by Hilari Bell
“I hear you want to talk to someone who knew the gen’ral.”
The goblins had made contact! But who was…?
“The general? I need to speak with the sorceress, Makenna. The sorceress of the Goblin Wood.”
“That’s the gen’ral, near enough. What do you want with her?”
“With her, nothing. But she’s got my brother and I’ve—”
“You’re the soldier’s brother? You don’t look like him.”
Did he mean Tobin? His brother had been a soldier, but Jeriah wished the creature would use people’s names. “If you’re talking about Tobin, he looks like our father and I take after our mother. And there’s something important we have to discuss. Would you mind untying the blankets so I can sit up? I’m hot, and I feel silly looking up at you.”
“But I feel just fine looking down at you. You can wiggle out when I’m gone.” The creature’s eyes glinted. Was he laughing? If Jeriah tried to free himself, the goblin would be gone in an instant, and who knew how long it might take him to contact a more reasonable goblin. If any of them were reasonable. Tobin had been in the Otherworld for over three weeks. A true knight would ignore the fact that he was sweating like a pig.
“All right. I asked you to come because I need your help. There are things about the Otherworld you may not know…”
He told the creature the details of the Otherworld’s nature quite concisely—he’d practiced so often, he could have recited them in his sleep. “So you see,” Jeriah finished, “I have to get into the Otherworld. Todder Yon said—”
“That tinker fellow? He talked about us?” The goblin’s voice was low, but the threat was clear. How could such a small creature sound so menacing?
“He meant no harm,” Jeriah said swiftly. “He only talked to me because he knew that I mean no harm. To you or her. I just need your help to find Tobin and the sorceress in the Otherworld. If…ah…if you’ll help me?”
He hated having to plead with them, but he didn’t see any other choice.
“I’m inclined to agree with your priest. The gen’ral and our folk, they’re safe in the Otherworld.”
“They’re safe? Why you…Tobin risked his life, gave up everything, to help your kind!” Jeriah struggled against the blankets and heard something rip. The goblin shifted uneasily.
“Don’t get flustered. I liked the soldier well enough, and I’ll be sorry for his death. But if your priest discovers there’s a chance of the gen’ral getting out, he might send hunters in.”
“A lot of good your ‘sorry’ will do my brother!” But Jeriah stopped struggling. “You don’t need to worry about your own precious skin, or your friends’. If Master Lazur ever finds out what we’re doing, he’ll just arrest me and put a stop to it.”
“Hmm.” The creature didn’t even have the grace to look ashamed. “I admit, I’d like to see the gen’ral again.”
A burst of hope overcame Jeriah’s disgust. “So if I can get the spell from Master Lazur’s books, could you or one of your people cast the gate? And then help me find them? And get Tobin—”
“The finding is no problem,” the goblin replied. “If you take a few of us in with you, and those spells you’re talking about can protect our magic, there are several ways we can locate them. But not one of us can work the gate spell; that’ll take human magic. The folk you need for that”—the creature’s eyes gleamed in the darkness—“are the Lesser Ones.”
“The Lesser Ones?”
“Humans like the gen’ral, who wield the small magics. They’ve been concealing their abilities since that cursed law passed, but there’s a lot of ’em and they keep in touch with each other. Proper organized, they are.”
“Can you put me in touch with them?” Jeriah tried to sit up again, but the blankets foiled him.
The little goblin grinned. “I could. But what for?”
“What do you mean, what for? To save Tobin!”
“Ah, I meant what’ll you give me for doing it? We goblins, we don’t care for indebtedness,” he finished smugly.
“Indebtedness? After all Tobin did for your people, you don’t think you owe him?”
The goblin’s expression seemed to change, but in the dim moonlight that shone through his window it was hard to be certain. “That’s between the soldier and us. What we’re talking about now is the favor you’re asking for. And its price.”
That the goblins were ungrateful vermin shouldn’t surprise him. “Very well. What’s the price for your services?”
“What I’d really like,” the goblin replied, “is for you to get the Decree of Bright Magic revoked so we wouldn’t have to worry about being hunted and burned out.”
Jeriah’s jaw dropped. “That’s impossible! I’d be willing to do it if I could—it’s a bad law for humans as well—but it’s not within my power. And it never will be!”
“Aye, I figured that, but I thought I’d ask. There is something else we need.”
“What?”
“A place of safety where we can live. Quite a few of us were forced to leave the wood. It’s spring now, and summer won’t be a problem, but come winter we’ll need a place.”
At least this request wasn’t completely impossible. “What kind of place?”
The goblin shrugged. “Anything that’ll shelter a few hundred. A big cave would do, though most of us don’t care for living underground. A ruined castle or deserted village would be better, but there’s none about that we’ve been able to find. We could even build for ourselves, in a deserted field or wood, but only if it’s somewhere humans never go.”
“I don’t know anyplace people never go. With so many Southland refugees, anything that can be inhabited is.” All the villages would be abandoned when the relocation moved everyone north of the great wall, but for now…“That’s impossible too. What else?”
“That’s all I want, human.”
“But…” How long would it take him to find these lesser magic wielders without the goblins’ help? Jeriah didn’t have any time to spare, but it went against the grain to give such greedy, ungrateful creatures what they wanted. The heroes of legend didn’t have to bargain with vermin.
The goblin snickered. Jeriah realized he’d muttered the thought aloud, and ground his teeth.
“Well, young hero, are you going to find us a place? Or shall I be on my way?”
“Wait!” Someone had to cast the gate spell. Priests wouldn’t. Goblins couldn’t. Jeriah’s only chance was this magical underground. But how in the Bright Gods’ name was he to find a deserted village or ruin where there weren’t any? Find…or make one? His breath caught. He couldn’t do that. He couldn’t! Jeriah squirmed half out of the blankets, then froze as the goblin tensed to flee. “Wait! I…I can do it, I think. I might…No. You ask too much.”
The creature folded his arms. “That or nothing, human.” His face was inscrutable, but there was no yielding in pose or voice. Jeriah had to get Tobin back. He had no choice.
“All right, I’ll try. But I’m going to need your help to bring it off. Meet me tomorrow night, in the grove of brill trees by the river. Do you know where that is?”
“I can find it.” The creature moved toward the door, silent as a shadow.
“If I find you a safe place to live, then you’ll put me in touch with these Lesser Ones?”
“Aye.” The goblin stopped at the door, his voice so soft Jeriah could barely hear it. “We pay our debts, for good or ill. Remember it, hero.” And he was gone.
INTERLUDE
Tobin
THEY WERE CUTTING THE FIRST trees today, to begin drying the timber for use in the first houses, in the first village, in their new world. Growing up on a lowland farm, Tobin had never felled timber before. He’d thought it would be a task in which his greater size and strength would be useful, but now, bringing down the third tree of the morning, he was beginning to suspect that the goblins didn’t need him at all.
They’d spent the years building in the great n
orthern woods. Their small axes cut the initial wedge into the trunk like a brigade of beavers. Now most of them had joined Tobin on the rope—a rope they had climbed up the branches to tie off—while the two best woodsmen cut a wedge into the tree’s opposite side.
Tobin’s strength was valuable in dragging the fallen tree to the open meadow, where Makenna, along with several goblin helpers, had set runes that would make the timber dry swiftly and without warping.
Tobin knew it worried her, that she’d needed the goblins’ help to cast a simple drying spell. But even tapping into the power of the ancient wall, she’d used so much of her own magic to cast the gate that it wasn’t surprising it took her a while to recover. Maybe magic came from nature, as she said, or it still might be a gift from the Bright Gods. It might even be both, as he’d once pointed out to her. But either way, it made sense that if you used it all up, it might take some time to—
The tree creaked, and Tobin didn’t wait for the woodcutters’ shouts, throwing his weight against the rope, digging his feet into the soft loam of the forest floor. For a long moment the green wood resisted; then a sharper crack sounded and the tree toppled slowly toward them. Tobin and his goblin assistants were well outside its reach, but they scrambled back a few more yards to be sure.
The rustling crash echoed through the woods, and when the branches stopped thrashing, the silence was broken only by goblin shouts.
The quiet bothered Tobin, although birds always fell silent after a noisy disturbance. There were plenty of birds in this world, though their songs were unfamiliar.
Still, there was something about this world, a waiting quality, that he sensed more clearly in the hushed quiet after a tree fell. Even more clearly than he did when he woke in the middle of the night, his heart pounding with dread for no reason at all.
He was getting fanciful. Too much stress, too much strangeness, in too short a time.
That might be part of what was giving Makenna so much trouble. As Tobin strode forward to help trim the branches, he knew he was wearier than he should be. Makenna wasn’t the only one who’d overexerted herself in the calamitous days before they’d escaped. They’d all recover in time. This world was as beautiful as anyplace he’d ever seen.
He still wished the birds would sing.
CHAPTER 5
Jeriah
JERIAH WIGGLED OUT OF HIS bed and sat a moment, enjoying the cool air. By the time he finished untying his blankets, his brain was whirling with plans and problems. He didn’t like the only idea he had, but the goblin had given him no choice. He had to think with his head, not his heart.
The major points were straightforward; it was the details that would be difficult. The first thing he needed was an excuse to ride out at night. If his father suspected what he was going to do…Jeriah shivered and pushed the thought away. No, his father had to ask…Ah, that would do it. All he had to do was kill a chicken.
Grimacing in distaste, Jeriah pulled on his tunic and crept out to the chicken coop. He chose an old hen, one that would have been slaughtered for dinner within a few months, and carried her out to the yard so as not to disturb the sleeping birds. With a murmur of apology and a sharp merciful twist, he wrung her neck. With a shudder of revulsion—knights killed men in battle and he was flinching over a chicken?—he dropped the twitching body and went to the smithy for a nail and the rake the smith used to pull clinker out of his coals. By the time Jeriah returned to the henhouse, the body was still. A few bloodstained feathers set the stage. He’d have to bury the chicken’s body, since a predator would carry it off. But first he took the rake and dug under a corner of the fence, so it looked like it had been done by an animal’s claws. Then Jeriah found a patch of damp earth. Using his thumb and the nail, he carefully shaped two distinctive footprints.
His father came late to breakfast. “A nightstoat got one of the hens last night,” he announced, taking his place at the head of the table.
Jeriah’s mother murmured something.
“Can I see it?” Tami asked.
“The stoat will have carried it off to his den. And eaten it by now. Why do you want to see a dead chicken?”
“Because nightstoats are the worst! They have magic, so no one can catch them, not even dogs. They can kill everything on a farm in one night!” Her eyes sparkled with gruesome excitement.
Senna began to giggle.
“Where do you hear these things?” her father asked. “Almost none of that’s true, Tamilee. They have no magic. The reason dogs can’t track them is because they’re almost scentless. And their ability to see in the dark is natural—their eyes are larger than day creatures, which is why they only leave their dens at night. Any light brighter than moonlight blinds them; they can be stopped simply by putting torches around the livestock pens.” He paused a moment, then grimaced. “Unfortunately, torches burn out, and enough to surround all the pens would cost more than a few chickens. They take livestock only one or two at a time, but they are indeed ‘the worst.’ We’ll have to hunt it down, but with the late planting I hardly have a man to spare. We’ve got to get the wheat in before the last of the rains.”
“I’m sure you’ll manage, dear,” said Jeriah’s mother, her thoughts clearly elsewhere.
“And just how, madam, do you think—”
“Could I hunt it, sir?” Jeriah’s palms were damp. “I’m not much use with planting, but I’m a fair tracker.”
Hunting the dangerous vermin that preyed on livestock was the only heir’s duty at which Jeriah had been better than his brother. His father, he noted bitterly, obviously hadn’t remembered that—the old man’s face lit with relief.
“Thank you, that’s an excellent idea. You can try tracking it this morning, get some sleep this afternoon, and start hunting tonight.”
Jeriah looked away from Senna’s startled, knowing eyes.
“I’ll do that, sir.”
A light breeze set the brill trees whispering. The moon was half full and the sky clear—a perfect night to hunt. Jeriah wished a simple hunt were all he was engaged in.
“Well, young hero.” The voice made him jump. “You’ve got some idea?”
Too late. When had he passed the point of no return? When Tobin leapt into the light? Sometime after that? Jeriah didn’t know, but he had no choice now.
He looked around till he spotted the goblin seated on a branch. Above his reach.
“Yes, I have an idea. I’m pretty sure I can get a place for you, but…Can your people swim?”
“If we must.” The goblin cocked his head curiously.
“Then follow me. Or would you like to ride?” Jeriah maneuvered Glory over to the goblin’s tree, but he was astonished when, after a brief hesitation, the small creature scrambled down the branches and dropped lightly behind the saddle.
He didn’t much care for the company, but it would get them there more quickly. The faster this was over, the better, as far as Jeriah was concerned.
When they reached the rotten dike, Jeriah dismounted and watched as the goblin gave Glory a reassuring pat, climbed down the stirrup, and dropped to the ground. How did a goblin become accustomed to horses?
“So what are we doing here?”
“That gate is waterlogged,” Jeriah told the goblin. “If I open it—or better yet, break through the rotten wood—the river will flood these fields. That village will be deserted as soon as the tenants can move their things out. Would that serve your needs?”
“Hmm.” The goblin scrambled up the dike and walked along it, surveying the land and the sleeping homes. Jeriah tried not to look in that direction. They’d be forced to move in a year anyway, he told himself fiercely. They all knew the dike would soon give way. He was doing no harm. Very little harm. Almost—
“Not a bad plan, human. Nearly worthy of the gen’ral. There’s a few problems, but I think we can handle them.”
“I got the idea from something she did. What problems? The water won’t be more than a few feet deep, especially
when the river goes down, and you said you could swim.”
“No problem there. But what’s to stop your fa from rebuilding the gate, draining the land, and replanting?”
“I don’t think he could, this year. We’re going to start moving our people north next year, so I don’t think he’ll bother.”
“I’m not inclined to take chances on what you think. Suppose we dig a series of tunnels under this dike, so when you let the water in, it’ll flow through ’em and bring the whole thing down? Hard for anyone to be repairing that. And we can rig it so the gate’ll be washed away. Because standing down below and chopping through that wood is like to drown the chopper!”
“You can collapse the whole dike?”
“I think so. It’ll take time, and care, so’s not to bring it down on our heads while we’re digging. And we’d need your help for some of the heavy work, but I think we can manage.”
Jeriah eyed the goblin suspiciously. “That would take months! Tobin will be dead by then. You know we don’t have that much time.”
“It won’t take months.” The creature raised his fingers to his lips, seeming to whistle though Jeriah heard nothing.
“What—”
A swarm of shadows erupted around him, from the bushes, from the young corn—they seemed to spring from the earth itself. Within moments, Jeriah was surrounded by goblins.
“Two or three nights,” said the creature. “Four at most.”
Tobin had been in the Otherworld for almost a month now.
“Make it two nights,” he said curtly, “and you’ve got a deal. As long as you’re sure no one will drown. They’ll lose their homes in a year or two no matter what we do, but I won’t let anyone be killed.”
“If most of the village wasn’t on higher ground, there’d be no point to the whole thing, would there?”
Jeriah waited.
“Ah! They’ll suffer nothing worse than wet feet. My word on it.”
