“I’ve got it.”
“Good.” Pyetr took Volkhi by a shorter rein and started leading him downhill. Babi growled, hissed, then bounded after, a small moving black spot in the starlight.
“We’re not up to it!” Sasha protested; and Pyetr ignoring him: Stop! Sasha wished him, and saw Pyetr hesitate in the same instant, set his feet on the slant and look up at him with a look he imagined as indignation.
“I’m taking from the forest, Pyetr, I can’t go on doing that!”
“You can keep on doing it till we know what we’re dealing with!”
“Not against him! I’m stealing what I’ve got—I don’t know, I can’t hold on to it—”
I find no limit —
“Long enough for questions!” Pyetr said. “Dammit, Sasha, don’t doubt! Isn’t that what you tell me?”
Eveshka ‘s grave, beneath the willow —
I’ve seen this, he thought. The bannik showed me this, god, we’ve arrived exactly where it said we would be.
“What are we going to do,” Pyetr asked, “camp here, go to sleep, not knowing whether he’s here or not—not knowing whether she is, more to the point?”
“I don’t know. Pyetr, I just don’t know, I’m not sure—”
“God. All right, wait here if you want to. Just keep wishing, all right?”
“I can’t!” he cried, feeling everything slipping. But Pyetr had already turned and started downhill, intending to go into that cave below the roots of the dead willow—with the bones and the dead things—
Eveshka’s bones, for all they knew, the irresolvable paradox of her existence—
“Wait!” he cried, plunged into a reckless, weak-kneed descent. Pyetr never so much as slowed down, that was what his wizardry was worth at the moment. He reached the flat strip along the water, seized Pyetr’s arm. “Wait!” he said, and Pyetr was going to resist him until he said, breathlessly, “Let me try.”
“Do it,” Pyetr said. And he was trapped, looking into Pyetr’s face—not up, nowadays. Eye to eye. Pyetr believed in him, Pyetr wanted him to produce thunder and lightnings, the tsar and all his horses: Pyetr, who did not always believe in magic, had an absolute faith in him, at least, and no belief in limits.
Eavesdropping had its penalties. He was trapped, enspelled by a man without a drop of magic. He felt in his pocket to be sure, in all the rain and the stumbling about in the woods, that he still had the little packet of salt and sulfur, while his wits were still wondering why he was doing this and telling him that they both were fools.
But he started walking toward the old willow down the shore— and stopped at once as he heard Pyetr leading Volkhi behind him. Pyetr nudged him in the ribs, saying, this man all Vojvoda knew for wild risks and breakneck escapades, “Go on. I’m here in case the magic doesn’t work. Babi’s right with me.”
Sasha clenched his teeth to keep them from chattering… chill and exhaustion, perfectly natural, he told himself. He was not sure any longer whether Pyetr was wrong, whether he had been right, whether in approaching the vodyanoi with stolen strength they were not doing something supremely stupid. It was certain at least that doubt was fataclass="underline" he tossed alternatives to the winds and resolutely wanted the vodyanoi out of his cave as they reached the willow.
“Can you feel anything?” Pyetr asked, and he jumped, losing his concentration.
“Shush!” He waved at Pyetr to be quiet, gathered his courage and, deciding the willow itself might afford him some feeling of the cave below its roots, he worked his way along one large root and leaned against the trunk, almost over the water as he wished down, down into the earth, where the River-thing collected bones and wove his own magic—he could feel that magic, now, dark and snaky and many-turning as its wielder, but he found nothing at the heart of it, as if the dark down there were vacant.
“Hwiuur!” he called to the vodyanoi. “Answer me!”
But there was no response under the bank. He heard the random lap of the river against the roots, smelled the dank breath of the cave under his feet as he balanced there—with very mixed feelings about finding the creature not at home. But the arm that supported him was starting to shake and, with the growing conviction that Hwiuur was not, wherever he was, asleep, he was very anxious to get off his precarious perch and away from the water edge. He pushed away from the trunk.
The tail of his eye caught a shape swinging in the willow branches beside him.
“God,” he gasped, afraid for an instant it was some drowned body snagged there.
It hissed at him, Babi hissed, and Volkhi shied up, as the creature suddenly took on an elbows-out outline, moving spiderlike toward him.
Blood on thorn-branches—
Pyetr’s sword rang free of its sheath. Pottery crashed. Volkhi thundered away along the shore.
Fall of rain… gray sky, gray stone…
Burned timbers… and lightning…
Pyetr’s sword crossed his vision and Sasha put out his hand to restrain him from that recklessness.
Black coils slipping into dark water, flowing and flowing into the deep…
Eveshka sitting at the rail, pale hair blowing in the wind…
The shape vanished from the branches in the blink of a night-confused eye.
“What in hell was that?” Pyetr breathed.
“The bannik. At least—it’s what showed up in our bathhouse. It’s not supposed to be out here. It’s not supposed to do things like this!”
A gust of wind blew willow-strands against his cheek, feathery and chill as the touch of a ghost. He faltered in his balance on the roots, snatched at the branches and immediately let them go—then grasped them again to be sure, while his heart thumped so hard it all but stifled his breathing. “Pyetr, it’s alive. The willow’s alive.”
Pyetr caught a handful of the willow switches in his left hand and let them go again as quickly. “Maybe some green left in the roots,” he said, his voice none so steady either. “Trees do that.”
One prayed the god it was only that—or at least that it meant something good, this life returned to dead branches, to Eveshka’s willow, Eveshka’s dreadful willow—that had been the last thing alive when the woods had died.
“What did you see?” Sasha asked him. “Did it show you anything?”
“No,” Pyetr said. Then: “Damn. Volkhi!”
Sasha looked. There was no trace of the horse but the baggage he had dumped on the grass—in which he held out little hope for the jars of herbs and powders.
The fire-pot at least had survived. And the vodka jug—which, by the one real magic of a very foolish young wizard, had no possibility of breaking or of emptying. Driftwood gave them convenient kindling. They shared a portion of bread and sausages, while Volkhi grazed on the margin at a good distance from the willow and the cave.
“Can’t blame the poor horse,” Pyetr muttered, while Sasha sorted broken pottery among other surviving pots, to tell what had spilled in the bottom of the bag.
Comfrey and their other pot of sulfur and salt—that was the real disaster: one wondered what comfrey did in a mix that repelled River-things.
“Probably,” Pyetr said, “he’s thinking life might be better with ‘Mitri, after all.” He broke a piece of wood in his hands, a crack muffled by the river-sound. “Probably he’s right. —I’m not going to sleep, understand? I don’t want to sleep tonight, in this place, I don’t care if the River-thing’s not at home, it’s not safe here, it spooks Babi, and don’t you dare work any of your damn tricks on me, hear me?”
“I’m not,” Sasha said.