Yvgenie (27 page)

For the god's sake, Kavi, tell her how you died!

Night made the forest a shifting confusion of gray and black. Branches raked and caught, trees floated past the eye like ghosts. The black furball was still with them and the ghostly owl flew ahead of them from tree to tree—guiding them, Yvgenie hoped.

To a place
I
know, Ilyana insisted, but he had no confidence in that. He had no confidence he would even get through this night and he desperately longed for the sun. The ghostly owl seemed more real now, so much so he feared if he nodded again he might never wake up. Pain could be more real than Owl was, pain could keep him awake—and he bit his lip and fought the lapses that made his eyelids fall and the sounds of their passage grow dim in his ears. He caught himself from time to time against the saddlebow, found his fingers growing numb. He thought of his father's house, he
t
hought of running away—he knew he had done that,
he
had,
h
e
had tried to take his life in his hands and do something honest that did not involve killing his father, or telling anyone
about
his father and the tsarevitch—

B
ut Bielitsa took a sudden shift of direction and he found himself slipping helplessly: a grip on the saddle checked his
fa
ll, but only that—he swung completely off Bielitsa's back,
st
ill clinging with both hands to the saddle leather as Bielitsa
tur
ned to keep herself from sliding downslope on the dead leaves. An embarrassing position, his horse about to fall downhill atop him, himself about to pull her down: he looked quite the fool in the wizard-girl's eyes, he was sure. But he would not have Bielitsa fall, so he let go.

—And found himself after a dark space on his back at the bottom of the slope with a fair-haired shadow between him mid a tree-latticed moon.

^‘
Are you all right?'' Ilyana asked solemnly. And for some stupid reason he started to laugh. Was he all right? Was he
all
right? He was lying on his back, head downward on a hill with a dead wizard's ghost slithering about inside his heart,
a
nd the girl asked Was he all right?

But breath ran out, tears of pain welled up and his stomach
ac
hed, so that he had to double over on his side—and he found himself facing the black furball's glowing yellow eyes and hedge of teeth. It snarled, spat at him and snapped at his lace.

Ilyana said, sternly,
‘
Babi, behave.
’

He would never of his own wi
ll have taken his eyes off the f
u
r
ball. Of his own will he could not get another breath. But his chest moved, and took it, his arm moved and braced under him. The ghost turned his face toward her and said,
‘
Wish us well, wish us well tonight,
Ilyana
. Us
and
this
b
oy—something's on our trail—more than your father.
’

Leaning there, head downhill, with Babi breathing on his neck, he thought for no reason of an ominous stone overgrown with thorns—Owl had died there. Wolves gathered
like tame dogs about Ilyana's skirts. Solemn yellow eyes gazed at him with no glimmer of sanity.

He blinked the night back around him, and shoved himself up frantically on his hands and knees, uphill, with a stab of pain across his stomach as the furball hissed and snapped at him. He fell back down, sitting. It seemed to him he had never fallen into the flood. Ilyana had been riding with him, just then warning him of ghosts and wizards that lived in this woods, and he had been answering her only a moment ago that there were things much worse than ghosts.

But he could not remember how he had answered her. Kiev and the gilt pillars of his father's house became a painted, shadowy porch, and the shadowed trunks of trees. Imaginings became wolves, wolves became Owl, and Ilyana drowned while he stood safe on the shore and
wanted
her to die.

God, no, that was wrong—he had been the one drowning and she had pulled him from the flood.

She said, trying to lift him by his shoulder,
‘
We've got to go on. Please. Please get up.
’

He tried. He shoved himself to his feet a second time and staggered upslope to catch Bielitsa's trailing reins. He had tried a jump, in the fields near the city wall. He had fallen and hit his head—

His father, watching from horseback, leaned back in the saddle and called him a fool in front of his men.

He caught his breath, clung to Bielitsa's neck and pressed his face against her mane, back in the dark and the woods.

I left Kiev. I had to take Bielitsa—there was nowhere safe for her.

But where are we running to? Where's safe, anywhere, now?

He remembered leshys and madness at their hands, a woods of golden leaves—an endless succession of days, while suns and stars careered across the heavens, while autumns and springtimes sped past in torrents of leaves and wind-borne seeds. He remembered anger that shattered stones,
f
orest-things as great as trees and very like them, with feet
that
were indeed backwards. He knew their names: Misighi
and
Wiun and Isvis and Priochni, scores of others—while he h
eld
Bielitsa's mane to keep
himself on his feet, and used B
ielitsa's strength to sustain him, knowing even while he look what was not his, that Kavi was betraying them—

B
ut, god, he was so afraid of dying
—

It needed only a little strength. Please the god and the
F
orest-things, too, only enough and not too much
…
the wizard-girl was in terrible danger of some kind, and he had
c
o
me
back from the grave for her sake
…

B
ut from whose grave—he was for a moment confused,
Ilyana
touched his sleeve.
‘
Is something wrong? Are you
al
l right? Yvgenie?
’

He
had a debt to pay. He had no choice. He turned his
back
to Bielitsa's shoulder, looked into her night-shadowed eyes.
‘
He wants—
’
The damnable stammer came back. He never would have thought of taking her suddenly in his arms, or of kissing her on the lips, which with his present dizziness,
made
all breath fail.

H
e thought, while he was holding her, god, it isn't me doing this, it's him, it's Chernevog doing it
—

B
ut the whole night spun about them. He lost his breath,
with
all of life within his reach. The forest was full of it. Nothing could withstand them, nothing would be strong enough if he reached out and took it.

H
e wanted to warn her. He wanted to say—don't trust him,
Ilyana
—because he truly was Yvgenie Pavlovitch, no matter whose wish had brought him to this place. He remembered drowning
Ilyana,
he remembered dying by fire and by water,
and
nothing could make sense to him. He thought that he
w
ould faint, he grew so dizzy, but life came with it, her life,
life
from the trees and the woods—from something vastly powerful—

G
od, stop it.
Stop
it, don't do this, it's wrong to do this—

E
ven
if—god, even if it was the
source of his next breath
.

Ilyana
fainted in his arms. He wanted to let her go. He
fought for the will to do that. And the thing within him whispered, faintly,
‘
Death's so long, boy, and so damnably cold.
’

Down one hill and up another, with, Pyetr was sure, his daughter's wishes earnestly trying to mislead him and
Eveshka
's and Sasha's fighting to guide him. In that toss of the magical dice, the god only knew which would win, but distance did make a difference, every experience he had ever had with wizardry assured him that that was so, and as long as Volkhi could bear the pace he was narrowing that interval-Mouse, he intended to say when he found her and the boy—mouse, if you're going to be a scoundrel, you shouldn't leave your pursuers a horse to come after you—if, that is, you didn't truly want to be caught.

But he believed she did in fact want that, in her heart, if only she could be assured he would not harm the boy. She would talk to him at safe distance, far from other wizardly interference. He had not heard a word or a stray thought from Sasha since they had parted company; and he hoped to come within Ilyana's influence before the night was out. But they were past Volkhi's first wind now, and he set a pace to hold as long as had to be.

But on the down side of a hill Volkhi began to shake his neck and object to the direction they were going, snorting and dancing about as if he had something entirely unpleasant in his nostrils.

‘
Whoa,
’
he said. On a vagary of the breeze he caught a whiff of it himself: river water where none belonged—

And snake.

Something heavy moved in the brush. A voice hissed,
‘
Well, well, well, what have we? Is it the man with the sword? How extremely nice. We're so
pleased
to find old friends.
’

It spoke so softly. And it struck so suddenly, out of the dark brush. Volkhi shied across the slope as Pyetr spied a
glistening dark body coming at them across the leaves and
sig
naled Volkhi to jump over it.

A snaky shadow whipped out of the trees, hit his shoulder
a
numbing blow—that was his only startled realization as his loot raked across Volkhi's back and he left the saddle.

Missy was doing her best, poor horse, and for far too long
there
had been no answer from Pyetr—not a wisp of an impression where Pyetr was now. Nothing had passed the
sm
othering silence from the moment Pyetr had ridden away, exactly what Sasha had feared would be the case. Pyetr had
salt
and sulfur with him, against noxious and magical crea
t
ures: he had given Pyetr that before he left the house.

But what with their arguing, and Pyetr rushing off, not hearing his warning—the god only hope, Sasha thought, that i
t
was Ilyana's doing and that Pyetr had in fact found her, because for all his wishing he got now a fleeting sense of
f
right—which gave him no ease either.
‘

‘
Misighi!
’
he called from time to time—but there was nothing from their old friend—and from the young leshys no answer, unless the Forest-things were contributing to the uneasy feeling in the night. The creatures abhorred magic and wizards: they were never easy neighbors to sorcery, and it was certainly an uncomfortably unpredictable lot of wishes I hat had gotten loose in the woods tonight.

Worse, there was a distressing feeling of self-will about it all, an irrational lack of forethought, or thought at all, and it was all too easy for a young
wizard to make that mistake: Cher
nevog
had
made that mistake in his own youth, and that the mouse had run away made him fear that Eveshka was right, that they were not dealing with the mouse in her right
se
nses. That the mouse had left her father lying bleeding on the floor, never mind the pillow, gave him no confidence at all tonight.

In cold truth, he was scared, he was terrified of the mouse's
inexperience
and her quick assumptions of persecution where none existed: Think, mouse, he wished her. Is it reasonable
that everyone who loves you has turned against you? I'm worried about your decisions, mouse. I want to talk to you. I promise I won't harm your young man.

But he feared his wishes died in the silence and he could not breach it. He was not the naive boy who had bespelled the vodka jug: the years had worn away his certainties; and now a day removed from the fire that had taken his house and so many of his notes, he could not shut his eyes without seeing the flames; and knowing the books were worth his life, knowing now that they had almost cost Pyetr's, the more he thought about it the more he was, stupidly, belatedly, panicked.

Dammit, Pyetr, doesn't the silence mean something to you?

Doesn't the fact that you aren't hearing from me—mean something?