Ciri shook her head sadly. "My father and mother both died many years ago. There is no one here to protect me. That was why I wove the boat of rushes and sent the doll down the waters of the stream, hoping someone might find it and hear my plea"
"How does the doll speak with your voice?" Matya asked, not caring if she aroused more of Ciri's displeasure.
"It was but the echo of my voice," Ciri explained, her eyes on the knight. "The doll is a magical thing. My rather brought it all the way from Palanthas for me when I was a child. If you speak to it, or sing it a song, it will echo your words back to you with the rising moon, exactly as you spoke them."
Matya's eyes glittered brightly. This was better and better. The doll would be almost beyond price. almost, that is. Matya always had a price.
"And how can I break this grievous enchantment?" Trevarre asked earnestly. He was good at this knightly business, Matya had to admit, despite his sorry looks. Ciri stood and walked to the window, gazed through it sadly a moment, then turned to the knight.
"There, in the center of the village, stands a shrine. In that shrine is an altar carved of marble. The altar is the focus of all my uncle's dark powers. I know, for I have seen him work his wicked spells there. From it, he draws his strength. But the magic of the doll has the power to counter it. If one who is strong of heart sets the doll upon the altar of his own free will, the enchantment will be broken."
"And what will happen to the doll?" Matya asked suspiciously.
"Its magic will be dissipated," Ciri answered. "It will become an ordinary doll and nothing more."
She walked to Trevarre then, and he rose to meet her. She laid a hand gently upon his breastplate. Matya could see the pulse beating rapidly in the man's throat. It was clear Trevarre was not immune to Ciri's bewitching beauty. Another weakness of knights, Matya thought acidly. Not that she cared one way or the other, she reminded herself.
"Will you do this task for me, my knight?" Ciri pleaded. "I cannot break the enchantment with my own hand, and there is none in the village brave enough to defy my uncle. Will you help me?"
Trevarre sighed and glanced at Matya. "I would, with all my heart, that I could do this thing, my lady, but I fear I cannot. You see, I have given Matya the doll in payment for bringing me to this place. On my honor, I cannot ask her for it back"
Ciri's face twitched. She shot Matya a look so filled with malice that Matya shivered. Then, aware of the knight's eyes on her, Ciri's sweet, sorrowful look had returned to her lovely face. She bowed her head.
"Then I am doomed, my knight."
"No," he said, with a fierce smile. "No, I cannot think that. I am no sorcerer, but I expect there is another — albeit cruder — way to free you." His hand moved to the hilt of the sword at his hip. "I will stand before your uncle when he returns, and I will demand a duel. The enchantment will be broken when your uncle lies dead at my feet. Won't that solve your problem, my lady?"
Ciri sighed. "My knight, you are indeed brave," she murmured. "So very brave."
Matya noticed, however, that Ciri did not answer Trevarre's question.
Matya awoke in the gray light before dawn. Ciri had provided her a bed. Trevarre slept soundly on a bed of furs before the cottage's hearth. Matya looked around the cottage, but Ciri was nowhere to be seen.
Just as well, Matya thought. This way she would not have to bid the strange young woman good-bye.
Matya knelt beside the sleeping knight before she left. His careworn face was peaceful in slumber, his brow untroubled.
"I hope you find your honor truly reward enough, Knight," she whispered softly. She hesitated a moment, then reached out a hand, as if to smooth his mouse-brown hair over the bandage on his head. He stirred, and she pulled her hand back. Quietly, Matya slipped from the cottage.
"Trevarre has what he wants," she reminded herself, "and so do I."
The ruddy orb of the sun crested the dim purple mountains to the east as Matya made her way through the village. A few folk already were up at this hour, but they paid her no heed as they went about their business. Once again, Matya had the feeling there was something peculiar about this village, but she could not quite fathom what it was. She hurried on toward her wagon and the restless Rabbit.
Then it struck her.
"The shadows are all wrong!" she said aloud.
Her own shadow stretched long before her in the low morning sunlight, but hers was the only shadow that looked like it was supposed to look. The shadow cast by a twostory cottage to her left was short and lumpy — much shorter than she would have expected for a building so high. She looked all around the village and saw more examples of the same. Nowhere did the outline of a shadow match that of the object that cast it. Even more disturbing were the villagers themselves. None of them cast shadows at all!
Her sense of unease growing, Matya gathered up her skirts and hurried onto the stone bridge. She suddenly wanted to be away from this troubling place. She was nearly across the bridge when something — she was unsure exactly what — compelled her to cast one last glance over her shoulder. Abruptly she froze, clapping a hand over her mouth to stifle a cry.
The village had changed.
Well-tended cottages were nothing more than broken, burned stone foundations. The smithy was a pile of rubble, and there was no trace of the mill except for the rotted remains of the waterwheel, slumped by the bank of the stream, looking like the twisted web of some enormous spider. There were no people, no horses, no dogs, no chickens. The dell was bare. The dark ground was hard and cracked, as if it had been baked in a furnace.
Matya's heart lurched. She ran a few, hesitant steps back across the bridge, toward the village, and she gasped again. Tambor looked as it had before, the villagers going about their business. Blue smoke rose from a score of stone chimneys.
Perhaps I imagined it, she thought, but she knew that wasn't true. Slowly, she turned her back to the village once more and walked across the bridge. She looked out of the comer of her eye and again saw the jumbled ruins and blackened earth behind her. Slowly, she began to understand.
Tambor HAD been destroyed in the Cataclysm. The people, the bustling village, were images of what had been long ago. It was all illusion. Except the illusion was imperfect, Matya realized. It appeared only when she traveled toward the village, not away from it. But how did the illusion come to exist in the first place?
Resolutely, Matya walked back across the bridge. She found that, if she concentrated, the illusion of the bustling village would waver and grow transparent before her eyes, and she could see the blackened ruins beneath. She walked to the center of the village, toward the single standing stone of pitted black basalt. This was the shrine of which Ciri had spoken. At the base of the standing stone was an altar, but it was not hewn of marble, as Ciri had claimed. The altar was built of human skulls, cemented together with mud. They grinned at Matya, staring at her with their dark, hollow eyes.
"Did you really think I would allow you to leave with the doll?" Ciri spoke behind her in a voice cool and sweet.
Startled, Matya turned around. She half expected to see that Ciri had changed like the rest of the village. The woman was as lovely as ever, but there was a hard, deadly light in her sapphire-blue eyes.
Ciri gazed at Matya, then understanding flickered across her face. "Ah, you see the village for what it is, don't you?"
Matya nodded silently, unable to speak.
Ciri shrugged. "It is just as well. It makes things easier. I'm glad you know, in fact."
"What do you want from me?" Matya asked.
"To strike a bargain with you, Matya. Isn't that what you like to do above all things?"