"Damn!" His wits were wandering. The horses' steps were heavy and slower and slower, and that was not right. He leaned over and hit Skory. Skory jumped and Lwi did, startled awake. But by the time they had come to the bottom of the hill, the horses were only ambling again, and resisted a second such trick, only did a faster step for a moment, and slacked off again,
"This isn't right," he said, "this isn't right at all. . ."
Ela lifted the amulet to her lips and held it aloft, her eyes shut and a dreadful concentration on her brow.
"What are you doing?" he began to ask, but just then came a spark of light, as if the mirror had caught the sun, then another, and another, and another. Her eyes opened and she let slip the mirror to dangle from its chain, as sparkles of light began to dance about them, on the ground, on themselves.
"Keep on!" he said, and in a numb, distant daze saw sunlight from the mirror glitter on the trees and sweep the ground. He had no idea now whether it was the right way they were going. He could only ride with the sparkles of light, that seemed to dance and beckon further and further amid the gloom.
A long time it seemed they went that way, the horses walking more alertly, their way lit with dazzle from an absent sun, a giddy, spinning dance of light in which Tamas began to hope there was safety . . .
Until they came to a steep descent, and that light glanced off metal.
"Ela!" he whispered, reining back. He saw goblins, hundreds and hundreds of them, arrayed in ambush among the leaves.
But his own voice seemed to come from far away, and Lwi stumbled when he began to turn on the slope. He saw Ela riding on, and he tried to bring Lwi about again on the leaf-buried slope, to reach her and turn her aside—but before he could persuade Lwi to overtake her it was too late: she rode within the goblin ranks, and those ranks tumbled, one and the next and the next, into piles of metal, moldered leather, and bleached bone.
He stared, overwhelmed by the strangeness of the sight, so that he questioned whether he was awake or seeing what he thought he was seeing. Lwi had stopped with him, and he tried to urge him to overtake the witchling, but Ela was further and further away, from the moment he had reined back. Now the sparkle of the mirror swept the ground ahead and danced among the trees, but not where he was. The whole woods seemed darkened, and Ela and the light seemed far, far away.
"Ela," he called after her. "Ela!" The woods seemed to swallow up the sound. He struck Lwi hard, for both their sakes, but Lwi would not go faster, not even take alarm at the heaps of bone that tumbled and rattled where they rode. He saw Ela look back as if at great distance. She was almost to the top of the next hill, and then at the crest of it.
"Tamas?" he thought he heard her answer him. But the sparkle went out then, and left no traces in the woods where he was. Lwi stopped listlessly, and he slid down in desperation and took the reins and began to lead him, insisting he keep moving, up and up the hill.
But perhaps he had turned aside on the hill and mistaken his direction—hills had so many faces, and deceived the senses so easily. He trudged the whole wide hillside, and found, everywhere, the ghastly dead, as if he had wandered onto some forgotten battleground, of some unchronicled war. There was no sign of Ela, not the least glimmering of the light he sought, only the rattle of bones falling, of armor clattering, and the sight of unhuman skulls—Azdra'ik's kind, and in like armor. He gathered up a sword from one of the dead, a frightening thing with backward spines for one of its quillons, the use of which might be to disarm ... the god knew, else.
With that, he kept going about the crown of the hill. Ela could not have had that much time to disappear. Skory might have had her way and gone off without direction, or even, the god forbid, thrown her and left her hidden in the brush. If that were the case, he might see her from the height.
But when he had trekked all about the hill, he found only more white and eyeless dead, and endless tracts of forest. He set out in the direction he thought they had been going, the sword thrust through his belt and Lwi's reins in hand, dragging at him so his arm ached. He called Ela's name from time to time, but, dreamlike, the forest smothered his voice. He said to Lwi, in the numbing whispering of leaves, "We'll find her. We won't lie down here. The silly girl says I can work magic. So let's try, shall we? Let's say we should find her, let's think about that, that's a good horse ..."
Easy to sleep. Far too easy to shut his eyes, even walking; while he still came on scattered stragglers of that ghastly army—as if some of that number had attempted escape from whatever had left them waiting for all time—only to let their eyes drift shut, losing their war to a gentle enemy. If he had magic, he called on it to save him and Ela from this place. If he had favor with the gods, he pleaded with them, but he was not sure they could reach within this realm, and he was not sure he had been as devout as the priests would wish.
"This way," the leaves seemed to whisper. "This way, Tamas."
Fish roasted on the fire, and there were greens such as Krukczy had found unspoiled in the garden and a few kitchen stores, but goblins had gotten the rest. It was a strange night, with Krukczy's musty fur drying in the heat of a fire, and Zadny with his head on his knee, and the dreadful warning still standing in the yard. Yuri did not like to think about it, and master Nikolai himself had asked if Karoly did not want them to try to bury the remains, such as there were, but Karoly had said no, said it with such harshness as invited no second question on the matter.
So here they sat, roasting fish in a ruined hall, amid the clutter the goblins had left of the place. Nikolai was able to sit up and have his supper, one-handed, and they had found master Karoly, and they had a roof over their heads and a wall around them tonight, but over all, Yuri found no appetite—thinking about Karoly's sister, and the servant, Karoly guessed it was, out there in the yard; and most of all thinking how it must have been Karoly's trail Zadny had followed, not his brothers', after all. This might be the end of it, beyond which—beyond which was nothing but going home, with Nikolai and with Karoly, at least, but—
He felt Zadny's head on his knee, absently scratched the soft, shaggy ears. Zadny had had his fish and probably wanted his, that was growing cold on a broken dish, so he began to break off bits, and pick out the bones, and give it to him.
But he heard master Karoly say something to Nikolai about tomorrow. Then followed an exchange he could not hear, the two of them talking in low voices; so he listened harder, and heard, "—going on from here,"
"Alone?" Nikolai asked, then Karoly said something, but Krukczy switched his tail just then, and a coal snapped in the fireplace, making Zadny jump.
He listened harder. And suddenly saw two grim faces look his way in unison.
He set his jaw and said, "Master Karoly. Are you talking about finding my brothers? Because if you are I'm not going home."
"Damned right you're going home," Nikolai said. "You're going to do as you're told for once, young my lord, and if you've any regard for your brothers' lives you won't take me from Karoly to make sure you get there."
"They're alive."
"I've the notion one is," master Karoly said, at which Yuri's heart beat faster and faster. "I'm fairly certain Tamas was here, and not so long ago."
"Then where is he?" His voice startled Zadny, who jumped up, darting from him to Krukczy, who crouched by the fire, and back, and back again.
"He knows," Krukczy rumbled, and rubbed Zadny's head. "Hound, he knows—brother. Hound, he knows."
"It talks to him?" Nikolai asked, but master Karoly held up his hand and said,
"Say on, master Krukczy. What else do you know?"
The troll's tail spun a nervous, curling trail, and ended in its broad hands, for safekeeping, as seemed. "Witch."