The Good Goblin

by C M F Eisenstein

  It was in this sweet, embracing wind that Amyia lay in the last strip of light, letting the water droplets slowly alight from her body like a thousand butterflies taking to the sky in far stretching and fabled spring-yearning meadows; at the least, this was how it felt in her mind as the moisture disappeared little by little. Cezzum had slipped into his dwarven clothes and ventured off into the forest, with Gnarlfang at his side, in search of some kindling and dry wood and, wishfully, some birchnum fruit as well.

  Palodar, with hands and arms laden with wares, sat down with a grass-muted thump next to Amyia. The girl sat up and looked at who had joined her.

  “’Ello Palodar,” she said excitedly.

  Palodar projected one of those grins that not only returns a greeting but one that also suggested he had more to say. “Well,” he said with a grand rising of his cheeks and pointing to the mound of Amyia’s tattered clothes off to their right, “since we be going to Darantur and we can’t quite rightly have you strolling into such a prestigious city in naught but your bare skin! I mean any good dwarf appreciates the naked body in all its bearded glory, but some less-than-well-disposed dwarves consider humans all out of proportions and gangly beasts and such when they are without dress. And considering the only use that welcomes your old clothes is that to fuel a fire, I thought, until we at least arrive in Darantur, I should make these for you.”

  Amyia’s eyes brightened as Palodar proffered the bundle to her. Taking it, she placed the pack delicately upon the grass, jumped to her feet and gave Palodar a peck on his hirsute cheek before starting to dress in the first item of the cobbled-together, canvas apparel. Again, it was fortunate that a beard hung from the dwarf’s face as his sheepish reddening could not be glanced.

  The toe-length trousers were snug and comfortable and the jerkin clasped firmly to her; tight enough to keep her warm, but loose enough as well as to provide ease of movement - indeed, it was a perfect fit. Both garments had the tawny-thread woven into them and a criss-cross design ran that along the sides; it allowed Amyia to adjust them as she saw fit. Two boot wraps had also been wrought; they were similar to those that Palodar had previously placed on her, but the soles had been thickened with numerous layers of the once large tarpaulin and the cross garters had been stitched directly into the footwear. As the last garment was taken, a gift was revealed underneath; the glint of a sheath spoke of the dwarven sword within; a thick loop of coiled thread created its fine girdle meant for a singular set of clothes.

  Something occurred next which the dwarf had not expected. Amyia’s face became sombre and still, passively cold. She bent down slowly as if in veneration of the weapon. Clasping the scabbard tensely in one hand she pulled the sword from it; the blade came free with a rich, ringing reverberation. Holding the blade before her eyes, rotating and turning it to capture every nuance of light, Amyia absorbed every feature of the blade; it was to her the means of her very existence; the blade was an effigy; the incarnate desire of her soul. Maleficent viridian eyes flowed from the sword’s tip, navigating ravenously along the fuller to the embossed hilt of steel and silver. Her lips murmured something inaudible, unhurriedly uttering an orison to the forged piece of steel. The blade snapped back into its scabbard; Amyia fastened it tightly to her waist. Whatever thoughts had surged through her mind had fled into the darker, deeper recesses of her thoughts; they were not sealed away, only momentarily assuaged.

  Palodar rose from the ground filled with anxiety, but he could see that her features had returned to a state of quiescence. Amyia stood before the dwarf – garbed in her canvas and thread clothing, resplendently adorned with the short sword – and for the briefest of times the girl she once was surfaced upon her again; calm, loving eyes filled with amity and which were void of any malignancy. Amyia thanked Palodar once again for much more than the dwarf could. With no one else about to admire his work Palodar thought it only right to announce, “I do say, marvellous craftsmanship; perhaps a tailor is what I should have been.”

  “A finer garb I have not seen, dear brother, but a tailor I do not think would become thee well, for who then would be my rock in this keen world?” jeered Cezzum with a great merriment as he emerged from the woods, his arms laden with twigs and logs and on top of which rested, seeping with juices, carved pieces of birchnum fruit.

  Palodar laughed. “Besides,” he conceded, “I could not give up the vastness of travel and the unexpectedness of it all; if I had to wimble from dawn to dusk my mind might as soon become wimbled!”

  “I’s think you’re long past that point,” taunted Amyia.

  Both she and Cezzum cackled as Palodar’s lips pursed. “The cheek! This little bairn has some gall.”

  “Only’s because I- warm enough to say what I thinks now,” Amyia bantered, plucking at the clothes fashioned for her. Palodar gently slapped her on the back in mirth.

  “But I cant’s promise they won’t gets dirty again!” warned Amyia.

  “Fear not, for in but a few days you shall all know dwarven hospitality at its grandest,” proclaimed Palodar. He looked pensive a moment then added with a wry smirk, “Well for you Cezzum, perhaps not, but we will work to change hearts, and if we have the time, minds too!”

  Contentment filled the three companions more so then ever before. A closeness was blossoming between them; not only a stronger affirmation of the love between Cezzum and Palodar but between the forthright and vibrantly iron-willed child as well; none were happier at this prospect than they.

  “Your annunciation progresses, child… Amyia,” said Tac’quin, correcting her name, as it joined the company. She sent a frown towards the dragon, intimating to it the curse of grammar forced upon her; her lips then turned wry and warm.

  Cezzum offered a piece of fruit to all present; all took with much zeal. The goblin piled the kindling and wood, creating a stout framework for a hearty fire; a flame from Tac’quin quickly ignited it.

  Dusk entered into its last throes and a shadow-filled night began to loom. Asthen had waned and Feser still remained but a young thing. The calls of night creatures spun and wailed through the air, but the consoling crackle of the campfire curtailed any noise that might bring worry to the party.

  The four companions sat about the fire. Rations were brought out and consumed delightfully, staving off hunger for another few hours. Serenity descended upon the group and with great unexpectedness, Tac’quin regaled them with its earlier story.

  Three moons and two days had passed since the escape from the war band. The remainder of the journey had been without incident. Unless, of course, obscene and lewd jesting from the lips of Palodar or the continuation of instruction in the art elocution were to be counted; Amyia indeed did consider the latter to be more harrying than the phagens and goblins which they had evaded.

  The breaking of dawn had only occurred when the companions entered the last leg of their journey, Tac’quin having espied the dwarven settlement from the air. The dragon had deemed it necessary, if not vital, that it was compelled by a force far greater than any in the known world – its hunger – to begin a hunt for an animal with its blood still coursing through it. This had left Cezzum alone at the head of the column.

  The dwarf and girl were happily involved in bickering, one that was filled with great vehemence, concerning the interpretation of one of Amyia’s stories from her book; she took great offence that Palodar understood it in a manner that was vastly dissimilar to her own. Cezzum had thus been left to his own thoughts. He vigilantly watched his surroundings, but allowed his mind to wonder, to ponder and to muse. He considered thousands of little thoughts that had been flitting about his mind for a number of days: the developments with Amyia, the taciturn dragon, the peace Palodar brought him and even his croaking frog back home – his home seemed so far away.

  There was something infinitely peaceful about the morning; it was a time where life was still attempting to gather courage to pull itself from slumber. It was a time that he found sublimely joyful, for it pro
moted solitude and peace, and the air, laden with vigour and freshness, gave the mind such creative impetus as to stir the deep and dark mires of thoughts and memories into waves upon a pearlescent ocean. Cezzum reflected on his life and the choices he had made. Although hidden to others, the pain of denouncing his kin still lingered strongly within him, made all the more marked by the fact that Filburn’s quest called upon him to tear asunder his own kind. The goblin held no love for his kith, nor did he feel any compassion for their plight and those that were felled by his companions or others. Irrespective, the goblin could not escape the clawing pang that somehow, quite intangibly, bound him to feel unsettling emotions for his own kind. It was with these thoughts locked in mind that the early morning sped past.

  The goblin, the dwarf, the dragon and the girl began to emerge from the southern eaves of the forest. Trees became sparser and less lofty. Sounds of all sorts – voices, shouts, yells, calls, banters, the creaking of wood – weaved through the previously still midday air. The companions left the woods completely.

  A vast sward of verdant grass stretched from the eaves to the foot of a grand mountain which stood dauntingly before them. While the trappings of autumn might have been encroaching upon the land where people of all races strode, winter had firmly gripped, with every ounce of its pale force, the summit of the vast and overwhelming massif. The snow-capped peak vigilantly watched the creatures below. A road of dust and dirt, well-formed and tamped, wound its way along the mountain’s periphery. It was as if the company had stumbled into a new world, for while their journey so far had led them on a path bereft of the usual clamour of the land’s denizens, they were then overwhelmed with its thronging. Wagons, carts, caravans, horses, ponies, merchants, travellers, soldiers, guards, poets, writers, smiths, bards, troubadours, farmers, reeves and every other vocation and form of being bustled along the road. Groups of lorans walked purposefully to their destination, their intricately woven robes accenting their illustrious tattoos; telopian merchants, their carts pulled by their mighty horses, jostled along – in the hopes of finding lucrative markets in the dwarven halls – and were escorted by cadres of armed telopians, who were slightly shorter than the lofty lorans and bronze skinned, but looked no less resplendent than others in their gilded armour and scarlet garb. Dwarves, elves and humans too all occupied the wide dwarven-wrought road which linked all the dwarven cities for those travellers and merchants preferring to travel under the sun and moons instead of the tunnels in the deep. Beautiful vehicles of every design were present: from hardy hewn human wagons and artistically crafted elven carts to the doughty and iron-shod caravans of the dwarves. Peddlers of every ilk weaved through the masses, careful not to spill their wares, as they sonorously cried out their items and victuals to those passing by that might find themselves in need of – or indeed sometimes not in need of as it were, and they would simply pay the dogged sellers to shift their focus elsewhere.

  Palodar stepped next to Cezzum and indicated the increased amount of dwarven guards who bore the crest of Darantur upon their arms and cloaks as well as the significant presence of mercenaries acting as escorts, seemingly outnumbering the travellers and merchants themselves; it was clear that war bands and raiders had pillaged far to the south. Palodar informed Cezzum that from their current position, if they walked east for no more than an hour, they would emerge at one of the lesser used entrances that led into the fringes of Darantur. It was an entryway only less used, intimated the dwarf, due to the fact that most merchants’ wagons were far too large to slip through it; not a problem, he suggested, that plagued him from his jeweller days.

  Tac’quin emerged from the forest a moment after the rest of its party, having landed behind the cover of trees, unwilling to draw too much attention it itself yet. Cezzum nodded to his companions – a sign they should move into the crowds. He knew it was impossible for a dragon to go unnoticed when ambling down a road, but dragons were sighted more often than not for them to proceed without a great deal of unwarranted attention, for rarely did they affect the lives, and especially the cattle, of any race. The problem, the goblin perceived, was himself. Cezzum pulled his cloak’s hood over his head as far as he could, burying and shrouding his face within its darkened reaches. Pulling two items from the knapsack, Palodar handed him a pair of the leather gloves and Amyia’s novel, her face clearly expressing a certain lack of enthusiasm at her most precious of possessions being placed in a position of peril. The goblin quickly donned the gloves, ensuring the cuffs of the ivory undershirt extended over his wrists, veiling all his skin, and clutched the tome passionately between his hands; he did his utmost to conceal the aureate title along the spine and held it closely to his chest as if it were a holy relic. He bowed his head and with steps that displayed patience as well as a staunch ardour for his spurious religious order, he stepped forwards with a deep breath. Palodar took a position at his friend’s side and walked towards the road. Amyia and Tac’quin quickly fell in behind them.

  Gasps, cries and strident murmurs became an overture for the companions when they stepped onto the path. A veritable parting of the rivers of people occurred as Tac’quin and the odd trio approached them. To their great satisfaction, Cezzum’s guise managed to confound all those whose gazes fell upon him, for almost all were focused on the dragon. Although the deception proved well, the goblin’s view of his surroundings was confined to his comparatively lacklustre black boots; he relied greatly on the step of his dwarven friend for guidance.

  Dwarven guards, who stood picketed at regular intervals, became tense. Their bodies visibly turned rigid and their hands gripped their pole arms more tightly. Burning eyes watched as vigilantly as a starved vulture would on a desert wonderer from behind their thick, embossed helmets and full beards of all varieties. Tac’quin, with askance gazes, could glimpse the unease and prejudices of the people rising to the fore as telopian and human mercenaries rested their hands atop their arms with a suspicious vigour.

  The companions continued forwards on their journey, their pace not betraying the intimidation they heavily felt from those who swarmed about them, made all the more palpable by the notion that if the truth were to be discovered of the hooded-halfling they would be descended upon with without forethought and Cezzum would be cloven from groin to scalp. A more gallant dwarven peddler tentatively circled the party, gathering the boldness to approach them. Palodar caught sight of the dwarf and gave an exasperated grimace towards him – it was the sort that did everything to tacitly convey the absurdness of the seller and a warning to be wary of his companions. It was all the heedless approbation that the merchant needed; he lolloped over.

  “Be’in ged’day te ye kind folk,” welcomed the itinerant vendor with a quantity of gaiety that matched his keenness to sell his wares. “What can I’be interin’ ye in on this fine an halcyon dey?” The merchant began to scratch about inside his large knapsack while he ponderously strolled next to Palodar, occasionally flicking a glance at the dragon, making sure he would be able to make a quick escape if the need so arose.

  Cezzum laughed furtively at the words of their harrying dwarf. The merchant was a portly creature if ever there had been one. He had a girth of equitable proportions to his bulging sack of goods and a face set with bright, sparkling eyes and a bush of a beard which tapered to a point in front of his navel where it was held lashed together with a knotted piece of cord before it spread out once more, like a camlet curtain above a four-post bed; the beard nearly embraced the dust.

  The merchant pulled from his bag a small silvery object. “My name be Hilloc of Darantur, kind patrons, an this dey indeed be lucky fir ye.” With speed that hinted at a life of pick pocketing before turning to peddling, or perhaps proving that the dwarf had two vocations, Hilloc thrust the glittering object into Palodar’s hand. Palodar regarded the object: it was a flask, shiny and ornate with undulating streams of white gold wrapping themselves around it.

  “Now there ye be holdin’ brother,” cried the dwarven-mer
chant with much emphasis, “a flask that has be seein the world! It has been said that be the very same flask that Darantur carried with ‘em to ye great dragon assembly nigh a more than a millennium ago-” Hilloc’s pitch was thrown off momentarily as Tac’quin’s eyes glowered at him; an effulgence was seen glowing down the creature’s nostrils. Palodar tried to press a grin on his face attempting to clear the concern that was etched over the merchant’s. The story of Darantur and the dragons was well known to him, being true for almost every dwarf, but Palodar thought lest he impede knowledge, the others of his party should hear the retelling of the parable from the obviously well-rehearsed merchant.

  Hilloc gallantly ignored the dragon’s muted surliness, coughed to alleviate his fear of the impending fire that was no more than a handful of feet away from him, and continued with a stentorian voice to peddle his ware. “The sky was be’in cold an grey when Darantur upon the mountain summit did stand…”

  The tale of Darantur, the seventh child of Palu’don, was renowned throughout dwarven culture, and although the seventh of nine children his actions brought greater fame to himself over his siblings – however some dwarves would argue ignominy rather than repute. The moons had waxed and waned and had come and gone such a number of times that all recollection as to when the event occurred was lost to history; with the loss of temporal precision arrives the twisting of veracity that is so welcome to turn commonality into legend.