“I’m not sure they are, Pyetr. I think they’re mine.”
“Then let me do the worrying. And the doubting. I’m better at it. You wish up a bear or something.”
“Don’t—”
“—joke about it? Better than listening to him.”
“It might be.”
“Might. May. If. Make up your mind, friend! That jug never has broken. Or emptied. You’re a hell of a wizard when you know what you want. Why don’t you just wish Chernevog to love us dearly?”
“Jugs don’t argue,” Sasha said glumly.
“They don’t put nasty thoughts in your head, either. Put a few in his. Can’t you?”
“I don’t—” He thought with embarrassment of his only enemy, of poor cousin Mischa, and a mud puddle, and one unbridled, purely malicious wish—and that, only after years of abuse. Pyetr’s misdeeds had always seemed, to a young wizard trying desperately to grow up without killing anyone, gloriously, recklessly imaginative. “I don’t want a fight with him—I can’t—”
“God, what do you think we’ve got? What do you think’s going on, boy? Wake up!”
He had no answer for that.
“Sense of humor,” Pyetr said, and hit him on the arm. “I’ll wager you anything you like—it’ll confuse hell out of him.” With which Pyetr took up Volkhi’s reins and swung up, then looked to Chernevog, saying, “Come on, snake, we’re going.”
I don’t know, Eveshka wrote in her book, on the deck of the old ferry, what to wish about the baby. Papa would say—you can undo anything but the past.
Pyetr, if this book comes to Sasha, and you hear this, believe that I love you—but I can’t come home until I know what brought me here and why. A wizard-child’s nothing you ever bargained for. I won’t do that to you.
I want you to know that. Maybe you hear me. But I can’t hear you and I can’t hear Sasha, no matter how I try. And I daren’t come back till I know more than I do. So I’ve got to go and find out what I can.
She put away the inkpot then, and closed the book.
18
There were cold spots in the woods. That was always how it started. Volkhi and Missy hated them and Pyetr swore and patted Volkhi’s sweating neck, saying, “There’s a lad, it’s only a ghost.”
At times he heard himself saying things like that and wondered about his sanity.
Magic that wasn’t magic and magic that was sorcery. Babi in hiding—and Babi, with Sasha and ’Veshka, was the only contact with magical things that this gambler’s son wanted. Things were not going altogether well, in Pyetr’s estimation, and while the ghosts were no surprise, they were nothing he wanted to deal with, and nothing Sasha needed, either—the boy was distracted enough; and there was a real danger in these flitting nuisances.
Despair, a cold spot whispered, brushing his ear.
“Shut up!” he said, swatting at it, small good that did.
Hopeless, another wailed.
“Go away!” Sasha wished it, and it wailed into silence. Another cried, Murderer! and flitted in front of Chernevog, who walked ahead of them. It gave Pyetr some satisfaction to see him flinch.
Chernevog! more of them cried. And, Chernevog! Chernevog! went through the woods like a whisper.
“Now we’re in it,” Pyetr said with a shiver. “Damn, Snake, you do draw flies, don’t you?”
Chernevog turned a pale face toward him and Pyetr felt a moment’s pain about the heart. Volkhi pitched of a sudden—
And stopped, throwing his head and snorting: it might have been Sasha’s doing that a ghost went right through Chernevog at that moment. Then a whole cloud of them surrounded him wailing and crying, and Chernevog, who had not been so mortal as to wave his arms and do natural things to ward them off, flinched and flailed out at them.
“Damn you!” Chernevog cried, and one said,
We are damned…
As the whole horde of ghosts whirled around them like so many pale leaves.
“Uulamets!” Pyetr yelled. “Uulamets, you old liar, if you’re out there, you’re the one we want!”
There was sudden silence. Not a ghost to be found.
Sasha said, “God, I don’t like that… “
Eveshka, the ghosts mocked her, Eveshka, where are you going?
She shuddered. They were her ghosts that walked with her, in the deep forest twilight. They were her victims, hundreds of them. They were wayfarers, rivermen, travelers on the road. They carried packs, some of them, and looked lost.
Do you know the way—? they would begin, and then their faces, faint in the forest daylight, would grow horrified, as if they had suddenly recognized her, and they would flee shrieking Into the brush.
Some leaped out to rob her—horrible men with shaggy hair, whose attacks ended in racketing shrieks of terror.
Worst was one that trailed her, calling out, Have you seen my mama? Please wait!
She would not look at that one. She felt it closer and closer, almost on her heels, felt it tug at her skirts.
Please, it said.
She wished it away, and it went, a child’s voice wailing, Papa, where are you?
She forgot her resolution then, she forgot everything but remorse, and the ghosts took it and grew stronger. It was harder and harder to resist them. She felt their hands pulling at her.
Come away, they said, come away, you’ve no right to be breathing.
You’ve no right to the sunlight. You’re bones, you’re only bones in a cave…
“Pretty bones,” something said, different than the ghosts, and she stopped, stood looking about the dark brush, her heart fluttering in panic.
“Oh, I’m here,” the voice said, deep in the shadows, and everything grew quiet, except that sibilant voice. Brash crackled with the gliding movement of a heavy body. “I’m here, pretty bones. Don’t be afraid of me.”
“Go away!” she cried.
It hissed. She saw a rapid disturbance in the brash, the merest glimpse of its huge, slick body as it lashed through the bracken. It turned up to her left, and said, “That’s not nice, Eveshka. We’re old friends.”
“Away!”
It slithered a ways further. She heard it stop.
“Go away!” she ordered it, but its persistence made her doubt it would go, and that was deadly.
“See,” it hissed. “I don’t have to do what you want. But if you’re nice I will. I won’t say pretty bones anymore.”
“Leave me alone!”
Another slithering movement, a voice further away this time: “He’s followed you, pretty bones, the man’s come upriver. But do you know who he’s traveling with? You’ll never believe it.”
Curiosity was a trap. She tried to refuse it. But her thoughts went scattering after the lure, and it said, the old snake did,
“Kavi Chernevog.”
She went cold through and through.
“Isn’t that odd?” it said. “If you listened very hard just now you might hear him. Sasha’s with him, of course, and I’ve no notion what they’re going to do with Chernevog. Why don’t you call them here? I’m sure they’d be glad to see you.”
“Shut up!” she cried.
“It’s getting dark fast, pretty bones. And don’t think of salt. Surely you don’t want to drive me away. You know where If go, first thing.”
She knew. She took a deep, shivering breath. One talked aloud to a vodyanoi, if one had the choice. She said in a trembling voice, “I know. But I’d be careful, Hwiuur. I’d not come too close, either.”
“To a wizard as powerful as you? I’d be very foolish. Where were you going? Is it interesting?”