“Get up,” Pyetr said to him; and he did, caught Pyetr eye to eye for an instant and with all his heart wanted this extraordinary man’s goodwill…
He felt Sasha’s instant intervention—turned his head and for a panicked moment it was Sasha he was looking at, Sasha wishing him helpless and quiet.
Then for no apparent reason things slid into order: he was aware of the ground they stood on, aware of the boundary of nature and magic, and for an instant of utter terror wavered this way and that of that line.
He clenched his hands, courted the momentary pain—he had that much sense left: think of running water when things went wrong: water and stones, no fear, change without change. He caught his breath and his balance then, looked back toward Pyetr—
And in complete simplicity cast his heart in that direction, quite the same as he had given it to Owl—because a man like Pyetr could no more use it than Owl could. He hoped it might appease Sasha—and no one had ever said of Kavi Chernevog that he was a coward.
But Sasha snatched it himself, before he could more than think of his own survival, and sent it back to him with a wish so strong he had no defense. He recalled the moment before he had given it to Owl, and tears came to his eyes—that was what Sasha did to him, while Pyetr said, completely extraneously to everything that was happening— “Find Uulamets! Misighi’s lost track, that’s what he’s done—he’s forgetting things the way I was forgetting!”
Sasha said, distractedly: “I don’t think so. It’s very possible there’s something left. I’d be surprised if there wasn’t a ghost or something.”
“There’s a damn shapeshifter!” Pyetr said. “We met that! No, thank you!”
Chernevog listened to the argument, remembering his house, remembering Uulamets coming to kill him, and how they had fought with magic the old man had all his life abhorred—
(Fool, Uulamets had railed at him, when Uulamets had first caught him at it, when he was a student in the river-house. Don’t you know there’s no creature wants to help you for free? The things that swear they will, want you, that’s what they want, boy, don’t ever think otherwise! Someday they’ll turn on you— at first chance they’ll turn on you, and then you’ll have not a chance in hell, boy!)
It was true—and maybe if early on he had had the old man’s
advice he might have stayed with simple wizardry— and had his heart in Uulamets’ grasping hands instead of where it was now, in himself, causing him pain and threatening his very existence. So very many things might not have happened: Uulamets would not be dead and he might have been, like Eveshka, under Uulamets’ orders, doing forever whatever Uulamets told him.
He thought of that, too. For some chances missed he could be truly grateful.
What Draga had dealt with had ultimately turned to someone cleverer and less indolent and less interested in pleasure and comforts. He had been there, when she had begun to fail.
Now it could find other possibilities, now that Sasha had him helpless as he was and exposed everything he had ever felt and wanted and dreamed of to, the god knew, anything that might happen by. He wanted Sasha to understand the appalling folly of what he had done—he tried, completely honest in what he offered, but Sasha wished him silent so violently and so angrily it stung.
Dammit, he had not had to bear that kind of rebuff since Draga’s time. And this boy did it to him with impunity, refusing to listen, the way he had refused to listen, if he had ever truly had a chance—
“Fool!” he said aloud. “It’s your own lives you’re throwing away!”
Pyetr looked at him anxiously. But he felt Sasha take what else he would say and turn it into silence. He fought that back and forth with Sasha until he knew Sasha would not hear his reasons, nor would he let Pyetr hear him: Sasha doubted everything he would say and every argument he could possibly make, because Sasha knew his own ignorance of magic, and simply had to assume he was lying in everything.
He knew that defense too: it was one he had used when he had been that young and that foolish and that damnably, blindly ignorant, and not Draga nor Uulamets nor even Eveshka had ever gotten past it.
There were broken jars: pottery grated as Sasha picked up his bag: “The god only knows,” Sasha said with a shake of his head, and squatted down to investigate the damage, trusting him, Pyetr supposed, to keep an eye on their prisoner, all this in a leaden, drizzling rain, at the edge of the dying wood. The leaves were almost all fallen now, the wind had stripped the limbs bare: black trees, golden, sodden ground.
No Babi, no horses, and no sign of Eveshka. Pyetr kept his sword in hand and one eye on Chernevog: even an ordinary man knew enough to worry when, in wizardly company, he found himself doing stupid things or omitting to do smart ones.
“A snake,” he muttered, standing guard while Sasha tried to put things to rights, “is still a snake. Whether his heart was in that owl or not, it’s still his heart, and it’s still a snake. —I hope you’ve noticed we haven’t done what we came here to do, I hope you’ve noticed this viper is still getting his own way.”
“Not all of it,” Sasha said, “I assure you.”
“I’d like to know what he’s missed. What do we do, let him loose while we go searching after a damn ghost that’s just as good let alone?”
All this while Chernevog was listening. He was acutely conscious of that. But privacy to speak meant leaving Chernevog unwatched.
Pyetr wanted to go down to the river, he wanted—desperately, on some premonition or someone’s wish—to go down to the river. He said quietly to Sasha, “I’ve got this feeling, I don’t know where it’s coming from…” Chernevog had sat down with his head on his knees and his hands locked on the back of his neck, no longer paying any apparent attention to them—but a cold unease nagged him, a sense of disaster no matter what they did. “I keep thinking we ought to head for the river, however far it is.”
“I think that’s as good an idea as any,” Sasha said.
It was not the kind of answer Pyetr wanted. He wanted the upset in his stomach to go away. “Are you sure it isn’t him wanting it?” he asked. “Look at him over there, pretending he doesn’t hear—dammit, he wants us dead! A heart doesn’t make any difference in that!”
“He can want that anywhere,” Sasha said. “I know what I want right now. I want to do exactly what Misighi said to do.”
“Hunt down Uulamets?” It was stupid to listen to irrational feelings, sudden notions, or chills down the back of his neck. But Pyetr knew where to start looking for ghosts if one wanted to find them, particularly Uulamets’ ghost—and that place was over on the other side of the river, the god knew how far from here, a burned house and a shallow grave. “Conjure him from here, can’t you?”
“I’m not sure I ought to conjure anything—I’m not sure magic’s a good idea right now. They said ‘Take him.’ So we’ll take him where Uulamets is.”
“I don’t like this ‘not sure,’ you know.”
Sasha stood up. “We’ve got no choice, Pyetr—”
“Damn right we’ve got a choice! How in hell are we going to cross the river? At least try calling him here, for the god’s sake! If we go out of here and magic starts working again outside this woods, it works for him too, doesn’t it?”