“Nothing we can do!” Chernevog cried. “Dammit, he’s giving Draga everything she wants—and a wizard’s no help to me! Join me, boy, join me, or I’ll be joining her, and then where will you be, where’s hope for any of us?”
Sasha squinted in the wind, shielding his eyes with his arm, and cried, “I’m going after him! You can do what you want, Chernevog!”
Thunder cracked. A tree shattered, spun burning fragments along the wind. The horse reared, cracking the limb it was tied to. Sasha grabbed after it, hacked at the tether.
Chernevog wanted the lightning elsewhere, he wanted Sasha to listen to him—he no longer knew anything for certain: no longer knew what had waked him or what had brought him here—Draga had shaped his magic, Draga had used it—
“Come on!” Sasha shouted at him, wanting him.
But a jagged shadow loomed between himself and Sasha, face-to-face with him—caging him with outstretched arms. He wanted help. It wanted—him. It was—him.
The night he had tried magic on his own, to know enough to free himself—
A wish unfinished, a desire Draga had ripped away and twisted—
“Chernevog!”
“All right!” he yelled at Sasha, waved his arm and swept up the fragment, crazed as it was—
The shadow—the fragment—vanished; but Owl was still there, Owl flew ghostly white and unruffled by the gale as Chernevog ran toward him. Sasha grabbed Missy’s mane, wanted her still just as long as it took: he heaved himself onto her back, pulled her about as Chernevog reached him—
Wanting him to stop, wanting up with him—this… Thing along with him.
It wanted to beat Draga—it saw lightnings and a rider on a black horse—
It took his offered hand, clambered up over him and flung itself astride as Missy took out running, held on to him as Missy trampled a rotten branch to splinters and took the hill in a dozen long strides.
He wanted to overtake Pyetr before it was too late. Chernevog offered help. And what he had taken up behind him and what was clinging to his back—he had no idea.
Lightnings cracked, throwing the whole woods into white glare, a broken limb tumbled into their path, Volkhi sailed over it and kept going, along a hollow and up a bank, between two trees so close one braised Pyetr’s leg.
It was ’Veshka’s wish guided him, Pyetr trusted that it was, it was her voice he heard wailing over the rest.
Lightning showed an abrupt edge to the ground—it came up through the trees, under Volkhi’s feet, and Volkhi plunged down a slope, took a shallow brook in stride and headed up again.
A thunderbolt hit behind, showing brush between the trees. Volkhi crashed through it, under limbs, and Pyetr grasped mane along with the reins, tucked low and held on as branches stabbed his back.
He heard wolves over the splintering of brush and Volkhi’s pounding strides, he saw clear ground ahead, lightning lit—a hill beyond a thinning screen of trees.
They came pounding into the clear, under open sky, where lightnings flickered—and Volkhi came to a sudden sliding halt, then laid back his ears and swung about as if something invisible held him.
A bear’s warning sounded over the wind. Pyetr saw the moving darkness at the edge of the trees as Volkhi turned. Thunder crashed and rumbled, and Volkhi kept turning, smelling the bear, it was damn sure. He gave Volkhi a gentle kick to make him move, and Volkhi only shivered, making nervous small steps, turning again.
Eveshka stood in front of him—looking up at him.
She said, “Pyetr?” But it seemed a dozen voices were speaking in his head.”Pyetr, get down, come here, do you understand me?”
He wanted to get off the horse. He wanted to get down and go to her, but there was that small cold slither about his heart that said,
Fool. Don’t trust favors.
Don’t trust anything Draga’s touched.
He said, with the lightning flickering overhead, casting her alternately in light and dark, “ ’Veshka, if you’re doing this— make it stop.”
The dark spot grew colder, cold that went through all his bones. He did not trust that heart, he did not trust himself near ’Veshka of a sudden, did not like ’Veshka’s coldness either, or the way she was looking at him.
He was afraid suddenly of what that heart in him might ask, or make him do—and he reined Volkhi further back.
He heard the bear moaning a challenge at his back—heard a voice very like Eveshka’s say, behind him, “Son-in-law, no one means you any harm. Get off the horse. Get off the horse.”
Missy was not fast, double-burdened as she was, but she charged through brush and trampled over the debris the gale flung into their path. It was wishes kept her going, it was wishes kept them on her back, and Sasha wished everything she could do. It felt as if Pyetr had just vanished from the world—no sense of where he was, only where he had been going when he had just quit being there.
Don’t trust anything! Sasha wished him. Don’t believe, don’t trust ’Veshka—she’s not safe.
Chernevog tried to tell him, it’s the wolves that have her heart, Draga’s wolves. They’ve torn it in pieces, and it can’t put itself together again—
Missy shied and skidded, almost went down. Sasha caught her neck as she came up, wished her steady.
Lightning showed something glistening in their path, something black and moving, that turned and rose up and up.
“Well,” it said, higher and higher above their heads. Lightning flickered on a huge glistening head, gleaming teeth. “My old master and my young enemy. Where are we going, mmm?”
“Run!” Chernevog yelled, and Missy bunched her hindquarters and bolted. Hwiuur’s long body stretched across her path. She cleared it: Sasha caught himself on her neck and gasped for breath, Chernevog’s hands clenched on his coat. Missy’s next stride shook them both back, by luck or wishes, and Missy stopped for nothing.
“Get down,” Draga said, and Chernevog’s heart shrank at the sound of that voice, saying, No, don’t, don’t believe anything.
Then Eveshka said, out of the chaos that surrounded her voice, “Pyetr, it’s all right.”
He looked in that direction—willing to listen—almost, for a moment, forgetting why he had come here, except whatever ’Veshka wanted.
But wolves came from the shadows of the trees, wolves came like shadows and gathered about her skirts.
“The hell it’s all right,” he said, while Volkhi shivered and backed and fretted in the hold of wishes. “Have you noticed, wife, those aren’t dogs? You go running off with never a word, I hear from your old enemy you’re having a baby—”
“Pyetr.” She held out her hands to him.
He kicked Volkhi hard, but Volkhi could not move.
“Pyetr.” Wolves milled about her as she came up to Volkhi’s side, Volkhi protesting with a soft, unhappy sound. She looked up at him, and Chernevog’s heart turned to ice. “I can free you,” she said, but it was the snarling of the wolves that wound around her voice, it was their eyes that looked up at him from the ground. “Pyetr.”
Chernevog’s heart flinched at her touching his knee. She said, “Pyetr, get down,” and it kept echoing.
He shifted his weight, looked down at the wolves looking up at him, looked ’Veshka in the eyes, ignoring the voices that howled and wailed—it was her he wanted to find. He took her hand, said, while Chernevog’s heart shivered, “ ’Veshka, why don’t you climb up with me instead? Why don’t we just go home? That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
She hesitated, lips open, lightnings flickering on her eyes. She seemed incapable of speaking then.