That was it. I had to tell him about this after tonight. I trusted him with my emotions, my trauma, I swear I did. I knew something had been holding me back from telling him. And I knew that he would be upset, maybe even angry, that I didn’t tell him about what was going on while the others knew for months. Keeping this secret needed to end.
Taking a deep breath, I creeped across the room and toward the door. Diaval made a “hurry up” motion with her hand, eyes rolling so far they were practically in the back of her head. We exited the room and quietly shut the door, and she let out a huff of exasperation.
“Honestly, I offer my time and services, and I’m nearly stood up by you having a nap.” She flicked her fingers, taking off the sting of the words. “Poor Soren’s gonna have a backache for days.”
“Sorry,” I said. “He told me a story and I fell asleep.”
Diaval raised an eyebrow. “A story? Color me impressed.”
This time I rolled my eyes. “Just because you have zero faith in the entire male population doesn’t mean everyone does.”
“I resent that,” Diaval argued. “I have zero faith in everyone equally.”
I decided not to continue down that rabbit hole, lest I tear my hair out. I was already possibly going to confront one of the things that’d caused me immense trauma for a hundred years, in a way that didn’t involve ripping his guts out, and I couldn’t let my emotions go so unchecked already.
Instead, I let Diaval lead me to the courtyard, marveling at how quiet the palace was at night. The once-white marble was now a shiny black with not even the moonlight reflecting from its stone. Soren’s household in the palace was relatively small as it was, making it not so loud during the day, but at night, I could hear a pin drop. Everyone was asleep or getting there. I wondered, for those thralls that stayed and converted, did they ever have a night when they could sleep without fear of murder, before we came?
The thought brought me back to my first nights with Soren. Terrified, bloody, bruised, and hurting in every possible way. I dared not close my eyes during that time, not knowing what would happen to me if I let my guard down even for a minute around the strange goblin and those who followed him. I kept myself so tense, then, waiting for sounds on the other side of the door. A warning that he was coming to hurt me.
But he never did.
I thought it was sure to happen when they moved me from the sickroom I’d been staying in to a room—a number of rooms actually—that could only be accessed or exited through Soren’s own rooms. Back then, when they walked in on me, fire filled my body and I thought about killing myself quickly before he had the chance to do anything. Except for the rooms he gave me had nothing I could use to die. No light fixtures hanging high enough, no sharp objects, even the mirror was polished copper and wouldn’t break no matter how hard I pounded on it.
But day and night came after day and night, and soon, I eased into the new life. After a year, I understood Soren had put me in those rooms to protect me from anyone who might’ve wanted to hurt me, and not because he wanted access to me himself. Because what kind of idiot would go through his lord’s rooms in order to assault a girl, knowing they’d leave a trail behind, if not run into their lord himself.
Those first nights, those first months, I only slept because the healer Tanya had put me under with herbs while she healed my broken body. Every touch, even hers, burned. I never wanted to be touched again.
I was lucky. I had help from people who cared, even if I didn’t know it then. I was sure, whatever their experience, those who served under the old Erlking had much more to fear.
I prayed they did get a dreamless sleep.
I banged into something hard, and Diaval let out a cuss. “Watch where you’re going!” she hissed as I finally noticed the area around me. Outside, the stars shown bright in the sky, the only light to be found. For a moment I stood there, looking up, picking out constellations in my head before Diaval gave my arm a rough jerk.
“Come on, we need to get started,” she said, leading down to an area of the courtyard where stone was inlaid on the ground. The dim light of the stars allowed me to barely see the symbols drawn in chalk across the path, and before I could say anything, Diaval pushed me down into the middle of it.
“Okay, sit down, close your eyes, and reach out,” Diaval instructed, before adding, “with your mind, not your hand.”
“I know what ‘reaching out’ means in this context, Diaval,” I muttered. “Have some sort of faith in me.”
She snorted delicately but didn’t respond, opting instead to begin chanting in a language I didn’t know. Unlike the ancestral language of goblins, which was only used when swearing oaths to the Erlking, this wasn’t rough and coarse but smooth, almost lyrical in a sense. It swayed and flowed like branches in a breeze, and as she continued my head grew light. My body was weightless, floating.
My eyes closed and I tried to envision it in my mind. Conjuring up images of the field I’d seen the world created on, the stag born, the creatures who moved north and south, as I was given the stag’s mantle of power. I focused on the space between the spaces, as impossible as it both felt and sounded, the idea that the world tree had roots connecting all the realms together, trying to picture the cosmos in my brain.
I tried, I really did. But I still sat there for who knew how long, trying to reach out to a voice calling me, faintly echoing in the back of my mind, but no matter what, I couldn’t grasp or reach it. The more I desired to hold it, the more I aimed to catch it, the more frustrated I got for missing it, the further it drifted from my fingertips.
“This isn’t working,” I finally said, crestfallen.
Diaval sighed. “Time for plan B, then.”
“There’s a plan B?” I asked, turning to face her as she cracked her knuckles.
“Yep. I’d turn around if I were you, unless you want a nasty bruise.” Blue lightning sprang forth from her hands, and my eyes widened as I did what she said.
“What are you do—” The heel of her palm struck the back of my head, and suddenly I was falling forward, landing face-first on the stone of the courtyard. Except, it hadn’t scratched me. It hadn’t even hurt at all.
Heart racing, I turned to see Diaval examining my slumped-over body. The body I was currently not in. The revelation did nothing for my rising heart rate as I brought a hand to my face, realizing it was slightly see-through.
“What did you do?” I asked, but my voice was carried away by some odd, ethereal wind.
“Get back to your body as soon as you can, Janneke,” Diaval instructed me. “I don’t know how long I can keep you tethered to this world.”
Now, out of my body, something tugged me deep in my belly. It was like someone had put a hook in my gut and was slowly pulling me forward, giving me no room to argue or refuse. The landscape changed as I walked farther, as my feet began to stand on air and the world turned upside down. The birds swam and the trees had roots for branches, and I was upside down, right-side up, and somewhere neutral all at once.
Focus your energy, I could almost hear the bastard’s voice for real this time, and despite every bit of my body aching to refuse his advice to spite him, I did as he said. I focused hard, back on that field where the world began.
Finally, Lydian appeared in front of my eyes.
The first thing I did was punch him.
I wasn’t sure who was more shocked—me, expecting him to maybe be incorporeal or untouchable or him, probably expecting … well, I didn’t think I’d ever be able to guess what Lydian was expecting.
He put a hand to his nose, then stared at the blood on it. “Ouch.”
I punched him again, this time in the jaw. “That was for my village and family.” Before he had a chance to move, I brought my knee into his stomach and slammed my elbow down on his back. A satisfying groan came from his lips. “That was for Rekke.” The memory of the young she-goblin who’d been forced to fight during the Hunt and was brutally disemboweled by Lydi
an still flashed in my mind from time to time and left me shaking with rage and sadness. I hadn’t known her well, but I knew her well enough that she didn’t deserve to die. “You know, the innocent child you killed on the Hunt,” I explained when he made a confused expression. I brought my knee up again, this time into his crotch. “That’s for what you did to me.” I released him and watched as he curled up on the ground, huddled in a ball of pain. Then I kicked him in the ribs. “And that’s because I wanted to.”
Lydian stayed on the ground, his body trembling. Or, at least, that’s what I thought until I heard the gasp-like laughter coming from his mouth. He was laughing. I beat him to the ground, his face covered in his own blood, and the fucker was laughing. Unbidden, Donnar’s words came back to me. If it’s any consolation, he was already a psychopath before I cursed him.
Yeah, I was beginning to see that.
Hot anger pooled into my muscles, but I forced myself to swallow it back. In the back of my head was a foreign feeling, not quite my own but not a stranger’s either, that I recognized to be the stag’s mantle. It pulsed and vibrated, almost like a voice, though no words were said, telling me that as reprehensible as this all was, I needed to keep my calm. If only it were that easy.
“Well,” I said to his still-laughing form. “I’m here. Talk.”
He stood, blood still trickling from his nose and down farther to his neck. It made for a gruesome site when he bared his teeth into something a bit too primal to be a smile. “Took you long enough.”
My hands curled into fists again. “Tell me what you want to tell me, and then get out of my sight.”
“Sight,” he mused, eyes getting that faraway look again. “That’s all it comes down to. Sight.”
Great, now he was going to ramble again. Just my luck. I wanted this to be over with. Standing this close to the monster, and he was a monster, was making my skin crawl.
His eyes cleared up again as he raked his gaze down me in a predatory way. I stared back at him, refusing to flinch. He made another bared-tooth smile at that. “I have to say, I admire your courage being here.”
I lifted my chin. “I already told you, Lydian. You hold no power over me anymore.”
“Your heart is racing like a frightened rabbit,” he countered.
“Your heart is kept locked away somewhere in the Erlking’s palace,” I said. “Keeping you in this place. Maybe once you cooperate, I’ll actually bury it, let you rest.” I refused to let him control the situation in any way. I was the one making the threats. I was the one with the power. I was the one in charge. He could try to flip that dynamic all he wanted, but it wasn’t about to change.
“I can never rest,” he said, beginning to pace in a feverish manner. “Not after all that’s happened, not after what I know, not after the world began falling apart.”
“What are you talking about?” I nearly shouted. “Enough with the riddles. Tell me.”
“Are you sure you want to know?” he asked. When I nodded, his eyes hardened. “Very well.”
The field around me shimmered in the air and shifted, changing into a different place all together. I could see all of the nine realms; I somehow stood within them and outside of them at the same time. Yggdrasil, the tree of life, held them together but something was gnawing at its roots. A giant serpent with gleaming red eyes, his entire impossibly long body wrapped around the tree. I stared as Lydian’s riddle came back to me. What happens when the serpent stops eating his tail?
“It eats the world from the inside out,” I spoke without thinking, without even putting the words together in my head. Almost like a different force flowed through me at this moment. This was my world, my worlds, that I was supposed to protect and balance, that I was supposed to keep steady, and it was being made to shake apart by this giant serpent.
The odd mine-but-not-mine feeling in my head, in my gut, returned, filling me with something akin to a mother’s rage at the destruction of their child—or at least being childless myself, what I thought it felt like. The nine realms were my children, and they were going to fall apart.
“I told you,” Lydian snarled. “I told you all. It’s all your fault. You and my nephew’s. You two were always meant to destroy the world.”
The vision faded away until I was back on the field, facing Lydian. His pacing had quickened now until he’d worn a groove into the grass, and his hands grasped each other, wringing and scratching his own skin.
“Soren and I have nothing to do with this,” I said sharply.
“No?” He looked up from his pacing. “Do you know the laws of winter, girl?”
Girl. He said it with disgust. That is all I ever was to him. A human girl. Easily used. Easily discarded. I am powerful now. Even if I don’t know how to use my full abilities, I won’t let him get to me. Not when I still needed information. When I woke up from whatever state I was in, I could take my anger out in any way I wanted, but for now I was forced to deal. “Of course I do.”
The laws of winter. The laws that governed the entire Permafrost. Sixteen in all, though some had been forgotten in time. But as the stag, I knew them all.
The Erlking’s word was law.
The Erlking must be the strongest goblin.
Oaths may not be broken if sworn upon land, sea, and sky, unless both the oathgiver and the oathkeeper agree to it.
The stag is the life force of the Permafrost.
Gifts may only be used for the purpose they were given unless that purpose is no longer suitable. This was the law that made it impossible for Soren to change my status as a thrall until I began adapting more to the Permafrost, since I was originally his uncle’s “gift.”
All favors must be repaid.
Those who consume the nectar of the Permafrost are bound to its lands.
If two or more persons get into a fight, the winner is granted the loser’s power and possessions, and gains immunity for any illegal action during the fight under the spirit of winter.
Iron is banned in the Permafrost on the pain of death, unless used by the victor of the fight.
Magic may not be used to alter the events of time.
All of these I knew, along with the ancient forgotten law that had given me the power of the stag in the first place. Yes, I knew the laws, lived by them like any other creature in the Permafrost. I was created in the Permafrost. Changed.
“No, you don’t,” Lydian said. He continued before I could protest. “Did you ever wonder why the line for the Erlking is not inherited by blood, rather than battle? It’s because the blood of the original Erlking mixed with the sacrifice of the stag sealed the realms together and kept the world serpent from waking from his slumber by shoving its tail in its mouth. If their blood was to mix again, then the serpent would awaken and begin gnawing at the roots of Yggdrasil, starting Ragnarök.”
Something uneasy was brewing in my gut at what he was saying, though I couldn’t truly understand it yet or make any sense of it.
“For that reason, the Erlking’s direct bloodline was all but eliminated. But as often occurs, females tend to be overlooked when it comes to bloodlines, and of the few who escaped, none ever participated in the stag hunt, having the knowledge passed down from mother to child.” He’d stopped pacing by now, though his hands still wrung together hard enough for his nails to dig into his skin and create welts. “It was a secret, you see. But I know everything. All secrets. All thoughts. All breaths and beats and steps, each pulse of blood, each twitch of muscle.”
Lydian broke off into laughter. “But of course, I couldn’t say anything. Damn svartelf, I had him to blame for that. What’s the use of seeing if you can’t tell? And when she came, she was the last of them. And I saw her, and I knew she would have a child and that child would find another child, and those two witless children would end the world. So, I killed her, but her spawn still lived. So, I took you because I knew who you were even if I didn’t know how you were going to do it, and you refused to answer any of my questions. Beca
use I had to ask. You were my one blind spot, the one thing I couldn’t see because how do you see someone dead and alive, moving and still, liminal? Now that I travel the space, oh, I can see them, but then, no, nothing. But I had to ask, ask or break you, break you or kill you, until you ruined it by shoving a piece of iron into my skin. And well, we all knew what happened after that.
“No one appreciated my attempts to save them all, so I decided to damn them instead, by giving you to him. Knowing maybe his pride would get in the way of you living. I judged poorly, and when I tried to fix my mistakes, save the world from you two children, you fought back and you won, and now the world is dying and it’s all your fault.”
5
THE MADMAN’S CONFESSION
LYDIAN CONTINUED HIS laughter, breath hitching and catching every so often until it would send him into deep coughing fits. He would recover from them and then continue laughing as his poison-green eyes kept themselves steadily on my face, watching my expression.
I breathed in the air, somehow both cold and warm, in this space in the field between worlds. It wasn’t his words that shocked me, not really; it was the scenes behind my eyes that played almost like dreams as he spoke. They flashed so fast, I almost couldn’t keep up, but they always ended up at the same place. Soren on the throne, me beside him, dark brown hair speckled with white, and the world tree cracking, breaking and falling, and the cosmos spiraling downward into black nothingness.
No, it wasn’t so much this madman’s confession that caused the nausea in my stomach. It wasn’t that he in some primitive way was, not right, never right, never on the side of good, “right” wasn’t the proper word for it, but correct in the ramblings about the world being destroyed, and Soren and I being the ones to bring it to its destruction. No, it was the way I could see it play out in my own head over and over again, the wheels of fate turning and turning and never stopping, no matter what got in its way.
Goblin King Page 5
