Yvgenie (v1.1)

by C. J. Cherryh

  He caught a breath. “Which are you?”

  “Wiun. It’s Wiun, young wizard.”

  “God.” There was no resemblance, no likeness. Wiun. Their old friend. As mad as Misighi, wandering apart from other leshys, but younger than most, far younger. And—dying? This peeling wreckage? “Wiun, god—what’s happened to you? The vodyanoi’s loose, Chernevog— Chernevog’s run off with Pyetr’s daughter…”

  “Chernevog. Yes. We know Chernevog.” A deep rumbling then, as of rocks under a flood. “Death in life. Life in death. But he serves the forest.”

  “Chernevog is yours?”

  “Death in life. Life in death. We sustained him. Go to the stone, young wizard.”

  “Wiun! Pyetr has two daughters! Ilyana’s in danger—she needs your help!”

  “Death in life. Life in death. Beyond our help. Beyond the old ones’ strength. We tried. The last is yours. For all our young ones. Go to the stone, young wizard.”

  The voice grew very faint. Wiun let him to the ground with a gentle crackling of twigs. “The stone, the stone that fed Chernevog—the sword that gave back his heart—all of these, our working, young wizard! But all we did is failing. Chernevog failed us. We had not the strength—and she was too strong—”

  “Eveshka?” Sasha asked, out of breath. “Is it Eveshka you’re talking about?”

  “The stone.” Wiun let Nadya down to him, and shut his eyes and ceased to move.

  “Wiun?” he asked, waiting. And: “Is he dead?” Nadya asked after a breath.

  “I don’t know.” He wanted Missy back, and Babi, now, please, quickly. He was shaken himself, and Missy was not going to come near the place, for all his wishing. “Come on,” he said to Nadya, and took her hand and drew her up and up the hill, where he wanted Missy to go now, quickly! One never forgot—never dared forget, in dealing with leshys, how strange they were—and how strong. “Hurry. There might be young ones, that don’t know us.”

  Nadya grabbed her skirts aside and climbed with him, out of breath and with her hair trailing loose from its braids. He pulled her a steep part of the slope, holding on to a sapling, as Nadya panted:

  “I’m all right, I’m all right,” the way her father would when things were not in the least all right, or sane.

  Misighi dead—god, Misighi could not die: Misighi should outlive all of them, like the woods itself—

  But Eveshka had destroyed the old woods, down to one last, wicked tree. The whole heart of the woods had died, and if the leshys of that forest were dying… and dying only now—

  God, what did Ilyana have to do with? And how did Chernevog fail them?

  “What did it mean?” Nadya asked him. “What did it mean, Go to the stone?”

  “It’s a place.” He felt Missy’s presence—she had run along the hill and through thickets. But Missy was not alone. Missy had company she knew. He caught sight of Missy’s spotted rump. And another set of markings.

  Patches. God—

  “It’s another horse,” Ilyana panted.

  Wiun had wanted them here. Magic had. It was no chance meeting. And magic, mindless or mindful, went on attracting pieces that belonged together, the god only hope it would include Ilyana—but he feared not. He feared all sorts of things with scattered pieces falling together as they were.

  “Everything that belongs together,” he muttered, wanting Patches and Missy both, please, quickly now. “Stacks of pottery—”

  “What?” Nadya breathed, struggling to stay up beside him, fighting her tattered skirts clear of brambles.

  “Pottery. Old wishes. They just damned well hang about waiting. It’s dangerous as hell when they start going—one after the other: impossible conditions all over the place and they make each other possible—It’s Ilyana’s horse. God, she’s all over mud and scratches.”

  “Can you ask her where she’s been?”

  Pyetr had never believed in such things. Nadya came believing them.

  All Ilyana’s packs were still on Patches’ saddle—for whatever dire reason.

  He said, with a sinking heart: “I don’t have to ask her.”

  Eveshka sat on the stone, hands blotting out the fading day, thinking deep, deep, into the earth and the stone, wanting the little life that might remain in this grove to wake and listen. She wanted the lifeless hulks to drag up their faded strength—once more—just once more—

  But something else came up from the dark, all dripping with malice, saying, “Well, well, you let the boy go, and where would he go? Where do you think?”

  Pyetr, she thought, trying not to think, and felt a deathly chill. God, no.

  “Oh, they’re marvelously agreed. They’re very worried about you. Why, do you suppose?”

  She wanted the creature away from her. But wanting—was so dangerous from this stone.

  “I know a secret,” Hwiuur said. “I’ve heard it in the streams. I’ve smelled it on the wind.”

  “To the black god with you! I don’t want your secrets!”

  “But you do, pretty bones. Was there ever a secret you could bear not to know?”

  She put her hands over her ears. But that could never silence Hwiuur.

  “Your husband has two daughters. Did you know that, pretty bones?”

  She had not. She cursed the thorns, she cursed the hedges, she cursed the magic that shut her out in silence. She tried not to hear what the creature was saying. She refused to think. Or to wish.

  “The leshys protected her all these years. She came along with Yvgenie. What do you think about that, pretty bones?”

  Pyetr had gone to Kiev. She had wanted him to leave her. He had taken to his wild ways again—if only for the while. And there were women he remembered from long ago—she knew there were, even not wanting to know. He swore not to care for them. He had not then. But he still remembered them, and other people, and the inns full of voices—

  “Did I say Kiev?”

  “Damn you, Hwiuur!”

  “Aren’t you the least bit curious?”

  No, she thought. No. And no.

  “Maybe a boyar’s daughter. Maybe very rich. So much gold. Golden hair, too. Pale, pale gold. Like his. I’ve heard she’s very beautiful.” The voice slid to the other side of her and said, close to her ear, “All the years Sasha wishes to protect Pyetr’s daughter—and he’s protecting her all along. Isn’t that amusing? You know I don’t lie, pretty bones. I never lie.”

  “And you can’t tell the truth without a twist in it! Get away from me!”

  “Maybe it wasn’t Kiev. There are farms. Maybe she’s a farmer’s daughter. A goat-girl.”

  “Be silent!”

  Hwiuur hissed and writhed aside. She clenched her hands in her lap and stared helplessly at the thorns that walled her out, at hedges shot through with ghosts that whispered now in her hearing, Eveshka, Eveshka, murderer—

  She thought, Ilyana, you young fool, don’t listen to them, come back, listen to me, Ilyana—your father is in danger. He’s in dreadful danger—

  From all of us…

  I wanted someone like my father. I didn’t know what I was wanting. I didn’t know what my father is with my mother, and what Kavi is and what she was. Now I know what it feels like. Now I know and I can’t do anything. there’s nothing I can wish that doesn’t hurt and there’s nowhere for me to go but with Yvgenie, because—

  Something cold shivered through the air while Sasha thumbed pages to the light of burning twigs, deeper in the woods, where Wiun would not be offended. A passing cold moment, he told himself, maybe the spookiness of the gathering night, maybe the thunder muttering in the distance. But it was a hell of a place to leave a page.

  And to lose a book.

  “I don’t like this,” he said, and met Nadya’s worried eyes. “God, there’s nothing in it to like, the book stops on a thought and she’d never leave it—Babi. Babi, there’s a good fellow—” He unstopped the vodka jug and poured, and Babi swallowed.

  “Find her, Babi. Can you
find her?”

  He was thinking of rusalki, and lovers, wolves—and Draga. And Babi—Babi turned up on Missy’s rump again, eyes glowing balefully gold in the firelight.

  Sasha said, “He can’t. I wish to the god—”

  No. Fool. One did not think about safe places or putting Nadya in them. Magic was too fickle and too much was loose. One scarcely dared breathe.

  His old master would say, Then do. Use your hands, not your wishes.

  He picked up the fire-pot and lidded it, leaving them in deep dusk, thinking: Wolves. And rusalki.

  If the leshys are dying—it’s not their silence. It’s stopped feeling like the mouse at all. And it’s not Eveshka. It’s nothing, that’s the dreadful thing. It’s—

  —nothing. Wishes just go nowhere against it.

  The day was shadowing out of the east, hastening toward that time when ghosts could most easily get one’s attention—no more real at night, Ilyana reminded herself, only that there were fewer distractions for the eye in the dark, and being alone was worst of all.

  But she had no desire to go up to that awful doorway. She walked the whole circuit of the hill, hoping another path through the thorns might lead out.

  God, but it only came back again, back to the hill and the palace of bone, and all the while the ghostly wolves lay about the door, the bear lazed near them, and Owl, faithless Owl, who should have guided her out of this, kept a watch from a white and dreadful ledge above the porch.

  She did not have to see them. She could wish not to see any ghosts at all and they would be gone until her resolve weakened. But she believed in Owl too much to think he was not there, and she was too afraid of the wolves and the bear to ignore them for long. Besides, they tended to move about especially when one was not looking, and she did not trust them. It was not true that ghosts were harmless. Kavi was not, by day or night. If Kavi was here, Kavi would—

  —Kavi would be a greater danger than any of them.

  A cold lump rose in her throat. She thought, I should try again. I should wish something far cleverer than I have and get out of this place before dark. Uncle would. Mother would. Kavi would think of something if he were here, and uncle was telling the truth, he’s ever so much older—

  Owl can see over the maze. Couldn’t Owl have shown him the way—couldn’t he listen to Owl, if Owl is his?

  I might. I could wish that. But Owl scares me. He always was a standoffish bird.

  If other birds came here I might listen to them. If they did. But all I’ve seen are ghosts…

  Darker and darker. She was scratched and chilled by ghosts, and came to the end of the path again, back at the hill, with no more daylight left and countless aisles of the maze untried—but her legs ached, she was hungry and thirsty, and she sank down in a knot to warm herself and to think and to wait.

  The dark grew. The doors and the windows of the palace began to glow with the slow movement of ghosts. She did not want even to look at it. But it kept drawing her eyes, the way the bear and the wolves did, and Owl at last left his perch and swept a turn about her, winging his way uphill.

  Come back, she wished him, and expected no more obedience than she had ever had from Owl, but he glided about again to settle on her hand, a weightless chill, with baleful and too cognizant eyes.

  The wolves and the bear appeared suddenly in front of her. Away from me! she wished them, and the wolves showed their throats and the bear ducked his head and looked away as a bear would from a wish.

  They did not leap on her. They did not threaten. She took courage from that and wanted them to lead her from the maze.

  But Owl left her fist and flew back up the hill, and the wolves and the bear slunk after him.

  —Is that the way out? she wondered, hugging herself against the sudden chill of that thought.

  Is the way out to go into that place and deal with what lives there?

  I’m not uncle Sasha. I’m not as strong as he is.

  But he said I was.

  If I dared listen to Owl—if I dared—

  “Grandfather?” she asked the empty air.

  A horrid thing burst into her view and gibbered at her and fled.

  Grandfather, if that was you, behave! I want you. Right now. No nonsense!

  “Disrespectful whelp,” a shapeless thing said, a mere wisp in front of her.

  If I can’t wish someone who likes me, what chance have I with something that doesn’t? Show me the way out of this place.

  “Is that all?” The thing became an upright shape. “Magic brought you here, and you want to run away.”

  This isn’t a nice place, grandfather!

  “Isn’t a nice place. Isn’t a nice place. Ha. What a grand-child! Whose daughter are you?”

  Papa’s. And uncle’s…

  “Ha,” the ghost said. “You’re my wish, girl. But so far I like your father better.”

  He was going again. She did not understand him. She did not understand what she had done to make him say that, or what he meant—

  —Except… papa takes chances.

  And this isn’t a place without wishes—my grandfather’s here, and he wished me, but that doesn’t matter: there can’t be a place there aren’t wishes, Kavi was right. When I ran I only took them with me—because I took me where I ran to…

  And why would he say he liked my father? He didn’t like him. They didn’t get along, mother always said that. She didn’t get along with him. Nobody could.

  Ghosts can’t always tell you all the truth. No more than they can lay hands on you. They can get just so close. Because they can’t do anything in the world—and their wishes aren’t strong enough unless they’re rusalki like—

  —mother.

  If I’m his wish he had to have made it before he died. And he died bringing mother back. Uncle said.

  She looked up at the palace on the hill, at the doorways where ghosts moved.

  Did he wish me here? He hated Kavi. Didn’t he?

  Is this whole place—my grandfather’s wish? Is he what’s waiting inside?

  She drew a breath, thinking how nice breathing was, even here, and took a first step up the hill. Nothing told her right or wrong. Nothing would, she decided, and took several breaths.

  Uncle would say, It’s up to you, mouse.

  Another handful of herbs. Firelight, fractured in smoke-stung tears. Eveshka drew in a deep breath, deeper still-Papa would say, The magic’s not the smoke, the magic’s not in the smoke—

  She recalled an ember in her mother’s hand, fire against unburned flesh—magic, against nature—but not wholly against nature. Easier to wish the air than the ember, and send the heat away as fast as it could come—

  Draga tried her with such illusions, but a young wizard’s eye had seen the means: not sorcery, but cleverness. Not magic: seeing to the nature of a thing. Draga’s only great magic, her truly dangerous magic—was her own daughter’s murder: was death, and a naive girl’s wish for life.

  The magic’s in the thinking. The magic’s in facing the truth, young fool!

  I was the spell you cast, mother, wasn’t I? Kavi only thought he betrayed you. But when you wish something as strong as I am dead—who can know how it might defend itself?

  It was such a foolish act, mother. Kavi said you were a fool in all the important ways. Or perhaps you aren’t through with your own wishes yet, and you wished Ilyana born— though I doubt that, one can never be sure. One can never be safe enough.

  Time had been that she had resented her father’s meddling, time had been his advice and his teachings had seemed foolish limits. But his daughter wished him back now, if it were possible—wished a ghost out of the earth and longed for even the whisper of his presence.

  You never taught me forgiveness, papa, but I try, I do try, the way Pyetr said—and you never trusted him. Why?

  Is there foresight? Is it something he would do? Or that I would, for him? Or is it the daughter we would make! Sasha says—the things that will be change
with every change we make. Sasha says—that’s why no bannik will stay with us.

  So there’s no predicting. Is there?

  Pyetr’s hands, fingers so long and agile with the dice-teaching Ilyana—

  No, she had said. No. Pyetr, it’s not a toy for a wizard. Not for us—

  Why? he had asked. And had not understood her distress.

  It disturbs me, she had written in her book that day. I don’t know why. Prediction—that’s what it does. But every time you throw them, every time you hope for an outcome, every time you wish into uncertainty—

  Pyetr had said, Try it, ‘Veshka. For the god’s sake, it’s just a game.

  It’s just a game…

  She squeezed her eyes shut, pressed her hands against her head, thinking: Is that why you feared him, papa?

  You drove our bannik away, you wanted to pin the future down and you kept after it with questions and questions until it ran away.

  Even looking at the future changes it. You have to walk blind or you’re not walking where you would have—

  I could wish things right. I’m stronger than my mother. Or my father.

  If I knew beyond a doubt. If there were no uncertainty.

  There was a sudden chill in the night, a shift in the wind that carried the smoke aside. And in her heart the old Snake whispered: “Well, well, pretty bones. Do you finally need my help?”

  She felt the thoughts that went left and right of reason. Change? Hwiuur was on all sides of a question at once. Hwiuur had no sides. And no real shape, nothing, at least, permanent.

  Like Pyetr’s dice.

  “Well, pretty bones, how does it fare tonight? Missing its young one? Its young one’s gone where it daren’t.”

  One wanted the creature. And so few ever would.

  He lunged, he rolled and twisted. She remembered his touch, she remembered the water and the pain of his bite, blindingly sharp.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know where your husband is tonight, pretty bones?”

  There was cold, there was dark. Time was that she had refused to die. Now there were conditions under which she would not live.