The Goblin and the Empire

by JD Cole

  “She’s supposed to be a queen or something, in that faery place, right?”

  “Yeah. Get plenty kinds, they got elves, gnomes, trolls, Dragons like me. Kelli’s a sprite, they’re like the royal family of faeries. Anyway, that’s how come Kelli was kidnapped-”

  “She was kidnapped?”

  “Yeah. Ben never tell you?”

  “He just said she was a queen.”

  “That lolo. She was kidnapped by… uh… okay this sounds crazy, but she was kidnapped by one alien. Like, from space.”

  “A faery, kidnapped by space aliens.” Erica’s expression was blank as she let it sink in. In the distance, Kim was enjoying the last moments of another wave ride. “Okay. Look, this is all totally weird… no, it’s freaking stupid is what it is. Space aliens and faeries? But… I’ve seen what Ben can do. He can change what he looks like, he can fly… if Kelli’s being threatened by aliens, that must be why he went off into space?”

  “Yeah. He’s looking for a way to fight these things in case any more try to go after Kelli. But that’s the reason we went to Boston. Kelli got rescued by the faeries, but the alien that kidnapped her started trashing the city for some reason. Kelli and me went there to fight it. Long story short, we won.”

  “But thousands of people died.”

  “Yeah, I know. And this is kinda sick, but we wouldn’t have known about the alien attack if that didn’t happen. Kelli can feel when people are hurt sometimes. That many people hurt and dying at once… Kelli couldn’t handle it. So we went and stopped him.”

  “Why did it kidnap her?”

  “Apparently the alien wanted to steal her magic somehow.”

  “And that blue Dragon I saw on TV-”

  “Was me. Yeah.”

  Erica allowed a bit of sadness to show in her face. “If Christian knew how to fly like you and Ben, he could come home to me tonight.”

  “Can you try again, calling him I mean, when we get back to the house?”

  “Of course. I talk to him every chance I get. Even though it’s not real to him, our talks do cheer him up. I can’t wait to see the look on his face when he finally accepts that he’s gonna be a dad.”

  “I can make ethergates. I can pretty much open doors to anyplace on the planet. Only problem is, I cannot really travel to places I never been, at least not on purpose. I been plenty places on accident, but I’m still learning. I can try to find Chris, I think. I just gotta figure out how, first.”

  “That’s unbelievable.”

  “I know I am!” Devon smiled, and laid forward to paddle into a smooth, oncoming ocean curl. Ahead of him, Kim laughed and maneuvered her board to catch the same wave as it approached her. Together, the couple surfed toward shore, playfully trying to dislodge each other from their boards. Erica watched them, almost able to believe that the world was still normal. Then she realized that if it was, her husband would be dead. She rubbed at where their child was growing inside her, hoping that the world would get as abnormal as it needed to for Christian to make it home to her and their baby as quickly as possible.

  ~ ~ ~ ~

  “Okay,” Kelli said, “so, the Gnome King’s name is Mennor… and he’s probably going to be the easiest one to work with. And then the Elf Queen… Jiya, right?” Dufangen nodded and smiled. Kelli had an incredible amount to learn about faeries in general, and sprites in particular, but for now the Royal Counselor focused on preparing Kelli for present-day castle business. Sorvir had taken leave to soak in a rejuvenation bath, something Kelli was interested in learning about. It sounded heavenly. At this moment, she was memorizing the members of her council; the kings and queens of all the faery races who had submitted to sprite rule.

  “And she,” Kelli continued, “is not very friendly. But Jiya will likely be passing the throne to one of her children soon, because she’s getting very old. And then… uh, Lim Horkuth?” Dufangen nodded again. “Horkuth is the Lim, the representative of the wolf tribes, because they don’t have a single ruler. You say he’s pretty mellow, he just kind of shows up on the council for something to do, but he never makes trouble. The same with the vampyres, their Lim is named Dandt. And the kathet…” Kelli shook her head. Kathet, she had been told, were cat-people; like the wolves, some of them had remained in the human world, but not because of a dispute with the sprites. All of the kathet tribes in the human world, starved of magic along with many of the wolves, had steadily regressed into animals: modern canine and feline species originated from the wolves and kathet. Unlike the wolf and vampyre nightfangs, kathet outside the Faery Realm were not rebels, and none had resorted to feeding on humans to retain their intelligence and identity. It had something to do with the kathet religion.

  “The kathet representative is… crap, I can’t remember her name.”

  “You should not use that language, Highness,” Dufangen chided.

  “What, ‘crap’?” Kelli laughed. “There’s words a lot worse than that.”

  “Such crass language does not become a queen.”

  “No, I guess not. But honestly, Dufangen, I still don’t feel like a queen. I feel like Kelli, a college freshman who raised horses and sheep, who did maintenance on farm equipment at the crack of dawn, then went surfing with her boyfriend afterward.

  “I guess we were what you call rich, but not in a high-society kind of way. My dad still wears flannel and denim. The only time I’ve worn formal gowns was for proms. We stayed at ritzy hotels on vacations sometimes, but… I don’t know. I’m just a normal girl, you know?”

  “But that is not who you are any longer.” Dufangen sighed. She had spent this whole time standing reverently beside the bed. But now, she hoisted herself up to take a seat next to the Queen. Kelli was much more comfortable the less formally everyone around her behaved. “I know this is odd, and at times will be difficult. But understand that I am not demanding you change everything about who you are. Look at it like this. Are there not functions in your world where you are expected to be more regal than usual, where certain behavior is simply not tolerated?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “Such is the case here, but it will be much expanded. We simply need you to get into a frame of mind where you consider your surroundings, and your situation, before you speak aloud. Politics is a set of very fine lines you must walk on, and any misstep can have dire consequences. You are already at a disadvantage as a jimani,” Dufangen warned, referring to Kelli’s mostly-human background. “You cannot be referencing bowel movements in the presence of royals. They will not take you seriously.”

  The queen giggled, and Dufangen allowed herself a chuckle.

  “You have a good point,” Kelli said, her cheeks pink with humor. “Exactly how often does this council convene, though?”

  “Well, obviously, they will gather for your coronation, and likely remain in Windham for at least a month following that, to serve at your leisure and get to know you. Beyond that, any one of them can call the council together to address any matter they deem important enough. You can do the same. Keep in mind that they are all, for the most part, autonomous, even though they answer to you.”

  “I don’t understand. How can that be?”

  “This is a subject I hoped to avoid as long as possible, but we might as well strike it now. I did not want to cause you worry while you are still learning how to fit into your new life here. But there really is no way to avoid this, you’ll have to learn about him if you’re going to learn to be queen.”

  “Him?”

  Dufangen blew a loud breath through her nose. “There is a reason the faeries formed an alliance under sprite rule. We protect each other from the horrors he would inflict on us all. His name is Ercianodhon.” Kelli mouthed the odd name curiously, ur-see-anna-dōn. “Not many know him by that name, however. Most know him only as the Goblin King.”

  “I’ve heard of him. Krin mentioned the Goblin King. He called him an evil faery.”

  “Evil does not begin to describe him. He is death in
carnate. Every creature that approaches him dies, their very life force pulled from their bodies to feed him. He was the birth of necromancy, a perversion of blood magic. Ercianodhon consumes the energies released in death, and uses them the way we use earth magic, or wind or water. But his magic does not replenish naturally, it must be fed by more death.”

  “So he stays alive by killing people?”

  “No, unfortunately he is immortal, the only creature outside of the Dragons who cannot be killed, at least not by any means known to us. But his strength is determined by how much life he can steal at any given moment. Using necromancy, he has created armies of goblins, creatures spliced together from the corpses of the dead he has consumed. He acts through these goblins, as he cannot interact even with his own minions without killing them. And when he learns of you, he will despise you, my Queen. He will hate you in ways you could never fathom.”

  “Why? What did I do to him?”

  “You were born.”

  ~

  Unnoticed by either of them, several mosquitoes were perched on the ceiling. Dozens had discreetly infiltrated the castle over the last week. Ercianodhon risked discovery if he sent too many of these dead insects —they would now more accurately be described as goblins— into Windham. The sprites were shielding this wing of the castle with intense fervor, and now he knew why. Every mosquito-goblin in Windham fell lifeless as he released his hold on their corpses; the sprites’ shield strained his ability to manipulate even these insects.

  Inside his castle, a twin of Windham castle he had carved into a nameless southern mountain range —at the cost of thousands of faery lives— Ercianodhon tapped his clawed, black fingers on the large table in the center of what would normally be considered a throne room. He found the notion of a throne pretentious, however, and saw no need to possess one himself. In place of one, the large table map and several shelves, stuffed to the brim with ancient tomes, decorated the room. His throne room was for thinking and planning, matters far more productive than holding court.

  “A new queen,” he snarled quietly. This was why the sprites had sent General Dragonheart and his armies into Matari to attack Ercianodhon’s most productive city; to distract Ercianodhon from what was really happening. The diversion had worked beautifully in favor of the sprites. Their queen was now safely in their custody, for the moment safe from the Goblin King’s grasp. Dufangen was quite right in stating that he hated Kelli. All sprites were the focus of his ire, but their monarchs in particular were a blatant challenge to his power. The Birthright had been forged in direct answer to Ercianodhon’s necromancy. Dufangen was also correct in stating that Kelli would never be able to fathom his hatred.

  He would never forgive house Moniscii —Kelli’s family— for what it had done to him. Dufangen would likely omit that event from her descriptions of him to the new queen. The ironic thing was that the queen might sympathize with her greatest enemy if she knew the truth. It mattered not to him; Kelli was now the youngest living Moniscii, and the Goblin King was determined that her coming death would be the sweetest he had ever tasted. Doubly so, when he once again proved to the sprites that the Birthright could not defeat him. Moving away from the oval table, he stretched his limbs: his black, leathery skin was criss-crossed by reddish-orange cracks, veins that pulsed like lava-flows. As he stretched, the cracks glowed brighter. The veins thinned and disappeared higher up on his long neck, where his black, dragon-like face was completely unmarred by any of the red veins. The veins on his large wings, however, were wide and almost fiery in the way they glowed. There was visible leakage from these as his wings opened to their full span, as if hatred were an orange vapor escaping the crack-like veins in his wings.

  If there was a limit to the amount of zombie-like goblins he could maintain at one time, he had not reached it yet. There were tens of thousands of goblins in the Faery Realm, of every shape and size and created for specific tasks. He focused on one —formed from the remains of an ice elf, commonly known as Solsdren— and walked it to one of the irenak barracks.

  Irenaks were curious creatures; they loved to fight, but they also had a culture rich in art and philosophy, most of it centering around their worship of death. Ercianodhon was death in physical form, and so the irenaks followed him almost gleefully. He enjoyed the many symphonies and concerts they performed in his castle, the sounds cascading down to his isolated rooms below the concert hall. Many of the pieces were written in his honor. The irenaks loved their ethnic music. They were also notoriously bigoted, and viewed other faeries as lesser creatures.

  The goblin walked into the large room, full of bunks, weapon racks, chests and tables, and silence fell over the thirty or so irenaks gathered within. The presence of a goblin was the presence of the King himself. The dead Solsdren pointed to a pair of irenaks nearest the door, and spoke with Ercianodhon’s voice.

  “You. Fetch Kirama from the lockhold, and bring her to the blood chamber.”

  The irenaks replied with hisses and clicks that translated to “Yes, your majesty.” They then moved past the goblin, which slumped against the wall until the King had need of it again. Necromancy kept it and the other goblins from putrefying, though it did not reverse any decay that occurred before the King could exert his influence on a corpse. The more degraded goblins were used far from the castle; the Goblin King kept a neat house, and did not tolerate filth in these halls. He seemed to compete with the sprites on matters of splendor and beauty, despite his inherently destructive nature. This castle was a mirror image of the one at Windham; similar in architecture and layout, beautiful in its own right. But this castle was subtly darker, a hint of menace lurking below the surface of every wall and tapestry the irenaks passed.

  Irenaks were roughly the same height as humans and vampyres, but easily three times as thick with fat and muscle. The reptilian creatures made their way down to the eighth level below ground, where the most valuable treasures and prisoners were kept locked away, and what they had been sent to retrieve was both a treasure and a prisoner. Torches lit the hallways for them, as irenaks could not see very well in the dark. Their alligator-like heads swiveled, forked tongues darting out to taste the air in the off-chance they might detect something that did not belong.

  As they approached the thick iron door that led to the lockhold, the dungeon’s warden stood and hefted his mighty warhammer with a requisite challenge. The irenaks halted their advance and stared at the minotaur, who towered over them by at least thirty hands. They were almost able to see the steam expelled from its nostrils down at them, and they certainly felt the globs of mucus that rained across the distance onto them. Minotaur meat was a rare delicacy among irenaks, prized because the beasts were extremely difficult to kill. Only irenaks and vampyres were brave enough to name minotaur as menu items. Wolves and kathet would not even dare to touch a minotaur corpse. Minotaur took great offense to their fellows being eaten, and avenged any instance of it they became aware of. Irenaks got away with it because they were protected by the King. Vampyres got away with it because, well, they were vampyres. It was a brave minotaur who went looking for a fight with them. Brave in this case also meaning stupid.

  This particular minotaur was a personal servant to the King, however; they would have to wait for it to anger Ercianodhon before they could set upon it for a feast. One of the irenaks took the initiative, speaking to the minotaur in its native, rolling tongue. “The King wishes to visit Kirama.”

  The minotaur nodded, lowering its hammer in one hand. The hammer head alone weighed more than either irenak. The warden turned and began unlocking the iron bolts, then pushed the door inward for them. “Kirama and Kirama alone comes out with you,” it warned them. They did not acknowledge it as they walked past. Many of the cells held nothing more than jewels and rich metals, no doubt enchanted treasures. Gold, silver, and gems could be found decorating the castle in abundance.

  Some of the cells had elves and dwarves; the children of rebellion leaders at Matari. There we
re also a few wolves, vampyres, and even a troll… just what a troll could have done to merit this level of the dungeon would incite interesting speculation upstairs. The irenaks ignored all of these as they moved to the very last cell at the end of cavernous area. No effort had been made to beautify this part of the castle. The rock walls and floor were very roughly cut, and almost looked like a natural occurrence, perhaps an ancient magma tube from past volcanic activity.

  The cell they wanted had no locks on the door. A simple ward on the metal kept the occupant within from being able to open it. And even if she escaped, there was the minotaur at the entrance to deal with. One irenak pulled the door open, and the other walked in, staring without pity at the creature they found there.

  “The King wishes to see you again, Kirama,” the irenak said in elvish Vomelri, the common tongue of the Faery Realm.

  Kirama shrank away, almost trying to crawl into the wall of her cell. She was a tiny sprite child, but very unlike any sprite in Windham. Instead of their ivory palor, Kirama’s skin ran in shades from pink to red; her long hair was a black river streaked with silver, cold as a midnight storm. A sprite’s lineage could be told by the color of their irises, but Kirama had none. Her eyes were empty, soulless orbs of white, but even so, her fear was unmistakable.

  “No,” she whimpered, curling her slender legs up into the rough brown rags they had clothed her in. “I don’t want to see him!”

  “When has that ever mattered, little one?” The irenak grabbed her by the wrist and wrenched her off of the ground, unconcerned as she cried out.

  “Let me go!” she screamed, tears raining to the ground. The irenaks had seen it all before. They weren’t moved in the slightest. She was only a thing, after all. Kirama continued screaming all the way up to the blood chamber, fifteen levels of tall, wide stairways from where her cell was. None of the irenaks within earshot paid her any attention. A few vampyres noted her passing with irritation, but beyond that, the pathetic little sprite could not encourage any kind of reaction from the castle residents, helpful or otherwise. Her only hope these long, lonely years was that someone would be greedy enough to steal her away from this place to use for their own purposes; an empty hope, as no one who entered this castle would dare cross its master.