The Goblin Mirror

13

EVERY BRAMBLE, EVERY HEDGE, EVERY BRANCH IN THE FOREST reached out to stay them, Nikolai swore it: he was accustomed to pass through a woods as free as a deer's shadow, but his eye could discover no path for himself, let alone for an elderly wizard on an exhausted pony—while Gracja, in Karoly's hands, had her own notion what was the easiest route down a hill—not always the wise one. She fetched up into a dead end, a narrow, leaf-walled wash barriered with a windfallen tree, and Nikolai had to climb over the trunk to reach her head.

But having sat down on the trunk in the process, he found getting up harder than he had expected, and he rested there to catch his breath.

"It's getting darker," Karoly said.

"I'm trying! This is a woods where we could use a dog, never mind trying to track that fool hound!"

"I mean it's getting darker faster than it ought to."

Nikolai looked toward what he took for the west, and glanced over his shoulder to what then must be the east, and he could see no difference. It had gotten to that time of evening when all light was gray and equal in the woods, when the trees and the canopy turned to their own woodland monotones—and there was no knowing what sort of predators might go on the hunt for boys and dogs once night had fallen.

That thought lent him strength to get up. He freed Gracja's rein from the branch that had caught it and backed her out of her predicament—poor pony, she was as blind-tired as they were; and she made a powerful effort to get up the slope again. He patted her sweaty neck when they had gotten to the top of the rise, and swore to her that he would get her out of this woods.

"Get down," he said to Karoly. "Get down, she can't carry you anymore."

"We've got to keep going."

"Do it on your own legs. We may need her before mis is done. Dammit, old man, just do what I say."

"Can't tell where you'll come out," Karoly muttered, trying to get down, entangled in his cloak, which was snagged on a branch, "Can't tell where he is, Ysabel can't get to us, we've just got to go on as we're going, as straight a line as we can hew, however long it takes."

"End up in some bear's belly," Nikolai said under his breath, and tugged the pony into motion so Karoly could get himself past the tree. "Some bear's late supper. Midnight snack. Probably already eaten the dog. Where in hell is the troll when you could use him?"

"Keep walking," Karoly said. Which was the only choice he saw.

It was a strange nightfall, a shadow that hung motionless in the east and then, slowly, in the dying of the sun, spread like a starry blight across the valley and the hills. The goblins built a great blazing bonfire, extravagant defiance against the night, and posted their sentries around about, whether against human armies from out of the valley or against others of their kind.

But their own light blinded them to all but each other.

"Join us at the fire," Azdra'ik said toTamas. "I swear to you, I swear to you it's rabbit and venison, nothing else. Nor has ever been. Come."

There were scruples, and there was hunger, but truth to tell, they had little left in the way of provisions, besides that these goblins seemed fairer and more amiable than their smaller cousins, and one could slide toward believing their reassurances, even against experience. Tamas found himself looking toward the fire, beyond the goblin lord's retreating back, and telling himself he was a fool to have come thus far off his guard with the creatures, or to attribute any common decency to them.

But Ela got up, dusted off her skirts, and walked in that direction, which left him solitary and supperless, except a last little heel of stale bread. What they were cooking this time looked like rabbit and smelled like rabbit, for what he could tell. They had torn back the grass to afford safe room for the fire, a blaze thicketed with sticks and spits—each goblin being responsible, as before, for his own supper, which they collectively proposed to share with their prisoners, their—guests, their fellow fugitives from the night and the queen's displeasure: he had no clear idea what they were in the goblin camp, and that in itself made him equally uneasy with the invitation and with their own refusal. If there were overtures toward them and he refused, that could be foolish, too. Even if the goblins only offered a shred or two of understanding of what they faced or where they were going ... it could make a difference in their living or dying tomorrow.

And if there was treachery and if the goblins intended betrayal, he would be more apt to discover it yonder in their company than sitting here alone.

So he got up and joined Ela in the firelight, easing his way in as goblins edged over to give him room. Goblins laughed with each other, albeit grimly, goblins spoke in low voices, and did their cooking, like any group of hunters. He watched the light as if it were the center of a black and unreasoning universe, until the voice within him said,

(Azdra'ik claims he's my servant. What do you think?)

He shrugged it off, watched as a goblin carved a small carcass in pieces, onto a square of leather, judging that that was the provision made for them, and sure enough, the goblin brought the packet to Ela and set it in her hands.

"Young madam," the goblin called her, bowing, and him: "Young sir."

Courtesy. Manners. There was too much puzzling about Azdra'ik and the company about him, too much of contradictions past unexplained. The ghost flared up all bones and shreds of grave-clothes, and a shiver went through him, a fear of believing anything.

But it was not bad rabbit. There was enough to eat, and warmth from the fire. For a moment or two on end he could shut his eyes and imagine he was back in his own woods, in Maggiar. But the conversation around him was not conversation he understood, and the creak of leather and the jangling of rings and ornaments was martial and strange.

He and Ela did not speak. There seemed nothing to say, that they would say with strangers around them. She seemed to drift very much as he did, remembering, perhaps, or thinking.

But her hand rested over the mirror beneath her gown, and her gaze turned toward the east.

He reached toward her arm. "Don't," he said. "Don't touch it tonight. Wait." It seemed desperate to him that she believe him, and he did not know why he should think so, but what she was doing terrified him.

She let her hand to her lap, and laced her fingers together and bowed her head.

(Inept, said the ghost. And thinking she knows. Damn you, boy . . . listen to me. Listen before it's too late.)

He blinked, he looked distractedly at the fire. He reached for Ela's hands and clenched them in his own, heedless of goblin stares and nudges of elbows, thinking, God, how can we survive till morning, how can we last the night, how if there's not a dawn?

A goblin arrived out of the dark and whispered something to one goblin, came to Azdra'ik's side and said something into his ear. Azdra'ik made a gesture and sent off ten or so of his company, who gathered up their weapons and followed the messenger.

He was holding Ela's hands too tightly. He let go. But she laced her right hand in his left and held on, only held on for dear life.

"Nothing," Azdra'ik said with an airy motion of his fingers. "A maneuver. A movement. Possibly even some of ours."

"Are there others?" Tamas asked in E!a's silence.

"You saw them."

"Shadows in the smoke."

Azdra'ik said something to his company, and some few of them rose and left, gathering up their weapons from beside them. "Troublesome shadows. The queen's shadows. There will be a guard tonight, I assure you. Sleep with at least that confidence."

"In you," Ela challenged him.

"In us," Azdra'ik said. "In us who have not consented to the queen. No, now—" Azdra'ik forestalled her interruption. "Listen to me. For one night, only this night, will you listen to me, young witch, and let me tell you a story. Was a time we ruled this land, was a time we had the respect of men ..."

"When," asked Ela, "when ever did you have our respect?"

"Oh, long ago. Long and long, when the old stones were young. Before the stone roads and the fences. Then sometimes men guested with us and we with them. But there was a falling out. Some say it was about the fences. Some say another thing. But however it was, a man died, a goblin was to blame, and bound as we were by a promise, and such as we are, and such as the promise was that bound us and men— we had no choice. We lost all the world. It was that absolute. It was that much trust we had placed in our virtue. We assumed too much, we believed in ourselves too implicitly. And we failed. So we left the world—and, young witch, let me tell you, to lose the sun and the moon was a dreadful thing. We would have promised anything for a foothold on this earth. Can you understand that?"

Tamas did. He would not have, before the troll, before the tower, before the woods, before he entertained a ghost within him. The firelight on the flat-nosed, jut-jawed profile lent it elegance, even comeliness—or the dreadful sights he had seen had made even a goblin face seem better to his eyes. He found himself glad of Azdra'ik talking to them, even longed to trust the voice, because it was alive, and in this world.

"After hundreds of years," Azdra'ik went on, in the soft crackle of the fire, "after so long a time, the witch Mirela read our stones and our signs and sought us out; and in exchange for a magic she could not do—one night a year we might see the world again. Of course we would agree. What would we not, for the smallest glimpse of moonlight? Then— you know the story—her daughter Ylena also found the way to us. Set me in my mother's place, Ylena begged us, and offered us a year to see the sun and the moon. For that, again—what would we not do? But it was an ugly bargain this witch wanted. We knew what she intended. Some of us spoke for and some against—but our queen in her cleverness said that any wrong Ylena did was a human's choice and a human's crime: that as the guilt of one goblin had damned us, the guilt of this woman was to free us. So she took the witch's bargain. We gained our year, and for all that year-can you imagine? We did everything, everything we had dreamed of since I was born—we walked in the sunlight, we saw the colors, we enjoyed every flavor and texture the world has to offer. We were happy . . . except one thing: that no matter our virtue or our fault, Ylena meant to send us back to exile."

(Virtue, the ghost laughed, and Tamas felt cold inside.)

"So the queen cast a spell, that Ylena should have a child Ylena did not want, despite all her magic—in which—" Azdra'ik made a small gesture. "I was an instrumentality."

"You, "Ela said.

"I was," Azdra'ik said, with a downward glance, "in a position of trust. And it was not a position I cared for, let me say."

The anger, the darkness of the ghost was for a moment more than the firelight, more than the hillside and the earth and the presence around them. "Damn you!" burst from Tamas' lips, and he swallowed down the torrent that wanted to follow, stopped his own arm in mid-reach toward Ela and the mirror and knotted both hands together between his knees, where they were safe, where he could not reach after what Ela would not, not yield to him—

Not, not, not, he told himself, daring not shut his eyes, staring into the fire until the light hurt and burned and he could not see the darkness inside him.

"... he's dreaming awake," Azdra'ik's voice was saying, and he became aware of Ela's hand on his arm, shaking him. "One simply shouldn't bed down with ghosts."

"I didn't," he said between his teeth, acutely aware of Ela's presence. "Don't listen to him."

"Or witches," Azdra'ik said, "but, after all, tomorrow things will be different—in one way or another."

"You were telling us," Tamas said, hands clenched, "what your own share of this is."

"Ah. That."

"Why should we believe anything you say?"

"Man, man, you prejudge us."

"What's the difference, you or the creatures that attacked the towers? What's the difference, you and the ones burning the cities down there?"

"Because we are not burning the cities down there. The queen tricked Ylena and held the land, and had a hold over Ylena's heir. Well enough if it had stopped there, if the queen or even Ylena could have been content—"

The things the goblin was saying roused echoes, memories of great halls, and goblin courtiers, and music, memories of a reflection that swam in liquid silver—a face that was his ... or hers, or the queen's, he was not sure, he only knew he did not want to see it clearly. He bit his lip until it hurt.

"I betrayed the secrets of the mirror," Azdra'ik said, "for one reason: if Ylena could have ruled her mirror, the queen with hers could never have prevailed over the world entirely; Ylena's wickedness aside, if another mirror existed, there would be another power—and if one witch failed our measure . . . even if one witch was with the queen's, her ambition would have led her to wield her mirror for her own interests. Therefore any shaping the queen would cast on the great mirror would always have its rival and neither one could prevail. That was our plan."

Anger grew and grew in him, the ghost troubling him so that he could scarcely sit still. He saw dark behind the fire, a great mirror swirling with baleful images—and he would not, would not consult the knowledge that lodged, screaming for attention, behind his teeth.

"The fragment," Azdra'ik said, "was our unexpected result. Ytresse ruled, then Ylysse, before Ysabel. Any of the three you might have met within the Wood: but when you were lost there, Tamas, my innocent, you strayed straight to the magic that had most claim on your presence. Of all ghosts in that wood, you met only Ylena. And that tells me there's more to this than a fledgling fool's bad luck."

Thoughts tumbled one over the other. The goblin was half shadow, half light. "You," Azdra'ik said, "you—resound— of magic. Yet you're deaf to it. You come from over-mountain to Ylena's doorstep. And the witchling crosses your path, with the fragment. And . . . much against my advice," Azdra'ik said, looking at Ela, "you've looked into the mirror. What you see the queen can see, if she dares invoke your world within the great mirror. You've guessed that, surely. Tomorrow, you have to compel her to see—what you wish. That's the whole business of the mirror. It's so dreadfully simple."

Ela said nothing.

"Do you understand?" Azdra'ik asked. "Do you want-perhaps—a year to think about it? To grow older? To bear children and pass this burden on? The i'bu okhthi can hide you—we will hide you, and set you away in safety where the queen may not reach you."

"No," Ela said shortly.

"Pride," said Azdra'ik. "Pride is a deadly matter."

"I don't believe," Ela said, "that there is anywhere safe."

"What do you say, young Tamas?"

He thought of Maggiar this time. He thought of home and orchards and their woods and the mountain trails that led straight to the heart of this land, and he thought of gran, and Karoly, and how gran had frightened them and Karoly had taken them over-mountain in full knowledge of where he was bringing them.

"There's no hiding," he said. "There's no hiding place even for a single year, that I know of."

A long time Azdra'ik looked at them, one and the other. Tamas thought—even began to hope—that Azdra'ik might know something he did not, and offer them a place.

"None that I would trust implicitly, no. No cradle for fools. No hiding place. Besides that we have no way off this hillside without more magic man we've yet seen, young witch. Make the sun come up. Make the day come. There's your first challenge."

"No," Ela said. "No. I won't fight her about that."

"What will you fight her for?" Azdra'ik asked and the ghost in Tamas listened, oh, it listened, and he trembled.

Ela said, "I'd be a fool to say. Mistress said—never give that away to anyone. I think she meant anyone. And I won't."

Anger welled up, anger he hoped was not his, at her obstinacy, at her damning them to this encounter, at her refusal to argue or to listen ... anger at Azdra'ik, who rose from beside them and walked away to the edge of the fire, a dark and martial figure that might have been human.

Not my anger, he told himself, struggling with the presence in him. Not my resentments, not my advice.

Shut up, he told the ghost, and feared it would find a way yet to harm them. It was vengeful. It had learned treachery at its mother's knee. He—had learned it from Azdra'ik ... he had learned it from Karoly, if he knew how to recognize guile at all.

An unarmed babe, he told himself, a boy who should not have left his father's roof to be put where he was set, to fight a war where truth was bent and what one saw and what was were at war.

Why, gran? Why didn't you teach us more?

Stories about the fairies and green valleys and magic waterfalls? What kind of help was that? Was that all you could think to give your grandsons? They said you were wise. They said you were a great and dreadful witch. And, fairy-tales? Was that the limit of your magic?

Damn it, gran! What are we going to do tomorrow? If I've got one ghost, why not yours? Couldn't you manage that, if witches have the run of the forest?

Hate him, the voice came back, soft and bitter; and he was looking at Azdra'ik's back, thinking that he could never take the creature face to face, that somewhere in this Azdra'ik meant to betray them—that at some time he would have to take the creature, from this vantage if he could, preferably from this vantage, and with no one else to know—because he was not a fighter. And not, evidently, a wizard either, who could bend the creature to anything useful.

Be rid of him, echoed deep inside him. Protect yourself. You have too much value. Think of your own kind.

It left him a different feeling than the first ghost—less violent, more cold. Gran? he wondered. Is that gran? Or is it lying? Or is it something else altogether?

Many of the goblins had gone away from the fire, some to pallets spread about, some to the shadows. He saw them, he felt Ela's touch on his arm and felt her departure, he supposed for sleep. He watched her walk to where they had set their packs, near the horses, was aware as she wrapped her cloak about her, settled down and tucked up against the saddles and the packs. All the camp was settling, and oh, he wanted the idea of sleep—but he feared it, feared the ghost and its treacheries. He only wrapped himself in his cloak for comfort against the wind and decided at least to loose the buckles about his collar and his ribs, and find himself a comfortable way to prop himself, head on arms, simply to rest his smoke-stung eyes and armor-weary shoulders.

To his dim suspicion the ghost did not immediately trouble him. The dark within the shadow of his folded arms was empty and comfortable; he saw only—imagined—he was sure—a night clear and sparkling with stars. Not a bad dream, he decided, not a threatening dream. He heaved a sigh and imagined himself walking along boggy ground that seemed somehow familiar to him. He could not remember when he had acquired the memory, but he thought certainly he had seen it before, every detail of the reeds and the starlit water at their roots, at just this moment, on just this night.

The moon was a sliver of herself, embracing shadow. That, he saw, looking up, and then saw the whole lake, and the dark hills, like a blow to the heart.

No, he thought in fright, wanting escape, because he did know this shore, this lake—he had had this dream before, and it was a trick and a trap that had brought him here.

But before he could look away a movement drew his eye: came a troll past him in the dark, one troll, and another and another. That was enough: he did not want to see more than that. The dream was about to revert to the nightmare in the tunnel, and that might be preferable to this place, but he most wanted to wake up and have no dreams at all.

Then came a pale doglike shape down the hill. It looked for all the world like Zadny, and he could not understand why he would dream about that.

After the dog came a boy, so like Yuri in every way that his heart ached with homesickness. He stood perhaps a moment longer than he should have, watching Yuri chase after the hound who chased the trolls. It made no sense, it made absolutely no sense, except in his attempt to change this dreadful lake shore into something he knew, perhaps his dreams were going to be better disposed to him and show him something he longed to see. The three trolls—that was a bizarre touch, and there was enough of nightmare and of memory both about that apparition to disturb him; but seeing Yuri—cautions fell out of his mind. He even tried to call out to Yuri, reckless of the dark and the wild shore, but in the perverse way of dreams, he could not get a sound out, or run, when he tried—no matter what his effort he could travel no faster than a walk, as if the land resisted him, as if, in this dream, he could not recall the next bit of ground beneath his feet fast enough to enable him to go faster—he could not look down and look at Yuri at once, and he feared something else appearing, every time he took his eyes off his brother.

He walked and walked, while the trolls had gone farther than was safe—there was a guard on the lake that he knew was the goblins' lake, and the three trolls had gone past that point, he was sure they had. He began to be afraid where this dream was going, and told himself that it was of no concern, his dream was powerless to harm anyone, and he could withstand any fright it offered: Yuri was home safe in bed. He was the one in real danger tomorrow. If he hoped anything good would come from the dream, he hoped if Yuri was dreaming, too, Yuri might hear him and wake up with a memory of talking to him, and remember it. Maybe that was what this dream was for. And, if that was the case, he did not want to tell Yuri how afraid he was, or how dreadful this place was, he simply wanted to say—Do what's right, do what's wise, Yuri, mind papa and grow up, and if I don't make it home-No, he did not want to scare the boy. I've had adventures, he would say, if he could. I've met this girl—

No, not that either: Yuri would make fun of him and girls. And how could he explain Ela to his family?

—I don't think mother would like her.

But I think—where would I be without her? And where would she be without me? She's very brave, Yuri. I don't think she ever had a friend but Pavel and her mistress, and that's no way to grow up. I think—

I think I needed someone like her. And you really would like her. If she were your age she'd climb trees and run races.

God, he thought then, she is Yuri's age, isn't she? And in his dream he said:

Yuri, if I get home I'll have the time to do things you wanted to do. ... I really mean to, this time . . .

All these things he made up in his mind to say, so perhaps they were said. He walked along beside Yuri, chattering like a fool about anything he could think to say. But after a time he could go no further, he did not know why, he just stopped, or Yuri was getting ahead of him; and Yuri just kept walking, farther and farther along the shore, where Zadny had gone, where the trolls had.

Come back, he tried to say. Yuri! Come back!

But Yuri trudged along the boggy, reed-rimmed shore until he was part of the shadows.

Then came a slight shimmering of the lake, as if someone had shaken water in a goblet. Water lapped at the reeds. Metal clanged in that impenetrable darkness, like a gate gone shut, and he tried to go forward, but he could not take a step, could not call out, could not move.

And Zadny came running from out of that darkness, running for his very life.

Zadny! he cried silently, as the hound hurtled past him and up the hill. Halfway up, Zadny stopped and looked back, tail tucked, as if he had heard, after all, but he spun about and began to run again, to the top of the hill, where he vanished, as the lake did, as the shore, and the sky, the way dreams began to come apart when they had made their point.

He saw the drifting of a shape in this half-dream. He heard the ghostly voice saying, Fool, it's not a dream, never think things are only dreams, here.

He opened his eyes on dark that promised nothing of morning and gave not a hint of time passed or yet to come. He achieved a few moments of sleep and sleep left him with nothing but troubling images—did not purge his mind of nightmares or break off the chain of sleepless yesterdays and yesternights that ran unbroken through his awareness. His very bones felt now as if a force ran through him, insufficient to sustain him and too intense to make breathing easy. The movement of goblins about their watch, the flicker of the fire, all floated through his awareness, disjunct from every experience, every memory equally important: dreams of home, dreams of the ghost, with never a boundary of dark in which he could say, Asleep, or Awake, or know unequivocally past from future.

Ela understood the dark around them, and he knew that— intimately. Ela was awake and aware of his awareness. All of which was too much for him. He dropped his head into his hands and wished that whatever was happening would be over tomorrow so that he need not spend another night like this one, nor another day after it, never, ever another day like this, if he died.

Ela was angry at his despair, and something more than angry. He looked up from his hands to find her bending to him, reaching for his arm, and he flinched from her, thinking how the goblins were witness, the goblins had already laughed at their apparent dalliance, and now he was humiliated in her eyes, in the helpless trembling that came over his limbs, that he did not want her to discover, but she did. She hovered by him and he sat there wanting to scream, wanting to laugh, wanting to cry—but she knew what had happened to him, that it was magic that would not let him rest, would never let him rest until he had done what magic charged him do—that was what gnawed at him, she had not understood it before now, and she was afraid of it breaking out ungoverned in him . . .

"Mistress said," she whispered, as if that made enough sense, and gripped his hand with a force unlikely in so small a girl. Ela had not slept either, Ela had been thinking—as one did, on the brink of magic, as one must, when so much was pent up inside trying to find its way out. She was feeling it. And she had no doubt now that he felt the same force running through his bones.

"I'm not a wizard," he protested in their strange, half-spoken conversation. It horrified him to think of sorcery breaking out in him like some loathsome plague; to think of Ylena's ghost shedding him like some outworn skin and acting in ways he could not predict, maybe against Azdra'ik, maybe against Ela, he could not understand Ylena's motives or its presence, except he had given the ghost the chance it wanted to escape the woods.

"Dammit, it's not me, Ela, it's not me, it's the witch, it's somebody named Ylena that I don't know about, I don't know what she'll do, I don't know what she wants but what she wanted when I was in her house—"

But he could remember the mirror beginning to crack, the dark and bright lines running everywhere across its face, and the light breaking out through the seams of the world. He could remember Azdra'ik being her lover, and he could still feel, as if it had been a moment ago, Ylena's lips on his fingers, on his mouth. He could remember her walking up beside him, and seeing white bone through her flesh, when Azdra'ik had bargained him free.

"I won't go tomorrow for some dead woman, Ela! I won't do it! I don't even know what we're going to do."

But he was lying, he knew he would go, it was quivering in his bones and his brain, and he had no command over it.

"Hush," she said, "hush."

She had touched where the mirror rested beneath her gown and it was suddenly worse, overwhelmingly worse. He caught her hand, too hard, and tried to be gentle, but he was shaking beyond his power to master his own strength. He thought of taking the mirror from her—he wanted the mirror in his own hand, because he did know what to do, and she did not.

He flung himself to his feet instead and staggered for balance, while goblin sentries looked their way in alarm-incongruously unsure whether it was reason for weapons or not; while Ela—Ela rose slowly and was angry with him, with the ghost, he could not tell, he could not at the moment tell which he was.

"Ela, I can't—can't touch you again, I daren't, I daren't be close to you tomorrow, you understand? That's what it wants. When we can't deal with it, it's going to turn on us! Stay away from me, don't touch me!"

Ela shook her head, and a quiet confidence came around her, about her. "It's mine to carry," she said, so firmly he could not himself disbelieve it. "Sit down. Sit down.'"

He did. How could one do other than what Ela wanted? He fell onto the stone and sat down, dizzy and confused, and Ela sank down by him, and took his arm in hers and held on to him.

"Shut your eyes," she said. "Trust me."

It was not easy. The ghost protested, wailed and flinched from Ela's touch. (Fool! it cried.) But he made himself do it, and found himself after a moment drawing easier breaths, and then a great, deep one, that seemed to come from the bottom of his soul.

Dangerous, he thought. Deadly dangerous, this trust he let her impose on him. Or the ghost thought so. He shut his eyes, on a welcome, vacant dark, and heard Ela say—or was it Karoly? —Take your time, Tamas, think, Tamas . . .

They had their supper at least, from Gracja's pack, no thanks to their foresight. The two of them sat down to eat it in the tangle of woods that did not seem willing to give them up, and Nikolai for one had diminished appetite. "Not even a belt knife on the boy," Nikolai said to Karoly, over stale bread and sausage toasted on a stick. "I should have drowned that dog when I had a chance. —It's burning."

"Shhh," master Karoly said sharply, and sat staring fiercely at the fire while the sausage on his side of the fire caught fire and sizzled and popped and cindered. Nikolai watched the sausage, for want of other visible result-watched it turn to cinder, and the oil on the stick catch fire, and the stick burn, and the end fall off in the fire.

Curious, he thought. One wondered what wizards did. Or thought. Or thought they thought. Meanwhile the boy was still lost, they had to get up somehow and keep going, and he ached from head to foot. He had pulled the pony uphill and down, the pony having, reasonably enough, no driving interest in where they were going, until finally Karoly could not walk any further, and the god knew he could not carry the old man on his back.

So they sat and burned a sausage to the powers of the woods, or whatever forces Karoly was engaging.

Finally Karoly blinked and said, not to him, he thought, "No. No. Dammit."

The air was cold for a moment. For a moment Nikolai was certain he felt a breath on the side of his neck, and the fire went down flat and sprang up again.

"I know that!" Karoly objected.

Fine, Nikolai thought, fine, now we're talking to the air.

He looked around uneasily, afraid of what he might see, but he found nothing and felt nothing.

Then Karoly leapt to his feet. "Get the horse!"

"I'm not—" —your servant, was what was first to Nikolai's mouth, but before he could even get it out, the old man was wandering off into the woods, into the dark without a care in the world for his safety or their weapons or the supplies in their packs.

"Damn!" Nikolai hurled his aching body into motion and stuffed their belongings in the pack, threw the pack on the pony and buried the fire in the earnest desire not to have the forest burning down around them.

The old man was out of sight. It was a crashing in the brush he followed, nigging Gracja after him in the dark for fear of his head if he tried to ride her through the woods. It was a breathless hill later that he even caught sight of Karoly, and onto the other side of it and downhill again before he overtook the old man.

Karoly knew he was there. Karoly spared him a glance and said something about the boys and trouble, but he knew that already. Something had persuaded Karoly of the right direction: Nikolai most earnestly hoped that was the case. The old man talked to ghosts and one of them had finally come through for him, but he could not see it, he could not tell.

Then he spied a pale shape in the shadows ahead of them, a pale, dog-sized shape, going through the brush and circling and looking back, not as if he were following a trail, but in the manner of a dog desperate to be followed.

Something had happened to the boy. The dog was roughed from scratches, dark marks on the fur—he limped on one paw and the other and evaded every attempt to lay hands on him. There was nothing to assume now but the worst; and Nikolai hurried as best he could with the horse in tow. "Get on," he said to Karoly when they had gotten to a single spot of flat ground. "Ride after him, I'll follow!" Because he feared there was no time for a man afoot, no time for maybe and no time for consideration. He took the bow from the saddle and held the reins for Karoly.

But when he looked about he could have sworn a man stood near them—real enough that his first impulse was to reach for his sword: a man in armor, who paid no attention to mortal threats, Pavel, he thought, but young Pavel, who walked away through the trunks of trees. There seemed to be a woman ahead of him, and maybe a girl, he could not tell.

Something wet touched his hand. Claws raked his leg.

"Damn!" he cried, before he knew it was the hound: and the hound was bounding away from them, after the ghosts, as if they should follow.

"Follow them to hell," Nikolai muttered, because following ghosts and stupid dogs could well lead there. Karoly was trying to get his foot into the stirrup, the pony was moving about, uneasy with good reason as Nikolai saw it, but he shoved the old man for the saddle and led off, with the most queasy feeling they were not anywhere people could get to without magic involved; and without it there was no way back.