"Again?"
"Oh, they'd begun here. That's how queen Mirela first found the key to calling them. They'd left their signs on old stones, they left their spells—in magic, one wanders through them like old landmarks. Of course the goblins had their own reasons for leaving such clues in the world when they were banished—but that's another story. At any rate, Mirela perished under most suspicious circumstances, Ylena became queen, and the goblins arrived in the world with banners and circumstance. They were on best behavior. They did no mischief. They were courtly, they were nattering to the queen, and they oh'ed and ah'ed over the new princess—"
"Ylena got a husband."
"At least a daughter. She was named Ytresse. She was very beautiful even as a baby. But Ylena had never planned to have an heir, and she hadn't succeeded in preventing her birth, if you take my meaning. Nothing worked. She suspected goblin treachery, and she fell out with the goblin queen until the day the year was up and the goblins were preparing to leave. They professed their regret to give up so much grace and comfort, and the goblin queen remarked to Ylena that she wished they might make a further bargain."
"The fool."
"Ylena? Of course. Ylena sensed magic in that baby. Powerful magic. She sensed goblin work. And the baby, Ytresse, had survived some very determined efforts. So Ylena wanted a spell stronger than the baby's determination to live. And the goblin queen said there was a lake—a particularly beautiful lake they had come to revere—"
"Goblins revere something?"
"There are goblins and goblins. Certain ones, yes, apparently do. This lake had a perfect reflection. It's quite shallow, very still, and it was a place of power in this world that the goblins wanted. So the goblin queen swore that Ylena might live so long as they had possession of that small lake. It was just tricky enough that Ylena believed in it. So she agreed on the spot."
"Clever woman."
"Ah, but when you deal with devils, beware the loopholes."
"The youth and beauty part?"
"Exactly. But—the goblins were of course willing to give Ylena spells to stave off age—by their magic, of course. So Ylena was trapped in her own bargain. But—but—" Karoly spat another bit of twig." Ylena wanted to deal no more with the goblins, and began to sustain herself by ... well, say her subjects grew fewer and fewer. She knew of course she'd been betrayed. Then a certain goblin came to her and offered her a secret—a secret, he said, in return for which he asked three wishes."
"You're joking."
"Three is a potent number. And he used his first two, but the third—not yet, for all I know. But for whatever reason, he told her how the goblin queen's power lay in a mirror, a working of magical smoothness and exactitude, and that if Ylena wanted power to equal the goblin queen's spells, that was what she had to defeat. So Ylena had a mirror made of silvered glass as smooth and perfect as she could obtain, and put into its making every spell she knew. —None of which, of course, went unreported in the territory around the lake.
So on a snowy midwinter's eve, when everyone should be asleep, and, as it just happened, the night before Ylena was quite ready to take her on, the goblin queen sent out her army and turned her spells against Ylena's mirror. When all was done there was little left of Ylena but a wraith, nothing left of Basel but the shell, and nothing of Ylena's mirror but silver powder—so they say."
"And the goblin queen's?"
"Cracked right in two, with a small fragment fallen, that was the price she paid for defeating Ylena. But the same goblin, so he claimed, the very one who had dealt with Ylena, stole the piece and took it straightway—you guessed it—to Ylena's successor, Ytresse, who had grown up into a wicked, wicked woman. But Ytresse no more trusted the goblin queen than her mother had. She made sure of her own heir-nothing of the goblin queen's doing, a witch named Ylysse. And Ylysse, after a long, long lifetime, passed the power to Ysabel—"
"Your sister."
"My sister."
"But it's a goblin trap, that fragment. It was from the beginning. —Isn't it?" *
"Consider its history. Is the goblin thief Jying or not? And why that knowledge he gave to Ylena in the first place, and why the three wishes, and the unfortunate issue to Ylena? It certainly is to ask. ..."
"Then—" Certain prying questions occurred to him, that did not seem entirely unwise, also considering the history.
"Then—?" Karoly asked.
"Where do you come into the story?"
"I? Nowhere. Or only at the last. Ysabel and I weren't descended from Ytresse. Not even from her apprentices. Urzula was."
His heart gave a thump. "The lady gran?"
"Exactly."
Nikolai let go his breath and drew in another one, thinking. My god. What else isn't what we trusted?
"You and your sister? —Where did you come into this?"
"Urzula's apprentices."
Apprentices, for the god's sake. "And what brought the lady to Maggiar? And don't tell me 'adoration for Ladislaw.' I was at the funeral."
Karoly laughed grimly. "Not overmuch of adoration. But a fair bargain on both sides. Ladislaw got his heir. And dare I say—if one hopes to undo a spell, one has to reach outside its arena of influence, one has to do the unexpected, work where one won't be spied upon—conditions which don't pertain to this side of the mountain."
"But she never warned anyone, not m'lord Stani, not—"
"I knew."
"Damned lot of good it did anyone. You knew, you knew when you saw the trouble start, let alone that business on the trail."
"It might have been trolls."
"Might have been trolls! The troll's not guilty, master wizard, the troll was hiding in the basement at Krukczy Tower, in fear of his life, don't tell me you hadn't clearer messages out of your dreams than that, once every wild creature in the over-mountain began pouring into Maggiar. ..."
"There could be other causes. I hoped for other causes. That's the nature of magic, master huntsman. When will it rain, do the birds tell you that without fail? Better yet, do they tell you where? Or are there ever false signs? The goblins have been in this world for hundreds of years now—and will be, so long as the agreement with Ylena stands."
"It doesn't."
"Oh, but to this day, Ylena has never given up her power-power to frighten, power to kill. She's still in mis world."
"You mean she's not dead."
"That describes it. Not dead. Not alive either. So the goblins hold then- land—and the mirror is mended, with its one piece missing. As for mistress Ursula—what she did, and how much of this is the queen's doing, the Lady knows, but I don't—nor can, I've realized that, long since. Let me tell you another secret. Urzula's real name was Ysabel."
"Your sister?" More and more crazed, it was.
"Both were named Ysabel. Our mother was a servant in this tower, a very minor witch, a distant cousin. Ylysse gave Ysabel to our mother to bring up and gave out that we were her children. Which put us in danger, certainly. But Urzula—"
"Your sister?"
Karoly shook his head. "Use the names they lived by. It's less confusing. And listen. Urzula wanted me with her because I wasn't gifted enough to leave here in danger—that and other reasons. ..."
"Were there other reasons?"
"Were we lovers?" Another spit of twig, and a dark, silent laughter. "Yes. Ysabel—my sister Ysabel—and I had a falling out on that point. We were twins. Ysabel expected loyalty, since she was getting the short end of things, and standing in the most danger. Ysabel wanted the teaching more than she wanted life and breath and I wanted—Urzula, that was the sad truth. I wasn't so gifted nor so dedicated as Ysabel. Magic for me didn't take fire, the way it did for her. I never trusted it. Still don't. Ysabel drank it, breathed it— and she never could have the magic she really wanted, would never be the witch she claimed to be. And Urzula—Urzula ... the way she felt about it—you know, I never understood whether she was, inside, like Ysabel, in love with magic, or more like me. Urzula held everything inside and you never knew. But with her birthright, the god only knows what she could do if she used it as freely as Ysabel—if she let it use her, like Ysabel. I always thought—leaving Ysabel on watch here was like leaving the fox in charge of the henhouse. Fond of designs, she was. Fond of workings and intrigues."