C. Cherryh - Rusalka

Eveshka arrived then—at which realization Pyetr got breath enough to hobble a step or two into the space between her and the prisoner, for what small protection he could be.

But it was not threatening now: it was trying to shield its face or to wipe its eyes, uncertain which. Pyetr reckoned, standing over it, that it must have met Sasha’s pot of sulphur and salt nose-on—thank the god and Sasha’s brave heart.

Uulamets meanwhile was threatening it with the sun, bidding it give up and swear to mend its ways, none of which made any more sense than the sight of the vodyanoi shrunk to the size and shape of a little old man.

“That thing won’t keep a promise,” he protested, when it did swear. “Yes,” it was saying, “yes, I agree, anything, only let me go—”

“Let my daughter go!” Uulamets said.

The vodyanoi twisted onto its face and covered its naked head with its hands. It wailed, “I can’t! I can’t do that!”

“Hwiuur. Is that your true name?”

It bobbed its head. “Hwiuur. Yes. Give me your leave, man. The sun is coming. Give me your leave to be here—I will promise, I will never, never harm you in this place—”

“—or elsewhere!” Uulamets snapped, and fetched the creature a crack of the staff. “Free my daughter! Give me back her heart!”

“I can’t, I can’t, I don’t hold it! Oh, it burns, man, it bums—”

Heart? Pyetr wondered, stunned by the thought. Uulamets asked with another thump of his staff:

“Who has it, then?”

“Kavi Chernevog!”

Uulamets’ staff met the creature’s back and held it still. Uula mets looked toward Pyetr then with a terrible anger on his face; but that look went past him and past Sasha.

“Is it true?” Uulamets demanded harshly.

Eveshka said nothing at all.

Hwiuur suddenly tried to slither for the river. “Get him!” Pyetr cried, lunging to stop the creature if he could, but Uulamets was there with his staff, and pinned it like a serpent to the ground.

Serpent it seemed to be for a moment. Pyetr watched in dismay as it lashed and writhed under the staff.

“Swear!” Uulamets ordered it. “Swear to help us!”

“I swear.” It was a man again, or mostly so, wrinkled, ridge-backed and serpent-twisted, clutching the mud with thin black hands.

“Swear to come and go at my orders; swear to do what I bid you do; swear never to lie to me and never to harm me or mine.”

It hissed, it writhed. Finally it said, “I swear by my name. Let me go.”

Uulamets drew back his staff. Quicker than the eye could follow it, it whipped across the mud and into the water.

“That’s one lost,” Pyetr muttered unhappily, but Uulamets called out, “Hwiuur!”

And a vast dark head of very unpleasant aspect rose up near the shore.

“Look out!” Sasha cried, and was on his way to snatch the old man back, but Pyetr grabbed him by the arm and held him where he was.

The Thing loomed up and up and arched its sleek, dripping head over to look down at the old man.

“The sunlight hurts my eyes,” it said in a deep voice like the booming of drums. “The salt was a wicked trick, man.”

“Don’t speak to me on that score,” Uulamets said. “I want Kavi Chernevog.”

Hwiuur reared back and settled deeper in the dawn-lit water, until he was on a level with Uulamets. “Ask me something I can do,” it said, again like drums speaking. “Chernevog is too powerful. He has what you want. You can permit me the sunlight; he can forbid. Then what will I do?”

The head sank beneath the water again, leaving an eddy and bubbles.

“Hwiuur!” Uulamets said.

It rose again, not so far as before.

“So you remember,” Uulamets said. “Obey my orders. You swore by your name.”

“So I did,” it said, and sank below the surface again. A black back broke the surface, long, very long, as it flowed away up-river.

Pyetr took a breath and flexed his right hand on his sword hilt while Uulamets turned his back to the river.

“Back to the house,” Uulamets said, and walked past them to take Eveshka’s arm and bring her up the path ahead of them.

Pyetr walked along beside Sasha, reckoning to himself what Sasha had done for him, coming down that hill and well knowing what he was risking. He wanted to throw his arm around the boy the way he had with ’Mitri, the black god take him, or Andrei or Vasya, none of whom had deserved thanking for anything.

But all that affection had been so cheap, and all that camaraderie so free with gestures that should have meant something he could not find one left for Sasha Misurov. He was lately scared and battered, he was tongue-tied and frustrated, and he stripped the bracelet of Eveshka’s hair off his wrist in a fury and flung it down on the path as they walked.

Dip the bracelet in the river, Uulamets had said.

Lead it to the house, Uulamets had said.

His sword hand was scored by teeth he did not like to remember. He sucked at the worst of the scratches, looked at the wound in the gray, beginning dawn, and spat, revolted by the taste of blood and river water.

“It did that,” Sasha said in dismay.

“It did that,” he said; and looked darkly at Uulamets ahead of him on the trail, walking behind Eveshka~who had run away from her father, it now seemed.

So, by Uulamets’ own word, had the wife; and so had this Kavi Chernevog—for reasons he personally began to suspect as evidence of good character.

There was anger and unhappiness in the house, and Eveshka was fixing breakfast only, Sasha suspected, because she was evading her father. Pyetr had poured himself a cup of vodka. He had been limping a little on the way up, his hand was swelling, and Sasha wished master Uulamets would do something about it, but master Uulamets just sat watching Eveshka as if he was waiting for her to say something, and as if he was thinking thoughts no wizard should entertain—all too easy for Uulamets inadvertently to let something terrible fly, if he had not done it already, and Sasha had no wish to disturb his concentration if he was trying to deal with that—

But Sasha himself was angrier than he ever let himself get, considering Pyetr was hurt and Uulamets had had a great deal to do with that, whether through bad planning or callous disregard for Pyetr’s life. He understood why Uulamets had not used the salt at the knoll: Uulamets had come prepared to deal with a ghost, not Hwiuur, and might not be expected, in the midst of a working that wide and that dangerous, to prepare for everything—

Though the vodyanoi should have been primarily suspect—given Uulamets had known then that Hwiuur even existed, which was by no means a certainty—or given that Hwiuur himself had not slipped around the edges of Uulamets’ attention with powerful wishes of his own.

Perhaps—Sasha tried to be charitable and to control his own temper—perhaps Hwiuur had put more strain on the old man than any of them understood, or perhaps neither Uulamets nor any wizard knew enough about vodyaniye: I wish I could tell you exactly, Uulamets had said to Pyetr—which did argue for some attempt at honesty on Uulamets’ part; but Sasha was not mollified. If Uulamets had known anything more than a stable-boy knew about such creatures, he should not have sent Pyetr without protection (the creature would smell it, Uulamets had said) or given him the instructions he had given, to try to outrace the creature on a steep trail, when it was that fast and that capable out of the water—but no, Uulamets had insisted, choosing the porch for a trap, the sun will reach here—

If Uulamets had paid a tenth part of his attention to anything but his daughter; if he paid it now, or even said, Thank you, Pyetr Bitch; or cared to do something about a wound that was already swelling and that, made by a creature like that, might have effects a stableboy from Vojvoda had no idea how to deal with—if Uulamets showed any least concern, Sasha thought, or even asked now what he was doing, rummaging through the herb pots and mixing up wormwood and chamomile, which were only kitchen lore and a poor second to Uulamets’ knowledge—