C. Cherryh - Rusalka

“Born on a bad day.” Master Uulamets snorted and reached after his cup. He took a drink. At the same time Sasha felt his breath stop and his heart lurch and ache and start again, along with his breath. He went very dizzy for a moment, and master Uulamets said, “They’re fools.”

He had no idea what to answer. He hoped master Uulamets meant fools because they were wrong, and not fools because they failed to drown him at birth. He hoped master Uulamets had no disposition to correct that mistake, if that were the case—and he even hoped, for half a breath, that master Uulamets might tell him something better about himself than any of Vojvoda’s wizards.

“How have you gotten this far,” Uulamets asked, “without killing someone?”

Uulamets might have stopped his heart a second time. It felt like that. He said, feeling as if he were strangling, “I don’t know, sir. I try not to.”

“How do you try? Explain to me.”

“I try not to wish for things that can go wrong.”

“Who told you to do that?”

“Just—when things go wrong. I know better after that.”

Uulamets lifted a brow and looked at him a moment before the edge of his mouth drew into a crooked, unpleasant grin. “Know better,” he chuckled. “Know better. Indeed.” He chuckled to himself for a moment. And a very uncomfortable feeling crawled up and down Sasha’s neck. “Know better than to try me , for instance.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Smart,” Uulamets said. “Smart lad. Your friend’s very lucky.”

To be with me? Sasha wondered, and clenched his hands, suddenly beset with a very unreasonable hope in this old man, who was more knowledgeable than anyone who had ever laid eyes on him: but, again, Uulamets might only mean Pyetr was lucky not to be in worse trouble, considering his company.

“Altogether taken,” Uulamets said, “you’ve managed very wisely—concealed yourself quite well, till your inexperience betrayed you. And so impeccably dean a warding. Very well done, lad.”

“Thank you, sir,” Sasha whispered, and wished himself and Pyetr safe against the attack he was sure would come.

“Wary, too. You don’t trust flattery.”

“No, sir.”

Uulamets’ brows drew together. He crooked the finger again, beckoning him still closer. No, Sasha thought, and stayed where he was.

Uulamets smiled, and the smile became that unpleasant grin. “An impeccable ward. But an egg is impeccable. And vulnerable. Inexperience and too little strength, young Sasha. I had a student once. He was a fool.”

He wished harder that they were safe, wherever they were. He wished so hard he stopped seeing the room around him, or Uulamets in front of him. Only himself and Pyetr, equally, inseparable, indivisible. He was aware of Uulamets getting up, taking up his staff. Walking around him. He let that go. It was Pyetr and their mutual safety he thought about and he did not look at anything.

“Stubborn,” he heard Uulamets say. “I’ve met fools before.”

He stayed as he was. Then pain struck his ankle, and the floor came up under his knee.

“Very good, boy. Very good. Magic’s so simple for the young.” He felt a touch on his hair, and heard Uulamets say: “But much simpler for a creature that is magical. Your friend’s in danger, you and your friend are in terrible danger, and you can only thank yourself you found this house before my daughter found you. But now she has. I admit I had somewhat to do with that—but I didn’t let her have her way, did I? Nor will, if you’re reasonable; otherwise—you’ll lose, boy. I was strong enough to hit you. I chose not to harm you.”

Or the wish worked, Sasha thought, even on Uulamets. So he wished farther, and farther, to forever, and he let go then, and stood up, because that was all he could do.

“The effrontery of you,” Uulamets said, standing back, leaning on his staff.

“You said you’d let us go. You said if I did what you asked you’d let us go and give us food and clothes and blankets.”

“Oh, that I will,” Uulamets said. “But getting out of this woods—that’s another matter.” Uulamets walked back to the table and leaned his staff against the wall. “The strength of magic depends on age; the ease of magic depends on youth. Simplicity of motives, you understand, makes magic ever so much easier. My daughter is older than you are—but her motives are ever so much simpler. You might say—a rusalka is motive. Could you stop her tonight? I think not. Perhaps you’ll want advice.”

He wanted advice—from someone other than Uulamets. But Pyetr would be for running; and Uulamets was telling the truth in one thing, that they were in very deep trouble, and there was no one else to ask.

“What should we do?” he asked meekly enough. But he was not prepared to believe anything Uulamets said.

Surely Uulamets was wise enough to know that. Uulamets gave him a long, calculating look.

“I want my daughter back,” Uulamets said. “It’s very simple. She wants your friend. You want your friend alive. Your wanting has a certain force that may prove useful—if you can hold on to that single mindedness of yours and learn a thing or two.”

“What, sir?”

Uulamets grinned. “The nature of your enemy. The nature of what you want. The nature of nature itself. I’ve wanted someone like you, boy, for much longer than you’ve been alive.”

PYETR COCKED an eye, lifted his head and winced at the pounding ache in his skull.

Much too much vodka last night.

Some muddle of a dream about woods and a drowned girl, a most vivid dream about running through the woods and seeing a face—

That was the pleasant part. The unpleasant part was waking up with a head like this, with the light coming through shutters the old man had been cruel enough to fling wide to the sun.

Uulamets was back at his book, at the table beneath the window. Moreover—Pyetr lifted his head and winced—Sasha was sitting on the end of the bench, in converse with the old lunatic, their heads together as if they were sharing some direly important secret. Most disturbing of all, they stopped whatever they were saying and looked at him, both of them with one solemn expression, as if he had discovered them in conspiracy.

It was all the same thing as the ghost, too much vodka and, he recalled, god knew what in the stew last night. That had been the start of the trouble, after which nothing had made sense, and they had gone out in the woods—

Or he had dreamed that they had.

He let his head back and stared at the shadowed, dusty rafters where there was no light to afflict his eyes, and tried to keep his stomach from heaving.

He heard a scrape of wood, heard footsteps. Sasha came and leaned over him, a worried young face against the dark of the rafters.

“Are you all right?” Sasha asked.

“I will be,” he murmured. Talking hurt.

“Do you want some tea?”

His stomach turned. “No,” he said, and shut his eyes. “I’ll just lie here.”

Sasha patted his shoulder. Pyetr’s skin ached. He heard Sasha go and say to master Uulamets, “He’s all right.”

He recollected, he thought, Sasha and Uulamets talking about him last night. He saw them this morning, cozy and full of whispers, and his stomach felt upset for a reason that had nothing to do with last night’s vodka.

He suffered the morning long, until Sasha brought him honeyed tea and some potion Uulamets insisted on. He drank the tea, he refused the nasty concoction Uulamets had made for him: Sasha pleaded with him, assured him there was no harm in it, but he pitched the contents of the cup into the coals.