by Jean Rabe
There were hundreds more dead slaves in the mine, Grallik suspected, and some knights among them. Something would have to be done about all their bodies and the stink building up in the shafts. The shafts would have to be reopened, ore production continued. But clearing the mine was a goal to consider after sunrise. Dealing with the mound of bodies there and then, Grallik had to focus on that problem.
“Guardian N’sera,” one of the guards began. “Shall I-?”
Grallik raised his scarred hand. “I need no help with this. Just watch the slaves.”
The odor from the dead was strong and overpowering and threatened to topple the wizard. Grallik was thankful he’d not eaten that day, else he’d be retching as he stood in front of the grisly pile. A haze of insects blanketed the mound, the incessant buzzing of the creatures making it hard for him to think. They flowed out around him, gnats sticking to the sweat on Grallik’s face and neck and flying into his nose and mouth.
He gagged and crossed his arms in front of his chest, ground the ball of his foot against the hard earth, and reached into his mind for one of his easiest fire spells. He closed his eyes when he felt the flush of the magic, a warmth that was comfortable and welcome. The magic sprang away from him to strike the edge of the pile a dozen yards away. He directed the energy to envelop the closest corpse, a hobgoblin clad in a threadbare tunic that quickly caught fire. Flesh was harder to burn than cloth, so Grallik had to concentrate, picturing a column of beautiful flame, of red, orange, and yellow. Blessed color to contrast with the mud brown of Steel Town. He opened his eyes to see a lick of fire begin to dance along the cloth and catch at the hobgoblin’s hair.
The insects were loud, so he couldn’t hear the first few harmonious crackles of fire. But after several moments, the flames spread and the noise of pleasant pops and hisses grew, and the annoying insects buzzed away into the darkness. Grallik felt the heat caress his face, relaxing him. The stench intensified, burning hair and flesh adding to the stink and sending billowing gray-black clouds up in the sky to blot out the stars. The Dark Knights always burned the slaves’ bodies, not willing to go to any effort to bury them and not wanting to give them any measure of respect. The goblins and hobgoblins never protested such treatment of their dead-not that their objections would have mattered.
Grallik circled the pyre, sending small lances of flame from his fingers toward the far side. He saw crushed skulls and ribs, partial torsos, and decapitated bodies. A war could not have been more destructive. He’d so far avoided venturing toward the Dark Knights’ graves, though eventually that would be necessary if he sought a pair of good boots. He could handle the sight of mutilated slave corpses far better than that of his dismembered brethren.
Satisfied that the pile of hob and gob bodies was burning well, he turned away and abruptly stopped in his tracks.
Goblins and hobgoblins were pressed against the fence, watching the fire. More, they were watching Grallik, their eyes wide and filled with fear and anger and sadness. They looked all the same to the wizard, though his eyes registered the different skin colors-orange, brown, red, yellow, and mottled shades in between. All were a bit drab and weathered looking, like old paint that had faded.
Most had wide-set eyes and broad noses, thin lips and sharp little teeth. Some had tall, pointed ears; others had crooked ones with pieces missing or decorated with shards of bones. Most were thin because the Dark Knights fed them just enough to keep them alive, and their ribs and shoulders were weirdly pronounced. A scattering had little pot bellies, and many had real arm and leg muscles from the heavy work they were forced to endure in the mine. Only one in five or six wore any articles of clothing. As in human society, clothing seemed to carry some measure of distinction, with the older or larger goblins boasting garments that came either from children in Steel Town who had outgrown them or women who had gotten tired of a raggedy garment and pitched it into the pen.
The hobgoblins were simply larger versions with more tufts of hair and even wider faces. Some had large enough teeth to be considered tusks. They came in a smaller range of colors, browns and reds, though they were equally drab and scarred. But they tended to wear more clothes because the hobgoblins served as foremen and stood apart from their more unfortunate brethren.
No two of them looked exactly alike, yet all of them appeared beaten down by years of hard work, malnourished from improper amounts of food, dazed by their hopelessness. To Grallik, they were all one and the same-tools for a job, to be treated with as much care as a sturdy pick or a shovel.
Little more than debris.
Many of the ones staring at him were injured, the stink from their dried blood and oozing wounds reaching Grallik as the breeze shifted. One in a corner drew his notice-a skinny female goblin with dark red skin and a lugubrious face etched with harshness. Her eyes were different, dark and small, set close to the thin bridge of her nose. They gave her a particularly angry expression. The others usually gave space to her, he’d noted in the past. Perhaps, like him, they were bothered by her angry eyes. Grallik had heard her two evenings past, hollering to the guards about a coming disaster. Could she have known about the quake?
How smart was she?
There were shamans among goblinkind. Was she one of them?
Huh! He shook his head. It was not likely but not impossible. He’d never scrutinized any of the slaves, only gave them passing glances when they brought the ore down the mountain. He’d never wondered if one of them carried a magical spark.
It was not likely that Angry Eyes was a shaman. And yet …
His throbbing feet reminded him that it was past time to sit and rest. His course took him around the goblin pens and toward chairs lined up where the tavern used to be. Grallik kept his gaze on the skinny red-skinned goblin as he went.
“The earth is not done,” he thought he heard her say.
10
FREED SPIRITS
Direfang watched as Moon-eye fawned over Graytoes. The young female sat propped up against a post, hands on her rounded stomach and eyes closed. She looked as if she slept, but the hobgoblin knew she just wanted a measure of privacy. Pretending to sleep despite all the noise and the crowding and the swarms of insects was her only way to get some measure of peace. Moon-eye waved gnats away from her face.
Her legs were swollen, and Direfang could tell that the left might be broken. If it were broken, it would be a clean break, he knew from experience. There were no bones poking out of her skin and no maggots worming their way inside. He was amazed that both legs hadn’t been thoroughly shattered and that she hadn’t died. But the ground beneath her chamber had been packed with soft dirt, and the dirt had absorbed some of the impact of the timber falling on her. Direfang had carefully carried her out of the mine and down the mountainside. He knew Moon-eye to be a hard worker, and he did not want Moon-eye to grieve too much over the death of a mate and risk punishment.
“Skull men will see to Graytoes later,” he told Moon-eye. “Mend Graytoes later. Graytoes will be well, maybe even a little later today.” He paused. “But maybe not until tomorrow. The skull men are busy mending the knights right now.”
Moon-eye snarled something unintelligible. He’d called to the guards several times, trying to get one of them to summon a Skull Knight to heal his mate. There were other goblins injured worse, but Moon-eye didn’t care about them.
“Moon-eye’s Heart hurts,” he said, stroking Graytoes’s arm.
“When the skull men are done with the knights, one will come here,” Direfang said.
“Promise?”
Direfang scowled. “No.” He patted the top of Graytoes’ head then worked his way through the mass of goblins so he could stand at the rail and watch the funeral pyre. He wondered why the Dark Knights chose to bury their dead and forever trap their spirits beneath the earth.
But Direfang had served the Dark Knights for many years and knew that was their way, though he never understood the reasons for it. It had something to do with thei
r gods, the burying and corpse rotting. Perhaps their gods, with their cruel senses of humor, required the barbaric ritual. Direfang had never asked the Dark Knights about it. He was content that the knights, even though they did it unknowingly, properly observed the custom of goblinkind by burning dead slaves.
The goblin and hobgoblin clans had different ways of disposing of their dead, though all accepted the burning that took place in Steel Town. In fact, most of the clans Direfang was familiar with preferred the pyre. Then, after the ashes were cold, friends and relatives of the deceased traditionally would break and scatter any remaining bones, trying to leave nothing intact. Similar things would be done in Steel Town, though not by any ritual, and likely not with relatives involved. The hobgoblin knew the Dark Knights would order the slaves to rake the bones flat and cover them with earth, so the area would not look unsightly. That’s what they had done seven years past, when a wasting disease swept through one of the pens and killed more than one hundred goblins before the Skull Knights could stop the malady.
Direfang had been among those who raked the bones then, and he’d volunteered ever since that time to spread the ashes of the occasional lone slave who died because of a beating or mine accident or old age.
The clan Graytoes hailed from preferred to leave its bodies to rot in the woods, bestowing the flesh on carrion birds and the insects, and knowing that larger predators would rip up the corpses, also thereby separating the bones.
Moon-eye was taken from his clan at such a young age that he had no memories of the traditions they had practiced.
Saro-Saro’s clan had been known for eating its dead; that was the only clan Direfang was aware of with such a predilection, though he was certain there were others. And that clan, too, scattered the remains of what was not consumed.
Hobgoblin clans on the coasts usually gave the bodies to the seas, knowing fish and other creatures would feast on the dead. Those inland typically cleaved off a limb or the head as a remembrance for relatives, leaving the bodies for scavengers and returning to break and scatter and spread the bones. Larger clans ground the bones and used them in pottery or gardens, honoring the dead by letting them nurture the living.
Some of the oldest goblin clans used the rib bones of their dead warriors to fashion pieces of armor, believing that they gained strength by keeping the memory of their heroes and ancestors close. Mudwort once told Direfang that her clan used the leg bones of the dead to beat ceremonial drums and used skulls for bowls. Finger bones were sharpened into fishhooks, for her clan favored extensive use of tools and relied on lakes and rivers for their livelihood. Mudwort knew of many other curious practices concerning the dead but did not speak much about them. She did, from time to time, laugh when the Dark Knights buried one of their own.
No goblin body should be left to rot beneath the earth. And none should be left intact or unbroken, all the clans agreed. There should be nothing for the spirit to return to.
Enemies were another matter. When clan warred against clan, which was rare, or when they fought tribes of kobolds and gnolls, the goblins tried to dig deep and bury beneath the earth the enemies they killed so their spirits would be trapped. It was another way to dishonor their foes.
All the clans Direfang knew of were certain that goblin and hobgoblin spirits-once separated from their dead bodies-would return to Krynn to begin another life.
Everything returned. Nothing was wholly lost.
That explained why Direfang and the others had memories that came to them mysteriously or why they instinctively knew how to do certain things.
It also explained why the bodies had to be destroyed. A spirit would first try to return to its old form, and if that form was whole, regardless of its state of decay, the spirit would lodge there. It would be trapped for decades upon decades in the husk of its former self. And when time finally turned the bones to dust, the spirit would dissipate, lost and tortured eternally.
But if the spirit could not return to its old form because that form had been burned or eaten and the bones strewn about and broken, it would be born again into a new body. Direfang wondered if the spirit of one of the goblins who died in the mine and was burned this night would emerge as Graytoes and Moon-eye’s child. He hoped not. He hoped the spirits freed that night would be born to clans well beyond Steel Town and never see the inside of a mountain.
No one knew how long a spirit hovered before returning or how many times a spirit returned.
He wondered how old his own spirit was.
Direfang considered some of the goblins in the camp to be old souls: Mudwort, Saro-Saro, Bentclaw, Hurbear, and a few of those on the pyre. Perhaps those souls in long-ago times believed in gods such as Chislev and Takhisis and would have understood the Dark Knights’ silly burial practices. But the goblins believed those things no longer-they were more sagacious.
The goblins and hobgoblins in Steel Town, and in the tribes and clans throughout Neraka, did not revere any of Krynn’s gods. They recognized that the gods existed and that they capriciously meddled in mortals’ affairs. But goblinkind did not believe that paying homage to any god would send their spirits to some glorious afterlife. Neither did the goblins care to spend their afterlife with any of those gods. Such a fate would be more akin to damnation than salvation.
The gods never did anything good for goblinkind. They never made goblins and hobgoblins and their bugbear cousins strong enough to stand up to Dark Knights and ogres and minotaurs. They never kept goblinkind from being exploited and mistreated by practically all the world’s races.
They never kept them from being ripped from their families and made slaves, from being whipped and practically starved, from being forced to mine ore for cruel taskmasters such as the Dark Knights of Hell Town.
And they hadn’t prevented the earth from shaking and collapsing shafts down on top of goblin heads.
So because the gods had ignored goblinkind and deemed them worthless of their attention, goblinkind in turn ignored the gods and deemed them worse than useless.
Direfang felt mildly sorry for the Dark Knights, yoked as they were to their foolish gods and rituals, burying their dead so the spirits would be trapped in husks rotting beneath Steel Town’s ugly earth. He wondered how many more years he would have to spend in the camp before he died and was thrown into the fire. He watched the flames dance up the bodies and hoped he’d be lucky enough not to be trapped in the mine.
“Cold night, warm fire,” a goblin at his side observed. “Good burn.”
“Yes,” Direfang admitted. “It is a good burn. It will keep the spirits away.”
“Away from the mine,” the goblin said. “Away from this hell.”
Direfang continued to stare at the flames, coughing when the wind shifted and sent the acrid stench of burning flesh across the slave pens.
“Bad smell, the fire. Good that it sends the spirits away,” the goblin continued.
“This one will burn a long time,” Direfang said. “So many bodies, piled so high. So many dead.” The heat from the pyre made him thirstier and made him think about the place in the mine where water poured down the wall, where he drank his fill before carrying Graytoes out. Still, he stood there watching until the fire died down and the pile was reduced to charred, twisted remains. Most of the goblins had watched too, waiting for the ceremony to begin.
Hurbear presided. The goblin, like others of his kind, had a flat face, broad nose, and pointed ears. His mouth was overly wide, however, and filled with broken, flat teeth, which indicated his advanced years. His skin was a dusky yellow; his dull eyes had a film over them. Goblins from the same area tended to have similar coloration, and eight of Hurbear’s clansmen, their skin a brighter yellow because of their relative youth, crowded around him.
“The passing comes to all goblins,” Hurbear began.
“Let the telling begin!” Moon-eye yelled. “Listen to Hurbear.”
The elder goblin made the same speech for each death in the camp. “The
shell destroyed, fire cleansed, the spirit reborn.” Hurbear made a fist and placed it over his heart.
“Spirit reborn,” his clansmen echoed. The largest thumped his belly with the flat of his hand then started up a drumlike cadence, which the other seven joined.
Hurbear raised his arms, fingers spread wide. “Spirits fly above Steel Town. Above pain. Above the great sad. Above clans left behind. Above all things.” He turned, nodding to each of the compass points. “The passing comes to all goblins. The passing came to …”
“Gray-morning.” Direfang claimed the right to speak first, and because of his size and his status as a foreman, none challenged him. “Gray-morning, called ‘old mother’ by some, hid strips of dried meat stolen from others in ore sacks on trips to the mine. Hungry, Gray-morning would eat before the work began. Hungry always, Gray-morning sucked on rocks and chewed on weeds, begged turnips from the taskmasters. Gray-morning brought smiles. The old mother, the old friend, will be missed.” It wasn’t a particularly captivating or special eulogy, but it defined the dead goblin and Direfang’s relationship to her. Direfang mimicked sticking a meat strip in his mouth and breaking some of it off. “Gray-morning is remembered.”
Other memories were not as well spoken but were nonetheless intended as a measure of respect.
“Big Snout smelled bad,” a young goblin offered. “Stunk in life, stinks now burning. Stinks worse in death. Big Snout is remembered.”
“Growler always scratched. Like a bear, Growler rubbed against the timbers in the mine. Growler is remembered.”
“Feshter was lazy. Lazy Feshter slept much, snored much. Lazy Feshter will not be forgotten.”
“Blue-lip bore two younglings in this pen.”
“Ren-Ren watched the horses. Ren-Ren made horse sounds.”
Direfang listened to each remembrance, trying to give each the reverence they deserved, yet finding it difficult to concentrate on only the sad occasion. He was worried about the goblins and hobgoblins who were not in the pens and not on the pyre, those unaccounted for because they were still in the mine.