“If there was corruption in her to purge, we’d purge it,” the Dragon said. “You can’t heal absence. Consider yourself lucky she didn’t burn with the heart-tree; if you want to call it luck, and not a pity.”

“A pity you didn’t, if that’s all the advice you have,” Marek said.

The Dragon’s eye glittered with what looked to me like a dozen cutting replies, but he compressed his lips and shut them in. Marek’s teeth were moving against each other, and through his gripping hand I could feel strung-hard tension, a trembling like a spooked horse, though he’d been as steady as a rock in that terrible glade with death and danger all around him.

The Dragon said, “There’s no corruption left in her. For the rest, only time and healing will help. We’ll take her back to the tower as soon as I’ve finished purging your men and it’s safe for them to go among other people. I’ll see what else can be done. Until then, sit with her and talk of familiar things.”

“Talk?” Marek said. He shoved my arm out of his grip; more water sloshed out over my feet as he stalked away.

The Dragon took the bucket from me, and I followed him back into the barn. “Can we do anything for her?” I asked.

“What is there to be done with a blank slate?” he said. “Give her some time and she may write something new on it. As for bringing back whatever she was—” He shook his head.

Marek sat by the queen the rest of the day; I had glimpses of his hard, downturned face a few times when I came out of the barn. But at least he seemed to accept there wasn’t going to be a sudden miraculous cure. That evening he got up and walked to Zatochek to speak to the village headman; the next day, when Tomasz and Oleg could finally walk as far as the well and back on their own, he gripped them hard by the shoulders and said, “We’ll light a fire for the others tomorrow morning, in the village square.”

Men came from Zatochek to bring us horses. They were wary of us, and I couldn’t blame them. The Dragon had sent word we would come out of the Wood, and he’d told them where to keep us and what signs of corruption to look for, but even so I wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d come with torches instead, to burn us all inside the barn. Of course, if the Wood had taken possession of us, we’d have done worse things than sit in a barn quietly exhausted for a week.

Marek himself helped Tomasz and Oleg up into their saddles before he lifted the queen up to her own, a steady brown mare some ten years old. She sat stiff and inflexible; he had to put her feet one by one into the stirrups. He paused, looking up at her from the ground: the reins hung slack in her manacled hands where he’d given them to her. “Mother,” he tried again. She didn’t look at him. After a moment, his jaw hardened. He took a rope and made a leading rein for her horse, hooked it to his own saddle, and led her on.

We rode behind him to the square and found a tall bonfire assembled and waiting, full of seasoned wood, and all the village in their holiday best standing on the far side. They held torches in their hands. I didn’t know anyone from Zatochek well, but they came occasionally to our market days in spring. A handful of distantly familiar faces looked out at me from the crowd, like ghosts from another life through the faint grey haze of smoke, while I stood opposite them with a prince and wizards.

Marek took a torch himself: he stood by the wood pile with his brand lifted into the air and named every man we had lost, one after another, and Janos at the last. He beckoned to Tomasz and Oleg, and together the three of them stepped forward and thrust their torches into the heaped wood. The smoke came smarting into my eyes and barely-healed throat, and the heat was dreadful. The Dragon watched the fire catch with a hard face and then turned away: I know he didn’t think much of the prince honoring the men he’d led to their deaths. But it loosened something in me to hear all their names.

The bonfire kept burning a long time. The villagers brought out food and beer, whatever they had, and pressed it on us. I crept away into a corner with Kasia and drank too many cups of beer, washing misery and smoke and the taste of the purging-elixir out of my mouth, until finally we leaned against each other and wept softly; I had to hold on to her, because she didn’t dare grip me tight.

The drink made me lighter and more dull at the same time, my head aching, and I snuffled into my sleeves. Across the square, Prince Marek was speaking to the village headman and a wide-eyed young carter. They were standing beside a handsome green wagon, fresh-painted, with a team of four horses, their manes and tails clumsily braided in green ribbons also. The queen was already sitting in the wagon bed, cushioned on straw, with a wool cloak draped over her shoulders. The golden chains of the enchanted yoke caught the sunlight and glittered against her shift.

I blinked a few times at the sun-dazzle, and by the time I began to make sense of what I was looking at, the Dragon was already striding across the square, demanding, “What are you doing?” I climbed to my feet and went to them.

Prince Marek turned even as I came. “Arranging for passage to take the queen home,” he said, pleasantly.

“Don’t be absurd. She needs healing—”

“Which she can get in the capital as easily as here,” Prince Marek said. “I don’t choose to let you lock my mother up in your tower until it pleases you to let her out again, Dragon. Don’t imagine that I’ve forgotten how unwillingly you came with us.”

“You seem ready to forget a great many other things,” the Dragon bit out. “Such as your vows to raze the Wood all the way to Rosya, if we succeeded.”

“I’ve forgotten nothing,” Marek said. “I haven’t the men to help you now. What better way to get you the men you need than by going back to the court to ask my father for them?”

“The only thing you can do at court is parade around that hollow puppet and call yourself a hero,” the Dragon said. “Send for the men! We can’t simply go now. Do you think the Wood won’t make answer for what we’ve done, if we ride away and leave the valley defenseless?”

Marek kept his fixed smile, but it trembled on his face, and his hand worked open and shut upon his sword-hilt. The Falcon smoothly inserted himself between them, laying a hand on Marek’s arm, and said, “Your Highness, while Sarkan’s tone is objectionable, he isn’t mistaken.”

For a moment I thought perhaps he understood, now; perhaps the Falcon had felt enough of the malice of the Wood for himself to realize the threat it made. I looked at the Dragon with surprised hope, but his face was hardening, even before the Falcon turned to him with a graceful inclination of his head. “I think Sarkan will agree that despite his gifts, the Willow exceeds him in the healing arts, and she will be able to aid the queen if anyone can. And it is his sworn duty to hold back the Wood. He cannot leave the valley.”