C. Cherryh - Yvgenie

Nadya came and sank down close to them, tacked down in a knot with her hands clenched white before her lips. Scared, decidedly, this daughter of his in gilt and tattered silk. Worried. With damned good reason.

A wolf—it might be the same wolf—slipped in and out of view, threading a path through the brush, and one could easily feel more anxious not knowing where it was than knowing. It had come closer a moment ago—but Bielitsa had made no protest, not even a twitch of her ears, and Yvgenie rubbed his eyes with chilled fingers, wondering was the wolf a ghost itself, and whether the ghost inside him knew it.

He was convinced there was a place ahead of them where the wolf could not reach, a terrible place, but safe from that danger. He had no clear memory any longer where the boundaries were between himself and the ghost, it was all a struggle now, moment by moment, to keep awake. Perhaps it was bewitchment. Perhaps it was simple weariness. But his hold on the world was slipping, that was the only way he could think of it; and he did not want to alarm Ilyana— everything seemed so precarious and so fragile now, and he did not want to talk about ghosts, or dying.

They reached the bottom of the hill and Ilyana reined in a moment, where there was water. The horses drank, wading into the stream, heedless of danger.

They can’t see it, he thought. They can’t smell it. It’s sun a ghost, like Owl.

It was there again, the wolf was, trotting across the slope in front of them.

“Do you see it?” he asked desperately.

“The wolf?”

“There,” he said. But by the time she had looked where he pointed, it had gone.

She patted Patches’ neck while Patches drank. Bielitsa gave a little twitch of her shoulders and lifted her head. “Probably he’s a little crazy. Uncle says they’ll kill one that’s too different.”

“Like people,” he said, and found himself remembering, not knowing what he was going to say, “My father had other sons.”

There had been another wife. His mother was dead. His father had had something to do with that, but he could not remember what, he could not remember his father’s face, try as he would. He only recalled a silhouette against a window; remembered nothing of home, though it seemed to him a while ago he had known more than that. He saw a gray sky above stark walls. He did not know why that image should terrify him or why people shouting should be so ominous. A dreadful thump, then, shocked through his bones.

The ghost said, against his heart, The man deserved what he got. Can you possibly mourn him? He gave you nothing but pain.

He understood then that it had been his father’s death he had just witnessed, and he was sure he had not been there—it had not happened when he had left. He thought, cold and sick at heart: The tsar must have found him out. The tsar must have learned he was plotting against him—but surely it wasn’t my fault—please the god it wasn’t my fault he’s dead—

Fool, the ghost said. I give you justice and you’re sorry? How can you forgive so much evil?

Memory of a gray sky. A feeling of justice done, but he could take no joy in it. The ghost’s question seemed wistful and angry at once, as if it truly did not understand. His hands felt chill as he drew up on Bielitsa’s reins, going on in the lead, he had forgotten where for the moment, and why, except he felt the wolf’s presence closer now, and he wanted them quickly on their way.

How can you forgive him? the ghost insisted to know, determined to know, because he had tried very hard and very long to understand what justice was. He did harm to everyone around him. How can you forgive him? How dare you forgive evil like that?

But Ilyana said, riding beside him, “What did he get? Who are you talking about?”

Her question confused him. He knew too many things, knew he had been hours ahead of his father’s men when he had reached Vojvoda; and he had known then they would kill Ilyana, and all her house—for nothing that was her fault—

No. The ghost was adamant. No. There had been a river shore.

She had said once, behind the stairs, I don’t know the town. I’ve never been outside the walls. My window only looks out on the garden. —And he had remembered that. And drowned her, for fear of what she was, or might become.

“Yvgenie?” she said.

He said, desperately scanning the branches and the sky, “Owl’s gone.”

“He’ll be back. He comes and goes.—You’re not worried about the wolf, are you?”

“Owl’s gone. The black thing is.” His heart was pounding in his chest, as if he were drowning. He knew that sunlight was still around him, he could see it everywhere, every detail of the branches and the leaves around them, every detail of her face and the sunlight on her hair. He kept remembering that day on the river, that he had known he loved her, quite, quite helplessly, and far differently this year than the boy he had been, the lost boy the woods had sustained in innocence—

There was no more innocence, once awareness came, only a struggle to love, and not to kill—this moment, and the next and the next—

He shut his eyes and rubbed them, with fingers gone quid chill, thinking, I can’t remember what’s mine any longer, god, whoever you were, Kavi Chernevog, whatever you did, give my memories back to me—or remember your own. I’m losing things. I’m trying to hold on, but I’m so tired—

But he remembered the river too, ill-matching pieces coming together for a moment, and said, “He forgives too much, Ilyana. There is evil in the world. There truly is evil. And he’s been too close to it. —So have I. And the wicked ones never tell you the truth. Do you know that?”

“Are you one of the wicked ones?”

“No.” He said—and it was a great effort to say, against the need he had for her: “Ilyana, don’t wish. Don’t wish anymore. Don’t expect things. You’re stronger than you know. Let go and let me lead you.”

She looked at him in dismay. She said, in a voice scarcely louder than the wind, “Who are you? Is it Kavi?”

He could not shape the words. He fought them out, not even understanding what the ghost made him say, “Ilyana, that place of yours—You’re wishing for what doesn’t exist. You don’t imagine how dangerous that is. You don’t know enough, Ilyana. You’re getting yourself deeper and deeper into trouble.”

“But can’t it exist? What else is magic, but wishing what isn’t yet? It will exist if I want it to—”

He saw the rooftops of Kiev, suns and moons careering above the golden domes, above the banners of the Great Tsar—remembered leaves and thorns, ominous as the echo of axes off snowy walls. He thought, in utter despair: I don’t want to do what I’m doing; but he could not remember why he felt so afraid of the place he was going, or so apprehensive of what might befall her there. He looked to the reddening and began to think, It’s because it’s too late. We can’t go back from here. There’s only wanting— his wanting, now, I’m so damned tired I can’t keep them apart, even know-what it’s doing—god, I’m not even sure it’s right—

“Wizards can do this to themselves,” Pyetr said, while Sasha slept.

Nadya looked at Sasha distressedly, and darted a look at him as he fed a few twigs into the fire. “Why?”

“Hell if I know.” But he did know. It was a way out of bud thoughts, dangerous thoughts, which were the straight path to unwise wishes. It was the powerful wizards that did it, so far as he knew of how things worked: small need the village toad sellers had of such defenses—if they could do it at all. To his observation only Sasha and the mouse could do it; and Eveshka, he supposed—last resort before one burned down Kiev or something—