Rusalka (v1.3)

by C. J. Cherryh

  But they stopped abruptly and bounced up again, continuing to bounce slightly—like his heart, he thought, swallowing the outcry he had made: Misighi had evidently caught a resilient branch to stop them. Misighi immediately stretched out the arm holding him, opened all the myriad twiggy fingers and slipped others from his grip until he dangled only from his hands, and lowered him and Eveshka rapidly down and down through empty air.

  “Fare well,” Misighi said, the mere creaking of branches, as its face retreated into the dark above him and shadowy limbs rushed up past them. “This is the boundary. Further than this is impossible for us.”

  Pyetr’s feet touched ground, and it let them go, uncurling its fingers from his grip.

  Then he did well to keep his shaking legs under him—instinctively tried to steady Eveshka, but his hands only met cold; and he looked up into the dark: “Thank you,” he said foolishly—difficult to bow to something far above his head; and only had a shower of leaves for his trouble, the creatures passing above them like a storm through the woods.

  Eveshka had his hand, always able to touch him, surer of his edges, he supposed, than he was of hers. He looked about him at a woods no worse than where they had been—and beyond, at a starlit forest of dead limbs, dead as Eveshka’s own.

  Closer than that, at a black ball sitting on the leaves, panting.

  “Good dog,” he said to it. Babi licked his lips and got up, expectantly, little hands clasping, then one finding the ground, pawlike.

  “You shouldn’t go,” Eveshka said, and turned and put her arms about his neck, looking up into his face. “Pyetr, please, no, I’m—not—strong enough—”

  Babi growled and of a sudden jumped up and grabbed his sleeve—pulled him sharply aside, for which a man could be quite resentful, except he saw Eveshka flit and stop a little removed from him, hands clasped together, pain on her face.

  “I—can’t,” she said, “I can’t not want you, and you know what that does to us.—Babi, keep him, watch him—”

  Pyetr tugged to get his sleeve free. “Babi, stop it!” He knew what she was up to, where she was going as she started away. “ ‘Veshka, no!”

  She paused, looked back over her shoulder, paler, much paler once she had crossed that boundary of living woods and dead. And it was not his gentle Eveshka looking back at him with that cold, resolute anger, or speaking to him in a voice so icelike still:

  “I can’t kill him the way I can you: there’s no limit to him. But you’re right: a sword might. A knife. I don’t know if I can get to him, I may weaken too much. But I’ll try, Pyetr—”

  Something moved among the trees behind her, something walking through the starlight, among the pale, barkiess trunks. “ ‘Veshka,” he said, shaking his wrist, trying silently to urge Babi to turn loose, not wanting to make overmuch commotion and precipitate something unwanted. “’Veshka, don’t look, but there’s somebody behind you—quietly, walk back here.—Babi, Babi, dammit, turn loose—”

  She did turn and look, and the gray figure came walking steadily as she began to tear into threads again, streaming away into thin air.

  “’Veshka!” Pyetr said—jerked violently to tear his sleeve free: cloth ripped, but Babi held like a lump of iron, seized his wrist with his hands, strong as chain, as Eveshka dimmed and dimmed. Babi began to pull him away, but of a sudden he wanted to go toward that ominous figure, and of a sudden Babi’s grip slipped, releasing him.

  He caught his balance, walked across the boundary, stopped beside Eveshka all the while knowing he had made a grave mistake in his plans against Chernevog—knowing that Chernevog had wished him here all along, ahead of his companions, and a sword could do very little, when Chernevog wished not.

  “’Veshka,” he said, feeling her attraction, too; and felt her attention—felt the touch of the threads that flowed from her and felt the delirious little jolts as his strength flowed out of him—to her, who was a wizard no less than Chernevog: “Take it all,” he said, with what breath he could spare, hoping she would go all the way to substance then: “Quickly. Take the sword…”

  But she might not have heard. The theft continued the same as the flow of threads from her to Chernevog, who walked up to them, a fair-haired man younger than himself, a handsome youth with a gentle face and a smile and outstretched hand.

  The hold on him broke, Eveshka’s touch stopped, sudden freedom, sudden loss: he reached, reeling in a struggle for balance, after the sword—got it from its sheath as his right leg went out from under him, and went down to his knee with the point, trembling, aimed at Chernevog’s heart.

  Then his arm simply would not move further, while Chernevog brushed the blade aside to close about the hand that held the blade, Chernevog a faceless shadow against the stars, holding his hand, making him look up. “You don’t want to hurt me,” Chernevog said, the way Sasha would wish at him, just as gently, just as subtly: nothing wicked could be that gentle, or that reassuring, and he could not move.

  Then it seemed for a heart-stopping moment the touch of a snake, and he recoiled, finding his sword in his hand and Chernevog close enough; he grabbed at Chernevog’s arm—

  But he found himself quite, quite incapable of moving then, Chernevog laying an arm along his shoulder, taking the sword ever so gently from his fingers, saying to Eveshka, “Don’t do that, ‘Veshka, he’s the one will suffer for it. Do you want that?”

  “No,” she said.

  “I know what you’ve come for. Shall I give it back to you? I can do that. I’ve kept it very well. I knew you’d come, soon or late.”

  “No!” she cried, and Pyetr wanted with all his heart to get his hands on Chernevog’s throat, but he could not, could not even though Chernevog wished him slowly to stand up and look at Eveshka.

  Her face was buried in her hands, her body heaving with quiet sobs.

  “She knows everything she’s done,” Chernevog said, beside him, and put an arm around him. “A heart is nothing I’d want. But I can make her happy. And you—what do you want? Your young friend safe?”

  “All of us,” he muttered, knowing it was useless.

  “I’ll throw in Uulamets, if he’ll be reasonable, ease poor ‘Veshka’s mind—yours, too. There’s nothing so terrible about what I want. No tsar you could find so kind as I am—”

  “Go to hell!” he said, and suddenly Eveshka went pale, spinning off threads of herself, faster and faster, until the starlight shone through her, until the threads wrapped themselves about him, the shocks multiplied and he heard her sobbing, “Kavi, Kavi, no!”

  “On the other hand,” Chernevog said, when the sparks cleared out of his vision and he was lying numb on the ground, “you can go to hell yourself, peasant lout, much, much more easily than I.”

  CHAPTER 31

  UULAMETS CHANTED SOFTLY, while the smoke went up, and ghosts swirled through their midst—but not within the smoke. Uulamets mixed ash and herbs into one of his small pots, then took a small flint blade and cut his wrist with it, bleeding into the bowl. “You,” he said to Sasha.

  Sasha, head spinning from the smoke, set the knife to his arm and brought it sharply down. Blood made a steady drip into the pot—not so painful: but his hands shook as he gave the items back.

  “Vodka couldn’t hurt,” Uulamets said, then, and unstopped the jug and took a drink and added that, too, which gave Sasha a queasy feeling as much as the bloodletting. “Don’t you know?” he asked, indignant, and Uulamets :

  “No.” Uulamets stopped the jug, stirred the mix with a carved bit of bone, added moss and another powder. “It can vary.” He took a twig from the fire and poked the burning end into the pot.

  It went up with a puff of fire, and Uulamets hastily danced it from one hand to the other, tamped in more herbs, then put the hollow bone into it and covered the bowl with his hand while he breathed the smoke through the bone.

  He passed pot and bone to Sasha. “Breathe deep,” he said, and as Sasha did that, “deeper.—Good lad.”


  His chest burned; his eyes blurred from tears as Uulamets took it back, sucked in several more puffs, then suddenly leaned forward, grasped him by the shoulder and blew smoke into his face, saying, again, “Breathe.”

  He did that. He did it twice and three times, and Uulamets wished him—he felt it start—let go, breathe the smoke he breathed, deeper and deeper, back and forth—

  Breathe out, breathe out, breathe out, hold nothing back—

  Heart and soul, boy, breathe it out—

  He was not governing his own body: Uulamets kept the breath coming out of him until he was fainting, falling against the old man’s hands.

  Then Uulamets made him breathe in, larger and deeper breaths, until there were enough of them and often enough mat Sasha could clench his hands and move his limbs and know that it was his own volition, that he was back from wherever he had been—

  But not without change. Not without a feeling of intimacy that made him afraid not to look into Uulamets’ eyes, and have Uulamets’ look into his, but he did that; because Uulamets wanted him to.

  The will went out of him, then, his hand lifted without his knowing why, and the raven landed on his wrist, its wings fanning smoke that stung his eyes. It hopped then to Uulamets’ outstretched hand and then to his shoulder, not objecting to the smoke or the fire, turning its single glittering eye toward him.

  Not a natural creature, very, very old, its feathers dulled, half-blind before Uulamets had wished it to his service and given it his heart, having no living thing else.

  “Better him than Draga,” Uulamets said, and flung it aloft, a heavy flap of wings into the night above the fire. “I wasn’t totally a fool.”

  Sasha knew other things, when he tried to think about Pyetr’s whereabouts: he wanted to know where Pyetr was, and instead knew too much about Draga, and women—things he had never experienced in his life; and most of all about Eveshka and Uulamets and Chernevog, so that he plunged his head into his hands and felt the whole world spinning, his innocence despicable and dangerous-He wanted to know about Pyetr, it was all he wanted, it was all that was left of everything he personally wanted—and he understood now that that wish had importance to people everywhere in the land, for generations and generations of Vojvodas and Kievs as far as he could think of—knew that the wish for

  Pyetr’s safety above all else might give everything to Chernevog, who might already have killed him.

  “Head over heart,” Uulamets said, laying a hand on his shoulder, shaking him gently, and Sasha wiped his eyes and nodded, trying, god! trying not to wish anything for a while.

  “Eventually you know,” Uulamets said, “you’re better off without a heart. My friend up there could carry both—”

  Sasha shook his head, wiped his eyes again and swallowed the lump in his throat, trying to think, simply to think what to want.

  That people be free and good-minded and safe from calamities: that wizards everywhere want that above all—

  “Unfortunately,” Uulamets said, “we have our faults. Our hearts aren’t perfect. And when we’re a damned, self-centered fool like our enemy, we’re in trouble.”

  We should wish for the most right things, Sasha thought.

  “That’s very good,” Uulamets said, “but in the meanwhile our enemy has more power than we do and we’re not likely to get our way just by wishing, are we?”

  “So what are we going to do?”

  “The power of names,” Uulamets said, and jabbed a finger at his chest. “Specificity over generality. When you wish for something specific and put a name on that one little thing—” Uulamets measured a tiny distance with his fingers, the size of a gnat. “That will go right through a wide, vague wish, like a stone through smoke. Poof. Wishes work best on unbalanced things.”

  “So it’s who’s smarter.”

  “And gifted. And what resources he has. Our enemy’s betting on all three. He’s a fool on a grand scale—but not in the little ones.”

  “Didn’t he wish not to get caught stealing?”

  “This book—” Uulamets laid a hand on the pack that he always kept close to him. “Is like that jug of yours. Like the raven. Nothing can happen to it so long as I live. Nothing will ever break that damned jug, till the day you die. Don’t do things like that lightly, hear me?”

  “The ghosts aren’t bothering us—” Sasha realized of a sudden, off the thought of having failed in his recent wishes.

  “He’s thinking again. Or we’ve overpowered them by knowing what we want. Who knows?”

  “Isn’t he going to know?”

  “Maybe. If he’s paying attention.”

  “But aren’t—” He did not want to quarrel with master Uulamets, but he had the most overwhelming anxiety about their waiting till morning.

  “What you haven’t learned,” Uulamets said, lifting a cautionary finger, “what you haven’t learned that you absolutely must, boy, is that a wizard can do more with a clear head at a distance man he can do, muddled and exhausted, close at hand—at least where it regards an enemy well-rested, comfortable, who’s had ample while to decide what he’s going to do about us. What we have to do—what we have to do is find his weaknesses and deny him the specific things he wants us to do. And get close enough and wise enough to see the specific things to undo him. Back and forth, you see. Rapidly. Very like any other kind of fighting. Dawn’s coming soon. I’m going to wish us both to sleep.”

  “If that’s a mistake, if that’s what he’s wishing us—”

  Uulamets tapped him on the forehead. “You don’t want something to happen. Vague as smoke. Wish instead with me: that we wake up safe, unrobbed, unthreatened, and in time, in spite of him. And shut up.”

  Uulamets tapped his forehead a second time, he felt himself going, and had wits left only enough to grab his blanket and dispose himself safely on the ground.

  He doubted their safety: he tried with all the force he had to believe everything was safe while sleep was overwhelming him…

  And was next aware of light falling on his face and of a rustling of dead leaves, before something landed on his chest and grabbed his collar.

  “God!” he gasped, eyes wide, nose-to-button nose and eye-to-moonlike eye with a black fur-ball. “Babi!”

  Babi shook at him, hissing, distraught—

  Babi, who had been with Pyetr—

  “Master Uulamets!—Get off me, Babi, I’m trying to get up!”

  “One never knows,” Uulamets said. “I wished for help, and… to tell the stark truth, I’d hoped for leshys…”

  “But I sent him to stay with Pyetr,” Sasha protested, gathering the dvorovoi into his arms and staggering to his feet. Babi hugged his neck and buried his face in his collar, all of which said to him that Babi was not in fact the help Uulamets had hoped for. Babi was help to no one at the moment. “Babi wouldn’t have left him—”

  “It’s certainly no small thing that’s driven him off,” Uulamets said, and immediately began gathering up his pack. “Babi! Come here!”

  Babi vanished from Sasha’s arms, to the dismay of both of them—simply ceased to be there, or anywhere in their vicinity. “Babi!” Sasha cried softly, casting about to find him; and from Uulamets knew only that it was a very badly used, very frightened Babi—apt to return to them at any moment, or whatever Babi considered a moment, but gone for now to a Place magical creatures could reach and no magician could.

  Where is that? Sasha’s wondered; and Uulamets, shrugging on his pack, said, “They know. We don’t. I’m not sure we’d want to be there. Pack up and come on.”

  Uulamets believed Babi’s appearance meant something direly wrong, that cam* through all too strongly, and Sasha tried to keep himself from panic as they hiked at the best pace they could manage along the overgrown bank, following the stream for a road.

  One or the other of them—he was sure it was Uulamets, because he had never held such terrible ideas in his life—thought what a wizard could do to an ordinary man like Pyetr, if that w
izard were vindictive: whichever of the two of them was responsible for that thought tried not to dwell on it—Sasha was sure he was trying, so maybe his own imagination had grown too wide and too terrible since he and master Uulamets had—

  —had done whatever had happened last night, which left his head crammed with constantly surfacing things he had never wanted to know, understandings too fast and too terrible even for Uulamets, who kept telling him be quiet, stop thinking at him.

  Uulamets himself was upset, Uulamets tried with all his good sense not to strike out at him or flinch from him: “Grow up, boy!” Uulamets said to him; and Sasha tried as hard as he could to be a man, the way he understood a man ought to be—

  Which was Pyetr, so far as he had ever wanted to be anyone.

  That was not by far master Uulamets’ choice: Uulamets thought Pyetr a bad man and undependable and self-indulgent.

  Wrong, Sasha thought.

  “Besides,” he said aloud, “he’s ordinary, and we’re not—you have to allow for that.”

  “I don’t have to,” Uulamets said, “and I won’t.”

  Sasha thought something then he had no desire at all to say to Uulamets : You’d have been better off if you had had somebody like Pyetr. You wouldn’t have been lonely all your life and somebody would have liked you.

  The old man said harshly, “And made mistakes like yours and his, young fool.” Meanwhile Uulamets was thinking, My own are enough—because he bitterly remembered Draga and how beautiful she had been—how for Draga, he had almost made the mistake of calling back his heart, a long, long time ago, where she could have gotten hold of it.

  That’s what Eveshka did, Sasha thought helplessly, and tried not to: it greatly upset Uulamets, as if in all these years he had never remembered that feeling, until he had—Uulamets’ thought—a damned boy pushing at him, making him remember too far back-To being alone; and the fire killing his parents; and uncle Fedya; and Uulamets’ father taking him deep into the woods when he was very small and giving him to an old woman, who was a wizard, and crazed, and very wicked and spiteful—