C. Cherryh - Chernevog

Eventually the upset in her stomach eased and Missy began to nose the herbage in front of her in some interest; mostly she wanted water, and her chest still burned, and it was not fair she had not been let drink her fill when there was water at hand… but now when she thought of it there was nothing stopping her, so she walked over to the little spring that welled up out of the rocks and drank as much as she wanted. There had been bogles and grabby-things; her ears still slanted to listen for them and her still watched all around at once, from the spring under her nose to, still visible behind her own feet, her favorite person sitting under the tree. Sasha saw himself from that unusual, top-blind point of view, and rode Missy’s thoughts, not remembering where he had come from or where he was going, just watching the thicket around them and tasting the good, cold water.

The whole wood was still. Very carefully he let go that wide vision and that keen hearing, and saw, from the rear perspective, Missy drinking. Then he could move without fearing he was going to run blindly into something ahead, although down and up still felt confused, and sitting upright made him dizzy for a moment.

He had been with Missy for some little time, to judge by the sinking of the sun—the shade was deeper, no direct light at all now in this little water-cut nook where bracken competed with young trees. He had been safe, this while: Missy was not a noisy creature. Missy wanted very little that made a difference in the world.

Missy lifted her head suddenly, pricked up her ears, and he instantly wanted to know what she was thinking—but Missy decided it was only a fox she smelted. Foxes were familiar. Foxes skulked about and were no bother to horses.

Sasha paid attention for a while, and worried Missy: Sasha thought a fox could hide a grabby-thing. Missy found this a disturbing idea, and decided never to trust foxes after this.

But it went away; and Sasha decided not, after all.

There was a danger in sitting like this too long. One could forget what one was doing, either harm Missy with ideas that were frightening gibberish to her; or go a little crazy himself and sit here, the two of them locked together until the next rain waked him or until he wished something truly dangerous for Missy or for himself.

There was danger in wishes of any kind so long as Chernevog might be paying attention in his direction. Chernevog had him far outmatched and Chernevog had Pyetr, and if he thought about what might be happening to Pyetr he could not trust himself to be sane right now, or to do anything reasonable or useful. He had worked very hard to be quiet and to go completely inside himself and Missy, until there was only his own life to worry over: he had drawn that selfishness tighter and tighter and tighter, not watching what Chernevog did, not trying to do anything about it, not wanting to be there—until his not being there suddenly became thoroughly, magically imperative-It freed him—but not Pyetr.

He pulled at his knee, straightened his leg, rubbed feeling back into his numb foot. Wish nothing unnecessary.

Think nothing unnecessary. Do the natural thing. Learn from Missy. Get up, get the baggage, see about something to eat. There were dangers but they were not here, and as long as he wanted only little things Missy would want they might not impinge on Chernevog’s specific wishes; so long as he wanted specific, natural things they might happen, and Chernevog’s widest, magic-driven designs might go skewed around them-that was always the hazard in generalities, master Uulamets had argued in his book: that in natural things nature tended to reassert itself, given any reasonable loophole.

So one moved a pebble. One wished, as simply as Missy, for well-being and supper, things that were, after all, fair— Missy was very much on things being fair, expecting things that ought to follow, one from another; and things that ought to happen in certain ways, on time, and in due amounts.

One wished, among first things, to make amends for keeping bad and scary company and to share this nice sausage he had with someone who had a perfect right to it. He broke off half— he was very sorry about the vodka; that was at the moment in a place he did not want to think about—but there was this sausage, this very nice sausage, because it was only fair.

An alarming row of teeth snatched the bit from his hand. And vanished, together with the sausage.

“That’s a good Babi.” He offered the other half.

It whisked into nowhere, too.

Eyes stared at him, faint, gold, vertically slitted, against green forest shade.

“Good Babi. Wonderful Babi. Brave Babi. Babi, do you want vodka? I think it’s fair we get it back. That’s my jug, and my spell on it, after all, and I think I should have it, don’t you?”

Babi waddled up on his hind legs and crawled up into Sasha’s lap to cling to his coat.

“We can’t just go and look for it,” Sasha said, stroking Babi’s fur. “We need help. I think we’d better get Missy and find the limit and see if we can figure anything out, don’t you?”

Chernevog was not pleased: Pyetr had no doubt at all of that while Chernevog was riding behind him, holding to him, wish-ing at him until he felt his hold on his own thoughts precarious. His own anger and his own grudge against Chernevog had occupied all his attention at the start, but Chernevog kept finding ways past that—little doubts niggling their way into his mind, Chernevog saying, “If we don’t find him, he may not see the morning,” and: “You can’t understand these things, dammit, you don’t understand the trouble he’s in,” and finally, to the point: “Pyetr Ilyitch, you know how he thinks, you know what he’d most likely do. If you don’t find him, dying’s not the worst licit can happen to him, don’t you care? It’s your fault, isn’t it, what becomes of him? He doesn’t understand what he’s taken on. Don’t be a bloody-minded fool!”

“I don’t know anything,” he told Chernevog. “It’s a wide woods—how in hell can I guess where he’d go? You’re the wizard.”

“He’s wishing me confused, damn you!”

“Then how can I resist?”

“Would he wish you in wrong directions?”

He said: “In your company, yes.” And Chernevog: “No, he wouldn’t. He’s a clever lad. It was no little trick to get away in the first place—but that has a certain cost. —I know how he did it. Don’t you wonder? Don’t you wonder how he could leave you and not let me hear him thinking?”

One tried desperately not to wonder. One could think earnestly about breaking Chernevog’s neck, which was hard to think about: one’s thoughts kept getting away; and one could be angry about Chernevog’s nattering at him, but that always led to the same place; and when one came back from half losing one’s mind, exhausted and desperate and still beset, and wrapped about by Chernevog’s arms, one concentrated on the trees or looked at bark and such and memorized shapes in the case that Sasha might rescue him and they might have to backtrack.

But that was useless, too—wizards could find their own way wherever they wanted; an ordinary man was no damn help to anyone… and he kept losing little bits of their trail anyway, moments that he was thinking of Vojvoda, of being hungry and desperate, of things he was not particularly proud of… like what he had done once to pay an innkeeper…

“We all have our faults,” Chernevog said to him. “And the limits of our pride. Some are less fastidious than others.”

He gave a backward jab of his elbow. “Leave me alone!”

It did Chernevog no damage. He was dizzy for a time after that and thought he might fall off the horse, but his body went on balancing the way it knew how to do. He was quite awake: he simply did not remember for the moment how to make his arms move, he scarcely knew how to breathe—