C. Cherryh - Rusalka

But not without change. Not without a feeling of intimacy that made him afraid not to look into Uulamets’ eyes, and have Uulamets’ look into his, but he did that; because Uulamets wanted him to.

The will went out of him, then, his hand lifted without his knowing why, and the raven landed on his wrist, its wings fanning smoke that stung his eyes. It hopped then to Uulamets’ outstretched hand and then to his shoulder, not objecting to the smoke or the fire, turning its single glittering eye toward him.

Not a natural creature, very, very old, its feathers dulled, half-blind before Uulamets had wished it to his service and given it his heart, having no living thing else.

“Better him than Draga,” Uulamets said, and flung it aloft, a heavy flap of wings into the night above the fire. “I wasn’t totally a fool.”

Sasha knew other things, when he tried to think about Pyetr’s whereabouts: he wanted to know where Pyetr was, and instead knew too much about Draga, and women—things he had never experienced in his life; and most of all about Eveshka and Uulamets and Chernevog, so that he plunged his head into his hands and felt the whole world spinning, his innocence despicable and dangerous-He wanted to know about Pyetr, it was all he wanted, it was all that was left of everything he personally wanted—and he understood now that that wish had importance to people everywhere in the land, for generations and generations of Vojvodas and Kievs as far as he could think of—knew that the wish for

Pyetr’s safety above all else might give everything to Chernevog, who might already have killed him.

“Head over heart,” Uulamets said, laying a hand on his shoulder, shaking him gently, and Sasha wiped his eyes and nodded, trying, god ! trying not to wish anything for a while.

“Eventually you know,” Uulamets said, “you’re better off without a heart. My friend up there could carry both—”

Sasha shook his head, wiped his eyes again and swallowed the lump in his throat, trying to think, simply to think what to want.

That people be free and good-minded and safe from calamities: that wizards everywhere want that above all—

“Unfortunately,” Uulamets said, “we have our faults. Our hearts aren’t perfect. And when we’re a damned, self-centered fool like our enemy, we’re in trouble.”

We should wish for the most right things, Sasha thought.

“That’s very good,” Uulamets said, “but in the meanwhile our enemy has more power than we do and we’re not likely to get our way just by wishing, are we?”

“So what are we going to do?”

“The power of names,” Uulamets said, and jabbed a finger at his chest. “Specificity over generality. When you wish for something specific and put a name on that one little thing—” Uulamets measured a tiny distance with his fingers, the size of a gnat. “That will go right through a wide, vague wish, like a stone through smoke. Poof. Wishes work best on unbalanced things.”

“So it’s who’s smarter.”

“And gifted. And what resources he has. Our enemy’s betting on all three. He’s a fool on a grand scale—but not in the little ones.”

“Didn’t he wish not to get caught stealing?”

“This book—” Uulamets laid a hand on the pack that he always kept close to him. “Is like that jug of yours. Like the raven. Nothing can happen to it so long as I live. Nothing will ever break that damned jug, till the day you die. Don’t do things like that lightly, hear me?”

“The ghosts aren’t bothering us—” Sasha realized of a sudden, off the thought of having failed in his recent wishes.

“He’s thinking again. Or we’ve overpowered them by knowing what we want. Who knows?”

“Isn’t he going to know?”

“Maybe. If he’s paying attention.”

“But aren’t—” He did not want to quarrel with master Uulamets, but he had the most overwhelming anxiety about their waiting till morning.

“What you haven’t learned,” Uulamets said, lifting a cautionary finger, “what you haven’t learned that you absolutely must, boy, is that a wizard can do more with a clear head at a distance man he can do, muddled and exhausted, close at hand—at least where it regards an enemy well-rested, comfortable, who’s had ample while to decide what he’s going to do about us. What we have to do—what we have to do is find his weaknesses and deny him the specific things he wants us to do. And get close enough and wise enough to see the specific things to undo him. Back and forth, you see. Rapidly. Very like any other kind of fighting. Dawn’s coming soon. I’m going to wish us both to sleep.”

“If that’s a mistake, if that’s what he’s wishing us—”

Uulamets tapped him on the forehead. “You don’t want something to happen. Vague as smoke. Wish instead with me: that we wake up safe, unrobbed, unthreatened, and in time, in spite of him. And shut up.”

Uulamets tapped his forehead a second time, he felt himself going, and had wits left only enough to grab his blanket and dispose himself safely on the ground.

He doubted their safety: he tried with all the force he had to believe everything was safe while sleep was overwhelming him…

And was next aware of light falling on his face and of a rustling of dead leaves, before something landed on his chest and grabbed his collar.

“God!” he gasped, eyes wide, nose-to-button nose and eye-to-moonlike eye with a black fur-ball. “Babi!”

Babi shook at him, hissing, distraught—

Babi, who had been with Pyetr—

“Master Uulamets!—Get off me, Babi, I’m trying to get up!”

“One never knows,” Uulamets said. “I wished for help, and… to tell the stark truth, I’d hoped for leshys…”

“But I sent him to stay with Pyetr,” Sasha protested, gathering the dvorovoi into his arms and staggering to his feet. Babi hugged his neck and buried his face in his collar, all of which said to him that Babi was not in fact the help Uulamets had hoped for. Babi was help to no one at the moment. “Babi wouldn’t have left him—”

“It’s certainly no small thing that’s driven him off,” Uulamets said, and immediately began gathering up his pack. “Babi! Come here!”

Babi vanished from Sasha’s arms, to the dismay of both of them—simply ceased to be there, or anywhere in their vicinity. “Babi!” Sasha cried softly, casting about to find him; and from Uulamets knew only that it was a very badly used, very frightened Babi—apt to return to them at any moment, or whatever Babi considered a moment, but gone for now to a Place magical creatures could reach and no magician could.

Where is that? Sasha’s wondered; and Uulamets, shrugging on his pack, said, “They know. We don’t. I’m not sure we’d want to be there. Pack up and come on.”

Uulamets believed Babi’s appearance meant something direly wrong, that cam* through all too strongly, and Sasha tried to keep himself from panic as they hiked at the best pace they could manage along the overgrown bank, following the stream for a road.

One or the other of them—he was sure it was Uulamets, because he had never held such terrible ideas in his life—thought what a wizard could do to an ordinary man like Pyetr, if that wizard were vindictive: whichever of the two of them was responsible for that thought tried not to dwell on it—Sasha was sure he was trying, so maybe his own imagination had grown too wide and too terrible since he and master Uulamets had—

—had done whatever had happened last night, which left his head crammed with constantly surfacing things he had never wanted to know, understandings too fast and too terrible even for Uulamets, who kept telling him be quiet, stop thinking at him.