by Frank Tuttle
"Wake up, Mistress," said her partner. Moments before, he had been a tall, dark-haired Prince of Sosang, who, to Mallara's delight, hadn't said a word all night. Now, he was a short, pug-nosed courtier with thinning hair and close-set eyes. "We've got trouble."
A harpist hit a sour note. "Not now, Burn," said Mallara. "Go away."
"Sorry, Mistress," replied the courtier, with a grin."Time to wake up. Nice gown." The courtier whispered half of a Word.
The Imperial Gala, the Old Kestrian music, the cool, perfumed air -- all of it fell away, a frail dream shattered by the courtier's single soft word.
Mallara blinked and yawned and woke. She lay in the weeds in the sun-dappled shade of a gnarled persimmon tree; her clothes -- pants, blouse, and vest -- were plain, tough traveler's garb. Ants scurried up and down her right arm.
A fist-sized blob of air blurred and hummed before Mallara's nose. "Back from the dance yet, Mistress?" asked Burn.
Mallara sat up. The sun was bright, the air hot, and Vo Sinte was a thousand-day march to the east. "I'm awake, Burn," said Mallara, brushing ants and twigs off her arms. "Start talking."
"While you and Prince Charming made eyes at your reflections, I flew toward Bertat," said the shimmer. "I met a lot of wagons on the road, all packed up and headed out, all in a hurry."
Mallara frowned and pulled a wilted peasant-weed bloom from her hair. "Any injured? Any soldiers?"
"None," said Burn, darting behind Mallara to chase away a horse-fly. "No smoke either."
"Burn," said Mallara, "You're stalling. Tell me what you saw, and who you insulted."
The shimmer returned to hang before Mallara's face. "I met two families at the on the road, Mistress," said Burn. "Three mules, two wagons, kids pushing wheelbarrows full of household junk." The shimmer paused. "Villagers from Bertat. They were being chased, Mistress. By goblins."
"Goblins?" Mallara's sleepy frown deepened. "Here? In the Kingdom?"
"Goblins," said Burn. "With, um, pastries. Pies, specifically. Apple."
Mallara stood up, hands on hips, brown eyes flashing. "Burn," she said. "Is this a joke? Did you use a Word to dispel my favorite dancing dream just to spin some asinine tale of pie-tossing goblins?"
"No joke, Mistress," said Burn. "I use the term 'goblins' only because I don't know what else to call short, pale things with two arms and two legs. And, goblins or no, they had pies. Arm-loads of apple pies. Fresh-baked. The goblins were stacking pies on the villager's wheelbarrows, and the villagers were throwing the pies in the ditch. If there's a punchline here, I don't see it."
Mallara frowned. "Nor do I." She sang a word, and her walking staff fell from a slit in the daylight to hang in her hand. "There's more, isn't there?"
"A bit," said Burn. "I made a quick flight over Bertat. Goblins everywhere. No villagers except a few stragglers on their way out. The goblins were busy -- looked like one bunch was putting a new roof on the inn, and another band was sweeping the streets and painting fence-posts."
Mallara lifted an eyebrow. "So Bertat has been invaded by an army of pie-baking carpenter goblins. I see."
Burn bobbed and buzzed. "Honestly, Mistress, I'm just reporting what I saw. And heard -- from the Mayor himself."
"You found Bertat's mayor?"
"It wasn't difficult," said Burn. "His wagon has 'Mayor' painted on the side. Spotted it half a mile out. Caught his Mayor-ship behind a bush. I pretended to be relieving myself on the other side of the same bush, so he heard my voice but wasn't shocked at my lack of arms and torsos and such."
Mallara sighed. "And?"
"His Mayorship claims the first goblins showed up ten days ago," said Burn. "Half a dozen of them marched in with brooms, sweeping the streets and knocking horse apples into the ditch. The villagers just laughed."
"They don't seem amused now," said Mallara.
"They aren't," said Burn. "The six goblins became three hundred. And the Mayor claims the figure doubles every day."
Mallara nodded. "Six to three hundred in ten days?"
"That's his count, not mine," said Burn. The shimmer bobbed near. "A dozen goblins sweeping the streets is small cause for panic. Twenty-five goblins patching leaky roofs were viewed, by some, as rare good fortune. But three hundred goblins with sharp, shiny hand tools?" Burn buzzed."The villagers left, in well-fed droves.".
Mallara sighed and shook her head. "How far out are we, at a fast walk?"
"About two hours," said Burn."And Mistress -- one more thing. I smelled magic, over Bertat. More than a whiff. Like somebody was burning spells for cord-wood."
Mallara stretched and yawned, willing away the last of the vestiges of the dancing-dream. "Then let's go, Burn," she said. "Time to put out a fire."
"Aye, Captain," said Burn. "Hoist the mains and drop the anchors, step lively lads she's in a mood."
"I could still get a cat," said Mallara. "A nice quiet cat."
Burn buzzed away skyward. Mallara sighed and marched out of the weeds and onto the cracked flagstones of the Old Kingdom Road.
"Behold," said Burn. "Goblins, great and terrible."
Bertat lay a stone's throw ahead, just across a narrow stone bridge that spanned a swollen, rushing creek. The Old Kingdom Road, still miraculously unquarried, crossed the bridge and made straight through the heart of Bertat, flanked on both sides by neat timber-and-stone buildings. An inn stood first on the right, and then a tavern, and a smithy. Across the lane stood a clothier, a shoemaker's, and a squat stone tower that might once have been an outbuilding for an Imperial toll-station but was now a public bath. Homes lay beyond, stretching down an oak-lined cobblestone lane that looped away up a hillside and out of sight.
And everywhere, goblins. Goblins scurried, goblins hammered, goblins dug and hauled and sawed. Dozens of pale, short, eyeless, mouth less mannequins swarmed in and out and on and under every structure in Bertat. Most were armed with saws or hammers; others bore arm-loads of fresh-cut lumber or buckets of nails. Scaffolds leaned against the side of the inn, and a new wing was forming as the goblins worked.
A tree fell at the edge of town, the crash of its landing hardly gone when the sounds of axes and saws began.
"Industrious little blobs, aren't they?" said Burn.
"They aren't goblins," said Mallara. "Or any other living creature. No eyes, no mouth, no fingers unless they need them." She frowned, listening to her staff whisper. "These are made things, Burn. Homunculi. A spell made solid."
Burn whistled. "Sounds like pre-Enlightenment sorcery to me," he said. "The kind the Order encouraged into extinction with reasoned debate and flaming tornados."
Five goblins entered the street from the alley by the inn. Each goblin bore a new-made broom in its mitten-like left hand. The small band of goblins marched down the street, toward Mallara, Burn, and the bridge.
"Go ahead, Mistress," said Burn. "Tell them how you feel about housework."
The goblins reached the bridge.
Mallara took her staff firmly in hand. "Burn," said Mallara. "High watch. Tell me if they all start moving at once."
"Aye, Captain." Burn vanished.
Mallara stepped forward, Word ready on her lips. The goblins on the bridge took no note, but began sweeping in a strange unbroken rhythm. Step, sweep, sweep, step. And again, all moving in perfect time, like five soft marionettes all played on the same long strings.
Mallara stepped onto the bridge and positioned herself in the path of a goblin. Step sweep sweep step, and its broom brushed her boot-toes.
Step. The goblin's eyeless face turned up toward Mallara's. Mallara smiled and shook her head.
The goblin turned, stepped, and swept, still in perfect unison with its broom-wielding kin, but now heading the other way.
Mallara shook her head. "Burn," she said.
"Here, Mistress."
"The spell. Can you locate the center?"
"With my eyes closed, as you solid folk say," said Burn. "Shall I find it and sneak about a bit?"
/> Mallara nodded. "But not too close."
"We've got a rogue wizard on the loose, don't we?"
"Looks that way," said Mallara. She sang a Word, and pitched her staff straight up. The air snapped, and a larger, thicker staff fell to her hand. "A rogue wizard with a goblin army."
Burn sighed. "And you poked me when I suggested a vacation on the beach. Tsk, tsk." The shimmer vanished.
The goblin Mallara had turned was back at her feet. Again, she shook her head "no."
The goblin continued sweeping, each pass a bit further up Mallara's boot-tip than the last. Behind her, she heard four sets of soft, light footfalls -- all in perfect unison -- thump-thump nearer.
Her big staff grew warm. "Not yet," she said. "Not yet."
She stepped around the goblin's broom and crossed the bridge into Bertat.
"Mistress!" said Burn, from above. "I'm back."
Mallara closed and parted her hands. The light that flickered between them winked out.
Burn dropped down before her face. "I found the wizard. And he's found you, Mistress -- the goblins are dropping their tools and converging on this porch. Hundreds of them, on the move."
"I know," said Mallara. She pointed out into the street, where scores of soft white bodies were shuffling hesitantly nearer. "It doesn't know what to make of me."
"It's a he, Mistress, and you're never going to believe what kind of he."
"He's a child, no more than ten. Probably an orphan."
Burn's hazy outline shrank. "I hate it when you do that."
Mallara shook her head. "Sorry, Burn. But while you were out I took a good long look at our rogue wizard's spell-craft." She rose. "The spell was cast to do simple chores," she said. "Sweeping. Cleaning. Cooking. The goblins were just extra hands."
"Must have been a busy lad," said Burn.
Mallara shook her head. "He bound it to the creek."
"Which is swollen with spring thaws," said Burn. "His six goblins become a hundred, and so on."
"And he gave it the power to make its own decisions," said Mallara. "Now it's decided not to obey."
Burn buzzed. "He did all that? With what? From what? I don't see much in the way of a library around, Mistress, or any other place he could learn enough to spoil apples, much less raise a goblin horde."
Mallara shrugged. "But he did. Somehow."
Burn whistled. "Can you control it, Mistress?"
"I think so," she said.
The mob of goblins in the street jostled closer to the inn's porch. A bold pair at the fore put two toeless feet on the porch.
"Could you perhaps start controlling it now?" said Burn.
Mallara's staff muttered.
"Mistress?" said Burn. "Did your staff just suggest that you run?"
The goblins advanced, all hesitation gone.
"A blast of raw hot magic might be appropriate now, Mistress," said Burn. "A small burst, even. Or a thunderbolt. Mistress? Rain of stones? Cold wind? Scary shadows on the wall?"
More feet made soft thumps on the wooden porch. Mallara's staff grumbled disgustedly.
Mallara backed up, found the door latch behind her, and inched open the door at her back.
"Ah, the ever-popular hasty retreat," said Burn. "Plenty of time for thunderbolts, maybe after lunch and a nap--"
The goblins surged ahead. Mallara bolted through the door and slammed it shut.
Soft hands scrabbled at the latch. Mallara held it fast long enough to drop the cross-bar. Something gave the door a single gentle shove, and then all was silent.
Mallara charged across the inn, dodging fresh-wiped tables and just mended chairs. "Take me to the child, Burn," she whispered. "Find a route that misses as many goblins as you can."
"Won't be easy. They're everywhere--"
Mallara flung open the common room's back door. It opened into a stable-yard and a back street. Both were free of goblins.
Mallara spoke a Word.
And vanished.
"Oh my," said Burn in a loud stage whisper. "The Sorceress is gone, fled, magicked away to a far place from which she will never return. Woe is me, whatever will I do, so forth and so on."
Then Burn, too, was gone.
Soft, round faces peered in through the inn's three glass windows. Then the goblin mob turned as one, and soon the sound of hammers and saws filled the empty village.
"Ouch!" hissed Mallara.
"Invisibility is tough on the toes, is it?" whispered Burn. "Hard to keep up with all those appendages."
"Cats don't gloat," muttered Mallara.
Burn snickered. "Cats gloat all the time, Mistress," he said. "They just do it quietly."
Vines from a thorn-bush rose and stretched taunt, caught in Mallara's pant-leg.
"My, what language," said Burn as the thorn-bush tossed and jerked. "What would Prince Charming think?"
The bush heaved and was still. An invisible Mallara panted and wiped sweat from her face.
Burn floated down level with Mallara's eyes. He could still see a tiny fleck of light at the back of each eye, and just a hint of green around in the blur around each pupil. "We're close, Mistress," he said. "Three dozen steps, no more, and you'll be face to face with your rouge sorcerer and his goblin familiar."
Mallara said a Word, and was visible again. Her sleeves and trouser-legs were ripped and torn, victims of tough thorn vines and sharp-edged knifewood bushes. Blood stained her forearms, and a long scratch across her right cheek. The scratches left by the thin knifewood fronds didn't bleed, but they were beginning to sting and swell.
Burn shrank. "Mistress!" he said. "I had no idea."
"It's like running in the dark," said Mallara. "Except it's your arms and legs you can't see, not the trees and the bushes. Never again." She said another Word, and her staff began to hum faintly. "Let's go," she said. "I've had quite enough of this."
Burn buzzed up and away.
"Mistress!" said Burn from the tree-tops. "It saw you. The goblins are moving this way. All of them. They didn't drop their tools, this time."
Mallara spoke a Word. The iron-shod ends of her staff began to sizzle and trail wisps of smoke. "Running or walking?" she said.
"Walking. Quickly. With a definite air of purpose, and I don't think they mean to build you a house," said Burn.
Mallara reached the edge of the forest and stepped through a line of squat juniper trees.
Ahead lay a grassy clearing, and then the creek. A tall, thin boy in a ragged tunic and too-large boots paced a tight circle in the sandy creek-bank. Two steps behind him, a single goblin matched his strides, its hands clasped behind its back in perfect imitation of the child.
The goblin stopped, whirled to face Mallara, and grabbed the edge of the boy's tunic.
The boy stumbled and turned. The goblin pointed at Mallara, and she noted that this goblin, unlike the others, had two coal-black eye-spots, ten fingers, and a small lipless mouth made into a black O of surprise.
Mallara smiled and lifted her staff in the Order's formal greeting. "Peace," she said. "My name is Mallara. I hold the rank of Sorceress in the Ancient and Venerable Order of Mages. I patrol and serve the Five Valleys, as aid, defender, and agent of the Crown."
The boy gaped, his eyes as round as the goblin's. Then, just as Mallara was about to lower her staff, the sandy-haired youth croaked out a Word of his own.
The air above him darkened, and from the patch of shadow a staff appeared and fell smoking into his hand.
Burn buzzed angrily. "Big toys, Mistress," he said. "That staff stinks of pre-Kingdom sorcery. Bad stuff."
Mallara heard and stifled a frown. "I'm not here to hurt you," she said to the boy. "I'm only here to help. With your spell."
The boy's knuckles grew white as he tightened his grip on his staff. Mallara saw with shock that the staff was made of a yellowed human leg-bone easily as long as the boy was tall.
"It's not my spell anymore," said the boy. "It's alive."
Mallara nodded. "I k
now, dear," she said, lowering her own staff. "It's alive, and getting stronger all the time."
The boy shook, his eyes welling with tears. The goblin at his side put a hand on his shoulder, but the boy's staff spat a tongue of flame at the goblin and it jumped away.
"I didn't know it would do this," said the boy. "It wasn't supposed to. But I had so many chores and more all the time and I was so tired--"
Burn whispered in Mallara's ear. "Make it short," he said. "His staff is calling the goblins in."
Mallara smiled. "And then you found the staff."
The boy's face froze. "It helps me," he said, warily. "It knows things. It talks to me."
Mallara sighed. "It always has time for you, doesn't it?" she said. "It never gives you orders or insults. It never ignores you. It treats you like a friend."
Mallara could hear the boy's staff begin to whisper.
"Mistress," said Burn. "Goblin army, a hundred heartbeats."
"It's talking to you now," said Mallara. "It's telling you that I'm here to hurt you, to take your staff away, to take away all your power."
The boy nodded. His face was pale and covered with sweat.
Mallara shook her head. "I'm afraid some of that is true," she said. "I'm not here to hurt you. But I am here to break your spell. And I'll have that staff. Broken, if necessary, but I'll have it."
Burn groaned. The boy's staff spoke, its words low and angry. The boy's face reddened.
"It's using you," said Mallara. "You're not stupid. Deep down, you know that staff is greedy and cruel and vengeful. It claims to be your friend -- but look at what it's done. Your helpers don't heed you. Your spell won't obey you. And your village is deserted, overrun by a goblin army that isn't funny anymore."
Mallara could hear rustles in the forest at her back. Rustles, and the soft crunching of leaves beneath eight hundred pale feet.
"You've been hurt," said Mallara. "And I'm sorry. But being hurt doesn't give you the right to do hurt," she said.
