You're wrong, he thought, forgetting the question. You're wrong, master goblin. One thing touches everything. The deer came to our woods. And the goblin queen doesn't rule everything.
"Here is your last chance," Azdra'ik said. "Hereafter— you have no retreat." With which, Azdra'ik moved off, with a suddenness that unnerved Lwi and made him jostle Skory.
In the next moment, round the shoulder of the hill a glistening horizon unfolded. He forgot what he was saying. He forgot everything he had had in mind to say, as he saw the starlit water cupped between the hills.
The lake, he thought, the place exactly, in every detail, that he had seen in his dreams.
The goblins in front of them rode down the steep incline toward the shore, fantastical shadows, they and their horses, against the star-sheen on the lake. They followed that lead, perforce, and other goblins rode down after them.
"The queen knows we're here," Ela said.
He felt nothing of the queen's presence. For a moment he felt not even the wind around them, and doubted what a moment ago he had thought he understood.
"Then do something," he said. The sense of urgency was suddenly overwhelming.
"Not yet," Elasaid.
"Not yet. Not yet. This is the place, Ela, this is the lake, this is where she lives. I saw it last night, I've seen it before ..."
"Everything here is what she wishes," Ela said. "Even we are. We couldn't have come here, else."
"No! Don't believe that! We're here. We're here because we decided, don't think anything else."
But the hill was the very hill that Yuri and the trolls had descended in his dream—the very shore on which they had vanished, and Zadny had come back again, terrified fend alone. . . .
Foolish fear. It was entirely unreasonable that Yuri or Zadny had been here. It was the sort of thing his own mind might conjure, out of his homesickness, that was ail, and the goblin queen had nothing to do with it.
But that meant his vision of Bogdan might be no different, and that there was no hope of finding him. Or—the thought came to him, and now he was not sure it was his own—if the mirror could make anything happen, if the queen could learn anything of his family none of them was safe ...
His confidence ebbed away from him as they drew rein on the very shore of the goblins' lake, and the horses, disrespectful of haunted places, dipped their heads to drink. He was terrified for his family, for his brother, for his land-But Ela's thoughts slipped in again, calm as the lake in front of them, on which the horses' intrusion sent out an irreverent ripple far across the mirrorlike surface—Ela had no attachments to anyone or anything, except, remotely, him—the goblin queen herself had seen to that; but not alone the queen. Her mistress Ysabet had left her no certainty, even about her own identity, but she had no one the goblin queen could threaten: everything she owned was hers. She stared into the dark, her hand above the mirror beneath her gown, he could feel it as if it rested against his heart, and said, so faintly he could scarcely hear:
"When I wish. That's my choice. When / wish. And no one can change that."
The lake reflected the sky and the sliver of moon so perfectly the mind grew dizzy searching for the seam of substance and image. One was the other. Up was down. Down was up. And the juncture between the two was the very heart of illusion. There, something said to him, there is the place.
It might have been the ghost that spoke. It might have been Ela. But the fear that stirred when Azdra'ik climbed down and walked along that reedy edge—that was most surely the ghost.
Treachery, it said. Treachery. Watch him. This is a potent place.
Treachery? he thought. Azdra'ik serves his own kind. Is that treacherous in him?
He slid down from Lwi's saddle and intended to lead Lwi with him; but a goblin offered to take the reins. He gave them into the creature's hand, thinking if there was duplicity now, if there was ill intent, it needed little violence to achieve its purpose. Either Azdra'ik's folk were rebels against their queen or they were the queen's most loyal subjects. And no goblin had moved against them yet.
Then he thought of what Azdra'ik had said, that his kind would be whatever the mirror made them—whatever the mirror could make them; and something about the fragment ... that as long as it existed ...
Ela had said and he had not understood until now. They were in the queen's realm, as close to the queen's absolute will as she could compel them or lure them. They were her enemies. They bore what the queen most dearly wanted— without wanting them to succeed. And in the goblin queen's sight, they were here with her permission, walking into her hands, himself, Ela, Azdra'ik and all of them . . .
Delicate, oh, so delicate, to be here within the queen's will in her view of the mirror, and not to be as the queen willed in their own. The whole world poised on the knife's edge of that distinction, precarious as a next and necessary breath, two reflections nearly identical—E!a with her hand poised above the mirror, and himself—
Himself, walking along the lake shore in Azdra'ik's tracks, with his sword at his side and intent against the queen in his heart.
He trod on bog. One boot leaked. He looked down before he thought, at water among cat-tail roots, reflecting his presence, and the dark reeds; and he had seen this exact thing before, so small and ridiculous a detail, but he had dreamed it, the exact same sight; and when he had looked up, in his dream . . .
—He beheld the face of the watcher on the shore, the armored figure whose face shifted with the changing moon. In his dream he had not recognized him—but of course it ^as Azdra'ik who faced him on the shore, Azdra'ik who, in that very image of his dream and this moment, turned his face from him, folded his arms and stood looking philosophically across the lake.
"Don't believe the quiet," Azdra'ik said. "The queen isn't waiting. This is her spell. This is her mirror. We're standing in it. The question is—will there be anything else? So far, our fledgling witch accepts what she sees."
"I've dreamed this," he said. "I saw my brother in the mirror. I saw him in the company of goblins like you. Is he possibly alive?"
"I'm sure I don't know."
"Don't you."
"Are we back to lies and liar?" Azdra'ik faced him, the exact figure of his nightmares, of his prophetic visions, he had no idea. "Not I, not I, lord human. Do you suppose I dealt with your ghostly tenant all those years ago ... for my queen's welfare?"
The ghost he had thought might be gone moved in him like the striking of a snake — there was blinding anger. He walked away without thinking about it, along the boggy edge, and on a saner uncertainty and a steadier breath, looked back, in possession of himself again, forewarned of its presence and sure, now, that the ripples he sent into the still lake were of his own making.
"Where will I find her?" he asked Azdra'ik.
"Find whom?"
"The queen, of course."
"You're quite mad. With that sword, with my dagger, will you attack her?"
"Yes."
Azdra'ik grinned, as if he had been waiting for that very thing, as if the dream were still proceeding, in the way of dreams, with a sense of necessity. "I'll take you there," Azdra'ik said, and, splashing across the boggy ground, gave orders to one and the other of his people.
Tamas looked toward Ela. She sat on Skory's back, Skory still as a painted image. Her hand was where it had been, above the mirror she wore beneath her gown; and he thought then—
Perhaps I should tell her what I'm doing.
But she's aware. And as for where I am in her mirror— I'm either, aren't I? I'm in the queen's mirror and I'm in Ela's, and when she looks, I'll be there—