C. Cherryh - Rusalka

Silence then; and the whispers came back, ominously. “You shouldn’t have done that…”

“Perish the lot of you!” Uulamets snarled. “You were nothing when you were alive and you’re less now. Get out of here! Let us alone!”

Another deafening shriek. Sasha clapped his hands over his ears, wanting quiet, the way he knew master Uulamets wanted it, but the sound diminished only while he was thinking about that, and rose whenever he thought about getting on their way, whenever he thought about Pyetr, about anything at all, until there was nothing to do but to endure the screaming and try to move, the two of them, as quickly as they could, while chills lanced through them like swords.

The wailing hurt , it ached, it occupied attention and multiplied missteps in this woods that had not so much as a deer trail, the god knew why no creature would come here. They had not seen the raven since they had first reached the stream they were following, Babi was gone again: they were alone in a streamside darker and darker with overhanging trees, with the white shapes of ghosts reaching at them, so real now Sasha feared it was not only thorns and branches catching at his clothing and his pack.

Then it all stopped, and in the ringing it left was a rustling and crack of brush, and a powerful, quick slither of some heavy body from the streamside.

“Master Uulamets!” Sasha said, as ripples showed beside them on the water, a little sheen in absolute black.

Branches broke above them, as something huge and dark rose straight up.

“Well,” Hwiuur said, tall and black as the trees themselves, “do you finally want help?”

“Where’s my daughter?” Uulamets demanded; and: “Where’s Pyetr?” Sasha asked, even knowing the creature would lie, knowing it meant them no good.

“I don’t know why I should answer you. Send that wretched little creature on my track, try to chase me back to the river—”

Is that where Babi was? Sasha wondered, and wondered with a pang of anxiety where Babi was now, along with Pyetr and Eveshka, while Hwiuur seemed so confident and so self-pleased.

God, he thought, god, no…

“You swore on your name,” Uulamets said, and stamped his staff on the ground, “and you’ve lied—”

“Not lied,” the vodyanoi said, and the voice came from lower and lower in the brush. A dank, river-smelling wind gusted at them. “I offered you my help—”

“Deceptions—”

“ I am a snake,” Hwiuur said, smoothly, gently, “and left and right aren’t that important to me: everything’s one thing, really, isn’t it, a pretty girl—pretty, pretty bones—”

“Where is she?”

“Where? Always where and when, you folk, I swear you baffle me—as if it meant anything, to be one side or other of a place. I’m here, she’s there, she might be, will be, could be, all these things, but that’s not the question you should ask: you should ask where you are, and where you’re going, and I can tell you that. You’re in Chernevog’s forest, and you’re going the way everything here goes: his way.”

“Where’s Pyetr?” Sasha cried. “What’s happened to Eveshka?”

“I’ve answered that, haven’t I? Ask me another question. Or ask my help. I would give it.”

“Damn you,” Uulamets said, “you’re to blame for this!”

“Tsss. I? Ask your wife.”

“Ask her what?” Sasha asked, clenching sweating hands. It was none of his business, it was impertinent, but he had doubts of Uulamets, doubts of the vodyanoi’s truths, doubts of everything at the moment—

Which made a wizard far less defended than an ordinary boy.

And there was no reason he knew that Hwiuur did not kill them both.

“Tsss. Ask her who taught Chernevog.”

“I know who taught him,” Uulamets snarled. “I know too damned well who taught him…”

“Ask where he got his power.”

“From my book,” Uulamets said, “—the skulking thief!”

“Ask how he could read it.”

“I don’t need to ask.”

“Ask who was sleeping with Chernevog.”

“Damn you!”

“Tsss. So little gratitude. Let me help you. I would help you—”

The shadow rose above them, up and up above their heads.

Then Hwiuur crashed down, splintering limbs, and breaking brush in his retreat. From water’s edge came a sly, soft voice: “Old fool. You’re so wrong—in everything…”

“Hwiuur!” Uulamets said.

But there was only a disturbance of the water, a spreading ripple, and the rustling of the leaves as the wind rose, cold-edged.

Sasha thought: Can it tell the truth?

And about what Hwiuur had said: It doesn’t make sense.

“How could Chernevog beat you?” he asked Uulamets, suddenly brave enough to ask, because it seemed to him everyone was lying, or telling Hwiuur’s kind of truth. “He wasn’t that old. He—”

Uulamets grabbed him suddenly by the throat, hit him with the side of his staff while he was so startled he had not even his hands up to protect himself, and pinned him against the brush, a gray ness of hair and beard and shoulders, a harsh breathing in the dark, a hand on his throat, not tightening, not letting him go, either.

“He was eighteen,” Uulamets said, “He was a handsome, glib boy , as helpful as you are, until I caught him at his game.”

Sasha trembled, thoughts scattering like sparrows—what Uulamets could do, what some faceless man had done, long ago, holding him and hitting him—

A neighbor woman saying, His father beat the boy—

“Dammit, boy, I told you I wanted to stop, I told you, you understand me, but you didn’t care, you were getting your way, no matter what—I can’t fight that, not without doing something our enemy can use, so I gave in to your foolishness, and keep going, and damn you! you natter and you argue and push me—”

“I didn’t understand I was doing it, I didn’t mean to do it—not—not except the first—”

Uulamets was going to hit him again, Uulamets was going to hit him because Uulamets was terrified of his own anger and there was so much of it. Honesty was equally frightening to him—and he was practicing it now, wanting a foolish boy to know how desperate and frightened a wizard could be.

Sasha laid his hands on Uulamets’ arm, wanting Uulamets not to be afraid of him—desperately afraid that was the wrong thing to do, realizing he should have said it aloud, the way Pyetr had told him—Say, it, boy!

The raven settled, with a flutter of wings, in the thicket at Sasha’s back.

“Please,” Sasha said, pushing at Uulamets’ hand. “I was stupid. But—” Tears threatened him. “Pyetr—”

The bird fluttered uneasily, settled its weight on Sasha’s shoulder and brushed his cheek with a nervous wing. Tears spilled. Pyetr was dead, he was scared it was true, it was his fault, and Uulamets called him a fool.

Uulamets’ fingers slightly tightened, only slightly. “A wizard can’t want too much,” Uulamets said. “He can’t want a kingdom, he can’t want gold, he can’t want things that bring him near other people; but there’s one most dangerous thing he can want.”

“What’s that?” Sasha asked, because the old man was going to squeeze his throat shut, and the old man said, hardly louder than the wind,

“He can’t want more magic than he has, he can wish himself more and more powerful. And do you know where he can get that power?”

It was hard to think past his grief, and the old man pressing him back against the branches, off his balance in every sense—most of all with Uulamets trying to get some admission from him he did not understand. “He can learn,” was the only answer that came to him.