C. Cherryh - Chernevog

Sasha would not have set such a trap without telling him, but Volkhi’s arrival was proof enough that Sasha could make mistakes, and there was absolutely no knowing what kind of visitor-confusing spells that old curmudgeon Uulamets might have set and forgotten.

God, he had not been afraid in the woods for years: he had been up and down the river, past the place where he knew quite well a vodyanoi might still lair; and poked into all sorts of place:. no sensible man would go without protection. But he had been able then to see where he was going, and he had had his sword with him, and, not inconsiderable, he had always had Babi to guard his back.

Now Volkhi walked as if he suspected devils under every bush. His ears flicked this way and that, his nostrils tested the wind, he seemed to float more than to walk—

Volkhi shied off from something, a quick sidestep and another before he came back under his hand, trembling, snuffing the air and snorting at what he was smelling.

“Good horse,” Pyetr muttered, patting Volkhi’s sweating neck, himself sweating and his heart thumping while he tried to decide whether Volkhi could perceive something his senses could not. A fool was out in the woods on a skittish horse with no saddle, with the day well along already and the road, if it was the road, going into deeper and deeper shadow under a clouding sky.

He sincerely hoped Eveshka was worried by now. He sincerely hoped his wife and his friend were wondering where he was by now, and were wishing him home before dark. He certainly wished so; but if his wishes worked in the least he would not be out here wondering where the road had gone.

Volkhi shied up and aside: he recovered his seat, kept Volkhi under the rein and got his heart back from his throat, patting Volkhi’s neck, telling him lies, how it was all very fine, they were going home, wherever that was.

Rain spattered the boards of the porch outside, a cold rain with a cold wind driving it. “He didn’t take his coat,” Eveshka said, at Sasha’s back, inside the cottage. “He didn’t even take a coat—”

Sasha lapped his belt about him, took his cap from under his arm and pulled it on. “He can take care of himself. He’ll either find cover till the worst of it’s past or he’ll be coming as fast as he can—I’ll probably meet him out there, probably slow him down, truth be told. I’m not sure—”

“The woods is wrong! Everything is wrong —”

He looked at her. He said, “I agree with you. But that’s no assurance he knows anything about it, and if he doesn’t know, he’s safer than we are. ’Veshka, please let’s not argue, please don’t be wishing him anywhere on his own. He won’t melt in the rain; he can build a shelter.”

“Build a shelter! He’ll be soaked to the skin—don’t tell me lie’s out there now because he doesn’t know there’s anything wrong!” She was wrapping dry clothes into Pyetr’s coat, making a compact bundle of it. “We shouldn’t have waited, dammit, we shouldn’t have let him stay out there.”

“There’s every chance he’s with the leshys.”

“There aren’t any leshys, I’m telling you!” She was near to tears. She tied the cords tight. “I tried!”

“Maybe they’ve heard you. Maybe they’ve answered and gone straight to find him. They don’t need to tell us. It may not occur to them to tell us.”

“Use the sense my father left you! There’s nothing out there, there’s simply nothing out there, it’s as if the world ends at the hedge. We can’t even make the rain stop!”

“It’s a big rain, it’s had a long time to get going, for the god’s sake, rains do have natural causes.”

“Don’t talk to me as if I was a fool! Something’s in our way out there!”

Doubt upset Sasha’s stomach, made Eveshka’s hastiness seem a threat more than the forest was. “’Veshka, I’ll find him, just for the god’s sake stop wishing anything. As long as we don’t know what’s out there—”

“Don’t know, don’t know, you don’t know the sun’s setting unless you look out the window! Use your head, Sasha! There’s the vodyanoi, for one, there’s ghosts!”

“He went the other direction, and neither one travels far from the river.” He took Pyetr’s sword from the peg where it hung and slung it from his shoulder. “I’ve wished him well, I’ve made wishes for him every day we’ve lived here, the same as you have, and if those wishes are working at all then they’re still taking care of him, and if something’s gotten around them, then it’s better one of us go where he is so we know what we need, isn’t it?”

She said nothing. She took a small clay pot from the counter and tucked it into the bag he was taking. Then the coat. “Just be careful,” she said, giving him the bag. Her face was pale in the gray light from the doorway, pale and terribly afraid. “That’s salt and sulfur. —You’ve got the fire-pot…”

He reached out, pressed her small, cold hands tightly in his own. “Listen, I’m not that worried about him. It’s probably the weather. He won’t take chances with a storm. He can’t wish the lightning.”

“He can’t wish anything else, either. Can he?”

He felt afraid of a sudden, profoundly, unreasoningly afraid of his choices. Everything seemed to tilt one way and the other, changeable, perilous. “I’ll find him,” he promised her on a breath; and ducked out into the storm, down the rain-washed boards of the walk-up. He splashed along the puddled path to the front gate—stopped there on impulse, feeling Eveshka’s strong wish behind him, and saw her standing in the doorway, pale as the ghost she had been. Haste, that wish said; and he caught a breath, shoved the gate open and hit the lane at a run, through rain-laden weeds, where wind and water had swept away the trail Pyetr had left.

Most likely, he reasoned, Pyetr had just taken out for the afternoon, had tossed that down-the-road-and-back promise completely out of his head the moment they had left him to his own devices, Pyetr having never a qualm about going off on his own, no more than he had worried seeing Pyetr ride off into a forest he knew.

But Eveshka had worried from the start, Eveshka had told him he was a fool about the bannik, and he had still trusted it, sight unseen…

Ordinary man Pyetr was, and blind and deaf to some influences. Illusions and compulsions had less power over him than over a wizard—until the source of them came close enough to lay material hands on him.

He wished he had listened to Eveshka, he wished he had listened to her from the beginning. He had called the bannik, it had come at the same instant this silence had descended, and it was as twisted as the house they had built for it, changing with every wish they made and every action they took, flinging up bits and pieces of vision that might be imminent or might be years away—one looked, and guessed, and doubted, and had to look again: a wizard had to know—wanted to know, kept wanting to know until there was no doubt. By that very wanting there were changes; and by those changes there were always doubts-Beware my daughter, Uulamets’ memories said: Uulamets kid continually mistrusted her; but he had looked for Eveshka’s advice and not taken it when she had given it to him, not even heard it, he had been so set on being right…

Think things through, Uulamets’ teaching advised him. Do the least possible. Don’t move till you’re sure…

Things were going wrong and it might only be a rainstorm and it might only be a stray horse and their own fear of what he had conjured up in the bathhouse, but there was a terrible feeling of wishes going askew, and along with them all their safety in this unsafe woods. No time, he kept telling himself now, no time for prophecies, no room for thinking things to the bottom and back again. He made only one clear, unequivocal wish—to get to Pyetr in person before something else did.