“How did you get up there?” Giles asked me wonderingly, not waiting for an answer. “I’m not sure we can get out. There’s a guard asleep downstairs in the hall, and another one walking up and down outside in the courtyard. And if she has some kind of captive spirit in that mirror.…”
I hadn’t told him what was really in the mirror, but I was quite sure it wasn’t captive.
“We’ll get out,” I said grimly. “As far as the stables, anyhow.”
I had Giles fetch his clothing from his room. I fetched mine out of the press. I put on the boots, held Giles tightly around the waist, with our baggage tied helter skelter and Grumpkin squashed between us, and said, “Boots, take us to the stables.”
And there we were, standing beside the horses, an arrival which startled the horses almost as much as it startled Giles. I told him there was no time to explain, and he subsided unwillingly, full of questions we had no time for. Still, he had his wits about him sufficiently to suggest that we tie some sacks around the horses’ feet, so their hooves wouldn’t make a noise on the cobbles. We waited until the guard moved around the corner, then made a dash for it. Once we were past the courtyard (the gate wasn’t even shut and there was no drawbridge), the road was mostly soft dust. We went down through the dark village, silent as mice, then up the other side. When we got to the top of a long rise, we saw a little campfire, and there was Eskavaria sitting beside it, waiting for us.
“Have you been here all along?” I asked.
“Thought you might not stay very long,” he said. “Thought I’d take you along to spend the night with my brothers and me.”
He wouldn’t have thought of that on his own. Who had told him to stay? Puck? Still running errands for Carabosse? I didn’t ask.
He brought our packhorses out of the shadows, mounted his own, and we went along through the starlight, with him humming a little song and the water making an accompaniment to it. We wove through rocks and trees. Once he got down and moved a log behind us, hiding the way. We came to the top of a long slope and could see below us the bulk of a house with windows faintly outlined in firelight.
Eskavaria looked up at the stars. “Midnight,” he said. “Time we get under cover.”
“What happens at midnight?” Giles asked.
“If she knows you’re gone, she may come looking for you then,” the little man answered, and we trotted down the long slope toward the house beneath the trees. A stable stood next to it, with a door connecting the two. We were beneath the stable roof when we heard the scream from above, a long, shrill cry that was not an owl.
Giles started to go out and look. Eskavaria grabbed his arm and held him. “No,” he said. “Never look up when you hear that cry, or she may see you. Faces show up in the dark more than hair or hats do.” Then he led us through the door.
It was a simple house, though larger than it had looked from outside, with one big room downstairs and a large open loft. The brothers, all six of them, were asleep up there. None of them were any bigger than Eskavaria. I could tell from the size of the beds. If not dwarves, they were not far from it. I thought of the “little men” the Dark One had mentioned, and knew these were they.
“You know where my granddaughter is,” I challenged him.
“I know where someone is. How can I be sure she is your granddaughter?” he challenged me in return.
I couldn’t think of an answer. I was very tired. I hurt all over, and I started to cry. Once started, I couldn’t stop.
Giles shouted angrily, “Now see what you’ve done. Damn it, Esky, she’s tired! She’s come all this way to find her granddaughter, and you say a thing like that!”
This woke up the family, and they all came down, rubbing their eyes and asking what was going on. Among themselves they spoke the other language, Euskara. Evidently other people call them Basques, but they call themselves the Euskaldunak, which gives you a hint as to what the language sounds like. Except for an occasional word that sounded rather Latinish, I couldn’t understand any of it, though the tone of the conversation was decidedly argumentative. There was a great deal of pointing up and making the horn sign and staring at us with a mixture of intense curiosity and obvious distrust.
I don’t think there was ten year’s difference in age from Esky, the youngest, to the oldest. The older ones had beards, the older the longer. Evidently they never trimmed them. The younger three or four were clean shaven. Esky told us all their names, and I promptly forgot them. Couldn’t pronounce them, in any case. Not Sneezy. Not Grumpy. My eyes were falling shut. Next thing I knew, they were spreading some quilts on the floor and I was being invited to lie down and sleep.
I didn’t wait for a second invitation.
When I woke, hours and hours later, it was full daylight and the house was empty. The door was open. I could hear horses champing away in the stables and the buzz of flies. Otherwise, silence.
I sat up and fumbled with my hair. Giles must have
