“Or kept him alive. I’m less and less certain he has killed the boy, in the strictest interpretation of things.”
“Interpretation? A handsome young boyaryevitch from Kiev just happens to fall in our brook in a rainstorm that happens to burn your house down? His horse just happens to find our front hedge the very hour my daughter runs off with Chernevog? So what do we call it? An uncommon spate of accidents?”
“No. But wishes can ride right over a boy who happened to be in their way. Anyone’s might have—even mine. Mine might still do him harm, I don’t know. Maybe wishing us well, I’ve unintentionally wished this poor boy into the brook that night.”
Dreadful thought. Paralyzing thought. A man couldn’t move who thought such a thing. “Sasha, that’s damned foolishness. You’ve never wanted anybody to die.”
“Hush,” Sasha said hoarsely. “Please, Pyetr.”
“Well, hell, leave your thieving uncle Fedya out of it! Reasons count for something, don’t they? And yours don’t kill innocents. Let’s not for the god’s sake sit and wait till everyone’s sure, shall we? Let’s wish my daughter to use the sense she was born with, first! Let’s wish she’d stop worrying about her mother and worry about herself—and talk sense into the young fool that’s running away with her. Hell, wish her to talk sense into Chernevog, while we’re about it!”
“I’ve done that.”
“And tell her I’m not upset about her dropping me on my head. It’s far too hard to hurt. Make her understand that!”
“I’ve tried.”
“ ‘Veshka wouldn’t hurt her or the boy. Not when it really comes down to it—I’ve proved that, more than once. Oh, hell, never mind explaining everything. Tell her stop and wait for me. Tell her I won’t lay a hand on her or the boy.”
A damned lot of baggage to slow them down—only reasonable, Pyetr told himself: wizards needed books and herbs, und Sasha had needed time to gather such things out of the cellar—all of which had put them further behind, while Eveshka took a lead on them, not mentioning Missy’s slower pace giving the mouse that much more continual advantage over them.
Small blame he could pass to Sasha or ‘Veshka for the mess. He had made the essential mistake: he had had his head bounced off the side of a substantial bedstead onto an uncompromising floor—not the first time in his life that had happened, the god knew, but certainly the most deserved. He had yelled at the mouse, he had scared his daughter like a fool, and the mouse had no more than protected herself. Absolutely it had been their mouse whose wish had dropped him on his head—he could think of no sane reason Kavi Chernevog would have delayed to put a pillow under his head mid a blanket over him, or waited while Ilyana did it, if he were in charge.
Besides which the mouse was terribly upset at leaving him behind. A man associated with wizards learned to trust his most unreasonable convictions as wizardous in origin—
In which light he knew the mouse had felt that crack on the head far worse than he had. It was entirely like a young wizard not to realize that a man wished asleep on his feet might fall onto the furniture—and, a former scapegrace him— he was even proud of the mouse for having the presence of mind afterward to take her book and her inkwell, to pack food and blankets, all very foresighted behavior for a youngster, never mind she had filched every last single sausage in the house, the pot of kitchen salt, and half the flour, but, by all they could figure, not a smidge of oil to mix it with. That was absolutely a youngster in charge. Then she must have caught Yvgenie Pavlovitch down by the stable fence, where he had found bits of severed rope and drops of blood in the dirt—appalling discovery, except that Chernevog directing matters would have taken all the horses—at very least opened the gate and run off Volkhi and Missy. The mouse had an unarguable naive honesty in her choices—and that gave them the chance they had.
He led Volkhi out of the yard and let Missy and Sasha pass the gate—latched it, out of habit, though there was no Babi to mind the yard while they were gone. Babi was probably frightened, Babi had probably gone to that Place Babi went to—
Which was well enough for Babi, but that place was trying to swallow up his daughter, too, in a place no living creature belonged, and he had his mind absolutely made up when he swung into the saddle.
“I’m going to ride ahead.”
“Pyetr—”
“I’m not afraid of Chernevog. God knows, we’re old acquaintances. We can talk. The two of us together can make more sense than some people I can—”
“No!”
“Sasha—” He shook his head to clear the cobwebs out, and rubbed his eyes. “Dammit, stop it. Tell her! Or just wish me to find her before trouble does.”
“It’s far too dangerous!”
“Tell me what’s too dangerous, with my daughter headed off into hills in the dark with Chernevog!”
“You haven’t any way to feel what’s going on!”
“My daughter’s in trouble out there! Let me go, dammit!”
“All right,” Sasha said, “all right, but—”
Sasha yelled something after him, but he reckoned he would hear that while he was riding—or if the silence swallowed him up, he reckoned there was nothing to do but what he was doing.
Yvgenie said, quietly: “We’re lost, aren’t we?”
“No. Of course we aren’t. I know where we are.”
“So where are we going?”
“North.”
“To what?”
“Where I want to go.” She was far from lost in the woods; and she was far from alone even in the silence: things near at hand were always talking to her, telling her where they were, even though the whole woods felt quiet and scary and pricklish with silence. She knew where home was, she knew where her mother was, and she would know her Place when she got there.
But if being lost meant missing supper and wanting a warm fireside, and being scared the way Yvgenie was scared, and having everyone in the whole world upset with them, they certainly were.
Yvgenie asked, “Where is that?”
“We’ll know, I said.” It was Yvgenie asking, she was sure. It was getting dark, he was beyond exhausted, and she had no idea how to answer him in terms ordinary folk understood—she had no idea what he did understand or how to reassure him: she trusted her friend for that; but her friend’s long silence worried her, as if—
He said, faintly, “I think we should stop and make a fire if we can.”
Something was singing in the brush, a lonely, eerie sound. A wolf had howled a moment ago. If she were on foot she might have been anxious herself. Things did not feel entirely right, now that he distracted her. Which might be her mother’s doing.
Some animal crashed away through the brush. Patches jumped, and Bielitsa did.
“It’s just a squirrel or something.”
“I really think we should stop.”
“Are you afraid?”
“No. Of course not.”
Another wolf called, in the far distance.
“That’s another one,” he said. “There must be a whole pack out hunting.”
“Wolves don’t hurt you. They’re very shy.”
“Wolves aren’t shy!”
“Have you ever seen a wolf?” She wanted not to be angry with him, but he kept worrying at her.
“I don’t know, I don’t know if I have and I don’t even know what I’m doing here!” He was frightened, he was angry at her, and she wished not: she wished herself safe from him—
But that was stupid. He could never harm her with his wishes, and now she had stolen his anger away from him, which was wrong, terribly wrong—
Talk to me, her father would say, when people forgot and wished at him:
Say it in words, ‘Veshka—
God!
Pyetr meant to be careful, with his neck and Volkhi’s; but he put Volkhi to a far faster pace than old Missy could possibly sustain, down the hill behind Sasha’s ruined house, and under trees and over the next rise, into thicker woods, where
the night had already begun to settle.
North. Owl’s grave was there—the leshys’ ring, where Owl had died, days north of here: a rusalka might haunt such a place, and be drawn there, against all reason—and whether their destination was Ilyana’s choice or Chernevog’s, it was certain at least that she would not follow the shoreline path, within reach of her mother.
So it was directly overland, by every advantage of ground he knew, so long as Volkhi could bear it, as fast as Volkhi could travel in this last of the twilight.
He personally hoped young Patches would do what a young horse would do and leave Ilyana stranded the first time a hare started from a thicket. That was the very likeliest way Sasha’s wishes might work to stop them, magic tending to take the easiest course. Patches taking his daughter under a limb was another, not the way he would want, given a choice—but that, too, if it gave him a way to catch her tonight. The specific wish overrides the general, Sasha maintained. Things happen that can happen, things happen when they can happen—and always at the weakest point.
Well, then, dammit all—the mouse must have wished her father well a thousand thousand times. So had ‘Veshka and Sasha—and if the mouse’s father was very specifically risking his neck out here in the woods in the dark, then the hell with caution: the mouse’s magic might have a hard time tonight, working against itself.
“Come on, lad,” he urged Volkhi, and took the ways he knew through the woods—having ridden this land many more years than the mouse had. He had planted no few of the trees on these hills, he had seen the land when it was all dead and bare, and Volkhi knew the ground, even granted a deadfall or two: Volkhi footed it neatly through a maze of birch trees and mostly jumped the small brook that wound across their path.
Splash! and onto the far bank, up across the facing hill, along the ridge and down the other side through a maze of saplings.
Damned sure Ilyana and the boy could make no such time, except by wizardry—and by all evidences the mouse was being as quiet as she knew how to be, interested solely in putting distance between her and her mother.
Which he figured most definitely put the matter up to the fastest horse and the surest knowledge of the woods, and twilight daring the mouse to drop her father on his head a second time.
The wind held fair for the north, in the slow unfoldings of the river, and the star-sheen on the water was light enough to steer by. Eveshka had the rush of water and the singing of the rigging for company, and all too much time for a wizard to think of possibilities, running along a shore she could not touch and a forest that refused to trust her.
Silence lay heavy there, even yet, not the silence of solitude, but her daughter’s fear that excluded her; and there was evil hereabouts—evil as ordinary folk held it, meaning what threatened their lives. In that light, perhaps evil also described her: her understanding did not extend beyond the woods and the river and a handful of wizards, all of which could just as surely threaten the lives of ordinary folk.
But there were creatures who fed on others’ suffering, there were those that relished others’ pain: that was what she personally damned for wickedness. And just ahead now on the leeward shore, was a cave that smelled of such wickedness and fear. A willow there had resurrected itself, a tree the leshys abhorred, though they loved all others in the woods. It had its roots in the watery dark, that willow, in a den she had never seen while she was alive. She was anxious passing it and vastly relieved when it fell astern. She wished her husband well; and Sasha, forgiving for now all his failures and shortcomings, knowing her own all too keenly.
She judged people too harshly. Pyetr would tell her that. Pyetr would say, That’s your father, ‘Veshka; he would say, with his vast patience: ‘Veshka, you ask too much. Of yourself and other people. You’re doing what you hated your father doing.
It might be true—but true, too, that as much as she and her father had quarreled when she was alive, and passionately as she had hated him, he had judged her wilful heart accurately enough, said no when he should have said no, and wished her to stay out of trouble, until a young wizard she thought she loved had lured her onto the river shore and murdered her.
She could imagine laughter in that cave tonight. She could imagine doubt and conceit flowing out of it like poison:
Do you know what your own daughter’s capable of, pretty hones? Does she scare you? She certainly should.
The willow fell further behind. But northward, on the other shore of the river, was a hollow hill, on which, in her dreams, lightnings still crashed. Her mother had been so much like her, so very much like her: Draga, Malenkova’s student, Kavi’s tormentor and teacher.
She should have said to Ilyana, calmly, reasonably, while I here had been time, and reason:
Ilyana, Kavi might be my half-brother. Did he tell you so? My mother hinted at it. It might have been malice. She knew we were almost lovers and she wanted to upset me. But it is remotely possible he’s my father’s son, of a wizard named Malenkova—his teacher.
Child, I only tried to make you strong and hard enough. I never wanted you to hate me.
Now it was too late to say that. It was too late to say other things like: Don’t trust Kavi. Don’t listen to him. He was my mother’s lover, years before he knew me, but they were both, my mother more than he ever was, Malenkova’s creatures…
You don’t know about Malenkova. I hadn’t time to teach you. And Kavi doesn’t remember. He can’t. He didn’t hear from my mother what I heard—I hope to the god he never did. I’d spare him that—much as he deserves to know what I know—
She put her hands over her ears and looked at the sky above the sail, as if that could shut out the thoughts.
Never think about the anger, never think about betrayals, but never, ever think about forgiveness either: every damned lime one trusted Kavi, every time one in the least began to believe him—
She tried to make Ilyana listen. She went on trying. But the magic reached the forest edge and stopped. Nothing got in, nothing got out, and she began to fear it was no longer entirely her daughter’s silence. Not this, not the slow, deep strength of it, that had increasingly the mark of leshys: wizard-magic was not working within its hold, except, perhaps, perhaps, very close at hand, on very familiar, long-associated objects.
It might protect the forest. But leshys had nothing of wizards’ purposes. And leshys could be mistaken in their wider judgments. She wanted them to hear her. She wanted their help. They had served the woods, she had atoned for the killing with planting and with care—but she had no feeling that they heard her—nor any certainty that they had ever forgiven her, or that they had ever understood wizards in their midst. They were younger now, Sasha said. There were so many young ones about—
And Kavi—
God, she had not for years longed to shed the body she wore and go, lay insubstantial hands on what might truly answer to that touch. She had not felt this—anger—in years.
—You damnable fool, Kavi! Even if you love her, don’t touch her, don’t even think of touching her. You don’t want her to want you, god help you if she wants you: you can’t stop her, by your very nature you can’t stop her—
For the god’s sake, Kavi, tell her how you died!
Night made the forest a shifting confusion of gray and black. Branches raked and caught, trees floated past the eye like ghosts. The black furball was still with them and the ghostly owl flew ahead of them from tree to tree—guiding them, Yvgenie hoped.
To a place I know, Ilyana insisted, but he had no confidence in that. He had no confidence he would even get through this night and he desperately longed for the sun. The ghostly owl seemed more real now, so much so he feared if he nodded again he might never wake up. Pain could be more real than Owl was, pain could keep him awake—and he bit his lip and fought the lapses that made his eyelids fall and the sounds of their passage grow dim in his ears. He caught himself from time to time against the saddlebow, found his fingers growing numb. He thought of his fa
ther’s house, he thought of running away—he knew he had done that, he had, he had tried to take his life in his hands and do something honest that did not involve killing his father, or telling anyone about his father and the tsarevitch—
But Bielitsa took a sudden shift of direction and he found himself slipping helplessly: a grip on the saddle checked his fall, but only that—he swung completely off Bielitsa’s back, still clinging with both hands to the saddle leather as Bielitsa turned to keep herself from sliding downslope on the dead leaves. An embarrassing position, his horse about to fall downhill atop him, himself about to pull her down: he looked quite the fool in the wizard-girl’s eyes, he was sure. But he would not have Bielitsa fall, so he let go.
—And found himself after a dark space on his back at the bottom of the slope with a fair-haired shadow between him mid a tree-latticed moon.
“Are you all right?” Ilyana asked solemnly. And for some stupid reason he started to laugh. Was he all right? Was he all right? He was lying on his back, head downward on a hill with a dead wizard’s ghost slithering about inside his heart, and the girl asked Was he all right?
But breath ran out, tears of pain welled up and his stomach ached, so that he had to double over on his side—and he found himself facing the black furball’s glowing yellow eyes and hedge of teeth. It snarled, spat at him and snapped at his lace.
Ilyana said, sternly, “Babi, behave.”
He would never of his own will have taken his eyes off the furball. Of his own will he could not get another breath. But his chest moved, and took it, his arm moved and braced under him. The ghost turned his face toward her and said, “Wish us well, wish us well tonight, Ilyana. Us and this boy—something’s on our trail—more than your father.”
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