to the house and wait, why don’t you? Snake, I swear to you, if you want him found, if you really, truly do want him found—”

  Chernevog said, “If he doesn’t have a chance out there, you have less. Or I would do that.”

  “The hell you would.”

  “Believe me.”

  That was a wish. It smothered thinking for a moment. It suffocated reason.

  “You don’t understand,” Chernevog said. “He’s not going to die. That’s not the worst that can happen to him.”

  He felt cold through and through, despite the sunlight. He fought believing anything Chernevog said—but sometimes it was so close to his own apprehensions…

  “There’s no particular good, no particular evil in magic, Pyetr Ilyitch: one either rules it—or one is ruled; and he’s quite vulnerable. He won’t die, but you’ll wish he had. He won’t be able to. Then you’ll wish you’d helped me with more enthusiasm.”

  “Shut up!”

  “My friend, be reasonable.”

  “I’m not your friend.”

  “You’re not my enemy. I assure you, you’re not my enemy.”

  “I killed your damn owl,” Pyetr muttered, and pulled Chernevog’s hands loose from his middle. “Keep your hands off me.”

  “I’ve no grudges. Owl was very old.”

  That callousness turned him sick at his stomach. “Don’t you love anything, Snake? Didn’t you, once? —What do you want, that matters to anybody?”

  “Just Owl.” They rode up a slope, Volkhi’s hindquarters bunching in a quick few efforts. Chernevog held to him again— with cause. “Just Owl. And he’s gone. Now you’re in his place. He was fond of mice. What do you want from me?”

  “I want you to keep your damned hands to yourself!”

  “I’ll love what you love; hate what you hate—I’ve given you that power over me. What more can I do for you?”

  That’s a lie, he thought as they rode along the ridge. —Sasha might have done something with his heart, if he could only have gotten it away from me—

  “He can’t. It’s much too strong a bond: it’s magical; and I’m far stronger. But it’s true you can command my friendship. Bestow it where you like: that takes no wizardry at all. It’s simply the nature of hearts, when they’re together long enough. You see how much I trust you.”

  He wanted Chernevog away from him, he wanted help; he was drowning in Chernevog’s thoughts. He thought distractedly, looking at the trees, Very soon there’s not going to be anything left of me. Sasha won’t trust me if we find him. He shouldn’t. God help me, I’m losing my mind.

  “Of course,” Chernevog said, resting his hand on his shoulder “as you probably do suspect by now—it can equally well go the other way.”

  Sasha sat tucked up in green shade, beside Missy’s feet, Missy looking quite content to stand with a patch of sun on her back—

  Sasha felt it, too, the way he had slowly felt aches in her legs leave and the pain in her gut ebb. It had been hard going for an old horse not used to running and not used to forests.

  Eventually the upset in her stomach eased and Missy began to nose the herbage in front of her in some interest; mostly she wanted water, and her chest still burned, and it was not fair she had not been let drink her fill when there was water at hand… but now when she thought of it there was nothing stopping her, so she walked over to the little spring that welled up out of the rocks and drank as much as she wanted. There had been bogles and grabby-things; her ears still slanted to listen for them and her still watched all around at once, from the spring under her nose to, still visible behind her own feet, her favorite person sitting under the tree. Sasha saw himself from that unusual, top-blind point of view, and rode Missy’s thoughts, not remembering where he had come from or where he was going, just watching the thicket around them and tasting the good, cold water.

  The whole wood was still. Very carefully he let go that wide vision and that keen hearing, and saw, from the rear perspective, Missy drinking. Then he could move without fearing he was going to run blindly into something ahead, although down and up still felt confused, and sitting upright made him dizzy for a moment.

  He had been with Missy for some little time, to judge by the sinking of the sun—the shade was deeper, no direct light at all now in this little water-cut nook where bracken competed with young trees. He had been safe, this while: Missy was not a noisy creature. Missy wanted very little that made a difference in the world.

  Missy lifted her head suddenly, pricked up her ears, and he instantly wanted to know what she was thinking—but Missy decided it was only a fox she smelted. Foxes were familiar. Foxes skulked about and were no bother to horses.

  Sasha paid attention for a while, and worried Missy: Sasha thought a fox could hide a grabby-thing. Missy found this a disturbing idea, and decided never to trust foxes after this.

  But it went away; and Sasha decided not, after all.

  There was a danger in sitting like this too long. One could forget what one was doing, either harm Missy with ideas that were frightening gibberish to her; or go a little crazy himself and sit here, the two of them locked together until the next rain waked him or until he wished something truly dangerous for Missy or for himself.

  There was danger in wishes of any kind so long as Chernevog might be paying attention in his direction. Chernevog had him far outmatched and Chernevog had Pyetr, and if he thought about what might be happening to Pyetr he could not trust himself to be sane right now, or to do anything reasonable or useful. He had worked very hard to be quiet and to go completely inside himself and Missy, until there was only his own life to worry over: he had drawn that selfishness tighter and tighter and tighter, not watching what Chernevog did, not trying to do anything ab
out it, not wanting to be there—until his not being there suddenly became thoroughly, magically imperative-It freed him—but not Pyetr.

  He pulled at his knee, straightened his leg, rubbed feeling back into his numb foot. Wish nothing unnecessary.

  Think nothing unnecessary. Do the natural thing. Learn from Missy. Get up, get the baggage, see about something to eat. There were dangers but they were not here, and as long as he wanted only little things Missy would want they might not impinge on Chernevog’s specific wishes; so long as he wanted specific, natural things they might happen, and Chernevog’s widest, magic-driven designs might go skewed around them-that was always the hazard in generalities, master Uulamets had argued in his book: that in natural things nature tended to reassert itself, given any reasonable loophole.

  So one moved a pebble. One wished, as simply as Missy, for well-being and supper, things that were, after all, fair— Missy was very much on things being fair, expecting things that ought to follow, one from another; and things that ought to happen in certain ways, on time, and in due amounts.

  One wished, among first things, to make amends for keeping bad and scary company and to share this nice sausage he had with someone who had a perfect right to it. He broke off half— he was very sorry about the vodka; that was at the moment in a place he did not want to think about—but there was this sausage, this very nice sausage, because it was only fair.