The Magician of Hoad by Margaret Mahy

thought, swinging up his arms desperately, trying to protect his head.
Better that knife than being kicked to death. Quicker!
    But suddenly another voice was shouting, shouting imperiously as if it expected to be obeyed. “Leave him alone! You there! Leave him.” And his attackers fell back, while, bruised and bleeding yet again but free from his enemies, Heriot, who had screwed his eyes tight, rolled over, then opened them again.
    The first person he saw was a girl… a girl in rich clothes staring down at him, as shocked as if he were an animal being slaughtered in front of her. Then he looked at the person in the act of dropping onto his knees beside him, and found himself staring up into odd-colored eyes, one blue and one hazel, blinking under a mop of mouse-colored hair… someone Heriot recognized, even though they had never met before. And, as the boy stared down at him, Heriot saw his expression changing… saw him jerk back on his heels as if he, too, had been given a shock, looking so startled, his startlement was almost a form of fear.
    “You!” the boy cried softly. “You! Hey! You’re my ghost. My ghost.” He looked over his shoulder at the girl standing behind him. “This is
him
! The one I told you about, theone who’s been sitting on my windowsill all these years.” Then he looked back at Heriot. “I’m the only one who’s ever believed in you,” he muttered.
    Heriot took a breath. “Fair enough,” he mumbled. “You must be the only one. I don’t believe in myself either. Not right now.”
    The boy began to recover from that first shock.
    “You can’t be a ghost,” he said. “Ghosts don’t bleed. You’d better come with me and I’ll take you to our doctors. We’ll work it out later—that you-and-me of things, I mean. The dream business.”
    Slowly, slowly Heriot stood up. He was glad to have someone friendly to talk to. The sound of his own voice began to make the places around him real. He was also glad to be with someone slightly smaller than he was, someone who could be leaned on easily, though before he put his hand on the boy’s shoulder, he looked rather doubtfully at those grand clothes.
    “Likely I’ll bleed on you,” he said. “Most of the bleeding’s over, but it keeps on starting up again. And that kicking will have set it off.”
    “Forget it,” the boy said. “They’ll clean any blood off me.” He laughed. “It’s what they’re there for, to make me respectable.” He laughed again, a curiously wild laugh, as if he were joking with something beyond reason.
    “They won’t make me respectable, not ever,” Heriot mumbled, still panting a little.
    Suddenly the boy, who was also his support, stopped. Heriot, head bent down, could feel that they were making way for others. Shadows moved across them. Horses’feet drew alongside, shifting and shuffling in the mud. Feelings of apprehension flooded Heriot, but they were not altogether his own feelings. Somehow he was feeling his companion’s response to the world in front of them. Heriot looked up, expecting to see strangers, but to his astonishment, an astonishment immediately touched with a kind of weary despair, three of the four riders were known to him, two because he had met them before, and the other… Heriot let out a sound that was half a groan and half a growl.

THE KING, THE HERO, AND THE MAGICIAN
    The foremost rider, the stranger, was a man in blue and gold wearing a golden helmet that was also a crown. Lining himself up neatly on the left hand of this crowned figure rode Lord Glass, while on his right was the magnificent man who only a few hours ago had tried to kill him, dressed in velvet and lace now, but not too grand for Heriot to recognize. And he could feel the man’s inner shock, like some sort of echo of his own, as their eyes met.
How did he get here?
they were both asking themselves. But he dared not spend time staring back at his enemy. Instead he let his gaze slide on to the fourth