Sixteen
“Excellent,” Yi’ta says when you tell him your decision. “We’ve work to set you to this very moment.”
“Not in the morning?” you ask.
“Indeed not. No time for such things as sleep. No extra time whatsoever. In fact, our task will be accomplished at precisely seven-fifteen abovetime or it won’t be accomplished at all.”
“Why’s that?” you ask.
Yi’ta pulls an elaborate sextant from a sheath at his belt. “It has to do with the longitude we’re at, of course, and the alignment of the sun. In order for the astral soundwaves to detonate in the correct location, considering our position and the two other contextual placements of sonaloptic–
“Well, suffice it to say there will not be time for sleeping. I need you to go to the secondary tower with this report,” he hands you a thin, hardbound journal, “and follow any instructions that they might have for you there. I needn’t tell you that this report must not fall into the wrong hands. If you succeed, you will be a hero to all the underfolk. Well, except to the gnomes of course.”
You open the report and look inside. The writing—if indeed it is writing at all—looks a bit like Arabic, if Arabic were entirely straight lines at right angles to one another.
“How do I–” you begin to ask.
“Gu’dal will show you the way.” Yi’ta turns to the back of the belfry and shouts. “Gu’dal!”
A lanky goblin woman in a fancy tailcoat and black tie saunters over, her ears hidden within a tall, thin top hat, one that extends half again her height above her. She affects the use of a cane—something you are quite understanding of. When she is near, she smiles in the menacing way you now attribute to all of goblinkind.
“We have little time to waste, I fear,” Gu’dal says. Her voice and accent, like Yi’ta’s, remind you of the speaking raven you once saw at a circus performer’s opium den.
Gu’dal, whose eyes reach your knees and whose hat reaches your thigh, grabs your pale hand in her green one and leads you down the stairs and onto the lamplit streets beyond.
To ask Gu’dal about the task at hand, go to Nineteen.
To ask Gu’dal about herself, go to Twenty-Three.
To continue on in silence, go to Thirty-One.
Seventeen
“They eat well, in the suburbs?” you ask.
“Better ’n a goblin, that’s certain,” A’gog replies.
“Right then, it’s settled. To Underburg. I know a thing or two about getting a rise out of folks who think they’re all proper and happy.”
“Do you always think with your stomach?” There seems to be genuine appreciation in A’gog’s voice.
“Oh no,” you say. “Before I’ve had anything to drink, I think with my… whatever the organ is that makes you want booze.”
“Brain.”
“Right then, before I’m drunk, I think with my brain.”
A’gog giggles and bounces up and down in the tunnel, his long green ears a’flapping. And it occurs to you that you haven’t been thinking with your stomach or your brain. It takes you a moment, but you decide you’ve been thinking with your heart. But that sounds terribly cliché, and certainly won’t make it into your poetry come the morning. Instead, you decide, you have been thinking with your wormwood.
A’gog takes your hand and breaks into a sprint, moving significantly faster than you would expect a green little monster who can barely meet eyes with your kneecaps to go, and you are forced into a swift jog to keep pace.
You fly down tunnels for twenty minutes and stop in front of a vent that A’gog immediately begins to disassemble.
“So what’s your plan? Give a good rousing speech? You Brits are good for speeches, is what I hear. I can interpret, too.”
“No,” you say. “Speeches are good for riling up people with nothing to lose, people who maybe were thinking about giving it a go but just never really made up their minds.”
“What then?”
“We’re going to destroy their way of life,” you say. In the dimly-lit hallway, you don’t know if A’gog can see your manic grin. You’ve never had much love for the middle class. At least the upper class knows how to party. The middle class? Worse than useless.
“Huh,” A’gog says. The vent comes off the wall, revealing a crawlspace. Well, a walk-space for A’gog. A crawlspace for you. “How you going to do that?”
“I don’t know yet. What’s the situation like in Underburg?”
You get on hands and knees and crawl into the wind. It’s quite painstaking and—after the first bend in the tunnel—dark. A’gog leads the way, and you follow his voice while he apprises you.
“It’s pitch black, it is. Like I was saying before, the kabouters don’t see with their eyes, they see with their ears. They screech—it’s a bit unnerving, just to warn you—and know where everything is.”
“Blind as a bat?” you suggest.
“Bats can see with their eyes. No, they’re blind as a cave critter. Only without the weird feeler-thingies. But kinda ugly like one, too. Anyhow, Underburg… the gnomes don’t bother to guard Underburg. The stupid kabouters have been slaves so long they don’t know they’re slaves.”
“Yup, sounds like the middle class to me. What are their houses made of?”
“Snot. They excrete a kind of sticky paste through their noses. It’s good glue, but if you have enough time and enough kabouters, you can build yourself a hive.”
“Huh. Is it flammable?”
“Sure.”
“You’ve a lighter?” you ask.
“Of course. Why, you’ve some opium?”
“No, no. I just think I have a plan.”
“Good, we’re nearly there.”
To set about incinerating the town of Underburg in the hopes that the chaos that ensues will spark the revolutionary potential and desire of the kabouters, go to Twenty-Nine.
To get into the city first and develop some sort of stunning—and only metaphorically incendiary—plan, go to Twenty-Four.
Eighteen
“I never been one to speak amiably with tyrants, nor one to costume my emotions. I’m also dreadfully afraid of missing anything interesting. So I suppose I shall volunteer myself, an infantryman in the ranks of goblins?”
Yi’ta looks you up and down, no doubt gauging your suitability for the task you’ve chosen to undertake. “Are you drunk?” he asks.
“Most likely,” you say.
“Are you this brave when you’re sober?” he asks.
“I’m afraid not.”
“Well then, please ascertain you have enough alcohol to keep yourself intoxicated until after our glorious victory, yes?”
“I wouldn’t dream of venturing out without ample spirits,” you say. Inside your head, you’re beginning to laugh. What an excellent adventure this shall be!
A tall—well, tall for a goblin—goblin woman approaches you, grinning quite mischievously. Although, you realize, it’s possible that she could be grinning without the slightest trace of mischief. That’s the thing about anthropomorphizing other creatures—it doesn’t work.
“Gu’dal,” the new goblin says, thrusting her hand out at you.
“Gregory,” you say, and shake. Your hand quite engulfs hers, and she digs her nails into your palm, perhaps by accident.
Gu’dal is wearing a patchwork tailcoat over tight leather pants that show her legs to be as thin as lines. She bears a cane, its head carved into the likeness of some sort of swine-faced demon, and wears a comical stovetop hat that makes her somehow seem even thinner.
“You’ll come down below with us then, storm the gates as part of the greatest horde these caverns have ever seen?”
“Er… yes.” You avoid letting yourself reconsider. You meant it when you said that you weep for lost opportunity. How could you not volunteer to fight in an army of goblins? Besides, odds are good that you’re merely hallucinating. It wouldn’t be the first time.
Gu’dal leads you
out of the belfry and down the stairs. Whatever that bundle at the base of the tower had been, it is gone now. But there is a goblin-sized archway mysteriously set into the base of the stairs. Your guide takes your hand in hers—this time without clawing you—and you crouch to follow her through the door and into the darkness.
Fortunately, after a few steps, you’ve room enough to walk upright down the stairs. And, what’s more, your eyes begin to adjust to the dark. Up ahead, you see the faint glow of gaslight.
At the base of the steps, you find yourself in what looks to be a service tunnel, pipes of all diameters running along the ceiling and walls. Every few dozen yards is a dim gaslight, and spaced further apart than that are vents that spill fresh—well fresher—air into the tunnel.
You’re led along this tunnel at a remarkable speed—despite her short legs, Gu’dal walks as fast as yourself—and find yourself heading deeper and deeper underground.
You come into a great chamber, the breadth and height of an opera house. There are nets strung chaotically throughout the chamber, balconies and hammocks set randomly throughout. And sitting, standing, hanging, clambering, and snoring within are hundreds—dare you guess thousands?—of goblins, all dressed in makeshift spiky armor, all wielding a fantastical array of edged, blunt, and projectile weapons. And nearly all of them look like they are having a great deal of fun.
“You’re preparing for war?” you ask Gu’dal.
“Of course,” she replies.
“I had expected something more, somber, I suppose.”
Gu’dal doesn’t answer you.
Right by the entrance, you see three gray-haired goblins sitting on their helmets, shuffling clay tiles about in front of them. It’s quite clear that they are playing a drinking game.
You decide that you like the goblins.
“Well, if all goes as we hope, we should be underway within the next few hours. Do you want to be right up in front, make sure you catch all the action?” Gu’dal looks enchanted, enthralled, at the prospect of going to war against the gnomes.
To join the front of the horde, go to Twenty.
To demure and find yourself a place near the back, go to Twenty-Seven.
Nineteen
“What is that we’re carrying, anyhow?” you ask.
“I don’t understand all of it,” Gu’dal says. “But basically, we’re building amplifiers and receivers in the belltowers. We’ll toll them in certain sequences—those sequences are recorded in the notebook—and if everything is lined up correctly, blam-o.”
“Blam-o?”
“We strike down the gates to Hak’kal and flow through like stormwater, washing their sins away with blood.” Gu’dal gets a bit of spring in her step as she describes the glorious revolution, flashing her fangs, and you can’t help but wonder if you’re on the right side.
“But what is Hak’kal?”
“Hak’kal is a monster. We goblins used to have a holy cave filled with food and riches. It was never depleted, because we were careful; we didn’t live in the cave, we just went there to gather. Then the gnomes came and built a city in our holy cave. Within ten years they’d exhausted their resources and now we goblins are forced to mine their metals. The slaves they brought with them, the kabouters, they gather all their food. The gnomes live like happy little kings and we goblins are their slaves. Until tomorrow. Then we’ll–
“Watch out!” Gu’dal says, pulling you into an alley.
“What?” you whisper, your back against the darkened brick, but Gu’dal puts her hand over her mouth, signaling you into silence.
As you watch from the darkness, three police officers stroll by on their rounds, swinging truncheons at their sides. You’re about to step out of the alley—skulking usually drawing more attention than simply walking—when you see what appears to be a child scurry after them.
“That’s a gnome,” Gu’dal whispers in your ear. You turn around and see that your friend is suddenly at your eye level: Gu’dal is clinging to the brick with claws on her hands and feet.
You stare after the retreating gnome. If it weren’t for the friendly green monster hiding in the alley next to you, you would never believe that the child-like silhouette was anything other than just that—a child.
The gendarmes past, you slip out of the alley and continue another three blocks to the secondary tower.
Go to Thirty-Three.
Twenty
“Of course! I’d hate to miss any of the fun,” you say. You’re not sure why you say it. But say it you do.
Gu’dal smiles at you, quite charming in her skeletal, green, pointy-toothed-and-black-gummed kind of way. It seems like everyone you know on the surface has a carefully practiced dispassion, a lack of interest in anything that matters to the real world. (Excepting your brother, of course, who was exiled for sedition.) But down here, people seem to care about something.
You make your way up to the front of the room, carefully stepping over sleeping goblins, narrowly avoiding being caught in the middle of a lively game of “catch the axe-head.”
When you reach the front of the crowd, up near a large set of steel doors that you presume to lead towards Hak’kal, you find a cut-off stalagmite to sit upon and, before you know it, fall asleep.
Ten seconds or three hours later, you’re roused by a booming, high-pitched voice. Dangling by a rope from the ceiling, a large goblin woman hangs in plate armor that looks cobbled from cookware. You realize that she’s giving a speech.
Gu’dal translates parts of it for you: “‘Goblins of the mines, goblins of the fields. Our parents’ parents’ parents’ parents' parents’ parents’—sorry, there’s a simpler word for it in Goblin—‘lived here in these tunnels. They lived honestly. They worked when it pleased them, invented only what was worth inventing. They built and ventilated these tunnels. They ate the mushrooms right off the walls! They sang and they danced. Sometimes they fought one another, sure. Sometimes they stole children from the humans above. But it is not as the gnomes will say, is it?’”
The entire crowd roared, “Hin!” You presume this to be the word for “no.”
“‘Every generation, we have tried to cast off our chains. Every generation, we have tried to destroy Hak’kal, only to fail! Will it be any different this time?”
As one voice, the crowd screams “Hin!” You begin to doubt your ability to guess what words mean.
“‘We will fight and we will die! We will fight and we will die!’” Gu’dal whispers this last bit of translation to you, then joins in the chant. “Gad urrthrane gad urrthrus! Gad urrthrane gad urrthrus!”
You pull a flask of brandy from its place in your vest pocket and drain it in one, long pull. Unfortunately, you’re still not feeling precisely “in the moment,” so you take your hipflask from its place tucked into your belt and begin to sip the grain alcohol within. Eventually, your mind goes where you want it to go. “Gad urrhtrane gad urrthrus! Gad urrthrane gad urrthrus!” you chant. And suicidal a chant it might be, it gets to you. You’re ready. Ready to fight, ready to die.
Go to Thirty-Nine.
Twenty-One
“These gnomish chaps,” you ask, “are they as short as you all?”
“Oh no,” the goblin says, “each one is twice as tall as a goblin and weighs easily up to four stone!”
“I’ll be happy to help,” you say, because you weigh ten stone and if there’s a fight you can win, it’s one against a foe half your height and stature.
“Hurrah!” a goblin—a different one—lets out. And suddenly a dozen small hands are upon you, dragging you along to join the rest of the horde. As one, you march out of the town, through a long tunnel, and into a tall room that looks almost like an opera hall: a tall cylinder with a floor that is sloped down towards… well, instead of a stage there is a massive set of steel doors.
And instead of an audience, there are hundreds, maybe even thousands, of goblins dressed for war. But if you’d hoped for a somber war party, you have come to the
wrong cavern. Well, you are rarely hoping for a somber party of any sort, so you’re most likely quite delighted: the goblins prance and play and drink—and copulate, it seems, if those two suspended in a net fifteen feet above your head are doing what you think they are doing—all while dressed in a crazy assortment of mismatched armor and wielding any number of misappropriated tools.
A’gog steps up and finds you, leads you to the front of the crowd. “Wouldn’t want to miss anything, I wouldn’t, and my eyesight isn’t what it once was.”
Looking at the crowd around you, you suddenly feel quite underdressed. Certainly, you’d look impeccable—well, a bit dusty—at a soirée, but you haven’t a stitch of armor about you, and while your cane is quite handy for threatening the children of beggars, you wouldn’t expect it to handle a full-fledged war.
It’s when you remember the existence of guns that your blood turns to ice. You’re four times as tall as any other target.
“Tell me,” you ask A’gog, “do the gnomes have guns?”
“No, no, of course not. A gun would be too dangerous underground. What if they struck a pipe? The pressure would blow the whole tunnel, it would.”
Somehow, this relieves you a little bit. But your guide continues:
“No, they don’t use guns. They use lightrifles.”
You decide you don’t want to know what a lightrifle is. Ignorance may not be bliss, but you don’t see any good place to relieve yourself and therefore “frightful sounding” sounds better than “the certainty of doom” that you’re afraid you might come to understand.
Your fretting is interrupted by the dramatic descent from the ceiling—via rope—of a rather large goblin woman wearing armor that is clearly piecemeal assembled from cookware. She speaks in a loud, clear, high-pitched voice, and stirs great emotion in the room. It’s a shame you can’t understand what she’s saying.
“What’s she saying,” you ask A’gog. Nearby, someone shushes you.
What Lies Beneath The Clock Tower: Being An Adventure Of Your Own Choosing Page 3