Goblin Quest

by Philip Reeve

  Philip Reeve was born in Brighton and worked in a bookshop for many years before becoming a bestselling author and illustrator. His debut novel, MORTAL ENGINES, the first in an epic series, was published to great acclaim around the world. He has won the CILIP Carnegie Medal, the Smarties Gold Award, the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize and the Blue Peter Book of the Year. He lives with his wife and son on Dartmoor, where the wildest places are probably full of boglins, dampdrakes and other mysterious creatures.

  www.philip-reeve.com

  www.mortalengines.co.uk

  By Philip Reeve

  Mortal Engines

  Predator’s Gold

  Infernal Devices

  A Darkling Plain

  Fever Crumb

  A Web of Air

  Scrivener’s Moon

  No Such Thing As Dragons

  Here Lies Arthur

  Goblins

  Goblins Vs Dwarves

  In the BUSTER BAYLISS series:

  Night of the Living Veg

  The Big Freeze

  Day of the Hamster

  Custardfinger

  For SAM, with luv an

  KiSsiz from oRL tHe GOBbLinZ

  Contents

  Cover

  Half Title Page

  About the Author

  Also by Phillip Reeve

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1A Visitor Drops In

  2Prince Rhind

  3The Sheep Lords

  4The Legend of the Drowned Land

  5Hostage of the Sheep Lords

  6A Robbery is Planned

  7Ill-Met by Poolight

  8Henwyn’s Ransome

  9Echoes of the Elvenhorn

  10Goblin Quest

  11Setting Off

  12The Perilous Wood

  13How To Be a Bee

  14Giants in the Earth

  15No Welcome in Ulawn

  16The Pebble and the Worm

  17The Cliff Path

  18Things in Tins

  19Floonhaven

  20All at Sea

  21The Fire in the West

  22Raising the Land

  23Found in Translation

  24The Streets of Elvensea

  25Hellesvor

  26Grumpling on the Stairs

  27Another World

  28Fire Warriors

  29Fire on the Nibbled Coast

  30The Flames of Elvensea

  31The Final Act

  32Homeward Bound

  Copyright

  “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!”

  The sound that echoed across Clovenstone that morning was one which Skarper had often heard before. In fact, it was one that he had often made before, usually when he was being chased by something, or falling from a great height towards Certain Death. But nothing was chasing him today, and he was not falling from anywhere. He was just ambling about in the sunshine, looking for mushrooms.

  Summer had come to Clovenstone at last, after a long, hard winter and a cold spring. The snow that had shrouded the ruins of the old fortress-city for so long had finally melted, although it still lingered on the lofty summits of the Bonehill Mountains which loomed beyond the eastern wall. Woken by sunbeams poking into his nest up in Blackspike Tower, Skarper had remembered suddenly how much he liked fried mushrooms for his breakfast, and he had come scampering down from the Inner Wall to this flattish, grassy part of Clovenstone to see if any had pushed their heads up through the earth there.

  He had found some, too. They were the fat, yellowish-white puffballs which the goblins of Clovenstone called urth grobbits. These were Skarper’s favourites, and he had just stuffed his pockets with them and was turning for home when he heard that strange new noise.

  “AAAAAAAAAAAA…”

  It seemed to be growing louder.

  Skarper looked around, but there was nothing to see. Only the grass moved, blowing in the spaces between the crumbling, ancient buildings.

  “…AAAAAAAAA…”

  Skarper looked up. What was that, right in the very top of the sky? That black speck, hard to make out in the dazzling sunshine, especially to goblin eyes which preferred the dark. Was it an insect? Was it a bird? It seemed to have two flailing arms, and two frantically kicking legs. It seemed to be a man…

  A falling man.

  “…AAAAAAAAAARGH!!!”

  “Oh, bumcakes!” said Skarper.

  He started to run one way, then changed his mind and ran the other. That was a bad decision. With a massive THWUMP the man landed on him.

  The goblin name for human beings was “softlings”, but it turned out they didn’t feel very soft when they were being dropped on you. Skarper would have been squashed flat if the bit of Clovenstone he happened to be standing in had not been so soft and boggy. As it was, he was driven deep down into the oozy moss.

  “Ow!” said the softling, after a while. “Ow, my head!” he added. “And my ribs. And my elbow.”

  “What about me?” asked Skarper in a squashed and bitter voice from somewhere underneath him. “What about my… What about all of me?”

  The softling had not realized until then that the hard, lumpy thing he had landed on was a goblin. With a cry of, “Ow, my knee!” he sprang up and drew his sword.

  “Unhand me, foul goblin!” he shouted.

  Skarper climbed out of the Skarper-shaped crater he had made in the wet ground. “My hands are nowhere near you, and anyway, they’re called paws,” he said. He looked ruefully at his tail. It already had one kink in it where it had been broken and set badly: now it would have two more. “Who do you think you are, anyway?” he asked. “Dropping on people like that. What’s your game?”

  “I am Prince Rhind of the Woolmark,” said the softling, drawing himself up tall and proud and sticking out his chin as if he thought Skarper should have heard of him and ought to be impressed. He was a handsome sort of softling, Skarper supposed, though slightly on the chubby side. He had a pinkish face and sandy-coloured hair. Underneath all the mud he was very expensively dressed, in richly embroidered felt clothes and a shining coat of fish-scale mail.

  “As for what brings me here,” Prince Rhind went on, “that is a long and fascinating tale…” But before he could get any further a plump white cloud dropped out of the sky and started to whizz about at head height.

  “Yoohoo!” said the cloud.

  “I might have known!” groaned Skarper.

  It was not really the cloud that had said “yoohoo” of course (that would be silly). It was the cloud maidens, the wispy, vaporous young sky-spirits who sat on top of it, looking worriedly at Prince Rhind.

  “Are you all right, sweet prince?” they twittered. “When we said that you would see Clovenstone if you leaned over the edge, we did not mean for you to lean quite that far over!”

  “Be of good cheer, sweet maidens of the skies,” said the prince. “I am unharmed. Happily, this goblin broke my fall.”

  “It wasn’t happy from where I was standing,” said Skarper. “What did you bring him here for?” But the cloud maidens just sniffed and looked snootily the other way. They didn’t like goblins.

  “I have come seeking the fell fortress of Clovenstone,” announced Prince Rhind, “where I have heard tell there resides a treasure which will be of aid to me in my perilous quest. These good maidens were kind enough to offer me a lift.”

  “Well, this is Clovenstone all right,” said Skarper. “It isn’t really a fell fortress any more though.”

  “No, indeed…”
Prince Rhind looked about him at the ruins. His handsome young face was a little downcast. The cloud maidens drifted overhead giggling and showering him with tiny heart-shaped hailstones inscribed with messages like “BE MINE” and “DREAMBOAT”.

  “You do have treasure houses here, don’t you?” he asked. “I was told there were treasure houses…”

  “Oh, they’re all inside the Inner Wall,” Skarper told him. “We don’t keep much treasure in them these days though.”

  “What do you keep in them then?’

  “Cheese, mainly.”

  “Cheese?”

  “Cheese. Haven’t you heard of Clovenstone Blue? We make it here. It’s very popular.” Skarper wrung some bog water out of his shoes and looked at Prince Rhind of the Woolmark with his head on one side. He didn’t seem a bad sort of softling. Probably he wasn’t really dangerous except when he fell on people, and he probably didn’t make a habit of that; it seemed to have been more in the way of an accident.

  “You’d better come and meet Henwyn and everybody,” he said, doubtfully.

  Prince Rhind nodded, though he looked doubtful too. “Everybody? Yes…” He seemed wary of saying too much to Skarper. Perhaps, like most softlings, he mistrusted goblins. At last he said, “Take me to this Henwyn, goblin, that I may share with him the great matter of my quest. I only hope that the thing I seek still resides here, for it is clear to me that much has changed at Clovenstone.”

  Prince Rhind of the Woolmark was not often right about things, as Skarper and his friends would realize when they came to know him better, but he was right about that. Things had changed and changed again at Clovenstone. Once, long ago, it had been the castle of an evil sorcerer called the Lych Lord, who had used his goblin armies to try and conquer the whole of the Westlands.

  Now his high black keep was gone, and the goblins who remained, living in the ruined towers of the Inner Wall which used to ring it, couldn’t really be bothered with conquering anybody. Indeed, the previous summer, when the dwarves of the north had tried to do some conquering of their own, it had been the goblins who helped to defeat them. People in the Westlands were starting to realize that goblins were not all bad, after all.

  The cloud maidens’ cloud trailed after Prince Rhind like a lovestruck balloon as he followed Skarper up the roads between the ruins, towards the gate that led through the Inner Wall. “It is not entirely what I was led to expect,” Rhind admitted, glancing at the giant molehills which the dwarves had left behind. The huge skull of a diremole grinned down at him from the wall above the gate as Skarper heaved on the knocker and shouted, “Open up!”

  “Who is it?” yelled a sleepy goblin voice from one of the windows high above.

  “It’s Skarper, you idiot.”

  “Well, why can’t you come in the underneath way, the same you went out?”

  “I’ve brought a guest,” said Skarper, pointing at Prince Rhind. “Guests come in the front way, that’s polite.”

  “Oh, all right,” said the voice, a bit peevishly. “Hang on. I’ll come down.”

  Skarper and Prince Rhind stood outside the gate and waited. After a few moments Prince Rhind said, “The person I really need to see is your queen.”

  “We haven’t got a queen,” said Skarper. “There used to be a king – King Knobbler – but we laughed at his pants and he had to go off and live in Coriander. They don’t laugh at people’s pants in Coriander. Well, not so much.”

  Rhind’s handsome forehead was creased by a princely frown. “My court sorcerer told me that Clovenstone was ruled by a wise and kindly lady who would help me on my quest.”

  “Oh, he must mean Princess Ned,” said Skarper, and his ears drooped. Ned had been wise and kindly, and although she had not exactly ruled Clovenstone – she was more interested in gardening than ruling things – all the goblins had looked to her for guidance. Also for scones. But Ned was dead. She had died quite unexpectedly the previous year, at the end of that business with the dwarves, and there had been nothing that the goblins could do for her except to tend the flowers that grew upon her grave in a corner of the pretty garden she had made inside the Inner Wall.

  “I see grief on your face, goblin,” said Prince Rhind. “Don’t tell me that the Lady of Clovenstone is dead?”

  “All right,” said Skarper. “But I ’spect you’ll hear all about it sooner or later.”

  Rhind’s frown grew approximately fifteen per cent frownier. “That is sad news indeed. I had looked to her to aid me in my quest, you see.”

  “There’s always Fentongoose and Dr Prong,” said Skarper. “They know all about quests and stuff. I ’spect they’ll help you.”

  A noisy rattling of keys and undoing of bolts had begun behind the huge gate, and at last it creaked open a little way. An ugly head poked out through the gap and looked the visitor up and down. The head belonged to Libnog, Skarper’s batch-brother (which meant that he had hatched from the same batch of eggstones, coughed up like hairballs by the magical slowsilver lake beneath Clovenstone).

  “What do we have to be polite to him for?” Libnog asked.

  “Because he’s a prince, you ignorant goblin!” shouted the cloud maidens, who had been hovering about above, writing CLOUD MAIDENS + RHIND LOVE 4 EVER on the gatehouse wall with icicles. (They had a thing about princes.)

  “He’s Prince Rhind and he’s come all the way from somewhere called Woolmark on some sort of quest,” said Skarper.

  Libnog looked Rhind up and down again. Then he tried looking him down and up. Goblins aren’t easy to impress, and Libnog wasn’t. “I suppose he’d better come in then,” he grumbled.

  And so it was that Prince Rhind of the Woolmark came to Clovenstone, striding through the dank and dripping tunnel behind the gate and out into the broad central space on the summit of the crag called Meneth Eskern. Once the Lych Lord’s Keep had stood there, safe in the circle of the Inner Wall and the six and a half goblin-haunted towers. Armouries and guardhouses stood there still, but all that remained of the Keep itself were mounds of shattered masonry. Among the dark stones, Ned’s little garden shone like a trove of treasure, jewelled and gilded with the flowers of spring. The bluebells that grew so thickly there had been planted by Ned herself. They were the magical bluebells of Oeth Moor, and they thrived in the soil of Clovenstone, so rich in slowsilver. Each time the breeze stirred the flowers they actually rang with tiny, pretty, tinkling notes.

  Prince Rhind stood listening a moment, then sniffed.

  “Why is there a smell of cheese?” he asked.

  “That’s from the cheesery,” said Skarper. “Didn’t I tell you? We make cheese here at Clovenstone now. It gives us something to do, now that we’ve all stopped fightin’ each other all the time.”

  “It is most … pungent,” said Rhind, wrinkling up his nose. “In the Woolmark we eat only the cheese of sheep, which does not smell quite so … interesting.”

  By that time, the news that a visitor had arrived was spreading fast. From doors and windows all around, the ugly figures of the goblins came creeping. Prince Rhind looked at them nervously. They were not waving weaponry or shouting war cries, like the goblins that he’d heard about in stories, but they still looked pretty ferocious with their fangs and claws and beady eyes, their spiky armour and their studded leather jerkins. He started to wonder if it had really been such a good idea to accept the cloud maidens’ offer of a lift and leave his travelling companions to make their own way to Clovenstone.

  Then he saw humans pushing their way through the goblin throng – two old men and one young one – and that calmed him a little. The young one stepped out in front of him and grinned. “Welcome to Clovenstone, stranger!”

  “I am Prince Rhind,” said the Prince, drawing himself straight and tall again, as if he was posing for his own statue. “You must be … Fentongoose?”

  “No, I’m Henwyn,” said the yo
ung man. He shielded his eyes against the sun and peered up at the cloud that was hanging overhead. “Hello, cloud maidens!”

  “Whatever,” muttered the cloud maidens. They had been very taken with Henwyn once, but that had been before they found Prince Rhind. Henwyn was handsome enough, but he was only a cheesewright who had blundered into Clovenstone seeking adventure; he wasn’t an actual prince.

  “I am Fentongoose,” said the less shabby of the two older men, squeezing between two fat goblins to stand at Henwyn’s side. “And this is my friend and colleague, Dr Quesney Prong.”

  “Greetings,” said Prong – who was not just shabbier than Fentongoose but taller, thinner and sterner looking.

  “What brings you to Clovenstone, Prince Rhind?’ asked Henwyn. “I heard the goblins saying something about a vest?”

  “He’s on a quest,” said Skarper.

  “Oh, a quest? That makes a bit more sense, now I come to think about it. What sort of quest?”

  Rhind frowned quite hard. “I was supposed to speak of it only to the Lady of Clovenstone. But your goblin Skarper tells me that she is no more.”

  Henwyn hung his head sadly. Prong and Fentongoose looked glum. Some of the goblins burst into tears.

  “Alas,” said Henwyn, “Skarper spoke the truth.”

  “Then I am not sure what to do,” said Rhind, scratching his head. “Perhaps I should wait for my companions to join me, so that I may seek their counsel.”

  “There’re more of you?” asked Libnog.

  “Oh yes! My sister Breenge, my cook Ninnis, and my sorcerer, the wise and mighty Prawl.”

  “Prawl?” Everyone perked up at the mention of that name. Even the goblins who had been most upset by the reminder of Princess Ned stopped sniffling and blew their noses with loud trumpety sounds on one another’s sleeves.

  “Prawl?” said Fentongoose. “Not the Prawl? From Coriander? Youngish fellow with spectacles and sort of sticky-out ears? Why, he was with me and Carnglaze when we first came to Clovenstone, foolishly believing that we could awaken its old power. I wondered where Prawl had got to! So he travelled all the way to Tyr Davas, did he? But what’s all this wise and mighty business? Prawl is not a sorcerer! He’s no more a sorcerer than I am!”