The Good Goblin

by C M F Eisenstein

  Entering the short greensward that surrounded the tower, Cezzum took note of how austere the area was. Apart from the tower, the ground was barren and the grass shorn meticulously; there was an unknown hand that greatly cared for its cultivation and tended to it with a passion. The sward of grass ran for several feet before the forest itself loomed over the tower’s glade. A tarnished, iron portcullis was the only perceivable entrance to the tower. With their duty firmly entrenched in their minds, Cezzum and Palodar approached the portal.

  Seeing no bell, alarm or knocker at the entrance, Cezzum was about to bang at the bars when a crack tore the air apart. In front of them, behind the protection of the iron bars, a loran flashed into view. A swift ephemeral luminescent glow, roughly the shape of a lofty human, was accompanied by a brisk crack as air that was previously void now harboured a shape; this was how the sudden manifestation of the person before them was heralded.

  A female loran stood before them. She had a drawn face, as if the depravation of sleep and the spirit of worry had robbed her of her haleness. Much like the other loran Palodar and Cezzum had met, she was tall and slender. Her hair was bunched up and pinned behind her head, displaying her high cheek bones and hard face to good advantage. She bore similar tattoos to the magician at the ford, they too suffused a great deal of her skin; only a few stretches of her pale skin shone through between her dormant armour and her robe; if not for the tattoos, her appearance would have been most scandalous in most societies. She regarded the two halflings before her for a moment, then, in the ænglix tongue, spoke with a voice that was assertive but betrayed by weariness.

  “To our tower I welcome you fellow knights,” she announced, waving her hand in a summoning gesture before the goblin and dwarf. A rustle of leaves came from the forest behind, and the two friends spun on their heels. Emerging from the eaves were four other knights, three additional lorans, their armour now receding back into their flesh, and an archer of men, who was removing his green fletched arrow from the bowstring.

  The sound of the portcullis rising brought the two companions’ attention back to the loran before them. Two of her fingers danced upwards, as if they were sensually tickling the air. A subtle, grey hue coursed from her fingertips and surrounded the iron grating and heaved it heavenwards. Without preamble the tired loran stepped forwards. “I am Casena, Knight-Captain of this loranic company. I have scant time to waste these days, even for those of my order. Ill winds, whispers, shadows haunt my mind ceaselessly – a breath, a voice, so familiar, yet unknown... it bellows putrid air over the lands.” Casena’s gaze lost focus for an instant as her mind fought against some unknown harrier within. She tugged at the collar of her crimson-black battle dress and brought herself out of her dark reverie. “I presume for a goblin and a dwarf to be dressed in princely attire, yet sordid from the heel to gullet and of unknown knighting, must indeed carry a charge of some manner for me.”

  “Aye, captain!” proffered Palodar as he pulled from his Bogroo-begrimed jerkin Lauret’s missive. Casena snatched it at once, breaking open the wax seal and glowered intently at the penned words. The visible impediments of doubt and grief seemed to raise themselves from her lineaments. The missive erupted into a flame within her hand and quickly fell to the ground as ash. “Follow me,” Casena instructed, her voice more commanding and beyond rebuff; there was such a raw power contained within the two words, even a greater compulsion than Filburn’s instructions had been; for this, Cezzum thought them not to be entirely without a preternatural power. The loranic magician wheeled around and strode purposefully into the tower. The two friends followed.

  A room opened up when clear of the portcullis. It was a commodious space with quarried, stone flooring and small windows that held no glass that were set high into the walls, inches from the floor of the next level; they let in but an inkling of light. Aside from the lugubrious atmosphere created by the meagre illumination, the chamber was perfectly square in shape, from one corner to the next, but as a consequence was most austere in its appearance. All that was present in the room was a sizable, threadbare rug and several stools in front of a great stone fireplace; not even a tapestry or a wall hanging, which were common ways to stem the cold, hung on the stone confines, and despite the halcyon autumn day outside, the tower remained as frigid as it was decorated.

  Palodar tugged his jerkin closer around his chest as they walked through the room. Without turning around to face them, Casena instructed, “Palodar remain here. Cezzum come with me.” The loran then headed to a spiralling, metal staircase - an oddity indeed and one that out of time with the stone structure. The flight of stairs was surrounded by a gloom where not even the narrow windows dared brighten; hidden away in one of the far corners through a small, recessed archway; it was easily missed.

  Cezzum looked at his friend with a beseeching query; Palodar uncertainly returned the gesture with a shrug of his shoulders and grinned wryly. As the goblin followed the laconic mage, she threw a small sphere of fire that smashed into the hearth, igniting it. The dwarf expressed his thanks and gave Casena a curt bow; the bow was never seen. Palodar, taking a seat on one of the stools, proceeded to bask in the warmth.

  The knight-captain mounted the steps, and without regard as to whether or not the goblin was following her, ascended to the next storey. Cezzum hurried after her, scampering up the less-than-halfling designed steps. The flight of spiralling stairs seemed to be secluded in their own stone tower, for with each floor Cezzum climb, the room leading from the stairs was cut off from sight by a thick, oak door.

  After following Casena for many flights, the knight-captain trilled her forefinger before a door’s latch and a clank indicated the lock had been unbolted from the other side. As the loran stepped into the room she said, “I know you must think me impertinent, an embodiment of animus, however, you cannot comprehend the burden I carry goblin.”

  Cezzum entered the capacious room. As bright as the contrast between day and night might be consider, so too was the room he entered was the complete obverse of the dismal landing below. The floor was mostly covered with a plush, ruby weave, apart from a few swaths of stone peering through; although the fabric was worn through many years, it appeared no less impressive. Stacks of books and shelves and tables laden with even more tomes were piled high to the ceiling; parchments and manuscripts created veritable nooks and bowers of arcane literature. No windows or portals were visible through the sheer massif of paper; the only illumination came from glass sconces that peaked out from between the stacks and shelves.

  “But, captain, wha-,” started Cezzum, but was interrupted by the loran when she turned to face him, gazing with her luminous blue eyes.

  “It is the same reason I know your question now; it is why I knew to address you, a goblin, in the tongue of men,” declared Casena, her voice terribly solemn. “It is the same reason why Knight Cezzum, I know you in your entirety: your past, your present… your task. Every facet of your being is illuminated before me.”

  The loran held her forehead as if she were overcome with a tremendous pain. With her stare averted to the ground below, and her hand firmly latched to her brow, she continued. “This burden is one of prescience. I become intimate with those around me. The moment another’s visage is bestowed upon my eyes, I am embraced by them; I become their friend, their lover – I am them, goblin. Before a single breath leaves, I relive their entire life. An entire history is woven within my cognizance – the exultations, the sorrows, ecstasy, and all that is utter wretchedness. But if that were the apex of this imprecation it would be but beatific benediction. Moments... spectres... phantoms haunt my sights, my mind. Never is there a trice of respite. Ceaseless years linger as a thousand voices rage within me, never dull, never forgotten. Yet a thousand more waft through the air, bringing whispers, rumours of everything... and of nothing – truths that will certainly come to pass and lies which beguile and mislead. It is a din... this orchestra of forlornness.

  “That is why, Cez
zum, I ask no questions of you and spare little time for inane converse, for but one less voice that I hear is, to me, a righteousness. This bountiful bane is an exiguous creation among my kind; scarce few are blighted by it; fewer wish for it.”

  Cezzum, at a loss for how to respond to the monologue, simply extended the edges of his lips downwards and gave a sympathetic smile to the loran. The knight-captain released her head, and upon seeing the face of the goblin, smiled herself. Light from the flickering candles danced off her features; for a brief instant she appeared youthful and untroubled with the content tug upon her lips. She gestured for Cezzum to approach. “But now there is an exigency in the matter that is before us. Many hours of work await.”

  The loranic paladin turned around and threw some books off the top of a high standing, round table covered with a purple drape. As the tomes and papers collided with the ground, Casena ripped off the cloth and let it fall to the floor. The antecedent table was in fact not as such. Now presented before the mage and goblin was an onyx pedestal. A firm plinth held it solidly to the floor while a tapering, ionic column reached upwards to hold a gently sloped basin at its summit. The entire structure appeared ancient in years; a great deal of the embossed works carved into the entirety of the pedestal were chipped, scratched and worn away to reveal speckles of the abyssal and pearlescent undertones. Cezzum ran his fingers over the surface of the unworldly object; his fingers came away with a fine coating of ice upon them. The goblin was on the cusp of inquiry, but before his mind could finish translating his thoughts to words, the loran interceded. “It is an Espial Font; it allows us to descry the provenance of a name, then trace that being towards its immediate abode. This device is of a lost eon; it was hewn when my people deemed it imperative to source the root of a being - a being unknown... apart from a mere name. Only one Espial Font exists. The cabal that was sanctioned for its birth gathered to pour their magic into its essence; yet, when they were through, they all succumbed to the rigours of mortality.” Casena spoke the words as she reverently hovered her hand over the depression on the font’s surface.

  Cezzum walked around the pedestal to stand in front of it, the bowl rested below the level of his chin; the loran’s fingertips still floated over it.

  “How do we proceed?” asked Cezzum.

  The knight-captain remained impassive.

  “Casena?” repeated the goblin.

  Abruptly a spark leapt from Casena’s hand and struck the hollow. She pulled her hand away and rapidly the tiny, scintillating sphere erupted into an enormous purple and green inferno that burnt surreally in the font’s basin without any fuel.

  “Now hasten Cezzum,” proclaimed the loran, letting her eyes once again regarded the goblin over the flames, “it is only you that yields the equanimity to seek out our quarry. I cannot.”

  The words swept over Cezzum’s mind - why was it to be him? The mere notion of touching the device unsettled him deeply; his fingers still ached with frigid remembrance.

  Casena approached the goblin, lowering herself onto her haunches, and with vacant eyes said, “A reason exists why Lauret omitted the name from his missive. Unwittingly, you and your dwarven friend are the sole keepers of the name; more than this, Cezzum, it is you alone that can locate this fell creature. The entity we seek holds many wards, barriers, fey tokens; they protect and obscure from the scrying of those from a particular balance in this world.”

  Cezzum felt a temptation towards the flame; he clenched his fingers instead. “What balance is this?”

  “It is a equilibrium inherent in us all, goblin. We do not choose it; it neither chooses us; mere capricious fate governs it and who it is bestowed upon. The race of lorans are to one side of this; humans, elves, telopians, dwarves, they all reside in this skew; within each is but a propensity to oppose this scale; even lorans are not impervious to the sallies of that which is fell. It is not a creation that should be reviled, it is but the way things exist. It is crass, Cezzum, but these base words we utter with insincerity, good and evil, these are not meaningless to that which you see before you. For this reason, none save you, goblin, possess the ability to seek out the Banner-Flyer. You are from a side we do not share the sight of; only providence has seen fit to bring you here, the lone creature in this world capable of this task.”

  Cezzum considered the words cautiously, he was resolute in his mission, but the Casena’s words weighed heavily upon him: a predetermination as to nature of a being, it was a notion repugnant to his very soul. It was as if a veil had been dropped, no longer shrouding an aspect of the world hidden to the goblin until now, and yet it threatened to overthrow all that he had ever sought in his life. Am I but a pawn to whim? He thought. What must I do?

  “Recount the name in your conscience,” elucidated Casena, touching the goblin’s cheek, “then plunge your hands into the flames, they will not scald.”

  Casena stood and held Cezzum’s shoulder as he turned to face the pedestal. Choice faltered under her guidance; his hesitant defiance broke. The goblin brought the name into his mind, framing it within his thoughts: Bledun-Deorc. Cezzum inhaled deeply, calming his tremulous body. The act preceded further consideration; he plunged his gangly hands into the Espial Font’s conflagration. Instantly Cezzum’s mind leapt from his corporeal frame.

  Palodar lumbered a fagot into the warming fire before him, rubbing his hands eagerly as the tethers burnt away and the sticks spread apart. Reaching for the fire poker he shifted and mixed the old ash and embers with the new fuel before he settled back down onto the low stool. The dwarf looked around the room, now brighter as the flames drubbed the poor light from the inconsequential windows. Despite the appeal of observing the bizarre openings, his attention soon came back to the dancing flames. Lorans, he thought, could use some dwarven decorations!

  The knights, which had nearly waylaid the halflings outside of the tower, entered the room with footfalls breaking Palodar’s insipient reverie. All of them, apart from one loran, headed straight to the stairwell, after a polite bow to their fellow dwarven knight naturally. The remaining loran made his way over to Palodar and took a seat next to the inviting fire and the affable, dwarven face.

  “Halé fratebròbor dweotus,” greeted the loran in Spáshelin, the loranic tongue.

  Palodar vacantly gazed, with a grin, at the dapper and faintly gaunt, young loran, whom, much like the other lorans the dwarf had met, possessed the same intense, oceanic blue eyes as well as incredibly detailed and ornate bodily markings; he too wore a long and flowing partitioned robe. The loran smiled and clumsily stumbled out: “Gretfang dwevorig.”

  The dwarf could not help but let his countenance curl in mirth. “I believe you mean: ‘Gretvang dwavorg’,” offered Palodar as he aiding the kindly loran with his dwarven Valaku.

  With a generous smile, the loran nodded his thanks; picking instead ænglix, he said, “Valaku was never my strength.”

  Palodar’s eyes cinched and his beard jostled up and down as he bantered, “And Spáshelin was never mine!”

  The loran proffered his patterned right hand. “Well met dwarf, I am Lúnàras Valéren.”

  “And I am Palodar of Palu’don; the fain salutation is all mine friend... and fellow knight,” Palodar said the latter with a grin locked upon his face as he took the loran’s comparatively slender fingers within his own.

  “It is odd,” speculated Lúnàras, releasing the dwarf’s hand, “that the commonest form of verbal parlance between all the races is conducted in ænglix; a treatise certainly awaits the conjuring of such questions as to why; what answers beg for enlightenment?”

  “I would simply attribute it to their great and far reaching network of trade. But then again,” admitted Palodar, “I am no scholar, and perhaps my view is tarnished by the need I had of the language to procure and vend all things that gleam.”

  The loran chuckled. “Or mayhap, it is due towards its somewhat… simplistic construction and rather lax, how to say... everything.”

 
“Aye, perhaps, but I would not let a human catch you saying that,” jested Palodar and the two laughed together.

  The loranic knight’s tone became keener. “Casena told of the arrival of a messenger; I must take it that you and your goblin friend are those that were foretold?”

  “Well, I don’t know how the knight-captain could have known that we held a missive for her, but I enjoy the idea of being expected,” said Palodar as he threw his hand in a flourish, indicating the room. “As far as the preparations that were made for my, appalling!”

  Lúnàras grinned widely.

  “But aye,” continued the dwarf, “we did bring tidings, and more importantly the name which Casena sought from Captain Lauret, whom we met in the Fallen Leas.”

  The loran drew closer, his face displaying ebullient interest. “Tell me your tale Palodar of Palu’don; any word from afar shall be treasured by mine ears. I pray you bring auspicious news during this dire struggle.”

  Palodar gave the loran a sly swirl of his mouth, his tongue beating outwards. “I am sorry fellow knight,” cried the dwarf with a mock-theatrical shrug of his shoulders, “but my lips are far too dry to regale you with any tale!”

  The magician laughed as he patted the dwarf’s shoulder in capitulation. He disappeared up the stairs and returned a minute later with two gourds in his hands. Handing one to the dwarf he took his seat next to the fire once again. Palodar pulled the bung and with dramatic verve sniffed the contents, testing a drop or two upon his tongue; he grinned. “A fine brew, my thanks! My lips shall now be looser than a sailor from Vintner’s Bay!” declaimed Palodar. He began to weave his tale for Lúnàras from the moment he stole the jewels from his dearest mother…

  The loran sat in stoic silence for a few minutes after Palodar had finished his narrative. Crackles burst forth intermittently from the waning fire; the dwarf, presaging the imminent cold, promptly drained the dregs of his gourd to warm his chest.