He found himself uncomfortable, in wizardry confidences. Embers popped, again, and Karoly's brow wrinkled with an upward glance.
"Are you there?" Karoly asked the shadowed air and the firelight, and Nikolai held his breath waiting for an answer, but Karoly gave another humorless laugh and looked down at his hands. "I chide the boys for moongazing. But boys are silly longer than girls, aren't they—and that I wasn't her ally, that was something Ysabel never could understand. That Urzula wanted me with her was something she thought she did understand—god, Ysabel was furious. And Urzula was on her way to get a husband and a successor the goblins wouldn't know about. That was—a painful realization."
A successor. Nikolai found his heart thumping so loudly of a sudden he could not believe Karoly did not hear. He asked, quietly, carefully, the gossip of every servant in the house: "Whose is Stani?"
"Urzula's, of course."
Damn the old man, up to the edge of truth and no further. But Karoly added, then:
"That's enough, if you want the truth. As witches reckon lineage it's enough. Ysabel and I lived this lie all our lives. And Urzula—" A private and lengthy silence. "She was really a reprehensible woman, Urzula was . . . short-tempered; cruel, at times . . . most times. Dreadful things amused her. But she worked for the right. —And defend her own people—god, she would do that." Karoly drew a long breath. "You know what disturbs me most?"
I couldn't possibly imagine, Nikolai thought distressedly, and simply answered, "No."
"That so much of the business with Ylysse began with Ylena."
"What do you mean—began with Ylena?"
"In sorcery—and far-working is necessarily sorcery—one wants to affect events at a great distance and over time, and one can't predict whether the outcome is good or bad for one or another person, only numbers of people. Urzula could dismiss consequences like that: Urzula didn't see one person, or a son, or a mother. Urzula saw—I can't tell you what Urzula saw, or, for that matter, what Ysabel saw. I only loved certain people. And I couldn't change what Urzula worked, I couldn't even change myself, or Ysabel. ..." Karoly cleared his throat. It had gotten very still in the room, and uncomfortably close. "Anyway, I chose the small magic, I'm a wizard, not a sorcerer, not even a good wizard until I've something I want with a clear conscience. I follow along after a sorcerer like Urzula, you understand, just picking up and patching what I can. Work against sorcery? That takes sorcery. That was Ysabel's domain." He took the twig from his mouth and shredded it in threads with his nail, as if the need to do that utterly occupied his attention.
"You mean you can't change anything? You can't do things differently than they've done?"
A moment's silence. "That's sorcery, too. Change the things they've done, means you change the far things. One thing touches everything. It's only the broken bits, the used bits, the bits passed over . . . that I can patch. The pieces in use—I can't help."
"Like Tamas? Is that what you're saying?"
"Like any of us. —Ysabel was as dangerous and as much in danger as anyone. It was a long and lonely time here, weak as she was, pretending so much more strength. Thank the god for Pavel."
"Pavel."
"The chap in the yard." A motion of Karoly's eyes. Up. Meaning the second pole and the second skull, Nikolai realized with a motion of his stomach. "He came from a long time ago. From Hasel. Half-mad, but he was devoted to Ysabel. Supposedly he kept the grounds—now and again. Mostly he kept Ysabel. —But beware the apprentice. Beware anyone who learned from Ysabel. The girl will have no conscience, Tamas, she won't know right from wrong . . . not if she learned at my sister's knee. Only the faraway things matter. Only the outcome, to anyone Ysabel would have taught..."
The old man was staring off at nothing, spinning the chewed twig in his fingers, talking to Tamas as if he were there, and the hair rose on Nikolai's nape. It took more than ordinary craziness to spook him, or ghastly sights to scare him—he had seen so many on his trek south, through the wars of wizards and petty tsars.
"Urzula saw the boys born," Karoly said, for no reason that Nikolai could understand, but the god only knew who he was talking to now. "She was satisfied then. She'd lived a long time. And she said they weren't her responsibility any longer. And I wasn't. So she died."
"Suicide?"
"No. Sorcery's like that."
"Better to wish your enemies dead. Damn. —And why didn't your sister know the goblins were coming? Why didn't she blast them with lightning or turn them to pigs or something? If she could call you from over-mountain, she wasn't helpless."
His caution had deserted him: he had asked too bluntly, perhaps, and he thought he might have angered the old man. But it was not a challenge. He honestly wanted to know why reasonable things had not happened, in a war of sorcerers.
Karoly frowned and finally said, very slowly, as if he were explaining to a child: "Because, master huntsman, do you forget? We aren't the only side in this war. The other side casts spells, too."
"So she couldn't just—send earlier?"
"So she couldn't think of it—at least not well enough to do a number of things all at once. It's often the little things that slip your notice—and sorcery doesn't leave tracks on objects that cause you problems, the way magic does. Mostly it's a gate unlatched, a moment of forgetfulness. Forgetfulness and looking past a thing are both deadly mistakes. The object on the shelf for thirty years, that you never think of being there, the thing you do every day, so you never remember whether you've done it or not, on one specific day. That sort of thing."
"Like this mirror that's so damned important? What does this mirror do? Why didn't the gran take it with her to Maggiar? Why did she leave it with your sister, where they could get at it?"
Karoly blinked and stared off across the room—looked back at him then as if he had only then accounted of his presence. "What did you say?"
"I said—why did the lady gran leave the mirror with your sister, if this tower wasn't safe from sorcery?"
Karoly blinked, shook his head, bit his lips a moment, frowning as if he were listening to something. Then he rose up, a shadow against the fire.
"Old man?"
"Find Tamas, do you heat? Find Tamas. Nothing's more urgent than that."
"And do what with him?" All his senses seemed foggy of a sudden, and the wound on the edge of hurting. "Shall we say, Excuse us, your goblin majesty, but we're not really interested in your war, and may we please go home? —I've been in bad situations, master wizard, I've been on battlefields and I've seen a city burn, but I didn't have a boy and a pony and a damned dog for an escort. And what do we do with the minor if we find it?"
Karoly pressed his fingers against his eyes as if he were fighting headache. "It's hard to think about. Ask it again, master huntsman."
"Why . . . ?" He must be falling asleep. He could not recall himself what must have caught Karoly's attention, god, he'd said it three times—did the man want it again? "What do I do? Where do I take me boys? If we get the mirror, what do we do with it? What can it do?" He remembered another piece of his question. "Why didn't the lady gran bring it with her?"