Chernevog (10 page)

6

Very little was left of the old road: it was getting increasingly overgrown, most confused where the fall of old trees had let in the sun, stretches rife with new bracken, saplings as apt to grow in the roadway as in the woods about. There were the occasional deadfalls, there were washes and slips where the death of trees had let streams run unchecked—rough ground and unpredictable, and Pyetr had had every notion of taking it easy on himself and on
Volkhi
this first outing, simply seeing, sedately and sanely, how
Volkhi
had fared these last several years.

But Volkhi's traveling stride, sure-footed and sensible, ate up the distances, made little of the obstacles, and in the shadowed places, the barren ground beneath the old trees,
Volkhi
threw his head and danced, never minding Babi turning up in his path—actually not odd at all, Pyetr thought, reckoning that a horse probably knew a dvorovoi when it smelled one. Babi skipped and trotted and panted along quite briskly, crossed right under Volkhi's feet, and
Volkhi
never made but a skip and a kick like a colt..

Pyetr laughed aloud, dusted Volkhi's rump with his cap, jumped him over an old log and,
Volkhi
taking it into his head just then to race, ran Babi a wild course for a long stretch down j the old road—but Babi cheated: Babi kept popping up just ahead of them.

* * *

Sweet oils and pine, bay for foreseeing: it was not what one hurried so much as the thought one put into it, master Uulamets would say. They filled the bathhouse with aromatic smoke and steam: they flung herbs into the small stone furnace and wished for visions in the firelit dark.

“
Bannik,
”
Sasha asked it, most respectfully,
“
is there a danger to anyone of this household?
”

“
Not is!
”
Eveshka said.
“
It only knows the future. Bannik, excuse us and show us the fireside this evening.
”

Hut they had nothing from the bannik beyond that first vision, only the creak and pop of settling timbers, ask though they would, however politely and respectfully.

Not their bannik, Eveshka had said: and Sasha was sure it
was
not, not the Old Man of the Bath of Eveshka's childhood, not even the angry creature that had fled from Uulamets, but something much darker—something which, so far as Sasha had seen it, resembled nothing so much as a ragged, feral child—

With claws that had left bleeding scratches on his arm.

“
Ours never had eyes like that,
”
Eveshka said, hugging her arms about her as she paced the circuit of the bathhouse.
“
Ours never attacked anyone, it never made sounds at all, it was just th
is
little old man who sometimes left footprints in the snow— especially when we left him vodka, and he'd get drunk, and you'd go into the bathhouse and he'd sit in the corner and give you visions—but they never made sense. They never were about anything important. This thing—
”

“
I'll get the vodka jug,
”
Sasha said, willing to try anything, and opened the door and hesitated in sudden doubt of Eveshka's safety.

“
I'll be all right!
”
Eveshka said, and waved him out.
“
Go! Let's just for the god's sake do something, shall we?
”

He wished
he
knew why Pyetr was not back. He wished—

He ran out into the daylight and got the vodka jug from where he was sure
Pyetr had left it, beside Volkhi's pen, and raced, breathless, back to the bathhouse and inside.

Eveshka stood waiting, arms folded.
“
Nothing,
”
she whispered to his anxious look, as he shut the door again.
“
God, just let's get it to show us whatever it wants to show us
... ”

He unstopped the jug, splashed a generous dash into the furnace along with the bay and the pine baric and the moss. Fire roared back into his face, dazzled him with light—

Drops falling from thorns, splashing into water
...

Droplets red and spreading in puddles on the stones
...

‘‘Where's Pyetr?
”
Eveshka cried, wishing truth from the bannik, feeling the silence on the woods like suffocation, like drowning
...

The River-thing sleeping deep in his burrow, old Hwiuur, coiled like the snake he seemed
...

She caught at Sasha's sleeve as he staggered upright. She stood there trembling, teeth chattering, saying, though she could hardly hear herself speaking in that silence,
“
I can't make sense of it. Blood and water—blood and water's all I can see of it— Sasha, I don't like this.
”

And Sasha, between breaths, holding her sleeve:
“
I don't see anything at all. It's not speaking to me.
”

Pyetr reined back at a brushy deadfall across the road, walked Volkhi around its end to the other side, then slid off for a rest
—
god, a little ride and already he felt the first hint of soreness that might, by tomorrow, have him walking very carefully.

More than that, Sasha was going to laugh—wish him well and cure the ache Sasha might, but he was certainly going to have his amusement beforehand.

So if one was going to suffer for it, Pyetr thought, rubbing Volkhi down with old leaves, and if one was bound to be sore before the day was done, there was no degree to that kind of ache: as well enjoy the day. Sasha would understand, Sasha would tell Eveshka there was no reason to worry about the horse—

But it was probably not wise to press the point too far, Pyetr told himself on a second thought: just a little way down the road. Eveshka was already upset, and if he was determined to cure her, of her fear of horses, he could hardly afford to have her worrying. So he swung up again to Volkhi's back, wincing a bit as he landed, and started off at an easy pace, Babi trotting along at one side and the other by entirely unpredictable turns.

It was too good to give up quite this early: aches to come and all, there was not a tsar in all the world he envied at the moment,
not for his wife, not for his court, not for any horse a tsar could own.

He'll surely come to some bad end, they had said of him In Vojvoda. Pyetr Ilyitch, the gambler's son, was bound, they said, to be hanged—to which he had come quite frighteningly close, as happened, but for Sasha. And here he was, Pyetr Kochevikov, who never had believed in magic, living with wizards, married to a rusalka who really, truly, was alive again; and riding in a woods with a dvorovoi for company.

Sometimes it all did take a little getting used to. Sometimes he did think of Vojvoda, where there was doubtless a price on his head, and where none of his old friends would ever believe the sight of him hale and well.

And he most particularly hoped his old friend Dmitri Venedikov had bought Volkhi back from the innkeeper to satisfy his debts—because if it so happened that Sasha's innocent wish had Indeed committed horse theft, he sincerely hoped it was from 'Mitri, and by the dumping of
'Mitri in some muddy street— not that he was bitter, god, no, he was too well-content for bitterness toward his old friends, else he would wish (being no wizard and free to do such things) for 'Mitri to break a leg or two, for all the help 'Mitri had not been to him.

In truth, outside of Volkhi's original owner, who had been no good master in the first place, he could think of no one else more likely to have bought Volkhi from his creditors—'Mitri having said, loudly, in his cups, that he had thought his friend should
give
him a horse like that, his friend having been lucky enough to win him with borrowed money—

'Mitri being a boyar's son, after all, and entitled to all that was fine, and Pyetr Kochevikov having inherited nothing from his father except a bad reputation and a close acquaintance with the dice.

Pyetr found himself thinking for the first time in years how the road that had led him to this woods equally well led back again, and how quickly Volkhi could carry him—just far enough for a sight of
Vojvoda’s
brown, shingled roofs above its wooden walls, just for a satisfyingly remote thought of those same muddy streets where he had grown up and almost died, and particularly
f
or the imagination of his old friends' faces.

God.

He reined Volkhi in, suddenly aware that his thoughts had
turned in very foolish directions, that he had been riding for some little time oblivious to the road, and most alarming, that somewhere along the way Babi had stopped running ahead of him. He looked back to find the dvorovoi, reckoning Babi had reached the end of his patience or his boundaries, and saw that the old road, clear enough ahead, was a maze of gray, peeling trunks and leafy saplings behind him.

“
Babi?
”
he called, but the forest was so quiet except for Volkhi's snorting and breathing that it seemed hard to speak at all.
“
Babi, dammit, where are you?
”

“
Down the road and back,
”
Eveshka muttered, pacing up and down, wiping the sweat from her face. Her hand was shaking, Sasha could see it. Eveshka paced another course, said, looking toward the north wall of the bathhouse,
“
He should at least be turning around now, don't you think?
”

‘‘Probably.
”
He knelt, adding wood to the fire. His nose was running from the herbs, his eyes stung.
“
But he's on a horse for the first time in years. Don't worry. He's probably just taking a turn or two—
”

“
Oh,
god,
Sasha!
”

“
Don't worry about him. Babi's with him.
”

“
We don't know he is,
”
Eveshka said shortly.
“
We don't know anything.
”
She paced half the circuit of the bathhouse, stopped, hand over her eyes, wanting simply to know what was going on in the woods, Sasha could feel it up and down his spine, wanting till it echoed around the walls— But there was no answer at all.

“
Don't,
”
he said,
“
don't doubt, 'Veshka, just think about the bannik.
”

“
Banniks don't know what's going on
now,
it's tomorrow they live in, and wizards keep changing that—it's likely we've changed it even walking in here. We ought to be down that road, Sasha, that's where we ought to be! We ought to be seeing where he is and what's going on out there, because we're not going to get anything here!
”

Sasha wiped his nose again, and passed his arm across his forehead.
“
We could equally well bring trouble right to him. We don't know what we're doing.
”
Eveshka shook her head violently, fireglow making her pale
hair and her underlit face all one color in his swimming vision.
“
He's not going to give us anything: if it was going to, it would have by now!
”

“
Maybe we haven't asked a right question, yet,
”
Sasha said, and shut his eyes and tried to find that question, but all he kept getting for vision was Uulamets' memories turning over and over in his head, images of the river shore, a foggy morning, Eveshka walking into that mist, ghost among ghostly trees-Memory or prophecy? God, did Uulamets foresee 'Veshka's drowning—and not even know he'd seen it? Or is it some morning still to come?

“
It's a trap,
”
Eveshka said,
“
papa always said, prophecy's a trap.
”

“
Don't offend it, 'Veshka!
”

She hugged her arms about her ribs, looked up at the rafters with a shake of her head.
“
I've bad feelings. I don't trust this place. I don't like what I'm feeling—I don't like what I'm feeling from the woods—
”

Wind skirled through the open door, hit the fire, flung ash and embers, whipped at them.

The door banged shut and open again, once, twice.

Sasha stood up, looking about him. His shadow and Eveshka's trembled in the rafters and against the wooden walls.

“
Bannik!
”
he shouted.
“
Answer us!
”

Everything seemed fraught with possibilities, yea and nay equally balanced. He felt a sudden sense of suffocation, all the wishes successive wizards had ever made in this place hovering and circling—other, older wishes, mostly impotent, unless they should brush up against a strong new one, and that touch should set some old wish spinning, bring it into new motions, bring it into the current of things—

Leaves in the current, leaf brushing leaf-Motions more and more violent
—
the whole pattern swirling and changing as the current changed—the leaves madly whirling among the bubbles, a small whirlpool and a greater and greater one
—

“
Bannik!
”
he whispered, wishing with all his might for true answers this time, feeling the currents move around him till they bid fair to disturb everything in the world that was fixed.

“
Bannik, answer me! You've come here for a reason. What question are you waiting for me to ask, bannik?
”

A shadow jumped from one bench to the other, and to the rim of the firepit. A stone rattled.

The ferry on the river, by daylight, headed north under all its sail.

“
Is this the future?
”
he asked.
“
Bannik? Is this what will be or is this what we ought to do?
”

Pyetr's face, ghostly pale, lit by lightning
...