A heart’s so fragile, Kavi had used to say.
But a heart’s capable of more than breaking, snake.
Hwiuur twisted and slithered aside, blithely, powerfully bent on escape and mischief—on Pyetr, and Chernevog, and the boy. She thought of an aged willow, a muddy grave in a dank, watery den.
And thought of lightnings.
“It wouldn’t!” Hwiuur hissed, whipping back about. “It’s bones are there. It daren’t!”
She said, as Pyetr would, “The hell.”
She folded up her book and wished the fire out.
And it was.
Pyetr felt a sudden chill—maybe present company, maybe just the persistence of fear in this nightbound tangle. His hand ached with a bone-deep pain. The misery went all the way to his wrist now—he must have fallen on it a while ago. His right hand. His sword hand, if it came to that—though there was little a sword could do against foolishness or jealousy and he could find no enemy but those and weariness. Volkhi had been on the trail too long now; the god knew the white mare had little left, and he feared increasingly that they were lost: Chernevog swore he knew the way and that he had seen Eveshka not far from here, north and riverward, near the leshy ring—wherever that was, in the dark, and without landmarks.
They came to a thread of water between two hills. “ Soon, now,” Chernevog had been promising him for the last while. Now he said: “Not far.”
Volkhi dipped his head to drink. Pyetr let him have his sip, and the white mare had hers, against a last effort, he told himself, if only the old lad had it left, not to break both their necks.
And when they found Eveshka, the god only hope Chernevog had not deceived him. If Chernevog had lied, and meant some harm to her through him…
He felt a sharp stab of pain from his hand. He looked down the dark stream course and thought of water—of dark coils, and pain, and the mud about willow-roots, and carried the hand against his mouth.
“My hand’s hurting,” he murmured. “It hasn’t done that in years.”
“My sympathies,” Chernevog said acidly. “Is it a cure you want?”
“No, dammit, I mean it used to do this. Hwiuur’s about.”
“The creature was keeping company with Eveshka. Not surprising.”
“What do you mean, Not surprising?”
“He wanted your daughter. But I wouldn’t let him.”
Chernevog was a shadow in the dark. A wizard might have told what that meant, whether fair or foul intentions, but he could not.
“So you aimed him at my wife?”
“You have the worst expectations of me. No. I said I wouldn’t let him at your daughter. God! Give me once a moment’s credence! It’s that way—” A lift of his hand. “I could be there now if I wanted to. But I’ll rather you deal with your wife, Pyetr flitch, thank you.”
Chernevog started off down the stream, that ran as a sometimes glistening thread through this trough between the dark hills, a reedless, leaf-paved passage. Pyetr rode glumly beside him: Sasha had to appeal to him to deal with Eveshka, Ilyana did, and now Chernevog—there was nothing wrong with Eveshka, dammit, she was Eveshka, that was all—and there was more to her than old resentments and present pain. Even if he seemed himself somewhere to have forgotten that. He had not been able to help her. Or nothing that had happened would have happened.
“You amaze me,” Chernevog said.
“Snake-”
An odd feeling came on him then, as if Eveshka had spoken to him. He stopped Volkhi and listened to the night-sounds and listened to his heart.
He did not like what he was feeling. The pain in his hand was quite acute. And he had the distinct impression that Eveshka’s attention had brushed past him and fled him in fear. Eveshka? he thought.
And felt Chernevog’s cold touch on his arm. Chernevog’s horse pressing hard against his leg, the darkened woods become a dizzied confusion to his eyes. He thought, He’s killing me; and tried to free himself, but there was nothing hostile in what he was feeling, rather that the danger was elsewhere close, that Chernevog was holding on to him and finding something of magic about him that Chernevog did not, no more than the last time, understand or wholly trust or have words for—
But he wanted it, and the boy wanted it—
Rusalki both, he thought, and tried to get past that veil of dizziness and confusion to reach Eveshka, thought then of Sasha, and how he had continually been driven to come this way, into Chernevog’s reach—
Things once associated are always associated—he could hear Sasha saying that. No coincidences in magic-He could hear the whole woods, hear the passage of a deer, the midnight foraging of hares and the life in the trees around him; and under it, through it, a sense of balances gone amiss, and something—
He did not want to look at that. But he tried. And it made no sense to him. It just was, and Chernevog was there, telling him he did not have to understand, not even a wizard could, but that it was where the silence came from and where it went, and the leshys had kept it in check so long as they could—the stone and their ring and the heart of their magic, that this thing wanted to drink down—
The leshys were dead. The leshys had misjudged young foolishness, and the self-will of two wizards’ hearts—he had not brought Ilyana to them in time. He had not wanted to. He had loved her too much. There had always been time—next year and next.
Misighi, holding Ilyana in his huge arms… Misighi, who could break stone with his fingers, returning her so carefully, and striding away from them, never to return to the garden fence, never again that close to them—
God, what did they want? What have they done? If they wanted her, could we have stopped them?
Eveshka—would have tried. Sasha would have—I would have—
Whatever a man could do, I’d do to get her away from that thing… Whatever all of them could do, they would do to get her back.
The world went hushed then, so abruptly it only gradually dawned on him he was hearing the wind in the leaves, and Chernevog’s voice saying his name, bidding him not fall off, damn him—that he had no right to be alive, no more than they did, and that they were, him, and the boy and Chernevog together, and that they knew where they had to go—
“Come on, dammit, Eveshka’s going after her.”
He found the reins somehow, he found his seat and turned Volkhi uphill, as Chernevog was headed, not breakneck after the first ten strides. In the moonless dark and on this root-laddered ground, there was no hurrying—like a bad dream, in which haste could manage only a numbingly slow progress over one hill and another and onto a level stretch overgrown with trees and thorn brakes.
Bits of white horsehair hung from thorns here, and Bielitsa made one futile protest against a wizard’s direction; but Volkhi went, panting now, into a barren starlit thicket with no trees to shut out the sky, with only peeling wreckage of dreadful aspect—leshys, Pyetr realized, all dead.
“Eveshka!” he called into that desolation. But no answer came. They rode among dead leshys as far as the stone that was the center and found smoking ashes beside it, where a fire had been.
That, and everything Eveshka owned, her book, her pack, and her abandoned cloak.
“God,” he muttered in despair, but Chernevog wanted his attention toward a gap in the thorns, a broad pathway dark as midnight and more threatening.
Magic had made it. That was where Ilyana was, that was where, Chernevog made him believe, Eveshka had surely gone, and he had no question about following—only about his company.
Magic was slipping loose at every hand. Sasha felt it like pieces tumbling out of his hands and there was no way in the world to go faster. Missy was breathing like a bellows even with Nadya’s lesser weight and the absence of the packs; young Patches, saddleless, with his weight and the books, Babi’s vodka jug and a handful of herb-pots, was blowing lather. It was all confusion of trees and brush and dark hillsides—rough ground, and the god only knew how Nadya was managing, whether it was his distracted wishes fo
r her safety, or her death-grip on the saddle and Missy’s mane. Don’t lose her, Sasha pleaded with Missy, and promised apples and carrots and every delicacy in the garden if she would only keep Nadya on her back and keep out of trouble.
Babi scrambled onto his shoulder. They were close, god, close enough to the mouse and Eveshka that he could feel presence through the silence. And a gulf dropping away into somewhere dark, deadly and deathly. He could not think of the mouse in that place. He could not think of Pyetr and Eveshka there. They would not be. No!
He thought, while Patches found her own way along a spring-fed thread of water, Mouse, listen to me. Listen!
For a moment then he had her, clear and true and very, very, very scared. There was open sky and the smell of the earth and river. He knew that place, he knew the feeling of it—the hollowness beneath—
God—
The mouse caught at him, the mouse was frightened, wanted him the way she had in the yard—and came around him, enfolded his wishes—
No, he had said then. Now he said yes. And did a more frightening thing, and wanted Eveshka to know he was there.
Now.
Beyond the doorway was starlight and river chill and a grassy edge along the shore—beyond the door was a dream, a very sinister one—as calm and as tranquil a place as the ghosts had been horrid, the water glistening beneath the stars and a fat old willow whispering in the dark. But the heart of this place was hollow and cold, one could feel the falseness of safety here. And one remembered that it was still the palace of bone, and that what one saw was not the truth—or the palace was not. The mouse was very scared, and very quiet, and very determined to have the way out—please the god. And grandfather might have wished her to be born and to be here, but she wished to do things her uncle would approve— that was the wisest thing she could think of.
Make up your own mind, a ghost said, and startled her when she saw it drift from the willow-shade. Mother, she thought, with a cold seizure of fear. But the ghost said:
Your grandmother, dear. Is the old fool telling you lies again? Or can’t he tell you?
The bear came out of the shadow, and ambled to her grandmother’s side, seeming far less fierce than she had thought. Her grandmother said:
Listen to me—
It was a wish. And it scared her. There was something in this place, something that made her want to listen, even knowing her grandmother had been wicked—
No such thing, the ghost said. Do you want Kavi alive again? From here it’s easy. Everything is easy—
Uncle would say, Magic is always easy. But is it wise?
Don’t you have any thoughts to yourself, child? What do you want?
She wanted—
Kavi. And knew it was foolish and selfish and wrong. She turned away, toward the dark rim of the woods at the end of the grass. She wanted to leave.
But something drew her to look back—and her grandmother was not there. There were wolves—and other things that spun in confusion, faces screaming, hands grasping—it wanted, and wanted and wanted, and she wanted it to stop changing! Now!
It did. It became a shriveled old woman and a pack of wolves, and it wanted her youth and her life and her heart. Come here, it bade her. Listen to me… and the thing under the earth echoed it and echoed it until she was confused.
No, she said, and told it No again, and it said:
What do you want, wizard?
And she thought, I want—
—and stopped herself at the brink, thinking: You don’t catch me twice, on. Go away!
It broke apart. The wolves did. The bits scattered in light and fire.
Not so dreadful, she thought, letting go a breath she had forgotten. I’m all right. I can wish them—
“Ilyana,” a voice said behind her back. And she had to turn to it—had to—before the echoes of it died in the earth under her feet. It was her mother, white and tattered and dreadful, with shadowed eyes and bloody scratches on her arms, her mother wanting her with more strength than she had ever felt in her life.
No! she bade her mother, and took a step backward.
Look out! her mother wished her. Her mother wanted her to look behind her, and the hair prickled on her neck. She thought—it’s a trick, it’s a trick like the others. She’s making that cold feeling…
“No!” her mother said, and started for her, wanting her as she spun about to escape. Wanted her to stop, warned he of death under the willow’s branches and for a moment the very earth underfoot seemed to tremble.
Another lie, she thought, and cast a look back at her mother. “Don’t come close to me!”
“Ilyana!”
Look, her mother wished her. And wanted what was there into the starlight. Coils rolled out, glistening wet, a head as large as a horse’s rose up and grinned at her with white, white teeth.
Something hit her breast and seized her about the neck, familiar arms, a desperate and frightened Babi: she hugged him without any thought but imminent destruction. She wanted Babi safe. That was all she could think of—could muster no conviction against that Thing her mother conjured—
Her mother wanted it here.
Her mother said, at her back, “Ilyana, Ilyana, comeback, right now. You don’t belong here.”
She could not move. Perhaps it was wishes. Perhaps it was terror. Babi growled and shivered in her arms.
“Ilyana!” her mother cried, and fear and feeling that never had been, for her, not once, not ever, came flooding up, with anger, and desire that was shattering as Kavi’s touch and tender as her father’s. Her mother wanted her safe at home, her mother wanted her away from this dreadful place that she belonged to.
“Bonesss,” the snake said. Hwiuur. She had no doubt. And Babi ducked his head beneath her chin and hissed. So did the vodyanoi, and the air shivered with river cold. “Your mother’s bones are still mine. She wants you safe. But you never should have existed, little mouse. She can be my pretty bones again. And what will you be, I wonder? Supper?”
“Hwiuur!” her mother said, forbidding him.
Hwiuur said, “One or the other is mine. One or the other; and I own you, pretty pretty bones, I only haven’t pressed matters—I only let the old man think he was clever, sending a mouse to catch a creature far-, far cleverer than he was. And ever so patient.” More coils poured out of the shadows, glistening wet and black. “On the other hand—you could give me the mouse. And I’d give you—oh, Kiev. Or whatever. Anything you like, pretty bones.”
“No,” her mother said. And of a sudden someone else was there, god, her father was there, and Kavi, and Yvgenie—
The vodyanoi hissed and lunged and Babi jumped from her arms, ran hissing and barking into Hwiuur’s face. She wished at the creature—hurt and harm and pain—and only got its sudden attention. It reared up and lunged for her and she furiously wished it no! as thunder rolled down on her from behind and hit her in the back.
The world jolted. An arm was around her waist, she was wholly off her feet and against the side of a white horse.
And her father—oh, god—
Volkhi shied off and Pyetr left the saddle, not—not his best dismount, no. He landed on one foot and lost his balance, fell and saw the creature coming down on him, a vast shadow with breath like the grave and there was no time for aim—he shoved his arm at Hwiuur’s face and dumped the whole damned herb-pot, salt and sulfur, in the jaws that closed on it—
—and opened again, with a hiss and a fetid breath that he knew in his nightmares. It hurt, god—it hurt, he all but dropped the sword in his good hand, and a coil whipped over him in its wounded frenzy. He hit it. He kept wondering where help was and got his feet under him and hit it again and kept hitting it, with everything he had, while Babi lunged at it and hissed and snarled.
It grew smaller, and smaller, and its struggles never ceased. Neither did his hitting it, until it was a shriveled black thing, with arms like a man, hiding its face with its hands and wailing, “No more, no more, man, oh, th
e bitter salt—”
“Let my wife and my daughter go! Let them alone! Do you hear me?” Another whack with the sword. “Do you swear?”
“Yes,” it cried, “yes, yes, no more.”
Eveshka was with him, Eveshka stayed his arm and hugged his shoulder, saying, “It won’t die. It can’t die. They don’t.”
“Ilyana—”
The pain stopped. The fear for the mouse did. The mouse was very well, give or take bruises, with the boy’s arm about her, and she was safe right now, no matter the quality of her suitors—Yvgenie Kurov was a damned fine rider, thank the god: wizardry might keep a man on a horse—but never guide a catch like that.
Hwiuur made a move to slither away. Pyetr hit him. What Eveshka wished he could not tell, but the air felt heavy. And Hwiuur shrank and shrank until he was like a withered, glistening serpent again.
“Make him swear by the sun,” the boy said—but that was Chernevog. “He’s afraid of that, at least. Make him swear.”
“I swear by the sun!” it cried in a faint, high voice. “I’ll never, ever, ever do harm to you. I’ll be your friend. You’ll see, I’ll bring you such nice gifts—I’ll never harm anyone in your house—”
“Nor our children or their children,” Eveshka said, “forever! Nor our friends or theirs!”
“I swear, I swear to everything you say!”
“Hit him,” Chernevog said. Pyetr hit him, and Hwiuur added, “By the sun, by the terrible sun! I swear! Let me go.”
“We have to be away ourselves,” Chernevog said. “This place itself is a ghost. And it won’t outlast the sun.”
He had greatest misgivings. But he lifted his sword and stood back, and let the creature slither away toward the willow.
Babi was faster. Babi pounced and swallowed, and sat up with his small hands folded across his belly
And licked his lips.
The stars were gone. In a while more there would be sun, but Sasha refused to dwell on that thought. He said, aloud or not he did not clearly notice, More wood. And thought, Mouse. Pyetr. Eveshka. Time you were moving.
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