So one moved a pebble. One wished, as simply as Missy, for well-being and supper, things that were, after all, fair— Missy was very much on things being fair, expecting things that ought to follow, one from another; and things that ought to happen in certain ways, on time, and in due amounts.
One wished, among first things, to make amends for keeping bad and scary company and to share this nice sausage he had with someone who had a perfect right to it. He broke off half— he was very sorry about the vodka; that was at the moment in a place he did not want to think about—but there was this sausage, this very nice sausage, because it was only fair.
An alarming row of teeth snatched the bit from his hand. And vanished, together with the sausage.
“That’s a good Babi.” He offered the other half.
It whisked into nowhere, too.
Eyes stared at him, faint, gold, vertically slitted, against green forest shade.
“Good Babi. Wonderful Babi. Brave Babi. Babi, do you want vodka? I think it’s fair we get it back. That’s my jug, and my spell on it, after all, and I think I should have it, don’t you?”
Babi waddled up on his hind legs and crawled up into Sasha’s lap to cling to his coat.
“We can’t just go and look for it,” Sasha said, stroking Babi’s fur. “We need help. I think we’d better get Missy and find the limit and see if we can figure anything out, don’t you?”
Chernevog was not pleased: Pyetr had no doubt at all of that while Chernevog was riding behind him, holding to him, wish-ing at him until he felt his hold on his own thoughts precarious. His own anger and his own grudge against Chernevog had occupied all his attention at the start, but Chernevog kept finding ways past that—little doubts niggling their way into his mind, Chernevog saying, “If we don’t find him, he may not see the morning,” and: “You can’t understand these things, dammit, you don’t understand the trouble he’s in,” and finally, to the point: “Pyetr Ilyitch, you know how he thinks, you know what he’d most likely do. If you don’t find him, dying’s not the worst licit can happen to him, don’t you care? It’s your fault, isn’t it, what becomes of him? He doesn’t understand what he’s taken on. Don’t be a bloody-minded fool!”
“I don’t know anything,” he told Chernevog. “It’s a wide woods—how in hell can I guess where he’d go? You’re the wizard.”
“He’s wishing me confused, damn you!”
“Then how can I resist?”
“Would he wish you in wrong directions?”
He said: “In your company, yes.” And Chernevog: “No, he wouldn’t. He’s a clever lad. It was no little trick to get away in the first place—but that has a certain cost. —I know how he did it. Don’t you wonder? Don’t you wonder how he could leave you and not let me hear him thinking?”
One tried desperately not to wonder. One could think earnestly about breaking Chernevog’s neck, which was hard to think about: one’s thoughts kept getting away; and one could be angry about Chernevog’s nattering at him, but that always led to the same place; and when one came back from half losing one’s mind, exhausted and desperate and still beset, and wrapped about by Chernevog’s arms, one concentrated on the trees or looked at bark and such and memorized shapes in the case that Sasha might rescue him and they might have to backtrack.
But that was useless, too—wizards could find their own way wherever they wanted; an ordinary man was no damn help to anyone… and he kept losing little bits of their trail anyway, moments that he was thinking of Vojvoda, of being hungry and desperate, of things he was not particularly proud of… like what he had done once to pay an innkeeper…
“We all have our faults,” Chernevog said to him. “And the limits of our pride. Some are less fastidious than others.”
He gave a backward jab of his elbow. “Leave me alone!”
It did Chernevog no damage. He was dizzy for a time after that and thought he might fall off the horse, but his body went on balancing the way it knew how to do. He was quite awake: he simply did not remember for the moment how to make his arms move, he scarcely knew how to breathe—
“Let me go,” he said finally, discovering he could speak.
And was back in Chernevog’s house, with Eveshka sitting in front of the fire with her back to him—and he thought, again, No, it isn’t, it isn’t her—I know this dream… oh, god, I want out of this—
He was standing on the river shore, tall trees grayed with morning mist. He saw a far, dim figure coming down the grassy bank, cloaked against the chill.
Eveshka had answered him, Eveshka came walking down from the house to meet him there. Come back at dawn, she had said. I’ll talk to my father.
But there was no hope of reasoning with Uulamets. He knew that. He knew mere was none of reasoning with Draga. If he did what Draga had said and brought her Eveshka, then there was no hope for him, either, mere was no hope in the world for a young wizard who had (Eveshka knew the truth, but not the significance of what she knew) already betrayed her.
She came walking up to him, she put back her hood. She was sixteen, she would die in that blue dress—Chernevog had already made up his mind that he would have to kill her—
“God, no!” he cried, and kicked Volkhi and tried to carry Chernevog off with him, but Volkhi no more than jumped, and he could not even as lift his arm.
“You don’t appreciate your wife’s abilities,” Chernevog said, holding him on the horse. “I did. I asked for her heart and she gave it to me—to give to Owl. To free her, I said—to put it with mine, where it would be safe. And it was. Do you know how I could lie to her?”
He did not. He did not want to know.
“The same way your friend could lie to us. By caring for nothing else in the world.”
Sasha wouldn’t, he thought. He couldn’t.
Dmitri walking away from him in the yard—
Sasha’s not like that, dammit!
He remembered Sasha riding away. He thought how terribly frightened he was in Chernevog’s hands, and how desperate, and how if Sasha could not hold off Chernevog, and Sasha had surely known he could not…
Dammit, Sasha’s doing something, he thought; and wondered, while he tried not to wonder: What can he do that won’t involve magic?
Uulamets—giving Sasha his knowledge at his death, leaving too damned much to Sasha…
God, no! He tore his ragged thoughts toward pain, remembered old Yurishev, who had run a sword through him one night.
That for Chernevog’s eavesdropping. He realized in vivid detail how much it had hurt, falling in the stable—
(Sasha had gotten him to safety, Sasha was resourceful, Sasha would go—where?)
He kicked poor confused Volkhi again and made him ran a few paces, but that lasted no more than the other times; Volkhi settled back to a walk, snorting and switching his tail, and Chernevog said against Pyetr’s ear:
“You’re not my match, Pyetr Ilyitch. Got the old man’s dying bequest, has he?”
He owed Sasha his life, Sasha had risked his neck for him… he said, aloud, biting his lip till it bled, because thoughts kept getting away from him: “Nobody’s ever cared much about you, Snake. I can’t say as I blame them.”
“So where are these friends of yours now?” Chernevog asked. “They ran. He ran. He left you. He’s quite desperate. Where would he go next? Deal with Uulamets’ ghost—alone, with what he already carries? That’s not damned smart of him!”