Ela understood the dark around them, and he knew that— intimately. Ela was awake and aware of his awareness. All of which was too much for him. He dropped his head into his hands and wished that whatever was happening would be over tomorrow so that he need not spend another night like this one, nor another day after it, never, ever another day like this, if he died.
Ela was angry at his despair, and something more than angry. He looked up from his hands to find her bending to him, reaching for his arm, and he flinched from her, thinking how the goblins were witness, the goblins had already laughed at their apparent dalliance, and now he was humiliated in her eyes, in the helpless trembling that came over his limbs, that he did not want her to discover, but she did. She hovered by him and he sat there wanting to scream, wanting to laugh, wanting to cry—but she knew what had happened to him, that it was magic that would not let him rest, would never let him rest until he had done what magic charged him do—that was what gnawed at him, she had not understood it before now, and she was afraid of it breaking out ungoverned in him . . .
"Mistress said," she whispered, as if that made enough sense, and gripped his hand with a force unlikely in so small a girl. Ela had not slept either, Ela had been thinking—as one did, on the brink of magic, as one must, when so much was pent up inside trying to find its way out. She was feeling it. And she had no doubt now that he felt the same force running through his bones.
"I'm not a wizard," he protested in their strange, half-spoken conversation. It horrified him to think of sorcery breaking out in him like some loathsome plague; to think of Ylena's ghost shedding him like some outworn skin and acting in ways he could not predict, maybe against Azdra'ik, maybe against Ela, he could not understand Ylena's motives or its presence, except he had given the ghost the chance it wanted to escape the woods.
"Dammit, it's not me, Ela, it's not me, it's the witch, it's somebody named Ylena that I don't know about, I don't know what she'll do, I don't know what she wants but what she wanted when I was in her house—"
But he could remember the mirror beginning to crack, the dark and bright lines running everywhere across its face, and the light breaking out through the seams of the world. He could remember Azdra'ik being her lover, and he could still feel, as if it had been a moment ago, Ylena's lips on his fingers, on his mouth. He could remember her walking up beside him, and seeing white bone through her flesh, when Azdra'ik had bargained him free.
"I won't go tomorrow for some dead woman, Ela! I won't do it! I don't even know what we're going to do."
But he was lying, he knew he would go, it was quivering in his bones and his brain, and he had no command over it.
"Hush," she said, "hush."
She had touched where the mirror rested beneath her gown and it was suddenly worse, overwhelmingly worse. He caught her hand, too hard, and tried to be gentle, but he was shaking beyond his power to master his own strength. He thought of taking the mirror from her—he wanted the mirror in his own hand, because he did know what to do, and she did not.
He flung himself to his feet instead and staggered for balance, while goblin sentries looked their way in alarm-incongruously unsure whether it was reason for weapons or not; while Ela—Ela rose slowly and was angry with him, with the ghost, he could not tell, he could not at the moment tell which he was.
"Ela, I can't—can't touch you again, I daren't, I daren't be close to you tomorrow, you understand? That's what it wants. When we can't deal with it, it's going to turn on us! Stay away from me, don't touch me!"
Ela shook her head, and a quiet confidence came around her, about her. "It's mine to carry," she said, so firmly he could not himself disbelieve it. "Sit down. Sit down.'"
He did. How could one do other than what Ela wanted? He fell onto the stone and sat down, dizzy and confused, and Ela sank down by him, and took his arm in hers and held on to him.
"Shut your eyes," she said. "Trust me."
It was not easy. The ghost protested, wailed and flinched from Ela's touch. (Fool! it cried.) But he made himself do it, and found himself after a moment drawing easier breaths, and then a great, deep one, that seemed to come from the bottom of his soul.
Dangerous, he thought. Deadly dangerous, this trust he let her impose on him. Or the ghost thought so. He shut his eyes, on a welcome, vacant dark, and heard Ela say—or was it Karoly? —Take your time, Tamas, think, Tamas . . .
They had their supper at least, from Gracja's pack, no thanks to their foresight. The two of them sat down to eat it in the tangle of woods that did not seem willing to give them up, and Nikolai for one had diminished appetite. "Not even a belt knife on the boy," Nikolai said to Karoly, over stale bread and sausage toasted on a stick. "I should have drowned that dog when I had a chance. —It's burning."
"Shhh," master Karoly said sharply, and sat staring fiercely at the fire while the sausage on his side of the fire caught fire and sizzled and popped and cindered. Nikolai watched the sausage, for want of other visible result-watched it turn to cinder, and the oil on the stick catch fire, and the stick burn, and the end fall off in the fire.
Curious, he thought. One wondered what wizards did. Or thought. Or thought they thought. Meanwhile the boy was still lost, they had to get up somehow and keep going, and he ached from head to foot. He had pulled the pony uphill and down, the pony having, reasonably enough, no driving interest in where they were going, until finally Karoly could not walk any further, and the god knew he could not carry the old man on his back.
So they sat and burned a sausage to the powers of the woods, or whatever forces Karoly was engaging.
Finally Karoly blinked and said, not to him, he thought, "No. No. Dammit."
The air was cold for a moment. For a moment Nikolai was certain he felt a breath on the side of his neck, and the fire went down flat and sprang up again.
"I know that!" Karoly objected.
Fine, Nikolai thought, fine, now we're talking to the air.
He looked around uneasily, afraid of what he might see, but he found nothing and felt nothing.
Then Karoly leapt to his feet. "Get the horse!"
"I'm not—" —your servant, was what was first to Nikolai's mouth, but before he could even get it out, the old man was wandering off into the woods, into the dark without a care in the world for his safety or their weapons or the supplies in their packs.
"Damn!" Nikolai hurled his aching body into motion and stuffed their belongings in the pack, threw the pack on the pony and buried the fire in the earnest desire not to have the forest burning down around them.
The old man was out of sight. It was a crashing in the brush he followed, nigging Gracja after him in the dark for fear of his head if he tried to ride her through the woods. It was a breathless hill later that he even caught sight of Karoly, and onto the other side of it and downhill again before he overtook the old man.
Karoly knew he was there. Karoly spared him a glance and said something about the boys and trouble, but he knew that already. Something had persuaded Karoly of the right direction: Nikolai most earnestly hoped that was the case. The old man talked to ghosts and one of them had finally come through for him, but he could not see it, he could not tell.