"Again."
"The damned mirror, master Karoly. What about it? Why didn't she take it to Maggiar? What's going on?"
Karoly looked . . . frightened, of a sudden, his eyes darting about the room. He's gone mad, Nikolai thought in distress. The old man's not sane . . .
Because he had never seen anyone do that in the middle of talking with someone, had never seen anyone take to watching something immaterial that flitted and darted and circled the room.
"Karoly?" Nikolai insisted.
Karoly stood up, and turned, a shadow between him and the fire as Karoly stared down at him. "Go to sleep," Karoly said, and suddenly Nikolai found his eyes so tired and the crackling of the fire so intense and so absorbing that he could not keep his wits collected. "Dammit, stop it," he protested—but his thoughts and his anger ran off in various directions, into memories of the road, the mountains, the woods and the pony. . . .
"The boy's in trouble," he dreamed that Karoly said. And Karoly said something more, concerning a place called Hasel, or where Hasel used to stand, but he could not hold onto the thought, not even enough to tell the old man what he thought of him. . . .
And Karoly for so many reasons deserved cursing.
9
LWI AMBLED TO A STOP IN THE TWILIGHT OF THE EVERLASTING woods, and it would have been oh, so much easier to give up and let the struggle go, Lwi refusing all reasonable urgings to go on. The morning had to come, and Tamas was so contused and so weary—but the easy way was the dangerous way, the easy way must always be suspect, master Karoly had always said—think twice and three tunes before you take the easy way.
Enough bones in this woods to make anybody think twice, he thought muzzily, and tugged at the reins and led Lwi's irregular steps on the straightest line he could walk among the trees, one step after the other, no wit left to reason what way he was going, except that everything ended, and that this night, like this woods, surely had an other side if he only persisted long enough in one direction, in one choice and not the dozen his mind wanted to skitter off into ...
It seemed to him at last that the woods was growing lighter ahead—like the moon at forest edge. He hoped then, that he had found the way out he was looking for, and the trees began to appear like shadowy pillars in some great hall, but he saw more trees beyond, and that light nearer and among them, as if the moon itself had come to rest in the very heart of the trees.
"Come here," a voice said softly, from everywhere at once. Ela, he thought at first, Ela's magic was talking to him, she had found the magical place she was looking for and she was calling him to her—and then he thought that the speaker seemed older than Ela: so readily a mind beset by spells began to apply ordinary judgments, as if such manifestations happened by mundane rules.
"Who are you?" he asked it.
"Why, the mistress of this woods, boy. What and who are you? Do you have a name? It seems I should know you."
The voice that had seemed to come from all about him came from his left this time; and he looked in that direction, seeing only massive trunks of trees.
"Tamas," he panted.
"What are you doing here?" The voice came from behind him now, the self-same voice, as if it were stalking him, but it was nowhere, when he turned unsteadily and looked. "What do you seek here, Tamas?"
"Are you a witch?" he asked, he hoped without a tremor in his voice.
"Of course," it said. It was behind him again. He turned back the way he had been facing and saw a shadow between the trees, a woman, he thought, with a cloak drawn tight about her. "Where are you going, Tamas?"
"Out of this woods," he said, and decided that if it was her woods, disrespect to her domain would never help his case. "I'm only going through, good lady. If you know the way out I'd be grateful."
"Why so anxious? Are you afraid?"
"I've no reason to be. I haven't taken anything, or touched anything." Those were the magical rules as gran's stories had them. He pulled Lwi to the side and took another direction. Or perhaps he dreamed he did. She appeared in front of him again, saying:
"But what's that at your side, Tamas? Is that yours?"
A chill went through him. He reached blindly toward the goblin sword, and pricked his finger on its spines. "I didn't think it was stealing."
"But this is my woods, Tamas. Everything in it is mine."
"I beg your pardon," he said. Breath came short, shameful panic. "I didn't think there was anyone to—" He drew Lwi in the other direction, and caught his foot painfully on a tree root. He recovered his balance and she was still in front of him.
"—anyone to care?" she mocked him.
"Are you a goblin?"
"Do I look like one?"
"I've only seen one, face to face. You don't look like him. But how should I know?"
She laughed softly, and beckoned him toward her. "Come inside. I'm not so stingy as that. And you don't look like a goblin, either. You look like a young man who's far from home."
For the first time he saw the dim outlines of a doorway behind her. Perhaps he had been looking so hard at her he had seen nothing else. But gran's stories had never encouraged him to accept such offers and he shook his head no. "Thank you, no, madam, I'm looking for someone."
"Have you lost someone? I can help you. There's little goes on in this woods that I don't know. —Oh, come in, come in, no sense to stand outside. The horse will be safe. Nothing harmful comes here."
It was dark, beyond that doorway. Everything about it seemed untrustworthy. "You can just tell me the shortest way out," he said, but she stooped and ducked inside— perhaps, he reasoned with himself, only to light a lamp or poke up a slumbering fire, and he might be foolish to object—but Ela had told him nothing of houses or cottages in this woods, especially not ones lit by a moon that, by his reckoning, ought not to have reached mid sky yet, a waning crescent by now, and not so bright as the light that filled this grove.
He did not want to go into that place—but what else might he do but wander on in the dark? he asked himself. Her invitation was the only choice he saw.
Much against his better judgment, he lapped Lwi's reins about a low live branch and went as far as the entrance, with no intention whatsoever of going inside until there was a lamp lit or a fire to show him what he was walking into. The air that wafted out to him had the chill and damp of a cave, but it looked on the outside like a peasant's cottage. He touched the rough stonework and it felt real enough, down to the grit of old mortar.
"Will you help me?" she asked from out of the dark.
"Madam, I would, but I'm sure you know your shelves better than I do. I'd only be in the way."
"Cautious boy." He heard further small movements within. "Afraid of me, are you?"
Less and less trustworthy. "Madam," he said uneasily, "I've seen nothing in this whole land but trouble." He heard Lwi tearing at the leaves behind him, and thought that if he had the sense his father hoped for in his sons he would walk away now, take Lwi in hand and keep going in his own slow and uncertain way, in hope of sunrise, eventually.
But of things he had met in this land, witches seemed thus far a power opposing the goblins—and light did spring up inside, a golden and comforting light, that cast a warm glow over an interior of curtains and shelves and domestic clutter—just the sort of things a woodland wise-woman might collect, birds' wings and branches and jars and jars of herbs and such. It reminded him acutely and painfully of master Karoly's study.