C. Cherryh - Rusalka

A wizard. Wanting Pyetr—wanting him to love her, wanting so much-Would he, without that? Would he forget about Kiev, and stay, without that?

God, how much of it is me holding him? And how much of it is me wanting her for his sake?

“What about Chernevog?” Pyetr asked again. “How long will he sleep? What do we do with him?”

So long as he lives, neither one of them is safe, nothing is safe, Chernevog’s the instability…

God, I’m not thinking straight; I can’t sleep, I daren’t sleep tonight—I haven’t the surety of anything.

Can he be waking?

Sasha dropped his head against his hands, thinking that, winning, they had not, after all, won. He could not justify Chernevog surviving, wicked as he was, he could not justify a mercy that endangered others, seeing what Chernevog had done, and in his exhaustion he could not see the river house again, nor staying with Pyetr and Eveshka, where he wanted to be, where he wanted dangerously much to be…

No.

Which meant leaving Pyetr to Eveshka, alone, trusting her to take proper care of him—when he at least had known unmagical folk, had lived with them as one of them, for the god’s sake, which Eveshka never had, and that was a terrible danger to him, hardly less than Chernevog.

But without killing Chernevog—without sleeping enough to have his wits about him—without the confidence to hold Chernevog while he got that rest—

God, he thought, and wanted Chernevog asleep, staying asleep—

“He’s slipping,” he whispered to Pyetr. Sweat was cold on his face, in the wind out of the dark. “God, help me, I’m not holding him—”

“ ’Veshka—” Pyetr said, looking toward her in alarm. “ ’Veshka, help—”

The instability grew less, that was the only way he could think it. Pyetr’s hand stayed on his shoulder a moment.

“All right?”

“I’ve got him.” Sasha drew a large breath, let it go slowly. “It’s all right.”

Pyetr still looked worried. Sasha hit him lightly on the knee. “Don’t do that. Don’t worry. It’s all right.”

Pyetr bit his lip. “Look. We’ve got him. Eveshka’s all right. Get some rest.”

Sasha wiped his eyes. “I don’t know what to do, I only know I daren’t take a chance.”

“On what? On ’Veshka? She’ll be all right. Get some sleep. We’ll both stay awake—I’m better than you are…”

“No.”

“I can want to stay awake, all right?”

“Listen, we’re getting out of here tomorrow. If you want that blackguard, I’ll carry him back.”

This, while Pyetr was doing well to carry himself, and they were too spent to patch everything. Sasha stared at him bleakly.

“We’ll make a raft or something,” Pyetr said. “It’s downstream.”

“Don’t distract me.”

“Don’t do that to me, dammit! Stop it!”

Sasha caught himself, dropped his head into his hands.

“I’m sorry,” Pyetr said quietly. “Sasha?”

“I’m all right. I’m all right, just—don’t push me.”

“He’s not all right,” he heard Pyetr say; felt Eveshka then, wishing at him, afraid of him—and perhaps she spoke to Pyetr, because all at once Pyetr seized his arm and shook at him, saying harshly, “Sasha? What did he do to you? What did Uulamets do?”

He did not want to answer. He damned Eveshka’s cold honesty. Or whatever made her betray him. Perhaps it was even fear for Pyetr—for all of them.

“He gave me everything he knew,” Sasha said, and added, because if he was telling the truth, it did not seem safe to tell only part of it, not when it involved Pyetr and Eveshka both:

“His book. His magic. Everything. Including about Draga. Including about Eveshka.”

He felt Eveshka withdraw. If Pyetr’s wishes had force he thought he would feel him retreating as well.

But Pyetr shook at him. “Sasha?” he asked, shook at him again, as if to make sure who he was talking to; and that hurt, that hurt beyond bearing. “Sasha, dammit!”

“I’m not changed,” Sasha said desperately. “It’s still me, Pyetr.”

“If he wasn’t dead, I’d kill him!” Pyetr slammed his hand against his knee, then looked, distraught, toward Eveshka. “God—”

“I know him,” Eveshka said faintly. “You don’t have to explain anything to me.” She stood up, hugging her arms about herself, then looked back and frowned at them, at him , in particular, as if she were as unsure as Pyetr what she was dealing with.

“He’s—gone,” Sasha said. “I only remember things. Pieces of them. Not everything at once.”

Perhaps that reassured them. He hoped so with all his heart. Pyetr put his arm around him, but he had just cheated, wanting them still to love him, and he was slipping again—

Pyetr grabbed hold of him, hugged him and held onto him, while the very air seemed charged and unstable—fraught with power different and colder than the lightning—

“Pyetr!” Eveshka said, “Pyetr, something’s out there—”

Sasha tried to use his material eyes, tried to stand up, and made it on the second attempt, while Pyetr gathered up his sword. There came a sound like wind in leaves, from all sides of them, and suddenly a smoky haze closing in about them at the farthest limits of the light.

“Leshys,” Sasha whispered, and, remembering: “Uulamets wished for leshys…”

Then Pyetr, to his startlement, called out like a householder to a neighbor, “Misighi? Is that you?”

If an ordinary man could feel anything magical, it was the good will of these creatures, so terribly reputed that the grandmothers frightened children with the mere mention of them.

But violent, half-crazed old Misighi folded Pyetr ever so gently to his leprous heart, saying, “It is you, isn’t it? You’re alive.”

After which so much strength poured into him he felt-terribly sleepy, and free of pain and free of worry.

“Let him go!” Sasha said.

But Pyetr looked down at him, at a very worried Sasha, holding, for the god’s sake, his sword. He blinked, feeling sleepier and sleepier, said, “It’s quite all right. They’re here to help.”

“Health,” Misighi rumbled, touching him with gently quivering fingers. “Be safe. Leave us the wizard.”

“Chernevog?” Pyetr had the presence of mind to ask, alarmed: he certainly had no notion of leaving them Sasha or Eveshka, but the dark that beckoned him seemed deeper and deeper.

“We can keep Chernevog,” Misighi said. “Break his bones…”

Another said: “Weave him tight, tight so he can’t do harm. Make his sleep deep. This is leshys’ work.”

“Replant,” one said.

“Regrow,” a fourth.

“The forests will come back,” Misighi said.

“Eveshka?” Pyetr called muzzily, feeling heavier and heavier. “Sasha?”

He thought they answered him, he thought they said they were all right. He hoped—his senses were raw and lately battered and desperate—he dared believe what he knew.

“Health,” leshys whispered, leaning close with a whisper and a smell of living leaves.

“Life,” one said, and another, in deep, rumbling tones: “Seeds follow fire.”

After that, the whisper of leaves, a gentle rocking, eventually a sense that they were moving very fast indeed.

“Take you to the river,” he dreamed old Misighi whispered to him in that sound, “send you safe home. Wiun says.”

Sasha waked with a start, on sun-warmed boards, with the soft lapping of water round about, the gentle creak and heave and pitch of the boat under him; and Pyetr and Eveshka asleep beside him, walled in by sacks and baskets that were not theirs. Their hair was all snarled with leaves and twigs, their clothing was precisely as he recollected out of a dream of firelight and burned timbers, a terrible dream, at the end of which Pyetr and Eveshka had been snatched up and taken from him in a haze of twigs.