by Hilari Bell
The moon was half full, enough light for her to see the goblins converging on the fragile web of chains. Chains that had been sundered like cobwebs by the strange being who crouched in the middle of the circle, trying to shake off the snare ropes that Miggy’s brigade had snubbed around nearby trees. It growled, its voice echoing even through the wind.
Makenna decided there was no need to run and strolled over to the shattered spellworks. They had looked so magical and fragile, and had taken so many hours for her to set up and inscribe, that she knew some spirit was bound to try to smash them.
The creature straightened at her approach, glaring. She thought this one was male, though it was hard to be sure. It was clearly a tree spirit, with a sturdy trunklike torso, gnarled features, and rough, barklike skin. It had far too many limbs to call them arms, and they moved stiffly and seemed to be jointed in the wrong places.
“What is this rope?” it said, in a voice that held the hollow boom of wood striking wood. “It burns.”
“Burns” was probably the ultimate curse to a tree spirit, but it didn’t seem to be in too much pain—and right now, Makenna found it hard to care.
“It’s made of clothing we brought with us and pulled apart for the threads,” Makenna told it. The rope was mostly wool from Tobin’s cloak, which they hadn’t had time to send with him—and a good thing, too. The goblins’ garments were too small to contain much thread, and Makenna had little to spare.
“It’s also full of my own hair,” she went on. “So it’s me that bound you. And finally”—she touched the amulet around her neck—“it’s woven through with these. They have an adverse effect on your folk, I’ve noticed.”
“Death bringer!” This time the voice was a hiss of whispering leaves.
“Now that’s not fair,” Makenna said. “I may have killed, but I’ve brought no death to this world. I’ve not even threatened it. Though I have to say, you folk are tempting me.”
“That is death.” He gestured to her amulet. “And whatever the water woman did, I will not bargain with one who carries it.”
“If you want us to go so badly,” Makenna said, “all you have to do is stop the magic drain long enough for us to cast a gate, and we’ll leave your precious world. Taking our death amulets with us. If the water spirit had given us just a bit more of that water that stopped the draining effect, we’d have been gone long ago.”
For a moment, she thought she saw temptation sweep over those rough features. She’d told the truth. With their magic fully restored, and some practice behind them, Makenna was fairly certain she could hold a gate long enough for all the goblins to escape. She’d cast the gate that had brought them here and the gate she’d used to get Tobin out—and since then, she’d had time to study Master Lazur’s spell books thoroughly. Getting herself out might be trickier. Before, the magic stored in the great wall had sustained the gate while she passed through. Makenna had no idea what would happen to a gate when its principle caster went into it. But she was willing to take the chance—if she could only find a way to stop the substance of the Otherworld from sucking down every rune she placed on it.
“No,” said the spirit. Its toes dug into the ground, and rock cracked as if a real tree had rooted there. “I’m not a traitor. I will not bargain with you, death-human.”
Makenna sighed. “Not even to get rid of us, once and for all?”
The creature shook, not its head, but its limbs. “You would only return, bringing the hunters with you—and then there will be no world free of them.”
This was new information. “Humans have hunted you?”
The glare that answered that was so contemptuous, it needed no words.
“Those were other humans,” Makenna said. “Not me. And have you ever been hunted by goblins?”
“No,” the spirit admitted. “Their kind have never done us harm. But they ally with humans!”
Cogswhallop had joined her some time ago. Now he snorted. “You’ve not been paying attention, barky. The humans have taken to hunting us too.”
“The old bond is there,” the spirit said. “Or you wouldn’t be standing at her side.”
Makenna eyed those rootlike toes that had so easily broken solid rock. “If we let you go, will you agree not to harm us in the future? Not in any way, not even by rotting the wood we cut?”
It hesitated, and she added, “If you don’t promise, there’s no way I can let you go.”
“Hey!” Miggy protested. “We had a hard time catching this one!”
“You did well,” Makenna told him. “But even if it refuses to help us, we’ve still no right to kill it. It’s doing nothing but defending its home against those who hunted it, just as we defended the wood against those who hunted us.”
Miggy’s mouth closed with a snap. Clearly he hadn’t thought of it that way.
It was also clear that Cogswhallop had. “Get its promise first,” he reminded her. “That one’s strong enough, and angry enough, to give stomping us into the ground a good try.”
“All right,” the spirit yielded. “I give wood oath I’ll not harm you or your goblins in the future, not even to rip up your puny tents or rot the wood if you try to build.”
“And your friends?” Makenna asked. “Will you keep them from harming us?”
The spirits reminded her of goblins, in their insistence that promises be kept. And they probably also shared the goblins’ tendency to interpret promises in a very literal way, when that was to their benefit.
“I can’t speak for the others,” the spirit said. “Even if I gave an oath, it wouldn’t bind them.”
“That’s honest,” said Makenna. “Though if we’ve got to capture every spirit in this world and get their oaths one at a time, it’s going to be a long process. Tell your lads to let him go, Miggy.”
The goblin cast her a dubious look, but he obeyed. With goblin hands helping, the tree spirit soon waddled off into the night.
“Was that wise, Gen’ral?” Cogswhallop asked softly. “It goes against my grain as well, harming a creature that did no worse than we were doing ourselves, not so long ago. But they’re going to get harder to catch.”
“With any luck,” said Makenna, “we won’t need to capture another. This one told me all I need to know without saying a single word. If I’m right, we’ll be out of here before the next one can do worse than tangle up our hair.”
In fact, it took most of another week for Makenna to figure it out. First experiments with the amulets, because she’d finally realized that if they negated so much of a spirit’s power and stopped the magic drain in both human and goblin flesh, they might stop the drain on her spell runes as well.
Makenna’s mother would have figured it out days ago, and that sharp priest would probably have seen it immediately. But Makenna lacked her mother’s instinctive understanding of the forces that worked on the world. There was less pain in memories of her mother now, as if the magic that hummed in her blood in this strange world had somehow drawn them closer.
Makenna would probably lose that magic in the real world—but for peace and safety, it was a better than even trade!
The spirits stepped up their harassment when she started experimenting with the amulets, but Makenna soon learned how large a piece of ground could be protected from the magic drain.
With trees she had to embed the medallions in the bark to make her runes stable, but an amulet buried under only a thin covering of earth would stabilize a circle about three feet wide. In the end, Makenna had the smiths link the amulets together, like a spider’s web.
Fortunately, that web didn’t have to be too large. Tobin’s irresponsible brother had sent all the amulets he could lay his hands on, St. Keshrah be praised. But even with the patron of responsible experimentation on their side, a score of goblins had been forced to give up their amulets to create the web, and to shield Makenna and the goblins she’d need to help her cast the spell.
Makenna then fastened the amulets on the trees t
hat formed the gate structure to the earth web. She’d given her word to two spirits that she and the goblins would take the death amulets away with them—and her mother would never have forgiven her for leaving behind something Makenna suspected could poison the very fabric of this world.
While she worked out the details of casting a stable gate, Cogswhallop and Erebus organized the exodus. Makenna could hear their angry voices clear across the camp, arguing about whether each goblin through the gate had to be checked off the Bookeries’ list or if they could just line up and be counted.
Finally the time came.
The sky was barely gray with the approach of sunrise, the air cool and damp. Makenna had chosen dawn hoping that a time of transition might aid the transition from one place to another.
Her team of casters spread out the ground web, covering the amulets and their chains lightly in the earth of this world. Those who carved fresh holes in the tree bark and stuck the amulets into the sap wrapped them in threads of fiber from the real world—the home to which they hoped to return.
Makenna herself drew the runes, runes describing this world scratched in the earth—where the children had been warned not to trample, on pain of being sent to their tents for the rest of their lives.
The goblin parents kept a tight grip on their wayward offspring, as they gathered into lines to be checked off the Bookeries’ lists.
Makenna ignored the arguments about whether or not someone would be allowed to go back and hunt for a lost basket, or the pretty stone they’d meant to pick up. Cogswhallop and his troop would sort that out.
The runes of the real world went onto the trees, to lead them from this world into theirs as surely as the trees sprang from the soil into the air. Or that was Makenna’s symbol, anyway. The priests’ magic worked almost entirely with power in the abstract—which was fine, if you had so much you could afford to waste it. Hedgewitches, like Makenna’s mother, needed symbols to guide and focus what small power they possessed. And they’d done well enough with those small powers that when the church planned to do something wildly unpopular, it had perceived them as a threat.
But the priest who’d been behind all that was dead, Cogswhallop had told her. It was safe to go home.
And to guide them, each goblin carried a token from the real world, something that came from there and represented home in their own hearts.
Makenna had brought little besides her mother’s spell notes into the Otherworld, so she had chosen a handful of thread left from the unraveling of Tobin’s cloak for her token.
It was made of wool from sheep that grazed on real-world grass. It had been spun by a woman breathing real-world air. And it had been worn by a young knight who was there right now, waiting for her to join him. Symbol enough.
When all the amulets were buried, the runes drawn, the goblins who’d volunteered to lend her power formed a circle around the edge of the web, holding hands.
Makenna ran her eyes down the long lines of waiting goblins. They stood quietly, gazing back at her with a trust this disastrous exile to the Otherworld should have destroyed. But it hadn’t.
She looked at Erebus, who nodded confirmation. Everyone she’d led into this mess was here, along with the brave fools who’d come with Cogswhallop to rescue them. She looked at Cogswhallop, who nodded as well. Everyone was ready.
Makenna laid her hand on one of the trees, on the amulet set into its bark, and felt two small hands pressing against her knees. She began to chant, and power, even stronger than when they’d practiced this, flowed through the goblins’ hands, through her hands, and down the amulets’ linked chains.
The runes sprang to life as if the rising sun shone through them.
Power. Was this how the priests felt, casting their spells? She was so full of power, it felt as if she could take the world into her grasp, molding it like clay.
The gap between the trees filled with a pane of glowing light, and through that light Makenna saw a forest glade. Once she would have seen no difference between it and the glade they stood in. Now the trees of the northern woods were instantly identifiable, compared to the forests of this alien world.
She checked all the runes once more—no flickering. Even the rune of stability glowed as cool and steady as moonlight. Makenna nodded to Cogswhallop, and the goblins in the first line picked up their packs and jogged through the gate in an orderly file.
It was a far cry from their desperate escape from their own world, with Makenna clumsily casting the spell as she read it, and goblins searching frantically for friends and family as the soldiers who would have killed them all thundered toward them.
The first line went through and the second line followed, without so much as a gap between them. Makenna felt a deep surge of gratitude for both her competent lieutenants.
Even the power that was theirs in the Otherworld began to diminish as the third line went through. The first time Makenna had cast a gate, she had drained the reserve of power that scores of ancient priests had sunk into the great wall. Now, though the gate was much smaller, the power came from her and her goblin assistants, and she felt the drag of it in blood and bone.
The chanting around the circle took on a determined note, and more power flowed down the goblins’ linked hands.
Makenna was vaguely aware of Cogswhallop’s voice shouting at the fourth line to run “Faster, faster, blast you!”
The last of the fourth line ran though the glowing gap, Cogswhallop on their heels, and now it was the spell casters’ turn. They had rehearsed this, sending the weakest through first, speculating about what would happen.
It was less drastic than they’d feared, but that didn’t make it good. As each caster passed through the gate, his strength vanished from the circle, leaving it weaker and weaker.
The last of them, an old Flamer called Mogarty, cast Makenna a worried look before she leaped through—but someone had to be last. Makenna had flatly refused the others’ offers to try to take that part. She was the caster, the anchor who held it all in place.
The spell was sucking power from her body now, fast and hard. Makenna’s temples throbbed, and her bones felt as if they were turning to sand. She had to go now.
She stepped to the far end of the linked chains and wrapped the loose chain they’d made ready for her around her wrist. She had no idea if this would work either, but she had to try.
She took a deep breath and poured every scrap of power she had left into the spell. The runes brightened—it was the most she’d get.
Makenna raced for the gate, amulets bursting from the earth in showers of grit and dead leaves. The last few feet yanked the remaining amulets out of the trees, and she threw herself into flickering gate like a diver.
The flash behind her was so bright, it looked like lightning, but no thunder followed.
Makenna fell to her hands and knees, aching as if she’d been beaten, but from the earth beneath her palms, from the very air around her, she felt the gentle seep of real-world magic. It wasn’t as powerful as that of the Otherworld, water compared to wine, but it felt better; cleaner and more honest.
In the Otherworld, toward the end, she’d felt that she had almost become the powerful sorceress her enemies had named her.
She wouldn’t miss it.
She lay down, rolling to face the sky, wondering where the goblins were. A moment later she heard human voices approaching—coming to investigate the soundless lightning, no doubt. The goblins would appear once they were gone.
There was a time when Makenna too would have dragged herself into the nearest bush and hidden, but her head still ached, and according to Cogswhallop the Decree of Bright Magic had been rescinded. She could deal with humans now. Maybe even live with them, part of the time.
“It’s a girl! Are you all right, lass? What happened here?”
The speaker was a middle-aged man, who helped her sit up, concern in his broad face. His rough clothes might have suited a number of tasks, but a scent of fresh-cut woo
d surrounded not only him but the two younger men who’d accompanied him. Lumber men. She’d driven a number of them out of the Goblin Wood—or even let them cut there, if they left the goblins alone.
Were they in the Goblin Wood now? In some other northern forest? She would ask, eventually, but more important . . .
“What happened is a long story.” She smiled at them all. It felt odd, smiling at humans. “But I’m well enough. I don’t suppose you’ve heard of a young man, Tobin Rovan, arriving sometime in the last few weeks like I just did?”
They stared at her, the older woodsman with a worried frown that was echoed on the face of one of the younger men.
The last man’s jaw had dropped. “I know her!” His astonished expression turned to fury in a heartbeat. “She’s the sorceress of the Goblin Wood! The one who killed all those folk! Arrest her!”
Looking at him, Makenna recognized one of the settlers Master Lazur had brought north to colonize the wood. They’d all gotten a good look at her, chained to a log as bait for the goblins, before Tobin had set her free.
The rough hands that seized her now were all too familiar, and so were the expressions of anger, doubt, and disgust.
So much for living with humans.
She made no protest as they hauled her off to jail.
Chapter 5
Tobin
WHEN VRUUD SAID THEY’D TELL the other Duri camps to watch for an escaped prisoner, Tobin hadn’t realized it would be more than two weeks before they returned.
Vruud had produced a pot of oily black sludge and told Tobin to work it into his hair. He went out again while Tobin obeyed, and came back soon with a pile of worn, drab clothing.
The shirt wasn’t too different from Tobin’s. The long trousers that gathered at the ankle were looser than his britches and felt strange, though they weren’t uncomfortable. A leather vest with pockets completed the outfit, along with a pair of sandals. The sandals were uncomfortable, their soles pressed into the shape of someone else’s feet, but a horseman’s boots under the clothing of a chanduri servant would be a dead giveaway. And, Vruud told Tobin, “dead” wasn’t a figure of speech.
