The Collected Short Fiction of C J Cherryh

by C. J. Cherryh

  "I shall watch you," Ilya said. "I shall; Anna will, one and then the other of us. We will not let you go."

  He looked toward the door, seeing beyond it, into the blue night. Hya took his arm, had a burning candle with him, to light them to the loft. "Come," Ilya bade him, and he climbed the wooden ladder that was carved with flowers, up among the painted columns and posts of the loft, quietly passed the roomful of sleeping children. There was their own nook; Dya shut the door, touched the candle to the night lamp and blew the wick out, small ordinary acts, done every night of their lives, comforting now. Andrei moved of lifelong habit, undid his belt and hung it on the bedpost on his side, took off his boots, crawled beneath the cold, heavy bedclothes. Ilya tucked him in when he had lain down, as once Katya had nightly climbed the stairs to do; and he feigned quick sleep. Ilya stood there a moment, walked around then with a creaking of the aged boards, climbed in the other side. The bed was like ice; it remained so, but Andrei did not shiver. He lay still, and listened to the wind, listened to footsteps around the door downstairs, soft, padding steps that would never print the snow. Listened to the blowing of flakes from off the rooftree, and the fall of those particles onto drifts. Timbers boomed, like lightning strikes, and he would jump, and lie still again.

  At last he could resist it no more, and stirred, thrust a foot for the cold air and the floor. "Andrei," Ilya said at once, turned, rose on an elbow, reached out to take his shoulder. "Are you all right, Andrei?"

  He lay back. "Let me go," he said finally. "Ilya, the wolf is out there. It will always be."

  "Hush, be still." And when he moved, hardly aware that he moved to rise, Ilya held him back. "It waits," he said, protesting. "It waits, Ilya, and the cold will spread, more than to me alone. You know that."

  "Hush." Ilya quietly rolled from the bed, and went around to his side, sat down there. "I shall get no sleep," Ilya said. "I shall never know if you are not walking in yours. How shall I rest, Andrei? I promised Anna I would watch you."

  He did not want to listen to this, but it touched through the numbness that possessed him. "You should let me go," he said. "I shall go. . . tomorrow or the next day. It will never be far, just outside the door. Umnik and me—it will have us."

  "Hush." Ilya wrapped his wrist in his belt, then attached it to the bedpost; this he allowed, because it was Ilya, and he knew how greatly Ilya grieved; it was not fair that Ilya should worry so. Ilya took great pains, with this and with the other one, sat there, straightened his hair, his hand very gentle. "Sleep now," Ilya said. "Go to sleep; you will not wander in your dreams. You are safe."

  He shut his eyes, thinking that the day would come, and other nights, and when he shut his eyes, the wolf was there, no less than he had been before, eyes like the sun, a white wolf in blue night, invisible against the snow which lay thick in the yard. The horses whickered softly, disturbed. Goats bleated. . . no need of alarm for them. They were safe in their warm stable, where the cold would never come. . . and it was the cold which waited.

  He felt Ilya draw back, heard the creak of boards, the door open, heard Ilya go down the ladder. He felt a little distress then and pulled to be free, but Ilya's knots were snug, and the vision drank him back again, the blue night, the pale snows. Somewhere he heard the softest of sounds, and he dreamed the wolf retreated, standing warily out by the fence. And others were there, white and gaunt with famine. A vision came to him, of the house door opening softly in the dark and a figure in his furs, who carried his bow and his shafts. Umnik nickered softly, came out from the stable on his own, and his ears were pricked up and his eyes were full of the moving curtains of light which leapt and danced and flowed across the blue heavens. . . . The aurora, uncommonly bright and strange. The horse walked forward, nuzzled an offered hand and the two of them stood together, man and pony, beneath the glory of the sky. Slowly the man looked up, his face to the light, and it was Ilya, whose eyes, angry, showed the least fatal quickness as they gazed at the heavens. . . curiosity, and openness.

  "There," Ilya said, tugging at Umnik's long mane, whispering and stretching out the bow like a wand toward the northern sky. "We shall hunt it, we two; we shall try at the least, shall we not?" And he opened the gate, swung up to Umnik's bare back, and the bridleless horse started to move, with eyes as fixed as Hya's, down trampled streets, past shuttered, eyeless buildings.

  And the wolves fled, like the wind, which swept over the eaves and the roofs and went its way, leaving a gate banging dully.

  "No," Andrei cried, but that was in his dream; and tugged at the knots, but they were sound, and the strength was gone from him, his soul fled away with the winds, where he watched all the town spread beneath him, all of Moskva embracing her knot of rivers, frozen and cracked and frozen again nigh to the bottom. He saw the gates, through a dust of blowing snow, saw old Pyotr and young Fedor's house shut up tight and the lights out. There Umnik paused, and Ilya dropped down, unbarred the gates and dragged one valve back in the obstructing snow until there was room enough for pony and rider to pass through. He climbed again to Umnik's bare back and Umnik tossed his shaggy head and jogged away in the skirl of blown snow and the glory of the northern lights. "Come back," Andrei wailed, but he spoke with the wind's voice, and the wind carried him, powerless. . . . He skimmed the surface of the snows as if his soul were a flitting bird, racing along before horse and rider, growing small again as wind swept him up. The wolves ran beside, pale movement on pale snow. . . . "They are there," he tried to shout. "Ilya, they are there."

  But Ilya was no hunter to understand the bow, had not so much as strung it. Andrei swept nearer, horror in his heart, and saw Ilya's face, the image of Anna's, saw fair hair astream in the wind, snow-dusted, saw his hands. . . Ilya's delicate hands, which were his life and livelihood, bare of gloves despite the cold. And Ilya's eyes, heedless of the wolves, roved the horizon and the sky where the curtaining lights streamed and touched the snows.

  Ilya rode north, and north still, with the lights ever receding to the horizon, with the wolves coursing the drifts beside, waiting their time. And the bow at last tumbled from his hand, to lie in the snow, and he never seemed to notice. The quiver slid after. "He is caught," Andrei thought, and the drawing grew dimmer and dimmer within himself, like ice melting away. Pain came back. He dreamed, helpless now, and hurting, saw Ilya slide down from Umnik's back, saw his bare hands caress the shaggy piebald coat as if in farewell, but when Ilya began to walk alone, Umnik followed after. "O go with him," Andrei wished the pony, which was part of him as Ilya had almost stopped being. "Do not let him go alone out there." And Umnik tossed his head as if, after all, he heard, and followed patiently, soundlessly in the powder snow and in the glory of the lights which played across the skies. Horror walked beside, four-footed, tongues lolling, sun-filled eyes glinting slantwise in the night, out of white, triangular faces, and teeth like shards of clear ice. Umnik threw his head and blew a frosty breath, and his eyes slowly took on that strangeness too, a sunflare gleaming, as if he were no longer one with man; and now an unsuspected enemy trod at Ilya's back.

  "Ah," Andrei thought, "let me see his face," and sought in his dream to come round before him, to warn him, to tell him, to know if that same change was yet worked on him. Ilya, he thought with all the strength left in him. Ilya, I am here; look at me.

  Ilya stopped, and turned, his face only vaguely troubled, as if he had heard some strange far voice.

  Ilya, o my friend.

  "Andrei?" he asked, his pale lips scarcely moving, and put out his hand as if he could see him standing there. "Is it this you saw? I have never been outside the walls; I was always too sickly. But it is beautiful, Andrei."

  He had no answer. The beauty which he had seen in the sky was gone; it was all dulled in his eyes, save what he saw reflected in Ilya's.

  "I thought," Hya said, "that I knew what beauty was. . . . I make beauty, Andrei, at least I thought that I made beauty; but I have never seen it until now. I should fear it, I
think, but I do not. Only to kill it—Andrei, how can I? How could you?"

  "Do not," he whispered. "Come back. Set me free, Hya. Come home. Let me go."

  "I have gone too far," Ilya said. "Don't look, Andrei, go back to your bed; you are dreaming. Go back."

  So a dream might speak to him, his own mind's reasoning in a phantom's mouth. It made him disbelieve for a moment, and in that moment Ilya turned and walked on, toward the north. "Wait," he cried, and followed, finding it harder and harder to go, for the wind no longer carried him. "Ilya, wait."

  A second time the face turned to him, still Ilya's eyes, though unnaturally calm. And now the wolves ranged themselves upon a low ridge, slitted eyes agleam. "Come back from them," Andrei pleaded. "Do you not see them?"

  Ilya looked on him with that look which he must once have turned on those who loved him, which reckoned him very distantly, and dismissed him, finding all the flaws in him.

  "The wolves," he wept. "Ilya, do you not see them?"

  "No," Ilya said slowly and considerately, looked about at them, and turned back. "There's nothing there. Go back. I've done this so you could go back, don't you understand?"

  "I'll hunt them," he vowed. "I'll hunt them every one."

  "No," Ilya said softly, and behind him stood the pony with eyes full of the sun; indeed the sun was rising, a thin line and bead, with glimmerings and streamings across the ice, ribbons and shafts of light which swept the snowy plain with rose and lavenders and opal odors. Ilya looked toward that sudden brilliance, turning his back. A shape was there, one with the light, robed in light, white like the snows.

  "Ilya," Andrei murmured, but Ilya walked away. Andrei caught Umnik by the mane, but no more could he hold the pony. . . Umnik walked too. The wolves glided and flowed to that shape, becoming one with it, which was woman or man, and intolerably bright. "Ilya," it whispered, and opened its arms.

  Andrei caught at Hya's sleeve, and received another distant look, turned him, hugged him, to keep his face from that shape, which became woman, and chill, and ineffably beautiful. "It is your Wolf," he said, holding Hya's face between his hands. "No more real than mine."

  "As real," Ilya said. "Never less real than yours." Ilya hugged him, slightly, and without love, with only the memory of it. "You gave it what you give to beauty, Andrei; and so do I. And so do I."

  He walked away, and Andrei stood, as if there were a bond holding him that had yielded all it could: he could not go further. He watched Ilya and the pony, one after the other, reach that light, saw the semblance of arms reach from it, and enfold Ilya, so that for a moment they seemed two lovers entwined; saw Umnik blurred likewise into that streaming beauty, and saw it spread with coming morning.

  Of a sudden as the light came Umnik was coming back, with a rider on his back, out of the sun which streamed about him and shot rays where his hooves touched the drifts. His rider was a like vision, in the moving of his hair and the lifting of his hand as the pony stopped. . . a fair cold face which had been Hya's, the hair drifting in the winds, and the eyes, the eyes ablaze with opal gold, like lamps making his glowing face dark.

  "Come," Ilya whispered. "O my friend."

  Andrei turned and fled, raced with the retreating night, fled with other shadows, mounted the winds, naked and alone. He crossed the rivers, and saw the bridge, saw Moskva embracing the frozen ice with its wooden walls, and staining the purity of the world with its dark buildings. He found the open gate and whisked in, skimmed the well-trodden street, found the least chink in the wall of the house and gained entry, into warmth and stillness, into the loft, where he rested, trapped as before.

  He woke, turned his head, found the place by him empty.

  "Ilya!" he cried, and woke the house.

  They found him by the gate, by the corner of the front-yard fence, partly covered by the blowing snow, frozen and with tiny ice crystals clinging to clothes and face. . . not terrible, as some of the dead were which the cold killed, but rather as one gazing into some fair dream, and smiling. Andrei touched his face as Anna held him, shedding tears which melted ice upon his cheek; and suddenly in his agony he sprang up and ran to the stable, with the others calling out after him.

  Umnik lay there, quite stiff and dead. The other pony looked at him reproachfully, and the goats bleated, and he turned away, walked back to the others, gathered Anna into his arms.

  The spring was then not long in coming; the winds shifted and the snows shrank and the rivers began to groan with breaking ice.

  Andrei rode the other pony in the trodden street, the bay, the younger, a beast which would never be what Umnik had been. The drifts within the city yielded up the white wind-blasted pillars which had been statues, turned up small and pitiful discoveries, small animals which had been frozen the winter long; and an old woman had been found near the Moskva river. But such tragedies came with every winter; and spring came and the white retreated.

  He passed the gates and the bridge, and neglected his eye-shields as he rode along. He had a new bow and quiver. . . the old ones, from Ilya's dead hand, had seemed unlucky to him. . . and he rode out along the edge of the retreating woods, where trees shed their burdens of snow, where the tracks of deer were visible.

  He and Anna had begun their living together before the spring; he wore work of her stitchery, and she swelled with child, and the dull scar of winter past seemed bearable. He had taken a free gift to the old wizard, Mischa, who had now lived yet another winter—a parr of fat hares, paying for truth he had gotten, and bearing no resentments.

  The bay pony's hooves broke melting snow, cracked ice, and there was a glistening on it from the sun, but the day was still overcast. He shielded his eyes with a gloved hand and looked at the drifts of gray-centered cloud, shivered somewhat later as the cloud blew athwart the sun, and a chill came into the air.

  There were only ordinary days, forever. He saw the places in Moskva where the paint peeled, saw cracks in the images of Moskva; the patterns which Anna made to clothe him seemed garish and far less lovely than once they had; he had seen beauty once, and aimed at it and wounded it.

  Now he saw truth.

  "Was it your sight you gave the Wolf?" he had asked Mischa finally. "Or was it the hand?"

  "I destroyed my sight," Mischa had said, "—after."

  Mischa had had no one. He had three families; had Anna; had a growing child. .

  Had had a friend.

  Ilya's carvings faded; would crack; would decay with the age of Moskva. Ilya had made nothing lasting. Nor did any man.

  The colors would fade and the ice would come; he knew that, but looked at the colors and the patterns men made, because he had seared the other from his heart and from his eyes; and he went on looking at it because others needed him.

  Cold touched the side of his face and pushed at his body, a touch of deep chill, a breathing of sleet and snowflakes. The bay pony threw her head and snorted in unease.

  What had Ilya seen? he wondered again and again. What, if not the Wolf?

  What had it been, that drew him away?

  Snowflakes dusted the pony's black mane, smallish stars, each different, each delicate and white and in the world's long age, surely duplicated again and again. As human grief was.

  He looked toward the north, toward the gleam of ice and sunlight, opal and orange and rose and gold, melting-bright. There was nothing there. Forever.

  1981

  NIGHTGAME

  (Rome)

  They offered him food and drink. He accepted, although by all his codes he should not. He was no one. They had taken his name with his totem and his weapons, and they had killed Ta'in, who was his heart. A warrior of the netang, he would have refused food and drink offered from an enemy's hand, and died of it, but they had forced it into him during the long traveling that had brought him to this place, and taken from him all that he was, and he was tired. His weapons, had he had them, could never have fought the like of them, with their machines and their mocking smiles. He wou
ld have killed them all if he could, but that was while he had been a warrior, and while he had had a name. Now he sat listlessly and waited what more would happen, and what he would be, which was something of their purposing.

  Belat switched the vid off and smiled at the portly executive who rested in the bowl-chair in the offices of the Earth Trade Center, next the crumbling port. "Netang tribesman, off Phoenix IV. That's what I've gotten us."

  Ginar folded his hands across his paunch and nodded slowly to Belat the trader. Grinned, in rising amusement. "The Tyrant will be vastly surprised. You go as planned. . . tonight?"

  "I've advised the usual contacts," Belat said, "that I have a special surprise for the evening. I've permission to cross the bridge. I even detected a spark of enthusiasm."

  "A special surprise." Ginar chuckled again. It would be that. "You'll not," he said, "mention my name in the City, as sponsor of this. . . should something go wrong. Your risk. After all—it's your risk. I only provide you. . . opportunity."

  The city was old as Earth was old, in the waning chill of its plague-spotted sun.

  The Eternal City. . . under the latest of its many names, in the reign of the latest of its tyrants. It sat on its seven hills by its sluggish, miasmic river, and dreamed dreams.

  That was the passion of its Tyrant, and of all the nobles of the city—dreams. The apparatus (which might have originated here, or perhaps on one of the colonial worlds: no one remembered) existed in the Palace which dominated the city; it gave substance to dreams, and by that substance consoled the violet nights and the oppressive days of the sickly star. There was nothing left to do on Earth, nothing at all, for the vanities were all exposed, the ambitions, the conceits of empire, the meaningless nature of power on one world, when greater powers now spanned the void and embraced worlds in the plural, when those powers themselves had had time to grow old and to decay many times. Earth had seen it all. The Eternal City had seen such eras pass. . . too often to be amused by the exercise of power or the pursuit of empire. It had no hopes left, being merely old, as the sun was old, and the moon looming large and sickly in the sky, lurid with the reflected glow of the ailing sun. Earth and the City could have no ambitions. Ambitions were for younger worlds. For the City there was only pleasure.