“How could he jolly well be lonely?” Orn exclaimed. “He’s got us! He’s got his animals! He’s got the jewels!”
“Oh, just let her stay, it might be a lark,” Joll said, grinning.
“In any case, let us be done with this bother,” Drows said, yawning hugely.
“If you need more company,” said Chief to the prince, “your father can send another fey up to join you.”
“No!” Idris said hotly. He wrapped his arms around his body as if he only just noticed the chill. “No,” he repeated, voice becoming small. “You know I don’t wish for any of their company save for Father and the Loresman. They stare so. I always feel it. And she doesn’t.”
After another moment of unhappy silence, the chief released a groaning sigh, deep and heavy as shifting earth. “The moment she causes trouble, she is gone,” he said finally.
Then Idris knew he had won, and he threw his arms around the goblin with glad abandon. No words did he speak, but the mewling cry from his throat seemed to please the goblins more than anything, and the fox yipped in excitement around their feet.
He hurried outside where Keeva sat upon the rocks, pulling her windswept hair back into its braid.
“They will let you stay,” he exclaimed. “And I may be able to help you hunt Dohmnal. I have tried to find his lair before.”
Keeva had not stood yet, and she looked thoughtfully upon the figure before her. Her first impression of his mysterious power and presence was long since blown away on the wind, and she felt an impulse to laugh at his childish excitement.
“Are the goblins your guardians or your keepers so that you must gain their permission for what you do?” she asked.
He stiffened as if he’d been bit, and she swallowed her words too late in regret. She must not forget that he was still fey, sensitive to insult, and not as tame as he seemed.
“I am sorry,” she said quickly. “I meant no offense. I only find it strange that a sídhe lives here with goblins. I did not know of an alliance between them and the great Court.”
His arched shoulders relaxed, and she knew the danger past. “It is strange,” he said. “But they are my friends, and this land first belongs to them, so I must honor their wishes. And they will allow you to be my guest. You may call me …Fingall.”
Of course it was not his true name, she knew that. All fey guarded their names jealously, and humans were wise to do the same. “You may call me Huntress,” she said.
“That is a title, not a name,” he noted.
“It is all I need,” she said, and followed him into the house.
4
Keeva woke to a wet nose sniffing her face. She lashed out her arm with a gasp, but hit nothing but air. Blinking aside layers of sleep, she shoved herself up into a sitting position, and stared at the fox panting at the foot of her bed. Her heart jolted to opposite sides of her chest in confusion, before she remembered the night previous.
Ah, yes. She was a sídhe’s guest up in the mountains. Though the air kissing her face was cold, her body was quite warm from sleeping under all the furs. She heaved out of bed and quickly donned the boots and coat that she had discarded, then strapped on her belts and weapons. A little globe of light had hovered gently in the air throughout the night, but now it brightened at her waking and bobbed before her as she wandered down the long halls. The fox bounded ahead to lead the way, whisking its long tail back and forth, an astonishing thing as she’d never seen the shy creatures act like a dog.
The faerie man…this…Fingall… stood before a stone table, arranging fruits on a tray with artistic talent. His head tilted as she came, and his hand flitted to the wraps on his face as if to make certain they were still secure. He tossed a peach her way, and she caught it deftly.
“Before you head out this morning,” he said, “I thought you might like to see my craft.”
“What?” Keeva said, biting into the fruit. “You mean you don’t spend the day cleaning the house and singing with the animals?” He laughed at that, and she wondered if she should find his laugh repulsive, but found she could not when it was filled with such joy.
Turning to a small chest upon a pedestal, he lifted the lid and retrieved two instruments of delicate woven gold. These he slipped over his hands and secured about his wrists and she saw that they were formed to replace his three middle fingers. There were not solid, only an outer shell of twined design, and yet when he flexed his hand they moved with his real fingers.
“Come on,” he said. “It’s in the goblin mines.”
The mines were not far from his cave, only a short distance down a well-worn path curving around the mountain side, and they were impossible to mistake as anything but mines with its warped wood beams and tracks leading into the mountain’s mouth.
“It is here that the jewels for the faeries are found. The goblins send them as tribute to the Seelie King.”
She wondered at the freedom with which he told her such valuable secrets and led her to this cave, but then, she suspected that finding the cave would be impossible for any mortal without fey aid.
The ball of light had followed them even here and its glow sent the walls of the mine glittering from waterdrops more brilliant than any diamond. The rock itself was black and crude, hardly looking like the sort of thing to hide precious gems. But as they traveled deeper down, the rings of picks and the grind of cart wheels soon echoed in far-off depths.
The voice of a goblin roared right in her ear. “Joll! Watch where you swing that thing!”
She gasped, jolting against Fingall. There was no goblin to be seen in the narrow passage, and there could be no way that voice had spoken so clearly through thick stone. It was like how she’d heard him over the wind and distance, but yet more impossible.
Before she could speak, another voice, this one unmistakably Rom, called just as near-sounding. “This jewel will write poetry!”
Tightening her grip on Fingall’s arm, Keeva took a deep breath. “How am I hearing them? They must be much further down in the mines.”
“Ah, that,” he said. “It’s mind-speak. The goblins use it for communication so they can keep track of each other here in this labyrinth.”
“They speak with their mind,” she said slowly.
“Yes,” he answered, then added with a bit of shyness, “They taught it to me. It’s how I speak.”
“I see.” She tried not to look surprised, realizing too late he couldn’t see her anyway.They had not gone too much deeper into the mines when Fingall, his hand having swept along the wall as they walked, abruptly paused and turned into another shaft. This opened into a small chamber and when the light whisked inside, the entire room burst into glittering wonder. The walls here were not sooty black, but every color of the rainbow. It was like walking into a giant geode, every crystal perfect and sharp and fine.
She froze for fear of one false step that would send her flying onto sharp edges. But Fingall walked in without notice of the splendor and sat on a cushioned seat thrown between stalagmites. There were other pieces of furniture in this room of terrifying beauty—a low table and a shelf. A fountain spilled from the rocks into a natural pool before draining into some hidden hole to continue its path through the stone.
Fingall opened the drawer in the table, rattling the strange tools inside, and then he picked up something wrapped in cloth, unveiled it, and held out his hand for her to see.
Carefully stepping across the treacherous ground, she bent to observe the remarkably large ruby clasped between his fingers. Except it wasn’t just a ruby, it was a small dancing horse, more dainty and detailed than any sculpture she’d seen before.
“Did….did you make this?” she breathed.
“Yes,” he said, quite proud.
“But—” But how, she wanted to say. How, when he was blind, and had only two real fingers on each hand?
“The faeries crafted these fingers for me so I could wield the carving tools more easily,” he said, wiggling the delicate gold
digits. “But they can’t feel so I use my thumb and little finger to make sure the shape is just right.” His voice softened. “So that they look just…just like I remember.”
There were several such ornaments upon the shelf: winged griffins, fawns dancing in a wild circle, mermaids diving beneath a wave. Through his fingers he had captured his lost vision.
“Fingall,” she said solemnly. “These are beautiful.”
“Come,” he said, leaping back to his feet, “There is more to see!”
There was something fearsome about walking into the heart of a mountain, surrounded on all sides by solid rock and trusting that the rock would not decide to collapse for reasons of its own. Some comfort came when the passage expanded into large natural caverns which surely must have borne the mountain’s weight for centuries.
Fingall chattered something about the goblin’s new excavation site not being much further, but Keeva paused and wandered off the path a few steps to peer into a pit carved straight down into the bedrock. The light bobbed above her head and she wished she could send it down the black hole for a better look. As it was, the light glittered off the veins in the ore with stunning brilliance.
“What is harvested from this dig?” she called.
Fingall made his way back to her, fingers tapping against the wall with slight uncertainty. “Oh. Is that one of the colith plunges? Don’t get too close.”
“I don’t think it’s that far,” she said. “I can almost see the bottom.”
“That’s not the point. There’s a gas that pools down there.”
“Poison?”
“In a way. We simply can’t breathe it. The goblins can because they’re cave-folk.”
Her pulse quickened at his words and despite the chill of the caves, sweat seeped from her skin. “Really.” Ignoring his warning, she bent closer. “It’s so beautiful though. Like nothing I’ve ever seen.”
“What does it look like?” he asked, edging forward.
“Dew on spiderwebs,” she said, leaning even further out. “And—” Her voice broke and she flailed her arms with a shriek.
“Huntress?” Fingall lurched forward, reaching wildly for her. She caught at him desperately, tangling in his arms and robes as she scrambled to get away from the ledge. Her heart lurched as her foot caught around his ankle and he tripped—tripped and toppled over the brink and into the depths of the pit.
His scream was not mind-speak. Like his laugh it came from his throat—harsh, graveled, and course. But the scream, in all its terror, was far, far worse.
Falling to her knees, she peered out over the edge, fighting the sickened swells of her stomach. “Fingall?” she gasped.
But when his voice cried out in her head again, it was not in response to her. “Chief!” he called, frantic. “Chief, Orn, Art! Help! I’ve fallen into the colith pit…please, Joll, I can’t breathe! Drows!”
She sprang to her feet, cupped her hand around her mouth and hollered in hopes to draw the goblin’s trail just in case there was more than one such pit. Her cry echoed through the chamber, mocking and false, before being swallowed into shadow.
Within moments, the rattle of stone under hasty feet rang through the mine’s halls, and a green light came flickering, swaying in step with the goblins. All seven of them came rushing down from a shaft, their lantern bug lamps held high and their picks still clutched in their knobby hands.
They hardly gave Keeva a glance as they skidded to the edge. “Hold on!” Chief roared. “I’m coming right now.” He threw the lantern in ahead of him, caught sight of where Fingall lay at the bottom, and then jumped in.
Despite Keeva’s claim of seeing the bottom, it was quite a drop, and her breath seized as the goblin plummeted, but then, he was a goblin. They were almost rock themselves.
Surely it could have been less than a minute since Fingall had fallen, surely he, faerie as he was, could have endured that long. But silence thundered in Keeva’s ears and her knuckles whitened as Chief came climbing back up, cheered and aided by his comrades, with the long white-wrapped body of Fingall slung across his broad shoulders. Carefully, the goblin laid Idris upon the ground, loosening the wrap about his face and throat.
“Take it all off, let him breathe!” Keeva exclaimed, reaching forward, but Orn struck her hand away with a truly fearsome glare.
“He will be fine,” Chief said gruffly, though he seemed to speak more to the anxious clustering goblins than her. “He just needs a little air.”
After a few moments, the prediction proved right. Fingall stirred, then coughed, and he levered himself up on one elbow. “Is Huntress all right?” he asked faintly.
“That’s very sweet,” Rom observed.
“Don’t be daft,” Art said, his entire face wrinkling in disgust.
“I’m right here.” Keeva wanted to touch his arm, but trespassing goblins was a feat even heroes hardly dared. And she was no hero; she knew that as certainty. Instead, she felt sick, ready to upend her stomach. It was all her fault that he’d fallen.
“Did I hit my head?” Fingall said, even his mind-speak slurred. “Something…something doesn’t feel quite right.”
“We are taking you back to your house,” Chief said. His beady eyes glinted in the dancing lantern light as he looked at Keeva for the first time. “And then the human is leaving.”
5
A strange and silent procession trooped upon the snow-laden slope of the high mountains. The birds and squirrels had seen the seven goblins march that path many times before, often with the tall white figure in their midst, but a stranger had joined their company this time, a mortal woman in ragged furs that caused every watching squirrel to bristle their brush tail. The mortal did not merely walk with them, but she marched ahead of them a bit like a prisoner. She did not seem to think that her state however as she walked with something like a proud and offended air.
The birds and squirrels could tell no more than that, so they soon lost interest and went on their foraging way.
If they could have heard the mind-spoken battle between the chief goblin and the tall white fey, they would have quickly learned the procession was not as silent as it seemed.
“It was an accident,” Idris said for the fourth time, and the firmness in his voice could have made it the final time had he been arguing with anyone less strong-willed than an angry goblin.
“An accident that could have killed you!” Chief snarled, his mind-speak always more deafening than his normal gruff voice.
“Let us not exaggerate.” Idris shook his head wearily, amazed yet again how quickly the goblins seemed to forget his protected state. He could be harmed, he knew that better than anyone, but blaming the huntress for near murder was an overreaction. It wouldn’t do to mention that while he was yet very much alive, the fall and loss of breath had hurt a great deal, and its effect lingered on him with a strange pain, as if something inside him had been picked out by a claw.
The goblin rattled on, his fury once rolling as unstoppable as an avalanche. “This is what comes of entertaining mortals; there is no good that comes to mixing with their kind. Mischief is their craft.”
A strange accusation, Idris thought, since he’d heard what names the humans had conjured for the faerie folk. Imp, sprite, puck, devil. If they always suspected each other of mischief, it was little wonder how much harm came from encounters.
“The fault is mine,” he said. “I should not have taken her to such a perilous part of the mine. And I believe I overcrowded her by the pit for she did not stagger until I was near. I will not let you banish her for my fault.”
“This is balderdash,” grumbled Chief. “I shall summon your father and mayhap will you listen to him.”
His breath hitched, thought darting ahead to where the huntress’s steps crunched in the snow. “Let me first tell her she may wait in my hall until Father and I have reached an agreement.”
Though the goblin grumbled, Idris knew he had won for the moment. While the goblins were lar
gely independent of the Seelie or Unseelie Courts, they could only contend with the will of a prince for so long.
The goblins paused some distance from the quarters of Idris, looking very much like a crop of suddenly grown boulders, and Idris followed the huntress up into his house. He could hear the stiffness of her walk, and he noted she did not ask for permission to go through his door, and he heard how his animals, darting forward in excitement, slunk to the side in dismay when the stranger entered first.
He followed her without question as far as to the door of her bequeathed room and leaned there against the carved frame. By the stretch of leather and rustle of feathered shafts rubbing against each other he guessed she gathered up her hunting gear.
“You need not leave yet,” he said. “I spoke with Chief and the decision about your stay has fallen to another.”
Her boot scraped on the stone as she whirled. “Ah! So you were having a conversation without me.”
“Mind-speak can be addressed to specific persons.”
“How nice,” she said pertly, a great deal more pertly than one might have expected from a party guilty of causing a sídhe to fall into a poison pit.
Yet he could not help a hidden smile at her undampened spunk and thought it rather refreshing not to be dramatically worried over.
“I shall speak with my father,” he continued, but he was interrupted by her hasty step forward.
“And I shall go for a while.”
“Why so? We shall not discourse long, and I am certain I can turn him to my side.”
“Fingall,” she said. “Have you ever heard of the saying, do not get between a mother bear and her cubs?”
“I have.”
“Also known is the saying, beware the sídhe’s wrath. So I shall go hunt some game, and if he somehow excuses my clumsiness, then perhaps we may meet another time.”
“There,” he said. “Enough of this mysterious familiarity. You know us too well, mortal girl. How did you come by such knowledge? You have secrets in your past, do not deny it, I have smelled them since you first arrived.”
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