The Legend of the Winterking: The Crown of Nandur

by J. Kent Holloway

  Taking a deep breath, Bryx managed to calm his trembling limbs, then glared at his comrades. “Take him. The Mother must learn of this at once.”

  The three goblins hefted the youth up, and slung him onto Bryx’s broad shoulders. It would be the quickest way. The safest way to carry him back to the village. Back to his queen, as well as his goddess.

  As the four melted back into the woodland shadows, Bryx pondered the implications of discovering not just one, but two Grah-lachteni in as many weeks. They made their way quickly, and silently, toward Ra’Ethana Pass—the gateway to Thana Pel—and the harvesting village from where they had come. It seemed a terrible omen, and Bryx could not help but wonder if his ill-fated hunting party was not carrying Doom back to his people.

  FIFTEEN

  “Blast and Farnquentils!” Garhet roared, tossing Krin’s furs to the ground and wheeling around on the giant. “Do you see what you did?”

  “What I did?” Ulfilas squatted down to meet the dwarf’s glare. “You can’t blame me for this. You’re the one who went all bulldog on me, remember? Had to show what a big man you were!”

  A low snarl rumbled in Garhet’s throat, refusing to back down from the bigger man’s gaze. The Visigoth was right, of course. It was his fault. He was sworn to protect Krin at all costs, and he had allowed his ego—and maybe a desire for some vengeance—get in the way of his mission. He had intentionally picked a fight with Ulfilas to put him in his oversized place, and it had cost them dearly. But he wasn’t about to admit it out loud.

  Instead, he turned back to Krin’s bedding, scooped up Glalbrirer, and slung the scabbard around his shoulder.

  That kid just can’t seem to hold onto this thing.

  Turning his keen eye to the disturbed snow surrounding the boughs. He picked up a handful of the fallen quills scattered on the ground near the bedding, and sighed. “It was the goblins. At least four of ‘em.” He pointed down at a cluster of strange looking tracks. “One of ‘em was a monster, judging by the size of his feet. Probably the leader.”

  Garhet, now on his hands and knees, sniffed at the snow, scurried a few paces to the east, then bent down again to examine another footprint.

  Ulfilas looked down at the dwarf, and crossed his arms over his chest. “What are you doin’?”

  “What do ye mean, what am I doin’? What’s it look like I’m doin’?”

  “Looks like you’re a dog searching for a good place to hike his leg.”

  The dwarf clenched his teeth at the insult, but resisted the urge to retaliate. It would do Krin no bit of good if the two of them started fighting again. Garhet still was cursing himself for running to the giant’s aid in the first place.

  What was I thinking? Helping the man who threw me overboard. Should have known it would be more trouble than it was worth.

  But given the chance, he would do it again. The challenge of fighting against insurmountable odds in a good lopsided battle was a temptation very few dwarves could resist. A good many of his kin had succumbed to its seduction in the past. When Garhet had seen the giant going toe to toe against an entire goblin hunting party, he couldn't have resisted joining in any more than he could have resisted gobbling an unguarded bagful of gumdrops.

  My ego. It’ll be the death of me yet. I just pray it doesn’t prove to be the death of Krin.

  “It also looks like you’re destroying a perfectly good trail too,” said Ulfilas wrinkling his nose in disgust. Grabbing Garhet by the shoulder, he pulled him away from trail. “Let me handle this before you completely obliterate any chance we have of tracking your silver-haired young friend. It is, after all, what I do for a living.”

  ***

  As Krin’s mind eased back into consciousness, his first thought was that he had experienced another blackout. Then, he remembered that Garhet had informed him the spells were him somehow tearing the fabric of reality, and slipping in between worlds.

  Ah, crap! It happened again!

  It made sense. Though his sight was impaired by a sackcloth covering his head. It reeked with a mixture of odors he would rather not guess about. The air all around him was frigid and his hands and feet tingled with the first signs of frostbite. His head swam as though he had just finished his drinking contest with….

  Ulfilas. A vision of the goblin battle in the small dell flashed through his mind’s eye. He had been injured. Carried back to camp, while slipping in and out of consciousness, by the bounty hunter.

  So how could I have rifted?

  He suddenly remembered that he had been in the heartland of Germania, near the Wiehen Mountains. It had been snowing yesterday; a pretty severe blizzard. Cold. That would explain the frigid air. But if I didn’t rift, then where am I?

  He focused his attention to the here and now, hoping to glean the answers from what he could sense around him. First, he knew he was being carried, his hands and feet bound to a long pole. He could feel himself bouncing up and down with the footfalls of each of his bearers, and the sharp oscillations of pain around his right shoulder with each step. The coarse rope felt like a myriad of teeth from a million tiny insects gnawed gleefully at his wrists. He tried crying out to let his bearers know he was in pain, but was stifled by the gag stuffed deep in his mouth.

  Okay. So this isn’t good.

  “Ahk gyona groc,” someone said to his immediate right. The voice was raspy. Breathless. He imagined it was the voice a reptile might make if it could talk. It sounded like the voices he had heard earlier, in the gully battlefield. Goblins! “Ahk Bryx ahgoena Xhun Tuhg!”

  His bearers suddenly halted their march. Someone walked past him, and growled. “Khun lag zarx, Xhunn Tuhg na ahk ahgoenloc al Bryx.” The words were spat from the speaker’s mouth. It seemed to Krin as though someone of authority had been challenged, this was the reprimand doled out to the challenger. “Ghud ahk gyona Grah-lachten!”

  The first speaker gasped. Krin could hear the sound of feet scurrying off as the second speaker coughed out a derisive laugh. Then, with no warning, his bearers began their march anew, and Krin found himself being jostled even more than before. They were now moving quicker, their movements more frenzied.

  Ah, come on! Each new jostle felt like someone applying sheets of sanding paper to his shoulder and wrists. And now, with the sackcloth over his head, his insides rumbled with a sudden bout of motion sickness. If they don’t stop soon, I’m going to lose it. The thought brought a renewed vigor to his nausea, and he clenched his teeth in an effort to fight the urge vomit inside the bag. He had already re-tasted Garhet’s grilled fish from the night before, and hoped it would go no further than that.

  Thankfully, after several minutes, the processional stopped again, the pole on which he was carried was removed, and Krin was tossed to the ground on his back. His legs and feet still bound, he rolled over on his side, only to be rewarded with a contemptuous kick to his gut.

  “Ek naga groh tossi,” said a new voice. Though thick, and raspy as the others, this one carried a decidedly female tone to it. “Remove the creature’s hood.” Krin marveled at the words. The voice spoke in Koine Greek, a dying language almost completely unheard of in the modern world. Fortunately, Nicholas had pounded the language into his head as a child in an effort to educate him better in the Scriptures.

  The sackcloth was ripped from his head, while two strong arms pulled Krin from his prone position on the hard dirt to his knees. His eyes struggled to focus in the dim light of the rustic, wooden hut in which he found himself.

  Torches burned from four stakes driven into the ground around him. The ceiling was high and dome-shaped with a hole cut at the top. A small wood fire blazed in the center of the room, its smoke wafting up through the opening on the ceiling. A massive wicker throne with a high back that flared out like the tail of a peacock sat opposite the fire, and was adorned with an obscenely obese goblin. Based on its attire, jewelry, and healthy set of bosoms, Krin guessed it was female. Unlike the black-scaled hides of the other goblins Krin
had seen, her skin was green—the color of pond scum—with a sheen like that of salamander. She had no spiny quills protruding from her back like her male counterparts did.

  “Welcome, Elf,” she said in Greek. “You are a most unexpected surprise.”

  Elf? Krin checked his memory for the proper translation of the word. While the Greeks had no specific word for ‘elf’, from his studies, he knew the adjective ‘exotic’ was used synonymously with any fae or alien creature. So why call me that?

  “Um, I think there’s been some kind of mistake. I’m not an…”

  Something hard and heavy slammed into the back of Krin’s skull, bringing a sprinkling of orange and black spots floating across his vision. “Ghat ahk gromo Xiun Tuhg!” a goblin behind him growled in his ear.

  “He says you are not to speak while I am talking,” the goblin female said flashing a saw-toothed smile. “I would heed him, if I were you.” The gargantuan goblin leaned forward, her hungry eyes pursuing her captive. “Now, I believe we have a few things to discuss before my soldiers show you to your new accommodations.”

  The goblin’s dialect was flawless. Vocabulary, syntax, and even diction were perfect. Krin couldn't help but wonder where she had studied it. According to the brief lessons from Garhet, the Go’oblidin rarely, if ever, ventured past the borders of Thana Pel.

  So if the goblins don’t travel, how had she learned the language so well?

  With a wave of her corpulent hand, the handful of goblins surrounding Krin scampered away. Two of them rushed to the hut’s entrance to stand guard. Another fled from the room altogether, disappearing through a door in the back. And the final goblin, a large, muscular specimen of nearly five foot tall, lumbered to the female’s side, a large hand clutching his spear.

  “I am Tuhg,” the female said. “Mother of the Gahb-ladenin. I am Queen. Ruler. And matriarch of my glorious race. My word is power. My power, absolute, and vested in me by the immense goddess, Nerthani, at the occasion of my birth.”

  Nerthani…thani. Sounds like ‘thana’, that's dwarfish for ‘earth’, ‘dirt’, the material world. An earth deity maybe? Do they worship the earth? Or something in the earth?

  He realized that the more he could glean from this audience with Tuhg, the more likely he would be able to come out of this alive. Or at least, he hoped.

  “I have made my formal introduction to you, noble Elf,” Tuhg said. “Now, likewise, offer your own. Who are you? Where do you hail from? And most importantly, what are you doing here, that your companions would slaughter my children so?”

  For the first time since he awoke under the goblins’ custody, Krin felt the chill bite of dread. Would she hold him accountable for their deaths? Would she believe him if he told that he would not even killed a single one?

  “I am Krin,” he said in passable Greek. He had never actually learned to speak the language, only read it, and he hoped he would be able to conjugate the verbs correctly enough not to sound like a fool. Who are you kidding? You’re a prisoner of a tribe of goblins. Of course, you’re going to sound like a fool. “Son of Nicholas, Bishop of Myra.” Tuhg’s jaw unhinged, stretching impossibly large in a surprised gasp. A flurry of hushed murmurs arose immediately from those within the hut.

  Do they know Nicholas?

  Outraged, the goblin queen stretched out a taloned finger towards him. “Liar! You are no son of Nicholas! The Magus has no children. It is forbidden by his Order.”

  Magus? Is Nicholas one of the Magi Order? It made sense. Why else send him to meet with them? Obviously, the bishop had known the Magi. Trusted them. It wasn’t a leap to assume that, at one time, he had been one of them as well. But how is it this corpulent hag knows so much about him? That’s the real question.

  “I am his adopted son,” Krin quickly corrected. “When I was just a child, he freed me from slavery to the Romans, then adopted me.”

  At this revelation, Tuhg exchanged glances at the Herculean goblin by her side, then turned back to Krin. “So where do you hail from, Adopted Son of the Wise Nicholas?”

  Krin wasn’t sure he liked the way she had used the word ‘wise’. On the one hand, they seemed to be treating the Bishop’s name with something akin to reverence. Maybe even fear. Perhaps it would be his way out of this mess; they might him go in deference to Nicholas. But he would need to play his cards right. Stay on the up-and-up, and earn their trust.

  “The Isle of Hibernia.” He decided the truth was the best answer. “Though I’m not sure which province. I was only three when I was taken by the Romans and…”

  “And your lineage?” Tuhg interrupted. Her voice quivered as she spoke, as if wildly anxious for the answer. “Who were your real parents? What line do you come from? I see no lifeglyphs on you. Very strange for your kind. I must know, boy! Tell me!” Her great fists pounded down on the armrests of her throne as she exploded from her seat. A disgusting string of saliva dangled precariously from her lips as she lumbered over him. Her breath smelled of rancid meat.

  “I-I don’t know. I never…”

  “Liar!” Tuhg’s open palm lashed across his face, sending Krin sprawling to the ground. “No more lies, elf! Tell me! Your father’s name…was it Kraen-Lil?”

  Krin felt the ember of anger he was unaware that he had been nurturing, flare to life at her ridiculous question. He leapt to his feet, careful not to trip on the ropes still binding his legs, and squared off against the monstrous goblin queen. “I told you, I…don’t…know!” He struggled against the bindings around his wrists and ankles, desiring nothing more than to lash out at the grotesque creature.

  Spurred by Krin’s unexpected outburst, the large goblin male lunged, whirling the spear through the air, and bringing it down hard on his still-healing shoulder. Krin crumpled to the ground.

  “Respect Mother!” The goblin snarled; his teeth bared. He continued in very broken Greek. “Bryx smite White-hair if White-hair not respect the Mother!”

  Without warning, Tuhg spun on the enraged Bryx, grabbed him by the throat, and then hurled him across the room with the effort one might use to flick away a flea. Her face a mask of pure fury. “Ack mog agyona, Bryx! Telog gro naga, et Pudi gran Nicholai!” When she looked back at Krin, her demeanor instantly became that of a gracious host once more.

  “Please forgive my son, Bryx,” she said. “He does tend to be a little over protective of his Mother at times.”

  Krin stared, dumbfounded at the female goblin. Though he hadn’t understood most of the goblin-speak, he had caught a single word: Nicholas. In context, he knew there was something about his own relationship with the bishop that resulted in Bryx incurring her wrath. But why? What is going on? And…

  “Why do you all keep referring to me as an elf?”

  Tuhg’s brows furrowed. Her head tilted, as if confused by the question. An uncomfortable dread settled in the pit of Krin’s stomach at the look.

  “Because, dear boy,” she said, sauntering back to her throne, and settling her prodigious backside into the wide, high-back wicker. “That’s precisely what you are.”

  SIXTEEN

  Garhet ran faster, weaving in and out of the trees as he felt one of the great cat’s fetid breath on the back of his neck. Ulfilas, having much longer legs, was several yards up ahead with his own pursuer close on his heels.

  The dwarf half-grunted a derisive chuckle at the giant’s misfortune because the moment the Cra'chuna made their move, Ulfilas bolted for the trees, shouting something about ‘only having to run faster than a dwarf’.

  Unfortunately for the giant, he had not known that despite their short stature, dwarves are extremely fast runners. At least, at short distances, and their hardy dispositions gave them the kind of endurance that would allow Garhet to out run the bounty hunter with ease. That is, if he could avoid being eaten first.

  The real question at the moment was the location of the third, and decidedly largest of the Cra'chuna now chasing them. He had lost track of it a while back, which unnerved
him even more than the six-inch claws now swiping dangerously close to his backside.

  Although he had never actually seen the creatures in action before, he had heard enough of the tales to know just how cunning they could be. He couldn't help wondering if they were even now being manipulated and corralled to the dining table of their predators’ choosing.

  Garhet risked a glance over his shoulder. The Cra'chuna’s mouth curled into a scimitar-toothed sneer, pushing the dwarf that much faster.

  The sun had already begun creeping below the mountainous horizon. Shadows began to stretch over every stray root and jutting stone along the forest floor making the going considerably more difficult in the ever-dwindling light. For Garhet, a dwarf accustomed to the dark recesses of caverns and mines, the impending darkness was hardly an issue. But for the Visigoth…

  “Bounty hunter!” Garhet shouted. “We can’t keep running like this!”

  Garhet watched as the big man vaulted over a boulder, landed with surprising grace, and resumed his flight with the effort one might exert in leaping over a pebble.

  “Well, wh-what do you…do you…propose…we do about it?” Ulfilas’ heavy breathing was the only sign the giant was tiring. He wouldn’t last much longer. It was time to use their wits, instead of their legs.

  “Can you find Krin’s trail?” Garhet was now almost parallel to the bounty hunter, though still about fifty dwarf-paces to his right.

  Ulfilas’ blade lashed out, slicing through a net of bramble blocking his way, then nodded. “Never lost it! Just a few yards to our left. Why?”

  Garhet smiled at the news. “Don’t let the cats drive us anymore,” he said, veering to the left, but keeping a safe distance from Ulfilas’ own cat. “Keep followin’ the trail. I have an idea!”

  ***

  Krin awoke to the cold tendrils of the darkness all around him. One minute, he had been looking up at the door being closed above him, the next, he was groggily coming to on the cold dirt floor of his cell. His eyes struggled to adjust to the ebbing light coming through the cracks of the trap door, but it was useless. With the sun setting, there just wasn’t enough to see clearly by. The fact that there was still sunlight shining through, however, told him he had not been unconscious for very long.