CJ Cherryh - Rusalka 2 - Chernevog

by C. J. Cherryh

  About which he also did not want to think, so he thought instead about the vodka and how Babi did deserve it, and how Missy deserved all the apples she could eat, when next he could find some.

  Missy put a little enthusiasm into her gait, and wondered where these apples were.

  She did, on the sudden whim of a breeze, smell water. Sasha could, on his own, eventually, and Babi clambered down Missy's mane and Sasha's leg and dropped down to the leaves.

  He hoped Babi meant to stay close. He had a very anxious feeling of a sudden: that was, perhaps, Missy; but it seemed to him he had smelled better places—this one had the flavor of too little light and too much water.

  And Babi, wherever he had gotten to, was growling at something in the brush, while Missy slowed her pace, doubtful of this place they were going, which did not smell like what her person wanted and certainly did not smell like the promised apples. It smelled more like old wood and rotten ground, a stable, perhaps, but not a nice one; and Sasha could not tell, riding Missy's senses as he did, whether it was that bad or whether it was simply Missy's keen nose.

  Babi turned up, a much larger and more imposing Babi, walking along at Missy's feet, and something plunked into water close at hand—a startled frog, Sasha hoped, and bit his lip to keep from the idea of Pyetr's sword, which was dangerous to want and the god only knew what he would do with it that he could not do with a stout stick. He regretted the one that was standing in the corner at home, where it did him no good… a stick was a perfectly adequate weapon. A branch would do . . . except he had no desire to get down to find one.

  Another plunk. Another frog, one hoped. Missy felt squishy stuff slipping under her feet and snorted in disgust. She seriously questioned the collective judgment in going farther, nothing here smelled nice, and the dvorovoi thought so, too.

  But her person insisted there was a grabby-thing after them that was somehow—here her person grew very hazy—going to get them if they did not go through this place and find the big water.

  So she wrinkled up her nose and trod right through the squishy stuff, in water up to her knees—no running on this ground, even though her skin shivered at the smell and the sounds of this place

  Willows whispered here. Water sighed. And something groaned and squealed repeatedly as if it were in pain. Missy did not like that sound.

  But her person thought of old boards and Missy decided it was. after all a stable, but not one where she wanted at all to stay.

  "Babi?" Sasha said, but Babi was off somewhere through the trees, and several things went plunk and splash, while the dreadful groaning went on and on with a curious regularity. He could not hear it with his own ears, but he began to find it familiar, began to hear in it the surge of the water, the groaning of wood against wood.

  "Babi?" he asked, wishing the dvorovoi would stay close and with a tiny, unwanted wisp of a wish, wondered if finding the boat meant finding Eveshka.

  Dangerous, he thought. Terribly dangerous. He got nothing and wanted nothing but to be Missy for a while, until he could be closer; he was Missy so thoroughly that riding made him very dizzy, and he shut his eyes and let hers do the work leaning on her shoulders and wanting her to keep walking toward the creaking sound, little as she liked it.

  Grabby-things, Missy was sure. They were going to leap out of where such things always came from, out of the spot between her eyes she could never see—

  She saw a white, huge thing coming out of that spot—a huge, flappy thing, and her heart went thump and her legs did a quick step without her thinking about it; but her person said it was safe, it was cloth on a big thing built of boards, and a nice person had brought it there from a place he knew.

  She was not sure about her person's judgment. It flapped and it groaned and she approached it very carefully—it smelled suspicious.

  The boat was snared fast in willows and the groaning was its hull rubbing against broken limbs—it did look spooky, even to his eyes, the sail still spread, veiled in shadowy willow-boughs, the shape of the bow thrusting out of the trees.

  It was only wizardry that could have brought it up this branch of the river, against the current, it was only wizardry that could leave lodged it here.

  "Babi," he said softly, slid off and untied Missy's reins, in the case she had to run in this woods—lapped them about his waist, and wished her to stay here.

  She shivered, threw her head, clearly hoping her person did not intend to leave her here long.

  "I'll be right back," he said, and patted her neck, wanting Babi to take care of Missy. He walked farther then, parting the willow curtains, in among the old trees—old trees, indeed, and alive: this shore was past the desolation Chernevog had worked.

  But one did not want to think about him.

  He heard Missy make a soft, worried sound. But the groaning of the boat against the willows and the flap of the imprisoned sail was enough to distress her. He wanted Babi to take care of her, and he heaved himself up on a willow limb and walked it to the rail of the old ferry, through black, trailing curtains of leaves.

  He dropped onto the deck with a thump very loud to his ears. He walked out near the mast and back to the little deckhouse, stopped and looked around him, listening to the flapping of the sail and the sighing and the groaning that gave the boat a voice.

  He wanted to know, then, whether Eveshka had left this boat of her own will—that seemed a safe wish. He hoped there might be resources left—they kept the boat stocked with all sorts of things, even apples, and Eveshka alone could not have used everything or carried everything away.

  The deckhouse was the first place to look—not the sort of a cubbyhole he was glad to open up and go poking into in the dark, but it seemed worse to him to wait for morning, while-things went further wrong elsewhere. "Babi?" he whispered, thinking if Missy could, please the god, take care of herself for a few moments, and Babi turned up on deck, then he would feel very much better opening this door.

  Babi did not immediately appear, but he had the feeling Babi was listening, at least; and he turned the wooden latch and pushed it open, hoping if something was lurking in there it would make a sound now.

  There was only the flap of the sail over him, and the hull groaning. He sank down on his heels so he could see into the dark by reflected starlight, and gingerly reached in to drag out the baskets they kept there.

  He heard Babi growl behind him. He hoped it was Babi. He turned on one knee, he heard a watery sound, he looked toward that and saw a great slick darkness rise up, up and up in the starlight, and grin down above the rail with sharp-toothed jaws.

  "Well, well," the vodyanoi said, "young wizard. I was wondering about you."

  Sasha felt into his pocket, after the packet of salt he kept there, and wished—

  No. He did not wish for the rest of it. He wished the vodyanoi to keep his distance. He said, slowly rising to his feet, ”Hwiuur, what do you think you're doing here?"

  "Waiting," Hwiuur said. "Of course, waiting. Of course you'd come—but where's your friend, mmmm?"

  "Stay back!"

  "Mmmm. A horse. A nice fat horse. I might start with it."

  "Stay where you are!"

  "Stay where I am... Where I am is in the river, in my river, young wizard, where you're trespassing, and all alone, aren't you, young wizard? The dvorovoi has no power on the water-but you could wish him to try.''

  That was a very bad thought. So was the fact that this creature was Chernevog's—and Chernevog might know exactly where he was.

  If it was still Chernevog's.

  23

  Hwiuur said softly, weaving to one side, "A bad position, young wizard, a very bad position you're in."

  "Where's Eveshka?" Sasha asked it outright, and wanted it to tell him.

  Hwiuur leaned slowly to the other side and hissed. "Oh, we want pretty bones, do we? She went walking."

  "Where?"

  Hwiuur swayed closer.

  "Get back!" Sasha cried, waving his hand a
t it; and Hwiuur drew back with a hiss.

  "Rude, rude young wizard. You want my help and you push me back. Is that at all reasonable?"

  ‘‘With you it is! Mind your manners. Tell me where she went walking. Tell me where she is!"

  "Safe," Chernevog's voice said at his back.

  He did not stop to think—he dived for the deckhouse door and rolled inside, pulled the door to after him as the whole boat rocked and the rail splintered. He thrust his shoulders back against the baskets and the wall, braced the door with his feet, wishing it to stay shut and Missy to run, get away, fast-He heard someone walking on the deck outside. He heard someone say, definitely in Chernevog's voice, right next tin-deckhouse door, "It's quite useless."

  He trembled, lying there in the pitch dark with a basket crunching between his back and the deckhouse wall, feeling the door shake against the soles of his boots as something kicked it. God, he had wished, he had thrown magic at it-He heard the slithering of a huge body, felt the boat tip, heard Hwiuur's whisper over the deckhouse ceiling, heard the slither of a huge body over the boards.

  "Well, now, young wizard. Perhaps now you'll be sorry you were rude."

  And Pyetr's voice: "Sasha?"

  For a moment he believed it. Then he thought not, knowing where he had left Pyetr, knowing Chernevog would have wanted him out that door with more force than he felt out there, Chernevog could not so conveniently have found him. Chernevog would not have taken second place to the vodyanoi. . .

  "Sasha?" Pyetr's voice said. "Sasha, I'm in trouble. I'm In deep trouble. Can we have some help here?"

  He squeezed his eyes shut and braced the door. He thought, hearing the boards above him creak with Hwiuur's weight, Everything's a lie. Everything I hear from it's a lie. Pyetr couldn't possibly be here. That's the shapeshifter, that's all it is.

  It hasn't a mind of its own, only what it borrows, like the likeness, that's what Uulamets knew about it—

  "Sasha! For the god's sake, Sasha!"

  Nothing more than an echo. It doesn't know anything, it's no more malicious than its original so long as there's no one directing it...

  "Sasha! God, Sashal"

  Pyetr wouldn't want me to open this door. Pyetr would never call me out into danger. It's a damned clumsy trick. . . . But a shapeshifter had no sense to know that. In its own right it had neither shape, nor mind . . .

  "Sasha!" He heard steps running across the deck, heard Hwiuur's weight slide across the boards and the steps stop abruptly.

  Pyetr? he thought, wondering, he could not help it, what was going on out there: and something that felt like Pyetr was thinking. Oh, damn! Pyetr had expected help on the boat and ran straight into a trap-No. He wanted what Pyetr was thinking, and got nothing. Dark. Confusion. Pyetr was asleep somewhere, he tried to assure himself of that, the god grant it was only sleep. He heard Hwiuur move, heard Pyetr yelling, "Sasha, dammit, do something—help me!"

  He kept bracing the door, the whole deckhouse creaking around him as the vodyanoi moved—the baskets crackling against his shoulders as he shoved against them . . . Baskets. God.

  He reached back over his shoulder and rummaged in the dark, thinking, Fool, fool! Salt and sulfur-Nothing but clothes in the basket immediately behind him. He tried another, arching his back, straining with both his feet against the door, found clay pots, pulled them out and pulled stoppers one after the other. Marjoram. Parsley. Thyme. . . . "Sasha! for the god's sake!" Rosemary . . . "Sasha!"

  The missing flour . . . Sasha dumped it, reached after the next, pulled the stopper— "Sasha!" Salt—He drew his feet up, rolled with the jar in his arms, eeled his way out the open door and scrambled upright on the deck under Hwiuur's shadowy jaws—slewed the pot wide and sprayed a wide white cloud of salt at Hwiuur's face and on around, where Pyetr stood with an expression of shock on his face.

  Hwiuur hissed and thrashed backward for the water, rocked the whole boat as he went over, dragging bits of the rail with him.

  What had been Pyetr melted and ran in little dark threads across the deck and off the edge, like spilled ink.

  Sasha sat down hard where he stood, with the half-empty salt jar in his arms, white dust blowing across an empty deck and melting in the puddles of water the vodyanoi had left.

  He shook, great tremors that knocked his knees together and made his teeth chatter.

  Close, he said to himself, very close. He hoped Missy was all right out there, and that Babi was with her.

  Most of all—he hoped Pyetr was all right; but he dared not think about Pyetr now, dared not, please the god—he dared not.

  But—he thought, recalling that darkness he had touched when he had sought Pyetr—the shapeshifter until now had taken the shape of dead people, not the living; and Pyetr had not answered him.

  His teeth kept rattling. He told himself it was magical and it would damned well take any shape it wanted, that anything else was only coincidence, only what they happened to have seen it do.

  The greater danger had been in reaching out like that. Ho dragged his mind away from it, he wondered instead after Missy, wondered, still shaking, where she was.

  Quite far away and knee-deep in water, as it seemed. He reassured her: it was safer near him. He wanted her to come back now, the bad things were gone; he wanted Babi to make sure she got here safely—but Babi arrived quite suddenly on the deck, a formidably large Babi, a very angry Babi.

  "Go see about Missy," he murmured. "It's all right, the River-thing's gone."

  Babi did not go at once, Babi marched over to the shattered rail and Sasha wanted him to stop. "See to Missy," he said again, wishing Babi, strongly, and Babi went this time without looking over that edge.

  Sasha hugged the salt jar against him and stood up, still weak in the knees, still thinking about the shapeshifter and its tricks, and leaned against the deckhouse. The wind blew pale salt across the starlit deck and the sail flapped and thumped against the willows.

  He wanted to know Pyetr's state of mind, he could not for a moment help himself—it was his heart at work, in the convolute way he had to think of such things. He dragged himself back from that thought and tried to tell himself what he had felt from Pyetr had not been the dark that death was. He had felt that dark silence many times, many times, if he went eavesdropping on people in their sleep—sometimes one overheard dreams and sometimes just a confusion no different than ghosts—

  Another shiver came over him, a sudden chill, a breathing at his nape. He looked across the deckhouse roof to the stern, fearing to see Hwiuur's massive head rising out of the river.

  But there was nothing more substantial than a sudden chill, us if the wind had skipped around his shoulders and whipped mound into his face. It spun around and around him, touching him with cold.

  Pyetr? he wondered with a heart-deep chill. Surely not.

  The cold spot passed through him. Not Pyetr—thank the god, no. It left him weak-kneed and short of breath and shivering so he had trouble hanging on to the salt jar. He asked it, teeth chattering:”Who are you?'' and waited for some manifestation, Nome pale wisp in the night.

  But there was nothing. He stood there looking into the dark, not entirely sure he wanted to hear from it again—and felt an overwhelming anxiousness.

  "Master Uulamets?" he asked whatever-it-was. "That's you, isn't it? Misighi said to look for you."

  It had shaken him worse than any ghost yet. He was all but certain now what it was—if it remembered its own name. He sensed its anger with him, and that was something he could not help at all—that he was profoundly glad this ghost was dead and Pyetr was alive.

  "I'm sorry," he said carefully to the dark, aloud, because it was easier to shepherd spoken words down a single, careful path. "It's not that I'm glad you're dead, understand, I never was. I'm not now."

  But it was hard to lie to a ghost, and he was terrified, now that he had found it. This one knew what to touch. What to ask. It had lent pieces of itself to him it might want back with a
claim he might not resist—and he needed them and Pyetr did, desperately, this ghost having no love of Pyetr at all.

  The boat groaned. There was the soft sound of water. He wanted the ghost to show himself, he wanted it to behave itself and forgive him that he did not want it alive and could not trust it. Uulamets had never encouraged trust. Quite the opposite.

  He only knew he was supposed to take the baskets out of the deckhouse. All of them. Now. Immediately.

  As wishes went it seemed harmless. He was not sure it was at all sane. But he pushed the door open and started dragging baskets out onto the deck.

  The third he pulled out— —'Veshka's book—here. Oh, god-He wanted light. Or something did. He rummaged feverishly in the deckhouse, looking for the lamp they kept there—managed, with many false efforts and desperate wishes, to get the thing lit, while the cold swirled about him and through him. He set the fluttering light down inside the deckhouse door and gathered the open book into his lap, tilting it until he could see the last pages written. He read, first:

  I don't know what to wish about the baby. Papa would say you can undo anything but the past. . .

  Draga threw herbs onto the fire and sparks flew, a cloud of stars whirling up the chimney. Draga said, ”Many things pass boundaries: not all are changed. Wood and water and iron go into the same fire. Each behaves differently. Does fire frighten you?"

  "No," Eveshka said.

  ‘‘You'd put your hand into it? "

  "I could," Eveshka said.

  Draga reached into the fire and gathered up an ember. Eveshka thought, It's the same as reaching into the fire—she's wishing the heat away as fast as it comes. But she's very good,

  Draga closed her fist about the coal, so there was nowhere for the heat to go. —Where is it going? Eveshka wondered. Can she wish it back into the fire?

  "I'm not wishing it anywhere," Draga said, and opened her hand. The cinder had become black. It still smoldered. There was soot on Draga's hand. "That's the very simple difference between your wizardry and mine. Your wish would be very modest and constant, very fussy, and if someone said your name you might burn yourself very badly, mightn't you? Because you'd lose your spell at the first pain, and you might not be able to restore it. But real magic doesn't bother to figure out a clever way to hold the fire. It ignores nature."