R1 - Rusalka (30 page)

A nocturnal creature like the vodyanoi was a little dim-sighted, Uulamets had said, where it regarded things unmagical; and therefore the small bracelet Pyetr wore about his right wrist, braided from a lock of Eveshka's hair, would shine like a lamp, Uulamets swore, so far as the vodyanoi was concerned—

Uulamets said walk slowly down to the river.

Uulamets said dip the bracelet into the water and be on his guard.

God, it was dark down there.

Sasha shivered in his hiding place, his knees going numb against the ground, while he peered out into the dark and waited.

And waited, what seemed an ungodly long time.

Pyetr would be coming fast when he came up the hill, that was the plan: attract the thing right up onto the porch, which was the highest point they could lure it; and right there, right beyond the fence and across the road, was the gap in the trees where the first rim of the sun always showed and always cast its first light on the house.

Master Uulamets had the end and the sides of the walkway up to the porch secured with a dusting of salt and sulphur; and his own post was here, with another jar of the same, when Pyetr should come racing up that walkway with the creature in pursuit.

His own job was to dash out then and draw one line with the salt and sulphur to seal the trap.

That was the plan.

But he very much wished, as he sat shivering in his hiding-place, that Uulamets had set his trap a little closer to the river, and he hoped that Pyetr would not take any chances.

There was a sudden, a clearly audible splash. He heard Pyetr yell.

And nothing else.

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P
yetr collected
himself on his feet, his sword still in his hand, by some presence of mind he would not have credited in himself. He could see, in the faint sky-sheen on the water, vast ripples where the thing had gone back under. He hoped to the god it had gone back—whatever had come lunging up out of the water right for his face—a horse, a snake, or something huge, dark, and wet that no rational man could ever admit seeing, involving, his shocked memory recollected, a vast array of teeth.

His legs began to shake under him. The tremor spread to his arms and his hands and he was ashamed of himself for that, but not very: it was time, he thought, to make a sensible retreat—the more so because for one very dangerous moment he had lost track of it. For that lapse he was honestly vexed with himself, and anxious, seeing the huge wallow in the clay where it might have slipped back into the river. He hoped it had.

He had been scrambling for his life at that moment. He had never seen anything so fast, never expected it to be out of the water in one move—the wallowed track went as far as the brush; and to his chagrin he realized that that brush went as far as the stand of dead willows between himself and the boat dock and the road.

That same run of brush likewise edged the trail to the house. That was both ways up, the only two routes to safety that he had, cut off if it had gotten past him onto shore, and right now he could not swear it had not.

"Pyetr!" he heard. Sasha's frightened voice, from up the hill. He was afraid to answer. He was afraid to move from where he was, on his narrow strip of shore between the brush and the river, and he had no idea which direction to watch first.

"Pyetr!"

God, he thought, the boy was coming down.

"Stay where you are!" he shouted.

And saw a liquid darkness flow across that hillside trail, hip-high to a man.

It put itself between him and the house.

It lifted its head then and began to slither and heave sideways down the slope toward him.

"Sasha!" he yelled, gripping his sword, and thinking wildly of a dive for the river—but the river was where it was most powerful. "It's on the trail! Look out!"

It gathered speed, it changed its shape and size as it came, smaller and faster. He poised himself to dodge if only it reared up the way it had before, but it was not doing that: its coils rubbed along the trunks of dead trees and slithered wider again as it came.

He jumped the thing, trod a soft back and sprang for the path, but its tail whipped around and hit him with a force that knocked him back against the brush.

Its face came around toward him then, all teeth, and he hit it a blow with the sword edge, which it did not like: it reared up and turned its glistening dark head toward a crashing in the brush, a high, shouted, "Here I am!"

Pyetr's head was still ringing. He
thought
he had heard that, and he heaved himself for his feet with all the strength he had left, no wit, just a straight double-handed attack, as the vodyanoi hissed like a spilled kettle and reared up, breaking branches, screaming when he hit it, still screaming as he kept on hitting it for all he was worth.

It shrank, smaller and smaller until it was only man-sized, a withered creature dusted in pale powder, and Sasha was suddenly in the fray with a stout stick in his hands, clubbing it while it howled.

It was too tough to stab. Pyetr gave up trying and simply hit as hard and as often as he could, afraid it was going to recover and kill both of them.

"Get out of here!" he yelled at the boy.

Which Sasha did not; Sasha kept hitting it, too, yelling, "Keep it from the river!"

At which time Uulamets arrived and pinned it to the ground with the butt-end of his staff in the middle of its back, while the creature whined and clawed at its own now-manlike face, whimpering and rubbing its eyes.

Pyetr staggered over to a tree to catch his breath, aching from head to foot, while Sasha grabbed hold of him and asked him was he all right.

Honestly he was far from sure. He was trying only to get enough breath to stand upright, and simultaneously to watch Uulamets and the creature on the shore.

Eveshka arrived then—at which realization Pyetr got breath enough to hobble a step or two into the space between her and the prisoner, for what small protection he could be.

But it was not threatening now: it was trying to shield its face or to wipe its eyes, uncertain which. Pyetr reckoned, standing over it, that it must have met Sasha's pot of sulphur and salt nose-on—thank the god and Sasha's brave heart.

Uulamets meanwhile was threatening it with the sun, bidding it give up and swear to mend its ways, none of which made any more sense than the sight of the vodyanoi shrunk to the size and shape of a little old man.

"That thing won't keep a promise," he protested, when it did swear. "Yes," it was saying, "yes, I agree, anything, only let me go—"

"Let my daughter go!" Uulamets said.

The vodyanoi twisted onto its face and covered its naked head with its hands. It wailed, "I can't! I can't do that!"

"Hwiuur. Is that your true name?"

It bobbed its head. "Hwiuur. Yes. Give me your leave, man. The sun is coming. Give me your leave to be here—I will promise, I will never, never harm you in this place—"

"—or elsewhere!" Uulamets snapped, and fetched the creature a crack of the staff. "Free my daughter! Give me back her heart!"

"I can't, I can't, I don't hold it! Oh, it burns, man, it bums—"

Heart? Pyetr wondered, stunned by the thought. Uulamets asked with another thump of his staff:

"Who has it, then?"

"Kavi Chernevog!"

Uulamets ' staff met the creature's back and held it still. Uula mets looked toward Pyetr then with a terrible anger on his face; but that look went past him and past Sasha.

"Is it true?" Uulamets demanded harshly.

Eveshka said nothing at all.

Hwiuur suddenly tried to slither for the river. "Get him!" Pyetr cried, lunging to stop the creature if he could, but Uulamets was there with his staff, and pinned it like a serpent to the ground.

Serpent it seemed to be for a moment. Pyetr watched in dismay as it lashed and writhed under the staff.

"Swear!" Uulamets ordered it. "Swear to help us!"

"I swear." It was a man again, or mostly so, wrinkled, ridge-backed and serpent-twisted, clutching the mud with thin black hands.

"Swear to come and go at my orders; swear to do what I bid you do; swear never to lie to me and never to harm me or mine."

It hissed, it writhed. Finally it said, "I swear by my name. Let me go."

Uulamets drew back his staff. Quicker than the eye could follow it, it whipped across the mud and into the water.

"That's one lost," Pyetr muttered unhappily, but Uulamets called out, "Hwiuur!"

And a vast dark head of very unpleasant aspect rose up near the shore.

"Look out!" Sasha cried, and was on his way to snatch the old man back, but Pyetr grabbed him by the arm and held him where he was.

The Thing loomed up and up and arched its sleek, dripping head over to look down at the old man.

"The sunlight hurts my eyes," it said in a deep voice like the booming of drums. "The salt was a wicked trick, man."

"Don't speak to me on that score," Uulamets said. "I want Kavi Chernevog."

Hwiuur reared back and settled deeper in the dawn-lit water, until he was on a level with Uulamets . "Ask me something I can do," it said, again like drums speaking. "Chernevog is too powerful. He has what you want. You can permit me the sunlight; he can forbid. Then what will I do?"

The head sank beneath the water again, leaving an eddy and bubbles.

"Hwiuur!" Uulamets said.

It rose again, not so far as before.

"So you remember," Uulamets said. "Obey my orders. You swore by your name."

"So I did," it said, and sank below the surface again. A black back broke the surface, long, very long, as it flowed away up-river.

Pyetr took a breath and flexed his right hand on his sword hilt while Uulamets turned his back to the river.

"Back to the house," Uulamets said, and walked past them to take Eveshka's arm and bring her up the path ahead of them.

Pyetr walked along beside Sasha, reckoning to himself what Sasha had done for him, coming down that hill and well knowing what he was risking. He wanted to throw his arm around the boy the way he had with 'Mitri, the black god take him, or Andrei or Vasya, none of whom had deserved thanking for anything.

But all that affection had been so cheap, and all that camaraderie so free with gestures that should have meant something he could not find one left for Sasha Misurov. He was lately scared and battered, he was tongue-tied and frustrated, and he stripped the bracelet of Eveshka's hair off his wrist in a fury and flung it down on the path as they walked.

Dip the bracelet in the river, Uulamets had said.

Lead it to the house, Uulamets had said.

His sword hand was scored by teeth he did not like to remember. He sucked at the worst of the scratches, looked at the wound in the gray, beginning dawn, and spat, revolted by the taste of blood and river water.