The Goblin Mirror

14

A SOFT HISS AND A SPUTTER OF SPARKS BROKE INTO HALFDREAMS Tamas suffered a moment of confusion, tucked into a stiff, foot-tingling knot next the fire, unable at the moment to recall what fireside of his life he was sitting at, or what was the warm and unaccustomed weight resting against his shoulder. But it proved disturbingly the latest place in memory, goblin-owned. The escaping sparks were a floating image in his vision, the night was still thick about them, smoke going up from a fire half smothered in earth, and the horses-goblin horses as well as their own—made uneasy sounds beyond the pale of the light.

"Good morning," Azdra'ik said somberly, "such as it is." Something else he added in his own tongue, exhorting his folk to wake and move, as seemed. Ela rested still against Tamas' shoulder, awake, but too weary to move and wondering (he was distressingly aware) whether there might be any breakfast, any warm cup of tea before they completely killed the fire. She wanted a hot drink very badly, astonishingly calm in her reckoning that there might be no more chances for such pleasures hereafter.

So she should have it, Tamas decided, excused himself to her and got up and told the goblin who was shoveling dirt onto the fire to desist.

That one scowled at him and he scowled back and interposed himself bodily until Azdra'ik intervened, asking what was the matter.

"Ela wants tea." That sounded foolish, but he felt exceedingly righteous in his insistence. Azdra'ik heaved a human sigh, shrugged and drew the other goblin aside for a word—which left untouched a single burning branch.

So Tamas fetched the wherewithal from their gear, and brewed a single cup of tea, with singed fingers, while camp was breaking.

"Thank you," Ela said when he brought it to her, seeming pleased that he had done that for her. It was indeed a silly thing to have done, he thought. But it lent a sense of then-own pace in the morning which felt strangely necessary, in ways Ela herself might know, and it set him to quiet, unhurried recollection, as if, over the edge now, he had to pull pieces out of memory, as if—as if the pieces were there. . . .

He thought for no particular reason of master Karoly at home, taking matters at his own studied pace—Hurry, hurry! two rascal boys would shout, eager to be at the orchard or the brook or wherever they had convinced the old man to take them for their day's lessons. So what is the answer? two scoundrelly lads would ask, impatient to be away from their lessons and away from the smelly bottles and vessels in the tower room.

Master Karoly would say, In time, in time, hush, be still, nothing works but in its own time.

Even with magic? they had asked once.

And Karoly had said, in his close-mouthed way, Especially.

Especially this morning, Tamas thought, while the camp broke apart in martial order, while, under the final shovelful of earth, the fire went as dark as the heavens. Ela had her cup of tea and he had his moment to himself, recalling the tower study on a rainy morning when the old man had said, for at least the hundredth and maybe thousand and first time, Think about it, think about it, boy. Don't ask me the answer. Don't even ask yourself. The answer's not in either place.

What had they been talking about? What had he been asking, that morning?

Something about clouds and rain, or-—?

"If OUR witchly guests are ready," Azdra'ik arrived to say, as goblins were going every which way into and out of the shadows. Behind Azdra'ik a goblin led up Lwi and Skory, saddled, without their leave; and lamas frowned as he rose and took both sets of reins from the creature—angry at Az-dra'ik's hurrying them, angry at the handling of their gear and their belongings and the lack of consultation when he was not, not hurrying this morning. He still did not know why. It was not the ghost. But he firmly made up his mind Azdra'ik should not be the one in their company to bid him do anything, or to require anything of him or her.

And most of all not to make him lose a thought.

"Don't hurry her," he said shortly. "Don't hurry me, master goblin, if you want our help."

"Ah," Azdra'ik said, hand on what ought to be a heart, extravagant as always. "And can you bid the queen wait? That's the question, isn't it?"

He stood sullenly telling himself he had had far and away enough of m'lord goblin in recent days; and telling himself that Azdra'ik was no different than he had ever been, and that it was fear he was feeling now: his body and his senses said that it was time for a sunrise and the stars were still bright—that was what had him short-tempered and jumping at every offense.

And if magic had sustained him through these sleepless days and nights—it had more to do now, and he felt nothing in himself like the currents of it that ran through Ela's fingers or the passionless confidence she had when that power worked—this girl that was hardly older than Yuri. He could not capture that confidence for himself this sunless morning.

Are we fools? he wanted to ask her. Are we fools to go ahead, or should I have given you better advice?

No, he thought then; she thought: even that distinction became muddled at unpredictible moments. He distressed her and distracted her and she wanted him quiet now, that was all. Shut up, she wished him, justifiably. So he asked nothing, tried to think nothing, and waited while Ela tucked the cup away and got to the saddle.

But as he was getting up on Lwi he suffered a lightning stroke of overwhelming panic, asking himself what he was doing, why he believed Ela, what a lad from Maggiar was doing, riding with a pack of goblin rebels. It was mad. He was mad. The whole world was, this morning. He kept thinking: Stop, go back, this isn't where I planned to go when I left home, this isn't what I planned to be, I don't want to die today, in this dark.

But he settled into the saddle, while, in his moment of fear, the spiteful ghost stirred within him, saying things he could not grasp, something about choices and cowards, and showing him (but he would not look) the faces of goblin courtiers and the sound of goblin promises. He patted Lwi's neck, warmed cold fingers under Lwi's mane, and told himself Lwi had much rather other company than goblin horses, Lwi had much rather have the sun come up, and much, much rather his own stable. But Lwi, with a snort and a shaking of his neck, did what he had to, as the company began to move, as goblin riders surrounded them and swept them onto a starlit trail. And Lwi's rider did—what he had to—no way back now, everything in motion from very long ago. He had as much as gran and Karoly had given him, that was all; and as much as he had learned on this trail, of goblins and of the witches of the Wood . . .

He had a tenuous awareness of Ela riding beside him. Ela was not thinking about home. Ela was thinking about the dark, and the hills, and the lake in his dreams, the same lake, that had been the bargain, and the point of treachery, and the home of the goblins for hundreds of years.

There was the place where wizardry lay veined in the rocks and sown into the soil and mingled with the water and the air. And in that place there was all the magic and more that a mortal could draw on and use. That was where they were going. Ela believed in evil and believed that that evil was on the side of the possessor of that lake, in a long, long series of deceptions, goblins against the witches of the Wood, and in that place, with all of that to draw on, and the mirror in her hand, what was just and right had to count for something ...

He wished it were so clear to him: evil and good had seemed so much more definable when he had thought all the evil came from goblins, and the ghost had done its best to urge that on him, but its reasoning was increasingly suspect; he wished he could recall something master Karoly had said on the matter of wickedness, but in all the years of teaching them, for the life of him, this dark morning, he could not recall a thing master Karoly had said on the subject, except that silly business of the frogs in the tackle-basket: It was not kind to them, boy. His mind fell into that memory for some reason he could not fathom. It was not kind to them.

And how did a man find his way on such thin and long-ago advice?

And what about the fish, that they had caught that very day for their supper?

Something about necessity, and doing what had to be done, and using no more of the earth than one needed ...

Spookier and spookier, Yuri thought, worse than the troll's tunnel before he had known the troll. It was not a hallway, it was not a tunnel, it was just a place he could not get out of. There was the shimmer of water on the ground, everywhere the sound of water, and the chill and the smell of water. He had never imagined such a peculiar kind of tunnel, and as for trolls, he would give a great deal for the sight of Krukczy just now. But Zadny had run past him in such a terror he could not catch him.

All of which ought to tell a boy to go back—immediately. But when he had tried that, he had found himself up against a wall of—just nothing, that felt like an edge of some kind, where you could fall and fall forever if you got overbalanced; and Zadny might have run right off it, for all he knew. He hoped not. He hoped there was not another such edge ahead—though he thought not, because the trolls seemed to have gone on through; or they had just fallen off into the dark one after the other without a yell or a protest or anything, and that was not like trolls.

But he was truly scared, now, if anyone had asked him — and ever so glad when he suddenly saw a light ahead, a hazy glow toward which he was walking.

And brighten, the pathway did, until there was a ceiling and there were walls as well as a floor—all rippling with water-patterns, and light beyond that watery surface, the way a pond might look if he was walking along the bottom, in some great bubble, and looking up at me sun.

It was water when he looked back, and when he went near the walls, they shimmered as if the bubble he was in might collapse. That scared him.

But he did not see any way to go but straight ahead, and if somebody like the goblin queen was doing this he did not want to give her any ideas about collapsing the bubble around him. And thinking about it might make it happen, if this place was like dreams, as it seemed to be. So he walked, quickly as he could.

Then—he could not be sure at first—there seemed to be someone standing in the watery uncertainties of the hallway, a long, long distance in front of him. He wondered if it was his own reflection he was seeing. Or it might be a goblin. But even when he stopped walking that figure looked as if it was moving closer. And when he blinked to be sure he saw it, it had moved closer still, seeming like someone he knew very well, who just should not be here. Whether he walked toward it or not, it just kept coming; and looked more and more like Bogdan. It did look exactly like Bogdan; and he should have been ever, ever so glad—he would have been; but Bogdan did not smile, Bogdan did not meet him with open arms like a brother, or act astonished to see him, or even ask him how he had come here.

Bogdan only said, as if he were mildly disappointed:

"I expected Tamas."

Hour upon hour the stars stayed overhead, the same stars that shone down on Maggiar, as far as Tamas could tell; and the pole stars had not moved in all the time they had been riding. But he did not know how that could possibly be—unless the very sky was standing still even in Maggiar, and unless lord Sun himself had no power to break the witch's hold—in which case his own family and every farmer in Maggiar and lands clear to the great sea must have wakened in confusion this morning, must be huddling together, hour by hour of this darkness, looking up at the stars and wondering at the meaning of it and whether there would be another sunrise.

But Ela commented quietly, as they rode side by side among the goblins: "Nothing changes here. The stars don't move. It's the same hour. It's always the same hour. That's the spell she's cast. Until that changes, nothing can."

She need not have spoken aloud. He was hearing her thinking just then, and wishing he did not, because in her thoughts was something about this not being a part of the present world they were traveling in, and it not having b«en a part of the present world ever since they had entered the Wood.

He was not sure of that. He thought about what master Karoly had said, how one thing touches everything—and recalled the deer ravaging the woods, and the store rooms piled high with furs, and the spring failing to come ... all this silent colloquy, while they rode above the fires in the valley, all this, while they rode in a serene high hills quiet. He thought, All this is there. What we do here, reflects there. Like the mirror ... it's all one mirror, and which side is the reflection, and which is true?

Riders burst past, with that strange thump of pads and scraping of their horses' claws. The last reined back to ride by them, to Lwi's offense. "Itra'hi are out there," Azdra'ik said out of the shadows. "Sniffing around the hills. I don't think they'll dare come at us. We're going right where their mistress would have us. I don't know what she has to complain of."

Disquieting thought.

"Unless you'd like to change your minds," Azdra'ik added. "We can still retreat."

"I don't see we'd gain anything." Tamas felt constrained to give a civil answer while the ghost or his own fear clamored otherwise; and he had lost a thought, confound the creature, but for some reason he found himself adding: "Possibly the queen can make a mistake."

"Oh, the queen makes many mistakes. But so few can take advantage of them."

"Maybe we will."

"The night the mirror failed," Azdra'ik said lightly, "the morning failed. And for two days thereafter. Witches and wizards knew. But the world never did. Did it? Do your old men say?"

It cast his calculations into disorder and agreed with Ela's way of thinking. "You mean no one elsewhere even noticed?"

"Except within her power—as we clearly are. This is a night of her making. This is the goblin night. This is the goblin realm you've crossed into. And she rules it absolutely. To do other than she wills is a difficult matter. Will you still challenge her? "

You're wrong, he thought, forgetting the question. You're wrong, master goblin. One thing touches everything. The deer came to our woods. And the goblin queen doesn't rule everything.

"Here is your last chance," Azdra'ik said. "Hereafter— you have no retreat." With which, Azdra'ik moved off, with a suddenness that unnerved Lwi and made him jostle Skory.

In the next moment, round the shoulder of the hill a glistening horizon unfolded. He forgot what he was saying. He forgot everything he had had in mind to say, as he saw the starlit water cupped between the hills.

The lake, he thought, the place exactly, in every detail, that he had seen in his dreams.

The goblins in front of them rode down the steep incline toward the shore, fantastical shadows, they and their horses, against the star-sheen on the lake. They followed that lead, perforce, and other goblins rode down after them.

"The queen knows we're here," Ela said.

He felt nothing of the queen's presence. For a moment he felt not even the wind around them, and doubted what a moment ago he had thought he understood.

"Then do something," he said. The sense of urgency was suddenly overwhelming.

"Not yet," Elasaid.

"Not yet. Not yet. This is the place, Ela, this is the lake, this is where she lives. I saw it last night, I've seen it before ..."

"Everything here is what she wishes," Ela said. "Even we are. We couldn't have come here, else."

"No! Don't believe that! We're here. We're here because we decided, don't think anything else."

But the hill was the very hill that Yuri and the trolls had descended in his dream—the very shore on which they had vanished, and Zadny had come back again, terrified fend alone. . . .

Foolish fear. It was entirely unreasonable that Yuri or Zadny had been here. It was the sort of thing his own mind might conjure, out of his homesickness, that was ail, and the goblin queen had nothing to do with it.

But that meant his vision of Bogdan might be no different, and that there was no hope of finding him. Or—the thought came to him, and now he was not sure it was his own—if the mirror could make anything happen, if the queen could learn anything of his family none of them was safe ...

His confidence ebbed away from him as they drew rein on the very shore of the goblins' lake, and the horses, disrespectful of haunted places, dipped their heads to drink. He was terrified for his family, for his brother, for his land-But Ela's thoughts slipped in again, calm as the lake in front of them, on which the horses' intrusion sent out an irreverent ripple far across the mirrorlike surface—Ela had no attachments to anyone or anything, except, remotely, him—the goblin queen herself had seen to that; but not alone the queen. Her mistress Ysabet had left her no certainty, even about her own identity, but she had no one the goblin queen could threaten: everything she owned was hers. She stared into the dark, her hand above the mirror beneath her gown, he could feel it as if it rested against his heart, and said, so faintly he could scarcely hear:

"When I wish. That's my choice. When / wish. And no one can change that."

The lake reflected the sky and the sliver of moon so perfectly the mind grew dizzy searching for the seam of substance and image. One was the other. Up was down. Down was up. And the juncture between the two was the very heart of illusion. There, something said to him, there is the place.

It might have been the ghost that spoke. It might have been Ela. But the fear that stirred when Azdra'ik climbed down and walked along that reedy edge—that was most surely the ghost.

Treachery, it said. Treachery. Watch him. This is a potent place.

Treachery? he thought. Azdra'ik serves his own kind. Is that treacherous in him?

He slid down from Lwi's saddle and intended to lead Lwi with him; but a goblin offered to take the reins. He gave them into the creature's hand, thinking if there was duplicity now, if there was ill intent, it needed little violence to achieve its purpose. Either Azdra'ik's folk were rebels against their queen or they were the queen's most loyal subjects. And no goblin had moved against them yet.

Then he thought of what Azdra'ik had said, that his kind would be whatever the mirror made them—whatever the mirror could make them; and something about the fragment ... that as long as it existed ...

Ela had said and he had not understood until now. They were in the queen's realm, as close to the queen's absolute will as she could compel them or lure them. They were her enemies. They bore what the queen most dearly wanted— without wanting them to succeed. And in the goblin queen's sight, they were here with her permission, walking into her hands, himself, Ela, Azdra'ik and all of them . . .

Delicate, oh, so delicate, to be here within the queen's will in her view of the mirror, and not to be as the queen willed in their own. The whole world poised on the knife's edge of that distinction, precarious as a next and necessary breath, two reflections nearly identical—E!a with her hand poised above the mirror, and himself—

Himself, walking along the lake shore in Azdra'ik's tracks, with his sword at his side and intent against the queen in his heart.

He trod on bog. One boot leaked. He looked down before he thought, at water among cat-tail roots, reflecting his presence, and the dark reeds; and he had seen this exact thing before, so small and ridiculous a detail, but he had dreamed it, the exact same sight; and when he had looked up, in his dream . . .

—He beheld the face of the watcher on the shore, the armored figure whose face shifted with the changing moon. In his dream he had not recognized him—but of course it ^as Azdra'ik who faced him on the shore, Azdra'ik who, in that very image of his dream and this moment, turned his face from him, folded his arms and stood looking philosophically across the lake.

"Don't believe the quiet," Azdra'ik said. "The queen isn't waiting. This is her spell. This is her mirror. We're standing in it. The question is—will there be anything else? So far, our fledgling witch accepts what she sees."

"I've dreamed this," he said. "I saw my brother in the mirror. I saw him in the company of goblins like you. Is he possibly alive?"

"I'm sure I don't know."

"Don't you."

"Are we back to lies and liar?" Azdra'ik faced him, the exact figure of his nightmares, of his prophetic visions, he had no idea. "Not I, not I, lord human. Do you suppose I dealt with your ghostly tenant all those years ago ... for my queen's welfare?"

The ghost he had thought might be gone moved in him like the striking of a snake — there was blinding anger. He walked away without thinking about it, along the boggy edge, and on a saner uncertainty and a steadier breath, looked back, in possession of himself again, forewarned of its presence and sure, now, that the ripples he sent into the still lake were of his own making.

"Where will I find her?" he asked Azdra'ik.

"Find whom?"

"The queen, of course."

"You're quite mad. With that sword, with my dagger, will you attack her?"

"Yes."

Azdra'ik grinned, as if he had been waiting for that very thing, as if the dream were still proceeding, in the way of dreams, with a sense of necessity. "I'll take you there," Azdra'ik said, and, splashing across the boggy ground, gave orders to one and the other of his people.

Tamas looked toward Ela. She sat on Skory's back, Skory still as a painted image. Her hand was where it had been, above the mirror she wore beneath her gown; and he thought then—

Perhaps I should tell her what I'm doing.

But she's aware. And as for where I am in her mirror— I'm either, aren't I? I'm in the queen's mirror and I'm in Ela's, and when she looks, I'll be there—

(Don't rely on it, the ghost said. Young fool. Her fears can overwhelm her. Fears for you, young fool. She's blind and deaf to what her mistress taught. It's disaster ...)

Azdra'ik's hand landed on his shoulder, startling him, making him look more closely than he liked into Azdra'ik's face.

"Come with me," Azdra'ik said. "I'll show you the way."

"To her?"

"As close as we can, as close as ever you'll wish."

Fear for me? he asked himself, disquieted. When did she ever care for me?

Am I doing the right thing?

They walked along the lake rim, the same path he had dreamed of Yuri taking, following the trolls. And they were not alone. Four of Azdra'ik's company were behind them— he discovered that as he glanced back.

The lake shimmered as it had in his dream, a watery flash of reflection, all around them, and above them. The stars vanished, and a gate clanged shut behind them.