“’Veshka!”
She caught her breath. Her mother stood up and took her by the arms, looked her in the eyes. “’Veshka, dear, you and I, understand me? You and I… against Kavi. Your father made you afraid of magic. You mustn’t be—or neither of us has a chance.”
22
Volkhi picked a crooked, trailless course through the young trees, knee-deep in seedlings while the taller, three-year growth was constantly enough to screen anything beyond a stone’s throw from their track.
Find Sasha, Chernevog said. So, perforce, they tried. They tried past noon, and into afternoon, taking a general course westward—Sasha had not been at the burned house, had not, which Chernevog had thought might be the case, gone back to Uulamets’ grave. After that-After that they turned north and west, in the not unlikely case Sasha had gone toward the river, Chernevog said. Chernevog searched with his magic and Pyetr scanned the sunlit, fluttering greenwood with ordinary eyes, looking for a white and brown horse, hoping with half his heart they would find no trace at all, hoping that Sasha was clear away and safe—and fearing he was not. He imagined terrible things—things like Missy felling; or vodyaniye and such lurking in ambush to drag horse and rider down into the brook; or Sasha’s heart just stopping, on a stronger wizard’s wish.
“That’s for easier than will happen to him,” Chernevog muttered at his back, “believe me.”
“Believe you? God… let me go and I’ll find him. Just go back to the house and wait, why don’t you? Snake, I swear to you, if you want him found, if you really, truly do want him found—”
Chernevog said, “If he doesn’t have a chance out there, you have less. Or I would do that.”
“The hell you would.”
“Believe me.”
That was a wish. It smothered thinking for a moment. It suffocated reason.
“You don’t understand,” Chernevog said. “He’s not going to die. That’s not the worst that can happen to him.”
He felt cold through and through, despite the sunlight. He fought believing anything Chernevog said—but sometimes it was so close to his own apprehensions…
“There’s no particular good, no particular evil in magic, Pyetr Ilyitch: one either rules it—or one is ruled; and he’s quite vulnerable. He won’t die, but you’ll wish he had. He won’t be able to. Then you’ll wish you’d helped me with more enthusiasm.”
“Shut up!”
“My friend, be reasonable.”
“I’m not your friend.”
“You’re not my enemy. I assure you, you’re not my enemy.”
“I killed your damn owl,” Pyetr muttered, and pulled Chernevog’s hands loose from his middle. “Keep your hands off me.”
“I’ve no grudges. Owl was very old.”
That callousness turned him sick at his stomach. “Don’t you love anything, Snake? Didn’t you, once? —What do you want, that matters to anybody?”
“Just Owl.” They rode up a slope, Volkhi’s hindquarters bunching in a quick few efforts. Chernevog held to him again— with cause. “Just Owl. And he’s gone. Now you’re in his place. He was fond of mice. What do you want from me?”
“I want you to keep your damned hands to yourself!”
“I’ll love what you love; hate what you hate—I’ve given you that power over me. What more can I do for you?”
That’s a lie, he thought as they rode along the ridge. —Sasha might have done something with his heart, if he could only have gotten it away from me—
“He can’t. It’s much too strong a bond: it’s magical; and I’m far stronger. But it’s true you can command my friendship. Bestow it where you like: that takes no wizardry at all. It’s simply the nature of hearts, when they’re together long enough. You see how much I trust you.”
He wanted Chernevog away from him, he wanted help; he was drowning in Chernevog’s thoughts. He thought distractedly, looking at the trees, Very soon there’s not going to be anything left of me. Sasha won’t trust me if we find him. He shouldn’t. God help me, I’m losing my mind.
“Of course,” Chernevog said, resting his hand on his shoulder “as you probably do suspect by now—it can equally well go the other way.”
Sasha sat tucked up in green shade, beside Missy’s feet, Missy looking quite content to stand with a patch of sun on her back—
Sasha felt it, too, the way he had slowly felt aches in her legs leave and the pain in her gut ebb. It had been hard going for an old horse not used to running and not used to forests.
Eventually the upset in her stomach eased and Missy began to nose the herbage in front of her in some interest; mostly she wanted water, and her chest still burned, and it was not fair she had not been let drink her fill when there was water at hand… but now when she thought of it there was nothing stopping her, so she walked over to the little spring that welled up out of the rocks and drank as much as she wanted. There had been bogles and grabby-things; her ears still slanted to listen for them and her still watched all around at once, from the spring under her nose to, still visible behind her own feet, her favorite person sitting under the tree. Sasha saw himself from that unusual, top-blind point of view, and rode Missy’s thoughts, not remembering where he had come from or where he was going, just watching the thicket around them and tasting the good, cold water.
The whole wood was still. Very carefully he let go that wide vision and that keen hearing, and saw, from the rear perspective, Missy drinking. Then he could move without fearing he was going to run blindly into something ahead, although down and up still felt confused, and sitting upright made him dizzy for a moment.
He had been with Missy for some little time, to judge by the sinking of the sun—the shade was deeper, no direct light at all now in this little water-cut nook where bracken competed with young trees. He had been safe, this while: Missy was not a noisy creature. Missy wanted very little that made a difference in the world.
Missy lifted her head suddenly, pricked up her ears, and he instantly wanted to know what she was thinking—but Missy decided it was only a fox she smelted. Foxes were familiar. Foxes skulked about and were no bother to horses.
Sasha paid attention for a while, and worried Missy: Sasha thought a fox could hide a grabby-thing. Missy found this a disturbing idea, and decided never to trust foxes after this.
But it went away; and Sasha decided not, after all.
There was a danger in sitting like this too long. One could forget what one was doing, either harm Missy with ideas that were frightening gibberish to her; or go a little crazy himself and sit here, the two of them locked together until the next rain waked him or until he wished something truly dangerous for Missy or for himself.
There was danger in wishes of any kind so long as Chernevog might be paying attention in his direction. Chernevog had him far outmatched and Chernevog had Pyetr, and if he thought about what might be happening to Pyetr he could not trust himself to be sane right now, or to do anything reasonable or useful. He had worked very hard to be quiet and to go completely inside himself and Missy, until there was only his own life to worry over: he had drawn that selfishness tighter and tighter and tighter, not watching what Chernevog did, not trying to do anything about it, not wanting to be there—until his not being there suddenly became thoroughly, magically imperative-It freed him—but not Pyetr.
He pulled at his knee, straightened his leg, rubbed feeling back into his numb foot. Wish nothing unnecessary.
Think nothing unnecessary. Do the natural thing. Learn from Missy. Get up, get the baggage, see about something to eat. There were dangers but they were not here, and as long as he wanted only little things Missy would want they might not impinge on Chernevog’s specific wishes; so long as he wanted specific, natural things they might happen, and Chernevog’s widest, magic-driven designs might go skewed around them-that was always the hazard in generalities, master Uulamets had argued in his book: that in natural things nature tended to reassert itself, given any reasonable loophole.