[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.She could have asked it something on her own."She certainly would, Pyetr thought desperately.Nothing was ever right unless Eveshka did it herself.''—Or maybe she got an answer from the leshys,'' Sasha said."That's just as likely.She packed, we do know that.She left around noon, we can guess that by the wind and the bread and all, and I really think she might have heard me last night telling her I'd found you.That'd certainly make her feel better about leaving.""Fine! That's really fine, Sasha!""Not because she wanted to.""Is that what the note says?""It just says she knew we'd follow her and she didn't want us to—which is saying she knew she couldn't wish us not to, because she wasn't that sure she was right.""Eveshka doesn't think she's right.The river'll run backward first.Where's she going?""It didn't say.""Didn't say.Didn't say.She left you the note, for the god's sake! She had to have said that."''I told you what it said.''"There's got to be something else.You didn't read it right."''Writing doesn't mean everything.''"Well, it's damn useless, isn't it? What the hell good is it if it doesn't tell you the important things?"Sasha had no answer for that one."I'll tell you the first thing I want to know," Pyetr said after a moment more of walking and gathering the bits and pieces of his temper."I want to know where our old friend under the willow is, and I'll lay you odds he's not in his cave right now."''I think it might be a good place to look," Sasha said.'' That's another reason I wanted to go this way.""For all we know the damn Thing's in our bathhouse! The bannik talked about the river, did it? It probably wanted me for its supper!""I don't think it was the vodyanoi.But I don't trust it.I'm not that sure it's a proper bannik.They're supposed to be old.This one isn't."Shapeshifters, Pyetr thought.In the god knew what shape.One could come up to the house in Uulamets' likeness.Or Sasha's.Or his.And Babi, who could recognize such things, had been with them.Babi had growled at the bannik, if that meant anything.He slogged through a boggy low spot, keeping his balance against Volkhi's side."I'll tell you," he said, between breaths and struggles after footing, "you say you daren't doubt anything.I can, remember? Doubting's a talent of mine.I doubt everything's all right.I doubt we know what we're doing.I doubt we're going to find anything in the old snake's hole, and I doubt my wife's in her right mind, does that add it up?""It seems to," Sasha confessed.The river trail dwindled to a track under dead trees and degenerated into a brushy bog.Sasha clung to Volkhi's back, his head buzzing with exhaustion and river-murmur.Time seemed muddled.He wished Volkhi and Pyetr to sure footing where it existed—there was no hope of following Babi, who had no sense about taller folk or obstacles Babi could pop past.Blink! and he was the other side, or halfway up a hill, or wherever Babi wanted to be, puzzled because no one had followed, no matter they were half dead of exhaustion and snagged in thorns."Babi!" Sasha called, wishing him to find 'Veshka, if nothing else, go to her, stay with her—but Babi paid no attention.Babi kept coming and going in his usual way, regardless of wishes.And from time to time he turned up on Volkhi's rump, when the going got damp, to sit until they reached drier ground.Wrong, Sasha kept thinking, desperately wrong to have come this way: recent rains had made the trail worse than the maze it was.He desperately wished them strength to keep going, wished Volkhi not to take him under branches, wished ways through this maze of dead ends and soft ground where Pyetr swore and stumbled knee-deep in water.‘‘It's worse and worse,'' Pyetr complained.”God, it's a damn swamp!""I'm sorry," Sasha said; but it hardly helped now
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]