C. Cherryh - Rusalka

“Pyetr,” Sasha whispered. “Pyetr, please, get back here. Don’t touch anything.”

More clods fell. Pyetr backed away from that wall and carefully drew his sword.

“I really don’t like this place,” Sasha said.

Neither of them moved for a moment. The dragging sound started up again and dislodged an earthfall directly over the cave.

“Is it her?” Sasha whispered, taking a grip on Pyetr’s sleeve, for fear of him starting forward, into a trap the rusalka had deliberately lured them to—and he fervently wished for the old man to hurry and find them.

Something hissed within the dark.

Something hissed atop the rim, too, and something small and black rolled down the slope, scattering clods as it came. It darted between them and into the dark hole, snarling and spitting, and darted out again, like a small dog away from a larger.

“God!” Pyetr cried, as an undulating black mass came out chasing it.

“Look out!” Sasha yelled and jumped for the sloping dirt as the black mass came after his legs. Pyetr was climbing too, beating it about the head with his sword as he climbed. It tried to follow them, while the small black ball that looked for all the world like the Yard-thing hissed and circled and nipped at its coils below.

“Fools!” Uulamets suddenly called from above them. “Get it, get it, go, you have it!”

“Have if?” Pyetr cried, beating at its head. “Get us out of here!”

But it was wilting under the blows, trying to hide its nose with small black forelimbs, writhing aside and dislodging more and more dirt on the slide. Sasha yelled in alarm as a slippage carried him down within reach of the thing. Immediately Pyetr was there, trampling him in the slide, but driving the monstrous thing aside and up and up the bank, where it had no apparent wish to go.

It collapsed on the slope as it reached the light, a black serpent, part scaled, part furred, with helpless naked limbs and a flat head which it attempted to cover. It seemed to shrink, then, sliding down into shadow, into wrinkled skin and fur, into a shape inexplicably like a little old man, while the Yard-thing kept hissing and growling in the shadow of the hole from which the creature had come, keeping it from refuge.

“Ask its name!” Uulamets shouted from above. Sasha looked up and saw Uulamets standing on the rim, then looked toward the cowering creature Pyetr held at sword’s point and said, “He wants to know its name.”

Pyetr jabbed it. Hwiuur , it said. Hwiuur , like some strange kind of bird. It edged closer to the hole, but the Thing was there and would not let it in.

“Ask it where my daughter is,” Uulamets called down. “Tell it answer or you’ll keep it here till the sun rises.”

“It’s a damned snake!” Pyetr cried. “How is it to know where your daughter is?”

But it was not a snake. It seemed more to be a hairy old man, who crouched in the shadow of the earth and shivered, saying, “The sun, the sun!”

“You’ll see the sun,” Uulamets shouted, “if you don’t answer. I want my daughter back.”

The creature covered its face, snuffling softly. “I’d do it,” Pyetr advised it. “He’s a terrible old man.”

“Is that all he wants?” the creature whispered between long-nailed fingers. “One thin-boned girl? I can. I can do that. Take the iron away.” It peered between the fingers, one pale snake’s eye, so it seemed to be. Or at least it was not human. “I know where she sleeps. I can bring her. Bone and all, I can bring her. Tell the wizard let me go.”

“Tell me where she is!” Uulamets shouted.

But of a sudden it was a snake again, whipping about at ankle height, bound straight for the cave, as the Yard-thing attempted to head it off.

Dirt poured down. The Yard-thing came backing out spitting and snarling, as the whole bank came down and the hole closed.

“Fools!” Uulamets cried. “You let it get away!”

“Fool, yourself!” Pyetr shouted, turning about, but Sasha quickly caught his arm and perhaps Pyetr thought again, that here were the two of them in this crumbling pit, three, if one counted the ill-tempered Yard-thing, four, if one counted the snake that had just disappeared into the bank, and one had rather not.

“It promised,” Sasha said to Uulamets. “It did promise. Master Uulamets, get us out of here.”

For a long few moments Uulamets stood there staring down at them, in what had become the first pale light of day. Then he flung down his staff.

“Climb that,” he said.

It took Pyetr bracing the staff up the unstable slope with his body length, and Sasha climbing up over him and up the length of the staff, while he showered a great deal of dirt down on Pyetr, who spat and swore and held on.

Sasha reached the top, hauled himself over the rim on his elbows and on his knees to find master Uulamets sitting on the grass arranging his pots in a half circle in front of him.

Sasha turned about and lay flat on his stomach on the rim of the pit, reaching down after the staff Pyetr reached up to him. He grasped it and tried to hold on while Pyetr climbed, but he failed to hold it and flung the staff aside on the grass.

“I’d use a limb,” Uulamets said disinterestedly.

“Master Uulamets says get a branch or something,” Sasha called down. Pyetr looked up at him distressedly. The Yard-thing was still in the pit with him. Pyetr was resolutely not looking at it. “Then do it,” Pyetr said.

Sasha got up and ran down the slope and up again to the edge of the dead woods, where there were rotten limbs in plenty. He picked a likely big one that was already lying on the ground and dragged it back as quickly as he could, past master Uulamets, who was sitting there with several of his little pots in hand, shaking out powders and muttering to himself and singing.

Sasha heaved the dead limb over the edge and Pyetr pulled it to the bottom, breaking off twigs and lesser branches which were in his way. Sasha lay down to hold the topmost branches steady while Pyetr flung himself at the dead limb and climbed, stepping from branch stub to branch. Finally he reached Sasha’s arms and hauled himself up and over, while Sasha clenched his teeth and held himself as steady as he could.

“Babi!” the old man called.

The Yard-thing came scrambling up the branches, face on. Sasha yelled and flung himself aside and sat down beside Pyetr as it scuttled over to Uulamets.

But Uulamets simply muttered to himself and scattered powders on the ground, ignoring it crouching there.

“What’s he doing?” Pyetr asked. “What does he think he’s doing?—What is that thing?”

“I don’t know,” Sasha said. He thought that he ought to feel something if it was true magic master Uulamets was doing. Or if what he was doing was working at all. He felt nothing but a shiver in his bones and a queasiness at the pit of his stomach.

“We ought to get out of here,” Pyetr said, Sasha thought quite calmly and reasonably under the circumstances. “We don’t know where that thing went. We don’t know what it’s up to.”

“We’ll go,” Sasha said, wishing that they would, wishing that he understood what Uulamets was up to. “Soon now.”

But Uulamets kept scattering pinches of powder and singing, and finally piled up a few handfuls of grass and asked for wood.

“For what?” Pyetr asked. “A fire? Here?”

“I’ll get it,” Sasha said under his breath, seeing nothing else to do. He got up and ran back to the woods and gathered up twigs and larger pieces, ran panting back to Uulamets and dumped it down, falling to his knees. “Master Uulamets—”

The Thing growled at him. Master Uulamets ignored him and went on with his chanting, which reminded Sasha very unpleasantly of the night Pyetr had almost died. It was the same kind of singsong, under the breath, it was the same oif-key tuneless wandering. He saw Uulamets pick up the twigs and break them and put dry grass into the midst. He saw Uulamets take a pungent bit of wool from one little pot and tuck it into the grass. Then he took a cinder from a small fire pot, and Sasha jumped in spite of himself when the pile burst into flame.