The Goblin Mirror

10

"HSSST!" AZDRA'IK SAID, CATCHING TAMAS' SHOULDER, and hauled him back to cover among the rocks, next to Lwi. There was not a sound but the horse and a bird singing somewhere near, in the late afternoon of this bad dream, on a long and rocky ridge. Then Tamas heard the faint jingle of metal, more and more of it.

"Another patrol." Azdra'ik extended his arm and pointed off along the slope. "I want you to go down and along that hillside, do you see?"

"Me."

"I'll keep the horse here."

"It's my horse. . . ."

"It's a large horse, fool. Go down there now and don't argue. Do you want him seen?"

"You're not going to eat him!"

"I much prefer young fools. —Get down there! Now!"

Tamas made a violent shrug, threw off Azdra'ik's hand and scowled into his face. "What is it you want? —Bait?"

Azdra'ik frowned at him, dreadful sight from his close vantage. "At least you stand a chance that way. —Take that damned thing away from her!"

"The mirror?"

"The mirror. The mirror. Yes, the mirror. Lady Moon, stand in a field and shout, why doesn't she? —Get down there, fool, before the rest of the world hears her business."

"How do you hear—"

Azdra'ik's hard fingers bit into his shoulder. "Because you're with me, because you resound of it, man, like a hammered bell; it bounces off every magic in the world, particularly if she wants to find something. That's why that patrol is hiking about the hills chasing its own tail. And that's why they haven't found her yet. But you're here with me, do you comprehend me yet? No? — Twice a fool. Go!"

He did not grasp Azdra'ik's purposes, but that patrol they had both seen he understood. That something had gone amiss with Ela's plans, he was sure; that Ela was making a magical commotion of some kind, he had Azdra'ik's word for it— and there was no question of her danger if the patrols found her. He scrambled away among the rocks, ignominiously dismissed, vowing he was going to live to rescue Ela, then take Lwi back and avenge himself on Azdra'ik ng'Saeich, sorcery and ail-But if Azdra'ik had told two words of truth, Azdra'ik wanted him for a way to obtain what a goblin dared not touch: he did not in the least believe that Azdra'ik meant to wait up here with his hands folded while he located Ela. It might be that Azdra'ik could not find Ela past the confusion he claimed existed. It might be that Ela's magic overwhelmed some sense goblins possessed and ordinary folk did not, and it might be that all that Azdra'ik could do now was to loose him like a shot in the dark—something about geese in the autumn, silly pigeons to their roost, he thought as he worked his way along the hill, exhausted and at wits' end. He had no more idea than Azdra' ik where he was going, he only hoped if there existed any shred of magic in him he would find Ela before the goblins did.

He passed along the long hillside, wary of ambushes. But perhaps Ela's magic did possess an attraction of its own, because something told him bear left and uphill, and, once he had gone far enough to have himself irrevocably confused, after the last split in the ridge, and once he had climbed down and up again, whether he was still on the same hill or not, he saw Skory's brown shape among huge pale rocks. The mare was still under saddle, grazing the coarse grass on the hillside. He slid down the dusty slope toward the horse, losing skin on his hands. Skory interrupted her grazing to look at him, then went back to cropping the grass, loyal horse, while there was no sign of her mistress.

He dared not call out. He only followed the impulse that had led him this far, walked along the hillside among the head-high boulders—and seeing shadow where no shadow should be, looked up, expecting a cloud overhead but there was none, just a darkening of the air and ground ahead of him.

I don't like this, he thought, and imagined some sorcerous goblin trap, but he could not think of going back. It was this way—he was sure enough to keep walking; and nothing visible threatened him, not the towering rocks, not the deadness of the grass or the leafless bushes. Perhaps by the sky above there ought not to be shadow on this ground, but it was no illusion: the air seemed colder as he walked, a wind began to blow, and when he looked back in unease, he saw nothing of the rocks he had just passed.

Worse and worse.

"Ela?" He dared not call aloud. He felt the cold more bitter than he had expected—whether it was the lack of sleep, or the dank chill in the air and the way things of magic tricked the memory. He had the feeling of walking toward some kind of edge, some place where every thing he knew ceased.

Then there was that jingling of metal he had heard before, soft and growing louder: the patrol, he thought, and sought some place to hide. Dust whirled up on the wind, and through the veil of the wind came riders all in goblin panoply, banners flying indiscernible in the thickened air. He hid himself among the rocks as they streamed by him unseeing, riders on creatures shadowy and dreadful, with eyes of lucent brass and the sheen of steel about them—they passed, and the sound diminished to a thumping in the earth and in the stones, that itself faded.

The rocks remained. The dust did. He was uncertain of everything else: it fled his mind like a dream—they had been goblins, they had been men—he held to the solid stone and felt the world unpinned and reeling around him—felt the rock shift in his grip, thump! once and sharply, as if the earth had fractured, and might do so again.

He made himself let go of that refuge, while his heart said danger—he let go the stone and walked, then ran across the trembling earth, through the dust and the howling wind. The jolts in the earth staggered him. The ground was darker and darker ahead—the quaking rocks hove up like ruined pillars.

Beyond them the air was ice—and sound ceased. He came on Ela in a frozen swirl of shadow and dust, the wind stopped with her garments still in motion—the mirror blazing in her hands like a misplaced piece of the moon.

He reached for her—reached and reached above a widening gulf, as wind began to roar and move about them, storm that whipped Ela's cloak about him and his about her.

Ela struggled at the envelopment, struck at him and tried to escape; but he would not let her go—not her and not the mirror: it burned his hand with fire and with ice, and he would not believe in the dark or the wind any longer. He believed in the hillside, and Skory waiting, and the rocks and the morning sunlight, no matter the shapes that came to his eyes. Fool, his brother called him, fool who would not make up his mind, but he knew what safety was, he remembered the stones and the brush and the mare and the sun on the stones and he meant to reach that place.

Then it was quiet, and they were there, almost within reach of Skory. Ela tore at his hand to free herself and take the mirror back.

"Stop it!" he protested. "They're after us, for the god's sake, get on the horse, they can hear the magic—they're looking for you!"

"Don't ever," Ela gasped in fury, "don't ever, do you understand me?"

"Girl, they hear it, everyone hereabouts hears it—" He had not yet let go her hand or the mirror, and she had not stopped kicking and struggling to have it away from him. "Stop it! Listen to me!"

"Where were you? I told you stay with me, and you go wandering into the woods—you're the cause of all this! I don't need your help! Let me go!"

All right, he thought, all right, others had told him so in his life—Bogdan said it: everything was his damned fault. But her shouting was going to bring trouble on them, and he could not hold on to a furiously fighting girl and catch the horse at the same time. He abandoned his argument and his hold on her and the mirror in favor of catching Skory before she bolted along the ridge.

But when he had caught the mare's reins, he looked around to find Ela disappearing straight up the slope.

He dared not shout after her. He muttered words only Nikolai used and hurled himself to Skory's back, out of patience with the mare's opinion what direction they should go, out of patience with contrary females altogether, and rode breakneck after the wretch, steeply and more steeply uphill, until he had to dismount and climb.

He had left Skory in a stand of scrub pine. Ela was not hidden. She was sitting down when he came up behind her, crying her eyes out, he could hear it—and he refused to be moved.

"Get up," he said. "Take the damned horse and the mirror and go where you like, I didn't come to rob you."

"I can't do it," she sobbed, "I can't do it, I wasn't strong enough ... I lost the woods, I wasn't there—"

That was the first admission of truth he had had out of her—and, god, at this moment she looked no older than Yuri was.

He sat down beside her, weak in the knees, now that he had stopped running. She buried her face in her hands and sobbed for whatever reason stupid girls cried for—while he had a lump in his own throat, of self-pity, it might be, counting he had no prospects but the goblins hunting them.

"Look," he began, "crying's no good."

She made an effort to get her breath. "I was trying," she sobbed, "I was trying to find my way in the Wood, but it wasn't doing what it ought—nothing's done the way it ought ever since you came—"

"All right. All right, maybe that's so—but maybe mistress didn't know everything."

"You don't know!"

"That's not the point, Ela!" God, he could hear Nikolai shouting it at him and Bogdan on the practice field. "The point is, you're not winning, are you? You're not winning. Maybe it's my fault. Maybe I'm not going to do anything I ought to do. That's not the point either. What are you going to do to win?"

She swallowed a breath and another one—while her lips began to tremble and angry tears welled up.

"Don't dare," he said. "Don't you dare. You were left with a weapon, girl, a damned important one, by the commotion everyone's making over it. Azdra'ik wants it. Do you want him to have it? Or what are you going to do with it, now the first try's gone bad?"

"If mistress' brother hadn't gotten killed—if you were any help, but, no, you were off in the woods—if anything mistress told me had worked the way it was supposed to—"

"That's not the point either. What are you going to do to him?"

"You've no right to talk to me that way!"

She was the most maddening creature he had ever met, but the goblin lord himself. He was at the end of reason, and sanity. "Then take the horse," he said, not even angry now, only reckoning what he would be worth, and how long he would last as an obstacle once Azdra'ik caught up, or the patrol did. Longer, he thought, if he could get clear of Ela, by going afoot, and maintain whatever magical echoes Azdra'ik said confused goblin pursuers. "Just take the horse, get out of here, and good luck to you. I'm tired, I'm just very tired, Ela. If you're going to be a fool, go do it by yourself."

"I'm not a fool," she said, her chin trembling. "She didn't tell me how it was going to be, she just said it would work, go and do this and this and this, and if that didn't work—if that didn't work, I had to find a place where magic was . . . and we can't get into the Wood in the right place, I can't find the center of it—I don't know what to do!"

Her mistress was a liar, her witchcraft was a muddle of truth, misinstruction and guesswork, and nothing in her life had prepared Ela to guess for herself. Entirely reasonable that she offered no answers and no reasons, he thought: she had none for herself. And such chances as he had to take, he could not do with a fifteen-year-old girl hanging around his neck.

But another sort of coming-to-senses occurred to him, seeing she wanted to act the child: he pulled her up by the wrist, took her face between his hands and kissed the second pair of lips he had ever kissed, neither kindly nor gently, intending to finish it with a cold Goodbye, I "m leaving—after which, in his fondest and most foolish imagination, she would come running to his heels and ask his help; or at least grow up a week or two.

But came a curious giddy feeling—it might be the mirror or it might be something as mundane as his lack of sleep. He grew short of breath; Ela's arm had arrived somehow about his neck and he found himself doing exactly what the ghost had done—passing on what had happened to him. He began to draw back in dismay, but the look in her eyes was as astonished, as bewildered and as frightened as he had been, and her fingers were knotted into his collar and the fist with the mirror was clenched into his sleeve.

"I'm sorry," he found breath to say—from which beginning he did not know how to get to Goodbye. He blurted out, "I'll get you to your horse," and bundled her downslope where he had left Skory tied.

"I don't know where we're going," she said, putting the chain over her head.

"Where you're going," he said, and untied the reins.

"I am not!"

"Just get on the horse," he said, and faced her toward Skory's saddle. "Don't argue. And be careful. Azdra'ik's out there looking for you."

She had her foot in the stirrup. He shoved at a clinging mass of skirt and cloak, and she landed astride, with a frightened grasp of his hand.

"What have you to do with him?" she demanded. "What happened to you? —Where were you?"

"I met a ghost," he said, and intended to give Skory's rump a whack. But she still held his hand.

"Whose ghost?"

"Ylena. That was what Azdra'ik said. He said she owed him a wish. It was me he asked for, or I don't know what would have happened." Skory's restlessness was pulling at them, scattering shale from underfoot, and he had to move a pace to keep up with her. "Get out of here."

"No. —No, I'm not going without you, I need you!"

"That isn't what you said."

"I never said, I never said that. I tried to bring you back— I did bring you back, and you can't leave!"

"You worked magic on me? You put a spell on me?"

"I brought you back! I brought you out of the woods, I rescued you! You can't leave, I won't let you!"

Wait and see, was on his lips to say. That she had bespelled Him was treachery. But the touch of her mouth was on his lips, and maybe it was a spell: he was still moving beside Skory's drift, with her stupidly holding his hand.

"That's why I couldn't stay," Ela protested, "that's why I couldn't find you, I couldn't work in that age of the Wood ... Ylena's the worst ghost we could meet! She's the witch who started the curse! She wants the magic! —Tarn, you can't stay here, you can't stay near this place, neither of us can! She's too powerful in the Wood, mistress didn't know that. She wants the mirror, that's what's gone wrong— She's planned this forever—"

He all but tripped over a bush trying to keep up with the mare, and fell behind, but no longer with the notion of going back and disputing passage with a goblin. He began to follow at Skory's tail, with the deep woods of yesternight too close in memory, and a shadow whispering in the dark, saying that there was no freedom from the magic the witches of the Wood had already made.

"So where else can we go? Do you know?" They were not headed back into the woods, but further along the hillside. "Ela?"

(A place of power, Tamas. My place is strongest, and safest. They dare not kill me, by the spell that binds them here, they dare not—I am your ally, if you would only listen. . . .)

He stumbled, so clear the voice was to him, like a memory of something he had never heard, something that had to do with that place behind his eyelids. He was cold through and through, he was lost in dark—

Azdra'ik! he called in that dark territory, and for a heartbeat believed Azdra'ik his hope and his safety—but that was a fool's thought, a dangerous thought—god, if Azdra'ik should have heard him ... if the witch had ...

God, no, he had escaped that embrace once—he had no desire to court it again, no desire even to think about it. He overtook Skory and limped at Ela's side. The sky had gone to milk and brass. His chest bumed, and from brass the sky went to palest violet against the ragged shadow of the pines. Ela drew Skory to a walk in the slight cover of the trees, and he found a saddle-tie to hold to, half-blind with exhaustion, stumbling on the crumbling shale—while something within him said, dark and cold as night—Tamas. You can trust me. It's my own interest, Tamas, as well as yours, your defeating her is in my interest, and I've no quarrel with the girl-Listen to me, Tamas. . . .

Curse all witches who made this folly, he thought in distraction. Curse the ignorant witch who had taught Ela by guess and by supposition: he had that clear now, too: Ela had had reason to be distraught, realizing of a sudden that all her resources were unreliable—so she looked to him?

Gran, he thought, and could all but see that charm-hung tomb in the rocks of Maggiar: Oh, gran, if spells are at work here—if her mistress has lied—if one ghost can harm us—I know you wouldn't. Can you hear me, gran, where you are? I need you, if you can hear me.

Foolish way of thinking—expecting magic, thinking that gran could possibly hear him ... he was down to such boyish imaginings.

But would not magic work that way? Was that not what a wizard was for—to demand the impossible of the world?

The peasants did—the country-folk came with their barley-straw men and their offerings of food and their requests for children ...

What had gran to do with that? What had gran to do with them?

If gran's ghost could come back, she would stand between him and that apparition of bone and shadow—gran would never abide threats against what she called her own.

But where did he begin thinking such foolish things? As a shield against the dark? As a wizard-wish? Or a boy's longing for gran's stories not to have been lies—when everything around him spoke of desolation and death. Gran's sunlit woods, gran's bright towers and gran's fields and villages and gran's faery. When was it so? Why fill her grandsons' heads with such hopeless, bare-faced fables? Was it an obligation of witches to deceive? Was that all that magic was? He had never felt that in Karoly.

Gran had crossed the mountains and gotten children with the lord of Maggiar—or—whoever his grandfather was. . . .

Why? To escape the folly the witches here had done? But why lie about what was here?

Because below them now was devastation. And Ela went— lord Sun knew why or where: he doubted she knew, except it bore them away from the hunters, and away from the haunted woods.

There was a hot supper, even a decent one. Nikolai insisted on making a small fire at sunset, saying if goblins smelled the smoke, they were apt to smell horses and human beings, just as likely, and tea and flat-cakes would put spirit in a body—but supper lay like a lump in Yuri's stomach. The trolls had gone off somewhere—into the stream, most likely. Zadny had had a fiat-cake and part of his, and was out investigating a frog or something at the water's edge, among the reeds.

The time was, not so many days ago, when he would have been over there himself, as lively and as curious as Zadny, inclined to poke about with sticks in the water and turn over rocks, but right now he thought that he had seen enough strange things to satisfy him for months and months to come. He wished the trolls would come back, he wished the wind did not sound so lonely in the treetops; and he understood why Nikolai was sharpening his sword, scrape, scrape, scrape, but that was not a cheerful sound, with the wind and the sighing of the tall trees and the flicker of what was, after all, a very small fire against the night in a probably haunted place.

Most of all he wished he had some idea where Tamas was tonight, and whether Tamas had had a good supper.

And what had become of Bogdan, to be evenhanded about it. He knew he should feel dreadfully guilty for being glad it was Tamas they had a chance to find. Unquestionably he would still be here if it was only Bogdan they were tracking ... he had gone out from home and over the mountains when it had been just Zadny, for the god's sake, so he had no question about his courage or his resolution on his brothers' behalf, but he had never considered before now that he really would not miss Bogdan that much if he could only find Tamas alive, and he did not think that made him out a very honest boy, when it came down to it.

He had found out a lot of things about himself since he had set out across the mountains—he had always thought of himself one way, that he did not have to be serious, he was not the heir to Maggiar. He would always be the youngest and he could do fairly much as he pleased in his life.

But Maggiar seemed very far away tonight, even if it was the same sky and the same stars over them. All the things he had used to do and all the friends he had used to have and all the things he had used to be interested in were on the other side of mountains—on the far side of sights none of the other boys had seen and experiences the other boys would never have, that was the truth of it. Tamas had given him his bow and he liked holding it now. He felt better for touching it, as if, as long as the wood was warm against his hands, things were not so bad.

It would grow cold if Tamas should die, that was the stupid kind of thing the ballad-makers said; but he had seen so much of magic in this place he was not so sure it was all stupid. He felt better if he had something of Tamas with him tonight, so maybe anything would do. Maybe the stories had something true about them, and it mattered less what it was one held to than how hard one thought about the person. Maybe if he could hold it tight in his arms and think of Tamas very, very hard, he could make him hear him:

We're here, we're looking for you, don't give up and don't do anything stupid ...

The wind whipped up of a sudden, a dreadful, sudden blast that chilled the air, that blew even the blankets into a rolling tumble and the fire into a trail of sparks and embers. Gracja whinnied in alarm and Nikolai leapt to his feet.

"It's the wind!" Yuri cried, cold through and through, and trying to stop the blankets and the pan from flying away, while Nikolai was grabbing after Gracja. "It's the same wind—"

Things that had started flying toward the gate started blowing back again, as if by magic—a gale was blowing from out of the gate, too, with equal force, and Yuri felt it hit from both sides at once, blowing his hair and his cloak straight up and around and around, and when he had fought himself clear of the cloak and prisoned it in his arms he saw the cooking plate fly up into the air, high as the trees, and come back down with a clang.

He stared at it, in a sudden silence, in the starlight. And looked up at a disheveled figure standing on the shore, at an old man in a pale cloak, with his hair all unkept, a man-Lord Sun—it was master Karoly, walking as if he were very, very frail. . . or hurt.

Zadny ran up to him—shied back again, circling about in bewilderment, at master Karoly's feet.

"Karoly?" Nikolai asked cautiously, and Karoly kept walking slowly, until he had gotten to the flat rock where they had made their fire. The wind had died. So had the fire, once, but it immediately sprang up again at Karoly's feet, with no cause that Yuri could see.

"Master Karoly?" he said, advancing cautiously, Zadny close about his knees. "Master Karoly?"

"I would very much like some tea," Karoly said in a faint, hoarse voice.

Tea, Yuri thought, and remembered the pan falling, and ran to get it, while Nikolai came near, stuck his hands in his belt and remarked, "Hell of a woman, your sister."

"God," Karoly said, with a shudder Yuri could see from there. He swept up the pan and filled it with water from the brook and came and balanced it on the fire at Karoly's feet.

But Karoly was talking to master Nikolai, saying something about his sister, and when Nikolai asked how things had gone, master Karoly said only: "Not totally—as I'd hoped. It's Ysabel. I've kept her company ... all the way from Tajny Straz. But I think it's Pavel, too—he wasn't altogether sane. I'd hoped ..."

Master Karoly was shaking. Yuri grabbed up a blanket from its grassy tangle, shook it out, and master Nikolai put it around Karoly's shoulders.

"She got ahead of me," Karoly went on, and his voice was so faint and strained it was scarcely louder than the creaking of frogs in the brook. "I'm afraid she's reached something else, something here, that shouldn't be. Her and Pavel. This was his home. —I would really like supper, Nikolai. I don't think I can do any more."

The sky lately ablaze with colors had gone to dark as they picked their way along the barren heights, seeking the cover of scrub and rocks as much as possible. A faint smell of smoke was on the wind. In the valley below, the sullen glow of goblin siege-fires made constellations and clusters of hellish stars, and the number of those fires, Tamas did not know how to reckon. He only knew that Maggiar could never withstand that tide once it lapped up against its eastern borders. Those lights went on and on to the horizon, where the hills narrowed in, and beyond, for all he could tell: campfires, the burning of human homes and livelihoods, the god knew.

(Many, the voice within him said. They have no mercy.)

He tried not to listen, resisted even blinking as much as he could, the dark around him matching so well the dark behind his eyes. Hard enough to keep walking, hard enough to keep his ankles from turning or his knees from failing. In the easier places, he clung to Skory's saddle-strings and guided himself by that, because his wits were so muddled and weary he tended to nod even while he walked. He suffered dark moments in which he was aware of nothing, no ghostly voices, no visions, just dark, and rest, and that, he thought in his muddled way, might be the witch trying to lull him into trusting sleep. She could afford to bide her time, knowing a man had to rest, had to, when he had not since ... he had lost count how long it had been since he had dared even shut his eyes.

The ghost had shown him Bogdan—shown him his brother in goblin hands and he had not stayed to ask her whether that vision was true—he had had a sword by him in that cottage and he had clawed his way out the door and fled without even thinking of it, when, if he had been a man, he might have threatened her into telling him the truth, he might have learned enough to help them right there, and he might not then have needed Azdra'ik's rescue, or lost Lwi, or ended up where he was, running for his life with no notion even where he was going.

His footing failed him. He caught himself on Skory's saddle, or thought he had, except he came awake in the dark, flat on his back on cold stone, with a shadow leaning above him.

He was back in the troll's den, he had waked again and it was back—

"Tamas?" Ela said from out of that shadow. —Ela's hands were the hands touching his face. He had to recall where he was, and he almost longed for the troll, and the cellar, instead of the hillside, and the fires, and the flight.

"I haven't used the mirror," she said in a faint voice. "I'd rather not. Tamas, Tamas, are you all right?"

He had a bump on his head. He must have fallen when he reached for the horse—or he might have walked a ways blind and numb, for all that he knew. It was no matter. He was lying down and he had to get up and go on, but even a moment of rest was to cherish. He drifted, half-waking, aware of Ela, thinking that, except the lump on his head, he was more comfortable right now, and closer to sleep, than he had been in days.

"Tamas."

"I know. I know. I'm moving." But it was hard to move at all, and he lay there collecting breaths for the attempt, or however many attempts it might take. Then that tingling feeling began again, and a flickering glow like marshfire fluttered over Ela's arms, over her heart and throat and almost to her face—mirror-magic. She shouldn't do dial, he thought, it's my fault she's doing that, I have to get up—

He tried. He began to rise on one arm, and got as far as one knee when he heard that faint sound of metal he had heard before. His heart sank. He snatched at Ela's hand, wanting no more magic, wanting quiet.

"It's a patrol. Quiet." He saw Skory's shadow, and got up as quickly and quietly as he could. Skory stood with head up and ears pricked—he caught her reins and put his hand above her soft muzzle, distracting her, cajoling her.

For a very long time there was nothing—only that sound, and Skory's alarm, and the soft, soft sound of Ela's cloak and skirts as she came near to wait.

Maybe the patrol was on the other side of the hill, he thought, maybe it was an echo from somewhere, and they were safe within their little cluster of scrub pine and brush.

Then, looking up the hill through the twisted pine boughs, he saw the flash of metal by starlight and the moving of shadows along the slope.

"Hobgoblins," Ela whispered, faint as breathing.

The small ones, he thought; the ones Azdra'ik compared to beasts. The ones that had taken the towers, and left them guarded by human heads when they abandoned the places they had taken, not even caring to occupy them. He kept his hand on Skory, felt her nostrils flare and her head toss in alarm as a wayward breeze carried goblin scent to her—it was not a greeting he had to fear from her, it was a sudden bolt for safety.

And thank whatever god watched them, the wind, that skirled so unpredictably in these cuts and crevices in the hills, was in their faces at the moment—goblin noses might be keen enough to smell them. Goblin hearing might pick up their least movement.

But for eyesight—the one in the cellar of Krukczy Tower had missed him, while these . . . these tramped down the hill and passed so close, so close to them at the worst moment that there was only a clump of brush between them a^id the goblin column, and they still did not see, nor smell, nor hear them. The foremost led the way downhill and the others followed, shadows sheened with figured steel and bristling with bows and spears, that diminished on the slope, and riled away into the dark approach to the valley.

Support for the siege of human towns, he thought, beset with a shiver now that the danger was past. He let go Skory's reins, wiped his hands on his sides, and felt he could breathe again.

"The hills must be full of their armies," he said in a hushed voice, and felt his knees trembling with exhaustion. For his part he would insist they keep going under cover of darkness, but Skory had had her own troubles at the last, had had to consider climbs carefully—Skory had had little rest herself, by day or by night, and, he thought distractedly, perhaps they should leave her and go afoot.

But she was goblin-bait for certain if they did that, and he was by no means certain they ought to go on in the haste they had been using.

(Go back, something whispered in him. Yes, go back. Bring the mirror back to the woods, Tamas. That's the only hiding place.)

He saw the ghost for the instant, white and drifting among the trees. He was not even sure he had had his eyes shut—he thought that they were open, but he could only see the dark, and that figure, and when a rock met his shin, he felt it over with his hand and sat down, propping his elbow on his knee and trying to rub sight back into his eyes, rubbed and rubbed and tried to banish that persisting vision in favor of the hillside, and Ela, and the ordinary rocks and shadows.

Stop it, he ordered the ghost, stop it, let me go, you swore to Azdra'ik—

A hand touched him and he flinched from it, thinking it was the ghost, but the rattle of pebbles agreed more with the hillside, and with the rock he had chosen as his anchor in the world, it felt more like Ela's touch, and he became sure of it when it slid to his hand and closed on his fingers—it was warm and fleshly, and it wanted his attention, sharply insisted on his attention.

(Two innocents, the voice within him said. Two damned fools.)

He jerked his head, thinking as forcefully as he could, Go away! And, beside him, Ela—

Ela slipped her hand from his and rose to her feet in silence. He could see her when he looked up—he saw her walk away from him as far as where Skory stood, and stand there, looking out into the dark. He felt a wall between them, as cold, as palpable as stone. He felt—a memory on his lips, that foolish moment he had thought to teach Ela a lesson. His mouth burned with it. It might have been an instant ago. Foolish, foolish exchange, with a witch ... with the witch of the Wood, no less with all that name seemed to mean in this land, in this war-He saw the pale edge of Ela's face appear from the shadow of the cloak, like the moon from eclipse, felt her eyes on him, a regard both intimate and dangerous, as if— as if trust and mistrust and all she knew hovered only on that moment.

He wanted to be nearer to her—he could not decide to get up, and before he could persuade his weary legs to move, Ela walked back to him, arms hugging the darkness of her cloak tightly about her.

"Something happened to you," she said—as well say he had committed every treason imaginable, it was that tone of voice, it was that feeling in the air between them.

"I told you," he protested.

"I hear hear you."

He was too weary for puzzles. But she meant more than the words, she meant something dangerous, she meant treachery and lies and the fragile hope that he was not lying.

He shook his head desperately. He did not understand, he wanted her to know he did not understand even what she was talking about.

"The way you hear magic," she said. "The way you— know it. I hear you."

"Couldn't you always?" Nothing made sense to him. But he was sure of things he did not know how he knew, he was guessing things he could not possibly know, he remembered her arms about him and how in the last few moments he had felt her presence near him like a shadow in the wind, all in the desperation and scatter-wittedness of the moment—he was dreaming now. He had lost his sight or he had already been dreaming then, and he was sitting on a real stone on a real hillside looking up at her, but he was only dreaming of Ela, as a man drowning in witchcraft might reach out to a safer presence and a safer dream. Don't go away, 'he wished her. The witch will come back. I can't shut my eyes but what she comes back.

Ela turned her back on him, perversely left him prey to the dream—but she stopped, then, and turned back and looked at him in such a way he knew she was not deserting him, he knew that she was angry at the ghost and not at him, and he could not remember if he or she had just said a word aloud—god, he prayed it was not a permanent condition, this listening, this—rawness of the soul that felt Ela's shadow, balanced dread of the ghost and fear of her own anger and her own impulses toward him, forbidden things, forbidden closeness—a witch did not care, a witch did not this, and did not that, mistress had always told her, and most of all a witch did not harbor such longings to be touched, or held, or to rest safe, with just someone, anyone, once in her life to hold her.

He would hold her—he would do anything she asked, anything but feel that lonely—he had never been alone, he had had brothers, he had had parents, he had had Karoly, he had never known such a feeling, except in the troll's den—but she turned abruptly away, and gave him her profile, pale as starlight. She stared into the night and her loneliness welcomed the shadows, the way mistress had taught her. Her presence cooled to ice.

"You didn't know," the child-woman said at last, the merest whisper. "Magic always had to be in you: the mirror knew. I know you didn't lie to me, but something's happened, somebody's made it happen—you're—hearing—me, aren't you?"

"I don't know what you mean," he said in frustration, but he already knew she meant the magic, and knew he knew— but he had no idea whether it was something that had broken out in him, or something someone had done to him, or it was good or it was bad, or whether it was the ghost's doing, some shameful mark of his near debauch and rescue—he was beyond his own understanding, utterly, afflicted with ghosts and with thoughts and feelings that were so certain and so utterly unproven to reason that he could not draw a line between what he had dreamed or what he had done. "I don't know what I'm hearing, I don't know what's going on in me."

His fear leapt to her like fire, and died, starved of substance, chilled to death while she gazed into the goblin-haunted dark—no, she did not want to be touched, now, to need that was weakness, and she was not weak—while he-he had meant no affection in laying hands on her or in kissing her lips, he had not come here to court some girl while his home was at risk, he was not so shallow as that, please the god, he was not such a fool, if only he knew whether it was his thought or hers that chilled his impulse to go to her and hold her. If he should touch her now, she would become more dangerous to the world than the ghost in the Wood; if he should want the things she wanted, he would never know his own thoughts again; if he should fly away to the ends of the earth this instant, it would make no difference: she would go on hearing him forever.

"Don't," Ela said faintly, still without looking at him—if she had looked at him just then her glance would have burned him like fire—Then the world jolted, thump! back to earth and rock, and Ela standing distant from him. After a moment more she did look at him, came back and sat down by him. Then he looked away, himself, not to start it all again. He felt precariously balanced, and he only wanted to lie down and sleep and wake out of the dream that had so many discordant parts in it—perhaps he was still sleeping, perhaps he was still in the troll's den, perhaps it would come back soon and he would not have to concern himself with solutions or escapes.

No, not asleep, yet. He caught himself from falling with a jerk of his head, which proved the case, and did the same thing again, thinking quite calmly that it was most unusual to fall asleep terrified, and that he was quite close to falling and adding another lump to his head, if that first one was real.

He simply could not open his eyes this time. He slid down sideways, with the whole night spinning, and tried to open his eyes, for fear of the ghost, but he felt the warmth of a cloak cast over him, and a living body next to him, and a weight on his arm. It seemed Ela was making a pillow of him, and hurting his bruises, but they were mostly numb: it was not that which he wanted to object to her—it was that it was no place and no time to rest, and that there was a ghost trying to find him in his dreams. She should magic them both awake. . .

But sleep was a weight he could not move this time, not even to lift his hand to wake her.