C. Cherryh - Yvgenie

Sasha’s eyes had opened. He was looking at her. He went on looking at her and the breath froze in her throat.

Anything he wants, her father had said.

He moved his elbow, and pushed himself up to look around. “God. Pyetr?” He staggered to his feet to look about firelit woods, and at her, with an accusation that made breathing difficult.

He remembered her father riding off into the dark, she remembered him telling her, Take care of Sasha… Tell him — you don’t have to tell him. He knows things like that. Just take care of him. He doesn’t remember to do that himself…

“Oh, god,” Sasha said, and she got up, she had no idea why, except he was in a hurry, and she could think of nothing but gathering things up and getting on the horse, whose name was Missy, and finding Pyetr before something found him, please the god—

Sasha was packing up his books. He said, “How long has he been gone?” and she answered, “A while,” shivering inside, because she realized then he was making her think of things, and he was sorry. He wanted her to forgive him and she did, she had no choice. Dammit!

“Please.” He cast her a look of purest misery. “I think I wished you here, I could have wished you born and Pyetr to trouble for all I know, and please excuse me, I’m not used to being near ordinary people, except Pyetr.”

Her father knew how to listen to him and answer him with just thinking, her father was a brave man with no fear of him, or of half the things else in the world he should be afraid of. Like vodyaniye. Like wizards and his other daughter and the rusalka who had taken Yvgenie…

“Please,” he said faintly, aloud, and she saw herself standing there with a knife in her hand, while he was standing there with his hands full of ropes and packs, and wanting her not to stand in his horse’s way, please, so Missy could reach him, so they could be moving. Something might have wanted Pyetr to go alone. Pyetr had had that notion from the beginning. And Pyetr had so little defense against the people he loved. Please be out of the way—and do what he asked— right now. Please.

Day came creeping through the tangle of branches, with the distant muttering of thunder—decidedly not the sound a man wanted to hear, with wizards involved. Pyetr dipped his hands in cold water, splashed his face and wiped his hair back for the moment it would stay out of his eyes, rocked onto his knees and sat with his eyes shut a moment, while Volkhi drank.

Not the wisest thing to do, perhaps, going off the second time alone, but in coldest sanity he did not think that surprising the mouse or ’Veshka with Nadya in his company was the best idea right now. Jealousy, hurt feelings, he had seen enough, even between his wife and the daughter he had known all her life.

And if an unmagical man had gotten any wisdom about magic after all these years, or about the hearts of wizards, there seemed only one way to put a stop to craziness when wishes got out of hand, and that was to put himself squarely in their way.

Sasha, Eveshka, Ilyana. Do what you like. But I’m not on anyone’s side. I won’t be. Don’t think it.

A second splash of water. The air was cold. But he and the old lad had been moving, and he had hurt his hand somewhere, add that to the account of an aching shoulder and aching bones. Nothing against nature, Sasha would say.

But, god, what else have we done in this woods?

Third splash of water. He shut his eyes and let the water run down his neck, numbing the fire in his shoulders and the ache behind his eyes. There was no constant pull and push here, no knowledge turning up unasked—it was quiet, truly quiet, except the wind in the leaves.

At this distance from aggrieved parties the man in the middle could draw a few sane breaths and try to think how many sides there were to this affair—

No one’s side. Not even excluding Chernevog’s. Or the boy’s. Or my other daughter’s. None of you and all of you are my side. And I’m all alone out here—any wish that’s ever let loose about me has its chance. Even Chernevog’s. Mouse, you chose him. If you want him and you want me, and he wants that boy—magic’s got the best chance at me it’s had yet.

I do hope you love your father—because he’s going to put himself where he needs help, mouse, he’s going to do it until you notice.

If you want things to be right, mouse, and you want your own way, you’d better want the right things. Can you possibly hear me?

No? Then I’d better be moving. Fast as I can, mouse. I was right in the first place. Maybe Sasha can’t catch up with me this time. Maybe it’ll be up to you. What do you think of that, mouse?

I do hope you think about that.

It was less and less effort to hold the silence: it seemed to be holding itself, now, and it had a lonelier and lonelier feeling since last night. They had waked this morning under a blanket of new-fallen leaves, and berry bushes, young trees and streamsides of bracken and silver birch gave way to shaded solitude, aged beeches and oaks far rougher and stouter than the trees to the south—perhaps, Ilyana thought, they had come to the end of the woods that they knew—at least, despite Yvgenie’s warnings, they had gotten, if not further than others’ wishes had ever been—at least well away from any place wizards who knew her had ever been. Perhaps that was the silence. But one hated to break a branch here. One felt fear—whether that it was something in the forest itself or whether it was only the unaccustomed stillness.

But when she wanted Patches to go a little more carefully Bielitsa brushed past her, finding a way through the thicket that her magic had not found. It was surely Kavi guiding them again, she thought, and set Patches to follow the gently winding course.

“Not a friendly place,” she said when he stopped and gave her the chance to overtake him. She had pricked her finger moving a branch aside, and sucked at it. “Can you feel it?”

“It was never friendly. I knew we were close last night. I didn’t know how close. We might have reached it… But something’s wrong.”

Absolutely it was Kavi now. He slid down from Bielitsa’s back, bade her follow and led the way afoot, a long, difficult passage in among aged, peeling trees. Not a wholesome place, she thought to herself: the further they went the more desolate the place seemed, until at last nothing near them was alive. Thorn-bushes broke with dry crackling, the moss went to powder underfoot, trees stood ghostly pale, bare-trunked.

“Kavi,” she said, “Kavi, stop. There’s nothing good here.”

He looked back at her, so pale, so frighteningly pale and afraid.

“There’s nothing alive here,” he said distressedly. “It’s dead.”

She thought, Is this what he meant, that it was wrong to wish a place where wishes weren’t? Is this that place?

It’s as if wishes fail here, as if you can pour them into this place, and nothing gets out—

But Kavi was leaving her, going deeper into this place. She was sure it was Kavi now, sure it was Kavi who ignored her pleas and kept going—

It was surely Kavi who led Bielitsa into a ring of dead trees, to a stone slab that might have been nature’s work—or not. She pushed her way past a fragile thorn-branch and led Patches through, as Owl came close and lit on the ground before the stone—the same place, god, her father and the sword: it was that stone, it was the place where Owl had died.

And standing all about them, huge trunks, peeling bark, white wood, like trees but not. Nor standing as trees would grow, wind-trained and orderly. There was disarray here. There was randomness.

“They’re dead,” he said, faintly, distressedly, “they’re all dead, Ilyana.”