C. Cherryh - Yvgenie

“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?”

“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—