He’s doing something. My father said—he wants things and they happen. Anything he wants—
God, one has to be so careful with him. Careful of him.
Take care of him, her father had charged her. She had thought—until he wakes. But she began to see what her father find trusted to her, and how very much Sasha needed someone he could trust—
Someone as brave as her father, someone not afraid of him—no matter what.
Desolation, ghosts, stones and peeling roots of broken trees, banks of thorns that went to powder in a grasping hand, that was the place Ilyana saw: Owl was still with her—but cast about as she would among the hedges she could not find a way out again, nor, it seemed, could Owl. Ghosts wove pale threads through the hedges and the branches of dead trees, cold to the touch and angry, one could feel it.
“Yvgenie!” she had shouted till she was hoarse, but only the faint wailing of ghosts answered. He was alone with Patches and Bielitsa in a place where life was fading and the result of that she did not want to imagine—Patches had never asked to be taken out into the woods and lost to a ghost. Her father was looking for her, beyond a doubt, and if she had feared her father harming Yvgenie, now it was Kavi harming her father she had to fear. She thought in despair. God, he couldn’t keep up and I wouldn’t listen. I’ve done everything wrong and now I can’t get back again. Papa was right and I wouldn’t listen to him, I thought I knew better—
Something moved in the tail of her eye. A wolf sat there, the one that they had followed into this place. It looked alive, yellow-eyed and with fur mostly white, but touched with gray and buff. Behind it, tongues lolling, sat others, milky-pale as Owl. Those were surely ghosts.
The living wolf got up and trotted away. The others followed it; and Owl glided after.
Dangerous to wish for what doesn’t exist, Kavi had warned her. Now she was on the verge of wanting her uncle to rescue her and most dangerously on the edge of wanting her father, the god forbid she should be so selfishly stupid. Her mother might know what to do, if her mother would even listen to her situation now, of which she despaired entirely: her mother was not inclined to patience; but god, she was in trouble. The leshys were dead. No one had ever told her that such things could happen, let alone that the woods might suddenly change beyond her understanding.
But they had warned her about Kavi. And she had thought it was so simple—as if loyalty and wishes could sustain him She thought, on the edge of tears: Uncle tried to tell me. Hope never seemed dangerous till this. Now I know what it can do to fools that won’t listen.
Ghosts belong here. Yvgenie doesn’t, not yet: he’s not dead and he’s not a wizard. That’s why he could get away and get Kavi out of this place. God, I don’t want to follow these creatures—it’s stupid. But Owl’s going. And if I lose Owl, what other tie have I got to the other side of the hedge?
Mother, I’m listening now. Uncle, I’m dreadfully sorry… Papa, please don’t come after me. Even wizards don’t belong here. You couldn’t—
A ghost poured out into the aisle ahead of her, and shaped itself into a great lumbering bear, white as snow. It looked at her over its shoulder, and its face showed a dreadful scar, as if something had burned it once.
She thought, It’s not just a ghost of a bear, it was a real bear once. Something dreadful happened to it. And what does it have to do with me?
A ghost swept near her, saying, Ilyana, granddaughter, look at me.
She did look. She saw a man’s misty face, fierce and young and very handsome.
It said, You’re my wish, Ilyana. And your grandmother’s. We never agreed, so least one of us has to be right. Your father was no one’s choosing—or he was your mother’s whim. I’ve no idea. I only know he’s made you terribly dangerous.
She was stung by that. She said, There’s nothing wrong with my father!
A raven had joined the ghost, shaped itself out of the mist and drifted with them, on gray wings. The ghost said, Your father is a gambler—but he’s no one’s fool. Your mother is a damned good wizard—and that’s enough to know. —I wish you to make your own choices, granddaughter. Be what you are.
“But you say I’m dangerous!” she protested, seeing the ghost fade away. “Are you my grandfather Uulamets? You must be! Come back! I’m not through talking to you!”
But the ghost shredded apart and streamed away through the hedges. The scar-faced bear and the wolves and Owl went ahead of her, and sometimes the ghostly raven, until through a last screen of thorns she could see what shone so pale and strange, a beautiful palace of curious design, made all of white stones, on a hill girt by thorn hedges laced with ghosts.
The evening light cast strange shadows on the white palace, making odd shadows, making its walls and its towers appear like lace. How beautiful, Ilyana thought, pulling aside a last few thorn boughs. How can anything so beautiful be wicked or dangerous? Kavi was wrong.
Something crunched beneath her foot. She looked down and saw a broken vault of bone—some old skull, buried in the earth. There were more such. Not stones, she thought, gazing up a hill where other such objects lay half-buried all up the hill to the foundation of the palace.
God, no, not stones that made such lacy walls and towers—but bleached and dreadful bones.
12
Birds took sudden flight from beyond the hill. Pyetr saw it and earnestly wished for Sasha, for the mouse—for his wife, if he could truly rely on her now. They were not the only adventurers in the woods, the dead deer proved that; an ordinary man had no way to learn what had raised the alarm in the direction he had to go except to go and see. Slipping up and over the hill afoot was once choice; but that meant leaving Volkhi tied, and, risking him, chancing being surprised afoot.
So he drew his sword as quietly as he could and kept riding, watching the trees ahead. He rounded the shoulder of the hill at a walk, feeling something eerily familiar and untrustworthy and magical at once.
He thought: ‘Veshka? Eveshka’s presence had touched him first like that—years ago; when he thought of it, it felt frighteningly like her, not his wife the way she had been for the last eighteen years, not the way she had felt since she had returned to the living. It stirred old nightmares. And an infatuation with his own destruction that had moved him once, in his bitter youth, when now life was very precious. He thought, ‘Veshka, god, is it you?
A patch of red showed on the hill, the red of blood; of flowers that never bloomed in woodland shade; or a silk shirt that was folly in the woods. Yvgenie.
But no sign of the mouse.
Volkhi had stopped unbidden, laid his ears back and swung half about. An ungodly feeling crawled up and down his spine while his own good sense and his experience of a rusalka’s attraction said stay clear, get away, Ilyana was his first obligation. But the boy—
He reined Volkhi around and around again while he hesitated. He was not making clear choices. But, dammit, he had prayed for Chernevog in his reach. He had set himself deliberately in the way of chance and others’ wishes. And the question now was whether he even had the power to ride past, or whether, trying, he would ran head-on into fate.
Then he felt the likeness of an arm reach about him, like ice, and Chernevog whispered ever so faintly, at the very nape of his neck, “Pyetr. Dear Owl.”
He made a wild sweep of his arm, but it met only deathly chill and fell numb at his side. His heart struggled, his head spun, and Chernevog said,
“Your daughter’s in danger.”
“I know she’s in danger, damn you.”
“The harm I could do is only death. Get down. Get down, now, Pyetr Ilitch.”
He wanted not to, he wanted to swing around and lay hands on Chernevog, but that was not a choice; his hands and feet were growing numb and he found himself sliding down from the saddle and staggering his way to Yvgenie’s side, where Chernevog wished him to go.
The boy lay like the dead, scratched and bleeding, the red shirt in snags and ruins. For a moment he pitied t
he boy, wanted to help him—
Then Yvgenie reached and seized his arm and the tingling crept up toward his heart, beyond his power to tear away, beyond his power even to want to escape, or to look away as Yvgenie’s eyes opened and looked into his, as Yvgenie’s lips said quietly, “Dear Owl. You came in time. And brought us horses. How foresighted of you.”
Damn you, he tried to say. But words and sense were beyond him. There was only the feeling of suffocation, that once had had infatuation and desire and everything he loved wrapped with it, and now had only desperation and fear and the memory of his wife as a killer, no different than the men who had hunted him.
He waked lying helpless on the ground and Chernevog was bending over him, brushing his cheek with a gentle touch and saying, “Catch your breath, dear Owl.”
His head hurt. His whole body was floating. The leaves against a darkening sky made a dizzying sound. “Where’s my wife? Where’s my daughter, damn you?”
“Where’s Sasha? Following you?”
“You’re the wizard. Figure it out.”
A great breath then, a rapid blink of Yvgenie’s eyes and a different touch, at his shoulder this time. “I had to leave her, sir, I was afraid—afraid he couldn’t stop if he got near her—” Another breath. Another blink of the eyes as Chernevog caught up his shirt in his fist. “The boy’s Kurov, do you understand me? Your wife’s wishes have come home to roost. A great many dark birds have, do you hear me, Pyetr Ditch?”
“Kurov!” Nothing made sense.
“Didn’t he say?” Again the tingling ran through his bones. And stopped. “He must have forgotten that part.”
“Damn you!”
“He brought your daughter here. Ill wishes have a way of burning the hand that looses them. Do you understand me now? Your wife wanted harm. And here there is, Owl, harm in Kiev, harm in this woods, harm to you and Ilyana and the woods itself.”
“Harm from you, you damned dog.” He made a try at getting up, but his head spun and Chernevog slammed him back to the ground.
“Listen to me, Pyetr Ilitch.”
One had to. One had no damned choice. And no breath left to protest. One recalled faces, years ago, a dice game in Kiev, with the tsarevitch, a man who had stood aside to whisper to others in a corner. And a lump on his head and a damnably uncomfortable night thereafter with certain men, until they had left him alone in the room with a very small window above a clothes press.
A reeling progress through the dark—
Pavel Kurov. Kurov’s house—
“Out the window and along a rooftop—you certainly never lost your knack, dear Owl. Unfortunately neither has your wife; and your wife has driven your daughter to what she’s done, your wife wished harm to me and harm to your enemies, and she’s got that, now. That your enemy’s son should bring your daughter to this woods is the tendency of wishes— they take the easiest course. Harm does, do you hear me?”
He stopped fighting. It sounded too much like the sort of thing Sasha would say. Had said, repeatedly. Always the easiest course. Always the course that satisfies most wishes at once. Like piles of old pottery, Sasha was wont to say, all stacked up and waiting the moment they all become possible…
Things happen that can happen—
“Why in hell,” he said when he had a breath, “why didn’t you come to me, if you’re so damned concerned about my wife?”
“I didn’t know what she’d done. I do now. I talked with her. She took everything I’d gained. She wanted Kurov to suffer. She wanted everyone who ever harmed you to suffer. Do you half understand? She’s looking for Ilyana right now and I can’t stop her, Pyetr Ilitch.”
“God.” He rolled onto one arm and tried to get up, failed and found the boy’s arm under his, the boy’s face broken out in sweat. Kurov’s son. Eye to eye with him.
He was sure it was Yvgenie who said, ever so faintly, “I love her. I know you hate me. But I swear to you, I truly do love her.”
“Love her, boy? You’re in the hands of wizards! Do you even know what you want any longer?”
The boy made a desperate shake of his head. “I don’t care.”
He thought, Fool, boy!
But that described more than Yvgenie Kurov.
He leaned on Yvgenie’s arm, he put himself to his feet and staggered after Volkhi, saying, “If we’re dealing with my wife, you’d better stay to my back.”
A hand landed on his shoulder. He knew before he looked around and saw Yvgenie who he was facing.
Chernevog said, “I love her, too, Pyetr Ilitch. The god help us. I had nothing to do with it. I couldn’t stop it. Misighi, damn him…”
God, tears welled up. And spilled, in his old enemy’s confusion. What did one say?
Fool for believing them, that was what.
“Pyetr, they wanted me to bring her to them. Misighi did—to be sure she wouldn’t—go my way—”
“What do you mean, go your way? If they wanted to talk to her they could have come to the door any day.—What did they want with her?”
Chernevog shook his head. “I don’t know. I can’t do anything against them, I can’t remember things, I’m not strong enough any longer— Being dead’s a damned inconvenience, Pyetr.”
“The hell!” He grabbed a fistful of silk shirt. “You’re not a fool, Kavi Chernevog, never try to persuade me you are. What did the leshys intend?”
“To save her. Their way. But they’re dead, Pyetr, they’re all dead, and I couldn’t stay with her in that place, I’d have killed her—”
“You’re a liar, Chernevog. You’ve been a liar since you were whelped, a hundred and too damn many years ago—”
“I’m not lying now, I swear to you, there’s something where she is, there’s something in that place and I couldn’t go any further—the boy’s not dead, and I couldn’t go—”
“The boy’s not dead! My daughter isn’t dead, Snake, don’t talk to me about loving her after you ran off and left her somewhere—”
“Because I’d kill her. Because the boy was dying, and he had the sense to do it, that’s the truth, Pyetr Ilitch. I’m not sure I did.”
God, he thought. Chernevog admitting failure? One could almost believe the scoundrel.
If one did not feel at the moment as if something was crawling on one’s skin, and know that even thinking about life, Chernevog was wanting it.
“Get on your horse,” he said. “Damn you, we’re going.”
Wishes come true at a time they can. So here I am, damn you, too, Snake: you swore once you wanted my friendship. And isn’t that wish of yours older than my daughter?
Yvgenie. Kurov’s boy. God.
The shadows were getting longer, and the way more overgrown. Babi skipped ahead of them, stopped and stared at them as if he could not after all these years understand why they could not pass a thicket the way he could.
Babi was upset. Sasha could tell that in the aspect he took, in the fact that Babi did not sulk about supper. It was cheese and honey-lumps eaten on horseback, water when they could, vodka to ease the aches where magic was elsewhere occupied; and Nadya had not made one complaint of pain or weariness the day long. She looked so tired as he held up his hands and let her slide off Missy’s rump for a little while. Missy took a step down to cool her feet in the brook that offered them a moment’s comfort. Nadya knelt to drink and wash her face, a very pale face in the fading light. He began to do the same.
Brush cracked—something coming through the thicket, he thought, a bear or a deer, something large and strong. But Missy thought suddenly of moving trees and grabby-things, and he made a snatch after her bridle, waded into the stream to hold her, wanting her to be reasonable, please, stand still, no moving tree would catch her while he had hold of her.
Brush cracked, and he heard a voice like rolling rocks, saying from a thicket across the stream, “Young wizard.”
He wanted Missy to stay calm. He was not. He was shaking as he led Missy across the stream, Missy strenuously re
fusing his assurances. No. It was a moving tree. She did not like them. They were not nice. They should all run away. Please.
He knew the leshys’ names, at least two and three score of them, knew most by sight and some even by the sound of their voices—but this one was so ruined and changed, peeling and hung about with spiderweb and dry leaves and grown over with living vine—he was appalled.
The leshy lifted an arm and reached for him. “Don’t be afraid!” he turned to call out to Nadya, as Missy jerked back and the reins burned through his grasp. But Nadya had followed him—much too close for safety. “Stay back!” he cried as leshy fingers wrapped about him and drew him inexorably away from her and upward. Like limber twigs, they were— like being enveloped by living brush-But not harmed. Yet.
“Where’s Misighi?” he demanded of it, angry, desperate, and all too aware of the strength in the fingers that wrapped about his waist; while from below: “Let him go!” Nadya cried, and pulled at his foot. “Let go!”
“Misighi is dead,” a deep voice said, deep as bone. “So many are.”
Dead, he thought, stunned. Misighi dead? No. He recalled Misighi’s booming voice and the last time he had see him— walking by the streamside—
Nadya cried, below him, with a dead branch in hand, “Sasha! What shall I do?” and twiggy fingers reached past him with a crackling and shattering of brush.
“Run!” he cried, but the creature had gathered up Nadya too, far too tightly. “She can’t breathe! Dammit, be careful! You brought her, don’t kill her!”
“Calm, calm,” it said, and drew them both close to its trunk and smelled them over. “This is the same, yes. Pyetr’s young one. Who else would attack us with sticks? And the young wizard. Yes, both. Don’t you know me?”
He caught a breath. “Which are you?”