C. Cherryh - Rusalka

The old man had stopped, in the deep shadow of the trees.

“You’ll die,” the voices said. “Go back, don’t go any further.”

Sasha struggled through the thicket to his side; and Uulamets abruptly thrust the staff out to stop him, as an earthen edge crumbled under his foot and splashed into water deeply shadowed by the arching trees.

Water, Sasha thought, looking up that arch. Father Sky, she’s gone to the water.

“Pyetr!” he shouted…

A ghost said, faintly against his ear, “Don’t trust her…”

Both feet this time, and the split boot had taken a flood in. If there was water north of Kiev he had not fallen into or stepped in, Pyetr Illitch had no notion where it was.

But the ghosts let him alone, which might be the daylight, he thought: he hoped so, and fought his way along the streamside with increasing surety where she was and increasing certainty she was following the stream.

He was not crazed. He knew he was in trouble, he had left his pack and his supplies, he was less and less certain he knew the way back to Sasha and the old man, and he was virtually sure—in that way that wizards had of making a man know things—that Eveshka was headed straight for Chernevog.

Alone.

After which—

After which, with Chernevog holding her hostage and with themselves entangled in this damned forest, there was no safety—no safety for any of them once it got down to wizardly quarrels, on their enemy’s own terms and their enemy maybe with help of his own—the vodyanoi, for one, and the god only knew what else.

Things were starting to go wrong for Uulamets in such numbers Pyetr had a worse and worse feeling about the odds in Uulamets’ company, although he hoped the old man might at least have resources left to protect himself—and Sasha, if Sasha was standing next to him and helping him. While an ordinary man like himself—

—seemed mostly a distraction and a perpetual cause of arguments.

Pyetr could feel quite sorry for himself if he let himself think about that fact, quite sorry for himself, quite angry and quite resentful of Ilya Uulamets ; but there had been altogether too much of temper and foolishness for his liking, and he did not intend to waste his time on the anger. Perpetually glum, he told himself: and no sense of humor. Maybe wizards had to be like that, but he was not, despite a most ridiculous and unmanly lump in his throat when he thought about the boy and when he slowly figured it out that that had most likely been goodbye back there, for good and all.

He had thought about going back, at first, when he had failed to draw Eveshka back; but he had thought then about his dealings with the old man, realized he was doing no one any good, and reckoned that the old man most probably could wish himself on Eveshka’s track, but that in this matter Pyetr Kochevikov had his own clear sense where she was—and he could perhaps rely on a quieter and less fallible sense in Chernevog’s territory.

So he had a magic of his own, of sorts, something Chernevog might not know and something he doubted even Eveshka herself could escape, if only he could keep his wits about him in this place: he had to, or lose—

—lose what he had until lately mistaken for gold and places; one was that boy back there, and one was Uulamets’ long-dead daughter. Lose them he might, he thought, but not to Chernevog.

Not while he could do anything about it. ill-prepared as he was, he had his sword, the god knew there was no lack of water to drink, and he had learned how to keep himself warm at night and fed from the forest itself, at least sufficient to keep him going.

Chernevog had wizards to worry about. Maybe the vodyanoi had told him there was a weak link in their company: namely an ordinary man; and for all Sasha and Uulamets had sworn he was hard to magic, still, maybe—wizards being a skittery lot—and considering an ill-wish by what Sasha had told him was likeliest to hit right at a weak point—

Namely Pyetr Kochevikov.

That was the way Pyetr figured it, which actually helped the lump in his throat—at least offering him the possibility that Sasha had never wanted to be angry with him, that Sasha might at this very moment be wishing him back as hard as he could—

Would he not?

Pyetr pondered that and wanted to feel it if that was the case: he truly did, even if it hurt. That was far better than thinking Sasha was still angry with him.

Absolutely no, he told himself at once, Sasha would not be angry with him, not to that extent; and he fretted at it, sorted through all the impulses in his heart, trying to find that confusion that wizard-wishing made in him; but he found himself without any ambivalence at all about his own safety—and that would be Sasha’s first and strongest concern.

Maybe Eveshka’s magic had taken hold of him so thoroughly Sasha simply could not get past that sense that guided him. But there were other answers, some of which scared him almost to the point of turning back and trying to find the boy.

No, he told himself, no, and no, for all the reasons that had brought him this far. He had learned about wizards, even Sasha—that a man who tried to figure out why he was doing anything could only get crazier and more and more scared.

So one reckoned the odds once, took a well-reasoned path and left the point of choice behind as quickly as possible, blinding oneself to all second thoughts, to wizard-sent ones and true ones alike.

Just keep walking, he told himself every time doubts occurred to him. If the boy’s in trouble, you’re no help at all going back.

There was no sign as far as Sasha could see, as thoroughly as he and master Uulamets searched the wooded streamside.

No splitting up, Uulamets insisted, foremost of instructions, and with the ghosts plaguing them continually, with the vodyanoi somewhere unaccounted for—Sasha agreed. Ignoring the touches, the whispers, the cold spots, he clambered up and along the stream bank, with ever and again an anxious eye to the water.

About the chance that Pyetr might be under that dark, sluggish stream—he did not want to think about that, he adamantly refused to think about that.

But that wish worked no more than the rest did. He kept calm, and he tried to keep his wits and his eyes sharp as he clambered with the old man along the tangle of branches along the root-choked edge, looking for any footprint, anything, be it no more than a snag of thread in a thornbush; he tried to keep his thinking straight while cold spots went through him at random, tried to know whether his thoughts were all his own or whether someone was wishing him to miss clues and make mistakes; and tried to reason who that someone might be.

He slipped on a root, caught his backpack on a branch that bent and all but flung him in, after which he clung, panting, to a second low-hanging limb—and staring at Uulamets with a thought: Is it you?

NO STOPPING to search for food, no time even to rest since afternoon, only an occasional drink from the stream he followed, for a throat gone dry with hard breathing—and the sense of Eveshka’s presence grew steadily fainter: he did not know why, whether it was distance or Eveshka’s own strength fading, or whether it was some other thing; but he saw the oncoming night with increasing apprehension.

“Veshka,” he said to her, under his breath, “ ’Veshka, you really don’t want to leave me to this—”

He had not done as well as he might. Perhaps there never had been a real chance for any of them in the first place—

Second thoughts again. No, he said to himself, no and no.

The ghosts would come back after dark. And she intended to keep traveling.

“’Veshka, dammit!”