"Well?" she asked, from inside, and beckoned to him. "Oh, come, come, boy, I don't bite."
He could see all the inside from the door. He entered cautiously. She was standing at her table, pouring from a pitcher into two wooden cups.
"I don't really think I need anything," he protested, because he had no desire whatsoever to eat anything or acquire any obligations of hospitality with a witch. But she set one cup into his hand and waved him toward a cushioned ledge, settling herself at the far end of that small nook, a very proper witch, very—beautiful, he decided, which bore not at all on whether he should trust her, of course, but she did not look wicked. She had put off the dark cloak, that was not black, but deep, deep red. Her gown was embroidered and fringed and corded and tasseled with intricate work of black and colors, of a fashion both foreign and strange—in fascination with which, he took a larger sip than he had planned, and felt the liquid go down like fire.
"Are you honestly a witch, lady?"
"Honest people have certainly called me that. And for your question, my question: What are you doing in my woods? Was it a way out you wanted—or were you looking for someone? Have you decided which?"
Perhaps she had the power to help them. Perhaps he had grown confused in his wandering. "Looking for someone. Who probably found the way out." Perhaps witches all knew one another. The tower was not that far away. He took the chance. "Do you know a girl named Ela? She came from Tajny Straz."
"From Tajny Straz. And don't you know these hills are a dangerous place?"
"Madam—" Words failed him. Everything he had seen came tumbling about him, with too much vividness and too little reason. "Are you at all acquainted with Ela's mistress? You are neighbors. And I know it's a dangerous place. The goblins killed her."
"A sad business. Yes, I'm aware. But that still doesn't answer why a young man is wandering these hills looking for a young lady from the perilous tower. I could wonder why I should answer his questions or tell him what I know—which might be something useful to him or not. How could I tea, if he won't tell me what he has to do with Tajny Straz and if he won't tell me the truth of what he's seeking?"
"We came to stop the goblins. They drove the deer and they burned the woods and when we came to see why, they ambushed us..."
"Did they? Why would they do that?"
"I've no idea." He held the cup locked between his fingers and wanted no more of what it held. His head was spinning and his thoughts fell over one another. "A girl is lost somewhere in this woods. I have to find her ..."
"Poor boy." She got up with a whispering rustle of cloth and taking the cup from his fingers, set both cups on the table nearby. "Poor boy, you've hurt your hand—you've bled all over the cup."
"I'm dreadfully sorry. ..."
"Oh, let me see." She began searching among the jars on the shelves, when he was only thinking how he could gracefully retreat. She found something, brought it back and reached for his hand. "Come, come," she said, and he felt like a fool, hesitating like a child with a cut finger—he truly did not want her to touch his hand, but she insisted.
"The sword did this. A wicked thing, and maybe poisoned." She carried his finger to her mouth while he was too confused to pull back or to protest her licking the blood off— quite, quite muddle-headed, then, and a little dizzy, as the pain stopped, and nothing seemed so comforting as her lips against his hand. "There," she said, edging closer, pressing his hand in hers, "isn't that better? Perhaps I can help you find your young lady. I do have my ways. And I can show you so many things, if you only pay some little token—the magic needs that, it always needs that, if someone asks a question."
He had not remembered about witches and payments. He regretted coming inside in the first place, or drinking anything, or letting her lips touch his hand. "I think—I think you never answered me—who you are, whether you know where Ela went.
"I don't. I can learn, ever so easily. Only I have to have something from you to make it happen. And you don't look to have any gold about you. What if my price were a kiss? Would that be too much to ask?"
He had never—never kissed any woman but his mother and his cousins: the truth was, he had never had the remotest chance, and her offer flung him into confusion. He was not courting some maid in Maggiar, he was sitting on a ledge in a strange little shelter with a witch who, he suddenly feared, was edging her way to more than a kiss. She might ask things he by no means wanted to do with a witch and a stranger. But he might be wrong about her intentions, and others were relying on him for their lives. So he leaned forward—it was not far—and paid her what she asked.
Her arms slipped about him. She held him that way and looked him closely in the eyes, laughing gently. "Oh, come, come now, was that a kiss?"
He had to allow it was not the way Bogdan would have done it. Certainly not Jerzy, or Nikolai. So he made a more honest try, but that did not satisfy her either: she made that kiss linger into two, and three, wandering from his lips to his neck, at which point he grew confused, what he should do, what he should agree to, what was right or wise to agree to or whether help that might be bought with dishonor could be relied on at all.
But what honor was it, if it let Ela go lost or goblins come at his land or his brother die without any justice for it?
She undid a buckle at his collar. He tried to think what to do, but when he shut his eyes to think he saw a dark tower, surrounded by goblin armies, saw war, men and goblins, a queen against a queen, not knowing how he knew that. He saw the great mirror cracked, and all the world rippled and changed like a reflection in water. Images flitted by, true or false, or what had been or what would be, he had no comprehension. What was happening in this world and the other tumbled event over event in confusion: he saw Lady Moon, in thinnest crescent, shimmering on a mountain lake. A goblin warrior stood on its dark and reedy shore, a knight whose countenance changed from fair to foul with the waxing and waning of the moon's reflection, with never a sun between.
That goblin figure turned and stared at him, the image of the goblin in the cellar, a hoped-for rescue turned to threat. Fair turned foul and fair again, not a human beauty, but beauty all the same, constantly changing with the reelings of the moon across the night.
But the shadow came across that goblin face and that armored body like the passing of a cloud across the moon, and when that shadow was full the body seemed broader, more familiar to him. The whole attitude was an echo of someone he knew—god, he knew with a pang at his heart, even before the cloud drifted on and the moon showed him Bogdan's pale face, remote, as a stranger to him. Slowly Bogdan began to turn his head, the very image of that creature in the cellar. He sought to escape that moment that their eyes should meet—but he could not turn away, not though his brother's eyes were dead and dark; and after that single glance Bogdan began to walk away, along the shore, into the dark.
"Wait!" he cried, and his voice echoed in vast halls that were suddenly about him, a structure of palest green stone and deepest black—he saw goblins standing about him, tall and grim, in the vaulted hall where the goblin queen issued her decrees. He saw her dusky face, dreadful and beautiful at once, with eyes of murky gold. Her braids were bound with silver, her necklaces were silver and gold, her long-nailed fingers were ringed and jeweled, and her arms were braceleted from wrist to elbow. "Well," she said, with that lisp that fangs made in a voice, and stared right into his soul. "Well, well, a venture against me. How nice."
"No," he cried, as she lifted a long-nailed hand and beckoned him closer, closer, with the force of magic. His body longed to go. He saw that Bogdan already stood there, among the dead-eyed courtiers. "It's all right," Bogdan said. "You've nothing to fear."