“God,” Chernevog said, and sat down against the thorn hedge, holding to its branches.
“Where’s my wife?” Pyetr asked him, with the sword against his heart. “Where’s my wife, damn you?”
“I don’t know,” he said faintly, and it seemed to his confusion that he had no better friend in all the world than this man who would put an end to wishes, this man who of all men he had ever known had no further designs against him. He sat there waiting to die, Pyetr stood there looking at him, and the sword hurt, but not greatly. Neither of them moved, for what seemed forever.
“Damn you,” Pyetr said finally. He thought that was the last thing he would hear.
But Sasha pushed the point away.
14
Nothing had worked the way it ought, in Sasha’s reckoning: the owl ought not to have died, the leshys ought not to be standing motionless and unhealthy as they were, and Chernevog ought not to be alive—but for the latter fact at least he had only himself to blame. He could not understand what he had done—or why he had not shoved Pyetr’s hand the other way.
“Get up,” Pyetr said, and Chernevog struggled to his feet against the thorn hedge, grasping branches that stabbed his palms with a cruelty that made Sasha wince. Blood came—droplets shaken from the thorns spattered the leaves.
God, I’ve seen this, I’ve seen this, and now it’s happening.
“Move!” Pyetr said, and Chernevog, seeming dazed and lost, went where Pyetr sent him, back through the thorn-hedge maze to the clearing and the stone.
We have to kill him, Sasha thought miserably. Surely that’s the only sane thing to do. Nothing can ever be safe so long as he’s alive.
“Misighi!” Pyetr called to the leshys, who stood all about them, still as trees. “Misighi, he’s awake, we’ve got him, now what in hell do we do with him?”
The leshys gave no answer. Chernevog had knelt by the owl, blood still dripping from his fingers, falling to the ground between his knees—Chernevog wiped his cheek with the back of his hand, looked utterly overwhelmed.
God, this is where it was telling us we’d be, this is what the bannik meant. But he’s not fighting us, he doesn’t act as if he understands anything—
“Don’t put on with us,” Pyetr said, “damn it all.” He had his sword in his hand. Everything about him said he was ready to use it: Sasha wished he would, before Chernevog recovered his wits and wanted their hearts stopped.
But Chernevog looked up, cradling his wounded hands one in the other, his face white with pain, eyes holding only bewilderment.
Pyetr’s sword trembled, rose in a wide, glittering sweep, and with a sudden wrench of Pyetr’s arm, hit the ground at Chernevog’s knee.
“Hell!” Pyetr said in disgust.
Chernevog had never flinched, only looked at them with that terrible lost expression.
“Is he doing that?” Pyetr asked angrily. “Is he wishing at us?”
Sasha said, “I’m not sure.”
Pyetr came back to him, and turned and looked again at Chernevog, the sword still in his hand. “He is doing it, dammit.”
The books, Chernevog’s with them, were all lying out in the brush somewhere—Sasha tried not to think about that. He caught Pyetr’s arm, drew him half about and whispered, “The owl shouldn’t have died, we’ve left my bags out mere, and I’m not sure the leshys are watching anything right now.”
“Let the damn bags stay there! Don’t let’s go off in separate directions like fools, all right? It’s exactly what he’d want!”
“I don’t know, Pyetr. I don’t know! If the owl did have his heart, and it did come back to him— Maybe that’s what the leshys wanted, maybe that’s what they’ve been doing with him all these years—”
“We don’t damn well know what the leshys have done, do we? They’re not talking to us. They’re not looking healthy at all right now, are they?” Pyetr’s voice rose. Pyetr made an evident effort to keep it low. “Misighi’s not the sort to draw off from us.”
“Maybe it wasn’t easy,” Sasha said, “working a magic like that. If they have somehow cured him…”
“Cured him of what? Cure him of life, that would have been some help! What are we supposed to do now, take him home? Let him live in our house, eat at our table, wander the woods and talk to the foxes? Pay social visits to vodyaniye and the god knows what? There’s a shapeshifter loose in the woods! Did Misighi send us that little gift? Did he send us the bannik? Or did Misighi turn the house upside down and lose me in the woods? Where’s ’Veshka, that’s what I want to know! She should have been here ahead of us!”
It was a disturbing lot of questions, all of which nested ominously in that confusion Chernevog occupied in his thinking. “We don’t know how far we are from the river,” Sasha said. “I don’t know. I don’t know about the shapeshifter. Maybe he did send it. Maybe it’s the vodyanoi trying to stop us getting here.”
“Fine. Fine. ’Veshka’s on the river and maybe the vodyanoi’s loose—”
“Pyetr, he has his heart, I really think that’s what happened. He must have sent it away a long, long time ago—and he wasn’t very old, then, he can’t have been, he was a boy when he came to Uulamets and he didn’t have it then. I don’t know what it would be like—but I’m not sure it wouldn’t still be the same as it was then.”
Pyetr looked at Chernevog, scowling. “That’s no damn boy.”
“But his heart, Pyetr,—something brought the owl here and brought us here, and the owl shouldn’t have died.”
“Fine. The owl’s dead. He wants us to feel sorry for him!”
“I don’t feel him wanting anything right now.”
“He wants to be free, is what he wants,” Pyetr said. “He wants us dead, is what he wants, and just because he hasn’t got his wish yet doesn’t mean he won’t if we turn our backs on him. ’Veshka’s coming here—we hope to the god she’s coming here— and we’d damn well better do something about him before she walks into this. I don’t want him trying any of his damn tricks with her!”
“Don’t—”
“—swear. I’ll swear, dammit, I’ll swear—Misighi, dammit, wake up and give us an answer!”
Something happened, then. It might have been a voice. It felt like a reassurance. It felt like a light moving around them when everything outside this grove was dark.
A leshy voice said, “No more, no more strength…”
“No more time… no more. Keep him safe.”
Misighi said, deep as bone, “Trees die. This will not. Take him to Uulamets.”
After which—Misighi stood as still as if he had never moved, as if not even wind could stir him.
“What does that mean?” Pyetr cried. “Misighi, what are you talking about, take him to Uulamets! —Uulamets is dead, Misighi! Uulamets has been dead for three years! Wake up and listen to me!”
Misighi did not move again. The only sound was thunder, the wind moving in the woods—
And the first few spatters of rain.
Owl was dead… he truly could not understand that. Owl was a ball of fluff, a hungry mouth—one had to feed him, one had to keep him in secret—Draga would kill him, else. He had taught him to fly, wished him safe and free and sent his heart where he had thought Draga could never catch it. It was not that many years ago.
But Owl was gone, without his ever knowing Owl was in danger at all—and everything he knew seemed to have changed. Lightnings flickered overhead. He could seize them—if he knew beyond a doubt that was what he wanted. He could free himself if he cared for one thing more than anything. But Owl was gone and Draga was dead and the pattern his own blood made, rain-washed on the leaves where he knelt, was of equal fascination with his warders’ argument about whether it was wiser to kill him. He could have offered his own opinion, but it seemed superfluous: the leshys had given their orders, and he felt—truly, mostly numb now, the pain in his hands a welcome distraction from wishes. He could not gather the pieces of his magic up again. He dared not, and it was the same as being blind.