Marak combed his hand through his shock of striped hair, remembering his first wife.

"There are all kinds of insanity, I suppose," he reflected, "but the insanity I know doesn't match this case. Sable's patient under abuse, and she's using a good brain to observe and draw accurate conclusions. That goblin comment is remarkable! You're not fooling her at all. Truly insane people are not pleasant to be around, and they're a lot of work to care for. No, Sable's useful to them, that's why they keep her alive."

"Poor Sable," sighed the young man, shaking his head. The goblin King glanced up in sudden interest.

"Poor Sable?" he echoed. "Have you taken a fancy to that one?"

Seylin grimaced at the bluntness of the question. "She's really ugly," he protested.

The King studied him thoughtfully. This from someone who had grown up with goblins. "She probably doesn't have to be," he suggested calmly, but Seylin didn't look enthusiastic. "All right, what about the other one?"

"Irina?" asked Seylin. He grimaced again.

Marak continued to study his young subject. Perhaps all elves were this squeamish, he considered. No wonder their marriages were arranged years in advance.

"Never mind," he said. "Things are bound to improve. You're just getting to know them, after all. Maybe they'll grow on you."

The young man lapsed into silence. The goblin King watched him. "Was there something else, Seylin?" he prompted. "Anything else you wanted to tell me?"

"Not really," Seylin replied. "Only, just—I just wondered . . . Marak, how is Em?"

The goblin King grinned affectionately at that miserable face. Then he broke into an amused chuckle.

When Kate walked into the water-mirror cave a minute later and shook her sleeping husband, he still had a pleased smile on his face. He opened his strange eyes and focused on her slowly, squinting up from his hard resting place. He pulled his six-fingered hand from the surface of the mirror. Water dripped from five fingers, but the sixth was completely dry. He continued to smile absently as he flexed the fingers. They were so cold. He was so stiff. He'd been there for a long time.

"Marak," said the astonished Kate, kneeling beside him, "what on earth are you doing on the floor?"

Elves, thought the goblin King in satisfaction, looking at her. Pretty things, elves. Particularly this elf. Life is good, he thought.

"Kate," he said agreeably, "some spells are harder than others." He winced as he shifted on the stone floor. She watched him in concern.

"It's time for my magic lesson," she reminded him, "but do you want to wait until later?"

"Yes, I do," he said, climbing slowly to his feet and leaning on her as he limped to his workroom. "I don't have time for lessons right now."

He pulled Seylin's ring from his finger and studied it fondly. Then he took Emily's ring from its hook and laid them together in the palm of his hand. He cupped his other hand over them and whispered softly for a minute.

"I need to meet with Thaydar immediately on a military matter," he explained to his wife, hanging the two rings back up on one hook. "Besides, I can't risk you trying to kill me today, you mad elf. As tired as I am, you might succeed."

Meanwhile, Sable curled up beneath the sheltering bows of a yew tree and pulled Seylin's cloak over her face. She lay awake, thinking about that new elf and Thorn's wish, and winced and shifted on the bare ground. Taken by goblins. A goblin's bride. Please, nothing so horrible as that!

Life is good, she thought fervently, rubbing her cold hands to warm them. Please don't let the goblins come. Please let me stay up here where there are stars.

Chapter Nine

Another boring night was almost over. Seylin studied his map to pass the time. He wanted to read the camp chronicle, but he didn't want Sable to start talking about goblins again. He needed to find a time to ask her about that when no one else was nearby.

Rowan opened the door, letting an icy draft in with him.

"We got that doe," he said to Thorn. Irina let out a groan.

Seylin followed the elves outside into the frost and found his little doe, dead. Rowan and Willow had already tied her feet up to the tree branch, and Sable was capably gutting her into a tub. Seylin struggled against his feelings of horror and sadness. That poor little mother, carrying her unborn fawn!

"Good work," said the blond elf to the two hunters. "We're eating well this winter. Get over here, Irina," he barked as the petite elf girl came slouching up.

"Oh, Thorn, do I have to?" she whined. "Why is it always me?" Seylin noticed that it was always Sable, too, but the scarred woman knew not to argue.

"I'll help, Irina," said Seylin. Thorn shot him an irritated glance as he walked away.

Seylin didn't know what to do, so Sable had to tell him, and that made Irina giggle. She couldn't imagine not knowing how to butcher. She'd been doing it her whole life.

"I guess you weren't ugly where you came from, either," she concluded. "I wish you were. Then I wouldn't have to butcher anymore, or haul the kindling, or burn the bones, or empty out the guts tub. We always have to do that kind of stuff because we're the ugliest."

Seylin studied her bright, pretty face, her green eyes and golden, if dirty, hair. "Irina, what's wrong with how you look?" he asked. "What's ugly about you?"

Irina's face clouded over with the unaccustomed effort of thought.

"Oh, you know," she said vaguely, "ugliness. But, anyway, I'm not as ugly as her." She gestured at Sable, who rolled her eyes and kept cutting. This reminded him that he needed to talk to her.

"Sable, why did you ask me about goblins?" he demanded. The black-haired elf paused.

"That's what happened to the woman you loved," she said shortly. "You lost her to a goblin. Your band was doing well, and then the goblins came. It's the only thing that makes sense."

Seylin was stunned by the conjecture. He couldn't deny it. Marak was right: he certainly wasn't fooling her.

"You need to leave," begged the scarred woman. "You must have seen the goblins, but you don't know what they're like. They'll follow you and find us. They'll capture Irina and me, and we'll die down there with them. They use elf women to make monsters. They—they breed them to monsters, to make more. I'm sorry about the woman you loved. What a horrible way to die."

Seylin looked down at the meat he was cutting, thinking of the woman he loved. Emily had endless fun with her monster babies. A few weeks before he left, she'd been babysitting Bony's twins. The two boys had ram's horns, and they kept butting heads. The little boys running at each other had looked so hilarious that Emily had laughed till she cried. Sable's information about elf women and monsters was technically correct, but it wasn't anything like the goblin life he knew.

"Seylin, please leave," she urged, "before it's too late for Irina and me. Oh, I know, you think we don't have much of a life, but it's a good life, really. We're free."

"Sure, it is," grumbled Irina. "I just love my life." She hacked savagely at the shoulder, carving out strips. "My dress stinks of blood, and my hair's all greasy, and I can't even take a bath."

"Don't be absurd!" replied Sable. "Think what it would be like if the goblins came. We still have stars. We can look up and see the sky."

"Nice for you," retorted the blond girl. "I don't have time to look up. I've got all that cloth to weave because Thorn's in a hurry for his new cloak. What's stars got to do with it, anyway?"

"Goblins live underground," explained Seylin. "They live in what you'd call large caves."

"Oh," said Irina, absorbing this. She pulled her thin cloak around herself, leaving a bloody handprint on it, and glanced longingly at her own cave. "Are the goblin caves warm?" she asked wistfully.

"Irina, think!" cried Sable. "Don't you understand? You'd be bred to monsters, to die having a monster child!"

Seylin opened his mouth to protest this, but Irina cut him off.

"I would not," she stated complacently. "I'm not old enough to be married."

"Fine," said Sable sarcastically, "for another six months! Irina, you're so stupid!"

Irina just smiled. That was what they always said when she won an argument.

"Em, think! Consider others for once in your life! Stop being so selfish!"

The two women and three children had been making their way steadily toward home, moving from one wayside inn to the next at a comfortable pace. The weather was worsening, and Ruby insisted that the children should be safe in the kingdom, but Emily doggedly refused to give up her quest.

"Take them home if you want," she declared. "I'm staying out side."

"You know I can't do that. Marak assigned me to guard you."

The door opened, and a very wet Jack scampered in, wrapped up in a towel. "We're ready to get out," he announced, hopping up and down. Ruby caught him in her arms and began drying his hair.

"You stay in there by the fire," she ordered. "I'll be there in a minute."

"What's a minute?" demanded the little boy.

It never ceased to amaze Emily that the twins were so trusting and affectionate with the old gargoyle. They clung to the teacher like burrs. No child in the goblin kingdom would do such a thing. They all knew about Lore-Master Ruby.

"You'd better do what she says," she warned Jack. "If you don't, she'll make your tongue a foot long, and it won't fit in your mouth anymore."

The boy looked shocked at this, but Ruby just patted his head.

"That's ridiculous," she told him calmly. "Run along now and wait for me." Regaining his confidence, he dashed through the door. They heard a loud splash as it closed.

Ruby immediately turned and gave Emily a glare that could have blistered skin. "How dare you!" she hissed. "You're trying to frighten those little children!"

"I am not," protested the young woman, looking blank. "You work that spell all the time!"

"I wouldn't do such a thing to a poor little orphan."

Emily jumped to her feet, her patience at an end.

"You did it to me more times than I could count! And I'm an orphan, too!"

"You!" scoffed the ugly old teacher, turning to the door. "You've never suffered a day in your life. You've never been a thing like these children."

Emily gritted her teeth as the door slammed, her face on fire. Then she grabbed her cloak and marched from the room.

Outside, snow was falling softly in a quiet night. There was almost no wind at all. Richard had gone to the stable yard to eat a bag of nuts after Ruby had pointed out the mess he was making with the shells. He looked up at Emily's furious expression and cracked a walnut with a rock.

"What are you and the lady fighting about this time?" he asked cheerfully, holding out the nutmeat.

"She's not a lady," growled Emily, taking it, "and I wish you'd stop calling her that."

"Sure she is," replied the young goblin, "as you'd know if you'd seen as many of 'em as I have. There's women and ladies, let me tell you, and they're hardly the same thing. It's their respectability that makes the difference. You can see it with half an eye." He cracked a nut between his teeth and spit out the shell.

Emily thought about this as she took a nut from his bag. "My sister's a lady," she reflected. "I'm not," she added with a sigh.

"But you're fun," said Richard generously, "and that's saying something. You're an enlightening person to be around."

Emily smiled to herself. Although he had had no schooling, Richard loved big words, and she enjoyed listening to the creative uses he found for his ambitious vocabulary.

"Ruby says I wasn't ever like you and the twins, that I never had a hard day. But that's not true. I'm an orphan just like you are."

"Well, now, I don't know that you could really call me an orphan," objected the goblin, "since I never had a mum or dad to lose. Mr. Simmons raised me, and a fine job he did. He took care of me right along."

"I thought you'd always been in the streets," remarked Emily. "Did this Mr. Simmons take you into his house?"

"Took me into his van, was more like it," asserted the boy. "Traveled with me the length and breadth of this isle. Showed me off in every little hamlet along the way, at a copper a peek or tuppence for the family."

"You mean he turned you into a sideshow?" demanded the astonished young woman.

"The one-and-only Devil Boy," announced Richard with gusto, smacking open another nut. "The only authenticated Fiend from Hell ever to be kept in captivity. With fangs, claws, and horns— that's my ears—and a cow's tail sewed in my trousers. We'd park, and he'd drum up a crowd and then pull back the curtain, and I'd be in a cage, clutching at the bars and snarling. For the grand finale, he'd launch into a church hymn, and I'd screech and fall into a faint. We did it right, let me tell you. He was a most assiduous showman."

"But—I mean—was he kind to you? You said he took care of you. Did he?"

"That he did," replied the boy good-naturedly. "He made sure I understood my part. Kept me down to one meal a day, but it was all for the good of the act. 'Richard, my boy,' he'd say while he was tucking into a leg of mutton, 'me old heart bleeds to keep this from you, but no one ever paid their brass to see a well-fed Devil Boy. Skin and bones, that's what they come to see, and we got to give them what they want.' He was laborious, was Mr. Simmons, most laborious indeed."

"And he made you sleep in a cage?" exclaimed Emily in disgust. " 'Course not!" Richard laughed. "No, the cage was just for the act. At night, he locked me up in a box so no one could steal a peek at me. Evenings, I'd sweep the van and tend the fire while he'd take a pull at a bottle and tell tales about his missus that ran off with a fortune-teller. We were amiable together, the two of us, and life was benevolent."

"Then why'd you leave?" Emily wanted to know.

"I didn't. The lads broke in and stole my box on a bet. When they got back to their place and let me out, they fell on the ground laughing. They made me the lucky-touch of the gang. It was the lads that taught me to pick pockets, to lift the nose-wipes and wallets and such. Didn't we have some jolly times! Didn't we just! But two of their best were pulled and tucked up proper. Put in lavender— hanged," he added at Emily's baffled expression.

"The lads said I'd turned their luck, and they drove me away. That's the lowest I ever was. I thought I might as well do myself in. But that's when I found my family, and I've been in charge of 'em ever since. Though it's nice to see the lady taking such good care of 'em now," he confided. "It's hard work raising a family."

Emily thought about being a child on the streets and looking after two hungry babies. Ruby had spoken the truth. Emily had never been what they were.

"I suppose I should let her take you home, where you'll all be safe," she admitted. "It is the unselfish thing to do. But I just hate to give up like this."

Richard nodded wisely. He'd heard all about Seylin, elf-hunter and erstwhile member of the King's Guard.

"You're wanting to follow your soldier," he said. "I don't blame you a bit."

Emily sighed. "I just wish I knew what Marak wanted me to do."

"I wouldn't let a king's ideas make up your mind," counseled the boy. "You do what you think best, and I'll back you against anybody.

Kings never would have cared for me, let me tell you. If they'd caught me, they'd have made me dance at the end of a rope."

He held up a nut and tried out the newly learned Fire Spell on it. When it burst into flames, he dropped it into the snow.

"What's he like, anyway, the ugly people's King?" he asked with pensive curiosity.

Even Emily's glib tongue and fertile imagination balked at the impossible task of describing Marak.

"He's a good King," she mused, trying to think of what to say. "He's fair, and he hardly ever stays angry very long. He's married to my sister," she added parenthetically. Richard's pale golden eyes almost popped out of his head.

"A King and your sister!" he exclaimed. "That makes you royalty, doesn't it!"

Emily grinned. "You could say that my life has been pretty benevolent," she replied.

The argument continued the next day in the carriage. They weren't very far from the goblin kingdom now, and the weather was awful. Ruby kept the carriage as tightly sealed as possible, but it was still very cold. She stayed in her regular form so that she could hold the twins close and keep them warm.

"We'll be home tomorrow if we travel through the night," she pointed out. "Em, I expect you to do the right thing for these little ones."

"But she wants to follow her soldier," protested Richard.

"Stop encouraging her," the teacher ordered him firmly. "The King commanded us goblins not to interfere in Seylin's work, so I'll thank you to be a good goblin and not interfere."

"I've got nothing against kings—live and let live, that's my plan—but I've never let their orders worry me."

"You wait until Marak gets his hands on you," declared Ruby. "You'll be singing a different tune then."

The goblin boy turned pale at these words and stared despondently at his boots. "I've said I'll back her, and I'll back her," was all he would answer. "No king has a hand on me yet."

Emily didn't speak. She thought about the elf girl's book in their pack and Marak Whiteye's betrayal of his mother's dreams, about their unexpected discovery in London and Ruby's growing fondness for the little humans. The quest hadn't been a failure. They had found some valuable things. But they hadn't found what Emily really wanted.

"Marak knew I was hunting for Seylin when he let me out," she said slowly. "He told me I would find what he wanted me to find."

"And you haven't found one hint about where Seylin is," observed Ruby. "Not in this whole long time."

"That's true," agreed Emily, her heart sinking. "Maybe Marak doesn't want me to find him. But you don't know, Ruby. Maybe he does. He could have just made me stay in the kingdom."

"How long are you going to drag us around while you try to make up your mind? I hardly call that responsible behavior."

The carriage stopped. They were changing horses. Emily leaned forward and lifted the leather flap over the window to peek at the vil lage outside.

"You're right, Ruby," she said, amazed to hear herself say the words. The old goblin was amazed to hear them, too.

"So you think I'm right," she remarked suspiciously. "Right about what?"

"That it would be irresponsible to drag you around. I know Marak wouldn't want that. And I think—or, rather, I know—that it's about time I did something Marak wanted. He's been like a father to me, and I can't say that I've done much in return."

"Then you'll come back to the kingdom," declared Ruby triumphantly.

Emily hesitated.

"I'm just going to do one more thing," she said. "I'll ask in this town about Seylin, and if I don't learn anything, I'll give up. It won't take any time. We're stopped for a few minutes anyway."

"I'm coming with you," asserted the teacher. "I'm not falling for one of your tricks."

Emily stood on the frozen ruts of the little road, struggling against tears. A man passed them, leading their tired team to the stable.

"Ask him," whispered the squirrel on her shoulder.

"No, not him," she answered. "I'll just go a little farther." I don't know why, she thought. This is completely hopeless. Seylin, why didn't I listen when you came to talk to me? How could I just send you away?

The door of the inn opened, and a girl came out. She was warmly dressed, and her fair hair was held neatly in a large blue bow. She looks happy, thought Emily forlornly. She looks like I used to look. As the girl passed by, she glanced over and gave Emily a friendly smile.

"Excuse me," said Emily. "Have you seen a young man here in the last several months, very handsome, with black hair and dark eyes? Or wait—maybe you would have seen a very large, furry black cat instead."

The girl stopped and stared in surprise. Then she impulsively seized Emily's hand.

"You must mean Seylin!" cried Jane in delight. "Tell me, can your squirrel talk?"

Chapter Ten

During the morning meal, Sable kept trying to catch Irina's eye, but the blond girl wasn't paying attention. Irina was dwelling on the unhappy fact that Thorn always gave her less food now than Sable had given her in the past. She knew he'd always handed Sable her food, but she didn't see why he had to pick on her. Irina glanced up to find the black-haired woman once again looking at her significantly.

"What do you want?" she burst out. Everyone shifted to stare at her and then at the dismayed Sable. "Oh!" Irina added in a tone of discovery. "I remember now! Thorn, the ugly woman wanted me to remind you that the flour stores are running low."

Sable certainly hadn't intended the reminder to come out like this. Thorn turned, eyes narrowed, to study his dead wife, but Sable had such a look of surprised alarm on her face that he couldn't help laughing at it.

"Well, now you can do something for me, puppy," he said. "I want you to remind the ugly woman that I don't need her help running this camp. You tell her I already knew about the low stores. I've been waiting till we had enough food laid by to take the men out hauling flour." He turned to Rowan. "If the weather's not too bad, tomorrow night should be a good time. We'll go south this year. We haven't been that direction in a while. Last spring, I saw a place that might serve us well. It looked like they should have something."

The next night, the four men of the band set out to haul flour. Seylin wondered just exactly what this would mean. Normally, under the elf Kings, the elves had bought their flour from a nearby mill. They didn't bring grain, not having their own fields, but they sent representatives to place an order and then bring home the flour in sacks. This was one of only a few situations that required elves to interact with humans, and it was also one of the few that required money. Seylin wondered considerably about money as they walked along. He'd never met anyone less likely to have it.

They came to a comfortable farmhouse at some distance from a village. Candlelight shone through one window, and Thorn and Rowan crept up and squinted at the room that lay within. Then Thorn beckoned, and the company went to the low door. It wasn't locked. Thorn opened it, and they walked right in.

A smoky, rustic kitchen lay before them, with onions, herbs, and dried sausages hanging from the rafters. A small fire crackled on the grate, and an old farmer sat alone at the kitchen table, drinking a mug of beer. He rose at their intrusion.

"Now then," he said with wary dignity.

"Soft without but fierce within, live in caves like goblin kin," chanted Thorn. Seylin looked at him in amazement. He was speaking elvish, and his accent was terrible. Seylin glanced back at the farmer. The old man was gone. Before he realized what had happened, a white rabbit scurried across the table, heading for the door.

"Oh, for pity's sake!" exclaimed Seylin. "You didn't have to do that!" He looked through the door, trying to remember the counter-charm, but the rabbit was already gone.

"Yeah, I know," grunted Thorn, walking to the fire. "We could have handled him easily, but why dirty our hands with human trash?" He surveyed Seylin with a conceited look on his face. "You thought you were the only one who knew magic," he gloated.

"Thorn always changes humans into rabbits," explained Willow proudly, "and we can tell his when we hunt because they're white, not brown." Rowan was busy opening doors and looking through them. Hauling flour, Seylin realized, was nothing more than stealing from the neighbors.

"What about the other people who live here and just aren't home?" he demanded. "If you take their flour away, how are they supposed to live through the winter?" Thorn shrugged without interest. Willow cut down a sausage and sniffed at it.

"Hey!" said Thorn sharply. "Get rid of that thing. You know human food's not fit to eat." Willow obediently threw the sausage into the fire.

"Three good-sized bags," called Rowan from another room. "One's been opened, but not much is missing."

"Great!" said Thorn briskly, going to see. Willow stayed behind. Now he was sniffing the beer. Seylin eyed the boy gloomily. Willow was growing into a very handsome elf, with all the grace and dignity of his ancestors, and here he was stalking around a farmer's kitchen sniffing foods like a tame bear.

Rowan and Thorn struggled through the narrow pantry doorway, dragging a large bag of flour between them. They dropped it onto the neatly swept boards by the open door through which the rabbit had recently left.

"Don't just stand there," demanded Thorn, beckoning to Seylin. "Grab a bag!"

Dark eyes flashing, Seylin walked haughtily to the pantry and levitated the two remaining bags, floating them over to the door. He turned back to the fire, and the bags dropped with a thud. Rowan grinned at Thorn.

"Well, aren't we fine," he said with a laugh, but Thorn didn't look amused.

Willow appeared in a doorway, wearing a thick coat. "Look at this!" he said in excitement, rubbing the lapels between his fingers to feel how soft the cloth was.

"No, thanks," said Thorn. "Willow, get that thing off."

"Aw, Thorn, why?" demanded the boy miserably. "It's really warm."

Rowan walked by him into the room. "It's the wrong color," he explained. Willow glanced down. The coat was black. His winter cloak was brown.

"I won't say it again," threatened Thorn. "Do you want to look like a human?" The elf boy sighed and pulled off the coat, stroking its soft wool unhappily.

"Humans have all the luck," he muttered.

Rowan walked back into the room, holding a hand mirror.

"Irina might like this," he suggested, handing it to Thorn. Willow came to gawk at it. He could barely remember seeing a mirror. Thorn had thrown out their last fragment after Sable had used it when she cut her face.

"That's just what we need," growled Thorn, "Irina sitting around making faces at herself all night."

"Suit yourself," said Rowan with a shrug. "She's going to be your wife."

"She is?" whooped Willow. "You're joking! Wait'll I tell her!"

Thorn looked up, his gray eyes stern. "It's my business, Willow," he said steadily, "and you'll keep your nose out of it."

"Well," said the elf boy uncertainly, "don't you even want her to know?"

"No," snapped Thorn. "And I'll tell you why. The minute she knows, she'll start expecting handouts, pats on the back, chucks under the chin. You go that way with a woman, and she thinks she's the piper and you're the one to dance. You take it from me, Willow," he concluded, shaking the hand mirror at the boy. "Never be nice to a woman."

Willow considered this piece of advice. "I'm not nice to Irina," he pointed out. He followed the elf leader toward the door.

Seylin hung back while the other elves left the kitchen, considering what to do. The loss of the family patriarch as well as all the flour was bound to be a devastating blow. He took his remaining money from his pocket and put it all down on the table. The next time he needed money, he'd just have to do what everyone else did: work for it.

He followed Thorn to the barnyard. A big horse came stepping out of the barn to greet them, blowing softly, ears pricked with interest. His winter coat was dull and shaggy. He was a bit of a mongrel, with legs that were too short and fine for his deep barrel chest, but his eyes were lively and intelligent.

"Oh, good, a horse!" exulted Thorn. So they were going to steal a valuable animal as well as vital winter stores.

"We don't need the horse," protested Seylin. "I can float the bags home with the Carrying Spell."

"Fine," said Thorn, "and while you're at it, you can float home the horse, too. Look at the meat on him!" he said admiringly.

Seylin's jaw dropped. "You don't mean you're going to butcher this horse!" he exclaimed.

Rowan grinned at his shocked face. "Uh-oh!" he teased. "Thorn, he's a picky eater!"

Thorn didn't answer. He vaulted over the fence and headed into the barn.

"Horse is good," Willow assured Seylin. "It tastes kind of like deer." He and Rowan climbed over the fence as well. Seylin opened the gate and walked in after them. The horse followed him, breathing on the back of his neck.

"Wool," said Thorn. "Look up there." Rowan went up the ladder into the loft, and after a minute, a bundle came hurtling down.

Seylin poked around the barn in search of food for the horse. He found oats and began shoveling them into a small sack. He thought moodily about the stables back in the goblin kingdom. Fine horses lived there. Marak was fond of horses, and so was Emily. So was he, for that matter. Living in the deep forest, elves normally had no use for horses and distrusted them accordingly, but he'd never read about any elves eating one before.

A noise distracted him. He came out of the barn to find his three companions chasing the horse around the barnyard, trying in vain to hoist a sack of flour onto his back.

"Stop it!" shouted Seylin. "Don't you people know anything about horses?"

"Of course we do," said Rowan with a laugh. "We know how to cook them."

They were home shortly before the morning meal. Sable and Irina had taken advantage of the men's absence to bathe and wash their clothes. Properly washed, Irina's blond hair was a mass of soft curls, and she was very happy and bubbly, chattering away and asking Willow about where they had gone. Willow was explaining about the sausage and the coat, forgetting for the moment his moral obligation not to be nice to women.

Even Sable's blue eyes were shining. She was clean, and she had had the luxury of combing out her black hair in peace. It looked like a crow's wing or a piece of black satin. Thorn noticed it, and his face took on a dangerous expression.

"Didn't you bring home anything besides horse and wool and flour?" demanded Irina. "Didn't you bring home anything fun?"

"No," said Willow with arrogant superiority. "Human trash isn't for elves."

"Oh, yes, we did," corrected Thorn, warming his hands before the fire. "We brought something else home."

"Did you? Thorn! What is it?" asked Irina, terribly excited.

"It's something just for elf women," said Thorn.

"Something for elf women?" echoed Irina, thrilled. But Thorn didn't look at her eager face. Instead, he looked down at his dead wife and her beautiful black hair.

"It's something Sable's been especially interested in," he continued. "Sable, with her sable hair." The scarred woman stood up to face him, thoroughly alarmed. He never used her real name any more.

"Don't you want to know what it is, Sable?" he asked. She eyed him anxiously. There wasn't a right answer. Everyone was staring at her, and she flashed a nervous glance at them all. Thorn reached under his cloak.

"It's a goblin!" he shouted, holding up the mirror, and Sable cried out at the sight of herself. She threw up a hand to slap him, but she stopped herself in time and stood there gasping, her hands balled into fists.

Everyone laughed at her, even Irina, her pretty voice joining the rest. Everyone except Seylin, who looked at her mortified expression and felt thoroughly ill. Thorn stopped laughing. He took a step toward her, his gray eyes deadly.

"Now you know what it's like for the rest of us," he hissed. "We have to look at it every single night."

Seylin walked up to the elf leader, absolutely furious. "I'm leaving tomorrow," he said coldly.

Thorn turned toward him in surprise, and Sable made her escape.

"Leaving the camp, eh?" asked the blond elf without much interest. "I guess you finally believe me about the girl. Tomorrow's a good time for you, but not a good time for us. We'll be working all night butchering that monster outside. I expected you to do your share."

Seylin glared at the hateful elf.

"All right," he said shortly. "I'll help with the butchering, but I'm leaving the minute it's done."

Thorn shrugged. "Go right ahead," he said, turning away. He looked for Sable, but she was gone. "The ugly woman left her looking glass behind," he announced in mock concern. "Here, puppy, you might as well keep it."

"Oh, Thorn!" gasped Irina. She took the mirror from him, unable to believe her good fortune. It was terribly hard to admire a reflection in the water. Her hair always dragged into it and spoiled the view.

Sable came back to serve the morning meal. Thorn gave her no food. He ate heartily, tipping up the bowl to slurp the last of the stew. He wiped his dirty hands and face on his remaining bread as if it were a dinner napkin. Then he flipped it through the air so that it fell in the dirt at Sable's feet.

Don't pick it up, thought Seylin. Don't give him the satisfaction of watching you eat it. But the scarred woman snatched the dirty bread and dusted it off hurriedly. Such a large piece. Who would have thought he would give her so much? And she devoured it in quick bites before he could change his mind.

"Em, this is madness," said Ruby. "He left months ago." But Emily wasn't listening.

"We were right here," noted Jane, leading the way into the snowy clearing. "This is where he worked his magic. He told me not to tell anyone," she added to Emily, "but I don't think he'd have minded this, do you?"

"I hope not," said Emily, looking around. "I won't tell," volunteered Richard.

"What magic did he work?" asked Ruby, studying the clear sky. The stars were shining very brightly.

"He changed the constellations into wonderful shapes, like harps and wreaths and thrones. He made a flower bush out of light. He wrote my name in sparks. He made the rabbits come out of their holes and— Good heavens! What's that?!"

A large white rabbit came crashing out of the frozen underbrush and collided with Jane's legs. Then it curled up on top of her feet and sat there, shivering.

"Do you think I did that?" she wondered, turning to the group. "Did Seylin give me the power to call rabbits?"

Ruby knelt down and examined the terrified beast. "That's not a rabbit," she replied.

Minutes later, an old farmer huddled in the snow, talking to himself, while the rest of them stood around and watched him. " 'Now then,' I said. 'Now, then. What's all this?' And then I was all over fur! Thanks, missus," he added as Ruby handed him a flask. "Lord, you're ugly to be an angel."

"Do you think it was a sorcerer who did it?" Emily wanted to know. The teacher shook her head.

"That's an elvish spell," she pointed out. "It makes a very pretty rabbit."

"Rabbit!" exclaimed the old man distractedly. "That's what they made of me. A rabbit! All that blessed fur! Where's my home? If this is heaven, I don't like it one bit. It's cold and soggy."

Emily sat down next to the farmer.

"Did you see elves?" she asked eagerly. "Was one of them good-looking? Well, I suppose all elves are good-looking—but did one have black hair and black eyes?"

"They attacked me!" blurted out the man. "Busted right into my kitchen! Elves? How should I know? They murdered me! And then I was a rabbit!"

They finally got the old man onto his feet and brought him to Jane's house, where she and her father discussed local events until the farmer gave up the idea of being in heaven. His village, it turned out, was not far away. Jane stayed home with the sleepy twins while her father drove the rest of them to the farmer's house in a wagon.

"Seylin saved Jane from the smallpox," he told them, "and he really saved my life, too. I had never realized how much she meant to me until I thought I was going to lose her. For the first time since her mother died, I'm not just living in the past."

They arrived at the farmer's cottage.

"I can't interfere," Ruby told Emily. "Not if elves are in the house." But the elves were gone, and so was the farmer's horse and all his flour. In their place was a small pile of money on the kitchen table. Emily called Ruby in to look at it.

"That's Seylin's money," she pointed out. "Dwarf-made coins. He must have been with the intruders and paid for the things they took. I can't go back to the kingdom now. He's nearby, and I have to find him."

The goblin woman sat down at the table to examine the little hoard. "But the children!" she insisted in dismay.

Jane's father had been helping the distraught old man to bed. He came back into the room in time to hear Ruby's comment.

"The twins can stay with us for a while," he offered. "Jane and I can look after them."

"And I want to help Em find her soldier," noted Richard.

"I can't allow that," replied Ruby. "Marak has word of you children, and he wants to see you right away. And, Em, I have to be the one to take the twins to him. Marak won't mind Martha, but he won't want Jack in the kingdom. There's a law against having an elf or human man ever live down there with us. But I've been thinking. If the right person promised to look after them in a quiet place across the lake valley, maybe the King would let them stay until Jack grows up. I have to be there to ask Marak about it before he makes up his mind."

Emily was astounded.

"The right person? Ruby, you can't mean you! You're going to volunteer to raise humans? What about teaching the pages?"

"I'm tired of teaching. I want a change. You were right, I made everyone hate my class. And you know what it's like to be a human," said the old woman appealingly. "I can't bear for those children to grow up without help."

Emily sat down on the bench next to her. "I think that's a good plan," she said generously. "I think they need you. Go home with them, Ruby. I'll be fine on my own."

"I can't allow that, either." Ruby shook her head emphatically. "The King insisted that you were always to have a goblin nearby to guard you."

"Well, I'm a goblin, aren't I?" pointed out young Richard. "I can do that Fire Spell about as well as you can. And I'm not so anxious to meet this ugly King. I'd rather stay here and help Em."

Ruby started to speak, but Emily spoke before she could answer.

"We aren't far from Seylin now, and we aren't far from home," she said. "If we don't find him quickly, I'll bring Richard to the kingdom myself. Marak won't mind. He'll know you did everything he told you to do."

They walked out into the frosty night, and Jane's father climbed up onto his wagon. Ruby started to follow him, but then she turned back.

"Good-bye, Em," she said. "You and Richard be careful. And"—she hesitated for a second—"and I hope you find Seylin."

"You do?" demanded Emily, more shocked than before. The old goblin looked embarrassed.

"For his sake, really, if he wants to marry you," she muttered. "He was always such a good boy."

Emily stared at her nemesis, remembering their countless class-room battles. It was strange to think that she'd never realized what a brat she had been. She knew Ruby hadn't been fair about humans back then, but she'd never helped the goblin understand them, either. She supposed if she'd been Ruby she would have murdered a student like her.

"Ruby, there's something I need to tell you," she said slowly. "All those tests—all those perfect scores—"

The teacher stiffened, and her white eyes narrowed in an angry glare.

"I studied and studied to earn them," Emily admitted in a rush. "I did all the homework, too, but I made sure no one ever found out. I studied more for your class than I did for any of the others. It was such hard work it almost killed me."

Ruby's lipless mouth broke into a smile so wide that it seemed it would split her face in two. But when she spoke, it wasn't to Emily. Instead, she crooked a finger at Richard.

"Come here, you smart little goblin," she told the street urchin. "I'm going to teach you another spell. This one tracks things and shows you where they went. Why don't you practice it on those footprints over there?"

Chapter Eleven

The next night, Seylin was up early. He struck his tent and packed his belongings, fuming to himself. He couldn't wait to go, but he was furious that he should have to. These were his people. They should have welcomed him. And even if they were ignorant and savage, they didn't have to be awful. They were fools and bullies, and the only intelligent member of the band just wanted him to leave.

He went outside to feed the horse, and his heart sank at the sight of the friendly animal. He stroked the horse's rough coat and rubbed his broad forehead. Those dark eyes watched him willingly. What are we going to do now? they asked. You're going to become a steaming carcass, thought Seylin unhappily. And once you're bloody bones and parts, I can leave this horrid place.

Rowan came through the door, testing the new edge he had put on his metal knife. Only Thorn had a real elf knife like Seylin's.

"What are you doing?" Rowan grinned. "Playing with your food?"

"I'm not eating this horse," replied Seylin with dignity.

"Oh, that's right," said Rowan, sobering up. "You're leaving. Good luck finding an elf woman."

Thorn came outside and began to issue orders. The women built a fire in the yard and began rearranging the meat in the shed. The shed was filling up, and Sable was considering where to put tonight's butchering. Seylin glanced into the shed and was sorry he did. He wouldn't have shared their meals if he'd seen it.

He went back to the men and discovered that they had a problem. It seemed that butchering the horse wasn't nearly as big a chore as killing it. Untrained in magic, they lacked the power to fell a big animal.

"Rowan, you do it," said Thorn. "Your Hunting Spell works better than mine or Willow's." But Rowan didn't look pleased at the compliment.

"Oh, no," he said firmly. "Not after what happened last time."

Willow made a face. "Was that disgusting!" he said. "And then we still had to whack it to death with a stick."

"Then we'll start there this time," decided Thorn. "Willow, go get a log from the woodpile." The elf boy obediently went off and returned with a decent-looking club. "Now whack him with it," directed their leader.

"What, me?" asked the boy, his face a picture of distress. "Why do I have to do it?"

"Because I'll whack you if you don't," threatened Thorn.

But Willow didn't make any move toward the horse. To him, it wasn't a friendly servant. It was a huge, frightening beast with four sharp hooves and big teeth. Thorn watched him with a thoughtful frown.

"Rowan, maybe you and I could work killing spells at the same time while Willow hits it with the log," he said.

"And maybe we could manage to kill Willow that way," replied Rowan. He turned, his eyes bright, and patted Seylin on the shoulder. "I know who can kill our dinner for us," he suggested. "He knows all about horses." Seylin just frowned at him. He'd been expecting this.

"Seylin, you kill it, then," directed Thorn, "if you really think you can do it."

Seylin crossed his arms and studied the animal. He liked the horse, and it wasn't going to be his food, but he knew how to kill it humanely, and he couldn't leave until it was butchered. He sighed and stretched out his hand.

"Don't you dare! You kill that horse and I'll never speak to you again as long as I live!" Seylin froze in complete astonishment. It wasn't—no, it couldn't be—

"A human!" shouted Willow, and they all turned to look. Emily stood up from behind a large rock. She was pale and grubby, and she had circles under her eyes. Seylin had never seen a sight more beautiful.

"Em!" he cried. "What are you doing here?"

Emily walked toward the group, her face uncertain.

"Seylin, I know that you had wanted—and I didn't— Well, I just came to say that if you'd rather marry one of these elves, I understand."

"He certainly wouldn't want to marry you," scoffed Irina. "You're so ugly."

Emily's uncertain manner fell from her. "Looks aren't everything," she snapped.

"Yes, they are!" insisted Irina hotly. "Aren't they?" she added in a puzzled tone, looking to her companions for support.

"Em," said Seylin, "what about Thaydar?" Of all the questions running around in his brain, this seemed the only one worth asking.

"Don't be absurd!" exclaimed his sweetheart. "After all the times we've quarreled, I can't believe you really thought I meant that!"

Seylin's world became a bright, shining, happy place. He walked over to her in a kind of dream.

"You're not married to Thaydar?" he asked. Emily just smiled at him, and Seylin's world reached perfection.

"You're going to marry a human?" exclaimed Willow in disgust. Seylin tore his eyes away from that smile to look at the boy.

"She has elf blood," he said loftily.

"Ugh! A half-breed," sneered Willow. Now Emily looked at him. "I may be a half-breed," she said tartly, "but I'm not wearing my last eighteen meals on the front of my shirt." Irina gave a happy giggle.

"You ought to change her into a rabbit, Thorn," pointed out Willow, scowling fiercely. "You always do when they find our camp."

Thorn shrugged. "She's Seylin's business," he muttered. But Seylin ,had seen Sable's astounded face. He didn't want to wait around for questions.

"I'll get my pack," he told Emily. "We're leaving."

"Hey!" said Thorn indignantly. "What about the horse?"

"You want to eat him. Kill him yourself," replied Seylin, disappearing through the door.

Emily came up to the horse, glaring at the silent elves.

"And is it a nice horse?" she crooned, scratching him under the halter straps. "We don't want to be dinner for nasty elves, do we? Imagine eating a horse!" she exclaimed. "How disgusting!"

"Imagine marrying a half-breed," sneered Thorn. "How disgusting."

"I wouldn't marry you, either, you horse-eating bully!" cried Emily. "I'd slit my throat first."

"I'd help you," promised Thorn. He crossed his arms, very annoyed. He wanted to kill the horse now just to upset her, but Rowan had disappeared, and he didn't think Willow and he could do it alone. "You'd make a nice rabbit," he mused darkly, watching her stroke the horse.

"Look what I've found," called Rowan. He returned from the forest, dragging something with him, and Emily turned with a gasp.

"Richard!" she cried. Rowan had him by his white hair. The boy gave her an encouraging grin, and the elves blanched at the sight of his one fang.

"Good evening, sirs, ladies," said the boy, bowing as far as he could without losing hair and tugging at his forelock politely. Irina let out a shriek of revulsion, and Richard sighed resignedly. That always happened. But Sable came forward to look at him and let out a bloodcurdling scream.

"Thorn! He's a goblin! He's a goblin!" she screamed.

"Don't you touch him," shouted Emily, darting forward to try to loosen Rowan's hands, but he caught the neck of her cloak and held her off from the captured boy.

"You stay out of this," he advised.

Thorn held out his hand to begin his Rabbit Spell, but Sable clutched his arm in a frenzy of terror.

"Don't, Thorn, don't!" she begged. "There'll be more! They're always together, and you'll bring revenge if you hurt him. We can't fight, we have to leave now, we have to get away before the others come!" She caught his hand, risking life as a rabbit herself.

Thorn shoved her away, trying to concentrate on his rhyme, but Seylin ran up and reached out his own hand in a protection spell. A bubble formed in the air around the goblin child, wobbling in a shiny globe and prying Rowan's fingers free from his hair.

"Let them go, Rowan," he warned. "We'll just leave. We don't want a fight." He walked through the group, concentrating on the spell. Rowan released the two outsiders as Thorn struggled with the hysterical Sable.

They might have gotten safely away, but Willow looked down at that moment and realized he was still holding the club. As Seylin walked by him, he swung it up and hit Seylin over the head.

The bubble around Richard's body popped with a sigh, and Seylin fell unconscious to the ground. So did Rowan. So did Thorn. So did Willow. Grotesque shapes jumped from hiding and raced toward the group. Seylin's agreement with the goblin King was over.

Chapter Twelve

Sable crouched on the ground by Thorn's side. She heard shouts, exclamations, Irina screaming frantically, and then her screams suddenly cut off. She saw the shadows of the newcomers pass to and fro on the snow around her, but she forced herself not to look up. It was the end of everything, the end of her life. She didn't want to see it.

Father was right, she thought. They all were right. I should have been safely dead long ago, and I wouldn't have had to live through this. Now I'll be tortured and used in horrible magic because I was cowardly and weak. A shadow fell across Thorn's quiet face and across the snow around them.

"Don't worry," said a good-natured voice, low and rich. "We didn't hurt him. He's just sleeping."

Sable went rigid. The voice was talking to her. She stared at the snowy ground, clinging to her life, her world. No one had grabbed her and dragged her away yet. She was still free.

"You gave him good advice," continued the voice thoughtfully. "He really should have listened to you." The voice was almost in her ear. A goblin, right behind her. Sable's nerve broke, and she abandoned her old life. She made a scramble for freedom, but an arm wrapped around her waist before she could even stand up.

"No, no," protested the voice, "you have to stay with me," and Sable was lifted off her feet by big silver-gray arms. The next thing she knew, she was carried up to that traitor elf, the one who had lied and brought the goblins here. He was struggling to sit up, his face very white, and some huge, strange form was doctoring the wound on his head.

"Sorry, Seylin," it said. "Orders. We had to let him hit you."

Sable looked away from that evil creature, its hideous striped face and gnarled hands. Look at the trees, she told herself. Look at the sky. Don't give them the pleasure of making you scream. The monster who held her knelt down on one knee and seated her on his other knee.

"Seylin," said the rumbling, good-natured voice. "Do you have a prior claim to this elf bride?"

Seylin turned away from Katoo's ministrations and caught sight of Sable staring out over his head as if he weren't even there.

"Oh, no!" he cried. "Oh, poor Sable! She's had a horrible life, Tinsel. Be nice to her."

"I will," promised Tinsel. "I'm always nice," he added with perfect truth. Seylin watched the handsome silver-haired goblin touch the elf woman's scarred cheek.

"Did that rabbit-lover hurt her?" he asked with an unaccustomed frown. Seylin flinched as Katoo rubbed the healing salve into his wound.

"No," he answered. "She did that herself so she wouldn't have to marry him."

"Makes sense to me," commented Tinsel. "I didn't care for him, either. But maybe you'll like me better. Right, Sable?"

Hearing her name, Sable slowly turned her head and looked up at the monster that had trapped her, at the wide chest draped in black, the broad metal-c olored face, the hair glittering in the starlight like the forest after an ice storm. And, looking downat her, dark blue eyes just like her own. Elf eyes, captured and locked up in a gob lin's face.

The big monster smiled down at her, and Sable's nerve broke again. She made a lunge to escape, but there wasn't the slightest chance of freedom. She mastered herself once more and froze, staring out at the trees, and Seylin could have cried at the expression on her face.

Thaydar came up, his arms full of unconscious Irina and his green cat-eyes gleaming with excitement.

"Seylin," he said, kneeling down and lowering his bundle, "do you have a prior claim to this elf bride? Marak said it would be best for the kingdom if his lieutenant married one of the captured elves. The importance of the position, that sort of thing," he explained modestly.

"But, Thaydar," protested Seylin angrily, "Marak promised me no raids for brides!"

"Oh, absolutely," agreed Thaydar. "We weren't dispatched for that at all, just to protect Em and her goblin escort and bring them safely back home. But Marak did say that if we didn't catch up to them in time to prevent their contacting you, and if you were to suffer any sort of harm in a fight, we should be prepared for the eventuality of taking brides, so he picked me for Irina and Tinsel for Sable.

"And, lo and behold," said Thaydar with a grin, "there did turn out to be a scuffle. Even if Richard hadn't provoked hostilities, Tinsel and I had thought up some nice ways to start a fight. A blast of snow in the face of the right elf as you walked by, or that horse's halter rope breaking, and him trotting off after you. Now, don't get upset," he added as Seylin started to speak. "We knew we weren't supposed to contact the elves. But a little snow's not really contact, is it? And some military commander I'd be if I couldn't bring home a couple of elf brides to my King."

Seylin surveyed the happy gleam in Thaydar's eyes. Marak was right: it was best for the kingdom that his lieutenant marry one of the brides. There was absolutely no way the clever Thaydar would go out on an errand of such personal and professional importance and come back to the kingdom empty-handed.

"Just look at her," gloated the fanged lieutenant, cradling the blond girl. "Isn't she the cutest thing you ever saw?"

"Thaydar," said Seylin irritably, "don't you think you ought to revive her?"

"Oh, I did," growled Thaydar cheerfully, "but she passed right out again. So now I think, best to let nature take its course, eh?" He beamed at the disheartened Seylin and walked off, carrying the insensible girl with him.

Sable was standing up now, and the monster was only holding her with one hand, but she still couldn't get away. He was doing something to her hand, some sort of magic, and she kept waiting for it to hurt. He was talking again, probably to her. Maybe she could learn some clue that would help her escape. She studied his moving lips, but she couldn't seem to hear him. His lips were metal-colored, too, and she wondered if they were cold like metal knives.

"Leash . . . ten feet... walk on your own ..." he was saying. ". .. Would you like that better?" He stopped talking, and she stared at him, tense with fear.

"Sable, do you understand?" the monster asked. Yes, she understood. She was captured, trapped, she couldn't get away. He was still watching her, expecting some sort of answer. She cringed, afraid that he would yell at her, and nodded her head nervously.

"All right," he said a little doubtfully, and he released her hand and took a step back.

Sable felt giddy. She was free. It must be some sort of trick. She walked cautiously by him, expecting him to reach out and grab her, but he didn't. Two more steps, one more step, and she was out of reach. She made a dash for the nearby woods. Her hand flew back, and she whirled, off balance, caught by some invisible force. Then the force released her, and she fell facedown into the snow.

Stunned by the fall, Sable lay without moving. In another second, his hands were on her again. She closed her eyes tightly, expecting yelling, beating, a slap across the face. Sable didn't open her eyes as those hands lifted her out of the snow. She had been hit many times. She knew what was coming.

Dismayed, Tinsel picked up the unresisting elf woman and brushed the snow from her face.

"Are you all right?" he asked worriedly, using the Locating Spell. No injuries, but she sagged in his arms as if she had fainted. Tinsel carefully propped her up against a tree.

"Are you all right?" he asked again, deeply concerned.

Sable opened her eyes and winced at the sight of the monster's face, but those hands hadn't hit her yet, and that deep voice still wasn't yelling at her. "I'm so sorry," it was saying, quiet and worried. "I should have known you'd do that. If I were in your place, I suppose I'd have done it, too. We'll just sit here for a few minutes. You can rest until the others are ready to go."

"Come show us where this one belongs, Seylin," called Katoo as he and Brindle shuffled by, carrying the sleeping Willow between them. Seylin and Emily went into the cave, and Seylin pointed to Willow's tent. The two goblins slung the elf boy into it and pulled his cloak over him. Then they went back outside to get another elf.

"What a pigsty!" exclaimed Emily, looking around. She glanced back up to find Seylin looking at her and blushed unexpectedly. Seylin thought about how miserable he had been thinking she was someone else's wife. She had been right about his behaving like an old governess. He had acted self-important and priggish.

"I didn't like living with elves," he said. "I was a fool to leave."

"Hmm," said Emily noncommittally. "You weren't the only fool. Did you know I actually made my peace with Ruby?"

"With the old lore-master? You two?" Seylin laughed. "Em, you have to be lying."

"No." Emily's eyes danced. "For once, I'm not lying. And if you hate elves and I like Ruby, it must be the start of a new world."

"Our world," said Seylin. "Yours and mine." And he put his arms around her, drew her close, and kissed her.

Seylin retrieved his pack and brought it back into the cave.

"I want to leave Rowan my knife," he said, laying it beside the sleeping elf, "and I want to give Willow my spare cloak because his is just a rag," he added, remembering the poor boy's delight over a warm coat. Then he put his extra winter clothes in Rowan's tent and dumped out the summer clothes as well. They had so little, he reflected, and they wouldn't turn up their noses at his clothes, which were proper elf colors.

"You're not going to leave this poor horse here to be eaten, are you?" demanded Emily as they came out of the cave. "I don't see why you should. You paid for him."

"Of course not," Seylin assured her. "They have plenty of meat." He untied the horse from the tree and led him up to the group. "Now we just need to think of a good name for him."

"Let's call him Dinner," suggested Emily.

"We could load him up as a packhorse," proposed Katoo, but Brindle shook his head.

"Marak said the comfort of the brides comes first," he reminded them. "Thaydar, since your bride is too upset to walk, I'd recommend that you ride."

Irina had awoken shortly before and was shrieking and sobbing under Thaydar's fond gaze, making poor Dinner rather jittery. When they hoisted her up onto the horse, she took one look around and fainted again.

Sable stood silently, holding on to her composure with a supreme effort. How long, she wondered, before the goblin caves? Where were the others, and when would they start the torture? Were they like humans, who kept their animals in little cages until they were ready to enjoy the slaughter? Now the monster was talking to her again. ". . . keepsakes. . . anything you want. . . won't be coming back ..." He stopped talking and looked at her. She stared at him helplessly. What did he want her to do?

"I don't think she can understand me, Seylin," said Tinsel thoughtfully. "This has been too much of a shock. Do you know if there's anything she might want to take with her?" He looked at the elf woman doubtfully as he said this. If her stained and ragged clothes were typical of the rest of her possessions, they should all be burned as soon as possible.

"Sable! Your father's book!" exclaimed Seylin, and he went back into the cave and returned with the old camp chronicle. "I'll keep it for you. You can have it whenever you want."

They set off into the night, following Brindle's lead, and walked the hours away. They soon left the elves' little forest behind. Sable watched the half-moon rise. They were on a snowy trail along the ridge of a hill, and the white fields around them were completely bare of trees. She had never before left her network of groves, and the enormity of the landscape unsettled her. It allowed her to see more of the stars that were appearing and disappearing in the cloudy sky, but it made her feel very unsafe. Tinsel watched her frightened face and could imagine what she was thinking. He knew from his page classes that elves never left the cover of the trees.

"I know you'd rather be in the forest," he said to her in a low voice. "But we're going this way because we'll be home faster. We'll be in the kingdom the night after tomorrow night, and then we'll be married. I know you don't want to marry a goblin, but I'm not so bad."

Sable continued to stare at the fields as if she hadn't heard. She wished that she hadn't. Her shock was wearing off, and the fear that they were about to cause her horrible pain was slowly ebbing away, but the reality of her situation was becoming clearer. She was finding it harder to ignore the bizarre shapes of the goblins and the strange new landscapes that they were walking through. She couldn't help understanding now the things that they said. And, worst of all, she had come to realize that she wasn't being dragged off to be bred to monsters, but to this monster, the one that had her by the hand. It wasn't just, as Thorn had always said, a story to frighten children. It was true, and this monster kept talking about it.

So did the other monster, the one that held Irina on the horse. Poor Irina, she was so terrified. He looked simply frightful. He had two long white teeth at the corners of his mouth, and his eyes were like a cat's. His voice was loud and gravelly, and he boomed when he laughed. Sable winced, looking at him and at the other outlandish shapes, at the sharp teeth, the long ears, the claws, the big twisted bodies. Golden cat-eyes, green cat-eyes, dark orange eyes with no white to them, like a bird's. It could have been one of them holding her now. She shivered a little.

At least the goblin that held her hand was quiet, and he didn't look like they did. He was a strange color, but he had normal hands, normal teeth, and normal ears. She tilted her head to look up at him, and those blue elf-eyes looked down into hers. He smiled at her serious face, and she looked away again quickly.

Shaky from the shock and terribly tired, she watched her feet stepping and stepping into the snowy tracks made by the others. The monotony of the endless motion dragged on her low spirits, and she stumbled along, half asleep.

Irina had almost cried herself out. Earlier in the night, she had alternated between screaming and fainting, and the fainting had been a real relief for the poor girl. Later, she had alternated between shrieking and crying, but neither of them had proved as satisfactory as the fainting. Now she was sobbing rather listlessly. It was beginning to occur to her that none of the methods she had tried so far was really improving the situation.

"What are you crying about?" growled Thaydar cheerfully. "No one's hurting you. No one's being mean. What's the matter, anyway?"

"I don't like horses," sobbed Irina. "Not except to eat."

"Well, don't you worry," said Thaydar. "You can walk if you want to. And once we're home and married, you won't ever have to see another horse as long as you live."

"I don't want to marry you!" wailed Irina, rubbing her hand across her eyes. She was starting to see halos around everything, she had cried for so long.

"Sure, you do," answered Thaydar with such confidence that Irina felt confused. "Why wouldn't you want to marry me?"

"Because you look so scary," she sobbed.

"But that's good," Thaydar told her serenely. "I'm a goblin. We're supposed to look scary." Irina thought about this. She decided it was probably true. "Don't worry, you'll get used to me in no time, and then you won't think I'm scary anymore."

"Really?" asked Irina hopefully. She didn't like being scared. It had worn her out.

"Really," he growled. "Now, don't cry anymore. A beautiful girl like you shouldn't ever have anything to cry about." Irina gulped and looked up at the fanged goblin. He smiled broadly at her, but she didn't faint.

"You—you think I'm beautiful?" she sniffled in a tone of wonder. "I think you're very beautiful," he assured her. "Then I'm pretty?" she asked, wiping her runny nose on the back of her hand.

"You're the prettiest thing I ever saw," he declared firmly.

Irina sat up a little straighter and forgot to cry for a minute.

"Then I'm not ugly and clumsy?" she wanted to know.

"Anyone who calls you that," roared Thaydar, "should be pummeled and horsewhipped!"

Irina thought about Thorn and Willow being pummeled and horsewhipped and broke into a little giggle. Then she looked at her goblin champion with new eyes. He was so big and strong and scary, he could just about do it, too.

"Does that mean I won't have to do the butchering where we're going?" she asked in a tone of great discovery.

"A little thing like you, with her hands all covered with dead sheep?" boomed Thaydar. "You must be joking!"

"No, she's not joking," interrupted Seylin. "The men made Sable and Irina do all the butchering. They had a rule that the ugly people butchered, and they said that meant the two women."

The cat-eyed lieutenant looked at the charming girl he held and felt deeply and righteously indignant. "Well, not anymore!" he promised stoutly. "My wife won't do any butchering she doesn't want to do."

"Oh!" breathed Irina with shining eyes. Now, that was a good reason to be the scary goblin's wife.

"No wonder your dress is all covered with stains!" fumed Thaydar. "We'll get rid of it right away, and you'll have some nice clothes. Ten dresses, twelve, fourteen, as many as you want. I can't wait to see you in a nice green satin to match your eyes."

"But it's winter," protested Irina doubtfully. "Don't I have to wear brown?"

"You can wear any color you want," insisted the goblin. Irina's eyes grew large.

"Can I have a blue dress?" she whispered in awe. Elves never wore blue, but it was her favorite color.

"Of course you can have a blue dress," growled Thaydar, smiling at her.

"Can I—can I have a red dress?" she faltered. She knew elves would never, ever wear red, but when fresh blood spilled onto the snow, it was so rich and magnificent.

"You can have a red dress, too," promised her goblin warmly, and Irina was beside herself with delight. All her life, she had hated her coarse, ugly clothes. She looked up at those terrifying cat-eyes and gave Thaydar a happy smile.

"What about a yellow dress?" she wanted to know.

Thaydar was feeling a little beside himself, too. He'd sought Emily's hand in marriage for the honor of an elf-cross bride, and he'd left the kingdom intent on the honor of a pure elf bride. He had been terribly proud of the beauty of his hysterical captive, but when Irina smiled at him, with those lovely green eyes, those perfect white teeth, and that adorable little chin, his tough old soldier's heart just turned to mush. Thaydar's life was never the same again. Making Irina smile became one of the goals of his existence, starting from that moment.

"You can have five yellow dresses," he promised. It worked. She smiled again. "Make that ten." Her smile grew bigger.

"Now you're just being silly," she said. He was glad she could tell because he wasn't entirely sure. Emily grinned, listening to them, and Katoo and Brindle exchanged glances. Who would have thought, their eyes told each other, that the boss was such an idiot?

Sable roused herself to the dreary reality of slavery. She looked at the snowy barrenness around them, and a lump came into her throat. This treeless wasteland was as frightening as the goblins were. It made her situation even harder to endure. She stared at the path before her feet, listening dully to the crunch of the snow, the growl of the goblins' voices, the thump of the horse's hooves, and Irina. Poor Irina. Sable looked up with a start. Poor Irina was—laughing?

"... and we'll have a little girl and a little boy," Thaydar was dreamily expounding for his giggling bride. "The little girl just as pretty as her mother is, and the little boy with fangs. And they'll be pages, and you'll go to court to see them serving their turn by the King's throne, all dressed up in their uniforms, and you'll just be so proud—"

"You'll be dead," interrupted a clear voice. Irina's face went pale. Thaydar turned, astounded at the intrusion. It was the other elf bride.

"What did you say?" he roared.

They stopped. All those animal eyes were staring at Sable now. She flinched and ducked her head nervously, but she was too upset not to speak.

"You'll be dead, Irina," she said, "with that very first baby. You'll die before you even see its face. We both will—you know that's just a woman's life. He's telling you a lie."

Irina began to sob, and Thaydar was furious. "Goblins never lie!" he thundered angrily, and Sable flinched again at the sight of those blazing eyes.

"She doesn't know that, Thaydar," observed Tinsel reasonably. "That must be some old scary tale the elf girls told each other about marrying goblins. It's not true, Sable. Having a goblin's baby isn't different from having an elf's baby."

Sable looked up at his friendly blue eyes with a little feeling of relief, but she was confused at his apparent sincerity.

"It doesn't matter whether the father's a goblin or an elf," she told him in a low voice. "That's just what happens when women have a child. Women have to die, that's how babies are born." Tinsel looked down at her sober face, puzzled as well.

"What a load of rubbish!" roared Thaydar. "Women survive childbirth every day." Sable winced at his loud voice and looked around nervously at all those strange eyes again.

"My wife's still alive after two," observed Brindle helpfully.

"I have both my grandmothers," added Katoo, his striped tabby face thoughtful. "And my mother's still alive, and she had quadruplets."

"But I think you cat folk are different," cautioned Brindle. "It's always quadruplets with you; that's not really normal."

Sable stared at the serious faces of the monsters, losing her confidence. Why would they try to talk her out of something so obvious? It must be a trick.

"Maybe goblin women aren't like that," she said. "Maybe just elf women are that way. But I know it's the truth. I know! I've seen the women die."

"She's right," said Seylin in the pause that followed. "Elf women are different from goblin women. They have a very hard time with childbirth, and they can't survive it without magic. I understand what happened now. Sable has the camp chronicle, and her great-great-grandfather's last entry told of a terrible accident. Almost all of the women were asphyxiated in one night. But the elf lord said that something even worse had happened, and now I know what it was. They lost the birthing magic. Only those dead women knew it. From that day on, the women in the camp were doomed to die in childbirth.

"I suppose they just told the little girls that that was the way life was," he conjectured. "And by the time Sable was born, they wouldn't have remembered anything different. Of course! That's why you didn't want to marry Thorn!" he said in a tone of discovery.

Sable drew her breath in sharply, feeling trapped by the revelation. Now all the monsters knew that she'd refused her marriage out of fear.

"But, Sable," he continued earnestly, "you don't have to worry about that anymore. We have entire books of elvish birthing magic. I can show them to you when we get home."

Sable glared at the elf. He called that torture chamber a home! And how dare he play on her weakness like that, trying to trick her now that he knew she was a coward!

"I don't want to learn anything from you, you traitor!" she hissed. "The goblins' tame elf, going out and finding them fresh blood. I begged you to leave so the goblins wouldn't come, and you promised me I was safe. You've never done anything but lie."

Seylin's face fell, and he looked away.

"That's not fair!" cried Emily. "He didn't know that we were coming!"

"It's all right, Em." He sighed. "She has a point."

"I don't think you could call Seylin a traitor," said Tinsel. "Both his parents are goblins." Sable stared at Seylin in horror and bewilderment. That handsome elf, a goblin's son? What other frightful things would they tell her, and how could she tell which were true? "He's right, Sable," continued Tinsel. "We know lots of healing magic. You're not going to die like that."

"I don't believe you!" she cried desperately. "I don't believe any of you. You're just telling us what we want to hear. You're trying to calm us with promises that nothing bad will happen because you think we're cowardly and weak."

"We don't think you're a coward," protested Tinsel mildly, but Sable wouldn't look at him anymore. "Well, we can tell you things, but you don't have to believe us. Maybe it's better if we showed you something. I've been wanting to try this." And he dropped his pack onto the snowy ground and began to rummage through it.

"Oh, good," said Seylin, looking up again. "I've been wanting to try it, too."

Sable held her breath. What were they going to try? She refused to look at the monsters; she wouldn't give them the satisfaction of seeing that she was afraid. After a minute, she felt something wet on her scarred cheek. She tried to jerk her head away, but the monster was holding her jaw.

"It's all right," he said. "It's just a cream."

Now she felt it on her other cheek. Then both cheeks grew warm, very warm, as if they were close to a fire. Alarmed, she tried to raise her hands to rub the stuff off, but he stopped her. Everyone was staring at her with intense interest. She began to panic in earnest.

"What are you doing to me?" she cried.

Tinsel turned her face, studying the cheeks with satisfaction.

"I healed your scars," he said. "I wasn't sure if it would work on such old wounds, but it did very well. There's just a thin white line left on each side."

He let go of her hands, and she reached up to touch her cheeks. They were smooth and flat now. She couldn't feel the scars at all.

"I'm glad they're not gone altogether," he added quietly. "They must have taken such courage to make."

Sable's heart was pounding. In a dream, or in a nightmare, she turned frightened eyes on the others.

"Oh, Sable, you're so beautiful!" exclaimed Irina happily.

Sable's hands began to shake. Her scars! They had kept her safe. She wasn't safe now. She didn't want those eyes staring at her anymore. She covered her cheeks with her shaking hands and turned away. The silver monster put his arms around her, shielding her from the others, and his sympathy made it harder to be brave. She moved her fingers against her cheeks, but her scars were really gone. She drew her breath in quick gasps, trying not to cry.

"You see," said Thaydar grandly to his bride, "that's the kind of magic we can do." Irina was terribly impressed. All Thorn could do was make rabbits.

"Then does that mean I won't die?" she asked in a small voice. She looked at her goblin hopefully. He always had an answer.

"My wife," growled Thaydar with conviction, "is not going to die in childbirth."

Irina thought about this for a minute. It wasn't hard to make up her mind.

"Then I want to be your wife," she announced, "because I don't want to die like that. When Laurel did, it really sounded like it hurt."

"You clever girl!" cried Thaydar admiringly, and that sweet face beamed up at him. Behind him, Emily grinned at Seylin and rolled her eyes.

Chapter Thirteen

They stopped a short time later to make camp in a little thicket. Tinsel took Sable off to one side and sat down, wrapping her in his cloak.

"No, I can't leave her," he said when hailed by the other busy goblins. "The last time I relied on the Leashing Spell, she tried to run off and nearly hurt herself."

Emily and Irina sat in the middle of camp while their bridegrooms set up tents. Thaydar had given Irina a necklace, and Emily watched her happily studying it in a small round mirror one of the goblin men had brought with him.

"I left my own mirror back home," she told Emily. "I wasn't awake when we left. Thaydar says when we get married I'll have a mirror so big I can see myself in it from head to toe, but I don't know how I'll be able to lift it. Do you think my present's pretty?"

"Yes," admitted Emily, noting that Thaydar had even made sure to match his fiancée's eyes. He would have been given a description of her, of course, but he wouldn't have had much time to prepare. Now, that was clever planning. No wonder he was Marak's top military man.

"Do you think I'm pretty?" continued Irina, studying her face in the glass. She looked the same as yesterday, but yesterday she had been ugly, and today she was pretty. She looked anxiously at Emily. Or maybe not?

"You're pretty," said Emily dryly. "But you're no genius."

"What's a genius?" asked Irina curiously. "Oh, wait. Thaydar'll know." Emily hadn't foreseen this development, and she didn't think Thaydar would be very pleasant about her remark.

"I just meant," she hurried to add, "that you're not terribly bright." She smiled a friendly, apologetic smile, and Irina smiled warmly back.

"Oh, I know that." She giggled. "Everybody tells me that. But I don't see what the fuss is all about."

Marak had stressed to the potential bridegrooms that they be the only ones to give their captives food. "Elf women take food from the hands of their husbands," he had warned. "If you let anyone else give their meals to them, it'll cause confusion." Irina didn't know the first thing about this, but she was only too happy to eat what Thaydar gave her. She gulped it down with relish under the loving gaze of her fiancé.

Sable understood exactly what it meant when Tinsel gave her food, and there was no way the silver goblin could induce her to eat it. Taking it would mean agreeing that he had the right to give it to her. It would mean agreeing to marriage. She wouldn't take it—she mustn't—but to turn down food freely given was a special torture for the starving woman. Her eyes wandered to it every now and then. She could even smell it a little.

"That's all right," he said kindly, laying the piece of bread in her lap. "You don't have to eat it if you don't want to, but I really think you ought to keep your strength up." And he began on his own dinner.

Keep her strength up. Of course! If Sable had the chance to escape, she would need the strength this bread would give her. Dilemma solved, she snatched the bread and began rapidly devouring it.

"Sable!" exclaimed Tinsel in alarm, plucking the bread out of her hands. "Sable, that's no way to eat!"

She stared in shattered disappointment. He'd taken the food away from her. It was true that Thorn did this whenever she was incautious enough to let him, but she hadn't realized that this goblin would do it. Such a huge piece, too. Her eyes stung with unshed tears.

"You could make yourself really ill by bolting your food like that," observed Tinsel. "Here, eat this slowly." He tore off a bite sized piece and handed it to her. She gazed at it dully. So tiny. The tiny piece vanished in a twinkling.

"You didn't chew that at all!" accused the goblin in dismay. "Chew this slowly," he said, holding out another piece, "and I promise I'll give you more."

Sable took the piece and gave it a couple of hasty chews to comply with his demand. He sighed and gave her more.

"Take your time," he said persuasively. "There's no need to hurry." But Sable thought there was. What if he changed his mind? She ate the next piece as rapidly as she thought he would allow, her eyes on the large amount that still remained. She had forgotten that she was supposed to refuse his food.

The party was distributed in three tents, with three people to a tent, and Sable and Tinsel were in a tent with the stripe-faced Katoo. She was glad at first that he was on the other side of her own goblin because his gruesome appearance still frightened her a little, but when Tinsel settled down beside her and spread his cloak over the two of them, Sable became very upset. Sharing food, sharing a tent, and sharing a cloak were all the signs of marriage in her simple world. She never should have taken his bread. Now this goblin thought that she was his wife. Tinsel sat up to rummage in his pack, and Sable shoved away the cloak.

"Here, let me see your hand," he said, but Sable ignored him. When she didn't respond, he pulled her hand out of the folds of her dress and rubbed cream on it. In a few seconds, the needle pricks, the knife scratches, the cooking burns, and the other scrapes and scars simply melted away. Sable stared in fascination as the skin became soft and smooth.

"How about the other hand?" he asked, and this time she held it out to him, watching as he worked in the cream. She turned her healed hands and rubbed them against each other. They had never felt like that in her memory.

Tinsel put the salve back into his pack and tucked the cloak around them once more. "Sleep well," he told her, closing his eyes, but Sable couldn't sleep. She had known the rules of her world even when she broke them, and she had known what would happen if the goblins ever came. Now they were dragging her away, but nothing was what she expected. Perhaps their confusing her like this was all just a part of the torture, but it didn't really matter. In the end, life held only two choices for her. She would either find some way to escape before she came to the goblin caves, or she would die having the monster child of her new goblin husband.

How could she escape? Now would be the best time, when they all were sleeping. If she had a knife, she could cut the side of the tent next to her and slip off into the whiteness of the day. She wasn't afraid of the daylight, she had been thrown out into it so often. One could go surprisingly far on feel alone. If they had more snow during the day, her tracks would be gone by nightfall, and they wouldn't even know which way to search.

She lay for ages listening to the goblins' steady breathing and watching the light brighten through the weave of the tent. Even under the thick canvas, the daylight made her squint. Over and over, she ran her hand along the wall of the tent beside her, pushing the seam with her fingers. If only I had a knife, she thought. If only my hand were a knife.

Suddenly the cloth parted under her fingers, and a bright beam of light stabbed in. Sable shut her eyes tightly and held her breath.

Slowly she ran her fingers along the tent wall close to the floor, and the thick, heavy cloth ripped beneath them. Very, very carefully, she made a hole that was wide enough to slip through. Then she stopped to listen. Not a sound but the goblins' breathing. Sable slid out from under the warm cloak and crawled into the daylight.

She paused outside the tent, trying to remember her surroundings. Tears streamed from her closed eyes because of the painful brightness. Crawling away between the tents, she moved as quietly as an elf knew how.

Then her hand stuck fast. It wouldn't move forward in the snow. She couldn't imagine what was wrong, and she couldn't open her eyes to see. Frantically, she slid it around, trying to find and feel the obstacle, but nothing was there to stop it. Just when she was about to give up, it freed itself as mysteriously as it had been caught, and she could move ahead once more.

Terribly excited, Sable crawled downhill, feeling for the thin trunks of the young trees. She didn't know how far the thicket extended, but she would search for a small cave or a patch of fir woods to hide in. She inched along over the uneven ground for a few minutes, and then her hand stuck fast again.

"We need to go back," said a quiet voice. It was her goblin husband.

Sable sat down and bowed her head, crushed with disappointment. "You followed me," she said.

"I had to," he answered, coming to her side. "We're leashed together with magic. You can't go more than ten feet away. The spell is like a rope that ties our hands together."

Sable rubbed her hand, remembering the pull on it. Now she understood.

"How did you cut the tent?" he asked curiously, but she wouldn't answer him. Tinsel put his arms around her, but she was stiff and unresponsive. He felt terrible for her. The poor elf woman hated him, and he couldn't do anything to make her stop.

"I'm sorry." He sighed. "I'm sorry we came and caught you. I'd let you escape, but I don't have the powder that breaks the spell. They probably knew not to give it to me. I can't steal it for you because that would be working against the King, but if there were any way I could do it, I would. I know how much you hate this. I know you want to be with your own people."

With her own people! Sable sat up with a jolt. That was what would happen if she escaped! Thorn would hunt for her, and he would find her, too. Now that the scars were gone, he would marry her, and she would die bringing his child into the world. Sable imagined for the briefest space of time what that would mean after all the insults, all the cruelty, and all the hatred that had passed between them. No torture and no goblin spells could ever be as horrible as having to be Thorn's wife.

"No!" she gasped, huddled in the goblin's arms. "I don't want my own people."

"You don't?" he echoed, surprised. He could feel that something had changed. "Sable, if you'll come with me, you won't be sorry," he promised. "I know you don't like us, but I'll be a good husband to you. Come back and get some sleep."

"All right," she answered. But there was nothing else she could say. Life held only one choice for her after all.

Sable woke up screaming from one of her nightmares. She felt arms around her and heard kind words in her ear. For a few seconds, she thought that she was back with Thorn and all the intervening years had been the nightmare. That evening, she ate her husband's food without protest and responded when he spoke to her, but she didn't have much to say. She watched the monster warily, trying to see what things made him angry so that she would know what to avoid. If Thorn had taught her one thing, it was to stay out of a man's way. Life with a goblin husband would be hard enough, but it would be unbearable if he started yelling.

As they broke camp and started off, Tinsel puzzled over this new development. He found his bride's suspicious glances and careful answers even stranger than her open hostility. Yesterday she had treated him as an enemy, and he could respect and understand that. Tonight he couldn't guess what she thought he was.

"Why don't you want to go back to your own people?" he asked as they walked along.

"Because of Thorn," she said in a low voice. "He hates me, but he'll marry me anyway."

"Thorn was the rabbit-lover?" asked the silver goblin. "And you were supposed to marry him, weren't you?"

Sable nodded, unsure how much to tell him.

"When I cut my face, he didn't want to feed me anymore," she answered, "but Rowan said the band needed me. They agreed that as long as he fed me my share it didn't matter how he did it. But he hated to feed me, hated it every night. The things he did weren't so bad. It was how he looked at me."

Tinsel thought about what it would be like to live with someone who despised you.

"I couldn't do that to you," he told her. "I wouldn't ever treat you like that. And you won't die having a child, either. The goblin King can get you through it."

Sable shivered at the thought of a goblin King playing midwife.

"I'm an elf, not a goblin," she pointed out. "He doesn't know about elves."

"The goblin King's Wife is an elf," said Tinsel, "and he helped her through their son's birth. It couldn't have been too bad because she was at a banquet two days after he was born."

"Another elf?" asked Sable in surprise. "An elf I don't know? Have you seen her?"

"I see her every day," said Tinsel. "Her son's almost six now."

Sable fell silent, confused. He must be lying. Unwilling to argue with him, she listened to him make promises and explanations without comment. The young goblin kept up the one-sided conversation for a while, but then he, too, fell silent. He considered his captive bride, with her history of neglect and abuse. She was so guarded and distrustful, she would never see him as a friend.

"I can't do this," he said. "The King's going to have to find someone else to marry you."

Sable stopped and stared at him, taken aback. She thought they were already married.

"I made you angry," she guessed. "I broke a goblin rule."

"No, I'm not angry," he replied. "That's not it at all. Sable, you're beautiful and brave and smart, and I'd like the chance to make you happy. But marriage isn't going to make you happy. How can I marry you, knowing how you feel about it?"

"It's not your fault if I die," she said slowly. "It's just a woman's life."

"That's not true," said Tinsel. "If I marry you knowing it will kill you, of course it's my fault if you die, and if I marry you knowing you'll be miserable, it's my fault if you're miserable. I know you won't die, but I also know you don't believe that. I can't marry you and make you miserable."

Sable was struck by this argument. It was what she had told Thorn all those years ago. If you loved me, you wouldn't want me to die, she had said. Now, why hadn't Thorn understood that?

"But you said I'll just have to marry someone else," she pointed out unhappily.

"I know," he told her, "but that's not my decision. Marak has to decide those things; that's why he's the King."

She thought about what this would mean for her. She would still die, and she wouldn't even have this quiet goblin's kindness anymore. Maybe it would be one of those others—loud, twisted, with strange eyes. Maybe it would be somebody cruel. Maybe she would live a life like the one she had had before, only this time she would have to die anyway. Tinsel looked at her face, even more distressed now, and he guessed what she was thinking.

"Marak will let you marry anyone you choose," he said. "You're terribly important. You're almost the only elf bride we have."

Sable thought about this for some time as they walked along in silence.

"Then I'll tell him I want to marry you." The big silver goblin was completely baffled. "Why would you do that?" he demanded.

She looked up at him anxiously. "Will that make you angry?" she asked.

"No, it won't make me angry," insisted Tinsel, waving a hand in the air. "But you've been nothing but unhappy the whole time you've been with me. Why on earth would you want to marry me?"

No one asked Sable why she might want to do things. Even during their happiest days, Thorn hadn't been interested in hearing her point of view, and during the last several years, no one had asked her anything at all. She couldn't explain that he had understood her argument to Thorn. She couldn't really explain about his sympathy and consideration, either, that it was the first time a man had wanted to hear what she had to say.

"You're kind," she said.

"We're all kind, compared to what you're used to," he replied gloomily. "You're with a better class of people now."

"And you don't want to marry me," she continued sincerely. "I wouldn't want to marry someone who wanted to marry me."

Tinsel glanced down at her serious face, truly and deeply puzzled. "You want to marry me because I don't want to marry you," he echoed. She nodded. He fell to work on that mystery, and a thoughtful silence descended once more.

"Will he make you?" she asked after a few minutes, and he shot her an inquiring look. "Will the goblin King make you marry me?" she asked with concern.

"Oh, probably," mused Tinsel.

Sable gave a little sigh of relief.

"Then I'll tell him I won't marry anyone else."

Tinsel shook his head. "I don't see how forcing me to marry you solves any of your problems," he observed. "You're still miserable because you don't want to be married in the first place, and now I'm miserable because I don't want to be married to someone miserable."

Sable thought about this and felt uncertain once again.

"But I'll try to be a good wife," she told him. She wasn't quite sure what that entailed. Apparently, she wasn't supposed to cook for him or sew his clothes, and she didn't know how to hunt.

"That's not really the problem," explained Tinsel. "You'd still think I was trying to kill you, and you couldn't help hating me for it. Remember that look in the elf man's eyes that you didn't want to see?" She nodded. "Well, I don't want to see it, either."

A light dawned in Sable's mind. She had been afraid that he would get angry and hate her, and it turned out that he was afraid she would hate him. She didn't just need his kindness, he needed her kindness, too. Sable was staggered at the thought. She had never had that kind of power before. Thorn had never given her the least indication that he cared about what she thought of him.

"But what if you don't see it?" she asked him. "If I don't get angry at you? If I try to be kind, too?"

Tinsel stopped walking. He studied her for a long minute.

"If that's what you want, Sable," he said, and he smiled.

Sable didn't know what to do. Maybe it was all a trick. Maybe, when they got to the caves, this goblin would hand her over to be tortured. But he didn't look as if he would, and he had been a good husband so far. He had fed her and kept her warm and talked to her, and he had cared about how she felt.

She rubbed her healed hands together, thinking about this. Then she looked up and managed a smile in return.

"We'll have a happy year," she whispered. "I promise."

Chapter Fourteen

Camp that morning was surprisingly uneventful. They had made good time during the long winter night and would be home before midnight the next day. Richard cheerfully ran errands for anyone who asked, and the goblin men made a fuss over him. He had assisted in unloading Dinner, who had been a packhorse for the night, and now he was bringing a pot of water to Brindle.

"Light that fire for me," directed the man, and a roaring flame shot up. "Wait! Not so much force next time!"

Richard sat down by the fire to tend it, and Brindle began sorting through their supplies.

"You have a good bit of magic," he observed to Richard. "If you're Mandrake's boy, and Marak thinks you are, you come by it naturally. Mandrake was the best illusionist among the Guard in his day. You'd walk right by him and think he was a rock or a tree. Then he'd trip you and get a good laugh at the stupid look on your face."

"I have a dad?" asked Richard in amazement.

"Doesn't everybody?" noted Brindle. "Had a dad, is more like it. Mandrake died a couple of years ago, and that's lucky for him. Marak was so angry when he found out about you that I thought he'd kill us all. I'm not even old enough to be your dad, and I still shook in my boots."

Richard's face fell. "The King didn't like it, eh?"

"Didn't like it?! He set a door on fire just by touching it, he was in such a temper! He called in every man who had been outside the kingdom, and he said that if anything like that ever happened again we'd every one of us be sorry."

"I've never been the kind who could please a king," said the boy with a sigh.

"Don't worry," said Brindle. "It's not your problem. Look here, now. Watch me make these beans jump into the pot."

"Lumme!" exclaimed Richard, and Brindle laughed at his expression.

"It's better with bacon, but we didn't bring any. Here, I'll teach you the spell."

Sable fell asleep fairly easily, but she woke up screaming again. She was very apprehensive about leaving the world she knew and going down into the goblin caves. As the evening wore on and they drew closer to the kingdom, she became quieter and quieter.

"Are you sure the goblin King will let me marry you, Tinsel?" she asked anxiously.

"I'm positive," said Tinsel. "He wants you to be happy."

"I don't know why he would want that," said Sable suspiciously. "Not if he's the goblin King."

The goblin King figured very prominently in the elves' scary stories. Human slaves had modified many of these from the ghost stories they knew in order to entertain the little elf children. The goblin King acted in some like a ghost, in some like an ogre, and in some like the devil himself. What he almost never acted like was an authentic goblin King, but Sable didn't know that.

Tinsel knew perfectly well why the goblin King would want her to be happy. Marak had reminded the whole party about it before they had left. The First Fathers of the two races were tremendously intelligent, but they were something like amateur experimenters. Neither elves nor goblins reproduced with the careless ease of the human race. Elf women didn't have the problem of sterility that goblins often had, but they were terribly sensitive to their surroundings. Unhappy elf women bore only one child, whereas happy ones bore three or four. Marak needed as many children as he could get from these last remaining elves to shore up his magical high families, and he had made very sure that his goblins understood this.

The party had been skirting forested hills for some time, and Sable could tell by their excited chatter that the goblins were nearing home. Now they left the forest to cross rolling fields again, and she felt a little relieved. There couldn't be a cave out here, she thought. But she was wrong.

"Close your eyes," warned Tinsel. "I don't want you to be frightened." Faint with dread, she felt them walking down a long slope.

When Tinsel uncovered her eyes, Sable gasped. They weren't in a field anymore. They were walking through a long, thin cavern, and her sky was now black stone. The light was very bright, and she could see that not one thing lived here, not a plant, not a field mouse, not a bug. They came to the end of this cavern, and a metal wall faced them. They were trapped, thought Sable in a panic. They would die here in this dead place.

"Welcome, elf brides!" boomed a massive voice, and Sable cringed in fear. "It's so nice to see pretty elves again." The iron wall swung forward, and the party walked through. Then it shut with a clang. "Do come see me sometimes," it invited, "even though I can't let you out."

The next cave was large, and horses lived in it; Sable could see their long faces poking out from little rooms on the sides. But the ceiling of this huge room seemed so low, she felt as if it were pushing down to crush her. She felt sick, and she found that she was shaking from head to foot.

From the stable they entered a suite of rooms designed for the reception and marriage of elves, where the goblin men removed the Leashing Spell at a large basin of water. They stopped in a big square waiting room decorated with lavish magnificence, the walls and ceiling covered with golden mosaics of the design that the dwarves liked best. To please the other races, dwarves sometimes made stone plants and flowers, but they never understood the point of making a rock look like something it wasn't. Their own art aimed at bringing out the natural beauty of stone and metal in intricate progressions and patterns of different colors.

Sable blinked in the bright light and studied the ceiling right above her, dazzled by the glittering tiles. She longed for the simple clutter of the forest, with its living creatures, its gentle movements, and its high, high ceiling of stars.

When she looked down again, a new goblin was standing before them. He was hideous, with eyes of two colors and stiff hair that rustled and moved like a living thing. His lips were brown, as if they were smeared with dried blood; his teeth were like sharp metal knives; and his skin was dreadfully pale, as if he were one of the walking dead.

"Welcome, elf brides, to my kingdom," the corpselike wraith said pleasantly. "And while I understand that you aren't yet glad to be here, you may rest assured that I am very glad to have you here. An especially warm welcome to Sable," and those eyes slid to her face. "It's been many a long year since we greeted a lord's daughter in this room." The bicolor eyes, brilliant in that deathly paleness, bored into her like coals. Sable shivered and hid her face against Tinsel's chest.

"During the journey," continued the voice, "you have had some time to become acquainted with the bridegrooms I picked out for you. I don't expect you to be pleased about your marriages, but if you have any specific objections to make about your bridegrooms, I will be happy to listen to them and see what I can do. Irina, please come with me. Thaydar will wait for you. We'll talk for a few minutes in the next room, and then you'll come back here."

Marak walked into a small room that was decorated as lavishly as the larger one. Against the far wall stood an elaborate stone throne that was carved out of one block. Before the throne was a stone table, its gray-veined surface highly polished, and on the other side of the table was a simple square stool of stone protruding from the floor.

Marak crossed to the throne and sat down on it, considering the elf girl before him. Less sensitive than Sable, Irina was also better prepared. She had been listening to Thaydar's stories about the goblin King for the last two nights, and she even knew something about what he would look like. Nevertheless, she was taken aback by his bizarre appearance and by all the unfamiliar sights. She wished Thaydar could be there with her.

"Please sit down," Marak urged, gesturing to the stool beside her. Irina looked at the stone seat without much comprehension. Elves didn't use furniture, so she wasn't accustomed to chairs. When she continued to stand, Marak left the matter alone.

"Tell me, do you have any objection to marrying Thaydar?" he asked. "Has anything he's said or done upset you?"

Irina's eyes were wandering in a bewildered manner around the room and back to him. She had thought she understood what her new life would be like, but now she was beginning to doubt it. Maybe Sable was right. Maybe Thaydar had just been telling her what she wanted to hear.

"He said—he said—that I wouldn't have to butcher," she stammered, looking at the King a little anxiously.

"That upset you?" asked Marak, amused. But he didn't laugh. Kate had specifically warned him not to.

"Oh! No," amended Irina. "I really hate to butcher."

"I promise you won't have to," said the goblin King graciously, and the girl relaxed a little.

"Do you like Thaydar?" he asked with interest.

"Oh, yes," confided Irina. "He knows all kinds of things, and he's just so strong and scary, and he doesn't ever let anybody tease me."

"Did my goblins tease you?" asked Marak in surprise.

"No," said Irina, "but he would have pummeled them if they had. And he said I could have, oh, all kind of things, dresses and mirrors and presents." She looked at the goblin King hopefully. She was starting to regain her confidence.

"He'll give them to you," promised Marak. "Thaydar is a very important goblin in this kingdom, and he can have anything he wants. You're right that he knows things. He's my military commander, and he advises me. If I were to die, he would take over running the kingdom until my son was old enough to rule."

"Oh," said Irina, tremendously impressed. Kings and kingdoms sounded so grand. "Thaydar says I'm pretty," she told him with innocent satisfaction. "He says I'm the prettiest thing he ever saw."

"I'm sure he wouldn't lie," commented the goblin King helpfully.

"Am I the prettiest thing you ever saw?" she asked. Marak fixed her with a thoughtful gaze.

"No," he answered steadily. "My wife is the prettiest thing I ever saw."

Irina considered this.

"I think that's so sweet," she said, beaming at him. Marak propped his chin on his hands and gave her an encouraging smile.

"So you don't mind marrying Thaydar," he concluded. "Is there anything else that's worrying you? Anything you'd like to mention?"

"There is one thing," she confessed reluctantly. "I'm not old enough to be married yet, not for six months."

"So you're seventeen?" inquired the goblin King.

"I don't know," said Irina.

"I think it would be fine for you to be married now," said Marak cautiously, watching her face. "Does that bother you?"

"No," answered the elf girl carelessly. "Thaydar says it's just a lot of nonsense."

Marak grinned. "I'm sure he's right," he said. "Thaydar knows all kinds of things."

The group waited quietly in the large room. Long stone benches ringed the walls on three sides, but no one sat down. The door opened, and Irina emerged.

"Sparks came out of my hand," she giggled to her bridegroom.

"That's wonderful!" said Thaydar warmly.

Seylin smiled to himself. It wasn't exactly wonderful. Marak had tested her for magical ability, and she was moderately but not thrillingly gifted. Emily sighed. When he had tested her, not even one spark had shown up.

"Sable," called Marak from the door. He could tell that the other elf was almost fainting with fear. Excellent, he thought with well-concealed glee. Her magical instinct was alert to the danger of goblins, the same sixth sense that had kept Kate fighting to stay away from him. Sable was an aristocrat, there was no doubt about it.

It's a trick, thought Sable, beside herself with dread. She would go through the door, and they would lock her up; they would torture her and work horrible magic. When Tinsel let her go, she clung to his hands.

"It's all right," he told her in a low voice. "I'll be waiting right here."

She remembered her dignity. She walked quietly into the small room, her eyes on the floor, somehow managing to pass the goblin King. She didn't look around as Irina had because she didn't want to see what was coming. When she heard the door shut behind her, she closed her eyes tightly. Marak walked by her and around the table, studying her attentively as he passed.

"Sable, please sit down," he invited. "And you'll need to open your eyes in order to find your seat," he added helpfully.

Sable stole a quick glance around the room, found the stone stool, and sat down on its edge, head down, clutching her hands together tightly.

"The direct descendant of the noble family Sabul," mused Marak, looking at his prize capture with acquisitive eyes. "One of the elf King's eighteen camp lords, among the highest of the high elves. There is nothing in a goblin King's power that I wouldn't do to make you happy in your marriage and happy in my kingdom. And look at me when I speak to you," he added pleasantly. "That's how business is conducted."

Sable glanced up at him, wincing. Marak smiled at her.

"That's better," he said. "I don't look as bad as you think. I want you to be happy, Sable. I want it very badly. So why don't you tell me what's bothering you because you don't look very happy at the moment."

"I can't live down here!" she burst out desperately. "Nothing lives here, not a tree, not a blade of grass. I can't even remember how many doors are between me and the stars now, and I can't breathe anymore!"

"Spoken like a true elf," remarked the goblin King approvingly. "We'll take those problems one at a time. The feeling of not being able to breathe is called claustrophobia, and it's very common in new elf brides. The thing to remember is that air can pass freely through spaces where you are not permitted to go. Even in small rooms like this one, you can usually feel moving air. Do this." He held his hand up in front of him, and Sable raised her shaking hand to copy. She could feel a tiny breeze flowing past it, and her breathing relaxed slightly.

"Blades of grass. We have lots and lots of those, and we have lots of sheep that eat them. We don't allow either one indoors, but you can visit them anytime you like. Trees. We don't have any real trees, but we do have a grove of pretend trees put in for the sake of the elves. They won't fool you, but you may find they do you a certain amount of good anyway, and if you decide you don't like them, please do me a favor and don't breathe a word of it to the dwarves.

"Stars," he continued. "Stars we don't have, no stars of any kind. Elf brides in the old days simply had to live without them, and they weren't happy about that. But you don't have a race of kinsmen outside waiting to liberate you, so I think I can offer you a compromise. As long as I see you trying to settle into kingdom life, I'll let you go outside for the night of each full moon. Do you think that will help make up for the lack of stars?"

Sable had been afraid she would never see the night sky again, but now she would see it in just three weeks. She began to lose her fright of the wraithlike goblin King, and the relief showed on her face. Tinsel was telling the truth, and so was he. He did want her to be happy.

"My goblins have relayed to me your fears about childbirth and the shocking condition of life in your camp," continued Marak. "I want to assure you that what was normal in your camp is not normal at all, and I certainly wouldn't authorize your marriage if I thought death would be the result."

"Why would you care?" she whispered. "It's just what happens."

"I care because you're my prisoner and not my subject," he responded. "I could order one of my subjects to certain death, in battle, for instance, if that death were truly necessary. But you're a defenseless prisoner who has committed no crime, so I can't have you killed no matter what the profit might be. It would be demeaning to my kingship."

There was a small silence, and Sable decided that he expected her to speak.

"Thank you for explaining that you don't think I'll die," she said.

"But you don't believe me," commented the goblin King. He paused and thought for a minute.

"Beauty meant everything to the First Fathers of the elves," he reflected. "It's a goal that causes problems in elf magic and elf cul ture, but nowhere is the problem of beauty so great as when the elf woman goes into labor. You elf women are petite and slender, with lovely, tiny bones, but an elf baby is longer-limbed and older than babies of other races, not like an ugly newborn at all. When a fine boned, small elf woman tries to deliver this larger, older baby, death is the logical result. With magic, birth is uncomfortable but achievable. Without magic, another process eventually sets in which usually allows the child to be born but always takes the life of the mother."

Sable found it hard to believe that magic could make such a difference and that all the elf men in her band would lie. "We were told that women have to die so babies can be born," she said. "Magic might just help sometimes."

"So you would say that the occasional woman might be saved by magic," suggested Marak, "but that the race was set up with the mother's death in mind." Sable nodded. "Not possible, and I can prove it to you." He hesitated. "At least, I think I can," he added, looking at her sharply. "Have you learned any math at all? Anything about numbers?"

"Do you mean counting?" asked Sable. "I can count up to eighteen.

"It's like counting," Marak said, "and you're smart, even if you're untaught. We'll give it a try. The race of elves came from fifteen First Fathers, and at one point in history there were about four thousand elves. That's a huge number, Sable—that's like counting the stars in the sky."

Sable was impressed. So many elves. So much company. How nice it would have been.

"Now, you notice that the number gets bigger, much bigger. Let's see if we can do that when the mother dies in childbirth."

He pulled open a shallow drawer in the table and brought out some shiny gold objects that looked like sharp pins sticking up from flat bases. Sable watched him, secretly a little flattered. Only her father had ever tried to teach her things. Thorn didn't usually explain himself at all. He just insisted that he was right.

"Here is your elf couple," said the goblin King, setting up two of the golden spikes before her. "A man and his wife. But the woman can have only one child, and then she dies."

He advanced another pin. "Here's the child. It took two parents to produce only one child. When the older generation dies away," and he covered up the two pins with his hand, "there won't be more elves than before. The mother has left a child to replace herself, but the father has no child to replace him."

Sable stared at the pins. She thought about Alder and Rose having just Irina, and Hemlock and May having just Willow. There weren't more elves than before, there were fewer.

"But the man could marry another wife," she pointed out. That was what Father had done to replace himself.

"Very good," said Marak approvingly. "Yes, that will help, but will it help enough?"

He brought out two more pins. "Here's the new wife, and she has a child. Now we have two children, that's true, but look, it took three parents to make them. You can see that you won't ever have more elves later if the mother dies. You'll always have fewer and fewer. But we know that the elves went the other way, that there were more and more. That happened because elf women were having two, three, and four children apiece, and that means elf women aren't supposed to die in childbirth."

Sable stared at the pins in excitement. It all made perfect sense. She knew that there had been more elves in her father's day. Even she had seen the band shrink in her lifetime. Soon, none of them would be left. Surviving childbirth. Who would have imagined that a goblin would teach her that?

Marak watched her excited face, pleased with his quick pupil. "Aside from this, did you have any other concerns?" he asked. "Do you have any objection to marrying Tinsel?"

"I won't marry anyone else," declared Sable forcefully. "He's kind."

"He is, indeed—very kind," agreed the goblin King. "Tinsel's always been amazingly nice. Since you have no objection, we'll hold the marriage shortly, and now I'd like to test you for magical ability."

He stood up and walked around the table toward her. Sable jumped up and drew back in alarm.

"Magical ability?" she asked. "What do you mean?"

"Your ability to work magic, of course," he said, amused. "What else would I mean?"

"But women can't work magic," she protested, taking another step back, and the goblin King gave a chuckle.

"I'm afraid your upbringing has been absolutely appalling," he said cheerfully. "No one has bothered to teach you anything but lies. Not only can elf women work magic, but certain kinds of elf magic were always worked by the women. Hold out your hand, and I'll show you."

Sable held out her hand, looking away and shuddering with disgust as he put that corpse's hand over hers. He pointed absently at the lamp above him, and the room darkened. Her hand began glowing with a bright silver light, and a single ray like a moonbeam shot from the end of each finger. The beams played around the shadowy room as she moved her fingers, and the silver light didn't fade for almost a minute.

"I knew it," gloated the goblin King, pointing at the lamp again. "You're powerfully magical, probably as magical as Seylin is. I'll start teaching you magic myself right away. You and Irina can learn with my wife; she's a beginner, too. Most magical people have a special talent. My wife's is killing people. I wouldn't be surprised, Sable, if yours is healing, and that's why you were so upset by the childbirth deaths. It would be wonderful if you were a healer; a talented elf healer could do a lot of good in my kingdom."

Sable flexed her hand, staring at it, and thought of Thorn and Rowan and Willow laughing over her working magic. And all the time, she could do it. She just needed to be taught. The goblin King opened the door, and she walked out, but she wasn't the same woman who had walked in a short time before. Her head was high, and her eyes were shining. She wasn't going to be tortured, and she wasn't going to die. She was going to learn magic.

"Your turn, M," announced Marak.

The second she was inside the door, Emily threw herself into his arms. "I've missed you so much!" she cried.

"Well!" exclaimed Marak, hugging her in return. "I'd like you to remember that this is an official elf bride's interview. You'll want to save these disruptive demonstrations for a more appropriate moment, such as the next time I'm trying to hold court."

Emily released him. "I count as an elf bride?" she demanded.

"Seylin went out hunting for a bride, and it seems to me that he's found one."

"I went out hunting for Seylin," countered Emily with a grin, "and I'm the one who found what I was after."

"You were seeking your human nature," corrected the goblin King, smiling. "Tell me, how did that go?"

Emily sobered up, thinking about what she'd found on her quest, about the elf girl's book and her goblin son's disastrous war of revenge.

"I found out that you don't just grow up into the person you should become," she said. "I always thought that it happened on its own, but it actually takes a lot of work. And sometimes"—she thought about Whiteye standing on the battlefield reading his mother's book—"sometimes it doesn't happen at all."

Marak watched her pensive face, a little surprised.

"That's certainly true," he remarked. "What else did you find out?"

"I found out that if you learn enough about something you can't hate it even if you want to. That's why Ruby couldn't hate the human twins." She paused to consider that and gave a little sigh. "And I suppose that's why I couldn't hate Ruby, either. What did you decide, Marak? You're letting her keep the children, aren't you?"

"Yes, I am, until they grow up," replied the goblin King. "Then Jack will have to leave. I'm not letting him bring a wife down here and start populating my kingdom with humans. I'll have him taught the merchant's craft, and he can make trading trips with the men. That's something that should help him in his world. Ruby is settling down with them on a farm across the valley. I should have known that if I sent her out with you she'd never do any more teaching."

"Ha! I was good for her," retorted Emily. "I made her think about new things."

"That I believe," said Marak. "You never think the same old things that the rest of us do. I've missed you, too—very much. No one else causes me such interesting problems. And let me add that seeing you and Seylin married will fulfill my fondest hopes for you both."

Emily stared at him in astonishment.

"Marak!" she exclaimed. "I never knew that."

"I know," he observed. "You never asked me. I've lived more than three times as long as you have, you know. You might ask my advice on occasion."

Marak opened the door and called in the rest of the group. Then he sat down on the throne again and lifted a large book onto the table. He flipped through the book until he came to the first blank page, produced a bottle of ink, and selected a quill pen from the drawer.

"The registry and marriage of elf brides," he informed the small crowd before him, "is a simple ceremony with three distinct parts. I'm going to perform each part for all three of you before moving on to the next one. M, you're first."

He beckoned Emily and Seylin up to the table. Then he positioned one of Sable's golden pins before them and set a small golden disk beside it. "Prick her finger," he directed Seylin, "and squeeze two drops of blood onto this disk."

Emily was preparing to question whether this was really necessary, but Seylin had her finger pricked before she could protest. The King covered the small disk with his six-fingered hand. When he removed it, the disk had changed color. It was now almost entirely bright red, but one small sliver appeared to have been marked off with a straight line, and beyond that line it was white.

"There, M, is your human blood," explained Marak, pointing to the red part with his quill. "And there's the elf blood," he went on, pointing to the slim white section. Emily studied it unhappily. No wonder her magic spells never worked.

Marak picked up his quill and dipped it, entering her into the registry. "Your age?" he asked.

"Eighteen," answered Emily. He entered it along with the results of the test and then added Seylin's name and age below it.

"Humor me, Seylin," said Marak as he wrote. "I want to test you, too."

Seylin obediently pricked his own finger and squeezed blood onto a new disk. When Marak lifted his hand from it, Seylin's disk showed three colors. Almost the entire disk was white, but a small section was red, and the tiniest of slivers was black.

"You see," said the King, "you're not an elf at all. Here's your elvish blood." He pointed to the white section. "That's quite a bit, but elves aren't like goblins. They never marry other races if they have any choice at all, and only the women can. An elf man couldn't have children with an elf cross, not even one as powerful as Kate. No elf would ever call you an elf. Do you see this?" he added, pointing to the tiny black section. "That's your goblin blood, so you're a goblin. One drop is all it takes."

Irina's disk was totally white.

"Now, that's an elf," observed Marak with satisfaction. "Is she seventeen, Sable?" And when Sable nodded, he entered her age. Then he wrote Thaydar's information below hers.

"Sable," continued Marak. "Sabul," he added, writing the characters. " 'Igniting the red flames.'" He paused and put down his quill to study the black-haired elf woman before him.

"In the reign of Aganir Halbi, the elf King named Winter Frost," he said, "and in the reign of my ancestor Marak the Antlered, the goblin King's military commander claimed the honor of an elf bride, and he and his men attacked the Top Shield Star Camp. The camp lord fell in that battle, and so did his son, but a young elf turned the tide. He fought so fiercely that he killed the goblin commander himself, along with a number of the Guard, and no elf brides were taken that night. As a reward, the elf King gave that young man the lordship of the camp along with a new name, Sabul, the Raging Fire because he had fought like a raging fire among the goblins."

Sable stared at the goblin King in astonishment. "How do you know that?" she asked.

"I read it in the chronicles," replied Marak. "Both of them. We have the elvish chronicles, too, for that span of years."

Sable didn't even feel the prick. A raging fire. Sabul. She remembered her father with a surge of compassion. He'd been hard on them, but he'd been hard on himself, too, and she wished she could find his spirit somewhere and tell him about the first Lord Sabul.

"Pure elf," commented Marak, glancing at the white disk. "How old are you, Sable?" She came out of her daydream with a jolt.

"I don't know the number for it," she confessed, ashamed.

"Tell me what you know about it," suggested Marak. "We can probably find the number."

"Irina and I share the same birthday moon," began Sable slowly, thinking about numbers. "We were both born in the middle month at the summer camp. When I reached my marriage moon, that meant I was eighteen, but at that same moon, Irina was only twelve. She won't be eighteen until that moon comes back next summer."

"Very good," said the goblin King. "You were eighteen five years ago, so that means you're twenty-three now. Next summer, you'll be twenty-four." He wrote down her age and Tinsel's information below it. Sable stared at him in awe and thought about all the things he knew: elvish and reading and writing and magic and enough numbers to count the stars in the sky. She wondered what it would be like to know so much, and how long it must have taken to learn.

"That completes the registry," said Marak, blotting the page and setting the book aside. "Now I need to put a magical symbol on you so that the doors know not to let you out." He took a bottle of gold ink and a small paintbrush from the drawer and worked the magic on Irina. "And remember, Sable, that I'll let you out for the full moon. Don't try to fight the spell." He worked the magic and studied the letter, but Sable didn't show the burning that Kate had after her own wedding ceremony.

"Very good," said Marak, putting down the ink and brush. "Now we come to the Binding Spell, which is the actual marriage. Seylin and M, you're first," he added, coming over to them. He plucked a hair from Emily's head and wrapped it around Seylin's right wrist. Then he plucked a hair from Seylin's head and wrapped it around Emily's wrist. As he wrapped the hair, it seemed to vanish from his fingers, but the hair could still be seen, deep under the skin, encircling the wrist like a thread. Irina came closer to look, and Emily held out her wrist so that she could see.

"This magic," explained Marak, "ensures that the goblin genealogies are accurate. As long as the married couple remain true to each other, those hairs can't be felt. If a spouse commits adultery, the hair begins to itch, and a rash spreads up and down the arm. That itch only stops when the spouse names the other guilty party in front of the King, so I can correct the genealogies if necessary, and in front of the other spouse, so he or she can decide on a suitable revenge. But the worst revenge is that the entire kingdom knows about it," he concluded cheerfully. "The confessions always take place at court, and they're very well attended."

The goblin King turned to his new couple.

"Congratulations on your marriage," he said pleasantly, "and because you certainly won't want to take her back to your Guard quarters, Seylin, the goblins have decorated M's quarters instead. That required doing some cleaning, M, so if you can't find anything, ask Kate where she had things put. Seylin, come see me tomorrow about new employment that will change your living quarters."

The young pair received the congratulations of the others and left the room, going back through the stables and down the corridor that had been Emily's first view of the goblin kingdom. They paused to lean out a window together, as they had done on that first night. The view of the lake valley, crossed by twinkling lights, seemed one of the most beautiful sights in the world.

Marak performed the Binding Spell on Thaydar and Irina, and now Irina had a hair of her own to study, black against the whiteness of her slender wrist.

"Congratulations on your marriage, old friend," said the King, "and, Irina, I hope you'll be very happy. Kate left some clothes in the dressing room for you to try on until you can have your own clothes made."

Thaydar and Irina left the room together, leaving Sable rather stunned.

"But—she isn't married now, surely?" she asked in confusion. "Irina's still just a child."

"It's all right, Sable," said Marak reassuringly. "I know that rule about waiting until the marriage moon is very important in elvish society, but it's never been true among the goblins. Of course, if Irina were younger, she wouldn't be ready for marriage, but she's seventeen, and that's old enough."

As Sable mulled this over, the goblin King performed the Binding Spell, and she was soon captivated by the sight of a thick silver thread shining around her wrist. She raised her arm and turned it, watching the silver sparkle in the bright light, and Tinsel smiled at the serious look on her face.

"Congratulations to both of you," said Marak. "Tinsel, spend the week with your wife, and keep her away from crowds. You've been moved into the most elaborate of the elf-bride quarters, on the green level. You'll find that your role as husband to an elf lord's daughter is more important to the kingdom than your role as a member of the King's Guard, and I know you'll treat it as such. I hope you'll both be very happy. In fact, I insist on it."

The goblin King watched the sober young pair leave the room hand in hand. As they went through the large square room, he saw Sable glance apprehensively at the ceiling, and he made a mental note to check up on her claustrophobia after a couple of days. Then he turned and surveyed all the clutter the ceremonies had created. Tomorrow, he would come back and retrieve the elf brides' registry and the magical items. He still had one more important errand to perform before he could sleep tonight.

Richard had managed to elude all adult supervision. Emily had left the stable convinced that he was with Brindle, and Brindle was sure he had seen the boy with Emily. It was hardly surprising that Richard could accomplish this. Even without an expert illusionist for a father, he had lived long enough on the streets to know how to make himself disappear.

Once Richard's companions left, goblin servants emerged to take care of Dinner. They examined the new horse carefully, gave him a thorough grooming, and prepared him a hot mash to eat. While he enjoyed his meal, they argued over his various features and faults. Finally, they turned him loose in a princely stall of his own, cleaned up the area, and left. Richard watched everything from behind some grain sacks, taking care not to attract attention.

As soon as the stables were quiet, he hurried back to the iron door and felt all over its smooth surface for a latch.

"What are you doing?" inquired a booming voice. "Didn't I just let you in?"

The boy looked around the empty corridor, but no one was there.

"Which one of you said that?" he demanded bravely.

"Which one of us?" The voice was puzzled. "I just see you and me. And stop that!" it continued as he slid his fingers over the hinges. "I'm very ticklish!"

Richard's mouth formed an O.

"I don't believe it!" he breathed. "It's the blinking door, isn't it? Well, if you're the door, then you can just let me out!"

"Sorry," replied the door officiously. "No minors allowed outside without their parents."

"But I'm not one of your miners!" exclaimed the boy. "I've never been in a mine before now!"

"You're confusing me," remarked the door. "I never open when I'm confused."

Richard began pounding on the iron surface.

"I'm built to withstand that," it observed stoically.

"Listen, if you don't open up right now, I'll—"

"Good evening, goblin King."

Richard froze, his heart in his mouth. The authorities had him at last.

"Good evening, door," replied a pleasant voice. "Good evening, Richard. Why are you beating up my door? Are you going so soon?"

The terrified boy huddled against the iron surface, his eyes tightly shut.

"Your Majesty, if you'll just let me out," he whispered, "you'll never see me again."

"I've no doubt of that," remarked the voice. "Why would I want to let you out?"

"You don't want me here," insisted Richard desperately. "You've been angry about me from the start. I know what you think. You think I'm not good enough to be one of your goblins. You think I'm trash," he concluded miserably. "And you'd be right about that."

"I think you're very smart, and I'm impressed at your character. Now, why don't you turn around and look at me?"

The street urchin shook his head and kept his eyes shut.

"No, you're talking like a real gentleman," he said dolefully, "but it's best if I just go. I'll go back to the life I'm used to. I'd rather."

"You'd rather?" The voice was closer. "You'd rather not have a home or a King?"

"No." The boy gave a sigh. "I'd rather not even think about them."

"That's unfortunate because you have them anyway." A firm hand pulled him around, and he looked into two piercing eyes. Richard burst into tears.

"I'm sorry!" he wailed. "For everything! Don't send me away! I couldn't bear it, I tell you. You'd kill me! Please don't send me away!" He wrapped his skinny arms around his King and wept noisily on his shirtfront.

"That's better," commented Marak, patting the sobbing boy on the head. "So you were running away before I could send you away."

"It's the worst thing I know," explained the boy tearfully. "I couldn't bear it happening again."

"No, you couldn't," agreed his monarch. "I'm surprised you survived it before. Being alone is the worst thing that can happen to a goblin, and it shouldn't ever have a chance to happen. That's why I was so angry when I heard about you all alone out there. I certainly wasn't angry at you."

Richard considered this through his tears.

"I don't know what you're going to do with me, Your Majesty," he said sadly. "All I know is picking pockets and scaring people in a show. I can't do anything but steal and lift handkerchiefs and wallets. Except—I do know how to make beans jump into a pot."

Marak laughed. "You have one honest pursuit, anyway! With a talent like that, you'll never go hungry. Come along. Tomorrow, I'll take you to the pages' floor, and you can meet the other children, but tonight you can stay with my family."

The urchin wiped his streaming eyes with the back of his hand.

"Bless me!" he exclaimed in wonder. "Me stay with a king and queen and all, just like I was somebody!"

"And a prince, too," pointed out Marak. "I don't mind if you teach my son how to pick pockets, but keep that bean trick to yourself. He would love it, and Kate's very particular about his manners. Let's go wake her up now, Richard. She's been anxious to meet you." And the King of the ugly people led his new subject away in search of a place to belong.

Chapter Fifteen

Sable and Tinsel went through the endless halls and stairwells of the palace, and one long, thin, bright cave replaced another before the apprehensive woman's field of view. Somehow, she was supposed to find a way to live in this strange series of boxes upon boxes.

But when they opened the door of their new living quarters, Sable didn't see a sterile box. The large, open room had been designed to look as much like a stretch of forest as possible. A number of artificial trees stood here and there, and green mats and hangings simulated the ferns and vines of a woodland scene. Over it all stretched a dull black ceiling so high that it failed to attract notice. An ornamental pool sparkled by the door under the shadow of some green-hung saplings. A little fountain bubbled at one end of it, and small silver fish flashed through the water beneath polished stone water-lilies.

The elf woman found that she was able to breathe freely for the first time since coming underground. It wasn't that the pretend trees fooled her. They just made the place look right to her. In the same way that Tinsel would have recognized a chair whether it was wood, stone, or metal, Sable recognized the organic clutter and jumble that belonged to a proper forest camp. And when they climbed the steps notched into the short cliff face that led up to their sleeping area, there stood a tent. The goblin studied it with a puzzled smile, wondering at a tent indoors, but Sable crawled into it to test the thickness of the pallet and crawled back out again, her face shining. She had never slept anywhere except inside a tent. Sleeping in a bed would have made her feel very unsafe.

They went back downstairs to the ornamental pool and discovered that supper had been left there in a basket. Tinsel opened a bottle of beer while Sable contemplated the enormous bun that he had handed her. Mindful of his gaze, she tried to eat it slowly, but the food only worried and upset her. For years, she had existed from one meal to the next. Life was a fragile, precarious thing.

"Maybe I'll be happy here," she said, not looking at her new husband. She rose and began to walk about, pausing to run her hand over the cloth greenery.

"Of course you will," agreed Tinsel in an encouraging tone. "You know the goblin King wants you to."

"But should I be happy?" demanded Sable. "My father taught me to hate goblins. Now I'm doing what they want." She thought about the goblin King, with his brilliance and learning. Her enemy seemed to know everything. Maybe he even knew at this moment that she was considering defying him. "What do you think he would do to me, Tinsel, if I'm not happy here?"

"Marak? I don't know. He has books to help him with that kind of thing, but I'm sure he wouldn't hurt you."

Sable imagined the goblin King poring over his books, looking up the perfect remedy for a rebellious elf. She shuddered. It wouldn't matter whether he hurt her or not; she knew she didn't have the courage to stand against him. She thought about her father, strong and brave, and felt again the pain of breaking faith with him. She knelt by the little pool to watch the silver fish.

"My father said that the goblins took the cowards. That's why I'm here," she whispered.

"That's not true." Her goblin came to put an arm around her.

"You were right not to marry. Your father was wrong about a woman's life. No woman should feel it's her duty to die having a child."

"I was right about that, wasn't I?" Sable studied her reflection. "The men lied to us for years and years. My father told me elf women were supposed to die. He probably lied to me about goblins, too."

"I'm sure he did," said Tinsel. "You don't have to hate us." But Sable didn't respond. She knew her father hadn't really lied about goblins. He just hadn't known how clever they were. He would never have given in like this and done what the goblin King wanted. She felt discouraged and overwhelmed.

"I don't care if he lied or not!" she cried bitterly. "I don't care what he taught me to do. I want to be happy. I want to learn magic, and I want to learn about numbers. Tinsel, would you teach me?"

The silver goblin hugged her reassuringly. "If that's what makes you happy," he promised.

Sable looked at him with new understanding. "I heard the goblin King tell you that I'm more important than your other work. You're just like me. If we're not happy, he'll look up remedies for you, too."

"I suppose so." Tinsel gave a rueful smile. "They might not be pleasant, either. He wouldn't worry so much about hurting me."

Sable smiled back, feeling a surge of sympathy and gratitude. It felt good to share her captivity with a fellow pawn.

"Then we'll have to look after each other," she concluded, "and make sure he doesn't need his books. I'm thirsty, Tinsel. Is cave water safe to drink?"

Next morning, Seylin went to see the goblin King to discuss his new employment, but he had a question to ask first.

"Why did it fulfill your fondest hopes when Em and I married?" he wanted to know. Marak gave him a sidelong glance.

"It isn't enough that you two have always loved each other and that I myself am very fond of you both?"

The young man considered this for a minute. Then he shook his head. "Not to make it a fondest hope," he declared.

"Then perhaps I should add," remarked the goblin King cheerfully, "that, with your overpowering elf blood and M's overpowering human blood, you'll have far more children than in a normal goblin marriage. My hope is that your children will have practically no goblin blood in them, and I'd say there will be seven or eight at least."

"You want me to have eight children?" demanded Seylin, considerably startled. His King fixed him with a stern glance.

"Don't be a coward, boy! Your kingdom needs you," he admonished. "You'll strengthen the high families for generations."

"When you told me to see you about new employment," said Seylin bitterly, "I had no idea it would be fatherhood."

"Don't be silly," Marak laughed. "Fatherhood is just a hobby. No, I want you to become Catspaw's tutor. You and M will move to the tutor's quarters, on the floor below the royal rooms."

Seylin stared at him in complete amazement.

"You want me to tutor the new King?" he breathed. "But—I'm not too young for that?"

"Tutoring a King takes the better part of thirty years," observed Marak. "You won't be that young when you finish."

"King's magic!" exulted Seylin, his dark eyes shining. "Of course, I'll have to practice it before I teach it."

"Yes, the tutor has a workroom, too," said the King. "But you can't neglect the other subjects: elvish, dwarvish, English, history, strategy, economy, mathematics. I'll help, of course, but I can't do more than oversee and guide you."

"A King! What a pupil!" gloated Seylin. "He'll be able to learn anything!"

"He'll be able to learn anything and do it even better than you do," said Marak with a smile. "Catspaw's not quite six, but his magic is already much stronger than yours."

That afternoon, Tinsel slept soundly inside his indoor tent, but Sable roamed the large apartment in a state of near-panic. Her quarters had no balcony or terrace, a precaution against an important elf bride's attempting to throw herself to her death, and Tinsel had locked the door with magic so that she couldn't wander off while he slept. Sable had never been locked inside anything before. She found it completely unnerving. Even though her elf senses told her it was day outside, she paced her luxurious quarters like a caged animal, unable to sleep.

She wanted to get a drink and wash her face and hands, and she stood for several minutes in front of the shallow basin in her dressing room, unsure about what to do. Tinsel had shown her how the shiny metal knob made water gush out, but Sable was afraid of that fast-flowing water. Even if she had enough power to deal with it, she hadn't had a single magic lesson yet. What if she was able to start the water but not stop it? Perhaps the cave would flood. So she went back up the pathway and washed her face in the ornamental pool instead, while all the silver fish huddled in the shadows of their stone lily-pads.

A thumping noise startled her, and she scrambled to her feet. Someone was banging nearby. Sable crept noiselessly to the locked door of the apartment and found that the thumping came from it. She wished with all her heart that Tinsel were there with her, but he was still sleeping, and she was afraid to wake him up.

"Hello?" said a woman's voice through the door. It wasn't Irina's voice or Emily's. Sable breathed very quietly.

"Sable, are you there?" the voice continued. "I'm the goblin King's Wife. May I come in?"

The goblin King's Wife. She was the other elf. "I—yes—I don't know," stammered Sable. "I can't open the door."

"I can open it," answered the voice. "Is that all right? Are you dressed?"

"I think so," said Sable. She was wearing a long robe. Tinsel had thrown her rags away that morning.

The door opened, and a blond woman stood in the doorway, an elf Sable had never seen. She gave Sable a bright smile, and Sable managed a little smile back. Then a boy stepped past her, a goblin boy. She stared at him with wide eyes.

"May we come in?" asked the elf, and Sable backed up. She looked past the boy and gave a gasp. A large, hairy gray dog stood in the doorway.

"It's all right," the elf woman reassured her, and she turned to the big animal. "Helen, you'd better stay out in the hall." The dog put back her ears and wagged ingratiatingly.

"No, she can come, too," said Sable bravely, backing up farther and looking at the crowd that assembled in her apartment. The dog sat down, panting. The strange boy walked right up to Sable. He had short hair of two colors, dark blond and pale beige, the colors mixing in patches and streaks all over his head. He was watching her keenly with one blue eye and one green eye. She found it hard to look at him, but then she found it hard to look away.

"This is my son, Catspaw," said the elf woman, and Sable realized quite suddenly that the goblin boy did have a paw.

"I'm going to be the goblin King," announced the boy, planting himself before her and rocking back and forth from his heels to his toes. He waited for Sable to say something appreciative, but she didn't. "You're scared of me," he went on, watching her critically. "Why are you scared of me?"

"Catspaw," explained the woman, "Sable's only just come here, and she's been taught to be afraid of goblins. You'll have to show her that the goblin King's son can be a gentleman." The monster boy pondered this instruction for a few seconds, wearing a thoughtful frown. "And my name is Kate," continued the elf, smiling at Sable again. Sable glanced down, startled, as her hand was clasped. She hadn't been taught to shake hands.

"Is she a goblin, too?" she inquired timidly, pointing. Kate turned and looked. Helen gave a thump of her tail.

"Oh! No, she's just a dog," said Kate.

"Could be a goblin, though," declared the young prince supportively. "See?"

There was a bright shimmer, and a half-grown wolf whelp stood on four feet where the boy had been. Three of the puppy's feet were gray, but the right front foot was still a golden lion's paw. A second shimmer, and the boy was back. Kate eyed Sable's shocked face with unease.

"Catspaw, you're not to do transformations unless Father's here," she reminded him firmly. "Why don't you have a seat and play with your mirror instead." The boy obediently sat down on the mat beside the fish pool, and Kate turned back to Sable.

"Did the dresses not fit?" she asked.

"Dresses? I don't have one," Sable replied distractedly. "Tinsel did something with mine, and I can't find it."

Kate looked at the black-haired woman. She considered all the horrible things Marak had told her, and she noted the lost, frightened look in those dark blue eyes.

"Come with me," she said kindly, taking Sable's hand, and she led the elf to the dressing room. Once there, she began pulling on knobs. The astonished Sable saw panels in the wall swing open and slide out to reveal all sorts of hidden cubbyholes.

Kate stepped confidently to the basin and brought warm water gushing into it. Then she taught Sable how to wash her face with soap and a cloth, how to clean her teeth, and how to trim her nails. She sat her down before the mirror and brushed out that long hair with a hairbrush, and she showed her how to pull it back with hair combs. She went to the drawers and closets and dressed the bemused elf woman in one undergarment after another, stockings, and slippers. Over it all went a long blue dress of some thin, shiny cloth, and then Kate stepped back to admire her work.

Sable stared at her reflection in the long mirror. She hardly recognized the beautiful woman who looked gravely back at her. This woman belonged in the elves' stories of ladies and queens, not in Sable's own life of deprivation and slavery. Only the wary eyes were the same. She still recognized them from before, and she ran her finger along the thin, faint lines that remained from her ghastly scars. She met Kate's approving gaze in the mirror and blushed.

"Two days ago, I was ugly," she said.

They went back to the ornamental pool, and Sable gave a squeak of fright. The goblin boy was watching a huge ant crawl around on the surface of his mirror.

"Catspaw, why don't you picture something nice," suggested Kate hurriedly.

"Ants are nice," protested the boy, but the ant disappeared. He caught sight of Sable in her new clothes and stood up. "You're pretty," he said, and he put his arms around her waist and looked up at her. "When I'm the goblin King, I'm going to marry an elf like Father did. I'm going to steal an elf bride just like you."

Kate, glancing at Sable's apprehensive expression, decided that this wasn't what she needed to hear.

"Well, you'll have to find one first, dear," she remarked briskly.

"I will," he promised, towing Sable over to sit by him at the ornamental pool. She watched him play with his magical mirror. Then she looked at Kate.

"And he's really your son," she said hesitantly. "I mean, he was your own baby."

"Oh, yes," laughed Kate. "He was my own baby."

Sable looked from one to the other of them. "I'm sorry," she said a little timidly. "I've never seen a mother and her baby before."

The smile left Kate's face.

"I know," she said. "Marak told me. It sounded so horrible." And her eyes filled with tears. Catspaw glanced up and saw them, and in another second he was in her lap.

"Mother, Mother, look," he said anxiously, holding up his mirror. "Look, Mother, I've made you a rose."

Irina and Sable began to find their place in the goblin kingdom, and if their comrades looked rather odd, at least their life was much more comfortable. Their new duties were more interesting, too because they had lessons in magic, elvish, and goblin, though the classes did give Irina quite a few difficult moments. Kate and Sable quickly formed a strong friendship, in spite of the fact that the two women came from such different worlds. They also had very different interests, as Kate was astonished to discover.

"What's this?" she asked one day, picking up some papers that Sable had brought to their elvish class. Sable glanced over and blushed.

"Tinsel's been showing me how math works," she admitted shyly. "I like to try problems when I have a few minutes alone. Numbers are so beautiful."

"Are they?" asked Kate in surprise, looking at the long-division problems. The goblins had never developed their own mathematics; instead because of their regular commerce with humans, they studied human mathematics. "I had to learn this, too," declared the blond woman, "but I thought language was much more beautiful."

"Oh, no," insisted Sable. "Numbers have such regular features. Languages are all lopsided and irregular, like goblins. If I know the word for 'dog,' I don't know the word for 'horse,' but if I know three and four, I know thirty, forty, three hundred, four hundred. And if I know three multiplied by three, I know three multiplied by thirty, and then division, which is multiplication in reverse. All the patterns are so beautiful, and they always come true. Numbers are something you can depend on."

Kate pondered this. It had never occurred to her that someone might like numbers more than words. She told Marak about it, and he found it equally interesting. Before their next magic lesson, he handed Sable a piece of paper.

"What's this?" she asked cautiously, looking at the complicated figures drawn on it. She still found the proximity of the goblin King unnerving.

"It's a new class just for you," he answered. "I'm going to teach you elvish mathematics."

Sable brightened, attracted by the thought of the math. "But I can't read this," she pointed out.

"No, you can't," he agreed. "The elves didn't use human numbers for their math. They developed their own."

"What did they use their math for?" asked Sable.

"Use?" Marak chuckled. "They didn't use it at all. They played with it, just like they did with everything. Elves liked to study geometric figures, but not like the ones you may have learned from Tinsel. Their geometry is in motion: a planet forming different figures as it crosses a constellation, or a dance of two circles, one going one way and one going the other, with dancers weaving in and out between them. The elves developed their math to describe all those moving figures, as if anyone would ever want to do that."

Sable was fascinated at the thought of those complex patterns.

"How do you know all this?" she asked.

"I wasted three years of my life studying elvish mathematics," he said. "My son will, too, and the pages learn a smattering of it as well. It exercises the mind, and that's about all. It's not anything I've used once I learned it. Sometimes, when I'm falling asleep, the beautiful figures from elvish math will drift around in my head. Poor elves, that's all they gave the world, a few pretty dreams."

If elvish math was useless and beautiful, it also turned out to be very hard. One problem could take all afternoon. Marak was impressed by Sable's rapid progress and pleased with her powerful interest in it. "So elvish math has a use after all," he commented to Kate.

Marak taught the three elf women magic twice a week. Kate and Sable were strong rivals in class, but Irina was perfectly content to stay in last place.

One day, he put an odd handful of ingredients in front of each of them. Kate studied her handful. It looked like a combination of uncarded wool, plant stems, seeds, and crumbled leaves.

"Starting today, you're going to learn how elf clothing is made," announced the King. "Most of these ingredients are common forest plants. The elves took their wool from their own flocks of sheep, which ran loose in the elf King's forest. Once a year, the elves called in the sheep and worked the Shearing Spell, peeling the wool right off. The protection spells on the sheep were renewed, and the sheep were free once more. You can see," he added dryly, "that the elves' life didn't involve much hard work."

"Mine did," sighed Irina, and Marak patted her on the shoulder as he walked to his own pile of ingredients.

"What you see before you is the raw material of elf yarn," he told them. "The spell for making yarn centers on the Harp constellation." He pointed to it on the star chart. "The First Fathers of the elves noticed how much a loom looks like a harp, so the spells for clothing are full of musical ideas. To make yarn, you cup your hand loosely over the ingredients before you, find the Harp in your mind, and recite the following phrase, 'gutesha-si shir' which means 'voices blending in a single melody."' Marak looked at his ingredients, frowning in concentration. "And then," he said, cupping his hand over the pile, "with your other hand—"

"You do this."

Marak looked up. Irina was pulling fine brown yarn out from under her cupped hand, just as steadily and easily as if she were hiding a spool beneath her fingers.

"Yes, that's what you do," murmured Marak, watching her. "Kate and Sable, you try now."

After a few false starts, Sable got a sort of string going, but it kept getting fatter and thinner. Kate produced crumbled leaves stuck together in a long line, and Sable's string tangled and broke off.

"Keep trying," said their teacher. "It's not an easy spell." The two women looked at each other and then at Irina. A fist-sized pile of perfect yarn lay by her rapidly moving fingers.

"Marak, I need more of that stuff," Irina announced happily. "I've run out."

Kate had never found a magic class so long before. After quite a bit of work, Sable could produce a rough yarn, but Kate's efforts continually frizzed or clumped back into plant bits.

"You'll notice that we've been working on brown yarn, for winter clothes," remarked their teacher. "In order to make green yarn, you add nisakha, 'of spring,' to the end of your spell, making it 'voices blending in a single melody of spring.' I'd like you to try making green yarn for next time. Kate, why don't you stay for a few minutes. I'll help you practice."

By next class, Sable had a tolerable brown yarn to exhibit, but her green yarn was more of a brown-green tweed. Kate shamefacedly exhibited a handful of rough twine. It was dark gray, speckled all over with pale wool fibers.

"Did you make green yarn?" Marak asked Irina with interest.

"Oh, yes," she answered readily, reaching into her bag. "First I made green for a while," and she pulled out a neat skein of beautiful, soft green yarn. "Then I went back to brown again," and she pulled out another skein, of lovely brown yarn. "But then I got tired of green and brown," she confessed. "They're so boring. I started to play with the spell, and first I made black because that's a melody of the night, you know," and she pulled out a handful of jet black yarn. "And then I made red because that's a melody of the heart."

Marak picked up the skeins and studied them carefully.

"That's wonderful, Irina," he remarked. "I've never read of any elf using the spell this way before." At the end of class, he asked them to continue working on their brown and green yarn. "But, Irina," he said, "I'd like you to see how many different colors you can make."

For the next three days, Irina could be seen at work on her yarn, sitting in the hall staring at a particular mosaic tile or looking out the window at the deep blue color of the lake valley sky. When class came again, she had fifty-six different colors to exhibit, including a bright, metallic yarn that she had modeled on Tinsel's hair.

Marak showed them how to make their yarn into cloth, a process more like knitting than weaving, so it produced a stretchy fabric. He assigned them to try it for homework. Sable had a modest swatch of green cloth to exhibit on the appointed day. Kate produced something that looked like a rag for scrubbing dishes, and her eyes dared the goblin King to comment. He didn't, of course, but he was aware of its history. He privately felt that it would have turned out better if she hadn't flung it against the wall so many times.

When called upon to exhibit her cloth, Irina pulled out a beautiful tunic of blended green and blue yarn.

"This is for the prince," she explained. "I got the idea because his eyes are green and blue. I used two yarns at the same time as I worked the spell, and that makes the whole thing so much more interesting because sometimes you look at it and see the green and sometimes the blue."

"But, Irina," said the goblin King, stunned, "I haven't taught you how to make the cloth into clothing yet. I haven't taught you how to join the seams." Irina's tunic had perfect elf seams, which is to say, no seams were there at all. The garment appeared to have been made all in one piece.

"Sure, you taught me," said Irina carelessly, and when he shook his head, she giggled. "You're always joking," she observed.

"Marak," asked Kate plaintively that evening, untangling her elf cloth, which kept knitting itself into a ball, "if Irina's so bad at magic, how can she be so good at this?"

"Most magical people have a special talent," he replied from the checkers game he and Catspaw were playing. "Almost all of Irina's magic is concentrated in this one talent. She has an astounding gift for textiles. Other elf women doubtless had it, too, but because of their upbringing, it never would have occurred to them to make cloth that wasn't green or brown. Irina's mind is open to new ideas, so she's trying all sorts of things. I can't wait to see her final project."

Marak had asked them to make any item of cloth or clothing they would like as their final project. Kate glanced down unhappily. She was making a scarf. It was useless in the goblin kingdom, but it was the easiest thing she knew.

"I'm supposed to have all this magic," she said with a frown, "and Sable outdoes me about half the time."

"It's a shame I can't teach you defense magic," murmured the goblin King. "Your attack and dismemberment spells would astound the class." He made a motion with his hand, and his checker jumped one of Catspaw's checkers. Then it seized the unlucky checker and ate it.

"I don't want to dismember anyone!" exclaimed Kate in horror.

"You just think you don't," remarked her husband absently. "But I'll bet you enjoyed beheading the sorcerer." Catspaw's checker jumped one of his. Then it jumped up and down on his checker until it was tiny bits.

Kate thought about that, smoothing out her snarled brown cloth. Almost seven years before, when her husband and half the King's Guard had been enslaved by a human sorcerer, she had left the kingdom to rescue them, and while that sorcerer lay before her, helpless and paralyzed, she had beheaded him with one blow of a sword. She enjoyed thinking about how she had saved her little girl, Til, from that horrible man, and she enjoyed thinking about liberating the goblins. But she never, ever let herself think about the satisfaction she had felt when she saw the sorcerer's head roll across the floor. Ladies didn't enjoy doing such things. She felt supremely annoyed at Marak for bringing it up.

"What's your special talent?" she demanded. "You never have a problem with any magic."

"That's different," chuckled Marak. "I'm a King. I have as much magic as about twenty of you, maybe more. Besides, not all magic is as easy for me as you think. I really have to concentrate on my dwarf spells."

"I'm so sorry for you," said Kate bitterly. Her elf cloth rolled up and fused itself into a solid mass. Marak waved his hand, and one of his checkers reached the last row. It blossomed into a golden crown and did a small victory jig.

Class time came again, and Kate produced her brown scarf. It looked as if it had already been worn for several years, perhaps by a cart horse.

"Very good," said the goblin King.

"Don't start," warned his wife.

Sable produced a tunic and breeches that she had made for Tinsel. She had spent a humbling afternoon with Irina learning how to make black cloth and getting help on the seams.

"Beautiful!" commented Marak. "Nice, even color, very well made. He has my permission to wear this on duty."

Sable glowed with pleasure. "But he doesn't have to," she protested modestly. "I like Tinsel in black anyway. It goes with his coloring."

They turned to Irina. She had been very secretive about her project, and not even Sable had managed to pry loose a clue. Now she reached into her bag and unrolled a tapestry about three feet square.

"This is the lake where we had our summer camp," she explained to her dumbfounded audience. "It was always my favorite camp. I was born there. You see this little grove of birches here, but most of it is oak and ash. The full moon shows up twice because it's high enough to shine in the water, and I never really saw a stag on the hill like that, but I put him in because deer are just so pretty, don't you think?"

"This is an amazing achievement," said Marak, putting his arm around her. "After lunch, I'd like to introduce you to two of our best weavers. You'll think they look funny, but they're very nice, and they're the strongest elf-cross weavers I have. I hope that you'll agree to work with them."

"Oh, good," said the elf girl, beaming up at him. "Are they going to teach me how to weave?"

"No, Irina," said the goblin King thoughtfully. "I'm hoping that you can teach them."

Chapter Sixteen

As the months passed, all three of the marriages that came from the elf quest prospered. Marak was satisfied that the elf women were happy, and he wasn't surprised that his own wife was happier, too. Kate had found a real friend in Sable. The twowomen spent lots of time together, studying their lessons or just talking about life.

Sable did have a moderate talent for healing, but she didn't pursue it. The suffering she had been through made her nervous and unhappy around those who were in pain, and it soon became apparent that her heart and a large share of her magic belonged to mathematics. Poring over the old texts in the King's library, she mastered all that was known of elvish math and went on to develop it in ways that no goblin had ever considered.

Always ready to exploit a resource, Marak asked Sable to work with the dwarves on their building and decorating projects. Ordinarily, these two races had nothing to offer each other: the dwarves suffered from a kind of reverse claustrophobia if removed from their mines and tunnels, and the captive elves of past days had always longed for the outside world and the sky. But Sable's interest in mathematical patterns matched the taste of the dwarves who had a talent for architecture. Together, they renovated some of the palace's most important spaces.

Irina caused a sensation in the goblin world. Without a doubt, she was the most imaginative elvish dress designer who had ever lived, and her bold use of color and texture made her a celebrity among the fashion-conscious goblins. Impossible to imitate, difficult to obtain, an original Irina gown was the finishing touch to any special occasion. But money and prestige were not enough to secure one. Irina's clients soon learned that the amiable elf woman enjoyed company. Those who stopped by her busy workroom found their projects moved to the head of the list. Thus the awkward, unwanted tag-along girl from the elf camp days soon found herself in the center of an adoring throng.

Only one person in the kingdom disliked the newcomers from the very start, and nothing could change her mind. Kate's human foster daughter Til had been the leader of an exclusive clique among the pages, but Richard's coming had wrecked it. The foundling who knew how to pick pockets and survive in the daylight world seemed to be everyone's darling. He could tell stories about scary human criminals and smoky London alleys, and he mesmerized the impressionable pages. Richard rapidly developed into a favorite in the guardroom as well. With his streetwise smarts and easy, likable nature, he was equally at home in a gathering of grownups or children. People stopped taking notice of the infuriated Til.

Even worse, Til felt that she was losing her hold on Kate, whom she had always viewed as her special property. From the day Til had arrived in the kingdom as a baby, the little girl whom Kate had found in the sorcerer's lair had been the center of Kate's world. Catspaw's birth hadn't done much to change this. Kate loved her son, but she didn't understand his goblin nature that well, and he was even-tempered and independent. Til, on the other hand, fought hard to get as much attention as she could. With Kate, she usually succeeded.

Now Kate had new friends and interests, and she didn't dote on the child anymore. Til's life among the pages took her away from her foster mother for days at a time, and Kate no longer pined for her little girl. In fact, as Til aged and her temper became increasingly tempestuous, Kate found herself more and more distressed by her daughter's behavior. The reserved woman couldn't identify with Til's vanity and ambition. When her attempts to manage the head-strong girl failed, Kate began to find excuses to spend less time with her.

In doing this, the King's Wife was merely Behaving like an elf, as Marak noted to the interested Seylin. "She did the same thing when M was growing up," he remarked. "She can't fight her nature. Elves don't tolerate negative emotion well at all. If someone's behavior becomes too upsetting, an elf simply stops speaking to him." This analysis was undoubtedly true, but Kate's reticence did Til little good, and the girl's conduct grew worse and worse.

There were many things that Til despised, but as the years passed, Catspaw came to top them all. It wasn't that the goblin prince was particularly cruel to her; he was usually completely indifferent. The stormy closeness of their early childhood was only a distant memory. Til moved in one circle of peers, and Catspaw in another. Even in boyhood, he was gaining magical power, confidence, and prestige. Til's younger sibling, respected by all, was being groomed to take over his kingdom. His ambitious foster sister felt that this was completely unfair.

The prince was shaping up to be a particularly promising ruler. From Kate, whose elvish roots almost certainly went back to the elf King's lieutenants, Catspaw had inherited a stunning amount of military magic, and with it came a real enthusiasm for the art of war. The young prince gathered about himself boys from the high families to join him in goblin games of strategy and battle. Richard, gifted as well with military magic, became his favorite opponent.

One day, when Til was close to fourteen years old, she came up the stairs to her parents' floor to complain to them about some imagined offense. But she couldn't even reach their rooms. Catspaw and Richard had taken over the broad hallway for their war games and had temporarily altered it past recognition. Instead of polished gold, the hall floor had erupted into miniature mountains, hills, valleys, and canyons. Over these, like ants, marched the phantom troops of the two warriors, who studied their ground and laid their plans. Behind the last mountain range, and before the doors that were her goal, the goblin guards watched the sport and made quiet wagers.

"Get this junk out of the way!" she demanded, walking up behind Catspaw. "I have to see Papa."

Her foster brother was too busy to respond. He was in the middle of an assault against the vanguard of Richard's army. The minuscule cavalry at his feet wheeled and charged, uttering faint war cries.

"Marak isn't at home," one guard related. "He's out inspecting the harvest, and the King's Wife has gone for a walk."

The thwarted girl seethed with irritation. She aimed a kick at a marching column of Catspaw's reinforcements, causing terrible slaughter. Tiny soldiers dragged their injured comrades out of danger. A chorus of quiet groans arose, like a regretful sigh.

Catspaw knelt to resuscitate his fallen forces, irritated in his turn. "Til, no one wants you here," he declared. "Go back to the pages' floor."

Til felt both the truth and the injustice of this remark and drew herself up to her full height. She might not be magical royalty, but she was half a head taller than he was.

"I'll do what I like! I'll never do what you say," she declaimed dramatically. She noted with displeasure that the guards exchanged amused glances, and Richard looked up and grinned.

"Of course you will," remarked Catspaw. "When I'm the King, you'll have to."

The veracity of this statement only infuriated the girl more. She struck out as best she could. "You're going to be a terrible King," she announced coldly. "Everyone knows it. They just don't tell you."

Catspaw's magic detected the lie at once. It didn't bother the boy that there were witnesses to the insult. He lived his entire life out in public. Schooled by Kate to be a gentleman, he glanced over his shoulder and gave Til a condescending smile.

"I wouldn't dream of contradicting you," he said and turned back to his battlefield.

Til went on the attack again, but this time with more cunning. Combat of a social sort was her own special forte; she gained her greatest satisfaction from the embarrassment and discomfort of others. She knew the prince's abilities, and she was also aware of his limitations. She worked out a battle plan of her own.

"Mama cried when she first saw you," she remarked.

"I know she did," responded Catspaw casually. "Seylin says that's normal when an elf bride sees her baby."

"She didn't cry because she was seeing any old goblin," continued Til carefully. "She cried because of you. I heard her talking to Sable one day. She said she knows that you'll never be a man like your father."

The prince's magic found no lie in these statements because each one was perfectly true. Together, they formed a lie, but his magic couldn't discern this. It didn't occur to Catspaw that Kate might be pleased to have raised a son different in many ways from her husband. The prince had two serious weaknesses: his loving regard for his mother and his unspoken awe of his father. The goblin King cast a very long shadow over the boy, a shadow from which he might never be great enough to emerge. If Til had spent years trying to think up ways to hurt him, she couldn't have found a better plan.

The goblin prince turned to face his foster sister. Dead pale, eyes blazing, he held out his lion's paw. A gust of wind swept across the landing and caught up the triumphant Til. She spun around in it, coming to rest against the wall, where she flattened out like a sheet of paper. In an instant, she was trapped in two inflexible dimensions.

A full-length mirror hung on the wall now, with the struggling girl pinned inside.

"I can't move! I can't breathe!" cried the desperate Til. She tried to turn her head, to move her arms, but there was nowhere to go. She had nothing but height, width, and a voice that was growing more frantic by the second.

"'To hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature,'" declared the boy from the depths of his fury. "That's you—all surface. Nothing behind the show." The mirror fell forward and hit the floor with a splintering crash. "Too bad, Til," he added remorselessly. "Seven years of bad luck."

Seylin heard the sonorous explosion and ensuing shrieks and ran up the stairs two at a time. He found Til sitting by the wall, her face and hands criss-crossed by a net of red lines. He knelt down beside the hysterical girl and discovered that they were shallow cuts oozing blood.

"What happened?" he asked Catspaw. His pupil's expression was distant.

"She shattered," the boy calmly replied. "It's only an illusion." A second later, the bleeding lines were gone, but Til still sobbed with fear and rage. Seylin tried to put a comforting arm around her, but she shoved him away.

"I'm surprised at you, Catspaw!" said the tutor, and his face showed his dismay. "You're too old and far too powerful to be giving way to your temper! A king has to use his abilities to help and protect the weak. Apologize to Til at once."

Catspaw turned to the weeping girl.

"I'm very sorry, Til, that you're so weak and I'm so strong," he told her in a steady voice. "I wish we could fight as equals. If you have any sense, you'll stay away from me. I'm not an enemy you can handle."

Til gathered herself up with a glare at them all and went off down the stairs. Nonplussed, Seylin stared after her. He stood up and turned to confront his pupil, but what he saw astonished him further. There was a look of decision, of authority, on the boy's face that he had never seen there before.

"I will protect the weak," declared the prince coldly. "But that doesn't include my enemies. I'll deal with them as I decide, and it's going to be too bad for them if they're weak."

Seylin understood what was happening. The prince's childhood was ending. Before, Catspaw had always obeyed him simply because it was expected. He would doubtless continue to do so, but it would never again be automatic. It would be a magnanimous gesture from now on, a generous gift from a superior to his underling. And the day would come when his royal pupil wouldn't obey him at all. Instead, Seylin noted with rueful unease, he himself would be the one who would obey.

Catspaw was becoming a real goblin King.