by Philip Reeve
If Ned had been herself she might have told him that that’s how it starts; you set out to punish bad people and end up punishing anyone who does not think exactly as you do. But she was not herself; an unusual meekness had come over her. The magic that Henwyn had called upon had not just made her young again, it had turned her into everything Henwyn thought a princess should be: beautiful and ladylike and a bit wet. Deep inside her somewhere, muffled, the old Ned struggled to break free, but the new one just stood there, drooping picturesquely and gazing up adoringly at Henwyn while he told her of his plans.
“Of course, I shall need an army,” he said. “Goblins would be best. Oh, why did Skarper have to run off like that? I would have made him captain over all the goblins of Clovenstone. Still, there are plenty more to do my bidding, I suppose. I expect they will all be knocking on the door when they know that the Lych Lord has returned. . .”
The goblins were not just knocking at doors; they were kicking them, headbutting them and smashing them down with axes as they milled through the lower levels of the Keep in search of treasure. At the sight of all those riches the alliance between the different towers had unravelled in an eye blink; Mad Manaccan’s Lads fell upon Chilli Hats and Growlers fought with Blackspikes, none wanting to let another tribe grab the best of the loot. After that, the members of each tribe started fighting among themselves. The floors of the treasure chambers grew slithery with spilled blood and dropped coins; fallen torches kindled small fires in piles of torn-down tapestries and smashed-up furniture, until the walls were flickering with the spiny shadows of the goblins, all thumping and throttling and hacking and impaling one another.
Through the din strode Knobbler, with old Breslaw hurrying at his heels, and all the biggest and fiercest of his goblin mob about him. With him, too, went Skarper’s batch-brothers, Yabber, Gutgust, Bootle, Wrench and Libnog. They had seen other hatchlings like them being bludgeoned by greedy Chilli Hats or kebabed on the long spears of Growlers, and they had decided that the safest place to be was next to Knobbler.
“Leave that!” the king bellowed at two small Mad Manaccan’s Lads carrying a golden shield. “That’s mine!” he roared, thumping another looter. But each time he was tempted to turn aside and stuff his own pockets with the shiny stuff he saw, Breslaw would lean close to him and whisper, “There’s a greater prize here, Knobbler. The Stone Throne, remember? Rest your fat goblin bum on that and all these treasures will seem only toys and trinkets.”
Knobbler grunted and looked around, squinting through the eye-slit of his bucket. “Where is it then? This throne?”
Breslaw jabbed a claw towards the ceiling. “Up.”
With another grunt, King Knobbler stomped towards the nearest stairway and started hurrying upwards. But he had only climbed a few floors when one of the other goblins, sharper-eared, said, “Listen! What’s that?”
It was a rattling and a crashing and thudding, faint at first but growing louder, and coming from somewhere above them. Soon even Knobbler could hear it inside his bucket. Mixed with the steady thumps and crashes there were yelps, and an occasional woeful cry of “Bumcakes!”
Round the bend of the stairway there came bounding what looked like a small wheel made of hair and metal. It bounced off a landing three stairs above the one where Knobbler stood and struck him square in the belly, knocking him backwards. He cannoned into Breslaw, who cannoned in turn into the goblins behind him, and they all went sprawling down to the landing below in a dropped-pot clatter of dinged armour and lost weapons.
Knobbler was the first to recover (it was reflexes like that that had made him king in the first place). He snatched up his sword and looked around angrily for the thing that had struck him down.
The thing uncurled and peered up at him.
“It’s that little runt!” he growled. “That Whotsisname. . .”
Skarper whimpered and hid his head in his paws again, as if that could protect it from the king’s wrath. Still dazed from his long tumble down the Keep’s stairs, he couldn’t imagine how Knobbler and the rest had come there.
Breslaw sadly shook his head. “Skarper,” he said. “What’s got into you, turning against your own kind and taking up with nasty softlings?”
Skarper peeked up at him. “They’re not nasty. They’re my friends.”
“Friends?” roared Knobbler, swinging Mr Chop-U-Up. “Goblins don’t have friends!”
Skarper yowled and threw himself sideways as the massive sword swished down. It missed him by a whisker and bit deep into the stone of the stairs.
“Get him!” roared Knobbler, trying to tug the blade free, but the goblins behind him were still untangling themselves, bruised and groaning. None of them had the chance to grab Skarper as he sprang up and scampered frantically over them and through a doorway at the far end of the landing.
Knobbler finally prised Mr Chop-U-Up out of the stair and made to go after him, but Breslaw grabbed him by the ankle. “Up!” he said. “The Stone Throne, remember?”
Knobbler nodded. “Get him, Dungnutt!” he bellowed again, and his second-in-command set off on Skarper’s trail. Knobbler straightened his helmet and started on up the stairs, running now, because he had worked out that Skarper’s softling friends must be somewhere inside the Keep as well, and he didn’t want them getting to the Stone Throne ahead of him. Up, up, up he went, past landings and doorways. Some of those rooms they passed were stuffed with treasure, and one by one the goblins who had followed him slunk off, bored with the long climb and eager to stuff their pockets. Soon only Breslaw was left, and Yabber, Gutgust, Bootle, Wrench and Libnog, who were too wary of the old hatchling master’s watchful eye and massive mallet to desert.
And then there were suddenly no more stairs to climb, and they all emerged behind Knobbler on to the metal map that floored the throne room.
Eluned keened with fright. Her memories of recent days had blurred when Henwyn made her young, but the memories of her girlhood were suddenly fresh and clear again, and the sight of Knobbler reminded her horribly of the night the Blackspike Boys had raided Porthstrewy and killed her mother and her father.
The goblins stood in a bunch at the head of the stairs. They saw the waiting Dragonbone Men, and the Stone Throne. Breslaw and the others drew back in fear, leaving Knobbler to stand alone before the gaze of the dark figure who sat waiting there.
“Hello!” said Henwyn. “What is your name, goblin?”
Knobbler mumbled something. He felt shy, which was a strange new feeling for him. He couldn’t help it, though. The goblins of Clovenstone had been servants for so long to the power of the Stone Throne that he could not help but bow before this new Lych Lord. “Knobbler,” he said. “King Knobbler. King of all the seven towers.”
“Excellent!” said Henwyn. “Then you shall be their captain when I get a proper goblin army sorted out. Things have been allowed to get pretty slack around here, Knobbler, but that’s all going to change now. I’m the new Lych Lord, it turns out. So kneel, and swear your loyalty to me.”
King Knobbler did not kneel, but he looked as if he half wanted to, and behind him Yabber, Gutgust, Bootle, Wrench and Libnog all sank to their knees.
Henwyn jumped up from the throne and came striding down the steps, and vague dark robes swirled around him like smoke and shadows. “My lord!” said Eluned in a warning voice as he went past her and strode across the bridge, but he paid her no heed. The Dragonbone Men stood aside to let him pass, and as he walked towards Knobbler the goblin king bowed lower and lower, until at last he was down on his knees, while Yabber, Gutgust, Bootle, Wrench and Libnog pressed their ugly faces against the floor and stuck their ugly bottoms in the air.
There was a clink of metal on metal as Knobbler set Mr Chop-U-Up on the floor before him. He was laying his weapon at the Lych Lord’s feet just as the goblin kings of long ago had done. But at his shoulder Breslaw gave a scathing hiss. “Ly
ch Lord? That’s no Lych Lord, Knobbler! Shams and trickeries is what he’s working! He’s naught but a softling! A stupid snivelling softling such as you’ve slaughtered by the score! Ignore him! Look at the throne, Knobbler! The throne! Ain’t it time it felt a goblin’s behind upon it?”
And to Knobbler it seemed that the smoky robes of the tall man who stood before him thinned and melted, and instead of the Lych Lord, grim-faced, terrible, he was looking at some shabby boy out of the softlands, with travel-stained clothes and a second-hand sword at his side. Indeed, it was the same shabby boy who had faced him two days before in the woods by the Oeth; the same second-hand sword that had left such a dent in his old helmet.
“You’re going to let yourself be owned and ordered by the likes of him?” asked Breslaw.
“Never!” grunted Knobbler. “NEVER!” he roared, and he snatched up the great blade that he had laid before the Lych Lord’s feet and, rising, swung it at his head instead.
Skarper was fast, but Dungnutt was faster. Skarper hared through the dim, vaulted passageways of the Keep, running he knew not where, and Dungnutt’s angry cries grew louder behind him, and the clatter of Dungnutt’s iron-shod paws came closer and closer.
Then, suddenly, from the shadows at the entrance to another stairway, a figure leaped out. Skarper, thinking it was more goblins come to head him off, squealed in terror and threw himself flat on the floor. Lucky for him that he did, for something big and dimly shiny swung above him and smashed into Dungnutt’s face. There was a loud, hollow dong like the note of a cracked bell: Dungnutt reeled backwards, and friendly hands heaved Skarper up and thrust him onwards, round a corner, up yet another stair.
It was a few seconds before he understood that he’d been rescued, and not until they paused for breath on a deserted landing that he saw who by.
The Sable Conclave had been forgotten by the goblins as soon as the lychglass broke. Ignored and half trampled, they had followed Knobbler’s boys into the Lych Lord’s halls and slunk up a narrow side stair to avoid the looting going on in the main part of the Keep. They had been looking for the Stone Throne, of course, but they soon got lost, and wandered vaguely among old bedchambers and wardrobes, doing a little genteel looting of their own.
It was pure luck that they had found themselves in the path of Skarper and his pursuer.
It was pure luck that Prawl had recognized him.
It was pure luck that Carnglaze happened to be carrying an enormous copper frying pan which he had taken from a pantry they’d explored. That was the thing he had used to wallop Dungnutt. It was still ringing faintly with the impact of the blow, and bore a deep dent in the shape of Dungnutt’s face.
“Did you see that?” Carnglaze chuckled, patting the pan. “Whang! That will teach those louts to tangle with the Sable Conclave!”
“And Fentongoose can work proper magic!” said Prawl excitedly. “‘Open,’ he said, and the lychglass shattered!”
Skarper shook his head. “That wasn’t Fentongoose,” he said. “That was the Lych Lord’s doing.”
Carnglaze shook his head. “Poor goblin! His adventures have sent him funny in the head. There is no Lych Lord, Skarper; he has been dead for years. . .”
“There is a new one!” explained Skarper. “And it’s Henwyn! He sat down on the Stone Throne. He’s descended from the old Lych Lord, it turns out, and now he’s flinging spells about. Look!” He showed them the glorious coat of mail he wore; his one remaining shoe (he’d lost the other tumbling down the stairs). “He made this stuff! He turned Princess Ned young again!”
“Henwyn? Descended from the Lych Lord?” Fentongoose said. “Then that explains why the cheese spell worked; why we picked on him in the first place! The old powers were not working through us, but through him.” He sounded both disappointed and a bit relieved. “All the prophecies – the Lych Lord’s return – it was young Henwyn all along.”
“Then the power of Clovenstone is in good hands,” said Prawl.
“Idiot!” said Skarper. “There aren’t no good hands for power like that! You remember what Princess Ned said? Power poisons people. You wait, he’ll be just like the old Lych Lord; conquering this and trampling that.”
“Then we must stop him!” said Fentongoose. “We must save him from himself!”
“How? Haven’t you been listening? He’s gone all magic!”
“Not yet,” said Fentongoose.
“Not wholly,” agreed Prawl.
“The power of Clovenstone will not wax full until the Lych Lord’s star hangs directly overhead,” explained Carnglaze. “Whatever spells Henwyn is weaving now, they are weak things, and will not have much power outside the chamber of the throne. Look. . .” And he reached out and pulled one of the scales from Skarper’s golden armour. It crumbled in his hand, dry and brown like a dead leaf, and Skarper looked down and saw that all the rest had withered too. He touched them with a paw and they dissolved into a drift of dust, and he was standing in his own clothes again.
“We may still persuade him to give up his power,” said Fentongoose.
“And hand it over to somebody who knows how to use it, you mean?” asked Skarper.
The old sorcerer blushed, and mumbled something about having spent a lifetime preparing to sit upon the Stone Throne and what a pity it would be if all that training went to waste, but his companions looked angrily at him.
“If we’ve learned one thing from our adventures here,” said Carnglaze, “it is not to tangle with goblins and magic and the old powers of the earth. Let us save Henwyn if we can, and then go home and take up a safer hobby.”
“Let’s save Henwyn,” said Skarper, “and then smash that Stone Throne up so there can never be another Lych Lord at all.”
Henwyn leaned backwards just in time, and Knobbler’s sword whisked past a half inch from the tip of his nose. He tried to work a spell, but although he could feel magic flaring and weaving all around him, it no longer seemed to flow through him; he couldn’t shape it or command it. It was the throne, he realized; he had to sit upon the throne. He turned to flee back across the bridge, but Knobbler blocked his way, breathing hard inside his bucket and readying his sword again. Magic lightning flamed and flared between the horns of Clovenstone, kindling a wicked gleam on Mr Chop-U-Up’s cutting edge.
“Dragonbone Men!” Henwyn shouted desperately.
With a leathery rustle the Lych Lord’s servants sprang forward to defend him. The other goblins cowered against the chamber walls, but Knobbler was braver than your average goblin, and Mr Chop-U-Up was not just any old goblin sword. Gods knew where Knobbler had come by it, in what deep armoury or warrior’s tomb, but it had been forged in the great furnaces of Clovenstone in days of old, and spells were layered in the folds of its steel. (It had probably had a better name than Mr Chop-U-Up in those days, but that was long forgotten.)
Swish! Flicker! Snick! The heads of three Dragonbone Men went bowling on the floor like wasps’ nests knocked down from the rafters.
“Hooray!” cheered the watching goblins.
“Nice one, King Knobbler!”
“Anchovies!”
Flicker! Swish! Spiff! Three more Dragonbone Men were felled. Arms and heads and spindly kicking legs tumbled over the flue’s brink and away down the long drop into the lava lake.
The last of them landed one blow, drawing black blood from Knobbler’s shoulder and opening a long gash in his armour, but then Mr Chop-U-Up went through him too and with a wrench and a kick Knobbler sent him after his comrades down the flue.
“The softling!” shouted Breslaw. “He’s getting away! Don’t let him reach the throne!”
Knobbler looked round. Sure enough, while he had been distracted, Henwyn had made it past him and out on to the bridge. Knobbler roared and leapt after him, and Henwyn, knowing that he could not reach the throne without a fight, turned to face him, drawing his own s
word and trying to remember the moves he’d practised in his bedroom at the cheesery.
That was when Skarper arrived, scrambling up the stairs with the Sable Conclave panting and complaining behind him. He felt his eyes turn wide as saucers as he took in the scene. He saw the strewn wreckage of the Dragonbone warriors. He saw Eluned pale and beautiful beside the throne. He saw Henwyn and King Knobbler facing each other on that narrow bridge.
He did not see Breslaw and the other goblins, who had drawn back into the shadows around the edges of the room to watch the fun. He didn’t see them until it was too late. “Stop him!” hissed Breslaw, and he found himself wrestled to the floor by Yabber and Libnog while the rest of his batch-brothers lay in wait to grab the sorcerers, one by one, as they came to the top of the stairs.
Out on the bridge, Henwyn swung his sword, but it rebounded from Knobbler’s gnarly armour. He raised it again to parry the blow that Knobbler swung at him, and Mr Chop-U-Up bit through the second-hand blade in a shower of sparks. Henwyn was left nursing a jarred arm and clutching the useless stub of his sword while the broken-off shard went ringing and dinging away down the shaft beneath him, down, down, down towards the lava far below. Knobbler started to laugh, but Henwyn, in desperation, jabbed the broken blade at him, and luck guided his hand. The sharp stub grated across the goblin’s breastplate and slid through the gash the Dragonbone Man had opened there, biting deep into Knobbler’s vitals.
The watching goblins gasped and growled.
“Henwyn!” shouted Skarper.
“Oh well done!” called the sorcerers.
“Arrghle!” said Knobbler, swaying backwards. Mr Chop-U-Up fell from his paw and clattered on the bridge. He collapsed slowly, like a goblin-shaped tent with all its guy-lines cut, till he was kneeling in front of Henwyn again. Black goblin blood twined down his thighs and puddled around his knees like oil.