A shadow rushed at them, a shadow shaggy with brown hair burst through the fire scattering embers, and turned and hissed and spat.
"Krukczy!" Yuri breathed, while Krukczy brushed at the singes to his coat, and spat and fussed, the other side of the fire, in the dark. Zadny barked, once and sharply, and Yuri hushed him.
But the magic had stopped. "Damned troll's right," Nikolai said in a low voice. Master Karoly had gotten to his feet, turning slowly to survey the woods, the ruined wall, the dark along the stream. The other troll had shown up, too. It huddled in the reeds.
"Damn," Karoly said, flinging out a gesture of disgust, and paced a wide circle. "Damn, and damn, Ysabei, don't be contrary, do you hear, don't be contrary! Do you want the goblins to get away with it? Is that what you want? To spite me, is the queen going to get away with what she did to you? With what they did to Pavel. He's dead. He's there with you. So are others, Ysabei, for the Lady's sake figure it out!"
Yuri flinched, because master Nikolai was hurting him— and it seemed to him now that the sparks were getting lip on their own, that they were making a shape.
And the old man rounded on it. "Ysabei?"
The fire blew up and sparks showered and whirled in trails of glowing smoke, up and up and up, until it made a shape, or shapes, all rolling and twisting like snakes.
"Pavel," Karoly snapped, "get out of the way! Do you hear? You're not protecting her, you're in the way, do you hear me?"
A thread spun off, and snaked around and around the center shape.
"Ysabei!"
Sparks flew every which way, and of a sudden a great wind blasted through their midst. Sparks stung Yuri's face.and hands, and Zadny barked and growled at something as Nikolai let go his hold and swore.
Trails of glowing smoke spiraled all about the stream bank, raced along the walls, wove among the trees, and spun faster and fester. Nikolai had his sword, but there was nothing a sword could fight, only the wind, and of Krukczy and his friend there was no sign at all.
Then came a voice that might be a woman's voice, Yuri could not tell. It was everywhere, and terrible, and a face loomed up right in his face, saying, "Who are vow?"
He did not think he ought to answer. He stood still, while Zadny leaped and tried to bite it, but Karoly said sternly, "Ytresse! Is it Ytresse?"
The swirl broke apart and spun elsewhere, around and around and around the circle of firelight, and suddenly rushed from everywhere at once, up and up, until it made a shape.
"Ytresse!" Karoly shouted. "You've no business here. Begone! Ysabei! Urzula!"
"That's gran's name," Yuri exclaimed, twisting to see what Nikolai might know. "What does gran have to do with it?"
"Maybe she wants her right name," Nikolai muttered, which made no sense. Nikolai was looking at the fire, over which, when he looked back, a shape hovered, and changed, until it was a woman's face, and another woman's, and a man's, Yuri could not tell which—they blurred one over the other and the features changed like pictures in glowing coals.
"To the queen," the image said, in its double voice, "to the queen, to the queen—the mirror of what is and may yet be—to the queen—the mirror of the moon, change fixed unchanging—" It said more than that, but more and more voices chimed in until nothing came clear.
Karoly ventured close to the fire—scarily close, Yuri thought: he would not have done that; close enough to pick up a burning stick and trace patterns in the air, patterns which stayed in the eye like the sun at noon. Letters, Yuri thought. Writing, all tied together in knots. The letters turned around and around the way the smoke did, and then streamed, streamed, large as they were, right to Karoly's open hand. The smoke followed the letters and the sparks followed the smoke.
Then there was just the fire, and Karoly leaned on his staff and sat down, plump! where he was, head hanging, in front of a tame, quiet campfire.
"So?" Nikolai wondered under his breath. "So? Did it do anything?"
Good question, Yuri thought. Excellent question, master Karoly would say. Nikolai gingerly let him go and walked over to where master Karoly was resting. Yuri followed, with Zadny crossing repeatedly in front of him and jumping at his hands. "Go away!" he told Zadny, and grabbed him before he bothered master Karoty, who did not look at ail well.
"What was that?" Nikolai asked Karoly, and Karoly, with a deep breath:
"My sister. And Pavel. Together. Mostly. Ytresse. Ylysse. Lady Moon, what have I called?"
"So could you talk to her? Dammit, old man, could you find so much as where Tamas went? Did he go through the arch?"
"Oh, that they did," Karoly said, "that they most certainly did."
"Then let's go after them!" Yuri said. But no one listened. Nikolai muttered something about if Karoly had taken care of things the way he should, and Karoly said something about people needing to deal with what was instead of what could have been, and that sounded dangerously close to a fight.
"Stop arguing," Yuri cried, and to his surprise both of them stopped talking and looked at him. "My brother needs help," was all he could think to say. "If the ghosts won't help us, if magic won't, then we have to go there ourselves, don't we?"
"Not in the dark," Nikolai said.
"Not in the dark," Karoly agreed, and got up, leaning heavily on his staff, and began to draw a line in the dirt and in the grass.
Why? Yuri wondered. But it looked like what boys drew in the dirt when they were going to fight, or a line nobody was supposed to cross. And when master Karoly drew it, he thought, things had better think twice about crossing it. He went and brought Gracja closer, where she could be inside that line when it closed, and all the while Zadny kept at his heels.
All the way about a huge area, master Karoly went, drawing his line. And he came back and muttered something at the fire, which flared up and ran a tendril of smoke out and out and around and around them like a wall.
"We left the trolls outside," Nikolai said, "good riddance."
"They can come and go," Karoly said.
"Fine. Then what good is it? Trolls can come and go. Can ghosts?"
"Not if I can prevent it."
"Well, it's not damn much good at all, is it?"
"You didn't build it, master huntsman. Let's see your line, let's see you defend it."
"Don't fight!" Yuri cried, angry at both of them.
"Listen," Nikolai said, ignoring him, "one—one troll was useful. Two of them we don't need. Why are there suddenly two of them? What do we need with two?"
"Because Hasel had one," Karoly said. "Every civilized place has one."
"No place that I was," Nikolai said.
"Then you were never anywhere civilized! And they have them north of here, I have every authority for it."
"Bogles in the hayloft," Nikolai said.
"And the bath-house. And the grain-bins. And the fields and the milking-sheds and the cellars."
"Those aren't trolls."
"It's the same thing!"
"They haven't any tails! I never saw a polevik with a tail!"
"Have you ever seen a polevik?"
Evidently Nikolai had not. Nikolai sulked, and nibbed his arm and paced. Then he said, "So have we got any help from your sister, or what?"
"I don't know," Karoly said. "I don't damned well know, I'm not going to know until we go in there, it's not an ordinary woods."
"It's not an ordinary woods."
"It's not."
"Well, fine, what's not ordinary about it? Ghosts?"
"You might say," Karoly said, and Yuri sat down slowly and put his arms around Zadny. He had seen all of ghosts he wanted to see today. But if Tamas was the other side of that place, or lost in there, well, he was going, and he did not want to call attention to himself or raise any question between master Karoly and master Nikolai about him not going and one of them staying to watch him. There were times, if one was a boy, it was a good idea not to be noticed. So he let them quarrel with each other, and like Zadny, he just kept still.