But as he thought back now, he decided the old man might have been annoyed at young fools who happened to be a lord's undisciplined sons—especially in the matter of the frogs, which had been his personal inspiration.
That was the forgiving master Karoly he wanted to believe in—not the short-tempered, close-mouthed old man on the trail. He was not sure now which man had really ever existed—but discovering what had lain next door to Maggiar unsuspected, and discovering that grown men fought and picked on each other like boys, and that sometimes good people died for no fair reason at all, everything else seemed in question, of things he thought he had understood. He was not likely to have the chance to use that knowledge ... or to find out other lessons this place had to teach, only defeat, and his own limits of courage, and the fact of a lord's second son mattering very little to the creature that looked on him as its property or its supper.
In time he heard the troll returning. He waited, trembling with the effort to hold his limbs tensed to move. It came up to the bars, a shadow that cut off all the light on what it was doing. He heard the chain run back ever so softly, link by link, and suffered sudden doubt what he should do next, whether it might be wiser to await a better chance than to try to break past it—it was a clever troll, cleverer than any troll he had heard of. It seemed to have some obscure purpose in what it did; and it whispered, now:
"Follow me."
It was foolishness even to imagine it could mean something other than harm to him. It might have hidden him from the goblin, but it had hidden itself by doing that. He had provoked it, and it had curled him, using nothing of its prodigious strength—but none of that said anything at all of its reasons.
He got up slowly, thinking: What if it only wants me in reach? And again: What if goblins are about to search this place? He felt after the gate in the dark, ducked his head when his fingers met the low bar overhead. The troll moved away from him, affording him all the room to run he could wish. He saw its moving shadow in other shadows, heard the slithering passes of its tail along the stone floor, and followed it—like any silly sheep, he said to himself: Bogdan had always called him the slow wit of the family; and he could not make up his mind what to do or what to trust—but he had no idea whether that sometime source of light down the tunnel was open or barred or a route straight to the goblins.
A door creaked ahead, on the right hand, the same door the goblin had used, he was sure of it. He saw it open, heard the troll go through, heard it breathing, and thought—the troll did fear them. It hid from them. It wouldn't willingly walk into their hands ...
He felt his way through the doorway, banged his shin and stumbled against steps. The slithering sound came from above him, as the troll climbed. "Where does this lead?" he whispered, as loudly as he dared; but it gave him no guidance but the sound of its tail trailing up the steps.
He felt the pitch of the stone stairs, climbed, aching from bruises, his head throbbing—there was no quickness or agility about it. A door creaked above, and when he had gotten there he felt his way through into another dark, smooth-paved passage, with an unfamiliar taint: goblins, he thought, dreading what he might stumble over in the dark, his worst fear that the troll might have made some understanding with them.
A door in front of him cracked on night and moonlight. The troll went out. He followed it onto the broad wooden roof, delirious with relief to have the sky and the stars over him.
But ringed about that sky, on pikes set in the ramparts, stood the skulls of humans and of horses. Heaps of bone were swept like offal against the ramparts, white bone with dark bits of flesh still clinging.
He spun about to escape the sight, to strike at the creature that betrayed him—
A slim, slight shadow stood there, wrapped in a dark cloak. A goblin, he thought at first blink—until the figure cast back the hood. A mere girl faced him, pale as the starlight and insubstantial as his grip on the world. She had a cleft in her chin. Would a sorcerer's illusion add that human detail? His wits were fogging, his legs were shaking—he felt the troll's shadow in the wind at his back.
"Who are you?" he asked.
"A witch," she said. "A powerful witch. I came here to find a wizard named Karoly. Do you know him?"
No, he thought distressedly, no, I'm not sure I ever knew him. He thought of the skulls at his back, and doubts and anger welled up, with a memory of his brother, and the road, and the warning stone. "Are you a friend of Karoly's?"
"My mistress is. Was he with you?"
"How should I say? I don't know your kind, I don't know if wizards die or not. He saw the stone, he didn't warn us, he didn't stop—" He was shaking in the knees, and it was not all the cold. "Look around you. Tell me if he's alive, and I'll ask him where my brother is!"
She looked distressed then. And the troll said, in a deep, deep voice:
"Ate them all. Only bones are left."
She glanced past him and above, and for his part, he wanted to sit down and let the troll and the witch argue out what to do or what more they wanted with him—escape was a far, confusing enterprise, and led probably to the hands of goblins, or witches, who knew?
"I have two horses," she said. "I've food enough. Krukczy, bring him."
He did not want to be brought. If there were horses, if there was a way off this rooftop, he was willing to go. The witch walked away to the edge of the parapet, and over the edge—onto downward stairs, as he saw; and he began shakily to follow, stepped over the brink and saw dark air and empty space as the wind rocked him.
But the troll caught his arm in a powerful grip and held him from falling—kept its grip on his arm and guided him all the way down the steps to the stones of the streamside, the witch moving constantly ahead of them, a cloaked black shape with now and again a pale wisp of hair or gown. He went without argument now, although the troll's grip hurt him. He thought: We came to find a witch; and I've found one, and she might even be what she says . . . If she's not in league with the goblins herself.
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.