said nothing of the court but to disparage it. After a moment he went on, however, and I listened, fascinated.
“The count had gone to Rosya to negotiate a treaty, across the mountain pass. He came back with unacceptable terms and a thread of corruption. Ludmila had a wise-woman at her house, her nursemaid, who knew enough to warn her: they locked him up in the cellar and barred the door with salt, and told everyone he was ill.
“No one in the capital thought anything of a beautiful young wife making a scandal of herself while her older husband ailed out of sight; least of all myself, when she made me the object of her pursuit. I was still young and foolish enough at the time to believe myself and my magic likely to elicit admiration instead of alarm, and she was clever and determined enough to take advantage of my vanity. She had me thoroughly on a string before she asked me to save him.
“She had a particularly deft understanding of human nature,” he added, dryly. “She told me that she couldn’t leave him in such a state. She professed herself willing to give up her place at court, her title, her reputation, but so long as he was corrupted, honor demanded she remain chained to his side; only by saving him could I free her to run away with me. She tempted my selfishness and my pride at once: I assure you I thought of myself as a noble hero, promising to save my lover’s husband. And then—she let me see him.”
He fell silent. I hardly breathed, sitting like a mouse under an owl’s tree so he would go on talking. His gaze was turned inward, bleak, and I felt a kind of recognition: I thought of Jerzy laughing dreadfully at me out of his sickbed, of Kasia below with the terrible brightness in her eyes, and knew that same look lived in my own face.
“I spent half a year trying,” he said finally. “I was already accounted the most powerful wizard of Polnya by then; I was certain there was nothing I couldn’t do. I ransacked the king’s library and the University, and brewed a score of remedies.” He waved towards the table, where Jaga’s book lay shut. “That was when I bought that book, among other less wise attempts. Nothing served.”
His mouth twisted again. “Then I came here.” He indicated the tower with one finger, circling. “There was another witch here guarding the Wood then, the Raven. I thought she might have an answer. She was growing old at last, and most of the wizards at court avoided her carefully; none of them wanted to be sent to replace her when she finally died. I wasn’t afraid of that: I was too strong to be sent away from court.”
“But—” I said, startled into speaking, and bit my lip; he looked at me for the first time, one of those sarcastic eyebrows raised. “But you were sent here, in the end?” I said uncertainly.
“No,” he said. “I chose to stay. The king at the time wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about my decision: he preferred to keep me under his eye, and his successors have often pressed me to return. But she—persuaded me.” He looked away from me again, out the window and over the valley towards the Wood. “Have you ever heard of a town called Porosna?”
It sounded only vaguely familiar. “The baker in Dvernik,” I said. “Her grandmother was from Porosna. She made a kind of bun—”
“Yes, yes,” he said, impatient. “And do you have any idea where it is?”
I groped helplessly: I barely knew the name. “Is it in the Yellow Marshes?” I offered.
“No,” he said. “It was five miles down the road from Zatochek.”
Zatochek was not two miles from the barren strip that surrounded the Wood. It was the last town in the valley, the last bastion before the Wood; so it had been all my life. “The Wood—took it?” I whispered.
“Yes,” the Dragon said. He rose and went for the great ledger I had seen him write in, the day that Wensa had come to tell us about Kasia being taken, and he brought it to the table and opened it. Each of the great pages was divided into neat lines, rows and columns, careful entries like an account-book: but in each row stood the name of a town, names of people, and numbers: this many corrupted, this many taken; this many cured, this many