“Let’s get on with things,” she continued. “There’s only so long I can stand an outlander in our midst.”
The königin made a grand gesture upward and lightly grabbed hold of one of the bright blue horns that grew from the bare black rock of her head. She released her grip and ran a single stony finger down the length of the cobalt spine. It was a simple gesture, but somehow she managed to fill it with a lasciviousness that made Freya’s stomach turn. The queen giggled girlishly and continued on.
“Our horns are our identity,” the queen said, suddenly serious. “Without them we are mere hunks of rock. To harvest a horn is the ultimate punishment among our kind. Worse than death, it is to become nothing at all, to be summoned back to the Verge for eternity, existing in a sort of Limbo, unrecognizable and useless, but forever denied reentry into this world. It is a fate that our kind find utterly reprehensible and it is reserved for the worst among us.”
Freya said nothing. She only hoped that the goblin in question truly deserved the fate that was about to be meted out to him. With a queen like that, she doubted the punishment necessarily fit the crime and she wasn’t keen on advancing the totalitarian regime of this goblin megalomaniac.
“So I think we are all ready for a bit of fun, aren’t we?”
As she spoke, the königin took a step off the top of her lofty summit and, just as Freya was certain she would tumble to the ground, a small flat-topped spire of stone raced up from the sheer sides of the black pinnacle to catch her footfall in midair. The queen took another step into empty space and another, but each time her certain plunge to the unforgiving stone floor was interrupted by the sudden appearance of well-timed stepping-stones. This unusual means of descent and the graceful, almost weightless quality of her footfalls, made it seem as though the queen floated to the ground. Despite her best efforts to the contrary, Freya was suitably impressed and a little afraid.
Her newfound trepidation only increased as the königin stepped lightly to the floor. The queen of the kobold was but a few paces away from Freya now, allowing the girl the opportunity to fully appreciate the evil that radiated from her every aspect. She was over six feet tall, and her horns, curved and striated like those of a gazelle, reached another two feet beyond that. She wore no clothing; her stony exterior gave no hint at her sex, but she moved with a kind of cool sensuality that was difficult to reconcile with the sharp skeletal quality of her body.
Her face, set into the smooth dark gray rock of her bare head, was composed of angular features that complemented her malevolence. A small, straight gash for her mouth, an angular nose and carven cheeks, but, as always with Freya, it was the creature’s eyes that revealed the queen’s true nature. They stirred the primitive parts of Freya’s brain. Like obsidian razors, they were cruel and unyielding; their shiny, pupil-less surface reflected the light from the cavern ceiling stealing any semblance of warmth from the blue blaze above.
The königin took a few long strides forward on her spindly legs so that she hovered over Freya and Rusty menacingly. Then, stepping even closer, the queen bent her face so near to Freya that she could feel the creature’s breath on her cheek. It came like the dank wind from a cold, wet cave and it was all Freya could do not to retch from its putrid stench.
“This is going to be fun,” the queen whispered.
Freya felt her knees weaken, but she wasn’t that feeble. She wouldn’t give into this stone tyrant. She felt her resolve strengthen. She couldn’t be broken so easily. The queen would have to work a lot harder than that.
The königin smiled cruelly when Freya made no move to back away. The empty mirth in her grin was more disturbing than if she had simply stated her cruel intentions.
“Right. Well then, let’s get the process started, shall we?” the queen said. “Please excuse me while I return to my pulpit. It really is most unseemly for me to appear before my congregation on an even footing. They look up to me, you see.”
Freya watched as the goblin queen ascended to the apex of the stone spire once more.
“What did she mean congrega—,”
Freya had turned to Rusty to ask him her question but stopped mid-sentence when a low but powerful rumbling made her turn around. From out of the massive flagstones of the cathedral floor, blue pools had sprung and seemed to be forming into recognizable shapes in much the same way that the queen had materialized. Freya watched with a mixture of horror and awe as the brilliant hue of a hundred or more goblin innards disappeared under the rigid façade of black granite. Blue spines of cobalt pierced the vibrating air of the stone nave and hundreds of flinty eyes glinted wickedly in the half-light of the blue-white flames.
“Welcome, kobold!”
The queen’s voice reverberated throughout the massive space. She began speaking in a tongue that Freya could only assume was their native goblin language, which sounded to Freya’s ear like German with the harshest consonants mellowed by graceful vowels.
“What’s this now?” Freya hissed to Rusty who had not moved a muscle in the last several moments.
“This is the congregation of the Juwelstein,” Rusty muttered in a barely audible whisper.
“Wonderful. And what are they doing here?” Freya could sense the panic rising in her voice.
“They are here for the reckoning,” Rusty answered without expression.
Freya gulped. “What did he do?” she asked quietly.
Rusty appeared reluctant to answer. As the queen continued the formalities of the goblin gathering, her voice ringing hollowly throughout the cavern, Freya studied Rusty’s face, waiting for a response.
“Insurrection,” Rusty said. He didn’t look like he was going to elaborate.
“What happens to them, Rusty?” Her voice was serious but plaintive. “Is it truly a fate worse than death?”
He raised his head and looked her in the eye for the first time.
“Without their horn they cease to exist in this realm. When a kobold no longer fits the legend, when they lose such a central part of their identity, they are recalled to the Verge.”
“What happens to them there?” asked Freya.
“It’s just as the queen said,” Rusty replied. “They become the flotsam and jetsam of the Verge. Characterless, they are set adrift, neither alive nor dead, to float across the dark of the blank pages of eternity’s empty storybook.”
The queen abruptly stopped her speechmaking and looked down from her lofty perch at Freya. The königin’s eyes were like black scalpels; her sermon to the kobold seemed to have stirred her more base instincts and she looked even less human than before. Freya felt her resolve faltering, but she held her ground.
“Girl, come forward.” The queen’s voice maintained its lyrical quality as it issued the command, but it seemed to Freya that there was a wild animal there in the undertones of her voice, waiting to be released.
Freya stepped away from Rusty and walked a few feet closer to the königin’s spiky pulpit.
“You will be this evening’s reckoner.” Her voice sounded musical still, but the beast seemed to be creeping closer to the surface. Freya’s pulse quickened. She looked to Rusty and his small nod confirmed her worst fears. She would be the one taking the horn.
“I—I couldn’t possibly,” she stammered.
“The law of this Juwelstein is mine, and mine alone. That law has been broken most egregiously and it is up to me to retain order.”
The melodic quality of her voice faded away completely and the growl of her true nature filled her words.
“To be desecrated by an outlander – that is the ultimate shame, and the ultimate expression of my incontestable authority here. Bring me the blamieren.”
A collective roar issued from the throats of the assembled kobold and Freya felt a little faint. A rent in the throng of goblins appeared slowly at first and then with surprising speed until a single goblin was isolated, his form backlit against the blue flames of the fireplace at the entrance to the hall. The roar of his brethr
en grew in intensity and those nearest to the condemned began brutally prodding him with their horns and forcing the goblin forward. The creature did not retaliate but neither was it resigned. It walked resolutely forward seemingly unaffected by the cruel blows it received from all sides. When it was nearly to the front of the cavern and the queen’s pulpit, a final thrust of razor-sharp horns struck the accused in the face. The goblin stumbled and fell to its knees. Viscous blue dripped from a gash on its head.
By now the howls of the assembled kobold had reached a fever pitch. The injured goblin found his feet and continued forward until it came to a stop just to the left of Freya. A hush fell over the congregation then, as though a switch had been flipped. Freya couldn’t decide which was worse, the deafening thunder of shrieking goblins or the deadly silence of this legion of otherworldly creatures, like tigers crouching in the underbrush.
“Kneel.” The queen’s voice was like a million shards of flint.
The goblin did as it was bid, but there was defiance still in the deferential posture.
“Rusty, the axe,” the queen growled.
From against a nearby pillar Rusty retrieved the same wicked-looking pickaxe he had been holding when they first met. Freya thought he had left the mining tool back in the great room of the lodge, but he must have brought it with him through the fire.
Rusty strode quickly forward and handed Freya the axe with its vicious silver blade and jet-black handle. It was much heavier than Freya had anticipated and her outstretched arms gave a few inches before she was able to recruit enough strength to hold it properly. Rusty didn’t look her in the eye during the exchange but there seemed to be a new tension in his shoulders, an anticipatory tautness in his limbs. She wasn’t sure if it was apprehension or excitement. Perhaps it was both.
“Blamieren, your time has come.”
The queen’s voice vibrated with animal barbarity. She issued a few commands in her goblin tongue and the goblin horde fell silent as the condemned creature bent at the waist and placed the crown of its head against the floor. The awkward position meant the cobalt horns rested parallel to the floor and it would be relatively easy for Freya to bring the heavy pickaxe down on the base of either one, severing it from the goblin’s head and consigning the doomed kobold to the Verge.
“Take the horn.” The queen’s command was nearly a whisper spoken from high on her pulpit, but so quiet was the great cavern now that the directive seemed to ring in Freya’s ears as though shouted from only a few paces away.
Freya hesitated. She had always considered herself a tough girl, a person who wasn’t afraid of a challenge, especially a challenge that stood in the way of her goals. One quick strike from the weighty pickaxe and the relatively fragile horn would be hers. She could be on her way and forget about this mad place, the goblin queen and her deformed human caretaker. But then where would she be? She’d be an executioner, not just a lackey in a pointless game of power.
It didn’t have to be this way, did it? All her life Freya felt she had acted as though someone else was the author of her own personal tale. This is where it had gotten her, carrying out some ridiculous ritual that would end brutally for all those involved. She was furious with herself for getting into this position, yet there was still a part of her that demanded her compliance, that reminded her that if she just followed the rules everything would turn out fine.
She stood there above the goblin, axe heavy in her hand, while an internal war raged inside her skull. Obey or refuse. She was ready to be the author of her own story.
“No.” Freya’s voice was even quieter than the queen’s but its impact was unmistakable.
“What did you say?” the queen asked, her tone incredulous.
“I said, no.” Freya surprised herself. She abhorred being the center of attention. Even under the best of circumstances, when called upon to perform in any capacity under scrutiny her face would immediately flush and her vocal chords constrict while her stomach twisted itself in knots. But here, in the midst of a mass of goblins and assured of an unpredictable queen’s wrath, she felt calm. For the first time in a very long while, Freya had taken control of her fate and it felt good. She smiled.
Later, when Freya replayed what happened next in her mind, she always lingered over the reaction her incongruous grin had engendered in the goblin königin. She liked to think that it was this tiny show of mirthful defiance in the face of cruel despotism that precipitated the queen’s downfall. It might have been, for when the königin saw that cheeky smirk from atop her pulpit she flew into such a rage that she threw her head back and howled. It was a ghastly outcry. Part wolfish wail and part demonic shriek, it echoed off the cavern walls, shocking everyone in attendance into stunned petrifaction.
All except one, that is. The goblin prostrated below her, the one the queen had called the blamieren, suddenly leapt to its feet and wrenched the pickaxe from Freya’s clenched fists. He hurled the tool, as though throwing a discus, straight at the queen atop her spiky pulpit.
It spun gracefully in the air, the sharp silver head chasing the ebony handle around and around as it sliced through the space separating the blamieren from his königin. The queen’s howl finally came to an end and she dropped her head back down ready to address the insolence of the girl before her, the human who had forgotten her place. Her flinty eyes were full of rage as they focused once more on the floor below her, but within a split second the rage shifted to surprise as she locked onto the fearsome axe cleaving the air mere inches from her.
There was no time for the königin to react and the goblin’s throw had been perfectly aimed. The jet-black handle spun around one last time, its momentum startling. The sharp silver spike of the axe’s handle whirled into view and time seemed to slow. Freya didn’t have perfect eyesight but she saw the point of the axe pierce the surface of the queen’s formidable blue horn, creating first a crack and then a jagged fissure. As the silver point began to turn away again the horn became completed severed from the queen’s skull. It twisted away into the air, carried by the momentum of the spinning axe.
The goblin that had thrown the axe suddenly sprinted ahead, nearly crashing into the base of the pinnacle. Freya wasn’t sure what he was doing until she saw the brilliant blue horn drop into his outstretched hand. The moment his stony fingers closed around it he began to laugh. The goblin’s outburst was humorless. It was full of wrath, resentment, and the empty joy of having exacted revenge. The sound was haunting as it filled the cavern, but it was nothing compared to the unholy roar that erupted from the bowels of the dehorned queen.
She was writhing on top of the pulpit, grasping frantically at the empty air where her horn had been. All pretense of humanity had disappeared and her true nature, that of the basest beast, filled her thrashing form. Whether she was filled with agony or anger, Freya couldn’t be sure, but when the queen threw her head back and screamed again, she could have sworn she felt that howl with her heart and not her ears, such was its primordial power. It was a sound that she would never forget, a sound that she knew would haunt the edges of her consciousness until the day she died.
The queen’s abject shriek was still issuing from her tortured throat when the flames on the ceiling began to flicker, their bright blue-white light sputtering. Directly above the königin the fire had gone out. Freya recognized the blackness there with a surprising horror in the pit of her stomach. No longer held in check by the mysterious cobalt flames it seemed to exult in its newfound freedom, churning and convulsing in an eerie danse macabre.
The fearsome liquid ballet culminated in a final molten jeté that sent a swirling column of blackness down from the ceiling. The column elongated, forming a stalagmite to mirror the pointy projection of the queen’s pulpit. The smooth velvet darkness formed a striking counterpart to the jagged pinnacle, a contrast made even more apparent by the tortured movements of the queen of the goblins.
For a moment Freya was unsure what was going to happen, but as the blackness cont
inued its relentless descent from the ceiling, it became apparent that stalactite and stalagmite would inevitably join. Despite herself Freya screamed as the shadowy murk swallowed the königin’s head, so ghastly was the sludge that consumed the queen. It instantly suffocated her frenzied cries, and the immediate silence in the vast cavern was terrifying. Like the eye of a storm, it portended disaster.
Freya was still looking at the place where the queen of the goblins had once stood when she felt cold fingers grab her hand. It was the goblin that had only moments before been kneeling at her feet, waiting for Freya to bring down Rusty’s pickaxe. Thick blue blood seeped down its brow and into its eye, and it was no longer laughing manically. Instead what Freya could only describe as a content smile suffused its rocky features. The goblin grasped her hand and turned it over so that her palm was facing up. Into it he slipped the queen’s long, beautiful cobalt horn. Freya stood dumbstruck as the creature’s obsidian eyes twinkled in the fading firelight from the ceiling.
Then, before Freya could even coerce a word from her lips in gratitude, a column of blackness smashed down on the goblin with startling force, absorbing him completely and then retreated back into the ceiling. Panic grasped Freya’s heart as scores of similar pylons of darkness escaped the ceiling and crashed down onto the assembled goblins who began to scatter in a frantic attempt at escape.
Another hand closed around her arm, but this time it belonged to Rusty.
“We have to go,” he said, his voice full of urgency.
Freya did not put up any protest as he pulled her forward and broke into a sprint. She held onto his hand hard as they ran for all they were worth back toward the dwindling flames of the hearth at the entrance to the cavern. Tar-like pillars crashed around them with greater frequency as the flames of the cavern ceiling sputtered and died. Freya could see the blue-white flames of the hearth flickering too. The once formidable blaze was little more than a few tongues of fire amid azure embers now. Rusty increased his already fierce pace and Freya had to sprint with everything she had left to keep up.
On the Verge Page 10
