by Nikki Frank
“I still don’t see anything.”
“Use your magic to sense the mine. Not your eyes.”
I closed my eyes a second time, but all I got were impressions of his body against mine and visions of . . . My blush returned with a vengeance. Refocusing, I found the entrance, nothing more than a small rise covered in grass and wildflowers. But with magic, a thin slit in the ground at the base of this became visible.
“The guards must be on the inside?”
Iya shook his head. “The rock and the log. But see how they’ve dug themselves into the dirt? They hate the light.”
“Can we sneak past?” I asked.
Iya shook his head. “Too risky. Can you take them out from here?”
I nodded as a bow and a vial materialized in my hands. The tips of two arrows were dipped in the vial.
“Naga venom,” I answered Iya’s questioning look. My insides puffed up as a pleased hiss escaped him.
I strung the first arrow and drew it back, the string making a quiet twang upon release. Immediately, the second arrow went the way of the first. Two soft thuds drew a smile from us both. I’d hit well, and the poison could kill from a single nick. A full dose of naga venom would completely disintegrate the bodies and the arrow shafts, it was so caustic. It left no evidence, unless the goblins were smart enough to test for the venom. They might find traces in the soil.
Hot breath washed over my neck. “God, you’re sexy when you’re deadly.” Iya pulled his body away from mine and gave me a swift kiss to the cheek. “Remind me not to piss you off.”
I used magic to put us both in Hermes shoes. Mine resembled black ballet slippers, and Iya’s were soft leather slippers. This way, we would be silent as we went through the tunnels. Iya smiled his approval.
Sneaking to the opening, I waved at Iya to follow me. Dagger in hand, I dropped to my belly, worming my way through the crack. The inside appeared deserted. A silent leap to the floor and one more jump backed me against a wall. Iya arrived a moment later.
We made it. He spoke through our magic.
I nodded.
Half-way through my nod, a silent explosion rocked the entire mine. Vibrating pressure screamed at my magic. Iya pressed me back against the wall, and his power slid over us both.
I used an illusion, he explained in my head. We set off an alarm. They can’t see us, but they can still feel, hear, and smell us. We’ve got to get out of here.
You studied the maps, I told him. You lead the way.
Iya kept us pressed against the wall and slid further inside the mine tunnel. The first of the goblin guards arrived, weapons drawn. Iya’s illusion worked, and no one noticed us. Light disappeared swiftly as we snuck deeper. My new night vision kicked in, making the tunnel appear lit with soft moonlight.
I listened as the goblins all tried to talk over each other. Not enough time had passed for the naga venom to dissolve the evidence, blowing my trick. Now they would look for traces of venom if people went missing.
We passed the disorganized guard and slipped into the tunnel Iya wanted—a hewn rock tube which led us under the Goblin Kingdom. In the blackness, the walls appeared as nondescript rock, but at least the surfaces were dry. My last adventure had involved damp, dark, claustrophobic tunnels of the unpleasant sort. We appeared to be in an arterial tunnel tall enough for Iya to stand comfortably. The tube stretched on with a gentle downward grade in the direction we needed to go. High on the adrenaline of sneaking in, we went for another hour before my exhaustion finally won.
I need to rest, or I’m going to make a mistake and blow our cover.
Yeah, I should probably rest, too. He pointed to a boarded-up tunnel on the left. We’ll sneak in there for a short nap. Short!
Iya pulled a board loose, and I shimmied in through the hole. How he fit in through the same hole baffled me. But he managed and replaced the board behind himself.
Sorry, we can’t have a fire. We’ll have to eat whatever cold food you packed. He made a low mattress and some blankets appear. You sleep first. One of us should keep watch.
Help yourself to the rations. I’m too tired to eat.
I curled under the covers, and a moment later, Iya joined me. His leg ran along mine sending squirming things into a frenzy in my stomach. His nose pressed into the back of my neck, followed by his lips.
Too tired, I reiterated.
Even for snuggling?
You don’t want to just snuggle. What happened to all the danger?
He put a string of kisses up my neck. It’s the danger that makes the opportunity so thrilling. What a perfect cocktail of adrenaline. How could you resist?
Easily. I couldn’t breathe. His hands now caressed the skin of my stomach. Iya, no— I pushed him gently away.
He let out a sigh that I felt on the back of my neck rather than heard. As you wish, Mistress Olivia. In that case, sleep and dream of me.
A wave of his power forced my eyes shut. As he ordered, dreams of him ruled my sleep, though I would never have spoken those dreams aloud. They set fires in my body and made me want to wake up and finish them in person.
I blinked at the darkness in front of my eyes. Silence covered the tunnel like a heavy blanket. The walls around us began to take shape as my eyes adjusted. They looked the same as when I’d fallen asleep.
Asleep!
I’d woken on my own, completely rested. That shouldn’t have happened with us trading watches. Sure enough, Iya lay, curled beside me, breathing softly. Some guard.
“Did you sleep well?”
I scrambled across Iya and against the wall as an unfamiliar voice came from the dark beside the bed.
“Who’s there?” I whispered to the cavern as a dagger materialized in my hand.
A man about my height walked directly out of the rock wall beside us. In the dark, his skin was gray and dusty. He looked like a . . .
“Goblin.” My teeth clenched, and my muscles tensed to spring at him.
He laughed. “If I were a goblin, you’d have been eaten already.” He held out a hand, palm up in an unfamiliar greeting. “Bazyli the kobold. Tell me all about yourselves. Only my curiosity has kept me from calling the guards.”
“We’d kill you before they got here,” Iya growled at him.
He shrugged. “Probably. But the goblins wouldn’t really care, and neither would I.”
I cocked my head. “Why wouldn’t you care?”
Iya let out an exaggerated sigh and rolled his eyes. “Here we go again. Another chance to save some random, bedraggled creature.”
“Saving others is not limited to the people I like or the people living in my district. If this kobold doesn’t care whether he lives, maybe we can help him, too.”
Bazyli gave a gurgling laugh. “You’re a funny creature. You can’t help a kobold.”
“Why?”
“Because we are the slaves of the goblins. They put us to work nearly a thousand years ago because of our ability to move directly through the soil. We have no offensive magic. We are helpless against them.”
Iya crossed his arms. “I doubt that. Not many magic creatures of your intelligence are truly helpless.”
“We are as brownies are to the elves.”
My mind still struggled to grasp this. “So, kobolds are related to goblins? And you’re still their slaves?”
“Yes, but . . .” He gave me a hard stare. “You are what type? Are all in your family tree treated equally?”
This made me pause. He had a point. “No. The fairies look down on imps, but we’re not slaves.”
“An imp!” He ducked and cowered against the wall. “You feed the goblin court. You don’t need to hide from them. They should welcome you.”
“You said your ancestors were enslaved a thousand
years ago?” Iya asked.
Bazyli shuddered. “By King Valkyv himself. As we speak, the Goblin Kingdom celebrates his millennial birthday. But for us Kobold, it is a time of mourning.”
Iya nibbled thoughtfully at his lower lip. “We need to get into the palace without being found and as quickly as possible. Can you help us with this?”
Bazyli began trembling all over. “They’d torture me. Death, I don’t mind. But they’d make sure I didn’t die for such a crime.”
“And what if we told you, you would be paid in freedom? Not just for you, but your entire race?” Iya asked.
“How? How can you even offer such a thing?”
Iya shook his head. “I don’t trust you enough. But I will trust you to take us, unseen, into the palace if you will trust us to free you and your kind in return.”
“Why do you need to get into the palace in hiding?” Bazyli asked suspiciously.
Iya winked at him and shook his head. “This is going to have to be blind trust.”
One small snap followed another. Bazyli fidgeted, breaking his nails off in nervousness. I took his hands and pulled them apart.
“Don’t do that. We’re your friends. Or we can be if you’ll trust us. Soon life will get a whole lot better for all of us. But nothing can happen until we get to the palace. Please?”
I used my sweetest voice, still holding his hands apart so he couldn’t pick. Bazyli glanced at me, then down at my hands with a startled expression. Suddenly he rubbed the backs of my hands with his thumbs.
“All right. I can’t refuse a plea from such a pretty girl.”
“Hey, hey.” Iya swatted Bazyli’s hands away. “That’s my wife.”
“Oh.” Bazyli backed swiftly off. “I, uh . . . sorry. I mean, never mind. This way.” He waved his hands over the rock wall, and the earth split apart. At the edge of the dirt, he stopped and eyed Iya. “You are masking it well, but you hold very dark magic.” Bazyli scratched at his pointed ears. “If this fails, could you kill me quickly? I don’t want the goblins to have me.”
“If things get bad, I can’t promise I’ll have time, but I’ll try,” Iya said.
Bazyli grinned over his shoulder at us. “We’ll take our own private tunnels.”
“Perfect,” Iya hissed gleefully.
Our little party cut a path through solid stone the way a boat might through swamp reeds. Bazyli parted the front of the stone, and it closed seamlessly behind Iya. I followed in the middle. We had no way to tell the passage of time underground. But my stomach’s rumbling led me to call a halt.
“I need to eat something to function my best when we arrive.”
Iya nodded, and Bazyli pushed the walls of stone back, then pulled rock stools and a table from the ground.
“You make that look so easy,” I told him, glancing at my ring. “We’ve done a little rock manipulation, but it took a tremendous amount of power.”
He smiled back at me. “Yet you can slip unseen and unheard into places and take children from beneath their parent’s noses. I couldn’t open a window unheard. We hold the talents we’re meant to.” He gave Iya a long stare. “I can’t guess what you are. You’re not an imp, yet you’re bonded to one. The pair of you confuses me.”
“You’ve also met the types of creatures you were meant to,” Iya countered. “My wife is a bit too forthcoming. If you haven’t dealt with my kind, it’s best not to say more. But that’s not surprising. In general, most creatures of your level don’t deal with my kind.”
“Creatures of my level?” Bazyli scowled at Iya. “That’s a very goblinish thing to say.”
At this point, I stopped setting out rations and flicked a small rock at Iya.
“Iya suffers from an excess of ego, but he’s not goblinish.” A shudder shook through me. “I’ve met some really vile creatures, and none have come close to goblins. They make my skin crawl in their own special way.” I sat beside Iya and gave him a playful elbow to the ribs. “You’re not vile, just nasty.”
“You have no idea.” He ran his tongue along my ear. I shuddered and started to run away, but he caught me and pulled me close. “Nuh-uh. You stay right where you’re at. Where do you think you’re gonna go in a six-foot hole in the middle of solid bedrock, anyway?”
“Bazyli’s watching,” I whispered, dropping my face toward the floor.
“Mmm . . . Sounds even more fun.”
He took my cheeks in his hands and squeezed, forcing my face up to kiss me. Parting his lips, he gave me a little shot of magic, and my head swam.
My very core vibrated. More and more, our individual magics were slowly harmonizing as we used them together. They were aligning the very makeup of our beings. If our bond felt like this now, how would it feel in a year or fifty? No wonder magic creatures didn’t separate. The kiss deepened, and I couldn’t think about anything but the taste of Iya’s magic and the feel of his lips. When he broke the kiss, I faltered toward him. He grinned at me.
“This way Bazyli won’t pet your hands again,” he whispered.
I gaped at him like a fish.
He smiled and patted my head. “Hurry up and eat.” Then he turned his attention back to Bazyli. “How far have we come? And when is it? We came into the mine mid-afternoon.”
Bazyli wrinkled his nose. “Then I’d guess you’ve been here a day and a half.”
“What,” I shrieked.
“Shh . . .” Iya cautioned.
“We’re in a six-foot hole in the middle of bedrock,” I snarked. “Who’s gonna hear? I could yell you have purple polka-dots on your ass, and no one can hear.”
Bazyli snickered, a hand over his mouth. “Does he really?”
“No,” Iya and I snapped together.
I stood and stuffed my crackers in my mouth. “We need to get going. We were way too lazy. How could we sleep the better part of a day?”
“Would it help if I said we’re less than a mile from the palace?” Bazyli asked.
I stopped in my tracks. “Yes. It would.” Some of the tension left my shoulders. “How did we manage that?”
“The mines wander all over. Kobold created the tunnels to gather precious minerals. But the three of us went straight through rock in a direct line to the palace.”
For the first time, things were going right. “Bazyli, you’re awesome. I can’t thank you enough.”
“Setting my kind free is plenty of thanks.” He turned his face to the floor. “Assuming you really can,” he muttered.
I ignored him. We hadn’t offered enough information to confirm we really had a chance. “Once we’re done, will you get us out and away from the palace? If you take us straight through the rock back home, it would really solve a lot of problems.”
Bazyli shrugged. “Why not? I’m already a traitor.”
Iya gave me a winning smile. “If this works out, I might have to stop giving you crap about picking up every stray we run across.”
I rolled my eyes. That wasn’t even worth a reply. “Time to go.”
“Not yet,” Iya said. “Bazyli, we need to get into a part of the palace where we won’t be obvious but will still be a short distance from the main chambers.”
“That’s going to be hard,” Bazyli frowned and rubbed the back of his head, “Since the millennial celebration is going on in the throne room and main banqueting hall. Guard is heavy around that. Why? Party crashing?”
“Party-pooping,” I said.
“Huh?” Bazyli scratched his head in complete confusion.
“A human turn of phrase. Don’t worry about it.”
He gave us another studious look. “Can either of you perform proper fire-magic?”
Iya and I both nodded, and Bazyli stuck his hand directly into the wall of rock surrounding us. When he pulled it out,
he had his fist closed around something. The room filled with an acrid smell, which made my eyes water.
“Neferrum.” He opened his hand. On his palm sat two small rocks. “The common name is Demon Ore. It reacts with fire and will fill the room with smoke. The ore burns for quite a while and might give you a chance to get out if you get in a tight spot.”
“Why Demon Ore?” I asked. “Just because it reacts with fire?”
He handed one rock to each of us. “No. The more powerful the fire used, the more powerful the reaction. If it contacts demon fire, get ready for fireworks. Conceivably the ore could blow apart a room and spew poisonous smoke for as long as it burned. Legend says demons are immune from the gases. But I wouldn’t really know. This is a banned substance in the Goblin Kingdom, and exporting it is punishable by death. The only way to find Demon Ore is to be a Kobold. As slaves, we don’t get out to meet any demons to sell to. So, no issue, really.”
I caught the gleam in Iya’s eyes. Evidently, Bazyli didn’t because he blazed ahead in selling a dangerous item to a dangerous customer.
“The goblins don’t want demons to be any more powerful than they already are,” he continued. “They say demons are truly terrifying creatures. Indiscriminate killers with a lust for as much evil magic as they can get their claws on. So, of course, they guard this secret.” Bazyli shuddered. “I’ve never met a demon. I can’t imagine how horrible they must be if the goblins fear them so. You said you'd met lots of horrible creatures,” he whispered to me. “Have you met a demon?”
I gave an involuntary snort of laughter. “The last creature I met who fit your description of a demon was a minotaur running amok. A lot depends on the individual. Goblins really ought to look in the mirror before they start casting accusations. They’re pretty bad themselves.”
Bazyli gave me a wide grin. “I fully agree.” A little sigh whispered out. “Is this what it’s like to be free? To converse with who you want, when you want, and about anything? No kobolds would dare say the things about goblins you’ve said, true or not.”