Think things through, Uulamets’ teaching advised him. Do the least possible. Don’t move till you’re sure…
Things were going wrong and it might only be a rainstorm and it might only be a stray horse and their own fear of what he had conjured up in the bathhouse, but there was a terrible feeling of wishes going askew, and along with them all their safety in this unsafe woods. No time, he kept telling himself now, no time for prophecies, no room for thinking things to the bottom and back again. He made only one clear, unequivocal wish—to get to Pyetr in person before something else did.
Rain perfectly well capped the situation, in Pyetr’s estimation. He rode along in a driving gale with his shirt and breeches soaked and no idea where he was going in this woods. “God,” he muttered, teeth chattering, and yelled, “Misighi!” as the rain became a gray, sheeting downpour. “Misighi!” —having lost all reservation about appealing for help the moment the rain started.
But there was no sign of leshys. And no sign of friends either. The rain gusted at him, the only warmth he had was Volkhi’s wet, moving body, not the surest seat one could wish; and Volkhi kept turning his head, laying his ears back to protect them from the water, shaking his neck and snorting protests at this lunacy.
Another gust, cold-edged and water-laden, and Pyetr ducked from it, spitting water, wiping it from his nose and his eyes. It was not only rain pelting them, it was dead bits of leaves, bits of bark, dirt, the god knew what. He said, patting Volkhi’s shoulder, “That’s enough, that’s quite enough, lad.”
It was deep, aged forest about them now, nothing but dead trees about, hardly a sapling or a bit of brush big enough to strip for living branches to shelter them, but a rocky outcrop finally offered a windbreak; he slid down and led Volkhi close up against that shelter, such as it was, next a couple of dead, dry pines that afforded relief from the wind coming at them sideways.
Volkhi snorted and protested, doubtless accustomed to a warm stable and a generous helping of good dry hay on a day like this, not to stand chilled and chilling after hard going, and Pyetr’s own teeth were starting to chatter. So he took to rubbing Volkhi down with twists of fern, work to keep both of them warm so long as his strength held.
Lightning flashed, turning the woods winter-white for a moment, making him and Volkhi both jump. “Easy,” he said, and shoved against Volkhi’s shoulder to hold him, thinking that the last thing he needed was to lose Volkhi in the woods. “Just Father Sky in a bad mood tonight. I promise you he has nothing personal against horses.”
Volkhi grunted, shifted, tried to nose his ribs, as if he did truly hope there was supper coming after all this work, from some magical bottom of his master’s pockets. Pyetr scratched under a wet chin and said, “There’s none for me, either, lad. I do promise to do better than this in future.”
Another flash and clap of thunder. Rain poured down their necks. Somewhere nearby a dead tree gave up a branch that crushed down and took others with it.
“Not a nice evening,” Pyetr muttered, pressing himself against Volkhi’s shoulder. “I don’t know what’s going on, lad. I truly don’t. —Sasha, dammit, have you noticed it’s raining?”
Granted neither of them liked to meddle with the weather more than the raising of a breeze, for fear of droughts and floods and other disasters wizards had to think about; and granted they might not go so far as to stop the rain for his sake—but they had surely noticed he had not come back.
“For the god’s own sake, Sasha, not wishing at me doesn’t mean I want to spend the night out here!”
Surely two wizards with their minds made up could manage to let him know where home was—unless—
Something’s wrong at home, he thought, clinging to Volkhi’s warm shoulder, scared and suddenly chilled inside as well as out. They had enemies: there was always the River-thing. And the leshys were not answering, no matter he called Misighi’s name till he was hoarse.
Things seemed less and less clear to his mind… first Babi, then his memory of the woods—slipping away from him so persistently he had to think hard to keep his wits about him, so pervasively that from moment to moment he began to think there was no such place as the cottage by the river, or, completely crazy notion, he had somehow not come there yet but would; now and again he had escaped the tsar’s justice on his own, riding Volkhi out of town. There was no such thing as magic—anyone who thought so was crazy, and everything he had remembered in these woods was yet to happen… or never would happen, and nothing good would ever be true for him for long: it never had been.
“Misighi!” he shouted, desperately, making Volkhi fret—but if there was a thing altogether elusive in the woods it was the leshys themselves; and if there was a thing first to turn invisible to an ordinary man, it was not something so plain and substantial as an old ferryman’s cottage on a riverbank, it was the Forest things that a man’s eye had trouble enough seeing in the first place.
“Misighi!” he called until his voice cracked, until he was half ashamed of himself, standing here shouting at nothing but his imagination. But if he was a fool he had no witnesses. “Babi,” he made himself say, confidently and loudly to empty air, “dammit, go home if you can’t do anything else! Go home and bring Sasha here.”
The wind gusted, shifting direction, slipping around the hill to find them. Under Volkhi’s mane was the warmest place to keep his hands, and against Volkhi’s side was the only warmth for a man in soaked clothing. He pressed himself there as closely as he could, and kept thinking about home, the very outlines of which were starting to shift and elude him, as if a veil were coming between him and that, too. He had to be crazy to keep thinking he had known such creatures as leshys or had a wife and a friend waiting for him.
He was the gambler’s son, the one the law wanted.
He had gotten away through the streets.
Gotten past the guards at the gate.
Gotten lost on the road, somehow, and ended up alone and freezing in the rain—in a woods he did not understand, looking for an escape that had never existed—or did not yet exist.
He squeezed his eyes shut until they ached, and until he stopped seeing the woods and the lightnings. Dammit, yes, there was a house, and there was a river, and he remembered someone saying—he had no idea who or when—that if ever he was lost there was always a way home: follow the river, no matter how far off true he had wandered, no matter how some subtle turning of the road and the obscuring trees had confused him, he had to believe the river lay east and the morning sun would show him the way. As long as he could remember that one thing and not lose it—
“Something’s very wrong,” he said to Volkhi. “Something’s very wrong with us, lad.”
He clung to that direction, held to the mere imagination a house that shifted outlines, friends waiting for him, a warm fire…
An old man there had threatened him with knives when was sick. The river ran by the house. It might be all his imagining. But it was what he chose to go to, it was the only warm place in the world, and there were people there he could trust, he had no idea why—