by Olivia Hart
“Half the goblins decided to leave this morning,” she said between bites. “Told me where they were going. Lots are joining the army. Weird. They’re little like me. What are they going to do?” She shook her head. “Others are making things. Others went to be hunters. Even weirder. Guess goblins are weird like fairies.”
“Did anyone else quit?” I asked.
She shook her head. “There’s talk. Nobody quit though. Maybe tomorrow. They’re thinking.”
I nodded.
“Keep me informed, Asli,” I said, and she nodded, focused on her food. She kept glancing at the dragon, and every time she did, he shrank further behind Sebastian. What a strange event.
Asli seemed to be able to keep everyone around her in line. Even a dragon. I was just glad that she hadn’t tried to tell me or Sebastian what to do.
Sebastian finished his food and we waited patiently for Asli to finish the salad. Then it was time to meet with the new council. A council I could trust.
* * *
Cara, Asli, Sinivyn, John, Andryn, Amra, Duma, and Beryl sat around a much larger table with Sebastian and me. Kasia and Talek stood. Beryl would still oversee the Dark Court’s finances. I’d gone through several of her record books, and though she had her favorite people to contract, none of it was outlandishly priced. She hadn’t done a bad job, and she’d done it for longer than anyone could remember.
Plus, I didn’t have the time to have someone try to step in. None of the people in this council had an aptitude for finances.
Duma was here because Sebastian believed that she could be left in charge of the Dark Tower. She was frustrated by the changes, but she seemed capable of adapting. I’d had a talk with her yesterday. The gnomes and Cara were going to help make decisions until Duma understood the way that I would run things.
Beryl began to speak, but Sebastian interrupted her. “Before we get going, I would like to reiterate the fact that we are changing the way that things work in the Dark Realm. The council will make decisions, but all major decisions will be brought here.”
“Cara is going to oversee the Dark Realm’s general interests outside of the Dark Court. Duma will see to the Tower’s day-to-day running. Kasia, Sinivyn, John, and Asli will be in charge of the city outside the Tower including construction other than the defenses.”
“Beryl, you will continue to be in charge of the financials of the Dark Court. This will be expanded to include all types of supplies.”
“Amra, Andryn, Talek, and I will be in charge of the war efforts. We will divide tasks amongst ourselves.”
“Are there any questions?”
“What will you be doing, Queen Rose, if we are doing all of these things?” Beryl asked with only the slightest sneer.
I began to speak, but Sebastian interrupted again, no longer sitting back on the sidelines. “She will be doing all of the things that you have no knowledge of. There is much more going on than you are aware of, and that is purposeful. There has never been a war between the Realms, and the fallout of this war could be catastrophic.”
Beryl sat back, not entirely satisfied with the answer, but that was all that Sebastian was willing to say on the subject, so I began the meeting.
“Are there any pressing concerns at the moment other than war concerns?” I asked.
“I’ve lost half my staff, but you already know that,” Duma said. “Though, there have been quite a few people that have asked to replace the goblins. We may not be as understaffed as I’d expected.”
“What do we do if centaurs, or anyone for that matter, stop wanting to be soldiers?” Beryl asked, surprisingly curious rather than dismissive.
“I think that we’ll all be surprised at the number of races that want to be a part of the army,” Cara said. “Many of the races were considered too weak or vulnerable to be allowed to join in the past.”
I nodded. “That’s what I expect as well.”
Andryn added, “It will be difficult to utilize troops that are inexperienced and whom we do not have a history of utilizing. Who knows what value goblins will have in war efforts?”
I already had thoughts on this matter. I’d seen enough fantasy movies to know the value of goblins.
“Sebastian, would you please explain the plans for the war?”
He nodded and began. “We need to focus on two fronts. One, we need to reinforce our current defenses in case Seraphina moves quickly. The Fae are generally slow to move, but Seraphina lived as a human for long enough that she will not be afraid to move quickly. I will leave Talek and Andryn in charge of this.”
“It will involve building defenses and training our troops to defend the Dark Court. Seraphina will assault the surrounding countryside to draw us out, but her only real goal is killing Rose and holding the Tower.”
“The second side of this is to gather the Dark Realm citizens who would not otherwise join us. The banshees, the ogres, the trolls, the dryads. All of the ones who hide in the dark places and have little contact with the outside world. We need their numbers, and we need their strength, but we’ll have to convince them to risk their lives for us. This will be mine and Amra’s task.”
“And a smaller objective is to rebuild the Assassin’s Guild. Using the Queen’s Gift and shadow walking, an Assassin’s Guild will be capable of wreaking havoc on Seraphina’s troops.”
“Are there any questions as to our goals?”
Silence again. The tasks were simple for now, but we would run into roadblocks soon enough.
“Good,” I said. “If you need guidance outside of the meetings, please let me know. These tasks are more important than anything else because they will determine the fate of the entire Dark Realm.”
Everyone began to stand up, and Sebastian put his hand on my thigh. Giving it a tight squeeze, he helped me to calm down. Somehow, after less than a year, I was making decisions on how to prepare for a war between two halves of an entire world.
There were no council members who had fought wars like this. It was unprecedented. Even the Dark Throne’s memories gave no advice. This was never supposed to happen.
But it was happening, and no matter how much we denied it, there was no stopping it unless Seraphina did something uncharacteristic. I would not be the one to strike the first blow, but when the blow happened, I would retaliate, and the world would shake when I took the field.
Until then, we would be sure that we were prepared, and this was the beginning of that preparation.
Chapter 12
Tamira
“Sister, your gifts to the Mother of Darkness will not end well.” I stood on the broken ground of her World of Death. She was not my enemy and never had been. She was exactly what the world had needed. An end to things, to ideas, to memories, to worlds.
She cawed in response, “She offers sacrifices, and I give information. I have done this since the beginning, Sister.”
“She is not a true Queen. She claims the gifts but refuses the sacrifice. This one will not honor your relationship.”
My sister shook her wings, several of her feathers ruffling. “She will not receive information without giving an adequate sacrifice. Her magic is too weak to affect me. What will the false Queen do to break this trade?”
I shook my head. My sister was clever, but as with all of the old ones, she was not always as clever as the young ones.
“I do not know. Maybe the White Queen would know, but I cannot guess. I do not trust this fairy.”
“Sister, you worry about me too much. I have seen far worse than this fairy.”
“The lines that bind us all warn me that there is more to her than you can see. Her mind is not clear anymore. And there are influences that seem impossible. Be wary. Even beings such as we are not immune to clever schemes.”
My sister cawed again and took to the air. She would go to one of the many windows into the Immortal Realm. She had dismissed my words, but she had not dismissed the information. She, of all beings in the worlds, knew how valuable information was.
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War Report 3
The town of Drathe on the road between the Court of Light and the Dark Court was destroyed. This time, there was a survivor. An elf who somehow managed to escape. The casualties are expected to be nearly a thousand, and the report by the survivor is troubling.
The elf reports that the attackers were from the Court of Light and that the walls were broken by mountain trolls while dozens of fairies attacked the defenders. Our patrols cannot protect these small towns against giants and troops of fairies.
We request more soldiers and more fairies. Otherwise, the best we can do is to harry the enemy until the civilians can escape.
War is here, and we need to protect the people of the Dark Realm. Please send us the reinforcements that we need.
Chapter 13
Rose
I was comfortable. Everything, for once, felt like it was under control. My friends from the village were managing all of the responsibilities I’d been unable to trust to anyone else. Now, it was only the most important or most confusing questions that were brought to me.
I could handle that. I didn’t want to stop being Queen. I didn’t want to stop worrying about fixing things. I just felt like there was too much for one person to handle.
And now there was this. I smiled down at Kral who had woken me in the middle of the night for the first test run of his No-Walk. I’d been annoyed initially, but after feeling his excitement, I couldn’t ignore it. This was important for reasons that I wasn’t entirely sure of.
It was built differently than human elevators, as there couldn’t be any iron or steel. Instead, the platform had been built of thick bronze, an alloy that was made in abundance. It made the No-Walk far heavier than any elevator. At the same time, the cable had been made of a metal that I’d never heard of before, though I had seen it.
It was what the necklace that Sebastian had bought from the artificer to hide my scent had been made from. A strangely hard silver metal. Kral had explained that it was a useless metal as it could not be mixed with anything else. It was only used as a building material because it was hard to work with and wasn’t exactly pretty.
Rails made of wood ringed the platform, and there was no roof. It wasn’t a simple platform, though. The brass floor had been etched with a scene of goblins in suits of silver armor, their leathery ears unmistakable. They stared down an army of cavalry in suits of golden plate. I couldn’t help but grin.
“How will you power it?” I asked the goblin.
“Artificery. I contracted one of the best artificers in the Tower, and we sat down to work through the options. The simple idea is that the power of stone pulls and releases the cable. Someone will have to activate switches, and another person will ride the No-Walk and send signals down to him. It will still be so much faster than walking all the way up and down the stairs.”
“Clever. Let’s see it work. Do you mind if I carry you down to the motor? I’ll ride it and you can run the motor.”
“That is fine, Lady.”
I picked Kral up, and I tried to be a little less jarring as I stepped onto the railing over the void below us. My wings lifted me, and instead of zipping downward, I took it slowly. Even with how easy I was flying, Kral’s entire body tensed as he looked down.
When we landed, he let out an audible sigh of relief, but he quickly hurried over to the motor. It was made of that same silver metal. Wrapped in a mix of gold and silver wires, a deep brown crystal sat in the center of the “motor”. Two wires were connected to a lever, and when Kral shifted them, one of the wires moved away from the crystal while the other touched it.
As soon as the wire touched the crystal, the spool of cable began to unwind, and the brass platform slowly began a controlled drop. It was working. This little goblin who had been forced to clean and serve had been capable of inventing things that would enrich the lives of everyone in the Dark Tower.
I grinned at him as the No-Walk landed on the ground. Kral said, “It’s not ready for general use yet. I still need to test its weight capacities and the wire stress, but it works.”
“It’s fantastic. I hope that your wife is ready to be married to the official Royal Inventor.”
“Royal Inventor? What is that?”
“It’s your new position. You’ve just earned yourself a noble title. To my knowledge, you’ll be the first noble goblin in the history of the Dark Realm.”
He gave me that slow blink that was so reminiscent of a cat and said, “But I didn’t do anything important.”
I pointed at the elevator and said, “That’s going to save a lot of people a lot of time and energy. More importantly, it’s going to save the men on the walls a lot of time if we’re attacked. You’re going to install these No-Walks at strategic points along the walls to speed up resupply and reinforcements. Then, I’ll have you get started on all of the other projects that we’ll need to test.”
“No one would have imagined that a goblin would have made the No-Walk, and we’re going to keep surprising them. This is what happens when you give people the chance to do what they were born to do instead of what people expect them to do.”
This time, Kral grinned. Sometimes it was the littlest people who could make the biggest difference.
Chapter 14
Sebastian
The Throne Room was filled to bursting today. The last time that Rose had held Court had been before her decree that no one would be forced to do a job, that she would not allow slavery of any kind in the Dark Realm.
A troll stepped forward. Trolls were the size of extremely large men, most of them standing close to eight feet tall. Unlike ogres, they weren’t large enough to topple buildings, but they were strong enough to break trees simply by pushing on them.
Trolls had skin similar to dryads, the colors and textures of bark. Their hair and beards were kept in braids traditionally, and they had long canine teeth that tended to protrude from their lips like short tusks.
The oddest thing about trolls was how they moved, though. Their steps had a rhythm that didn’t make sense. One foot would fall at a different speed than the next when they walked. Their hands would move quickly and then slow drastically. Everything about them from their words to their mannerisms moved to the beat of a foreign drum.
This troll was a prisoner who had assaulted his overseers while chopping trees in a forest close to the Dark Court. He’d been abused like the ogre, but this had been before Rose had come to power, and so he’d been given a sentence of slavery for three hundred years. Instead of cutting trees in the cool forest, he’d been sent to a salt mine.
Normally, prisoners were not allowed to request an audience with the Queen, but Rose had included them in her call for petitioners for this very reason. He wore rags, and his body was covered in sores from his cracking skin. Long scars from whippings crisscrossed his body.
“Queen,” he said, falling to his knees. “You let ogre live when he kill workers. I not kill workers. I just hurt. Same thing happen as him. I hear story. I ask for freedom. I not want to be slave. I not want to be in salt mine. Please free Jinjin.”
Rose looked at Jinjin and said, “What do you want to do Jinjin? If I let you go free, what do you want to do?”
The troll didn’t look at Rose. “I not know. Go home. See wife. Eat good food. Be a troll. Not a slave.”
She seemed to think, and I felt an explosion of excitement. That was surprising as she’d already decided that all prisoners who had been violent in similar ways to the ogre would be freed.
“Jinjin, I will free you. You did what anyone would do. The same thing that any fairy would have done if they’d been forced to work as you did, to be treated the way that you were treated. The Dark Realm may allow hunters to hunt, but we will not allow laziness, and slavery is laziness.”
The troll looked up, and for the first time in my life, I saw a troll cry in happiness. As the tears fell to the stone floor under his knees with soft splashes, he said, “Thank you, Queen. Thank you. Thank yo
u. I will write songs of you. Songs about beauty and wisdom. Songs about how you not like other fairies. Thank you.”
“I have a favor to ask you, Jinjin. Will you introduce my husband to your people? We need many hands to help with the war efforts, and troll hands are strong and quick.”
“You force trolls to work? To fight?”
Rose shook her head. “Absolutely not. But, I would like to see if any would be willing to work or to fight.”
Jinjin shrugged. “I will do this. Don’t think it work good, but I will show you my people.” He stood up. “Long trip to my people. Need lot of food.”
“The Prince of Shadows will take you there. You’ll be home tonight.”
Jinjin bowed, and he turned to me. “I wait outside.”
Rose stood up and said, “We will continue in a moment. Prince, come speak with me.”
She walked behind the Throne, and I met her there. In a hushed whisper, she said, “We need the trolls to support us. For building and for war. They aren’t violent, and they won’t be impressed by it.”
She took a deep breath and focused on the wall behind me. I knew the expression well by now. She was searching through memories of the culture, learning about the history of the trolls in seconds through visions.
When she turned back to me, she said, “Challenge a female to a drinking contest, Sebastian. She’ll refuse you, but don’t let her back down. And let me remind you that you need to win this drinking contest.”
I took a deep breath. “How am I supposed to win a drinking contest with a troll, Rose?”
She shrugged. “I have no idea. You’re a tricky guy, Sebastian. Figure out a way. Smoke and mirrors, lover.”
I tried to put on a smile, but she knew how I felt. I couldn’t hide things from her anymore, not now that we were bonded.
“I’ll do what I can, Rose.”
