Goblins

by Philip Reeve

  Upon that pinnacle, at the top of a last flight of seven steps, there stood a stone chair. Black it was, and burnished; shining; its facets veined with slowsilver and other magic metals. Hard and high and dangerous it looked, and Princess Ned went to the bridge’s end and gazed up at it, and said in an awed and shuddery voice, “Oh! It is the Stone Throne!”

  The Dragonbone Men rustled like dry leaves in a wind. “The magic has returned,” said one.

  “The Lych Lord must take his seat again, and rule.”

  “But don’t you understand?” shouted Henwyn. “He’s dead! He’s been dead for centuries, and the world is free of him! There is no one to sit on your horrible hard old throne. . .”

  The Dragonbone Men swung their dry heads towards him. They fixed him with silverfish eyes. Folding at the waist, they bowed low before the bewildered young cheesewright and their voices buzzed like seven swarms of bees trapped in seven paper bags.

  “The star has risen. . .”

  “A new Lych Lord has come to wield its power.”

  “Lord of Clovenstone,” they whispered.

  “Lord of Ash and Shadows.”

  “Come. Sit upon your Stone Throne.”

  “Me?” Henwyn touched his own chest. He looked for help to Ned and Skarper. “I’m just a cheesewright!” he protested. “I’m not a sorcerer! Just because I found this silly amulet? It isn’t even mine! Perhaps it’s Fentongoose you’re waiting for. . .”

  “Come.”

  Henwyn took a step towards the bridge and drew back nervously, appalled by the great drop beneath it. “And again, no handrail,” he complained. “I mean, is it just me? I like to think I’m pretty steady on my feet, but when I’m crossing stairs and bridges above gulfs of magic lava I like something to hold on to. . .”

  “Come,” whispered the Dragonbone Men.

  And suddenly Henwyn found that he wasn’t afraid of the drop after all – or, if he was, that his need to reach that black throne was greater than his fear. He crossed the bridge and climbed the steps, and as he climbed he saw that there was something lying on the throne, and as he reached the top he realized that it was a man.

  How had none of them noticed him there before? Perhaps it was because the throne was so big and the man was so small; because the throne was so richly carved and the man so plainly dressed in shabby old black robes; because the throne was magnificent, and the man was a shrivelled-up little wizened, wrinkled thing more like an old gnarled heather root than a human being. But he was alive, and watching his visitor with pale yellow eyes.

  “So you’ve come at last,” he whispered. “You took your time!”

  From beneath the cobweb hair at the old man’s temples black wings jutted, attached to a circlet of silver that ringed his brow.

  “You are Him! You are the Lych Lord!” said Henwyn, in astonishment.

  “I was,” the old man said.

  “But all the songs and stories say you’re dead!”

  “Of course I’m not! I’d hardly be sat here talking to you if I were, would I?” snapped the old man. He frowned – one more wrinkle in a face made of wrinkles – and just for a moment Henwyn caught a glimpse of the proud and frightening person he had been. Then his voice faded to a whisper again. “Songs are mistaken sometime, and you can never trust storytellers. They got it wrong, as usual. That last day, when the magic was fading and my people had fled and King Kennack’s armies were battering down my gates, I gathered what little power remained and cast one last spell. I sealed the Keep. I slowed time to a trickle. And here I have waited ever since. Keeping the Stone Throne warm for you, as it were.”

  “For me?” said Henwyn. “That’s what they said, those leathery chaps, but. . .”

  “You have my token about you, I suppose?” the Lych Lord said.

  Henwyn fumbled the ivory carving out on the end of its string. He pulled the loop of string over his head and held the amulet out. “This old thing?”

  The old man nodded. “He who carries my token home to Clovenstone, shall take my place upon the Stone Throne. That’s the way it works, you see.”

  “But I didn’t bring it here!”

  “Yet there it is, around your neck.”

  “It was Fentongoose who has guarded it! Fentongoose who brought it here! Fentongoose, master of the Sable Conclave! He should be the new Lych Lord if anyone should! Although. . .”

  “Ah!” said the old man. “But does the blood of the Lych Lord run in this Fentongoose’s veins?”

  “I, er. . .” said Henwyn. “Well, it certainly doesn’t run in mine!”

  “Are you certain of that, Henwyn of Adherak?” The old man heaved himself upright like a stook of dry sticks. “When I guessed that all was lost, I sent my household away. I sent Stenoryon to Coriander, to keep the knowledge of me alive till the magic grew strong again. But my daughter? My own small daughter, who was heir to all my empires, yet too little then to even know it? I could not entrust her to a lot of silly would-be wizards. I sent her where she would be safest, into the household of King Kennack himself, where, I believe, she became a dairy maid. You are of the royal line of Clovenstone, Henwyn of Adherak.”

  “I’m not!” said Henwyn. “I don’t feel royal or evil or any of the things a Lych Lord ought to feel. . .”

  “Have you not felt Clovenstone calling to you, all your life?” asked the old man. “Did not the Sable Conclave seek you out – led to you by the power in the amulet, although they knew it not. Did your cheese not come to life?”

  “I did that?” said Henwyn, amazed.

  “Well, sort of. I did it. I saw you through the eyes of the amulet, and I set in motion the events that would lead you here. If I could have only controlled it a little longer the cheese demon would have snatched you up and run here with you; you would have arrived weeks ago. But the magic is weak nowadays. It is hard for even I to work a spell on anything beyond the borders of Clovenstone. Only the presence of the amulet allowed me to influence the cheese at all, and when that fool of a Fentongoose panicked and ran away I lost the link; the spell was broken.”

  “The cheese creature exploded. . .” remembered Henwyn.

  “What sort of an evil sorcerer is it who panics at the sight of a cheese demon?” scoffed the old man. “Sable Conclave indeed. Standards have slipped. But you’ll put that to rights once you sit upon the Stone Throne.” He reached out one thin, trembling claw of a hand and took the amulet from Henwyn. He set it on the arm of the throne, and it quivered a moment like a blob of mercury, then sank into the stone.

  “From the throne it was made, and to the throne it returns,” said the Lych Lord. “The throne is the source of it all, you see.” Raw magic from the deep places of the earth is stirred into life by the coming of the star. When the star draws close, the power waxes; when the star soars away it wanes. The star is coming close again now; the power is gathering. It flows up through the Keep, through the throne, out into the world.

  “But it needs a mind. It needs a person sitting on the throne to give it shape and meaning and direction. Without that it would just flail about, creating random giants and useless woodlings and the like for want of any better way to express itself. Someone must control it or there would be chaos.”

  He patted one arm of the throne. “Take your seat, Henwyn of Clovenstone. You’ll understand.”

  He slid himself forward, reaching down his withered legs, his bony toes. He gave a sharp sigh as he raised himself from his stony seat. Regret? Or relief? It was hard to tell. He stood in front of the throne, and reached up to pluck the winged crown from his head. “Here,” he said, holding it out towards Henwyn. “Take it!”

  “But I don’t want it,” said Henwyn, and then realized that perhaps he did. All his life he’d known that he was special; that he had a destiny. Perhaps he’d just been wrong about its nature. Perhaps that was why he’d been no use as a
hero – because he’d been a villain all along! “Me?” he wondered. “The new Lych Lord? The king of all the world?”

  “Take it,” said the Lych Lord, in a voice as faint as a breeze in a tomb, and he tottered and fell forward. Henwyn reached out to catch him, but it was like catching a toppling pile of sand; the dry grains and cinders that had been the old man poured between his fingers, spilling in a grey drift down the steps, settling as dust upon the dust of Clovenstone. All that remained was the winged crown, solid and cool in Henwyn’s hands.

  “Henwyn!” called Princess Ned, from the far side of the bridge.

  He looked back; saw her and Skarper watching him.

  “Throw it away!” called Ned. “Please, Henwyn! There is dreadful magic here!”

  “No, it’s all right!” said Henwyn. He wished he could explain to her that this was what he had been waiting for, all through his dull and cheesy life. He sat down upon the Lych Lord’s throne.

  He felt it change. He felt it shift and stir, shaping itself to him. He set the winged crown upon his head.

  There was a huge groaning sound, a cracking and a shattering, and across the lychglass dome above there reached a spider’s web of thread-thin cracks. Skarper and Princess Ned clapped their hands over their ears and cowered at the enormous noise, but Henwyn only laughed, because he knew it was not just that dome which was breaking but all the lychglass upon all the doors and windows of the Keep, as if Clovenstone was shaking off a thick frost that had settled on it while it slept.

  From every window, every balcony, every battlement and arrow-slit of the Keep the plugs of lychglass cracked and fell. A great fissure opened in the lens which covered the main gate. The noise it made startled King Knobbler, who had been about to bring down Mr Chop-U-Up on Fentongoose’s scrawny neck. He stumbled backwards, gaping, and behind him his horde of goblins cowered, throwing up their shields to shelter from the shower of shards. But no jagged blades of lychglass came plummeting to spear them: it had splintered into such tiny crumbs that most of it just blew away on the breeze, surrounding the Keep with a glittering mist. The few pieces that did hit the ground came down as a gentle snowfall of crystals, shining in the moonlight and the light of the goblins’ torches, settling on their heads and shoulders like mystic dandruff.

  Knobbler looked at the three sorcerers, cowering among drifts of lychglass dust on the cobbles in front of him. “Did you do that?”

  “Of course!” fibbed Fentongoose. “Open it, you said, and we, ah. . .”

  A long, discordant creak drowned out the rest. The Keep’s gate, freed of its lychglass seal, was swinging open, letting out a smell of dust and dry air; letting in the moonlight. The goblins stared in silence for a moment, then surged forward, big ones trampling small ones underfoot, small ones scrambling over the big ones’ heads, swirling into the halls of the Lych Lord like a smelly sea.

  The new Lych Lord sat upon his throne and felt the ancient power of Clovenstone course through him. It was not all it might be yet, and wouldn’t be until the star came closer, but it thrilled him all the same as he began to realize what he would soon be able to do. He looked out over his throne room and saw how the squirls and splodges of different-coloured metals on the floor made a map: hammered silver for seas and rivers, green copper for the forests, bronze for the moors and burnished brass for deserts, gold and platinum and lapis lazuli for cities. He looked out across the world that he would rule: the cities that he would conquer, and the kingdoms that would pay him tribute. . .

  And he saw his friends stood there, looking up at him with worry in their faces, and remembered he was Henwyn of Adherak as well as the Lych Lord. It touched him to see how concerned they were. “It’s all right,” he said, forgetting for a moment about his destiny, his vast new power. “I’m still Henwyn. I’m not going to be, you know, evil. . . Magic can be used for good, as well, can’t it? Skarper, my friend, I won’t desert you. Look!”

  He let the powers of Clovenstone lift his hand and flex his fingers. He felt it raise the hairs on the nape of his neck. He whispered words he’d never heard before, and something like a smoke enveloped Skarper. When it cleared, the goblin’s shabby clothes had changed. The old jerkin he had found himself had turned into a fish-bright hauberk of silver scales, and there were golden rings upon his paws and a circlet of gold about his head. Even his shoes were made of gold, etched with threads of slowsilver and studded with rubies. Skarper looked down at himself and flinched in surprise. Coins cascaded from his sleeves.

  “You wanted treasure?” asked Henwyn. “You will have more treasure than a goblin ever dreamed of!” And he saw Skarper’s eyes shine, and felt glad that the first deed he had done as Lych Lord was something generous. To give your friends what they had always wanted; wasn’t that the best use of power?

  Next he turned to Princess Ned. She took a step away and held up one hand, palm towards him. “I do not want riches, Henwyn,” she said.

  Again the magic prickled; he felt all the branchings of his nerves tingle as it surged through him. Smoke wrapped the princess. When it blew away, she was not dressed in finery; she still wore the same patched frock and bog-soggy boots, and the necklace around her throat was still just string and stones. But the lines of laughter on her face had smoothed themselves away; her long hair had turned from grey to gold. She looked at the hand that she still held out, upraised in front of her, and she saw that all the creases and crinkles of age were fallen from it, and it had become soft and white again. She was a girl, as young and beautiful as she had been on the long-ago Tuesday when Fraddon hoisted her ship from the choppy seas off Choon Head. She touched her fingers to her lineless face and Henwyn, looking on, saw wonder there, then a little fear, then dawning joy. He had found the thing she wanted too. Who wouldn’t want a chance to live again?

  “See?” he said. “I have rescued you after all. I have rescued you from time.”

  Skarper looked up at his words. He had been so busy admiring the fine new rings and silver wristlets which Henwyn had magicked for him that he had not even seen the transformation being wrought on Princess Ned. Now he stared at her, and despite his new riches a little creeping feeling of unease came into his mind. He was remembering what the princess had said about power, and what power did to people. He remembered her saying it, sitting on the sofa in her cosy old ship, with her knees drawn up under her chin and her nice grey hair spilled over them. He had liked her that way; she looked prettier now, more like a storybook princess, but less like herself. He wanted the old Ned back. And he missed the old Henwyn too. He’d wanted a friend, not some all-powerful Lych Lord who dished out magic presents to his companions, and did who knows what to his enemies. . .

  Skarper shook his paws, and the new rings flew off and landed clattering on the floor. He took a step backwards, and the ruby-encrusted shoes Henwyn had made him felt heavy and uncomfortable. They clumped across the metal map as he turned and fled between the silent Dragonbone Men to the stairs.

  “Skarper?” he heard Henwyn call behind him. “Skarper! Come back!”

  The Dragonbone Men skittered into life, sprinting after Skarper with their strange, stiff-legged run, but Henwyn halted them with a gesture. “No, let him go.”

  Skarper glanced back over his shoulder as he reached the top of the stairs, and saw the Dragonbone Men freeze in mid-stride. Then he tripped over his strange new shoes and pitched forward. “Bumcakes!” he cried, curling into a ball like a scared hedgehog, putting his paws up to protect his head, and his mail coat rang upon the stones as he went tumbling head over heels down the long spiral of the stairs.

  Princess Ned looked up at Henwyn. No, not Princess Ned any more; Eluned. Ned was far too ordinary and mannish a name for someone so young and beautiful. She said, “He is afraid of you, my lord.”

  Henwyn laughed. It seemed such a strange idea, that anyone should be afraid of him. Little Nuisance crept out from beneath his cloak,
and Henwyn worked another spell – it was easy, once you got the knack – and turned him from a dull brown dragonet into a perfect miniature dragon, his scales blazing with rich colours. Isn’t that what a dragonet must dream of? thought Henwyn. To be a proper dragon? He almost made him dragon-sized as well, but decided he had better wait until his powers were stronger and he was quite certain of his dragon-taming abilities.

  Nuisance hiccupped and let out a little flare of orange flame, which startled him so much he took flight and went whirring away to hide among the ornate carvings which ringed the chamber. Henwyn felt irritated, and a little sad. Did no one appreciate his kindness?

  “Are you afraid of me?” he asked Eluned.

  “A little,” said Eluned, and she looked so beautiful that Henwyn could not resist changing her clothes for her; her homespun kirtle kindled into bright silk, and splashes of bog mud on her skirt’s hem became lush knots of gold embroidery.

  “Don’t be afraid,” he said. “I’m not like him. . .” He pointed to the ash of the old Lych Lord, sprinkled down the steps of the throne. “I’m going to do good things. All this magic is waiting to be used, you see. It needs harnessing, power like that. Like a wild horse or something. That’s what Clovenstone is for. I’ll use the magic to bring rivers to the deserts of Zandegar! I’ll use it to build fine palaces for my sisters, and a new cheesery beyond compare for my dad. I’ll use it to throw down bad kings and tyrants everywhere. That lout the king of Choon, for instance; I’ll show him a thing or two!”