So it was directly overland, by every advantage of ground he knew, so long as Volkhi could bear it, as fast as Volkhi could travel in this last of the twilight.
He personally hoped young Patches would do what a young horse would do and leave Ilyana stranded the first time a hare started from a thicket. That was the very likeliest way Sasha’s wishes might work to stop them, magic tending to take the easiest course. Patches taking his daughter under a limb was another, not the way he would want, given a choice—but that, too, if it gave him a way to catch her tonight. The specific wish overrides the general, Sasha maintained. Things happen that can happen, things happen when they can happen—and always at the weakest point.
Well, then, dammit all—the mouse must have wished her father well a thousand thousand times. So had ’Veshka and Sasha—and if the mouse’s father was very specifically risking his neck out here in the woods in the dark, then the hell with caution: the mouse’s magic might have a hard time tonight, working against itself.
“Come on, lad,” he urged Volkhi, and took the ways he knew through the woods—having ridden this land many more years than the mouse had. He had planted no few of the trees on these hills, he had seen the land when it was all dead and bare, and Volkhi knew the ground, even granted a deadfall or two: Volkhi footed it neatly through a maze of birch trees and mostly jumped the small brook that wound across their path.
Splash! and onto the far bank, up across the facing hill, along the ridge and down the other side through a maze of saplings.
Damned sure Ilyana and the boy could make no such time, except by wizardry—and by all evidences the mouse was being as quiet as she knew how to be, interested solely in putting distance between her and her mother.
Which he figured most definitely put the matter up to the fastest horse and the surest knowledge of the woods, and twilight daring the mouse to drop her father on his head a second time.
The wind held fair for the north, in the slow unfoldings of the river, and the star-sheen on the water was light enough to steer by. Eveshka had the rush of water and the singing of the rigging for company, and all too much time for a wizard to think of possibilities, running along a shore she could not touch and a forest that refused to trust her.
Silence lay heavy there, even yet, not the silence of solitude, but her daughter’s fear that excluded her; and there was evil hereabouts—evil as ordinary folk held it, meaning what threatened their lives. In that light, perhaps evil also described her: her understanding did not extend beyond the woods and the river and a handful of wizards, all of which could just as surely threaten the lives of ordinary folk.
But there were creatures who fed on others’ suffering, there were those that relished others’ pain: that was what she personally damned for wickedness. And just ahead now on the leeward shore, was a cave that smelled of such wickedness and fear. A willow there had resurrected itself, a tree the leshys abhorred, though they loved all others in the woods. It had its roots in the watery dark, that willow, in a den she had never seen while she was alive. She was anxious passing it and vastly relieved when it fell astern. She wished her husband well; and Sasha, forgiving for now all his failures and shortcomings, knowing her own all too keenly.
She judged people too harshly. Pyetr would tell her that. Pyetr would say, That’s your father, ’Veshka; he would say, with his vast patience: ’Veshka, you ask too much. Of yourself and other people. You’re doing what you hated your father doing.
It might be true—but true, too, that as much as she and her father had quarreled when she was alive, and passionately as she had hated him, he had judged her wilful heart accurately enough, said no when he should have said no, and wished her to stay out of trouble, until a young wizard she thought she loved had lured her onto the river shore and murdered her.
She could imagine laughter in that cave tonight. She could imagine doubt and conceit flowing out of it like poison:
Do you know what your own daughter’s capable of, pretty hones? Does she scare you? She certainly should.
The willow fell further behind. But northward, on the other shore of the river, was a hollow hill, on which, in her dreams, lightnings still crashed. Her mother had been so much like her, so very much like her: Draga, Malenkova’s student, Kavi’s tormentor and teacher.
She should have said to Ilyana, calmly, reasonably, while I here had been time, and reason:
Ilyana, Kavi might be my half-brother. Did he tell you so? My mother hinted at it. It might have been malice. She knew we were almost lovers and she wanted to upset me. But it is remotely possible he’s my father’s son, of a wizard named Malenkova—his teacher.
Child, I only tried to make you strong and hard enough. I never wanted you to hate me.
Now it was too late to say that. It was too late to say other things like: Don’t trust Kavi. Don’t listen to him. He was my mother’s lover, years before he knew me, but they were both, my mother more than he ever was, Malenkova’s creatures…
You don’t know about Malenkova. I hadn’t time to teach you. And Kavi doesn’t remember. He can’t. He didn’t hear from my mother what I heard—I hope to the god he never did. I’d spare him that—much as he deserves to know what I know—
She put her hands over her ears and looked at the sky above the sail, as if that could shut out the thoughts.
Never think about the anger, never think about betrayals, but never, ever think about forgiveness either: every damned lime one trusted Kavi, every time one in the least began to believe him—
She tried to make Ilyana listen. She went on trying. But the magic reached the forest edge and stopped. Nothing got in, nothing got out, and she began to fear it was no longer entirely her daughter’s silence. Not this, not the slow, deep strength of it, that had increasingly the mark of leshys: wizard-magic was not working within its hold, except, perhaps, perhaps, very close at hand, on very familiar, long-associated objects.
It might protect the forest. But leshys had nothing of wizards’ purposes. And leshys could be mistaken in their wider judgments. She wanted them to hear her. She wanted their help. They had served the woods, she had atoned for the killing with planting and with care—but she had no feeling that they heard her—nor any certainty that they had ever forgiven her, or that they had ever understood wizards in their midst. They were younger now, Sasha said. There were so many young ones about—
And Kavi—
God, she had not for years longed to shed the body she wore and go, lay insubstantial hands on what might truly answer to that touch. She had not felt this—anger—in years.
—You damnable fool, Kavi! Even if you love her, don’t touch her, don’t even think of touching her. You don’t want her to want you, god help you if she wants you: you can’t stop her, by your very nature you can’t stop her—
For the god’s sake, Kavi, tell her how you died!
Night made the forest a shifting confusion of gray and black. Branches raked and caught, trees floated past the eye like ghosts. The black furball was still with them and the ghostly owl flew ahead of them from tree to tree—guiding them, Yvgenie hoped.
To a place I know, Ilyana insisted, but he had no confidence in that. He had no confidence he would even get through this night and he desperately longed for the sun. The ghostly owl seemed more real now, so much so he feared if he nodded again he might never wake up. Pain could be more real than Owl was, pain could keep him awake—and he bit his lip and fought the lapses that made his eyelids fall and the sounds of their passage grow dim in his ears. He caught himself from time to time against the saddlebow, found his fingers growing numb. He thought of his father’s house, he thought of running away—he knew he had done that, he had, he had tried to take his life in his hands and do something honest that did not involve killing his father, or telling anyone about his father and the tsarevitch—