The vodyanoi was there, coiled in his cave on the riverside, one knew… one knew he was. Eveshka paced the floor, knotted her hands together till they ached; and it whispered while she paced, the old snake did, Eveshka, Eveshka, listen to me… It said, Fool, to trust a heart. They’re so breakable. It said, You could do so much, you always could, and you fall so far short of that-Shut up, papa, she said, because that last was not the snake at all, that was her own memory: the room said it to her, the walls said it to her, the cellar echoed with it: Fool, fool, you won’t take advice. Trust no one, least of all anyone who says he has your interest at heart…
Want nothing. Need nothing. Wishes do come back on you, young fool, don’t you understand that? And when the wizard wishes himself, then everyone’s in danger.
She wished for leshys. She wished for Pyetr. She wished to break through the silence. But something else whispered back: Listen, Eveshka.
8
Streams were over their banks: trees were down—reason enough to hope Pyetr had settled in to wait out the storm, Sasha told himself, with the dark coming and the rain still falling. His own coat was soaked, his boots were soaked, probably the fire-pot in his bag was drowned, and he had had to leave the road again, edging out onto a flooded log for a bridge to the other bank, holding to willow-wands overhead.
He reached a point he had to jump for it—hit the slick far bank, grabbing for handholds among the new bracken and wishing the roots to hold in the sodden earth—no testing whether his magic was working any more, except the fact that the bracken-fronds held and he did not dump himself into the flood. Such small proofs gave him both hope and fear—hope that his gift still might find Pyetr; and fear that Pyetr’s vanishing from his awareness might mean something unthinkable.
But he was fast running from daylight to a starless, stormy dark, in which he had to trust his wizardry absolutely. He was north of the road, he was sure of that; he kept wanting to know where Pyetr was, and what Pyetr was thinking, and something kept convincing him of direction—but whether that was his wizardry working blind, he had no idea. He had no sense of Pyetr’s existence.
I’m here, he wanted Pyetr to know, I’m looking for you: if you’re safe, don’t leave where you are, just wait for me. He struggled calf-deep through rain-wet fern, brushed thickets that caught at the sword and the pack, in a twilight so deep the fern could mask an abrupt edge, anything. He caught a stitch in his side, kept going, shaking water from his eyes, in the erratic white flicker of lightning.
And in that flickering the fern moved on the hill opposite, rippled in a swift line headed straight for him.
He wished his welfare and drew Pyetr’s sword, for what good it was to him: the disturbance streaked at him and flung itself with considerable weight onto his leg, scrambled with a frantic strength up his body despite his grabbing to stop it, reached his neck and clung there with all its might—a most familiar grip, perfectly reasonable that his wish had not fended it off.
“Babi?” he said, still shaking. “Babi, thank the god, where’s Pyetr?”
It hugged him the harder, burrowed its head against his collar, a most desperate and rained-on Babi, in a dark nearly complete now, except for the lightning flashes.
The rain settled into a drizzle, at what point this interminable night Pyetr had no idea. He thought if he had the strength he would try to gather such weeds and fern as he could and make a pile of it to keep the chill off; but he kept putting that effort off, thinking how cold he already was, hoping for dawn to bring him warmth: very soon now the sun would come, he thought as he clung close to Volkhi’s side, any moment now the sun would come up—it was only the storm clouds making the dawn late.
But when the weather did settle, and the sun had not come, Volkhi shook himself and started to wander out into the open despite the cold sprinkling from the trees. “Whoa, lad,” Pyetr murmured, held him, and Volkhi stood for a while, but restlessly.
So, he decided, he had kept Volkhi warm, and Volkhi could return the favor: he found purchase on the rock with his foot, got the reins and a handful of Volkhi’s mane and shoved himself up to sprawl out flat on Volkhi’s wet back, to travel again in the dark, wherever Volkhi took the notion to go.
East, he reminded himself, trying to draw from his muzzy wits which way that was or what he was doing hi this place, or whether he had only been dreaming about going east and finding a river. He was stiff, he was sore, he could not remember where or why he was riding half-frozen in the woods with no sad nor proper bridle.
But eastward he had a wife waiting for him. A warm fire. Sasha, The Cockerel’s fey stableboy, the one nobody wanted— Sasha was there, too. He could not imagine what they all had to do with each other, but he had a conviction that they were friends—that they all lived together in a house—
Which had a garden, a porch, a bathhouse he and Sasha had built—
His wife had wonderful blond braids, hair like light when it flew free, so much of it she could wrap in it…
She liked blue. She had a favorite gown with leaves embroidered down its sleeves, and petticoats with flowers on their hems. They were spells she stitched, she had told him so. She had a garden, and little plots she tended in the woods, where she grew trees and plants that would not grow in other ground.
But he could not see her face now, except details that would not fit together—and he fought to keep them, even if they did not match what he thought was true any longer, everything he loved slipping away from him faster and faster-He was in a room with Sasha; Sasha was (but that was wrong Sasha could not read) writing something. Sasha had grown up. His face had lost its boyish look—become a young man’s face—
And the river would lead him—
Home, somehow. He knew so little for certain. Things in woods, the old folk said on winter nights, wore their feet backwards and led travelers astray; Forest-things shifted shapes, and Things that looked like trees could move and change a man’s path, leading him to disaster.
How did I get here? he wondered, finding his lids heavier and heavier as he rode—until of a sudden Volkhi shied sideways, came full about under his hand, bringing an old man into his sight—a white-bearded, scowling old man in the lightnings and the crazed patterns of the brush, who looked, the moment Pyetr thought about it, like someone he had known very well, and, crazily, had trouble seeing quite right—
Because he had never in this life looked to see that face again.
“You’re dead,” he said to his father-in-law, as all sorts of things came flooding back to him—the inside of the cottage, the cruel old man with his knives and his damnable singing… the old man whose daughter was a cold-fingered ghost…
“You’re lost,” Ilya Uulamets said, leaning on his staff. “Not that I’m surprised. And here you are. My daughter’s choice. God save us.”
Volkhi was still fretting and trying to turn. Pyetr kept a tight rein, jostled this way and that. His heart was thumping hard from the start the ghost had given him… but Eveshka had died und haunted the river shore, he remembered that: he had seen ghosts, and recalling that his wife should be a ghost ought to pain him, but it seemed only a fact to remember, nothing he should be entirely distressed about. The oddness was Uulamets, who had no business being dead yet… or was; god, he had no idea what had happened and what was going to happen, or what was happening to him now.
“I need to get home,” he said to Uulamets, patting Volkhi’s neck, himself trembling while he reassured the horse, and feeling as if he were doing all this in his sleep, completely numb. “I think something’s wrong. I think something could be very wrong.”