C. Cherryh - Yvgenie

But he wanted it, and the boy wanted it—

Rusalki both, he thought, and tried to get past that veil of dizziness and confusion to reach Eveshka, thought then of Sasha, and how he had continually been driven to come this way, into Chernevog’s reach—

Things once associated are always associated—he could hear Sasha saying that. No coincidences in magic-He could hear the whole woods, hear the passage of a deer, the midnight foraging of hares and the life in the trees around him; and under it, through it, a sense of balances gone amiss, and something—

He did not want to look at that. But he tried. And it made no sense to him. It just was, and Chernevog was there, telling him he did not have to understand, not even a wizard could, but that it was where the silence came from and where it went, and the leshys had kept it in check so long as they could—the stone and their ring and the heart of their magic, that this thing wanted to drink down—

The leshys were dead. The leshys had misjudged young foolishness, and the self-will of two wizards’ hearts—he had not brought Ilyana to them in time. He had not wanted to. He had loved her too much. There had always been time—next year and next.

Misighi, holding Ilyana in his huge arms… Misighi, who could break stone with his fingers, returning her so carefully, and striding away from them, never to return to the garden fence, never again that close to them—

God, what did they want? What have they done? If they wanted her, could we have stopped them?

Eveshka—would have tried. Sasha would have—I would have—

Whatever a man could do, I’d do to get her away from that thing… Whatever all of them could do, they would do to get her back.

The world went hushed then, so abruptly it only gradually dawned on him he was hearing the wind in the leaves, and Chernevog’s voice saying his name, bidding him not fall off, damn him—that he had no right to be alive, no more than they did, and that they were, him, and the boy and Chernevog together, and that they knew where they had to go—

“Come on, dammit, Eveshka’s going after her.”

He found the reins somehow, he found his seat and turned Volkhi uphill, as Chernevog was headed, not breakneck after the first ten strides. In the moonless dark and on this root-laddered ground, there was no hurrying—like a bad dream, in which haste could manage only a numbingly slow progress over one hill and another and onto a level stretch overgrown with trees and thorn brakes.

Bits of white horsehair hung from thorns here, and Bielitsa made one futile protest against a wizard’s direction; but Volkhi went, panting now, into a barren starlit thicket with no trees to shut out the sky, with only peeling wreckage of dreadful aspect—leshys, Pyetr realized, all dead.

“Eveshka!” he called into that desolation. But no answer came. They rode among dead leshys as far as the stone that was the center and found smoking ashes beside it, where a fire had been.

That, and everything Eveshka owned, her book, her pack, and her abandoned cloak.

“God,” he muttered in despair, but Chernevog wanted his attention toward a gap in the thorns, a broad pathway dark as midnight and more threatening.

Magic had made it. That was where Ilyana was, that was where, Chernevog made him believe, Eveshka had surely gone, and he had no question about following—only about his company.

Magic was slipping loose at every hand. Sasha felt it like pieces tumbling out of his hands and there was no way in the world to go faster. Missy was breathing like a bellows even with Nadya’s lesser weight and the absence of the packs; young Patches, saddleless, with his weight and the books, Babi’s vodka jug and a handful of herb-pots, was blowing lather. It was all confusion of trees and brush and dark hillsides—rough ground, and the god only knew how Nadya was managing, whether it was his distracted wishes for her safety, or her death-grip on the saddle and Missy’s mane. Don’t lose her, Sasha pleaded with Missy, and promised apples and carrots and every delicacy in the garden if she would only keep Nadya on her back and keep out of trouble.

Babi scrambled onto his shoulder. They were close, god, close enough to the mouse and Eveshka that he could feel presence through the silence. And a gulf dropping away into somewhere dark, deadly and deathly. He could not think of the mouse in that place. He could not think of Pyetr and Eveshka there. They would not be. No!

He thought, while Patches found her own way along a spring-fed thread of water, Mouse, listen to me. Listen!

For a moment then he had her, clear and true and very, very, very scared. There was open sky and the smell of the earth and river. He knew that place, he knew the feeling of it—the hollowness beneath—

God—

The mouse caught at him, the mouse was frightened, wanted him the way she had in the yard—and came around him, enfolded his wishes—

No, he had said then. Now he said yes. And did a more frightening thing, and wanted Eveshka to know he was there.

Now.

Beyond the doorway was starlight and river chill and a grassy edge along the shore—beyond the door was a dream, a very sinister one—as calm and as tranquil a place as the ghosts had been horrid, the water glistening beneath the stars and a fat old willow whispering in the dark. But the heart of this place was hollow and cold, one could feel the falseness of safety here. And one remembered that it was still the palace of bone, and that what one saw was not the truth—or the palace was not. The mouse was very scared, and very quiet, and very determined to have the way out—please the god. And grandfather might have wished her to be born and to be here, but she wished to do things her uncle would approve— that was the wisest thing she could think of.

Make up your own mind, a ghost said, and startled her when she saw it drift from the willow-shade. Mother, she thought, with a cold seizure of fear. But the ghost said:

Your grandmother, dear. Is the old fool telling you lies again? Or can’t he tell you?

The bear came out of the shadow, and ambled to her grandmother’s side, seeming far less fierce than she had thought. Her grandmother said:

Listen to me—

It was a wish. And it scared her. There was something in this place, something that made her want to listen, even knowing her grandmother had been wicked—

No such thing, the ghost said. Do you want Kavi alive again? From here it’s easy. Everything is easy—

Uncle would say, Magic is always easy. But is it wise?

Don’t you have any thoughts to yourself, child? What do you want?

She wanted—

Kavi. And knew it was foolish and selfish and wrong. She turned away, toward the dark rim of the woods at the end of the grass. She wanted to leave.

But something drew her to look back—and her grandmother was not there. There were wolves—and other things that spun in confusion, faces screaming, hands grasping—it wanted, and wanted and wanted, and she wanted it to stop changing! Now!

It did. It became a shriveled old woman and a pack of wolves, and it wanted her youth and her life and her heart. Come here, it bade her. Listen to me… and the thing under the earth echoed it and echoed it until she was confused.

No, she said, and told it No again, and it said:

What do you want, wizard?

And she thought, I want—

—and stopped herself at the brink, thinking: You don’t catch me twice, on. Go away!

It broke apart. The wolves did. The bits scattered in light and fire.

Not so dreadful, she thought, letting go a breath she had forgotten. I’m all right. I can wish them—

“Ilyana,” a voice said behind her back. And she had to turn to it—had to—before the echoes of it died in the earth under her feet. It was her mother, white and tattered and dreadful, with shadowed eyes and bloody scratches on her arms, her mother wanting her with more strength than she had ever felt in her life.