Most of all Uulamets had renounced sorcery as foolhardy, wealth as useless to him, human company as dangerous—that was all the sum of Uulamets’ goodness.
For a moment he did not know whether that last was Chernevog’s thought or his own. Then he found a thought like flotsam in the flood: ’Veshka wouldn’t let her father put any wishes on us, she’d know, surely she’d know, now. She would never let anything go on working on us— I’d know, for the god’s sake, with his book and all—
(But we didn’t know about the patch on the teacup. I didn’t, until I started worrying about it…)
He stared past that dark gulf of panic to the real world of misty woods, to Pyetr riding just ahead of them, Pyetr ducking to miss a branch, resettling his cap—Pyetr knew the world in ways he never would, had gotten along in Vojvoda’s streets, fought actual duels—Pyetr could live anywhere. He didn’t need to stay here…
Why did Pyetr stay if there weren’t any wishes? It was Kiev he wanted, it was Kiev he dreamed of—but Uulamets stopped that. I did. Eveshka did.
Find Uulamets… god, I don’t really want to find Uulamets, I don’t want to meet him again, I didn’t trust him while he was alive, until I knew he needed me enough to keep away from Pyetr.
Now I don’t know how to keep him away from me.
“Shut up!” he said to Chernevog, thinking: Both of us had Uulamets for a teacher—both of us had to stand up to the old liar, and he’s using that, damned if he isn’t… he’s asking about Pyetr, that’s what he’s doing.
Chernevog laid his hand on Missy’s neck as Sasha ducked the same branch in his turn. “Listen to me,” Chernevog said softly, “listen—”
Pyetr turned around, leaning on Volkhi’s rump. “Let him alone, snake. Get your hand off the horse!”
Chernevog said, “I’d look out for that limb.”
“Pyetr!”
Pyetr made it, only scarcely, lying back on Volkhi; and looked around again, scowling.
“It’s a mistake to go to Uulamets,” Chernevog said. “The leshys can be wrong. Uulamets wanted nothing but his own welfare. Ask his daughter.”
“For the last time, shut up!”
“She’s alive, isn’t she? The old man actually brought her back.”
“Shut up!” Pyetr cried. “—Sasha, shut him up.”
It was hard to hear what Pyetr was saying. Sasha ducked the same oncoming limb. He collected presence of mind enough to watch Pyetr’s trail while Pyetr was looking back, watching Chernevog. The silence grew and grew. For a moment the constant wishing and watching ahead made his head spin and Missy’s motion under him confused him—but Pyetr was stopping, Pyetr got off and led Volkhi back past Chernevog—
“No,” Sasha said as Pyetr took Missy’s reins too. Pyetr asked him something, but he was snared in a different kind of silence, one in which he could hear a deep, distant whisper, as if the whole forest sighed, the air growing colder and the world rapidly grayer—
As if a storm were coming—but the sky was already overcast, and the mist falling now was only the wind shaking drops from wet limbs—
He knew exactly where ’Veshka was, he knew there was something wrong on the river. He said, in panic no wizard should give way to—”Pyetr, Pyetr, ’Veshka’s in a bad spot, there’s something wrong out there and I don’t think she knows it—I think she’s asleep or something—”
“Tell her!” Pyetr said. “Wake her up!” and Sasha tried to do that with all the attention he dared take from Chernevog.
Chernevog seized at him with a fervent wish for silence. Pyetr grabbed Chernevog by the shirt and flung him away.
But Chernevog was not the worst danger he was feeling. It was a different thing. It had place, but no course that he could find, it was neither good nor evil and might not even have intent…
“Can you find her?” Pyetr was asking him, and it was strangest of all to him that the horses should stand so quietly in this storm, as if there was not a thing amiss in the world.
“Sasha!”
Pyetr had his knee, Pyetr was shaking at him, glancing anxiously back at Chernevog. “For the god’s sake—Sasha, wake up!”
There was nothing wrong. In the daylight where Pyetr was, where Missy was, where his own body was, there was absolutely nothing wrong.
But Chernevog was saying, “God, get away from it—”
Everything came back to clarity again—the daylight, the slight mist of rain, Pyetr’s worried face.
And with that came the slight, constant sighing of the trees and the small awareness of life in the woods and the sky and the river, as plainly, as constantly available to him as if mere had never been a silence in the woods.
Nothing was wrong, nothing might ever have been wrong— except for Chernevog’s face, pale and sweating, and Pyetr’s worried expression. Missy sighed under him and ducked her head, like Volkhi, to examine the weeds underfoot for edibility.
“We’re passed outside their circle, now,” Chernevog said. “Or they’ve just stopped protecting us.”
“What in hell’s going on?” Pyetr asked, and shook at Sasha’s leg a second time. “Sasha?”
“’Veshka’s across the river.”
“Across the river—”
“I don’t know why. There’s something wrong over there. I’m afraid she’s in the middle of it and I still can’t make her hear me.”
“God,” Pyetr said with a disgusted shrug, as if it were some town squabble Eveshka had involved herself in. Pyetr walked a step or two aside, swept his cap off and stood there holding it, looking out in the direction of the river.
As if we’re deaf to each other, Sasha thought desperately, as if all of us are deaf to him, and he can’t make anybody hear him, ever.
God, Pyetr.
Pyetr hit his leg with his cap, turned and motioned with it ahead of them, toward the river. “Well, we’ve got to go there, don’t we? Find Uulamets! Uulamets is in the damn middle of this, that’s what’s going on. He wants us over there, hell! It’s ’Veshka he wants!”
For a moment it made a terrible, clear sense. It was like Chernevog’s warning. It was frighteningly like the things Chernevog had just been saying to him. “He brought her back from the dead, Pyetr, he died bringing her back.”
“He died getting her away from him! He died making sure Chernevog didn’t get his way in the world! That doesn’t say he’s happy being dead, or that he’s through meddling!” Pyetr shoved his hair back with the cap, pulled it on and caught a breath while Sasha tried to think whether Pyetr was sane or he was. But Pyetr said then, quietly, hand on hip, with a shivery twitch of one shoulder, “God, I don’t know. I don’t like this. I don’t like anything to do with him. —Why the shapeshifter? Why did it look like him?”
“Was there a shapeshifter?” Chernevog asked.
“You shut up!” Pyetr said; but Sasha was thinking that both of those questions were important. He said,
“There was. It tried to lead Pyetr off somewhere.”
“What are we doing?” Pyetr cried. “Asking his advice now?”
“My advice,” Chernevog said, “is exactly yours—don’t trust Uulamets.”
“God,” Pyetr said, leaning on Missy’s shoulder.
“The dead aren’t loyal,” Chernevog said. “You can’t trust them. Uulamets had no idea what he was doing with that kind of magic, he didn’t understand it. I do. Believe me, Ilya Uulamets was never on anyone’s side but his own.”