C. J. Cherryh - The Goblin Mirror

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THE GOBLIN MIRROR

Sale of this book without a front cover may be unauthorized. If this book is

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destroyed'' and neither the author nor the publisher may have received payment

for it.

A Del Rey Book

Published by BaUantine Books

Conventions. Published in the United States of America by BaUantine Books, a

division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by

Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 92-53171

ISBN 0-345-38476-8

Manufectured in the United States of America

First Hardcover Edition: October 1992 First Mass Market Edition: January 1994

A WITCH WIND, COUNTRY FOLK CALLED THE SUDDEN STORM

that plunged Maggiar from autumn into winter, that stripped the colored leaves

from forest and orchard all in a night. Behind it came an ice wind, edged with

sleet and bitter cold— but that same winter brought a wealth of game the like

of which the old folk had never seen. Hunters trekked home over the drifts

with their pack ponies laden with meat and furs to keep old and young well-fed

and warm; and with ample stock besides for trade to the west: deer and badger

skins, marten and fox and ermine, from a plenitude of game that never seemed

diminished. By midwinter deer had stripped the forest branches low enough to

reach, foxes raided middens and storehouses, and the hunters could not shoot

or trap them fast enough. Deer took to farmers' fruit trees. Boar rooted after

winter stores, and marten and ermine hunted right up under the porches of

Maggiar's isolated steadings. The old folk said: It was never like this

before.

Behind the deer and the marten came the wolves, well-fed, content, inclined to

lie about at first, but more and more of their voices sang in the mountain

heights, songs cold and keen as the winter wind, that set folk looking

anxiously toward the shutters at night and asking themselves was the door

latch snug enough and had they barred all the sheds?

At last and as suddenly came the melting wind, a dark nighttime storm that

rattled doors and windows, pelted the trodden snow with mingled sleet and

rain, and turned the fields overnight to hedge-rimmed lakes. Farmers slogged

about their spring chores in mud-weighted boots, attempted

2 THE GOBLIN MIRROR

planting in the high spots, and swore that they had never seen

so quick a thaw or so much flooding.

In that season hunters began to find strange tracks in the woods, and spied

shadowy movements flitting at the edge of the eye—a creature that left

beatiike prints, walking upright. The forest took on a dangerous feeling then,

and the Old Folk whispered that a troll might have moved in. As yet no one had

seen it, but the woodcutters and the charcoal burners cast anxious looks over

their shoulders as they worked; while in lord Slant's keep, hunters old and

young gathered and whispered in somber tones. Lord Stani's wizard, Karoly,

wore a longer and longer look, casting the bones often and listening with his

ear to the stone of the walls and the earth of the courtyard. Lord Stani asked

Karoly what he heard in the earth, and the hunters asked. At one such asking,

Karoly only muttered that many things seemed blessings that were not, and that

father Sun and mother Earth never gave so liberally without a cost.

A deer was found at the forest edge totally blind and thin as a wraith—hunters

killed it out of pity and let it lie and rot. That, too, they whispered about,

unsure why that single death so disturbed mem—but the truth was, once pity had

afflicted them, a sense of guilt crept in, and made them think twice about the

pelts stacked so high in the storehouses. It made them wonder for the first

time whether luck that came so easily could be wholesome, or whether there

might be something wrong in what they had gained too cheaply—as if they had

plundered what was sound and left what was lame to breed and increase.

Master Karoly waked the watch one midnight swearing that he smelled something

burning—not cookfires or rushlights, but something like old straw set ablaze.

The watch failed to smell it, the night scullions railed to find it in the

kitchens, and no more discriminating nose they roused could smell it at all.

Still, when a wizard insisted, it seemed only prudent to wake the lord and

lady, so before all was done, lord Stani had his men and lady Agnieszka her

women searching the keep from tower to deepest cellars, while ser-

[ C. J. Cherryh 3

s vants scoured every outbuilding and haystack inside the walls *« and

nearby for any hint of smoke.

But nothing turned up, after the hold had been in uproar

half the night. There was bleary-eyed grumbling among the

,' people at breakfast that their wizard might be confused in his

f old age—complaint that fell silent once Karoly came drag-

; gling into the hall, haggard and worried, and begging their

:. pardons for his foolishness. Somber looks followed his dis-

\t tracted passage through the room, and folk whispered how

'-'- wizards sometimes had the Sight, though Karoly had never

had it: the bones gave him merest hints about the future.

In one rainy mid-afternoon soon after, Karoly asked a passing serving maid

what child was hurt; but the maid heard no crying child at all. Karoly stopped

more than one servant, upstairs and down, distressedly asking did they not

hear some child? And that report sent more chills through the keep. A ghost,

some muttered. Ill luck, the servants began to say. The cooks obsessively

feared fire, and parents kept an anxious eye to their children.

"What do you see?" lord Stani asked Karoly that night. ' 'Is there some

danger—of fire? Of flood? Or is it some other thing?" There had been peace in

lord Stani's land for all his lifetime, except the ordinary bear trundling out

of the forest after easier pickings, and once, twenty years ago, an incursion

of bandits. So lord Stani asked the questions the hunters had asked, as a man

who had known peace all his life, and feared now, as the hunters feared, that

his run of luck might have been too much and too long. "I need leave," Karoly

said for reply, "to visit my sister over the mountains, and , ask her what she

sees. My dreams worry me."

Lord Stani (the servants who witnessed it reported so) asked very cautiously,

"So what do you dream, Karoly?" :. Karoly was silent a moment, gazing at

the wall. Finally ,-- he said, "Wizards' dreams are all true and all

treacherous; : and if we knew always what we dreamed, we'd be no wiser. \

I put no trust in my dreams. I beg you, let me go." ; • No one had known

Karoly had a sister—that news flew | quickly about the halls, likewise

Karoly's saying that,

4 THE GOBLIN MIRROR "Something drove the deer." The rumor of the hour said

that lord Stani was reluctant for his old tutor to leave, especially now, but

saw no way of stopping him, none, at least, that Karoly would regard. It was

foolhardy to ignore Karoly's advice, that was the consensus on the scullery

stairs and in the smithy: some disaster boded, that Karoly sought to head

off at its source.

So Stani called his two elder sons, Bogdan and Tamas, and bade them take

Karoly through the mountains and bring him home again as soon as possible.

"It may be an old man's notion," lord Stani told them, "or it may be

foresight—he always was wise before. Don't let his horse throw him, don't let

him go cold or hungry— and above all bring him back in one piece. Woodcraft

was never his best point; and he has no seat at all. If his horse so much as

caught wind of a bear, he'd be afoot with it."

The brothers laughed, restless with the spring rains and delighted with the

proposal. Bogdan said, "So much worse for the bear," and Tamas, the younger,

said, "We'll take good care of him, papa." No one of their generation had ever

ventured over the mountains. They had distant cousins and uncles in that land,

they supposed. They knew of places like Krukczy Straz and Hasel, Burdigen, and

Albaz, where their grandmother had had brothers and sisters—a land, the gran

had told them, of beautiful waterfalls and tall pine forests. They knew all

the names of them: the land over-mountain was their own land of once upon a

time, and to ride out on their father's orders, to find this unguessed and

surely witchly sister of master Karoly's—for the rescue of Maggiar, if the

.rumors were true—all this, and to have a winter full of their own tales to

tell when they got safely back again? This was the chance of their young

lives.

Their mother took a far dimmer view of matters. Lady Agnieszka went storming

to lord Stani's chambers and servants pressed ears against the doors and

listened wide-eyed to the shouting inside for half an hour; while the youngest

of lord Stani's three sons, Yuri, aged fourteen, declared to his friends that

Bogdan as heir should by no means put himself

C. J. Cherryh 5

in danger; he should be the one to ride with Tamas—which opinion he bore to

lord Stani, himself, hard on his mother's icy retreat.

But to no avail. Lord Stani informed his youngest son in no uncertain terms he

was the sacrifice to his mother's good graces, the piece held in reserve

against fate and accident; lord Stani said no, and no, and no.

After which, Nikolai, the master huntsman, his feet propped in front of the

kitchen fire, told the pastry cook, "Trolls, that's what it is. Truth is, I'd

rather not have the boys along. And come to that, I'd rather not have the old

man. Send us up in the mountains and let us singe a few hides, I'd say, and

leave the youngsters out of it. But the boy's of that age. ..."

Bogdan, he meant. Bogdan, who was lord Stani's own image, dark haired and

broad shouldered, the first in every game and every hunt; lord Stani foresaw

the day Bogdan would be in his place, and wanted his heir to gain the

levelheadedness and die experience of border keeping a lord ought to have.

Bogdan should see the land over-mountain and maybe, lord Stani had confided it

to Nikolai in private, come back with a grown man's sober sense, less temper,

and less interest in girls and hunting.

As for the younger son, Tamas, just past his seventeenth winter—shy, too-

gentle Tamas, prettier than any girl in the keep—the boy was a fine hunter, if

he could hit anything he'd tracked; a fine bowman, against straw targets; a

serious, silent lad who would sit for an hour contemplating an antheap or

picking a flower apart to find out what was inside. A little slow-witted,

Nikolai summed him up, a little girlish, decidedly different from Bogdan's

headlong rush at life. And this was the boy lord Stani sent in his charge,

likely to hunt trolls?

Because that was what was really behind this flood of game, lord Stani himself

had said as much to Nikolai when he had charged him pick the men for the

escort and see that both the boys and the wizard got back with a whole skin.

"Don't speak of trolls," the pretty cook said, making an averting sign.

6 THE GOBLIN MIRROR

"I'll bring you a tail," Nikolai said. He was courting the cook. And not

lying: a troll-tail he had taken, once upon a time, and given it to a silly

maid he had been courting then. But Zofia was horrified. The kneading of bread

had grown furious.

"You keep those boys safe," Zofia said.

' 'Keep Tamas safe. That's why m'lord sent young wander-wits: to put a rein on

master head-foremost Bogdan."

Zofia frowned. The dough changed shape and folded again, hi Zofia's strong,

floury hands, a fascinating process. ' 'The scullions heard a thing hi the

eaves last night,'' Zofia said. "Skritching and scratching and beating with

its wings. And master Karoly said yesterday—he was sitting just where, you

are, having a sip of tea—he said we should do without mushroom picking, not

send the lasses out, not go in the woods. And I says, Why? What's out there?

and he says, Just don't be sending the youngsters beneath the shade of the

trees. Why? I says again. Is it trolls? And he says—he takes this long sip of

tea, like he's thinking—but he says something odd, then, like: There might be

a troll, but it didn't want to come here.—That's just the way he said it. What

do you make of it?"

"That it's exactly what I said to m'lord upstairs, a fat summer in the high

country. A fat summer, a bad winter, too many deer. They strip the woods and

they're straight for the orchards, it's as simple as that."

"And the trolls?"

"The wolves and the trolls, they go where the pickings are. But now that the

bears are waked up—" Nikolai re-crossed his feet on the bench, so the fire

warmth reached the sole of his other foot. "They 'II put master troll back up

the mountain in short order. Then they 'II be rattling the shed doors and

sifting the midden heaps—so you can look to hear trolls under every haystack,

half of them with cubs and all in a bad humor.''

' 'It's not lucky to make fun.'' Zofia licked a floury thumb and made a

gesture toward the witch-knot on the rafters, garlic and barley stalks. "You

watch those two boys, you

C. J. Cherryh 7

hear, don't you be letting them do something foolish, and don't you and Karoly

do it, or the lord and lady won't let you back again.—You!" Thump of the dough

on the table, and a scullion froze in his tracks. "Fetch the milk upstairs,

and don't be slopping half of it.—I swear, the help is all scatter-wits this

evening."

But Nikolai, thinking about the lord's two sons, said, half to himself, "The

boys with trolls is one thing. Over-mountain is another. See his sister, the

old man says. Why hasn't he seen his sister before this, is what I'd like to

know, and where did he get a sister and what's he to do with her of a sudden?

He's never been back over-mountain that I know. And I ask lord Stani about

this sister business and he says Karoly insists and we should go."

"Old Jan says he'd come and go over-mountain."

"Upon a time, you mean."

"When he and the old lord was pups, long before you or I was bora." Another

folding in, another cloud of flour. "Old Jan was saying how Karoly was always

out and around, in those days, off in the woods, up in the hills ... the old

lord, too—or least as far as old Jan remembers. So there could be a sister

over-mountain, could be a horde of sisters, for all anybody knows. And how did

the old lord find the lady gran? We all know she at least come from there."

The dough thumped down onto the table, whump. "Lady gran used to come down

here and stir the pots herself. 'More salt,' she'd say, and me mum and she'd

be going round and round about the pepper and the spice. . . ."Whack. "She

used to get herbs from Karoly. Karoly'd go pick at the right of the moon and

the old lady'd say, Which side of the tree did you dig it from? And Karoly

would say, snippishlike, The right one. I 'member that, plain as plain, I'd be

stirring the pot, me standing on a step stool, I was so little, and they'd be

arguing. And me mum said I shouldn't listen, the old lady .had strange

practices, that was what me mum called it. *Strange practices.' The lady gran

died and they still hang charms on the grave. Don't they?"

It was true. And it was certainly not the first time Nikolai

THE GOBLIN MIRROR

had heard witchery and the lady gran joined in one breath— along with the

observation that Karoly had been the guiding hand behind the young lord, Stani

having been about Yuri's age at the time the old lord went over his horse's

neck and never walked again—and the lady gran had had her way with the land

until lord Stani was toward twenty and nine, with the god only knew what

arrangements (or doings) between her and Karoly.

"Don't they?"

"They do that," he said. Women's business and witches. It was bad enough

Karoly wanted to consult a witch: Nikolai wanted no part of the lady gran's

business. The lady was in her grave and stayed there, thank the god; trolls

were enough trouble for any man.

Cook gave a shake of her head and mounded the dough into a bowl, threw a towel

over it. "Over-mountain isn't where I'd like to be right now, with strange

doings and things flying about a' night. Ask yourself what was trying to get

in with the scullions last night, eh?"

The boy was clumping up the steps with the milk pail. He came in white feced

and hasty, all ears. Nikolai looked at the boy, who set the pail down and

said, "Is that all, dame Zofia?"

' 'Be off,'' cook said. And when the door was shut:' "They don't want to go

into the barn, don't want to go to the sheds in the dark. I don't rightly

blame them."

"There's no troll in the courtyard. They don't go where there's this many

people.''

"If they eat them one by one there's not that many people, is there?" Cook's

voice sank to a mutter. "I don't like the store room meself, and that's the

truth. Karoly said keep all the latches tight. And what did he mean by that;

and what was that smell of burning, I'd like to know. So he's running off to

over-mountain, to the lad> gran's relatives as well as his, if you ask me—and

lord Stani sending the boys with him ... at whose asking, I want to know. His

lady certainly didn't want it; and lord Stani wasn't listening to her at all,

that's what the maids heard come out of that room.''

C. J. Cherryh 9

That was what the men were saying, too, down in the courtyard and in the

stables and the barn. The grooms were saying other things, how the barley

sheaves above the stable door had fallen down in the wind, the doors had come

open, and something had scared the horses last night, the same maybe as had

scared the scullions.

Or maybe the wind had been what had them all upset. The old man smelted smoke

and heard lost babies, rumors of it traveled from village to farmstead, and

you could stay in the kitchen listening to tales until all the world outside

seemed dark and evil.

But Nikolai had a lonely walk out to the tower tonight to reach his quarters,

and on the way up the twisty, narrow tower stairs, where the light he carried

up from the doorway made rippling giant shadows on the stones, he found

himself thinking about the upstairs shutters and wondering if he'd left them

latched or open on the night.

Foolish notion. An open window had never bothered him before. There was

nothing to fear—nothing that wouldn't have a better chance at him tomorrow

night, when they were sleeping under the stars. But there was something about

old piles of stone like this, that had seen lords and servants come and go,

that they accumulated shadows and odd sounds, and creaks and sighs of wind;

you could well expect to meet the lady gran or old lord Ladislaw on the

stairs—and it was no good thing to think of, on the eve of going troll-hunting

and wizard-shepherding: the lady gran might be safe in her grave these last

ten years, but he had to open the door of his room and probe the shadows, a

grown man, for shame! who did not like to find the shutters open on the night

and the light blowing precariously in his hands.

He went and pulled the shutters closed. In that instant the lamp blew out and

the door slammed shut, thump! plunging the room into dark and echoing through

the tower like doom. It actually took courage to turn again and calmly latch

the shutters, to remember his way blind through the dark of his own chambers,

feel after the door, and open it.

A very little light came up from below, not enough to light

THE GOBLIN MIRROR

the steps. He found the lamp on the table and felt his way downstairs again to

light it—not the first time the door had played that rotten trick, with the

wind coming out of the south; not the first time he had trekked down the steps

to relight the lamp—but he had never had a heart-thumping panic like this,

god, not since he was nine years old, and he'd dared me bogle in the hay-loft

that the neighbor boys refused to face.

It had known better than to meddle with him, and fled with a great rustling of

straw and a clap of wings.

He lit the lamp. He climbed the stairs and on that last turn half-feared that

the shutters in his room would be open again, or that something would be

waiting hi the shadows, or behind the door. That was the price of listening to

stories, and he was a fool to think about them. Zofia was probably snug hi her

own bed, forgetful of all her notions.

But he thought not. He somehow thought not, tonight. And even with the

shutters shut and the lamp burning bright, he longed for the morning, when

they could be under the sky and out from under vaults of stone and memories.

Trolls and wolves isn't all that's wrong, he thought to himself, suddenly, for

no good reason. He remembered over-mountain, at least the glimpse of it he had

had from the heights, the year of the troll. He remembered a green land under

a strangely golden sky, and a feeling he had had then of secrets beneath that

green and witchcraft thick as leaves in that country. He had come from the

north, followed the soldiers at fifteen, through wars and famine and the

doings of wizards and witches—but that place had had a spooky feeling to it

even that long ago. He had closed his mind to it, then: put away the memory

until it was nudged by a rattling shutter and talk of the lady gran.

Karoly? Karoiy was a dabbler, a pot-wizard, a weather-witcher. Think of Karoly

and you thought of wheaten charms and jars and jars of powders for toothache

and the gout. Karoly was sunny fields and winter firesides—

(But hi the lady gran's day Karoly had gone off for days on end, that was so.

One wondered where. Or why. Assig-

C. J. Cherryh n

nations with some sunburned country lass? Karoly was a man. And the lady gran—

)

The lady on the stairs, dreadful in the lamplight—she had not been old. Her

hair had been black. He remembered it as black, the year he had come to

Maggiar. ' 'Whose are you?'' she had asked. "Whose are you, pretty? And what

are you doing on my stairs?''

Shutters rattled with the wind. Forget the pretty cook, her pastries and her

stories. Forget the lady gran, the stairs and the long-ago dark. Lord Stani's

master huntsman longed for sky above him, for the sighing of leaves—the forest

had no memory such as stones acquired, when men piled them up and dwelled in

them and made walls and bolts to keep themselves safe from each other inside.

THE WHITE BITCH HAD WHELPED IN THE NIGHT—SOFT

nosed, was nudging the newborn pups against her belly to nurse in the morning

chill.

No few of them were yellow. Yuri was quick to point that out; and Tamas rubbed

the ears of the gawky yellow hound that thrust its head under his arm to have

a look at the puppies: Zadny, they called the ugly stray, who desperately

wanted to please, who was good-tempered and keen to do what a body wanted.

Somebody had lost a fine dog, in Tamas* estimation, the day Zadny had slipped

his leash: he had arrived in the ice wind, starved and foot-sore, refusing

every hand but Tamas' own, from which day he was Tamas' dog, and fastest of

all the dogs Tamas used. In case wanderlust took him away this spring, Tamas

was delighted to see the puppies.

But Tamas came to the kennel in armor this dawn, with grandfather's third best

sword bumping at his side, breakfast uneasy in his stomach, and the stark

realization in his mind that he could not be here, that Yuri must inherit the

puppies— to see them walk, and tumble, and play. Yuri had run up looking for

him and Bogdan as if nothing else were going on in the yard: Bogdan was busy

at the stables, in the deepest throes of packing; but lamas had excused

himself and come for Yuri's sake; and, laced with changes that would pass

without him, was suddenly beset with apprehensions.

Yuri lifted up a puppy and showed him the face. "It has to be his, doesn't

it?"

"No question,' * Tamas said, rubbing the blunt puppy nose 12

C. J. Cherryh

that had Zadny's yellow fur. "Only lighter. But puppies are, you can't tell

yet." He had come here to mollify Yuri's offended sense of importance; now he

felt unease, and a sense of loss he could not define. It prompted him to say,

"Take care of them. If anything should happen—"

* 'It won't happen!'' Yuri scowled and set the puppy down against its mother.

"No reason I can't go, I'm only two years behind you, but no one sees that."

It was three. But shading on two. " 'Anything can always happen,' " Tamas

quoted Karoly, and reached out to squeeze Yuri's sullenly averted shoulder.'

'Maybe it's nothing, all this business, maybe it's just a bad year and it's a

foolish goose chase, over-mountain. It might be. It's not what goes on there

that I'm worried about, it's what happens here."

There was a wet-eyed angry look from Yuri. "Nothing happens here. Nothing ever

happens here!"

"So it's your job to see it doesn't. Hear me?" His brother longed after

importance. Tamas offered what romance he could. "Noises in the stables,

scratches at the windows . . ."

"Birds," Yuri said sullenly. "That's all, it's birds. It's springtime, master

Karoly says so, what do they expect?"

"Just take care. And don't go off alone in the woods and don't let your

friends go. There could be a troll, and I don't want you to find it.''

"I thought there was a troll. I diought you were supposed to kill it on your

way.''

"If we meet it on our way. We're supposed to ride over-mountain and back,

that's all we're supposed to do. Master Karoly isn't happy witii things here,

that's why we're going to talk to his sister, isn't it? It's no good if we get

there and something dreadful's happened back here, if the house has burned

down or something. So watch out for things. Keep an eye on every thing—don't

let your friends be stupid, don't go into the woods. Don't let something go

wrong. You're . taking Bogdan's place in the house. —And take care of Zadny

for me. All right? The houndsmaster doesn't like him; he threatens to lose him

in the woods, and I want you to watch

THE GOBLIN MIRROR

out for him and see he's all right while I'm gone. Promise me."

There was not much time. Men were mustering in the yard. And talk had only

broken the dam: Yuri glared at him with tears brimming, temper and shame

equally ruddy in his cheeks. "You get to do everything. Bogdan ignores me.

It's not fair!"

"It's the first time, I promise you, it's the first time IVe ever gone

anywhere—and next time, you will go. You'll be tall as I am in another year.''

"It won't do any good. The baby has to stay home if the rest of you get

killed. For the rest of my life they'll say, 'Somebody has to stay home . . .'

"Take care of Zadny. Keep out of trouble. Promise me?"

"I promise." Sullenly. Tearfully.

"Come on." He tousled Yuri's hair and Yuri batted at his hand.

"Don't treat me like a baby. Don't do that."

"I promise. Never again." This morning seemed an ominous time for Never

Agains. He skirted around that thought, into irrevocable decision. ' 'Come on.

Walk me to the yard.''

Yuri got up in glum silence and dusted himself off. Zadny came wagging up,

brushed his cold nose against Tamas' hand, and got in his way—Zadny was

roundly cursed for that habit, by cook, by Taddeuscz the houndsmaster, by

Bogdan, especially since the day Zadny had gotten shut upstairs and chewed

Bogdan's best boots. Zadny had a way of crossing one's path on stairs, or in

doorways. Zadny chewed on things. He was lost, Tamas was wont to argue on his

dog's behalf. —He likes to be close to people. He hasn't grown into his feet

yet. He hasn't had anyone to teach him manners.

He thought of Zadny underfoot in the yard, with the horses, or the very likely

chance of Zadny following them down the road. "Yuri," he said, "we have to tie

him," and Yuri agreed, and got a rope.

It was a betrayal. He got down on one knee and tied the knot tight, getting

dog all over him in the process, and a wet kiss of forgiveness in the face.

"Be good," he told Zadny.

C. J. Cherryh

"Stay, mind Yuri." After which he got up, wiped his face and his leather

surcoat, and went with Yuri out of the kennels.

Barking pursued them through the gate, onto the trampled earth and flagstone

of the larger courtyard, where horses and grooms mixed with stray goats and a

handful of agile pigeons. The escort was gathering, with relatives and well-

wishers, mothers and wives and younger brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts

and cousins and grandparents, all weaving perilously in and out among the

horses, all turned out in holiday best because it was no hunting parry they

were organizing, it was as bold and ambitious a setting-forth as anyone had

made for years in Maggiar, to legendary over-mountain, with the chance of

trolls along the way—fifteen men, all told, with their horses and three pack

ponies loaded with grain and canvas for the mountain passes. The commotion

caught Tamas up, making his heart beat faster. Colors and edges seemed both

bright and unreal this morning. Master Nikolai was shouting at the grooms.

Jerzy was flirting with a knot of Zav's cousins. Bogdan, looking every bit a

lord's son and a warrior, was taking his leave of their mother and father at

the top of the steps.

Tamas eeled through the confusion, hurried up the few steps to the landing

with Yuri in his wake. ' 'Do you suppose you can get this lot away today?"

then- father asked Bogdan just then. Bogdan laughed and took his leave,

clapping Tamas on the arm and ruffling Yuri's hair as he passed, with, "Be

good, little brother."

Tamas went and kissed his mother—"Be careful," she said to him, straightened

his cloak-pin and remarked how handsome he was, but she had said a great deal

more than that last evening—about witches and trolls and the necessity of

watching what he ate and what he drank and never, never, never believing

something that looked too good to be true.

"We'll be back before high summer," he told her, seeing tears glistening—high

summer was what master Nikolai had assured all of them; he kissed her a second

time, guilty for her tears, then briskly hugged his father, who patted him on

THE GOBLIN MIRROR

the shoulders, saying, dryly, "Tamas,—keep a leash on your brother.''

"I will," he promised, startled: his father had never said such a thing

before, never hinted in all their lives that he doubted Bogdan's leadership,

and he was not sure it was not a joke, except his father was not laughing. Had

there been some falling out this morning? Bogdan at least had been laughing as

he left.

Their father hugged him a second time, closer, clapped him on the back and

shoved him after Bogdan, as if that was after all his final judgment of the

sons he was sending out into the world—but, lord Sun, he had no idea how he

was supposed to restrain Bogdan's headlong rush at obstacles: master Karoly

could hardly do that. He was the younger son, Bogdan was in command, and their

father told him to keep Bogdan out of difficulties?

The clatter of horses racketed off the courtyard walls, drowning shouts and

conversations as Tamas went down the steps, past master Karoly, in armor like

the rest of them, who was on his way up to his father. He spotted his own

horse in the milling yard: the grooms had brought him, and they had indeed

tied his packs on for him as they had said. He headed that direction in

relief, done with good-byes and parental tears. Now his only worry was not to

look foolish among the older men—when out of nowhere a chubby girl ran up,

pressed a heavy packet into his hands and fled.

He stopped, confused, as Yuri turned up at his elbow, breathlessly asking

could he have use of his hunting bow while he was gone, his own was too short

for him, and he needed a far heavier pull than Bogdan's old cast-off . . .

"Yes," Tamas said absently. The packet the girl had given him smelled

wonderfully of cake and spice; and he wondered who she was, or what he had

done to deserve her attention. Other girls were giving out gifts of cakes or

garlands to their sweethearts—but he was notoriously, famously shy of girls—

everyone teased him for it; she intended he give it to Bogdan, that was most

probably the answer.

"Tamas? Can I?"

C.J. Cherryh 17

He remembered his promise not to ruffle Yuri's hair—just in time. Yuri stood

looking up at him, promising fervently, "I'll take care of it," —meaning the

bow, which would only gather dust this summer, and that was not good for a

bow. Or for other things. "Use anything," he said. "Anythingof mine you like."

One did not hunt trolls and come back and play with kites and tops. The

clothes, he would outgrow. The few things else . . . why detail a few

sentimental trinkets? Yuri had the last of his boyhood to go, the exploring

years, the hunting and the fishing out at distant farms a marvelous half day

away from home and supper. . . .

Pottery crashed. Michal's horse, fighting the grooms to avoid a gaggle of

girls, backed into stacks of baskets, then surged back toward the screaming

girls, across a ruin of apples. Chaos spun through the yard, Michal and the

grooms all cursing as they restrained the horse.

"All right, all right," the master huntsman shouted, "to horse, lord Sun,

clear back, can we have less commotion and get us underway? Master Karoly?

M'lord Tamas? Can we get to horse?''

His face went hot. He glanced back, where Karoly was still with their father,

insisting, he suddenly realized, on rehearsing every detail he had gone over

with their father last night—he knew Karoiy and he could catch the gist of it

from here. So he ran back up the steps, tugged master Karoly by the sleeve,

with: "Master Karoly, we're leaving right now," and drew the old man down to

the yard.

"The weather-glass," Karoly was calling over his shoulder as grooms at the

foot of the steps were boosting his armored weight into the saddle. "Don't

forget the weather-glass, I showed Yuri how to read it—"

Their father called back, "Be off or you'll be here for harvest. —And mind,

listen to advice, master Karoly!"

"—have to keep the water up to level!" Karoly shouted back, while Tamas tucked

his be-ribboned prize into his sad-!dte pack before mounting. "Be careful!"

Yuri wished him, with worry on his face.

"Use your heads!" their father bellowed across the yard.

THE GOBLIN MIRROR

Bogdan, ahorse, laughed and waved, already turning away; "Good-bye!" Yuri was

shouting, and with his foot in the stirrup, Tamas had an overwhelming impulse

to glance back toward his parents and his home as if—as if, it seemed, he had

only this last moment to fix everything in memory, everything about this place

. . .

But Bogdan was riding for the gate with Karoly and Nikolai, leaving no time

for moon-gazing, and he hit the saddle as his horse joined the milling spill

outward, overtaking Bog-dan and the horse his own was most used to following.

Hooves rumbled on the bridge, thumped onto the solid earth of the road, and

the voices and the cheering grew faint. When he looked back a third time, home

was gray, forbidding walls and a last pale glimpse of festive well-wishers

within the gates, but no sight of Yuri, who was probably sulking. The day

seemed perilous, full of omens; yet there was nothing he could put a thought

around, as master Karoly would say. As if—

As if he were on the brink of his own forever after—or maybe only of growing

up. It was a slice of his whole year this journey might take, bound where

there might be bandits, or trolls. And he had given everything away.

He asked himself why now. Yuri would only lose the things—Yuri was fourteen,

still careless, and could Yuri know the value of a broken toy horse and a

bird's nest? Yuri would toss the keepsakes into the midden and use the painted

box to hold his fishing weights.

But fields surrounded them now. The horses ran out then-first wind and settled

to a steady pace as friends sorted out their riding groups. In a little more

there was no sign or sight of the keep at all, only orchards on either side,

and a dark straggle of wild woods hi front of them. The day had settled to a

steady creaking of leather and jingling of harness and armor—as life would be

for days and days, and probably more of that than of meeting bandits.

And they were not strangers he was riding with, they were mostly Bogdan's

friends; and a few of his father's men. Bog-dan might be in command for

appearance's sake, but master

C. J. Cherryh 19

Nikolai was in charge where it came to trolls—not to mention master Karoly,

who could tilt any odds to Nikolai.

As the day passed, it felt like any ordinary hunting-party, forgetting the

armor and the swords and master Karoly's presence with them: the jokes and

gibes were the same, older men testing the younger ones—in which, being

youngest and a fair target, he made no jokes, only defended himself. He could

trade gibes with his lord brother, if he chose, which the others only rarely

dared—

But he would not do that in public. Not in front of Bog-dan's friends. Bogdan

was anxious about having him along: Bogdan was always anxious about his wit in

front of witnesses, and generally left him alone: by Bogdan's example, he

supposed, so did Bogdan's friends, although he was a fair target on certain

points, like girls and hunting, and doubtless had a reputation for glum, dull

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THEGOBLINMIRRORSaleofthisbookwithoutafrontcovermaybeunauthorized.Ifthisbookiscoverless,itmayhavebeenreportedtothepublisheras'unsoldordestroyed'andneithertheauthornorthepublishermayhavereceivedpaymentforit.ADelReyBookPublishedbyBaUantineBooksCopyrightc1992byC.J.CherryhAllrightsreservedunderInternat...

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