God do they smell!
“Get on shore!” I yell. They climb along me to the shore. Yeah, ow. Stop stepping on my face while I’m rescuing you. That is my nose you’re stepping on! By the gods, if I didn’t need them right now I would toss them back in!
I look and make sure that there aren’t anymore. I don’t see any more in the water.
I crawl onto shore, coughing. All told there are now five goblins. Five. And Gerald. And I’m wet. I hate being in wet clothes! How much clothes and I even wearing? All of my clothes? Well there is a bright light to this shit filled day. There are a few scratches along my shoulder and leg but the tears to my dress are minimal. I am not showing off anything that I don’t want to.
“Are you all right?” Gerald asks.
“I’m soaked!” I snap. What about my books? Shit! They are still on that bridge. The plate is too far away from me so I know it isn’t levitating anymore. If they fell in, they are gone. Wait. What am I even thinking? All that spray from the river on that bridge will soak the books until they are worthless. Those books are gone...just...argh!
“Highness!” a goblin says holding up a scroll.
“Give it here,” I command. I take the wet scroll and open it. It is my Icy Reception spell. It must have slipped out of my belt. Why isn’t the ink bleeding? Oh, that’s right. I protected all my icy scrolls because I was young and stupid. Well, I guess not so stupid. I always regretted protecting my scrolls and books as I got older thinking it is a waste of time. Now, I can see that young me wasn’t as stupid as I thought. I roll the scroll up and stick it in my belt.
I stand up and my dress is sticking to me. My hair is heavy and sticking to me as well. My clothes make this weird sucking sound when I move, sloshing about with every step. I hate being wet in my clothes! This isn’t fair! I am going to rip that deep trawler apart when I find my way to the warren. Where are we even? This is a large cavern but there is a solid wall to my left and right. Across the river I can see a passage. Is there not a passage on this end?
“Highness!”
“Yes?”
“There is a way over here!” the goblin says, pointing.
Ah, good!
“Let’s go,” I say.
“After you,” Gerald says.
Five goblins are left to me. Maybe some of the others survived and I’ll meet up with them further down this cave tunnel. I hope so. The Goblin Queen with her mighty army of five goblins! And not a single one bearing a red sash.
I can hear the faint roar of the deep trawler. I can’t believe that I almost died to a beast like that. I’ve been so worried about other things, the heroes chasing me, that peasant woman that has eluded me, that I haven’t been as observant enough as I should be to my immediate surroundings. Hopefully there isn’t anything else waiting me. Just one peasant woman, more goblins, and an easy trek to the warrens and safety. That is all I want.
Glimpsing Forward and Back
This cavern is wetter than the ones that we’ve been traveling down due to the river behind us. The spray forms little pools in the crevices and impressions in the uneven rocky floor which streams down in tiny trickles. There is enough moisture to keep every bit of this tunnel damp. I have to be careful or I’ll slip. I’m not exactly wearing shoes to go exploring in.
It isn’t steep enough that I’ll suffer any injury other than to my pride but my pride has already been subjected to enough today.
The temperature has gotten cooler as well. Being soaked is not helping. Gerald seems to be weathering this fine as are my goblins. None of them are wearing as much clothes as I am. My dress keeps sticking to my legs! I wish there was a spell to just dry your clothes.
I pause, hike up my dress, and squeeze it in my hands. Water oozes around my fingers and drips to the downward sloping floor.
“Are you cold?” Gerald asks.
“No,” I say.
I am cold but not enough that I am shivering just yet. I would love to dry out by a fire. I release my dress and continue on.
If that peasant woman can easily dispatch my goblins two at a time I may have my hands full with her. With five goblins they should overpower her. But what to do with Gerald when that time comes? Gerald is patient. He doesn’t want to escape. But why? Does he hope to be reunited when his sister and friends come to rescue him? Does he trust them so much that he isn’t worried about whatever may happen to him while he’s with me?
Heroes are fools. I bet I could unbind his wrists and he would still follow me. He’s basically a lost puppy. A gay puppy but one that will follow me obediently.
“Have you ever been down this far?” Gerald asks.
“I have not,” I say.
“So you don’t know what is down here?”
“That is correct,” I say.
What does he think I meant when I said I’ve never been down this far? Or is he taking pride in the fact that I don’t know the way? Is he calling me an idiot?
“And you only have the five goblins.”
He can do simple math. Does he want a prize?
“Five is enough,” I say.
“Do you still think you can win?”
“I just saved your life back there,” I say. “We escaped a deep trawler. I can handle your friends.”
“My offer of a fair trial is still available to you,” Gerald says.
By the gods, not this again.
“I will never surrender to a hero!”
“You’re going to keep on fighting against the inevitable?” Gerald asks.
“Who am I going to surrender to? You? My prisoner?”
“I wouldn’t be your prisoner at that point, would I?”
“Let me think; I could be bound and then taken to a village where everyone hates me and no matter what evidence they have I’ll be found guilty and executed.”
“You may not be executed. Some see that as following down the path of the villain,” Gerald says. “You may be put in stocks or imprisoned.”
“Locked in a small room or humiliated? Why, that sounds like a far better choice,” I say sarcastically.
“Suit yourself,” Gerald says.
“You are not looking at things from the more realistic point of view,” I say.
“Realistic?”
“You have three comrades who are far behind us. They have to choose the right path we took or end up somewhere else. They have to make it past my runes without serious injury because you are not there to fix them up. Any patrol that I have down here could happen upon them still and of course, there is the deep trawler.”
“It could just jump into the river.”
“It could, but it didn’t. They are fast swimmers. Do you think we outswam it and then while we took our time getting out of the river it decided we simply weren’t worth it?”
“How do you know it didn’t jump in after us?” Gerald asks.
“Didn’t you hear it roar before we entered this little tunnel?” I ask.
“I did,” Gerald says after a moment. I can’t tell if he is lying or not. Why would he? “I wasn’t sure that you had.”
“I had,” I say. “So I know that the deep trawler is back in that cavern and the heroes will have to meet it at some point. Unless they go in a direction away from us. Do I need to mention to you how that would be just as preferable?”
“Your books might still be on that bridge,” Gerald says.
“So they may think we went into the river but will they know where we popped up? So if they jump in to try and follow our path they will not know where we climbed out,” I say. “And the deeper we go, the better the chance of meeting up with more of my patrols and maybe even stumbling into the goblin’s warrens.”
“You put a lot of faith in the goblins coming to your rescue,” Gerald says.
“It isn’t a rescue that I expect.”
“No?”
“Does a queen’s army rescue her whenever it does her bidding or aids her? Does a king’s army?” I ask.
“Well,
I am not royalty so I can’t attest to that,” Gerald says.
“Not royalty? I thought you were a queen,” I say with a smile. Oh, after all that crap seeing Gerald annoyed again at my hand feels so good.
“Karma is a bitch, you know that right?”
Karma? Does he really believe in that invisible hand of fate crap?
“Oh, me mocking some hero is going to offend the gods and bring some balance from their angry hand? Is that how I’m going to be defeated? By making jokes at your expense?”
“You’ll get your comeuppance at some point,” Gerald says.
“Oh no. Not me. It is you who will get your comeuppance,” I say.
“I…do not think you understand the meaning of that word exactly…”
“Of course I do. You arrogant heroes, imposing your own morality on the world around you, ignorant of how you got to your elevated positions to say nothing of how the noble lords and ladies you serve came to their illustrious titles. You will get what you deserve. Your comeuppance. That is, what you meant, right? A just desserts?”
“You think that my quest to rescue two peasants kidnapped deserves some sort of moralistic comeuppance?”
“That is quite the spin on what is happening here,” I say.
“Oh?”
“You invaded my domain and wish to see me dead or humiliated because I broke your rules. Me!”
“So you think you are above a trial?”
“No. I know I am. I am a queen! I rule here! Not some old men from some backwoods little village that no one cares about. Your quest is foolish.”
“You think that helping those in need is foolish?”
“I think you are foolish.”
“Me?”
“And your friends. And your sister.”
“How so?”
“You four, bravely entering into a villain’s domain, expecting to always win is a fool’s quest. You charged in against a vampire and you even admit you won due to luck. Someone needs to knock you down a peg. And that someone, is me,” I say.
“Fine,” Gerald says.
Did I win that argument? He looks annoyed. It’s because I’m right. He is the invader here. He deserves to be punished for his transgressions.
“What is that up ahead?” Gerald asks.
I’ll take his refusal to continue this debate as a victory.
“A cavern of some kind,” I say.
It is an opening, not large, but this will serve as a little room to rest. My feet are killing me.
“Are you resting?” Gerald asks.
“Yes, we are. We are far enough ahead of the others that I can rest my feet for a moment,” I say as I look down and see a little bit of water on the floor. This little water filled depression might just be big enough to scry through. I get closer and try to judge its size and...yes, yes I can scry through this. “You five, keep a watch on the priest and for any intruders.”
“Yes highness.”
I find a rock nearby and start to carve some runes.
“I knew a runecaster once,” Gerald says.
“And?”
“She couldn’t scry like you can.”
And he wants to know why? Fine. I’ll tell him. I’m in a good mood.
“That is because she never cast the Ritual of Ohgham.”
“Ritual of Ohgham? What does that do?”
“Let’s me scry with runes,” I say.
“I mean, how did you cast it?”
“Well, you need some gold, some silver, some thyme and rose petals. Oh, and three recently beating hearts cut out with an obsidian dagger.”
“Oh,” Gerald says. He sounds disappointed.
“Without that, you are limited in how you cast a scrying spell. Like Cassandra,” I say.
“You…you know she can scry?”
“Without runes, yes. I gathered that from her conversation with the others.”
“Oh.”
“Yes, ‘oh’ indeed. Without runes, scrying has a terribly limited range. Something like twenty or thirty feet. You can scry further but the item or person has to be dear and beloved to you. So Cassandra can try to scry on you if she gets close enough. But she won’t have anywhere near the range that my scrying has. Do you think Cassandra will cast that?”
“I don’t think any hero will sacrifice, three people?”
“They just have to be sentient. I used three of my goblins,” I say. Gerald looks to the five goblins and then back to me. I have finished carving my runes and I wave my hand over the water. The water shimmers and an image of the peasant woman appears.
She hasn’t befallen any further hardships I see. She is the same as the last time I looked in on her, wielding a spear, torch in hand, her clothes tattered and bloody but she seems to be moving a bit slower. Perhaps she has not been eating.
Not that I have. I had a big lunch but I can feel myself wanting a little something. Gerald could summon some food but he could cast who knows what to go with that meal. Bread with a side of humiliation? No thanks. I hand Gerald back his holy focus and I may wake up in chains being dragged off so the heroes can club my dignity to death. Or me to death.
It isn’t worth the risk right now. The peasant woman is still in a cave somewhere so I still have some time. Wait. What are those stones beside her? They look square and crafted…what else is down here?
“You!” I call out to my goblins.
“Highness?” one asks.
“Have you found any structures down here on your patrols?” I ask.
“No,” the goblin says.
“We don’t patrol down here usually,” another goblin says.
“That isn’t the deep deep?” I say pointing to the scrying pool. The goblin shrugs his shoulders.
“We’ve never patrolled for you highness.”
“We help guard your home. In the above place.”
Oh, that is just fantastic. I manage to grab the few goblins that don’t venture down here.
I would like to find a patrol somewhere down here. Depending on how big this underground area is it might be easier for this peasant to escape my patrols than I think. I haven’t found any patrols yet.
And I won’t. Not here. My goblins wouldn’t have taken this path because they wouldn’t dive into a fast moving river for a regular patrol. They would just go across that bridge. If this path doesn’t connect to another tunnel somewhere I won’t find that woman or the warrens. Should I go back?
No. Doubling back will just put me closer to the heroes and I do not want that right now. I need the goblins! Well, more than the five I have at my command right now. Goblins are not fearsome one on one, they are fearsome in numbers. Five goblins are nothing!
And nothing is all I have available to me right now. God, my dress is, fucking, stuck, to my leg…I hate this shit!
“Are you getting hungry?” Gerald asks.
“I’m fine for now,” I say.
“If you give me my focus I can bring us some food,” Gerald says.
“And you can cast anything else.”
“You don’t trust me?”
“Why should I trust a hero who is my prisoner and has been talking endlessly about dragging me back to a trial?” I ask.
“Fair enough. But without food we will all die,” Gerald says.
“No food?” a goblin asks.
“Oh, you shits eat anything anyway, don’t you? Haven’t you found something to eat down here recently?” I ask.
“We have but we were afraid highness didn’t want us to eat it,” a goblin says.
“Don’t worry about that now. If you see something down here, that isn’t a book, scroll, or a person, you may eat it. Moss, little lizards, toads, those you can eat. Okay?”
“Yes highness!” they say. A few start looking around this cavern for bugs and whatever else goblins eat.
“That just leaves us,” Gerald says.
“Hitting on me now?” I ask.
“I was offering you some food,” Gerald says.
He thinks that pretending to be helpful will lower my guard. I need to tell him no, it isn’t going to happen.
“Like a sausage?” I ask.
“That isn’t what I was saying,” Gerald says.
“I’ve already asked you if you have anything to put in my mouth,” I say.
“That isn’t what I was saying...”
“Oh,” I say, interrupting him, “I’m sorry. I thought you liked sausages. Nice, thick, sausages. No?”
I laugh.
“I suppose that doesn’t help, does it?” I ask with a wicked smile.
“Does that make you feel better saying that?”
“It does. And I needed a little cheer up, so thanks for being there,” I say.
“You’re welcome. I think,” Gerald says.
“And listen,” I say.
I look around, putting my hand to my ear, pretending to listen.
“What? I don’t hear anything.”
“Exactly. Where is your karma? Am I not to have my comeuppance for all the jokes at your expense?” I ask, looking around. “No?”
“Karma comes when you least expect it,” Gerald says.
Oh, karma has rules now does it?
“I’m sure it does,” I say.
“It’s okay if you don’t believe me. It will happen,” Gerald says. “So, can I have my focus or are we just going to sit here and starve to death.”
“Oh, stop it. We aren’t going to starve to death. There is no need to be so melodramatic Gerald.”
“As you wish,” Gerald says.
“Let’s see what your sister is up to, shall we?” I ask.
“If you…”
“Highness!” a goblin yells.
I wave my hand and remove the image from the small pool of water.
“What is it?” I yell.
“There is this…slimy stuff bubbling…”
Slimy stuff bubbling? Oh shit!
“No! Get away!” I yell. I run from the small pool of water to the corner of the room bringing my light orb with me.
“But highness…” the goblin says as he pokes it with his finger. The cave ameba lunges out and grabs his arm, dragging him to the wall where more of the ameba oozes out from some cracks in the wall.
The Goblin Queen and the Sigil of Altazan (The League of Sinister Means Book 2) Page 18
