The Goblin Mirror

6

"FISH," KRUKCZY ANNOUNCED, ALL DRIPPING, AND FISH there certainly was, a big fat one, flopping about on the floor. Zadny began to bark, threatening it. But Yuri got it and cut its head off, and cleaned it. So when master Nikolai finally opened his eyes on the morning there was breakfast cooking.

"We're still alive," master Nikolai murmured as if that surprised him.

"Goblins all gone," Krukczy said, very full offish, as it seemed, and wanting to nap awhile, with Zadny, who had breakfasted on fish of lal and roe.

"Damned good friends," Nikolai said under his breath. "Never ask where that hound came from. Friends with trolls, it is."

Yuri cast an anxious glance over his shoulder, but Krukczy only seemed to drowse, and Zadny had curled up and shut his eyes.

"Go home," Nikolai said in a low voice. "If there's fish in the stream, catch some, take the pony, leave me and the damned dog with the troll, and get home. Tell your father—"

"I'm not telling my father anything," Yuri said, with a lump in his throat, "because I'm not going home yet."

"You've no business in this—"

"You've no business either, you can't use your left arm. What are you going to do to rescue them?"

"I'm going to use my head and go home when I can walk, and get help over here, so there's no question of your going along—"

"Yes, there is. Because if you're going home you can ride Gracja and I'll take Zadny and I'll find them."

"You'll mind what you're told, young lord! I'm responsible for you—and don't think you've proved a thing, running off from home, trekking over-mountain with no damned sense what you were getting into ...

"Did vow know?"

Master Nikolai shut his mouth and clenched his jaw.

"And you wouldn't go home," Yuri said further. "Not except to make me go. Which you can't do. So there."

"Damn your disobedience."

He did not like being damned by master Nikolai. He was sorry to be disrespectful. But he said, to drive home the point: "You can have my pony, if you want. I got this far. I can walk." Master Nikolai was furious with him, but he was not going to do as he was told, not this time, he had made up his mind on that account, and he was more scared than he had ever been in the mountains. He changed the subject, since master Nikolai was not going to say anything helpful. "Breakfast is ready."

"We're not discussing breakfast."

"Krukczy can catch you more fish. They'll freeze in the pass and they'll be fine. You'll have food all the way home. And he brought greens for Gracja this morning. So she's all right."

Silence from master Nikolai. Nikolai was mad at him. Nikolai tried to sit up and hurt himself, which did not improve his temper.

"Go home!"

"I wouldn't go home without my brother's dog. Do you think I'd go home without Aim?"

"You've not a hope of finding the boys. We don't know where they went."

"Zadny will."

"Damn that dog, he'll get you killed, that's all he's good for. He's got no sense!"

"I'd rather have you with me," he said, with a glance from under his brows, and there was a lump in his throat, and in his stomach, too, where breakfast sat like a stone. "I followed everything you said, master Nikolai, all the way up the mountains, and I didn't have any trouble. I did everything you said last night. Didn't I? And things are all right. I can get along all right if you go home. —But I'd rather have you there. Gracja could carry you. And Krukczy says he's going with us."

"Damn," Nikolai said under his breath, and muttered to himself and winced, with his eyes shut, because it hurt him to sit up. "Damn and damn, boy! You belong at home!"

But Nikolai never for a moment intended to go home without him. Nikolai wanted to find his brothers and not to have to face his parents without them. There was never a tune they were lost or strayed that Nikolai had not found them and brought them home, only this time was the worst, it was by for the worst.

"So will you go with me, master Nikolai?"

They were riding in the sun, and Bogdan asked him—asked him something, Tamas was sure—but, distressingly enough, he could no longer remember the exact sound of Bogdan's voice; or see Bogdan's face except in shadow. Sunlight streamed about them blindingly bright. Petals drifted down in clouds from the orchards, a blizzard of dying flowers.

If there were a means, he thought, to gather up all the flowers, if he could recover the recent springtime, if he could retrace their path on the mountain road and say, when they had hesitated at that dreadful stone, master Karoly, where are you leading us? Whose friend are you?—then everything might be different.

But he and the witch girl kept riding down the stream, and fever and sunlight blinded him. He might be home, in the orchards about the walls. But if he was where he remembered, a dreadful thing had happened, which in his confusion he could not recall, except the ominous curtain of petals, a sign of decay and change.

The stones in his dream echoed with drums. A goblin looked at him and was blind to him. A troll held him in its arms as skulls shone white under the moon, horse bones alternate with human, a goblin fancy of order. Their kind was not incapable of artistry.

Birds screamed from the thickets while the horses picked their steady way downhill. He saw huge lumps of rock, saw juniper and patient saxifrage, but nothing in this place of orchards, no tree so tame, only twisted shaggy bark, tough and resilient, and weathered gray stone. Gone, the soot-stained snows and lifeless rocks of recent nightmare. Roots here invaded rock and patiently wedged cracks wider, making mountains smaller. Master Karoly said so.

Came pine and linden, rowan and new-leafed, timid beech—he knew them by their names, master Karoly had taught him. Listen to their voices, Karoly had said: each sings a different song. So he knew with his eyes shut the sound and smell of each and every one. But what did that say of where he was or what did it say of the character of his companion, who refused all questions and rode in disdainful silence?

Wool-gathering again? he could hear Bogdan say. There are times to do things and times to think, brother. Figure it out, will you?

A dark-spiked shadow of pine ran along the streamside. The witchling led them down to the stream again—when had they ever left it?—and let the mare wade in and drink.

He stopped Lwi short of that: it dawned on him to look into the saddle kit, now that they were stopped in daylight. He was too stiff and sore to turn around to search the gear from horseback, so he slid down, thinking if anyone had food left in his saddlebags it might have been Nikolai; he had never thought to search this morning, and hunger had not much intruded through the pain.

That was a mistake, he thought, kneeling by the water's edge. Getting off was very surely a mistake.

Ela rode the mare between him and the sun, asked, disgustedly, "What are you doing?"

He had tried to get up. Instead he knelt with one knee on wet and soaking reeds, and wet his hands in the icy stream and carried them to his face, while Lwi wandered free in the shallow water. Ela dismounted, and he blinked wetly up into eyes green as glass, green as pond water. Her hair was palest gold. These details absorbed him, along with the frown that knit her brows.

"Fool. You'll catch your death. The stream is ice melt."

It might be. But it took the pain away, and he laved his face with it, ignoring warnings. He wished he could slip into it head-deep, and have it take all the ache, and the thinking, and the remembering. He said, conversationally, on the last of his self-possession, and the last shred of his strength, "I was looking for something to eat. Is there anything? I think I could go on, if there were."

As witches went, he vastly preferred master Karoly. Karoly would not have called him a fool. Karoly would have had some sympathy, long since, even if he had betrayed them. But she confessed there was something to eat, and said she would get it out of her packs if he would quit being a fool and not drown himself in the meanwhile.

She had not a kindly word to her name. She was the most unreasonable, ill-tempered, and arrogant creature he had ever met, including the troll. But she took packets from Skory's saddlebags, and thereafter Lwi and Skory browsed the shore while he and the witch shared the first meal he remembered in days—a little jerky and biscuit, and a sip of clean, cold water.

But after the work the dried meat was, he felt wearier than he was hungry, and set his shoulders against a gnarled pine so that the roots and the stones missed most of his bruises-only to rest, he protested, to her impatience, only a moment.

He was filthy, he was bruised down to the fingertips, there were cuts in his scalp, his bath in the cave had only moved the mud about, so far as he could tell, and she was right, he had soaked himself down the neck and now he was chilled and sorry for it. But he had a precious and clean bit of food in his hand, overall nothing much was hurting him, and his eyes drifted shut—as if, once the terror was past and food had hit his stomach, he could not keep his wits collected or his eyes open. He had found his land of once upon a time, but it was all dark, everything was grim and magical things lived here, oh, yes—trolls and witches. Of gran's stories—at least there were pine groves, and this brook which the goblins had not so far fouled. That was true. So he could still believe in her, for what little good those stories were.

Ela's mistress would prove wiser, and better natured than Ela or gran. And if not, if this ride was all for nothing, then he would ride away on his own, and trap and fish for his food and get home past the goblins somehow.

And his father would ask—

His father and his mother and Yuri would all ask, Where is Bogdan?

His only answer must be, I don't know. And his parents would ask why, and he could only say that he had not warned Bogdan, worse, he had fallen off his horse when Bogdan could have most used help, and he had no real answer for what had become of his brother. He never would have, unless he found someone who could tell him what had happened in this country and why goblins were loose and no one stopped them, and whether Bogdan had died with the others—he had not counted the skulls, he had had no such thought in his head last night, nothing but to escape the sight. . . .

A warm hand touched his brow. It confused him, or the tingling that followed it did. He opened his eyes in confusion, saw Ela with a frown of concentration between her brows. He felt warm and cold all over, felt. . .

She said to him, "Get up. Do you hear? Get up now."

He did not even think about doing it. He got to his feet with the bit of jerky still in hand, stumbled on the roots and went after Lwi, as the witch girl put her foot in the mare's stirrup—not a graceful mount, but the mare stood still: creatures did as Ela said. So was he doing, although it dawned on him while he was gathering up Lwi's reins that his pain was less, and while he was hauling himself into Lwi's saddle, that he was not so weary or short of breath as he had been.

Only tired. Unbearably tired, so that once he was in the saddle it was easier to let Lwi follow the mare.

"Wake up," Ela told him twice, before he caught a branch across the face, and, his forehead stinging, kept himself awake.

"I'm fine, I'm fine," master Nikolai panted, and Yuri bit his lip while Nikolai hauled himself painfully onto Gracja's back. Master Nikolai was not at all fine; but he wanted no help, he said, thank you.

"Are you on?" Yuri asked, holding his breath for fear that Nikolai might slide right on off the other side, onto the rocks. He held his hand ready to grab Nikolai's trouser-leg.

"Go now?" Krukczy rumbled, curling his rat tail around and around so it made ripples in the water; Zadny put himself under Gracja's feet as they started off, and scampered from a near miss. Gone to their queen, Krukczy said of the goblins; but Yuri had had no disposition to search the place to be absolutely sure. It was enough to be away, as quickly as they could.

The morning shadow of the mountain was still on them, the rocks dark and the water beside them murkily gray, but darkest was the out-thrust shadow of Krukczy Straz itself, where the going was so narrow Nikolai's leg brushed the tower wall, and he felt the shadow and the threat of the tower looming until they had made it away into the living brush.

"Green," Nikolai murmured, and it was. Grim as the mountains had been, they had come where there was forage. Gracja nipped leaves as she went, caught mouthfuls of grass, so that Yuri tore up handfuls to give her as he saw a chance, to keep her from jolting Nikolai. Zadny rolled in the grass and got up and ran circles until he panted. But the troll met them only now and again as they went, preferring the stream they could not at all times follow. Krukczy would emerge like a bear from the water, shoulders first, and then two large eyes, that might vanish again; or all of Krukczy might come out to walk with them awhile, dripping on the leaves, squishing like a sheep in a rainstorm, and trailing a watery snake curve with his long furless tail.

"Find brothers," Krukczy would say on occasion. And:

"Went this way, went this way." And, yet another time: "Going to see the witch."

"Karoly's sister," Nikolai said, with the nearest interest he had shown in Krukczy's wandering conversation. "Where does this witch live?"

It obtained an airy wave of a very large hand. "There, there, down."

"Fine directions," Nikolai said sourly. Nikolai was in pain, and sweating, and they needed to stop—No, Nikolai insisted, he was on the horse, he was staying on the horse, so they were still going.

Nikolai asked aloud, "Are there more goblins, master troll? Or what kind of place is this they went to?"

"Gone to their queen," was all Krukczy would say. "Gone to their queen. Queen sends them, queen says come back."

"Where?"

Krukczy gave what seemed to be a shrug as he walked, and his tail whipped about nervously. "Where the queen is." Krukczy seemed more and more agitated. "Goblins . . . goblins ..."

"Where?"

"Gone."

"No sense," Nikolai muttered. "No damned sense, you can't talk to it. . ."

Krukczy was further and further ahead. Yuri tried to hurry, tugging on Gracja as branches separated them from Krukczy's shaggy shape—Krukczy was only a shadow now, a brown shadow quickly slipping away among the leaves.

"Give me the reins," Nikolai said. And when he started to protest, "Give me the reins!"

He passed them up, and Nikolai gave Gracja a fierce kick, sent her at a run on Krukczy's track—and, fearing Nikolai would fall, Yuri began to run, diving through brush Gracja and the troll had broken, Zadny racing ahead of him. He ran and ran, and heard Nikolai call out, "Damn you—"

But Nikolai had brought Gracja back to a walk by the time he had him in sight again. There was no sign at all of Krukczy. "Damned troll," Nikolai breathed as he caught up. But Nikolai kept Gracja moving, so that he had nothing to do but to walk behind with Zadny and hold his side against the stitch he had caught running so hard.

Then he saw Gracja's reins fall slack, and Nikolai leaned perilously in the saddle. He flung himself forward to stop Nikolai from sliding off, heedless of the thornbush Gracja's forward progress took him through. He shoved at Nikolai, got the reins and made Gracja stop. Gracja was confused, and scared, and Zadny's jumping at her legs was no help.

"Easy, easy," he breathed, trying to steady Gracja with one hand and hold the other ready to keep Nikolai upright. Nikolai had caught himself against the saddlebow, but the whiteness of Nikolai's face and the set of Nikolai's jaw said he was in excruciating pain.

"Better lead," Nikolai said in the ghost of his own voice. "Do you know the way back, boy?"

"No, sir," he said faintly. The very sunlight through the trees seemed cold. "I don't think I do. We've been up and down so many hills ..."

"I don't know either," Nikolai said. But he did not believe that. Nikolai never got lost.

He looked about him, and up at the sun, the way Nikolai himself had taught him. But lord Sun was hidden by the trees. He only believed he knew where west was. But west was a long ridge of mountains, and a maze of hills. Nothing-nothing was certain. He led Gracja a while, in the direction he thought was right. And when he looked back master Nikolai's eyes were shut and Nikolai was leaning again.

"Please don't fall off," he said. He was still shaking from running. His side hurt, and he could not get enough breath. "I think we need to find somebody, I think we need a place with people, very soon."

"Karoly's sister," Nikolai said. "The ones we're following—there were hoof-prints . . . some time back. Horse-hair—white—on the branches."

Yuri was embarrassed. He had been blind—leading Gracja, keeping his eyes on the troll, that was all. He had seen no such things. Nikolai, hurt as he was, lying much of the time against Gracja's neck, had kept his eyes open. But he had a dreadful thought then. "Do goblins ride horses?"

"Eat them, for all I know." Nikolai's eyes shut again, and half opened. "Shouldn't have run. Shouldn't have run. Damn, boy."

"Yes, sir," he said. "What should we do?"

Nikolai sat there a moment, above him, his eyes open-but Nikolai said nothing; only, for no reason, took his weight to the stirrup and began to get down—which, if he did—

Yuri shoved hard to stop him, put himself in the way so Nikolai had nowhere to step. "You can't get off," he told Nikolai. "Don't get down ..."

"Boy, I want you to take the horse."

"No!" he said. "No. If you get off, I'm staying here. We're both staying here. Do you want that?"

"It's left us," Nikolai said. "It's left us in the middle of the damn woods, boy, it's smelled goblins and it's run."

"Then don't make things worse! I can't get you back up on the horse if you fell, and I don't even know where home is."

"You can track us backwards. Back to the tower ..."

"No, sir! I won't, I won't do it—you stay on, you hear me? If you get off, I'm staying with you until you can get on again. Do you hear me, I'll do it!"

Nikolai seemed to think about that. Or Nikolai was in too much pain to think at all. He leaned heavily on the saddlebow until all Yuri could do was steady him; and he knew it hurt Nikolai's wounded arm, but it was the only way he could manage. He started leading Gracja again, making as much speed as he could, looking back as he could to be sure Nikolai was still steady.

But a thread of blood was running down Nikolai's hand, staining Gracja's side.

He's dying, Yuri thought in panic. He's going to die if we don't get help, and there's nothing we can do any taster than we are.

Zadny went in front of them. "Find people," Yuri said to him—"Zadny, find people, do you hear me?"

There was no knowing whether Zadny understood a word,

but he kept to the front of them, sometimes losing himself in the brush, so he feared they would lose track of the hound, too, and be alone.

"Maybe we can find somebody besides Nikolai that got away," Yuri said to himself. "Everything's going to be all right, it's just trolls don't know what people need, it's just scared, probably Nikolai chasing it scared him, he'll come back. Nikolai shouldn't have run the horse, that's all—the blood will stop."

"Karoly's sister," Nikolai murmured, once, obscurely, and he stopped Gracja and went back to him to see whether Nikolai was all right. But Nikolai only said, "Are we still on the trail?" and he said, "Yes, sir, I think we are. . . ." realizing with a chill that Nikolai was off his head and lost. He had made Nikolai come with him. He had been disrespectful, he had refused Nikolai's advice, and been smug about it; and offered Nikolai no choice but come with him— because he had known in his heart of hearts that Nikolai would never take Gracja and ride home without him. He had wanted Nikolai to get on Gracja's back and come with him this morning; and he had been so sure he was doing the right thing, so sure Nikolai was strong enough—although Nikolai had told him last night he would never make it. He had not listened: he had not wanted to listen, that was the bitter truth. Nikolai had said go home and have his father send men who could do more than a stupid boy could do-Nikolai had never once asked him to get him to safety, Nikolai was too strong for that, Nikolai was supposed to be with him to advise him, that was the way he had intended things . . .

The woods blurred in front of him. He walked and followed Zadny, and looked for the hoof-prints master Nikolai had said he had seen, because there was no time to be wrong now—thanks to his cleverness and his disobedience, master Nikolai had no time.

The sun sank as they followed the watercourse downhill, sometimes among rocks, in the shadow now of tall beeches not fully leafed, and early willow, and brush as stripped as the brush the other side of the mountains. The plague of beasts had passed here, too, Tamas thought, in the numb lucidity that had come since he had had water and food. Leafless vines snagged the horses' feet and snapped, dry branches broke under their hooves. The horses, taller than deer, found browse along the way, a snatch of leaves, and in clear spaces, patches of stream-side cress that had grown since the depredations. Ela held the lead, no horsewoman, but Jerzy's mare went along as if it had home and stable in mind.

So did Lwi, without his urging; and when he protested the horses could not stand that pace forever, she declared they would be all right, that was her word, they would be all right.

"Are there goblins behind us?" he asked. And got no answer.

His bruised bones ached, after so much and so rough riding—but he was thinking clearly enough these last hours to realize that he had lost his grandfather's sword, and even the saddle knife, with his own horse. Nikolai's bow was all the weapon they had, that and its handful of arrows.

Well done, he thought bitterly, in Bogdan's tones. Well done, little brother. And only now wondering what you have for resources? You unfailingly amaze me ...

He tried at least to calculate how far they had come. In a clearer space he looked back and all about for the sight of mountains, but the trees still loomed taller: the forest was all their surroundings, the colorless and dimming sky with its high cloud making time itself uncertain. He was all too awake, in the dark that lived within the forest, where twilight was early and shadowed with leaves. The whole world tottered on the edge of reason, imagination led nowhere, and he had no sane choice now but the one he was following.

"We'll make it by twilight," Ela declared, the only words she had volunteered to him since noon. "We have to."

He repeated his question: "What do we fear in this woods?"

"All manner of things," she said, and added: "Everything."

Lwi tossed his head, sweating. Tamas patted his neck beneath the fall of mane, misliking vague answers, and disliking witches more by the passing hour. Maybe she could ease his aches, but the ease did not last. Maybe she could make creatures go where she wanted, but clearly that did not extend to goblins, and maybe not to bears; so what good was that?

Besides, who knew what women thought, or might do, or why? Here he rode in a shadowy, goblin-haunted woods asking himself not for the first time how Ela had escaped the goblins' ambush, or hidden the horses, or made bargains with trolls to rescue him.

Walls before nightfall had been his hope in mid-afternoon: the expectation that they would find some fortified and human hold, an unassailable place with a great lady who happened to be a witch, but who, please the god, would turn out to remind him a great deal of the Karoly he had loved, an old woman who would keep a study in equal clutter, who would answer his questions with equal sympathy, tell him the good and the bad that he had to deal with, and magic up a wise and potent answer he could bring back to Maggiar.

But by the beginning of sunset he still saw no fields such as a great hold would need, only this barely flourishing desolation of woods and stony hillsides. He was down to hoping for another tower, like Krukczy Straz. (And another troll, shuffling about the halls in service to Ela's mistress? He was over the boundaries of Maggiar and clearly things here were different.)

Madam, he would say to Karoly's sister—at least he imagined that was how to address a witch—I was with master Karoly, whom, I fear, the goblins ...

... ate? Killed. Killed was far kinder, and he could get immediately to: Master Karoly came to ask your help, my father asks it. Then the witch would say: What exactly do you want me to do? and he would have not an idea in his head: he had no idea what a witch could do, or what she would ask of him—

Because witches asked payment, that was in grandmother's stories, along with trolls and magical waterfalls that made one young a thousand years, and undead creatures that haunted the site of their demise, different than ghosts, and bloodier. . . .

Madam, he would say, if you would help my father and my people—and my brother, if he's still alive . . .

What would he do in return for that? Anything, he said to himself. Anything. Bogdan had left him that duty. Master Karoly had. He was the last of their company and lie had no choices, now that he had gone this far.

Madam, anything at all, if only you'd do something ... if you could do something ...

But the witchling pushed the horses both to the limit of their strength and spoke of being in after dark, and that was no recommendation of her mistress' power. "I don't like this," Ela said once, which instilled no confidence at ail. He asked no further questions. But she said again, "She should hear me," and he thought she must mean her mistress.

"Where are we?" he asked. "How far yet?"

But for an answer, the witch-girl only put Jerzy's mare to a jogging, bone-jarring pace, slipping perilously from side to side of the saddle. They rode down a slope and along a winding hillside, and even in the clearings now, the light was dimmer. Sanity seemed diminished, feeble, overwhelmed.

"Be careful," he began to say, but it was far too narrow a trail to overtake her and Skory was already vanishing in the brush. Lwi had taken to running, too, through twists and doubling turns, under trees and headlong downhill. Alone, he would have reined Lwi back, but pride or fright said no fool witchling who could scarcely stay ahorse was going to lose him in a woods full of goblins—not now, with night coming.

Down to the trough of a hill and up again, up and up through a jolting series of climbs, then onto—thank the god— a well-worn footpath, that promised habitation hereabouts.

Earth and recrossed roots sped under Lwi's hooves, new-leafed branches whipped past. Then an archway let them through a stone wall so overgrown with vines it loomed right out of the woods, one with everything around it.

He saw Skory and her rider and the skull-topped poles ahead of him all at once, saw Ela sliding down from the saddle in the courtyard of this forest-wrapped tower and an outcry of protest stuck in his throat. With all the clatter they had just made, they could have roused the sleeping dead, but there was no need compounding the error: he kicked free of both stirrups and slid from Lwi's back while Lwi was stopping, chased a disappearing flash of blond hair and flying cloak into the shadowed doorway of the vine-veined tower. Goblin work was plain to see in the courtyard, the door dark and unbarred to all comers—and Ela ran inside and upstairs with the fleet surefootedness of someone at home on those steps.

He could not. He stumbled on them in the dark, hurrying as fast as he could to overtake a bereaved and frightened girl, intending to reason with her: after the rooftop of Krukczy Straz he had not the heart to blame her; but echoes were waking to her search with the dreadful sound of an empty house, and betraying where he was now seemed doubly foolish. They had two horses in the courtyard that might be their only way out of here, he had left the bow down there in his haste to overtake her, and if there was any mystery left of them, he hoped to preserve it, arm himself and reserve some surprise on their side if she came running ...

A step rasped on stone below him and his heart skipped a beat. Down the dark of the winding stairs, the faintest of twilight from the hall below still showed at the edges of the steps and on the walls opposite the core. And the step repeated itself.

Ela, he thought. We're not alone. Do you know that?

He fervently hoped for witchcraft, recollecting that Ela had come and gone undetected among goblins, and got along with trolls; but that had been no trollish movement. That had been a shod foot, a scuff of leather on stone, and since the second footfall, silence: Ela's, his, and whoever shared the tower with them.

He leaned his back against the stone of the stairwell core, keeping still in the remote chance it would go away and not come up the stairs. Ela was silent now that she had roused trouble; Ela must have heard it wherever she was—in some hallway upstairs, while here he stood guarding her retreat, and he could only hope she had recovered her good sense.

Not a woman's step, below, he was sure. It had sounded to his ears very like a man's boot, edged with metal. And the silence persisted, as if the presence down there had realized its mistake, and waited for him to make the next move.

Which could just as well mean some guard of this place, some honest servant of Ela's mistress, who could end up in fatal misunderstanding of intentions on this dark stairs—fatal for him, counting he was empty handed. The intruder, if intruder it was, had come past two horses out there—and knew their number. He thought, I'm trapped. Maybe I should take the chance and call out—in the case it is a friend.

An outcry would warn Ela. But Ela was being wary now that it was too late, and he decided that he was in no hurry either. Let whoever-it-was move again. He wanted to be surer, before he made an irrevocable move, and meantime he wanted off this stairs if there was a hope of doing it in silence.

He heard a faint, faint movement below him—the tower was old. Its steps gritted underfoot, there was no helping it. So did his, he discovered, and the other was moving now. He pressed his back to the wall for steadiness and heard a whisper of cloth and metal, saw the illusory light at the lowest steps eclipsed by darker shadow. He set his foot to the next step and moved up and up, trying to mask his movements beneath the movements of the one stalking him, and meanwhile to widen his lead on it, hoping desperately for some doorway out of this place that would not compromise Ela.

But the next turning of the stairs showed a fault glow above him, a window at some higher turning, when he most prayed for deeper daik, and when he judged he was running out of stairs altogether.

That was no good. He had made his own mistakes, he could only hope in Ela's magic now, and he thought he had as well find out whether it was friend or foe stalking them, before someone died of what might, after all, prove a mistake. He called out, failing nonchalance:

"Are you a friend, down there?"

It glided onto the steps below him, a darkness on which metal glistened, a horrific and elegant armoring he had seen once before, in the cellars of Krukczy Straz—a jut-jawed countenance beneath a mop of dark hair and braids.

Fangs, oh, indeed it had. And eyes large and virtually whiteless. And an unsheathed sword.

"Well," the goblin said. "Well, shall we see?"

He backed up a step. He had not intended to, but the creature seemed to have more of the stairs than he had, as he took account of its reach and the sword in its hand.

"There's nothing up there," it said. It beckoned to him with an elegant, beringed hand. "Come down, come, you've nothing to fear."

"So goblins joke."

It laughed, showing fangs, and climbed another step closer. "Oh, often. It's a joke, you know, like that in the yard. Where's the witchling?"

"Out the door. Riding away. You can't find her, can you?"

"So men joke, too."

Man, it called him—not for his age or his facing it: it meant his difference from its kind, it meant no sympathy or mercy, and he backed another step, he could not help it. He was not ready to die. He contemplated a rush against it, perhaps to bear it over on the steps, or tear through its grip. Its nails were dark and long, on hands as beautiful as a woman's, as expressive, as graceful in ironic gesture. And somehow it had gained another step without his seeing it.

"Where is she?"

"I've no idea." His heart fluttered. It took another step and he had no choice yet but to back up, feeling his way around the core. It was clearly in the light now. Its eyes were green as old water, its smile nothing reassuring.

"Afraid of me?" it asked.

"(Mi, never. Why don't you go downstairs?"

"Why were you going up? Looking for something? A witch, maybe?"

"I'm a thief," he said. "Like you."

A second time it laughed, and flexed a hand about its sword hilt, beckoning with the other. "Then we should be friends. Come down. We'll have a drink together."

"Be damned to you."

The sword flashed, rested point down on the steps between them. "You've great confidence. Is it justified, I wonder?"

It meant to kill him outright, he had no doubt now. He backed up only for a feint, shoved off from the edge of the step and, bare-handed, struck the blade aside as he dived for the shallow of the turn.

The goblin warrior followed the blade about, full turn, that was how it had its arm in his way, and him pinned against the great pillar of the core, staring at it face to face. Its iron-hard arms were on either side, and the carelessly held sword leant against his neck as it shook its head slowly. "Not justified," it concluded, and grinned at him, a showing of fangs, a glitter of shadowed eyes behind a disordered fringe of mane—such details stood clear as his heart pounded away and he wondered could he duck down quickly enough, or dared he move—considering the cold blade beneath his chin.

"Lost its tongue?" it asked him. "Fellow thief?"

He had. And his breath. He brought a knee up- The goblin knocked his head against the wall, not grinning now. He made a second try—but the goblin was too tall, and breath was too short. It said, hissing into his face with that lisp the jutting fangs made,

"I want the witch, man."

"What witch?" he asked. "Which witch?" Light-headedness suggested rhymes. It could not be more annoyed, and he was out of strategies. He tried to pry its hand loose. As well dispute a stone statue. "I think you ate the last one—hereabouts ..."

"Liar," it said, and tightened its grip. "Are you a liar?"

"Of course not," he had wind to say. It slacked its hold ever so little.

"A conundrum. How clever." Unexpectedly it let go entirely, and gave him room on the stairs, "Run, man. Run."

He did not believe it, not even when it dropped the sword point and gave him room. He drew a shaky breath, made a gesture downward, giddily, toward the stairs. "You first." If one was about to be beaten anyway, he had learned that from Bogdan—if one was about to be stabbed from behind, as seemed now, then play the game for pride, if that was all he had left. And to his own light-headed amazement he was not tongue-tied or wool-gathering. Bogdan would approve, if Bogdan were here, but this creature and his kind had—

He could not think about that rooftop. He refused to think about it now.

The goblin stepped higher on the stairs, trading places with him on the narrow steps, and tapped the side of his leg with the sword blade as they passed each other. "I'm letting you go, man. Go. Next time—find a sword."

It was going on upstairs. It was searching for Ela. It would come back for him, or others were below to deal with him. He contemplated attacking it as it turned its back on him in contempt and kept climbing—the troll had inured him to terrors, for days now, and he wanted to go for it bare-handed as he was. But that served nothing. In the hall below he might find a weapon, a fallen board, anything to throw a pennyworth weight onto his side of the balance and do it harm it might feel, if it followed him. Or get to the courtyard and his bow if it did not.

He sped down the steps, angry, desperate, blind in the winding dark below, expecting to run headlong into more of them at any turn. He saw the faint twilight from the doorway and bolted down the last turns into the entry, where his dark-accustomed eyes picked out cloth in the shadow, a cloaked figure that accosted him with:

"Shh!"

Ela's whisper—while his fist was knotted up to strike and his legs were shaking under him. "What were you doing up there?"

"There's a goblin," he stammered. The fury ran out of him, and he set his shoulder to the wall for support to his shaking knees. Hardly a hero, he: he had fled pell-mell down the stairs, and the goblin could come back down or call to its friends from the window at any moment.

"Then get out of here! There's a place I haven't looked—"

"Ela, give it up! Everyone's dead! The horses are out there. They know there's two of us! They'll find us. —Lord Sun—"

"I have to!" she whispered, and tore away from him.

"Ela!" he whispered furiously, but she was a wisp of cloak and shadows, headed for a door, another stairway, he had no idea. He took her advice and ran out the open door to the yard, where the horses were grazing on the grass that had sprung up in the half-buried cobbles.

"Aha!" rang out from some window, from the roof, he had no idea, nor waited to see in his reach after Lwi's saddle. A knife thumped into the ground beside his boot, stuck upright in the weed patch beside the cobbles. He jumped—he could not help it, and Lwi shied as he grabbed the reins. The bow was not strung. He snatched up the knife as his only gesture of defiance and looked up at the tower.

"Ah. Do you take my gift?" the goblin warrior called down. My gift, my gift, my gift, echoed off all the walls, loud as Lwi's hooves clattering on the pavings. Skory danced away, out of his reach, and he had visions of the goblin coming down the stairs and cutting off Ela's retreat. "And are you a thief, too?"

Thief, thief, thief, the echoes said.

"What harm have we ever done to you?" he shouted up through the echoes. "What do you want?"

Want, want, want, the echoes gave back, as Ela came flying from out the door.

"Ho!" the goblin shouted; "Witchling!" But Ela never stopped. She caught Skory's trailing reins as the goblin disappeared from the window, downward bound without a doubt. He drew Lwi after him, held Skory's reins while Ela climbed up to the saddle, and without a second glance over his shoulder, flung himself for Lwi's saddle.

"Witchling, witchling, witchling," the echoes were still saying, as they rode past the grisly warning on the poles, through the gateway and into the tangle of the woods again, where the horses had to strike a slower pace.

Then he cast an anxious glance over his shoulder, and saw Ela's face as she looked back at the vine-shrouded gates. It was not grief, not a child's bewilderment, but a cold, white-lipped fury.

"What can we do?" he asked. "How can we fight them?" He was willing to hear anything but pointless defeat, nothing done, nothing even learned about their enemy, and their enemy in control of the place they had come to find and despising all they could do.

She laid a hand on her breast, and said only, "It's mine, it's mine, and he knows it."

"What, the tower?"

"This." The hand was pressed to something beneath her collar, and she looked at him with a set face and a defiance that challenged him along with the goblin as she rode past him.

So it was not for her mistress she had been searching the tower. Karoly's sister was dead, if those skulls could tell the story. And he—

"Where are you going?" he asked.

"To make them regret it," was all she would say.