C. Cherryh - Rusalka

“Until someone objects,” Uulamets said, and struggled up the rise the land took here, up the mist-slick and muddy slope. He faltered, and Sasha without thinking steadied him, not surprised when the old man shoved him off at the top, not offended at the anger and the concentration that refused outside interventions. Quiet, that concentration wished on them both: invisibility, unexpectedness.

It encouraged Kavi Chernevog, told* him reassuring things about his own power, his own cleverness—it told him Ilya Uulamets was old and failing, and that there was no reason to worry in this encounter Chernevog had long schemed to provoke. Every power hereabouts was afraid of Chernevog, even the leshys.

It was easy to believe that, it was especially easy because that was what Chernevog sent out to them, and they echoed back to him with small slight changes for his own suspicious, heartless character:

Beware of Eveshka.

She doesn’t love you. Could you expect that? She never did: she only wanted power for herself.

Then a soft, insinuating doubt came from the other direction, the certainty that Pyetr was alive and with Chernevog.

Sasha faltered, felt a cold, cruel impulse to distrust Uulamets, remembering that Uulamets would spare nothing, not even Eveshka, certainly not him or Pyetr in his purposes, and rescuing Pyetr was out of the question.

Then Uulamets caught his arm and said, “Watch yourself, watch yourself, boy. That’s him, too. You can’t believe a thing.”

But he was increasingly certain where Pyetr was, next a tree in a yard he had never, except through Uulamets’ eyes, seen in his life; and he was certain that Eveshka had given way to Chernevog and accepted his gift of strength, Pyetr having no more to spare…

As for Sasha Misurov, the seductive whisper came, if he would simply stand aside, if he would do that, then Chernevog would make him powerful in his own right, over all the people in the world that had ever despised him, because Chernevog did not discount him, Chernevog recognized his presence with Uulamets and knew that, but for youth, he was far more than Uulamets—

A boy who would pledge himself to Chernevog would be part of Chernevog’s own household, along with Eveshka, along with Pyetr, ageless, ruling over cities and kingdoms if he desired it—

Or he could die, seeing Pyetr die before him—

“If Pyetr’s there,” Uulamets breathed as they walked, “Chernevog won’t kill him, not while he’s got you upset. Trees , boy!”

He was worth nothing , at the end, except as a hostage, a weapon on Chernevog’s side, a point of leverage between Uulamets and Sasha, who were going to walk into this place—

Chernevog perhaps wanted him to know that, or Hwiuur did; or perhaps he had wit enough occasionally to know some things without a wizard to explain it to him: he no longer was sure where his thoughts came from, sitting where Hwiuur had dragged him, in the mud of the yard, at the foot of a dead tree-once Chernevog had gotten from him the little packet of salt that Sasha had given him at the start of their trek.

God, he had never once thought of it; and maybe that was the kind of luck a wizard made for himself. But to have Chernevog take it from him and throw it contemptuously into the mud-Smiling.—God!

“Hold him,” Chernevog said then to the vodyanoi; and to Pyetr: “They’re still coming. The old man’s tricked your young friend, quite the way he’d have used me or his own daughter, ultimately—gotten hold of him in a way your friend wouldn’t choose for himself, I assure you. You might pull him away.”

To you, Pyetr thought, and turned his face against the smooth, cold bole of the tree, expecting pain for that refusal.

“Don’t you owe him to do that?” Chernevog asked.

Only stop fighting me, Chernevog kept saying, in countless ways: I have everything. I’ll give you anything you want…

Eveshka had tried, god, longer than flesh and bone could hold out, while Chernevog who could have killed him with a spare thought kept him alive—

“Eveshka’s reconsidered,” Chernevog said. “I think you understand that. Shouldn’t you do the same? You could save your young friend, who has so much potential. You could amount to something. You could do so much good with your life. And you da nothing .”

Pyetr went—finally, while Chernevog walked off to the house, and the exhaustion and the doubts about Chernevog and Uulamets both overwhelmed him. He hung his head and tried to get his wits about him, ignoring the soft slither of Hwiuur’s coils constantly circling the tree, occasionally sliding over his legs, Hwiuur whispering in his cold, sibilant voice: “Not so glib now, are you? Not so clever after all. Such a disappointment you’ve proved to your friends. And to the woman.”

I’m not a disappointment, Pyetr thought, remembering ’Mitri, remembering pronouncements from every father in Vojvoda.—Everyone expected me to be a failure.

“They’re coming,” Hwiuur said, and nudged him with his head, jaws against his cheek. “Look, look, just atop the hill.”

Sasha, with Uulamets, he could make them out through the brush, under the gray and flickering sky—the both of them walking steadily toward the house, whether by their own will or not.

“You’ll find out, now,” Hwiuur said, resting his jaw on Pyetr’s shoulder, gusting dank breath into his face.

“God!” Pyetr flinched from under that weight. “Get away from me! Sasha, dammit, run, for the god’s sake !”

“Pyetr?” Sasha’s voice came drifting across the distance, thin and frightened. He saw the boy start to run then.

Toward him.

I’m a damn jinx, Pyetr thought, cursing himself—

In a wizard-quarrel, where every player but himself could load the dice—

A gambler’s son knew a crooked game when he saw it.

“He’s in the house!” Pyetr yelled, and quicker than he could get it out, the vodyanoi’s coils went about him, tightening. “Chernevog’s in the house: get him!”

Sasha had stopped cold, looking at the house, Pyetr saw that as his ribs began to creak—joints cracking with his effort to keep the coils apart.

Suddenly something small, winged, and black flurried into the space between his face and Hwiuur’s, driving its beak again and again at the vodyanoi’s eyes.

And a heart-stopping flash of light and shock burst in the yard, with a crack of thunder.

Sasha sprawled in the mud, scrambled toward master Uulamets while burning bits of the bathhouse were still showering down around them.

While—he thought, Uulamets thought, having wished Chernevog’s bolt aside—the lightnings were reshaping themselves over their heads: their hair was rising on end, skin prickled the way it had when Uulamets had realized that one was corning.

Uulamets had wanted it toward the house, but Sasha had simultaneously flinched, disagreed, feverishly compromised on something belonging to Chernevog—

Remembering his parents’ voices behind a sheet of fire—

“Sasha!” he heard Pyetr screaming, then, while the lightning aimed at them again, while Uulamets a second time wanted the house—

Sasha wished with him of a sudden, scared, knowing Pyetr was in trouble.

The sky tore, the world tore, a seam of bright light. The east tower of the house went white and showered bits of burning wood.

Fire leapt up in the shattered tower and at places on the roof, fire spread on the winds of Uulamets’ intention—wind rushing toward the house.

“Lightning likes tall things,” Uulamets muttered, as Sasha wished a sudden, stolen swirl of wind and sparks toward the vodyanoi—wished Pyetr /ree—while more lightning was readying itself and Uulamets was trying to concentrate their attention and fight Chernevog’s direction of it in less than a heartbeat.