Chernevog (11 page)

“
Is this now? Is this someday? —What are you telling bannik?
”

A stone rattled. Of a sudden it sprang at him, grabbed his arm with long-nailed fingers, drew him close to its face, growing more and more visible.

Thorn-branches. An overwhelming sense of danger
...
Eveshka gazing at him out of shadows, with a face cold and unforgiving as death.
‘‘Bannik! Will Pyetr need our help?
”
Spray flying under the bow, canvas cracking— A young man walking toward him, out of shadow. It might be the bannik itself, it had that feeling of danger and omen, light touched dark hair, white shirt
—

The bannik hissed into his face, and sprang back into shadows, a figure all elbows and angles as it scuttled under a
bench.
“
Bannik!
”
Sasha shouted at it.

Again that sense of smothering in this dark, of a
presence
surrounded by chaos, might-be, could-be, must-be constantly changing position with every wish that brushed it.

He wanted its name. He wanted power over it. He wanted to stop this future from being. He stood still and shivering tried to stop wanting anything in its presence.

Leaves moved more and more slowly in the current, bubbles on dark water, that seemed now to stand still, everything seen to stand still, waiting for a single wish to steer it—
The door banged open again, admitting stark, gray daylight. Raindrops pocked the dust outside.

Pyetr looked about him, reining Volkhi around. It was as if some
veil had come down between himself and the road home again—the way magical things could look quite otherwise than the truth, tricking
an ordinary man's eyes and lying to his senses.

“
Babi?
”
he shouted to the woods around him, and it seemed to him that the very daylight was grayer and colder, that the trees
were shifting at every glance away and back again to look less familiar. Volkhi moved under him, tossed his head and snorted
like he did not like the breeze that was blowing to him, rustling the young leaves and rattling dry, old branches.

“
Babi?
”

A prickling touched between his shoulders, a sensation of
something watching him from behind. He looked back, looked up into the branches, hoping still for Babi. Nothing was there.

He was increasingly tempted to call out Misighi's name. If
one was in trouble in the woods, leshys were a very good idea; but they were odd creatures too, especially Misighi, who was very old, impatient with fools, and apt to ask embarrassing questions, such as precisely what
had
he seen to be afraid of?

Nothing, precisely. He had, like a fool, ridden without watch-Ing the shapes of the trees, and just as soon as he did see some familiar shape, some oddity he had observed riding past it on
the
way out, then he would know precisely where the road was.

In the meanwhile the sun gave him a general direction toward home, the lay of the land gave him an indication where the road ought to be—so he started riding again, paying close attention to the trees this time, looking deep into the woods on either hand for the sight of the peeled limb or odd trunk that might give him a clue: he was sure he could not be far off the track.

But when he looked behind him, where the road toward Vojvoda had once looked quite recognizable, what he had just come from seemed as much a maze as the way home did.

“
Babi!
”
he called. But the silence when the sound died was
stif
l
ing
.

He could not believe Babi would have left him intentionally. He told himself that Babi was quite probably still there, and that it was only his nonmagical perception of things that was making it difficult to see him. For some reason magical things had started hiding themselves from him, the way leshys could look like leshys one moment and like trees the next. He had been thinking very hard of Vojvoda and his old life, and he felt a guilty apprehension that he should not have done that: that being so stupid

as to want Vojvoda again, he might have—the god only knew broken some spell or something, separated himself off from whatever let him see magical things, because there had been time he had not been able to, there had been a time he could look straight at Babi and not see him at all for what he was.

Sasha would not have set such a trap without telling him, but Volkhi's arrival was proof enough that Sasha could make mistakes, and there was absolutely no knowing what kind of visitor-confusing spells that old curmudgeon Uulamets might have set and forgotten.

God, he had not been afraid in the woods for years: he had been up and down the river, past the place where he knew quite well a vodyanoi might still lair; and poked into all sorts of place:. no sensible man would go without protection. But he had been able then to see where he was going, and he had had his sword with him, and, not inconsiderable, he had always had Babi to guard his back.

Now Volkhi walked as if he suspected devils under every bush. His ears flicked this way and that, his nostrils tested the wind, he seemed to float more than to walk—

Volkhi shied off from something, a
quick
sidestep and another before he came back under his hand, trembling, snuffing the air and snorting at what he was smelling.

“
Good horse,
”
Pyetr muttered, patting Volkhi's sweating neck, himself sweating and his heart thumping while he tried to decide whether Volkhi could perceive something his senses could not. A fool was out in the woods on a skittish horse with no saddle, with the day well along already and the road, if it was the road, going into deeper and deeper shadow under a clouding sky.

He sincerely hoped Eveshka was worried by now. He sincerely hoped his wife and his friend were wondering where he was by now, and were wishing him home before dark. He certainly wished so; but if his wishes worked in the least he would not be out here wondering where the road had gone.

Volkhi shied up and aside: he recovered his seat, kept Volkhi under the rein and got his heart back from his throat, patting Volkhi's neck, telling him lies, how it was all very fine, they were going home, wherever that was.

7

Rain spattered the boards of the porch outside, a cold rain with a cold wind driving it.
“
He didn't take his coat,
”
Eveshka said, at Sasha's back, inside the cottage.
“
He didn't even take a coat—
”

Sasha lapped his belt about him, took his cap from under his arm and pulled it on.
“
He can take care of himself. He'll either find cover till the worst of it's past or he'll be coming as fast as he can—I'll probably meet him out there, probably slow him down, truth be told. I'm not sure—
”

“
The woods is
wrong
!
Everything is
wrong
—
”

He looked at her. He said,
“
I agree with you. But that's no assurance he knows anything about it, and if he doesn't know, he's safer than we are. 'Veshka, please let's not argue, please don't be wishing him anywhere on his own. He won't melt in the rain; he can build a shelter.
”

“
Build a shelter! He'll be soaked to the skin—don't tell me lie's out there now because he doesn't know there's anything wrong!
”
She was wrapping dry clothes into Pyetr's coat, making a compact bundle of it.
“
We shouldn't have waited, dammit, we shouldn't have let him stay out there.
”

“
There's every chance he's with the leshys.
”

“
There aren't any leshys, I'm telling you!
”
She was near to tears. She tied the cords tight.
“
I tried!
”

“
Maybe they've heard you. Maybe they've answered and gone straight to find him. They don't need to tell us. It may
not occur
to them to tell us.
”

“
Use the sense my father left you! There's nothing out there, there's simply nothing out there, it's as if the world ends at the hedge. We can't even make the rain stop!
”

“
It's a big rain, it's had a long time to get going, for the god's sake, rains do have natural causes.
”

“
Don't talk to me as if I was a fool! Something's in our way out there!
”

Doubt upset Sasha's stomach, made Eveshka's hastiness seem a threat more than the forest was.
“
'Veshka, I'll find him, just for the god's sake stop wishing
anything.
As long as we don't know what's out there—
”

“
Don't know, don't know, you don't know the sun's setting unless you look out the window! Use your head, Sasha! There's the vodyanoi, for one, there's ghosts!
”

“
He went the other direction, and neither one travels far from the river.
”
He took Pyetr's sword from the peg where it hung and slung it from his shoulder.
“
I’v
e wished him well, I've made wishes for him every day we've lived here, the same as you have, and if those wishes are working at all then they're still taking care of him, and if something's gotten around them, then it's better one of us go where he is so we know what we need, isn't it?
”

She said nothing. She took a small clay pot from the counter and tucked it into the bag he was taking. Then the coat.
“
Just be careful,
”
she said, giving him the bag. Her face was pale in the gray light from the doorway, pale and terribly afraid.
“
That's salt and sulfur. —You've got the fire-pot...
”

He reached out, pressed her small, cold hands tightly in his own.
“
Listen, I'm
not
that worried about him. It's probably the weather. He won't take chances with a storm.
He
can't wish the lightning.
”

“
He can't wish anything else, either. Can he?
”

He felt afraid of a sudden, profoundly, unreasoningly afraid of his choices. Everything seemed to tilt one way and the other, changeable, perilous.
“
I'll find him,
”
he promised her on a breath; and ducked out into the storm, down the rain-washed boards of the walk-up. He splashed along the puddled path to
the front gate—stopped there on impulse, feeling Eveshka's strong wish behind him, and saw her standing in the doorway, pale as the ghost she had been. Haste, that wish said; and he caught a breath, shoved the gate open and hit the lane at a run, through rain-laden weeds, where wind and water had swept away the trail Pyetr had left.

Most likely, he reasoned, Pyetr had just taken out for the afternoon, had tossed that down-the-road-and-back promise completely out of his head the moment they had left him to his own devices, Pyetr having never a qualm about going off on his own, no more than he had worried seeing Pyetr ride off into a forest he knew.

But Eveshka had worried from the start, Eveshka had told him he was a fool about the bannik, and he had still trusted it, sight unseen
...

Ordinary man Pyetr was, and blind and deaf to some influences. Illusions and compulsions had less power over him than over a wizard—until the source of them came close enough to lay material hands on him.

He wished he had listened to Eveshka, he wished he had listened to her from the beginning.
He
had called the bannik, it had come at the same instant this silence had descended, and it
was
as twisted as the house they had built for it, changing with every wish they made and every action they took, flinging up bits and pieces of vision that might be imminent or might be years away—one looked, and guessed, and doubted, and had to look again: a wizard had to know—wanted to
know,
kept wanting to know until there was no doubt. By that very wanting there were changes; and by those changes there were always doubts-Beware my daughter, Uulamets' memories said: Uulamets kid continually mistrusted her; but he had looked for Eveshka's advice and not taken it when she had given it to him, not even heard it, he had been so set on being right
...

Think things through, Uulamets' teaching advised him. Do the least possible. Don't move till you're sure
...

Things were going wrong and it might only be a rainstorm and it might only be a stray horse and their own fear of what he had conjured up in the bathhouse, but there was a terrible feeling of wishes going askew, and along with them all their safety in this unsafe woods. No time, he kept telling himself now, no
time for prophecies, no room for thinking things to the bottom and back again. He made only one clear, unequivocal wish—to get to Pyetr in person before something else did.