I had only seen my companion as a dark shadow, but slowly climbing into the light, I saw that he looked very familiar.   I hadn’t seen Viktor in these clothes, but they fit him.  Kind of, I don’t know, lumberjack.  (And no, I wasn’t going to hum the Monty Python tune.)  He looked more relaxed, if possible, as if he was in his native element.

I wondered briefly what other things Doloise hadn’t told me about what I had experienced with her.  Of course, I can’t rightly blame her, because (frankly) I never asked.  If she had been human, maybe, I would have been annoyed that she hadn’t thought to tell me, but she wasn’t human, and you know what?  I’m good with not holding that against her.  I’m big that way.

With a click of the tongue and a point of a finger, the dogs ran over to him.  He had his own fire on this level, one that burned less red than the signal I had been using as a guide.  There was wood stacked and a door crafted into the mountain.  I remembered reading something about “river sweatlodges” in Siberia, but besides thinking the name was “vanya” (which actually kept leading me like a red herring into thinking about Middle Earth) I couldn’t remember much about them.  This seemed to be a more permanent campsite, though, than a waystation somewhere.

The dogs curled up around the fire, eyes open and watching both of us.  Viktor went into a wooden chest and poked around.  He handed me a long thin poker, more like a hot dog roaster than a rapier or some sort of actual weapon.  I suppose I could have had a lucky shot and got it through his eye, but how do you kill someone in the lands of the dead?

I was feeling pretty dead myself, dead tired that was.  I pulled up a wooden bench and sat on it near the fire, waiting for Viktor to return.  He grunted a few times, then straightened up, holding some ingredients I was a little surprised to see, but not unhappy about his acquiring.  We made sandwiches of shortbread-like crackers, chocolate, and sponge-like cheese.  I would still group them in as “s’more-like objects.”

I could have been concerned about eating something from the lands of the dead, but I didn’t feel anything sinister or otherwise significant in it.  Of course, from my younger days I knew if a Long Island Iced Tea is made well you don’t notice the alcohol in it either.  In my defense, I was currently a quivering bundle of paranoid sensitivity, so I think anything that went “twang” when it should have been well-nigh organic to the environment or hostile to me would have set me off.

I did not want the taste of chocolate to make me think of Doloise, but I was here because of her, and focusing on that was important.  I ignored any tendency for tears to well up, because I knew it was just the smoke from the fire.

We sat and enjoyed our treats in almost silence.  I could still occasionally hear a howl or a yip or a bark, and, of course, the stacking and chewing of the food, and the crackle of the fire, oh, and yes, the occasional heartbeat of the land.  It seemed quiet because neither of us were talking.

He threw a couple of the crackers to the dogs, who were awfully polite in catching them without pushing each other.  He leaned back.  “You have questions,” he said, looking into the fire.  “I cannot answer them.  We do not share the language.  We come from different worlds, you and I.”

I glanced at him.  He had quirked a smile, so it was on purpose.

“I think wizards just like to feel mysterious,” I said.  “You can tell me things.  You can tell me one simple explanation of what this place is.  I don’t know enough to ask smart questions that need in-depth, technical details.”  I stood up and returned the bags of treat-making to him, so I could get close.  I kept the wire fire-equipment in my free hand.  “And why you lied to me.  Make it simple.  Lie to me again if you have to, but don’t think I don’t know.”

He regarded me impassively, taking the bags and leaving them by his own wooden chair.  After a moment, he relented and smiled.  “You are a strange one, E.”  He used my whole last name, of course, with the strange little quirk in it upon which my grandfather always insisted.

I don’t come from a family of wizards.  My talent is a freak one, which is why I’ve had to learn so much about other kinds of practitioners to try to develop rules for myself, capabilities.  I still don’t know how I managed to face Ivan and use the portal.  I still don’t know that I did, in fact.  Maybe I fainted, and this was all a dream.  Maybe the magic used me.  But sometimes I think there are hints in my family that they hid something, and having an barely-pronounceable name might have been a misdirection for identity magic.  Or just ethnic heritage.  Who can tell?

“Yeah, well, that could be why I don’t get many dates.  Talk to me.”  I like to think I sounded strong, and not cajoling in the least.  Convincing was what I wanted to express, but I hadn’t checked out those books on negotiating yet.  I did give him room, stepping back to sit on my bench, and burning off the food remnants from my roaster.

“We knew your face,” he said, finally, “and it was an honest one.  Not one that had seen hard work, but one that looked for answers.  When Father Ivan left, he tore us apart, and when he returned with his Nellya, we were not sewn together.  That is maybe woman’s work?  But Nellie was no woman.  Trouble never comes alone.  Artur joined us, then.  I think he looks to slay dragons.”  It was an ironic smile.

“One does not want friend to always agree, but to argue smartly.  Andrei wished to weave her to us, use her power.  Artur has the heart of a bear who thinks it is a wolf.  They argued.  I listened to Father Ivan.  What he went looking for, he found.”  Viktor shrugged.  “But it was not good.”

He sighed.  “Nellie wanted to go home, but she could not, not without Ivan’s heart.”

“So she saw Doloise’s power as a way to change things?” I asked.  It made sense.

“We were looking for a way to close things.”   He made a motion with his hands.  “Return Nellie to her place, Ivan’s heart to his.  You brought the,” he used the word they’d used to describe Doloise again.  Boyar-something? “Perhaps that one has knowledge that can assist, now that his Nellya saw they were not rivals, and that the Doloise was not sent to capture her.”  He shrugged.  “We wished Father Ivan back.  He has spent too much time here, in the three-ninth, the far away, his heart may not know the right home.  So I came to bring some home to him.”  He shrugged.  “And then there are the wolves.”

I looked at the hounds.  “These are spells?” I breathed out.  It wasn’t really a question.

He nodded.  “I built the signal fire to draw in Ivan.  I have not been able to find him.”  He looked past me to the valley.  “I do not know if the wolves protect him as a wolf, or if they keep help away.”

I had a very bad thought.  “When did you last see Ivan?  In the real world, that is?”

He smiled.   Then he frowned, thinking.   “Four… days ago?  Time is different here.   He served me dinner, and we talked spells.  I said I had one to help his heartache.  He said he needed that or the butcher.”

The heartbeat had been off.  It was getting slower.  “The executioner?”  I asked.

“He joked the headsman, yes.”

So I had seen him just after that, and it was two days ago in real world.  Time was a tricky subject.  And Viktor didn’t know what happened.  If I was right, and even if Ivan could be saved, albeit in a burnward or something, we were running out of time.

I just love being the bearer of bad tidings.