C. Cherryh - Rusalka

Uulamets gripped his arm, hurting him. “Save it. You’re right, he does know more than we’d like. Don’t think about it. Most of all don’t believe what attracts you, not in this game, do you understand me now, boy? Catch me once, not twice with that trick.”

I can’t help it, Sasha thought. If he aimed at Pyetr, Pyetr may be with him—

With Eveshka—

Uulamets’ fingers pulled at Sasha’s arm as he started walking again: Uulamets was angry, angry at his own anger: smothering it, killing it with long-practiced indifference. “He’s trying to shake us,” Uulamets muttered, and let him go to walk beside him. “He’s not going to. No tempers, boy, no resentments, what seems, isn’t necessarily so, you understand me? Believe things aren’t the worst, they won’t be the worst, quiet your damned self-doubt, boy, you can do anything you want to do, just want it enough and don’t stop till you’ve got it.”

Pyetr , Sasha thought, and tried to unwish that—as the raven swooped low, winged past them like a shadow and went aloft again, down the road. God, no, he thought, helpless totally to wish no. God, master Uulamets, I’m sorry, I’m sorry—

“Fine help,” Uulamets said, flinging his arm aloft as they walked. “—Find my daughter, that’s what you’re good for, you feathered thief! Go!”

“I didn’t mean it,” Sasha said miserably.

“Wish confusion on our enemies,” Uulamets said under his breath. “And trust the bird. One of those things a magician can only do a few times in his life, don’t ask me why I picked a damned crow—ask me why I didn’t choose a bear, a wolf at the least.”

The bird had been Uulamets’ pet when he was a boy. That came through, along with a memory of the house where they were going, a ramshackle place of towers, a terrible old woman intending the raven’s death—

A scared young wizard, desperately protecting the only living thing he loved—

Uulamets shut that away, like a door slamming, with the thought that their enemy’s attack had already had its effect, Pyetr was their point of division, Pyetr was the unstable point—

Sasha thought—

Things change that can change —

PYETR DID NOT remember arriving at Chernevog’s house. He only recollected a screen of dead hedges and gray, dead trees, hiding a towered and rambling structure as decrepit as Uulamets’ cottage; remembered walking toward it, not of his own accord, until his knees gave way under him and spilled him helplessly on his face in the dust. He was sure that that much was real.

He thought that at one point, in a room of polished wood, Chernevog had spoken to him again, saying with wizardly persuasion, “You might still redeem yourself with me—” He thought he had refused then—refused, though he was less and less sure he was right, or sane, or that he had chosen right in leaving Sasha to Uulamets.

“Come now,” Chernevog had said again, or at some other time. “Isn’t it foolish to fight me, when all I want is to give you everything you want? Listen to me, that’s all.”

“Sure,” he had said, “why not?”

“But you have to believe in me,” Chernevog had said, “and you’re lying, aren’t you? Stop pulling away from me. Do you want to live, fool?”

“Yes,” he said, eventually, screamed it, because Chernevog insisted, then tucked himself up on the floor where he had fallen and held his stomach—

Or it was long ago in Vojvoda, on a dark lane with a couple of bad losers—who had robbed him besides—

One bully’s like another, Pyetr thought now bitterly. Never satisfied, never satisfied, no matter how much you give them.

“Yes,” he said when Chernevog asked, or “No,” when Chernevog insisted; “I swear!” when Chernevog half-suffocated him; anything that Chernevog wanted, he agreed to, because he had no choice if Chernevog moved his limbs, stopped his breathing, dashed him to the ground—no choice and no effect to his wishes, for good or ill.

At last he felt cold against his face, and heard Eveshka pleading, “Pyetr, Pyetr, get up, hurry.”

He did try. Every joint hurt. “Please,” she whispered, “please, quickly, quickly, do what I tell you. He’s asleep. You’ve got to get out of here.”

He hauled himself up by the edge of a tottering bench that made a sound like thunder, got his knees under him and shoved himself to his feet. Eveshka tried, with little touches that could not touch him, to assist his balance, guiding him through an archway of carved fishes and up a short flight of steps.

“Where’s my sword?” he asked, catching at the doorframe, at a shelf then, for balance, within a little of knocking a pot off it. His heart thumped as the vessel rocked and settled. “Where’s my sword? Where is he?”

“It’s too dangerous, no! I can’t get past that door. He’s protected! Just get away—”

“Where’s the damn sword?” he insisted, but she wanted him out the door, wanted him to get to Sasha and her father—wanted him simply out of her way:

“Help my father!” she said. “Help where you have a chance: you can’t face him, you can’t do anything against him, you can’t even get in there. Just get out of here! It’s all you can do, Pyetr!”

He saw his sword by the door, staggered that direction and picked it up, having then to lean against the wall, his knees shaking under him.

“Please,” Eveshka said, and touched his face, tears shimmering in her eyes. “Please! You’re no help to me, you only hurt me—”

“It’s a trick,” he said. “Dammit, it’s a trick!” He struck out at her, passed his hand through cold: that was like Eveshka—who recoiled from him, hands clasped in front of her mouth.

“Get out of here! Please.”

The door beside him blasted open on a gust of wind and damp straight from the outside. He looked out on gray daylight, the tops of dead trees beyond a porch railing. Misting rain gusted into the room. Wind knocked something rattling, with a sound to wake the dead.

He turned his head in alarm, saw Eveshka’s eyes widen, her mouth open in that instant as something blocked the wind at his back.

He whirled around face to monstrous face with the vodyanoi’s head swaying snakelike above the porch rail, sleek and black and glistening with rain.

“Well, well,” Hwiuur said, “come ahead, come outside. The master certainly doesn’t mind. He truly doesn’t. He said you’d be coming.”

Pyetr moved to slam the door shut, but a rain-laden gust blew it back at him, and the vodyanoi struck through the doorway like the serpent he was, blocking it from closing as his strong, small hands seized Pyetr’s ankle.

“Stop!” Eveshka was screaming. “Kavi! Kavi, no, stop it! Make it stop! It’s going to kill him—”

Pyetr gave up holding on, slung the sheath off his sword and beat at the River-thing’s head and body as it dragged him out into the light. His hand ached and went numb; he all but dropped the sword, sky and boards changing places as wet coils flowed over him. The sword did leave his hand. Pain ran up that arm to his ribs, where Hwiuur’s weight pressed.

“Got you at last,” Hwiuur said, wrapping around him.

Then the vodyanoi flinched upward and hissed: “Salt! Treachery!”

They could see the towers through the woods, a huge house that might have graced some great city, sitting instead in desolation, weathered gray as the barren trees about it.

“There,” said Uulamets, out of breath.

And Sasha, with a pounding of his heart, with far too many unwelcome memories of this place and Uulamets’ own boyhood: “Do we just walk up to it?”