The Goblin Mirror

7

THEIR GOING WAS A HASTY CONFUSION OF DARK AND branches by starlight. Leaves raked Tamas' shoulders as the horses struck out on a downhill and up again, on a ride in which any stir of brush might be goblin ambush, any twitch of the horses' ears might be the only alarm they would have. The witchling told him nothing—but, Tamas thought, nothing he had done back at the tower had deserved her confidence. The goblin had let him go: she might have bewitched the creature, or not, for all he knew—she might not know what had happened up there on the stairs and might ask herself how he had escaped, weaponless.

But it was not an hour to plead for trust. And counting her reticence and the fury he had felt in her glance, he began to ask himself whether she was in fact a white witch, whether in feet she needed help in which a fool would do very well-he had heard about that kind of sorcerer in gran's stories, too.

But how did one know the good witches from the bad? Ela moved by dark, in shadows, and by moonlight, and if that had not been a curse she had loosed against the goblin he never hoped to feel one. The horses' mad steadiness, jolting his exhausted, spinning senses, the goblin saying, "Run," as if it were a choice he had ... its eyes looking into his, mad and malicious and amused with him and his plight. . .

Lwi stumbled, and the near fall and the slope beside him sent a chill through him. "The horses can't do any more!" he protested, with too much pride to add, Nor can I. He was crazed, trying to comprehend goblin games and witches, most of all for staying with her, and he began to think that his own staying might be more spell than reason.

"Not far now," she promised him.

But Not Far took them down a hill and along another and another, and maybe a third: he was drifting in nightmare corridors and remembering goblin footsteps somewhere along the second hill, in a forest darker than the night sky, Lwi panting as he moved.

Then he heard water out of the dark—their stream again, he thought; or he was dreaming still. He heard it nearer and nearer, until he saw Skory wading into it, Skory first and then Lwi dipping their heads to drink as they walked—he let out the reins and let Lwi drink as he could, never stopping, even yet—bewitched, as before.

"Have mercy," he pleaded. "This is foolish. What good to kill the horses? We've outrun the goblins. They aren't following us, Ela, for the god's sake—"

They were at the bank. She rode Skory further up before she stopped—but Lwi stayed on the bank to drink, no longer spellbound, as far as he could tell.

So they must have arrived, he thought, and slid down from Lwi's back, sore, and dizzy, and suddenly perceiving a stone wall and a gateway in the darkness of the nightbound trees. For one blink of an eye he feared they had ridden full circle back to the tower and into a trap, but at a second, he saw only an open gateway into, so far as he could tell, an overgrown ruin.

"Ela?" he said, but she was staring at the gate, simply staring. Lwi had had enough water, and he patted Lwi's sweat-drenched neck, and led him up gently to the grass that grew along the shore, while the mare wandered at will. This time he loosed the bow and the arrow case from the saddle; and looked around to learn in what precise place Ela decreed for their camp.

But she had vanished in that instant of inattention—through the gateway, into the ruin.

"Ela?" he asked the empty night, exhausted, lost, and suddenly outraged. He went as far as the dark doorway, and found no sight of her, listened, and heard no sound but the sighing of a cold night wind and the sudden jingle of harness as Skory shook her head.

So the girl wanted to slip away alone into the ruin after riding all day, finding her mistress murdered, and escaping goblins with something the goblins were looking for? Well and good. Maybe witches needed no sleep and no protectors and dined on moonbeams. He strung the bow in a fit of temper, set it and its arrow case against a man-sized lump of stone, and unsaddled and walked and rubbed the horses down—there were grateful creatures at least.

Afterward, in a calmer frame of mind, if no easier in conscience, he bent down at water's edge, cooled his face in water that chilled him to the bone—good water, clean water, that set him shivering as he washed and drank—but that was honest work that he had done, unlike some he could think of; honest work and honest sweat and trying to do the right thing.

He was chilled through. He took his bow and found a feat next to the wall, hugging his cloak about him against the night wind, and thinking that now that his stomach was quieter, he ought to try to eat—get into the packs and find something to eat for himself, since the girl would not deign to advise him where she was or what she was up to or when, if ever, she would come back.

But he had no real appetite left, and not to be pent anywhere or shoved anywhere, or bewitched off on another ride—that was all he wanted. It was enough to know there was food and water within reach, even if he was too exhausted to eat. He could sleep a moment, he decided. It was only his neck at risk, now. He need only shut his eyes and listen to the forest whispering in the wind.

"Men see so poorly at night," a goblin voice lisped, from the wall above his head. He flung himself to one knee, reaching for the knife.

The goblin leapt down with a light clash of metal as he reeled to his feet, drawing the knife—it was that near him. He heard the horses bolt and run.

"Well, well. Here we are again, and you threaten me with my own gift."

"It is you," he said, backing up a step, trying to clear the light-headedness that assailed him. "Ela!"

"Oh, hush, hush, man, she's not afraid of me. She should be, but she isn't. She's a great magician, like her mistress, don't you know? Undoubtedly greater. Ysabel wouldn't touch what she's taken up. Now Ysabel's dead, and her poor, slow-witted servant with her. I wonder how she will fare."

"E-la!"

"I tell you she won't hear you. She can't hear you."

It advanced. He stepped back again, giddy, keeping the knife between him and its owner—a wicked blade, with a backwards spine he could only guess how to use—but this creature most certainly knew, and it had the sword that matched it.

"Ungrateful wretch. Here." Jewels glittered in the starlight, in a black-nailed hand. Something thumped to the ground at his feet.

He was supposed to look down. He refused to take his eyes off the creature, who smiled at him, showing fangs, and leaned casually against the wall, long fingers, spiderlike, grazing the sword hilt at its side. "Oh, not at all trustful. Are we, thief? Lie to me, and all the time you were with the witchling. For shame, for shame."

"Where are the rest of you?"

"Of me? Why, altogether here, man, altogether where the witchling is and isn't. —But witches are like that, nor here, nor there, most of the time. While you—" Another smile, close-lipped, but the fangs still showed. "You are most definitively here, young gentleman, in possession of my knife, and, by my graciousness, its sheath, and your head. And here am I, seeking your gracious hospitality. What do you say to that?"

It was hard for a cobwebby wit to follow the twists and turns of its converse, but it seemed foolish to attack the creature, more foolish to die in contest with weapons it knew, when it seemed extraordinarily enamored of its own cleverness, and he had no idea the measure of it. He took a breath, adopted a careless stance. "What do I say? —That you're a common bandit!"

"Oh, uncommon. A lord among my kind, and grossly inconvenienced by this girl, this fledgling, this would-be sorceress. So here we are, thief and liar, and bandits both."

"I'm no bandit."

"But thief and liar you admit to?' *

"No."

Again the sharp-edged grin. "Azdra'ik is my name. And yours, man?"

"Tamas." He gave no more clues to his family or his friends than he must. Exchanging names offered a familiarity he had no wish to share with this creature. He only hoped Ela had heard him call out, and was working some magic to deliver him: meanwhile he could no more than play for time, and he wondered how many other goblin warriors were slipping around them in the forest dark. Lwi and Skory had made no further sound, but he did not think goblins could overwhelm the horses without at least some commotion,

"So, Tamas, and are you a wizard, too?"

"The greatest."

It laughed. "Audacious man. Why don't you go find the witchling? I'll wait here for you."

"Of course you will."

"No, no, my solemn word. You're free to go."

It meant to follow him to Ela, he was certain of it. But he did not know what else he should do, that might give him a chance, or even delay this creature more than a single pass of its sword; and he no more knew where Ela was than it did. Perhaps he could lead it a chase and raise enough noise that Ela would know where he was. Or maybe they had already caught her, and it was only a cruel joke the creature played. But he had no better offers for his life.

He caught up the bow and case, dived through the gateway into the shadow of the ruined wall, and found himself in a maze of brush and broken walls. His footsteps sounded louder than he liked on patches of exposed paving stones. He tried to keep silence, and now and again glanced back, afraid the creature was laughing all the while and following him.

He dared not call out. He feared she might answer, unaware of the danger. It was not even his intention to find her, only to raise enough noise for her to take some magical precaution—and for him to locate targets at more than arm's length, if the creature had companions slipping through this woods. He had an arrow against the bow. He was ready for treachery.

Then he saw Ela's pale hair past a screen of head-high brush, and stopped and caught himself against a truncated wall, trying to think what to do or whether to go to her—

But she stood so still, so unnaturally still, paying no heed to his footsteps on the stones and his moving in the brush. She was gazing down at her cupped hands—working some magic, he told himself, but nothing evident to him, nothing to his observation that might have dispelled the threat outside.

He glanced back the way he had come, wondering whether to go back and try to lead off the creature rather than disturb her working—but that seemed supremely ill-advised. And if despite all he could do, he was followed, they had already found her.

He came to her and stopped at respectful distance, trying to say calmly, "Ela. Ela, there's a goblin—in our camp—"

She might not have heard him at all. He saw the flash of glass and starlight in her hands, held the bow and the arrow in his left hand, touched her arm ever so slightly, then shook at her, when she remained, statuelike, completely oblivious to his touch. "Ela. A goblin. It's after us."

A flutter of her eyelids then—a moment that she looked straight at him. "No," she said, shaking her head, as if what he said were patently foolish. "No. Not here."

Perhaps, then, the wall did keep something out. Perhaps there was some magical reason the goblin asked him to find her, and perhaps it had been a mistake to come in here and disturb her magic. Maybe that was exactly what the goblin wanted. But there was nothing to do now but make her understand him. "It's out there with the horses. It followed us from the tower." He tried to sound sane and reasonable. Breath failed him. "It spoke to me. It told me to find you. What should I do?"

She seemed to have understood, then. And the amulet in her hands began softly to glow and cast a light on her face— a mirror, it was, a simple mirror. He remembered the goblin saying that her mistress would not touch what she had taken up ... and he thought: This small thing?

Then a feeling of malaise tingled through the air, through the earth, through the soles of his feet and the nape of his neck and the palms of his hands. He heard the trees sighing in the woods and the water of the brook running, and a distant shouting, as if it came out of some hollow hall. Ysabel wouldn't touch what she's taken up, echoed in his ears, like voices from the tower—taken up, taken up, taken up—

The dark around them receded. They stood beneath the ghostly lamps and hangings of a great hall, and all around them men and women fled in fear. The floors and walls Began to crack as light blazed through, brilliant as the sun.

Everything whirled about them. Suddenly a veiled woman stood in this thundering chaos, her cloak and her robes cracking like banners in the winds that swept the hall. She looked full at them, at him, and pointed her finger, crying into the gale—" ... one and the same ... One is all! Remember that, above all! There is always a flaw—"

The image shattered, with a sound of breaking glass. Shocking quiet followed, isolation and dark, ordinary night around them, an ordinary moon above the ruined walls and the brush. He discovered himself breathing, and his heart beating and the sighing of the wind moving without his will.

"Wizard!" Ela cried, tearing her arm free, and hit him with her fist. "Liar! Damned liar, get away from me! You touched it, you changed it—"

"No!" Too many accusations of falsehood had come his way tonight, too many confusions. "Anything that happened, you. did. That thing you have—did." Words were coming too rapidly, and he could not get breath enough, in the sudden stillness of the air. She began to walk away from him and he caught her arm and held her perforce. "I've nothing—nothing to do with magic, or goblins, or this thing of yours! I don't know what you were doing, but there's a goblin the other side of the wall where the horses are, it's looking for you, and it says you've inconvenienced it—that that thing you have, your mistress wouldn't touch! He called her name. Ysabel. And he told me to find you, don't ask me what for—I didn't know anything else to do!"

Light shone through Ela's fingers, reflected on Ela's pale face—the rest was dark, and sighing wind. "My mistress wouldn't touch.it," she echoed. "Then why did she hide it from everyone but me, why did she tell me to use it, did he tell you that? —Let me go! Where do you get the right to shout at me?"

"You said you were a witch!"

" I am!" Light reddened the edges of her fingers and made the illusion of bones within. "I brought us away from the tower, didn't I? I brought us here!"

"Did you rescue me, or was it the troll's idea? This is the second time that creature's let me go!"

"He's not a—"

"I don't care what it is. Karoly is dead\ Your mistress is dead\ Krukczy Tower is full of goblins, and now your mistress' tower is! The one waiting out there—wants you." He struggled to keep his voice down. "It says its name is Az-dra—Zdrajka—something. It says—"

"Azdra'ik!"

Beyond belief. "You know him?"

The glow had all but died within her hand, leaving only night above them, and a plain piece of mirror when she opened her fingers, that reflected nothing but dark and moonlight. "This is mine. I have it! It can show me anywhere in the land. It can open magic to me. It can defeat them!"

"Then begin with the one that's been following us! If it gets the horses, we're afoot here with its friends, with lord Sun knows what next! Send him off, for a start!"

She seemed to have run out of words. The bit of silvered glass flashed in. the moonlight, inert as its delicate chain that sparkled in her fingers. "Let me go," she said. "Let me go! You've already changed something, I don't know what. What more damage can you do?"

He released her arm. She eyed him balefully, then began to walk, back toward the gateway and the horses. He walked with her, with a stitch in his side and with the disquieting understanding that she was going indeed to confront this Zdrajka-goblin with her piece of glass, and he nocked the arrow and had another ready as he walked.

"Let me go first," he said, "and tell him I found nothing." Perhaps after all, he thought, lying was his best talent. But it was not fair tactics he expected, from a goblin; and it was not fair tactics he meant to use, with the advantage all to the goblin.

Ela might have heard him or might not: she kept walking, and he saw her lips moving, shaping words that had no sound. That, he did not like: it might equally well be a magic to deal with him as with the goblin, so far as he knew, or blackest sorcery that might not care where it made its bargains.

But when they came to the gate, the horses were grazing peacefully in the moonlight, as if nothing had ever happened.

"Well?" she asked. "Where is he?"

"He was here," was all he could say—until, outside the gate, walking over the ground he and the goblin had occupied, he saw the glitter of jewels in the moonlight, and gathered up the sheath that belonged to the knife. "It was here," he said, showing it to Ela. "It was here and it left."

Why? was the next obvious question. But Ela only frowned and walked away in silence.

While the horses, that should have been off in the woods and the devil's own work to catch after their fright, might have had second thoughts about the grass growing in this spot, and hunger might have weighed more with them than goblin-smell—they certainly showed no signs of recent panic.

He could not answer that well for himself: he ached from running, he was ravenously hungry, which no one reasonably should be, who had just seen what he had seen. He was vastly relieved that the horses were all right; and beneath all that, he felt the complete fool. So far as he knew, Ela's magic had bespelled the creature, brought back the horses and secured their safety, and he had been unjust to lay hands on her and most of all to disturb what might have been a delicate and essential work of magic. He could no longer even swear that he had seen what he had seen either outside or inside the walls—it was slipping away from him, detail by detail, like a dream—but he did know that he found himself deeper and deeper entangled in what Ela would, and where Ela was going, and what Ela wanted.

He asked himself when and where he had passed the point of no return, because he no longer knew how to ride away— not alone because he no longer knew the way home through these wooded hills. He desperately wanted a hope to chase— anything but a blind flight this way and that from successive disasters, anything but a return without answers and without help.

But, damn it all, if magic was the help Karoly had placed all his hope in, a waking dream did not change what was going on in this place, or get them help, or get him home again with any answers.

He thrust the goblin knife into its sheath and that into his belt, and went and sank down on his heels where Ela sat. The mirror was in her hands. It seemed to occupy her attention, quiescent as it was, and he waited a long time to see whether she was doing anything or only brooding on his company.

"Ela," he began finally, most respectfully, most courteously, he thought, "Ela, I want to know where we're going, and why, and what's ahead of us. I want to know why that creature left and why he asked for you and told me to find you. I want to know why master Karoly believed it was so important to talk to your mistress, but he could never tell anyone why; and I want to know why he rode past a goblin warning and never warned us what it was."

"Sometimes you can't," she said faintly.

"Can't what?"

"Can't break through a spell."

"Is that what happened? He wanted to and couldn't?" It opened a sudden hope for master Karoly's character. He wanted to understand Karoly's actions, even if it involved dark and damning things. But she looked away from him, evading his eyes the very way Karoly had done since his dreams began, and with gentle force he touched her knee and drew her attention back, with all the gentleness and patience he could muster. "Is that the kind of thing that happens?"

"Sometimes. Sometimes—else."

Oblique. Always oblique. She still evaded his eyes, even answering him.

"Like the goblin leaving? You made it leave?"

"I don't know." Her gaze roved distractedly about the wall of trees as if she were listening to something, to anything and everything in the world but his voice.

"What's out there, Ela?"

"I don't know."

'I don't know,' began to take on a thoroughly ominous ring—recalling Karoly and the goblin stone, and considering their present situation.

"Ela. Are we in danger?"

"I don't know." A sudden pale glance, starlit. A frown. "Yes. The moon. On the lake. There's danger. There's always danger."

There was no lake. It was a stream in front of them. "From where? What lake? What are you talking about?"

"The goblin queen."

He rocked to both knees on the cold ground. "Why should she be our enemy?"

Another wandering of Ela's eyes, about the sky, the streamside. The leaves whispered louder than her voice. "Because. Because she is. Her kingdom—I don't know if it appears, or if it always is. But she can reach out of it, and this knows where she is." She held the mirror against her heart. "This always knows."

She looked so young—not the witchling now, but a frightened child, pale in the gibbous moon.

"And your mistress said to use this thing."

"My mistress said—if everything foiled, if she wasn't mere when I got back, that I should try to get help here."

My god, he thought. With no more than that instruction, the woman sent a girl off to Kmkczy Straz? A great and powerful witch, Ela claimed to be—and maybe it had been her magic that lent him strength to ride, and not the first meal he had had in days. Maybe it had been her magic just now that had sent the goblin away, and maybe it was her magic that had waked him from the daze that had held him since Krukczy Tower-But, lord Sun, was there not better hope for them than 'try'?

He asked, "Wasn't master Karoly supposed to come back with you?"

"Yes."

"So he was supposed to help you use this thing? He was supposed to know what to do? Is that what was supposed to happen?"

A glance aside from him, at the sky, at the wall, anywhere but his face.

God, he thought, murkier and murkier. He touched her arm gently and made her look at him.

"Ela. What would master Karoly have done with the thing, if he were here? Do you have any idea what that is?"

"Stop her."

"How would he do that?"

Her eyes slipped away from his.

"Ela?"

There was no answer. Their journey had been disastrous from home to the mountaintop—their canvas had ripped. They had had nothing but contention among themselves.

And Karoly—had gone silent when he most needed to speak.

"Ela. If you're a great witch, can you say what you want to say? Can you answer me?"

She did look at him, a pale, distracted glance. The mirror in her lap began to glow with light as she brushed its surface, and she looked at him, truly looked at him.

"I saw a castle," he said. "We were there. Weren't we? I saw a woman. . . ."

"It was a long time ago. The chief of the goblins came here. Right in that very gateway—"

He glanced toward that gate, he could not help it—and the goblin was sitting on the wall, long legs a-dangle. "God!" he gasped, snatched up his bow and scrambled for his feet.

The goblin leapt to the ground. It landed with grace and arrogance, and swept them a bow.

"Well, well," it said, "not paying full attention, are we, young lady? —You truly shouldn't distract her, Tamas. Keeping us away takes constant thought, especially once we've made up our minds about a thing."

It wanted Ela—that was what it had continually claimed. He felt of the arrow he had ready, and laid it to the string. But it made an airy gesture, refusing such unfavorable battle.

"Oh, no, man, there's no need of that. I've merely come to watch."

To watch what? was the natural question. But he disdained to ask it, and the goblin laughed softly and made a second flick of the wrist.

"Ah, ah, ah, pricklish pride. It does lead us by the nose, doesn't it? —I'd advise you give me the trinket, witchling. Or at least put it away and don't use it."

"You killed my mistress," Ela accused it, standing at his elbow. "You killed her!"

"I?" The goblin laid a hand where its heart should be. "I by no means killed your mistress. We were always on the best of terms."

"You just happened by today," Tamas scoffed.

"I just happened? Ah, no. I knew. No sooner than a foolish woman dismissed this girl to Krukczy Straz, the ravens knew and gossiped on the housetop. The whole woods knew. Did not you?"

He did not take his eyes from the goblin. But he saw a flare of cold light in the very tail of his eye, and saw the goblin's face go grim and hostile.

"Forbear, "it said, holding up its hand. "Forbear, foolish girl, put it away!"

"Did you kill her?" Ela's voice cracked like a whip. "Don't lie to me, don't dare to lie, ng'Saeich!"

"No." A short answer. The goblin's nostrils flared and the scale armor on his chest flashed with his breathing.

"/ am the witch in Tajny Wood. Am I not, Azdra'ik ng'Saeich?"

"You. Are."

A silence, then. Tamas dared not turn to look. He felt ants walking up and down his spine and on his arms and felt his heart beating fit to burst. The creature would spring. He raised the bow, gauged the gusting wind.

But the goblin shrugged a shoulder into a spin half about and a mocking flip of the hand. "Ah, well, a new witch in Tajny Wood and a bit of broken glass. And what do you propose to do with it, pray tell? To order me about? Does that amuse you?"

The feeling was dreadful then. Tamas drew the bow.

"Put it away!" Azdra'ik exclaimed, his voice trembling, and turned full about, holding up his arm. "Put it away, young fool, do you even know what you're dealing with?"

The mirror, the goblin meant. And the goblin took no step closer—took two away, in fact, and turned full about a second time, pointing with a dark-nailed hand.

"That—fragment—is not a toy for your amusement, girl! That is nothing for a human whelp to handle in ignorance! Give it to me! Give it to me before you destroy yourself."

"Leave us alone!"

"Man. Tamas . . . this thing she holds—the witches of Tajny Wood have feared to use, and this underling proposes to make herself a power with it."

"You seem not to like that."

"Listen to me, fool! A mirror stands in the queen's hall beneath the lake, a glass taller than the queen is tall; and in it she sees what is and what may be, and she shapes what she wishes and deludes those that will believe. That is that shard and the magic of it, a shard from its edge, against that and against the queen. That is the power your young mistress proposes to oppose. A gnat, man, a gnat proposes to assail the queen of hell—and for her right hand, lo! Tamas, with his bow and his dreadful knife! Tell me—what will you do first, young witch?"

It was laughing at them, this creature, as it sauntered away toward the wall, the dark, and the brush. It vanished.

"I'm not sure it's gone," he said.

"He's not," Ela said. He looked at her, seeing anger, and fear. Her hands shone like candlewax in the fire they covered. "But he won't do anything. He daren't. He can't."

He let the bow relax, caught the arrow in his finger along the grip. "It doesn't dare the gateway. I'd rather we moved there tonight."

She gave a furious shake of her head. "We daren't go back in there. Not tonight. No."

"Then why did we come here in the first place? What are we doing here?"

Her eyes slid away, toward dark, and nowhere.

"Is it because of the mirror? Is it something it can tell you—or something you don't want to meet?"

A frown touched her brow, as if he had said something curious.

"The mirror called me a wizard," he pursued the point, "and it was wrong about that. Did it show you the goblin?"

"No," she said, and walked away from him, a deliberate turning of her back. "But why should it?" floated back to him, supremely cold and disinterested in his challenge.

Maybe it was a spell that made her deaf to him. Maybe it was sheer arrogance. He inclined now to the latter estimation, thought: Be damned to her—and went to see whether the horses had come back unscathed.

Liar, she had called him. She and the goblin were evidently agreed on that point.

Well, then, admittedly he had not been scrupulous with the truth, with witches or goblins. Or trolls. He saw no obligation to have his throat cut. Or to have his land invaded and his kinfolk murdered by goblins. Or to die for nothing because some self-righteous slip of a girl was too cocksure stupid to take anyone's advice.

He found no harm with the horses, at least. He thought again of taking Lwi in the morning and riding west, just blindly westward, until he found the mountains to which these hills were the foothills; and he thought how Karoly had not been able to do what was right or sane either. Maybe his own hesitation was a spell; or only his good sense at war with his upbringing, that said girls were not safe wandering the wilds alone: for her part, of course, she would very surely hold him by magic or by any other rotten trick, because she would not saddle the horses. She was too fine to soil her hands, and she was too delicate to lift the tack about, but forget any other use he was—she was too wise to need what he knew.

He gave Skory's neck a pat and walked around her, with suddenly a most unpleasant notion he saw something in the tail of his eye. He walked behind her and around to Lwi's side, to steal a glance toward the wall without betraying that he had seen anything.

The goblin was back, sitting in the shadow, simply watching.

Damn, he thought, and turned his back on it, at wits' end, exhausted, robbed of appetite and, as seemed likely tonight, of sleep, by a goblin who made no more sense than Ela did. At Krukczy Straz he had known where home was. The troll had not even been that bad a fellow, give or take the want of regular meals—

But the memory of that roof-top brought a haze between him and the world and he was too tired to dwell on horrors.

They twisted and became ordinary in his mind, an unavoidable condition of this land; and he found himself a place at the foot of a tree with his bow across his knees and his eyes shut, refusing to care what the witchling thought. She was awake. Let her watch. Let her worry.

But he had not succeeded in sleeping when Ela came back and made a stir near him, getting into the packs. He tried to ignore her, but what she unwrapped smelled of spice and sausage, and it was impossible to rest with that wafting past his nose: he gathered up his bow and, with a glance at the goblin still sitting in the shadows, he served himself a stale biscuit and a bit of sausage and sat down.

"Was Karoly your father?" she asked straightway.

"No." Appalling question. With Aw mother? The girl could have no idea. So much for witchcraft and farseeing.

"Someone in your house was a wizard."

"Karoly—just Karoly. And he's no kin."

"Or a witch," Ela said.

"No."

But gran leapt into his mind, gran, whose grave—

"There had to be someone," Ela persisted. "A cousin? An uncle?"

"There wasn't," he lied: god, he was growing inured to lies. He was surrounded with them. He had the most disquieting feeling if he looked toward the wall this moment, he would find the goblin staring back at him—

—mirror image, down to the arm on the knee. He shifted his posture, suspecting mockery in its attitude, and fearing suddenly that its sharp ears might gather every word they spoke.

"I'm no wizard," he muttered, lowering his voice to the limit of hearing. "Master Karoly taught me, just simple things. Maybe he taught me a deal too much, maybe that was what you saw. ..."

But gran was from over-mountain, from these very hills.

Gran had shown them little tricks, move the shell, find the coin—two young boys had been oh, so gullible, once, and gran had laughed in her solemn way, and said there was always a deceit, gran had called it. —Always look for the deceit, even in real magic.

Please the god, there was a deceit.

But the only deceit he could see was over there, by the wall, staring back at him.

"You were Karoly's student?" Now, now the girl wanted to talk, suddenly she was brimming with questions, worse, she had made up her mind to what she thought and there was no shaking it.

"He taught me letters. And how to name birds and trees. That was all. —It's listening to us, you know that."

"It doesn't matter. What you are, his kind can tell without your saying."

He muttered: "I'm the lord in Maggiar's second son. And my brother is his heir, if he's still alive. I'm not a wizard, none of our family have ever been."

"I felt what the mirror was doing. It answers you. It won't do that except for wizards."

"Well, it makes mistakes, doesn't it? It didn't see him— and is he there, or isn't he?"

She was not as sure of herself on the matter. Such as he could see her expression in the dark, she was not utterly sure, and he was relieved at that.

Gran was not a witch. Gran was gran, that was all.

(But the country folk to this day hung talismans about her grave, straw men and straw horses, sheaves of wheat-childless couples brought straw children to gran's graveside, and ...

... burned them. He never had understood that part.)

"All the same ..." she said, frowning. And took her blanket, flung it about herself and settled down with Skory's saddlebags for a lumpy pillow, having had the last word, and giving him no indication at all what he should do about the goblin.

There were worries enough to keep his eyes open, if they had come singly, if the whole whirling chaos of them had not exhausted him. The suspicion of gran was the final straw, the absolutely overwhelming weight on his mind, and, back at his chosen resting place, while the girl slept, he began against his will to rehearse memories, gran's friendship with Karoly, gran's possets and potions—gran's staying up all night. One could see the light in her window, late, later than a boy could keep his eyes open—but was that incontrovertible evidence of witchcraft?

He remembered the day she died—and the storm and the lightning, and the people and the horses all drenched, lit in the flashes, while they rode back from the burial—the rain and the bitter cold. He and Bogdan had taken chill, and their mother had had a fierce argument with their father, giving them hot tea and vodka, wrapping them in blankets—their mother saying ...

..."This is her weather. God, when's morning? When will it be morning?" And their father: "Be still!" But the vodka had woven through his wits, and hazed everything. Their mother had said something else, that their father Jiad shushed, and their father had said, "I never knew her. The god knows she was no mother to me. But she loved the boys."

And he had thought, half-asleep then and sleep-haunted now, Gran was gran, that's all, gran loved what agreed with her, gran would ride out with anyone who'd ride with her— she loved the open sky, she said—she and Karoly used to—

He did not want to think about that. He twitched and shifted position, but he kept seeing gran and Karoly grinding herbs, gran and Karoly riding in the gates one early dawn ... gran being so long a widow, people talked, but people somehow looked past the indiscretions ...

While grandfather Ladislaw had been alive, there had surely been no such suspicions, god, it was not true, his father could not be Karoly's bastard, wizardry would have out, would it not, if gran were a witch—Karoly most certainly being a wizard? That was the way he had always reasoned, when the unwholesome thought had nudged him— but no one thought twice about it, no one ever thought, the thoughts just—

—slid right past it, like water around a rock. Like questions around a wizard.

He felt cold inside, false and hollow, as if he might not be who he had always believed he was, as if the lineage of Mag-giar might not be his at all, and his uncles and his cousins— Who knew in what degree they were really related, any of them? If Karoly was in fact his grandfather, and Ladislaw no kin at all, then his father had no right to the lands or his house. If Karoly was in fact his grandfather . . . had his father known, and faced Karoly every day of his life?

But it was ridiculous, patently ridiculous. No one in his house had taken it seriously or put themselves out about the gossip—

—As if, lord Sun, gran being widowed and Karoly and gran being mostly discreet about their nighttime rides, no one wanted to say anything, no one had ever dared say anything. Mother would never put up with unseemly talk in the house, Mother would never tolerate a breath of impropriety, everyone knew that, certainly never any scandal touching the household—and Father having not a shred of magic about him . . .

Everyone had known so many things without knowing them, without anyone taking rumors to heart, without anyone ever blinking at an association that, however flagrant, never— somehow—seemed to be anyone's business.

God, he did not want to think about it now. He saw the horses eventually asleep, forgetful of the goblin presence near the wall, and if an old campaigner like Lwi had smelled out the situation and decided to rest, a tired young fool might be excused the fault. He tried to chase away the worries, angrier and angrier that Ela had first upset his stomach and then assumed he would watch while she slept. Probably she made it all up on purpose, so he would stay awake.

He saw the goblin's head fallen forward, now, as if even the goblin found it too much. Now, surely, he thought, he could watch the creature a while, and if it was no trick, then maybe he dared catch a wink himself.

But before that happened he heard a bird begin to sing; and another; and he sat there while the goblin slept on, dark head bowed, braids hiding his face.

So in this country such things were not nightmare, they lasted unabashed into sunrise.

And this one feared no harm from them—that seemed evident, whatever its reason.