C. Cherryh - Chernevog

The voice said, more substantial now, rough as she remembered him: Shut your eyes. You’ve taken on far too much this time. You need help. If you’ve not discovered it yet, young fool, that’s my grandchild you’re carrying.

One could wish a wound to heal, one could wish strain and heat to leave tired joints—but unless one did something both reckless and foolish, that wish had no resources but the body in question—and a body had only so much to spend: it always paid afterward, in profound, watery-kneed exhaustion.

But Volkhi had to stay sound at least to get them away, please the god, and Sasha rubbed Volkhi’s legs down, wishing up new strength in himself and in Pyetr, too, while Pyetr was shutting the door and bringing his packs down. Volkhi, evidently inspired to appetite, ducked his head and unconcernedly cropped a mouthful of something that interested him.

“You ride,” Pyetr said, carrying their several packs off the walk-up, Babi trotting at his heels. Pyetr set everything on the ground and offered Sasha a quick hand up to Volkhi’s back, insisting, “I’ll take second.”

Pyetr was doing very well at the moment, Pyetr was not asking questions and Pyetr wanted no arguments. Sasha took the lift up, settled astride and took the packs Pyetr handed up to him, his own bags of books and breakables, the grain and the blanket-rolls. “I think we should take the old path,” Sasha said. “It’s longer, but you’re right, at least the river can keep us going right, no matter if something tries to confuse us—and there’s at least a chance of spotting the boat that way.”

“The wind’s been out of the south since noon,” Pyetr muttered, shouldering his own packs. “It’s a damned long start she’s had already. —Can’t you do anything? Stop the wind, maybe?”

There had come a sighing in the trees just after the sun had passed its height—just when, while they were walking home, Eveshka must have taken to the river and wished herself up a wind that… he was not sure… might be blowing a little less for his efforts.

“I’ve tried. Weather takes—”

“Time,” Pyetr finished glumly. And then looked alarmed. “She planned this ahead of time? Is that what you’re saying?”

“We don’t know she raised it.” He was pushed to say that. He did not want to say anything else. He wished Volkhi to move, so that Pyetr had to go ahead quickly and open the gate.

“You’re saying—” Pyetr began.

“Don’t,” he said. “Pyetr. Later. Please. Later.”

No need to lead Volkhi, Pyetr had found that out: the boy just wanted, and Volkhi had as well have no rein on him.

Wizards wanted this, they wanted that, and everything moved, horses, people, friends—Eveshka was off to the god knew what, and Sasha first insisted they stay and then insisted immediately, now, in the next few moments, they be off into the dark with a wizard’s clattering pharmacopeia and a load of books—

Which told him nothing except that Sasha had found something in the house that scared him out of good sense, something he did not want to talk about in earshot of the yard or even in the house—whatever banniks had to do with it. And the wind that carried Eveshka away from them had gotten itself together in whatever time it took a wind to gather.

“What’s going on?” Pyetr asked once they were on the downward pitch of the road, beside the dock. “For the god’s sake, what are we running from? What did you find out?”

Sasha said, from Volkhi’s height beside him:

“She did leave us a note. I found it in my book. It should have been the first place I looked.”

Pyetr looked up at him, but against the night sky Sasha was shadow, and out of the dark Sasha’s voice was hoarse and thin, telling him less than it might have.

“She wanted to go looking for you, right off,” Sasha said. “But I didn’t think we should: I was afraid we might be calling you back into something, and she was going to stay and try here while I went looking—”

“You said that already. What else did the note say, dammit? What’s she up to?”

“Finding the leshys. She was worried, the way things were going.”

“Worried about the leshys?”

“About the quiet. So she was going to try from the house…”

“What? Try what? Sasha, don’t make me ask every damn question: spit it out! What did she write? What did she say she was doing?”

“She didn’t say. If she knew, herself, which I’m not sure of.”

“God! Wizards! Then guess, is that so damned hard? Tell me what goes on between you two! I live in the dark!”

“Things don’t go on between us.”

“The hell!” He never wanted to shout at the boy, he never wanted to be unreasonable. He was losing his mind. “Dammit, just give me a guess, give me anything, I don’t care! Tell me what goes on in my wife’s head. And what’s the bannik got to do with it?”

“It showed up just after you left. She called you to come back—but this quiet—”

“You said that! What about the bannik?”

“We both asked it, and it showed us thorns and branches. She didn’t trust it.”

“Showed you thorns.” One resisted the urge to drag Sasha off the horse and shake him. One just kept asking, reasonably, patiently, shivering with the chill of wet weeds soaking one’s legs as they left the empty dock behind and started along the trail, “What do you mean, showed you thorns?”

“It doesn’t really talk when it answers. You see things.”

“So why in hell didn’t we ask it a question? Are we afraid of it? Maybe it showed her something you don’t know about, maybe—”

“It wasn’t the same bannik that used to live there. She didn’t trust it; but you’re right, that’s not saying she might not have gone back in there after I left. She could have asked it something on her own.”

She certainly would, Pyetr thought desperately. Nothing was ever right unless Eveshka did it herself.

“—Or maybe she got an answer from the leshys,” Sasha said. “That’s just as likely. She packed, we do know that. She left around noon, we can guess that by the wind and the bread and all, and I really think she might have heard me last night telling her I’d found you. That’d certainly make her feel better about leaving.”

“Fine! That’s really fine, Sasha!”

“Not because she wanted to.”

“Is that what the note says?”

“It just says she knew we’d follow her and she didn’t want us to—which is saying she knew she couldn’t wish us not to, because she wasn’t that sure she was right.”

“Eveshka doesn’t think she’s right. The river’ll run backward first. Where’s she going?”

“It didn’t say.”

“Didn’t say. Didn’t say. She left you the note, for the god’s sake! She had to have said that.”

“I told you what it said.”

“There’s got to be something else. You didn’t read it right.”

“Writing doesn’t mean everything.”

“Well, it’s damn useless, isn’t it? What the hell good is it if it doesn’t tell you the important things?”

Sasha had no answer for that one.

“I’ll tell you the first thing I want to know,” Pyetr said after a moment more of walking and gathering the bits and pieces of his temper. “I want to know where our old friend under the willow is, and I’ll lay you odds he’s not in his cave right now.”

“I think it might be a good place to look,” Sasha said.” That’s another reason I wanted to go this way.”

“For all we know the damn Thing’s in our bathhouse! The bannik talked about the river, did it? It probably wanted me for its supper!”

“I don’t think it was the vodyanoi. But I don’t trust it. I’m not that sure it’s a proper bannik. They’re supposed to be old. This one isn’t.”