The Goblin Mirror

4

"HOLD ON," YURI BEGGED. "DON'T FALL, DON'T LET GO-"

Master Nikolai clung to Gracja's saddle as he walked, that was how they descended from the road, Gracja stumbling on rocks as they worked their way down near the slide. Of a sudden, faced with a cluster of boulders, Yuri had to let go the reins, because there was no more room for another body as Gracja passed between—he had no idea whether there was footing for her there, but the sheer slide on their right went straight to the water.

"Look out!" Yuri pleaded, seeing Gracja stumble and Nikolai's body hit and drag through a gap not wide enough for him and Gracja at once: Nikolai had lost his footing, but he was still holding on, his left hand wrapped in Gracja's saddle-ties, when Gracja stopped unevenly in the shadows of brush and rock right at the streamside. Zadny began jumping up and pawing at Nikolai anxiously, the habit that made the houndsmaster hate him. Master Nikolai, hanging limp from a wrist wrapped in the saddle-tie, no more than lifted his head and said, "Damn you," to the dog.

Yuri threw an arm about Nikolai, trying to help him stand, but he was no better help than Zadny: the moment Nikolai unwound his wrist from the leather, his weight was more than Yuri could hold, and he collapsed with him, Nikolai gone suddenly all limp and loose and maybe dead, for all he could tell. Zadny licked his face and Nikolai's while Yuri had not a hand to spare to hit the dog. His heart was pounding from the climbs, one after the other, racing from the fright just now of losing Gracja's reins and almost having Nikolai dragged to his death, and most of all from being very near the tower and the goblins.

But they were in cover now, finally, in the dark and the brush on the streamside where Nikolai had intended to go— or as close as he could manage. Gracja had just slid whichever way she could at the last, and chanced into this nook where only the starlight reached.

"Stop that!" he whispered, elbowing the dog's attentions away from him, "dammit, stop!" — language his father would by no means approve. Then to his vast relief he felt Nikolai move. "We're all right," he promised Nikolai breathlessly: he wanted ever so much to believe it himself. "We're all right, we've made it, we can rest here."

"Good boy," Nikolai said, "good boy," and might have been talking to the dog. The drums were still within the looming tower, long quiet, but it was a lonely silence, without even leaves to stir, only the soft rush of water in the stream.

Goblins, master Nikolai had said: they already had his brothers and master Karoly and everybody—even the horses. And master Nikolai had been going to see what he could do alone, when Zadny had found Nikolai and guided him—but Nikolai had run out of strength and bade them go down into the brush and get into cover. Without him, Nikolai had meant. But he had talked Nikolai into holding on; and he had gotten nun down here, and once Nikolai had caught his breath he would tell him what he had to do next, please the god.

He began to shiver in the wind, knees and elbows tucked for warmth, saw Gracja pulling at the leaves of the bushes-she had found something alive, in the very shadow of the goblin tower, at least enough to keep her stomach from hurting, he hoped. Because his did. Master Nikolai had told him everything down to this point. But there had not been much of the rabbit yesterday; and he had a very sick man in his lap and he honestly did not know what to do with him here, where goblins could find them at any moment.

He knew at least where to get warmth. He unsaddled Gracja, rubbed her down briskly with her blanket and took it, still heated from her body, back to Nikolai, and tucked it about him; then he took his water-flask from the saddle, held his head and gave him a drink.

"That's good," Nikolai breathed, in the waxing and waning of a pain he had never felt and did not want to imagine. Nikolai was stronger than he looked, he kept telling himself that, and kept believing they had only to do the right things, one after the other, and somehow the sun would come up in the morning and master Nikolai would be all right, and they would make a plan to rescue everyone alive from the goblin fortress.

But Zadny had lost Tamas' trail up there on the road. Zadny had cast about and then gone off after master Nikolai's scent, from all he could guess, as the only one who had walked out of the ambush, perhaps the strongest trail, the only one without goblin smell about it: he could think of no other reason Zadny would have followed Nikolai and left Tamas.

Nikolai breathed, "Damn you, why are you here?"

Following the dog seemed a miserably stupid thing to say. He said, with a lump in his throat, "Because I'm a fool, sir. What shall we do now?"

There was long silence. He thought Nikolai must have fainted again, and feared he might even have died, but Nikolai blinked, then, staring at the sky.

"A pair of fools," Nikolai said finally. "I'm not going to make it, boy. Can you get home from here?"

"No, sir." Short answers, Nikolai had always wanted from them, no excuses, when he was teaching them. He blinked tears and tried not to shed them. "I'm out of food."

"There's the horse," Nikolai said, and he did not for a moment understand that.

"No, sir," he said, "no, sir, I won't."

"Then eat the dog and ride the horse."

"No, sir!"

"Like your damn fool brother," Nikolai muttered, but which brother he meant, Yuri had no idea. Nikolai shut his eyes, and drew several slow breaths, then looked at him in the starlight. "The horse is goblin bait. So's the dog. So are all of us. You understand that, boy? Are you going to stay here and watch, and then be dessert? Your father's lost two sons in this place. You're the heir. Do you understand me?"

"So what were you doing? Were you going home without them?"

"I was going to see—" Nikolai stopped. Master Nikolai stared at him straight on, all shadow and starlight. "Don't you think about it. Don't you think about it, boy."

But it was exactly what he thought master Nikolai would do. Nikolai had been going down there, hurt as he was, to see if his brothers were alive, or if any of them were, or if there was anything he could do, and master Nikolai had not waited to get well, because there was no time to wait, if the goblins had his brothers in that tower. So he knew what he ought to do, then, first off.

And mere was still night left.

"Boy," Nikolai said, when he got up to go to the tower. "Young lord." More respectfully, and struggling for his words. "Listen to me. ..."

"I'll be careful," he said, and got his bow and his arrow case from Gracja's saddle.

"They can smell you," Nikolai whispered, evidently resigned to what he would do. "At least trolls can. Watch the wind."

Yuri came back and squatted down with the bow across his knees, out of Nikolai's reach, because Nikolai was devious, he knew that. "I'll find out where they are. Don't move around and make it bleed." Nikolai had lost enough blood. It was all down his side. Nikolai said he had pulled the arrow himself, and he flinched even thinking about it. "If I'm gone awhile I'm hiding, all right?"

"Don't take that damned dog," Nikolai told him. "Leave him with me."

That also seemed like a good idea.

The stream was cold water, stones slick with moss. Tamas wobbled along the edge, slid and slipped and saved himself from falling, but the effort left him hurting. Meanwhile the troll carried the witch-girl effortlessly in its arms and set her safe and dry-shod on firmer ground. Then it forged ahead of them, breaking a passage through the brush.

A whispering began to surround them, not alone the sound of water over stones—but the wind in living leaves. The branches he fended with his hands were pliant, and the boughs above their heads sighed with life. The fire that had blackened the mountains must not have reached downstream—and very far downstream, as it seemed to him, before the troll slowed to a stop, looking as satisfied as if it had gotten them somewhere besides the middle of a forest.

But he was glad enough to rest, and glad enough to find things alive, and sank down on the spot, covered in sweat and shaking. The troll for its part seemed to be leaving them—it walked back up the water's edge, passing him with no notice or apology; the witch girl called after it, "Thank you, master Krukczy."

It turned in the moonlight, looking like someone's abandoned mop, except the snaking tail. It bobbed a little and inclined as if it bowed, then turned its back and waded into the stream, a moving ripple, that was all.

Tamas muttered, "Good manners for a troll."

"He's not a troll," she said sharply. "His name is Krukczy like his tower. This is his Place, and he saved your life."

Troll was close enough, in his opinion. But he had not meant to offend her, or the mop, for that matter: he got up with the very last of his strength and put forth the effort of manners, starting to say, "I am grateful—" But she turned her back and began to walk away down the shore, evidently expecting him to follow.

Damned if he would stammer and protest after her. For a very little he would let her walk on alone to her business, and take his rest here, and go home.

But he needed a horse and she claimed she had one; he needed food and he had none—a bad position for any assertion of his independence, no matter that the arrogant witchling looked fragile as a flower and younger than he was. And she had claimed to know Karoly.

So he followed, on what breath he could find. He even recovered his manners, and panted, when he had almost overtaken her, "I apologize. He's not a troll. Whatever he is."

"The watcher here," she corrected him. "Watcher."

"Of Krukczy Straz. And you can't bespell them, it only makes them angry."

None of that made sense to his ringing ears. He walked, stumbling on the stones and the roots, and asked finally, because nothing else of his situation made sense, "Why did you rescue me?"

She cast him a shadowed glance and never slowed a step. "I thought you might be glad to be out of there."

"I am." He had a stitch in his side that was only growing worse, never mind the bruises that hurt with every step. "I am grateful." They had started off badly, without names or courtesies; but, granting the complete justice of her displeasure, and the sting of her treating him as a servant, it still seemed foolish to volunteer too much to any stranger, who he was, who his father was, and hence that he might be valuable. He said only, when he had overtaken her again, "My name is Tamas."

"Ela," she said.

"Your name is Ela?" (Evidently it was. She said nothing else.) "I'm very glad to meet you." God, it was ridiculous, chasing the damned girl, trying to observe the courtesies when he could scarcely get a pain-free breath to talk at all. "What do you want me to do?"

"Walk," she said, and pushed a branch aside, that sprang back and caught him in the face.

Outrage only made him dizzier, and shorter of breath. He wiped the tears the grit from the branch had left, kept walking, and promised himself he could leave the surly girl whenever he liked, just let them somewhere find horses and a sense of direction—soon, please the god. The pain in his head had become blinding since the blow across his eyes, every bone end in his body was bruised from the slide down the hill, and he was weak-kneed from want of food.

But just when he thought he could go not a step farther, the space along the shore widened to a moonlit strand of grass, where grazed the promised horses, one dark, one light. Lwi, Nikolai's glass-eyed gray, and Jerzy's little bay mare: he recognized them the moment Lwi lifted his head, and he went and fell on Lwi's warm shoulder with his eyes stinging and a lump in his throat—an old friend in a bad place, Lwi was, his own horse's stablemate, who knew him despite the troll-smell and the dirt, and nosed him in sore ribs, in recollection, he was sure, of smuggled carrots.

"Nothing this time," he murmured shakily, patting Lwi's neck. "Good fellow. How are the legs? Better than mine, I hope. —Skory, good horse." Skory evaded his hand, skittish fool that she was; he remembered why he hated her; and he looked along her side to find the witch girl frowning.

"The saddles are over there," she said, pointing grandly to a brush heap, and he stared at it and at her, out of breath and out of strength, wondering if she even understood that he was doing well to keep his feet.

"I take you do know what to do with them," she said, as if she were far too exalted a lady to deal with horses . . . and he caught a breath and another and found himself moving-he had no idea whether it was anger at her that lent him strength or that he had suddenly found a last reserve somewhere at depth, but he went where she said and found the saddles and all the gear, including Nikolai's bow, lying under brush, on the ground, of course, in the dew and the damp-Fool girl, he thought in growing contempt, and then realized what he had seen when he came up to the horses, that they had not even a tether—no tether, goblins all about, trolls running up and down the riverbank, and they were still waiting where she had left them? That was more evidence of witchcraft than he had seen out of master Karoly in his lifetime. It gave him second and third thoughts about disrespect to the girl, while he flung the brush aside and, staggering, retrieved the tack. If a witch's mere servant could do this much, and expected such great respect for herself, then perhaps master Karoly's sister was someone of immense consequence in this land, the sort of help his father might soon need against what was preparing, so he might do well to keep a civil tongue, saddle the horses for the girl and meet this mistress of hers face to face before he claimed anything about his origins.

So he took Jerzy's mare, Skory, first, adjusted the blanket on her back, took deep breaths until he could bend and snatch the saddle up and fling it on—waited several more, leaning against her side, before he could attempt the girth, that was how scarcely he was managing. But through all of it, the mare at least stood still, better than she had ever done for Jerzy.

Lwi had better manners from the start. Lwi did not suck in wind the way Skory did, Lwi took his bit without fussi-ness: that was the kind of horse Lwi was, besides sure-footed and level-headed; and the witch taking Skory's reins and of course assuming the pretty mare was hers was entirely agreeable to him—he said not a word about Skory's character, only gave the girl a hand up, gave her the reins and showed her how to hold them. The elegant mare was beautiful and sly and fractious—like Jerzy; but she did not go into her accustomed dance, she did not pitch the witchling off her back. Somewhat to his disappointment she stood like a lady; and he went and, with failing strength, got his foot into Lwi's stirrup and flung himself into the saddle.

Through a haze of dark and moonlight, then, he saw Ela ride the mare past him and felt Lwi turn of his own accord, in a dreamlike slowness. Moonlight on the water beside them showed only vague shapes of stones and turbulence. The horses kept to a leisurely walk as if no goblins dared assail them.

"Are we going to your mistress?" he asked.

"As quickly as we can," she answered him.

"To do what?" he asked, but got only silence. "To do what?" he repeated, more loudly, and had no more answer than before.

Damnable rudeness. If he could get to this sister of Ka-roly's, and prove who he was, and tell her what had become of Karoly, she might care what befell her neighbors—but now that he had leisure and bream to think about it, the witch's own land had not fared outstandingly well, if Krukczy Straz was any evidence of her authority. One could suppose matters might be better lower down, that the goblins might be a plague that had turned up on the heights, or the borders, and that Ela's mistress could deal with if she put her mind to it—but would she not, knowing that her brother was due over the mountains, as she must have if she sent this girl to find him—have done something to defend him? —Unless, of course, she had relied on Karoly's own abilities.

For some reason the goblins had quitted the tower-perhaps the girl's mere arrival had confounded them and driven them in retreat, but Ela had been anxious to leave the tower itself, and she had certainly been no help to Karoly, if that had been her mission.

A great many things did not make thorough, sense. He began to take sober account that if he was wrong about following this girl, he could lose himself and leave no warning at all for his father—but if he left her without seeing her mistress, he lost all chance of the help Karoly had supposedly tried to find.

He could hear his brother saying, Brother slow-wits, can't you make up your mind about anything? —But, no, he could not be easy with what he decided, go on or go back. It was never his skill, to take a blind decision and wager others' welfare on it. Doing something required knowing where he was, or who he was dealing with—and his guide and her mistress and Karoly himself were ciphers. The girl might be a graceless shrew, but maybe she was the grand lady she claimed. Maybe she was unaccustomed to riding alone in the woods with strange young men who (he had to admit it) reeked like a troll den. Maybe she thought him some man-at-arms, accustomed to rude orders. Maybe—

In the starlight and the dizzy patterns which forest shadow made of his companion and Jerzy's mare and Lwi's pale neck, it was easy to become foggy-headed. He tried to reason clearly, he tried to maintain a recollection of the way they were going: descending straight along the river into the green land they had glimpsed in the sunlight, he thought, if it was the same stream as ran beside the tower.

He thought that if he should decide to go back, he could trace the water uphill at least to the road, but it seemed more and more deceptive: in the way of streams, that met and joined and carved narrow passages the horses could not follow, it wove back and forth and lost itself repeatedly beneath the trees. Leaves brushed his face and blinded him, then gave way to streamside again, the same one, a different, he had no more confidence he knew at all.