"Gone," that one said. "Stay with us!"
"Gone after them?" He had not intended argument. It leapt out.
"Stay!" that one said sharply. Lwi and Skory were surrounded by goblin horses and he had his hands full with Lwi. He dared not break from the group and had nowhere to go if he should. Ela stayed beside him, clinging to the saddle, casting fearful looks behind, and with her hand reaching fitfully after the amulet she did not touch. Reassurance, he thought, the possibility of reinforcement ... overwhelming temptation: (Take it, from her, something said to him. She won't refrain. Something will happen and she'll resort to it, and that's fatal, that's death, Tamas ...)
But before the horses had run out their wind, before they had even cleared the area of the brushfire, goblin riders came up from behind them through the smoke, and Azdra'ik was with them, frowning and angry.
"Keep going," Azdra'ik said, but Lwi and Skory could not stand the faster pace, and fell farther and farther behind as they went, as the trail climbed up and up among rocks likely for ambush. Tamas was not sure whether all the riders in their party had come forward with Azdra'ik, leaving no rear guard. For all he could tell enemies might be chasing after them and their group might be in full rout.
But at the crest of the hill and above the smoke, the goblins abruptly stopped, their horses milling about in confusion and turning and snapping at each other in the way of their kind.
Lwi slowed to a walk. Tamas let him. Ela rode beside him in silence as then- winded horses climbed, up and up the loose earth that claws had scored before them. Something was wrong with the sky, that was—Tamas' first impression-some dreadful fire, far worse than the last, shadowing the eastern sky with a black pall of smoke.
But the higher they rode the darker it looked, until they came cautiously among the goblin riders and had a look over the ridge. The daylight stopped in the valley, simply stopped, and the rest was a wall of night, a division drawn in sun and shadow across the end of the valley, and across the hills. Looking into it, the sky was pitch black, the more stark for its touching the daylight where they were. Tamas blinked, and had an impulse to rub his eyes, although there was no wavering in the sight, no compromise with his outraged senses.
"Lord Sun," he breathed—but lord Sun did not rule yonder. Other powers did.
"Every day," Azdra'ik said, riding close to them, "it grows. Lately it has grown by valleys and hills. This is the queen's power advancing. This is what you attack, young witch, do you see it? Are you still confident, or will you retreat?"
"Retreat where?" Ela asked faintly. "Where could we go to escape this?"
"You might delay it. Go make young witches. Go make someone brave, or stronger, or wiser in choosing the hour."
Ela shot him a hard, pale-faced look. "It's mine."
God, Tamas thought in despair: it sounded like the old, the unrepentant Ela, Ela who could do anything, and they were done, if that was her whole answer.
"Ela," he said.
"He won't have what he wants," Ela said. "He can't make up for stealing it, the queen won't forgive him—"
"That's not what I want, young fool! I want this thing taken away from here!"
"For how long, ng'Saeich? For how long do you think you can go on hiding in the hills and looking for charity?"
"No charity!" Azdra'ik declared, clearly offended.
"I remember a night," Ela said, and Azdra'ik glared.
"It was the collection of a debt. A favor done. There was no charily, ng'Ysabela."
"Mistress fed you. Mistress said to me later that you were harmless. I didn't believe it. I still don't."
Azdra'ik swept a bow from the saddle. "I'm ever so gratified, young witch." And with a cold stare: "But what other judgments are you fit for? Lady Moon, wait at least for your own maturity!"
Ela shook her head and shook it a second time. "That," she said, gazing out toward the dark," is that waiting? Where is it going from here and how fast? Or is she content?"
The goblins murmured together; and Azdra'ik grimly nodded and slid down from the saddle. "Down and rest," he said, and said something to his people, some of whom rode back down the hill.
"Itra'hi," Azdra'iksaid. "Sniffing about us. If you don't make the point with them, they'll not take you seriously. And one cannot trust them. —Get down, get down, take a rest. Closer than this—there's no safety."
"Should have let the forest have them," the one nearest muttered, and Azdra'ik:
"Worse will have them. They already belong to her."
"How long a rest?" Tamas asked. There was not a bone of him that did not ache, as he slid down and his feet touched the ground.
Azdra'ik's hand landed unwelcomely on his shoulder, and he looked the goblin full in the face, expecting some foul trick; but Azdra'ik's grip had no force this time.
"As long a rest as the queen affords us," Azdra'ik said in a low voice. "As long as that comes no closer. Personally, I don't expect a dawn."
He stared at the goblin, wondering—too many things to keep collected. His exhausted thoughts scattered, and beneath them a crawling of the flesh insisted, Don't trust him, don't believe in him, don't take his reassurances.
"Mind," Azdra'ik said, "the young witch holds all our lives." He did not know what Azdra'ik expected him to say. But Azdra'ik had not let him go. "A dangerous business," Azdra'ik said in a low voice. "Affections for a sorceress."
"She isn't," he said. And he heard the other word then. Absurd. "And she doesn't. She hasn't. She won't. Ela hasn't a shred of romance."
"Her opponent is darkest sorcery." Azdra'ik lifted the unwelcome hand on his shoulder, on the way to sitting on the rock beside him. "Sorcery that has less romance than you can imagine. Ask your guest."
"I've no wish to ask her anything! God ... I want free of her!"
"She does devil you, then, does she?"
A breath. A difficult breath. Images and fears crowded him close. "Small freedom you won me."
"I bargained for your life, man. The bargain you made with the ghost was your own folly, and damn your prideful foolishness."
"I made no bargain with her!" But he thought of what he had done, paying the kiss the witch had asked, and of what he had been willing, then, to do. It was only from time to time and afterward that he had changed his mind and wanted his own life back.
"Listen. Long ago, long ago, man, when Ylena was in mortal flesh, she came to us. Granted, we have our moral faults—"
That was worth at least a bitter laugh.
"I say, our moral faults," Azdra'ik persisted. "Not far different from those of men. Among them contentiousness. And greed. And intolerance. We lost our place in the world— we were driven from it. If our queen took any means no matter how desperate to restore that to us, there were those who would do any work she required. Ask me tonight, when there's leisure for such things. But meanwhile—meanwhile . . . offer the young witch no choices, no distractions of your evidently potent charms—"
He started to object, but Azdra'ik's long-nailed finger lifted before his nose.
"Hear me," Azdra'ik said. "Hear me, or damn her and all of us. If the young witch with that fragment in her hands, with the queen at war with her, has one single thought of compromise, she will worse than die. If she spares a moment for interests other than her own, she will lose everything she has and might have, that is the war she was fitted to fight, that is the war she has undertaken, and that is the enemy she faces, do you comprehend? Sorcery cannot be half-hearted, it cannot think with a heart, it simply has to be the only answer she affords. If we are extremely fortunate, we may still be in possession of that fragment tomorrow and the sun may yet rise on this hill. But if you distract her young and eminently scatterable wits—"
Lwi was pulling at him at the other hand. Lwi jolted him with a butt of the head, one more irritance than he could abide in patience. "Her young and scatterable wits have outwitted you, m'lord goblin: she is where she chooses."