Goblin Nation s-3
Page 29
That is the reason behind the burning, I’ve learned. If a goblin corpse is burned and the bones separated, there is nothing the spirit can return to. The spirit must find another host-this being a child coming new into the world. A goblin or hobgoblin child to be specific, as they believe the spirits must return to a familiar form.
How they’ve come by this belief is a mystery. The goblins I’ve talked to have no explanation for it beyond saying it was passed down from fathers and grandfathers and the ancestors before that. There is no swaying them in this belief.
And against everything I have learned in my religious teaching, their arguments have some merit.
“How is it that goblins know instinctively which roots are tasty and not harmful?” Bent-Ear said to me. “Why do goblins know what mushrooms to eat without older goblins telling them? Why do goblins sleep with their backs to the rising sun?”
“How can hobgoblins tell if water is good or bad just by looking?” Direfang said. “It is because the old soul that lived in another body learned to tell the taint. The old soul in the new body remembers the look of the water.”
“How can goblins see through the earth? Call through the ground to kin?” the goblin shaman Mudwort argued. “No mentor taught such skills. Such goblins do not need schools and books and the trappings of Dark Knight wizards to hone their magic. Goblins need only to remember what the old soul inside them learned. The spirit does not forget, no matter the body the spirit has chosen to dwell inside. Instinct? There is no such thing, Horace of Zeboim, the Worthless God. It is the spirit’s past life coming to the fore. Goblin spirits return.”
I tried to give up on arguing and keep listening. I am a priest of Zeboim and do not want to be swayed away from my cherished god. But I could not yield my curiosity.
And if the bodies are not burned? I asked.
Mudwort said not all clans practice that, as she said some of them fear fire. But no clans leave the corpses intact if it can be helped. If a body is left intact for more than a day or two, the spirit can return to it, where the spirit will be trapped for eternity. It is tantamount to damnation to exist in such a shell.
Some clans of hobgoblins stake the corpses in fields, allowing small animals and insects to feast on the dead flesh. The bones are separated, when little flesh remains, broken, and scattered so the spirit must look elsewhere for a new shell.
One goblin clan of the plains uses the corpses to lure animals that can be caught and eaten. It is the dead serving the living, taking life from death, they say. The remaining goblin bones are not wasted, rather they are used as tools, the ribs often tied together with twine to make breastplates and shields.
The Marsh clan sinks the bodies, letting the fish and the water tug away the flesh and the water push the bones apart.
The Clan of the Dark Sunset hacks the corpses into pieces and feeds the bits to the livestock it keeps.
Some of the free Nerakan clans were known to toss the bodies of the dead into volcanoes.
At first I considered it all barbaric, but there is a practical side to the rituals … the dead do not take up space on the earth.
The goblins take care to bury the bodies of their most hated enemies-whether those be Dark Knights or ogres or minotaurs. They want the spirits to return to the rotting shells, to be forever trapped and miserable for an eternity. I learned they were quite pleased that the Dark Knights in Steel Town buried their dead; the goblins felt it proper that their hated foes condemned their own brothers’ spirits.
If I die in the company of these goblins and hobgoblins I travel with, will they bury me? Or will they care enough for the healing and scant fellowship I offered to toss my corpse onto their pyre?
Will I be remembered too? I wonder.
FB2 document info
Document ID: fbd-5d08b7-cae7-2943-5481-6bb4-a10d-37506c
Document version: 1
Document creation date: 28.04.2013
Created using: calibre 0.9.24, Fiction Book Designer, FictionBook Editor Release 2.6.6 software
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Jean Rabe
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