by Tom Holt
Better give them something to listen to, then. “My fellow goblins,” Mordak said. “Together we stand on the threshold of a new dawn. Together we stand ready to set our hands to a new path. Together, we can achieve the change, the real change, that our society has been crying out for.”
He paused for the usual standing ovation; three minutes precisely. He had an idea that some of them at least were beginning to relax; this was, after all, exactly the way all royal speeches had begun for over two thousand years. Sorry, lads, he thought, but I can do no other, God help me.
When he looked at them, he said, what did he see? He saw a strong people, united in their common goals of remorseless progress, legendary brutality and total victory. And yet (immediately the assembly froze) how long was it since any one of them had stopped to consider the best way of achieving those goals, unanimously shared as they were by the entire goblin people? Excellent though their traditional way undoubtedly was, might there not just possibly be a better one?
In the second row back, a senior goblin official was slowly grinding his jaws, whetting his tusks together with an audible slop-slop noise. Oh hell, Mordak thought. Still, on we go.
As long as there have been goblins, he said, goblins had been miners; brave, bright-eyed, dedicated heroes of labour who’d hewn the living rock in search of the shining stone prized above all other minerals. To defend what was rightfully theirs, generations of goblins had fought the dwarves for possession of those mines, and that conflict had shaped the goblin people, as the hammer and the anvil shape the red steel. What were the proudest battle cries of their race? Our shafts, for ever, and Mines, not yours; and that shared heritage of valour and sacrifice was the very core of goblinkind, a heritage that would endure as long as a single goblin waddled on earth. And that was, of course, exactly how it should be.
However—
Mordak swallowed hard and went on. However, he said, although the miners’ heart, the miners’ courage, the miners’ ruthless determination, the miners’ very soul were indispensable parts of being goblin, maybe mining itself didn’t have to be. He would like them to consider a few hard facts. Although output of shining rocks had risen steadily by at least 10 per cent every year for over a century, net income from shining rock sales had remained absolutely constant. Deaths from mining accidents had also risen, year on year; likewise, casualties in the dwarf wars. More goblins than ever were dying to produce more shining rocks than ever before, but they, the hard-working families of the United Hordes of Goblindom, weren’t seeing the benefit. Now, he asked them, who was to blame for that?
Dead silence; but, he dared to hope, not the sort of silence that immediately precedes the first shout of Get him! Call it a miracle, but they were still listening.
Naturally, he went on, we blame the dwarves. Dwarvish aggression started the war, dwarvish greed kept it going, generation after weary generation. But there was peace now. Finally, Drain’s people had been dragged to the negotiating table and forced to see sense. From now on, not one more goblin need fall to the murderous axes of the ancient enemy.
Pause. On their faces he saw that sullen, resentful, salad-is-good-for you look that told him he still had a very long way to go. In which case, he told himself, onwards–
We have shown the world, he said, that goblins aren’t afraid to break the mould. We have shown all those who sneer at us and mock us that goblins have the courage, the faith, to do what it takes for a better tomorrow. (The human book he’d cribbed that last bit from had said a better, brighter tomorrow, but he’d had the sense to realise that, in front of an audience of cave-dwellers, it probably wouldn’t play too well.) It was time, he told them, to summon up all that courage, all that determination and sheer goblin grit, and go for real change, real progress. It was time, he told them, to leave the mines.
Maybe they were just too stunned to move. He looked at them and figured he had fifteen seconds, twenty at the most. He drew a very deep breath and went on.
The mines, he said, are holding us back. We work, we sweat, we die, but who gets all the profits? The wizard. We increase output; do we get paid more? No, we do not. We fight off a dwarf invasion of our galleries, but do we reap the benefits? No, the wizard does. And there’s absolutely nothing we can do about that, because only the wizard wants the shining stones; and, so long as he can get them from the dwarves as well as us, he’s in a perfect position to tell us how much he wants to pay for them.
So, he went on, we have two choices. We can exterminate every last dwarf under the mountain and so gain a monopoly, or we can leave the mines and find another way to earn a living. I know that every fibre of your being is shouting for the first option. I have to tell you, it can’t be done. Stop, I beseech you, and think for a moment. We’ve never lost a war with the dwarves, but–you know this yourselves–we’ve never really won one, either. We can wipe them out, but we’ll be wiped out, too. And for whose benefit? The wizard’s. Is that what we really want? Don’t let’s give him the satisfaction.
Mordak paused, partly for rhetorical effect, partly to make sure that his pre-planned escape route was still open. He didn’t dare glance over his shoulder, but the reflection in his carefully placed gauntlet showed him that the way was clear as far as the back of the hall, where his two trusty mercenaries would hold them off while he lifted the trapdoor down to Gallery Six. Once he was down there, it’d be a straight run to the border and Drain’s solemn promise of political asylum; a term which, he couldn’t help thinking, perfectly described the assembly facing him right now.
Here we go, he thought.
There is, he said, a better way. It’s a way that leads us out of the mines. A way of prosperity, of security, of independence, of freedom for ever from the greed and oppression of the wizard. It’s the way, the only way, that goblins can be free and still be, to the very roots of their souls, goblins. It’s the way of basket-weaving.
Thirty-four thousand eyes blinked simultaneously. If he’d been in a better frame of mind to appreciate it, he’d have thought it was a wonderful thing to behold.
Basket-weaving, he told them. He, their king, had thought long and hard, wrestling with the problem day in and day out, and finally the solution had come to him. After all, people the world over need baskets. They’ve always needed baskets, they always will need baskets. And what occupation could possibly be more suited to the unique talents and traditions of the goblin people? To weave a basket, you first hack down a young sapling. Then you tear it lengthways until it splits; then you twist the riven split with your bare hands and force it into contorted shapes, while piercing holes in the growing lattice with a bare, sharp bodkin. Then, when you’ve done that, you slice off the sticking-out ends with a big knife, and, lo and behold, there’s your basket. My friends (said King Mordak), don’t you agree, isn’t that precisely the sort of work that we goblins were born to do?
And so, he said, I offer you two choices. One leads to the glorious but inevitable extermination of our race. The other leads to wealth, fulfilment, happiness and power. It’s not an easy choice, but since when did goblins relish the easy way, the soft way, the coward’s way? My fellow goblins, I have nothing to offer you but bark, sap, sawdust, toil and sweat. I know you will make the right choice, not just for yourselves, not just for your broodspawn, but for your broodspawn’s broodspawn. Thank you.
It was the deepest, heaviest silence he’d ever known, but what was most remarkable about it was that he couldn’t read it–he, King Mordak, born and raised in the dark, silent mines. For all his shrewdness and insight into the narrow, bony heads of his people, he simply had no idea what the twenty thousand goblins facing him were going to do next.
And then they began to shout.
It started with a few barks at the back of the hall, grew into a clattering, like heavy raindrops on a tin roof, and swelled into a roar that shook the walls. They were all bellowing at the tops of their voices, and what they were shouting was: Mordak! Mordak! Mordak!
; So that was all right.
He let them rip for a minute, then raised his claw for silence and got it. My fellow goblins, he said, let us now go forth. Let us leave slavery and the mines and go into the forest. In the forest, we’ll hack and split and twist and stab and slice ourselves a golden future, until every basket, every basket in the whole world, is made by us. Of course (he said, and paused, and they all paused with him), there may be some people who don’t like it. There may be some who don’t want us to take over the fat basket-weaving monopoly they’ve enjoyed for so long. They may not want us to swarm out like lava over the willow coppices, cutting a swathe so wide it’ll be visible from the highest mountain. They may not like it at all. But I tell you this, my brothers. If the Elves don’t like it, if they come for us, with their poison arrows, their spears, their sneers and their ears, we’ll teach them a lesson they’ll never forget.
It’s always a good idea, Mordak reflected as they carried him shoulder-high from the chamber, to leave the best bit till last. Even so, it had been a hell of a gamble, and he’d risked it, and he’d won. I won, he thought. I did it. All alone, against the odds, I did it.
And then he thought; what the hell did I just do?
“So,” Yglaine said, after a pause, “you haven’t actually done anything, then.”
John the Lawyer blinked twice, then smiled. “On the contrary,” he said. “Like I just told you, I’ve been researching the origins of the wizard, and I have to say, it’s quite—”
“About getting me a new violin. You haven’t done anything at all.”
Elves, he thought. With ears like that, you’d think they’d listen just occasionally. “Like I told you,” he said pleasantly, “I’ve been researching the origins of the wizard, who I believe is at the very heart of a chain of causalities whose roots go deep—”
“It wasn’t the wizard who broke my violin, it was a giant. I thought you’d grasped that.”
John sighed. “Yes, it was a giant, but—”
“Right. So what are you wasting time chasing after the wizard for?”
“Point one, the giant is dead and can’t be sued, point two, even if it was still alive it wouldn’t have any money. The wizard, by contrast, is still very much with us, and he’s so ridiculously wealthy he could afford to buy you a thousand million violins, and if we can establish a direct causal link—”
“I don’t want a thousand million violins, where on earth would I put them all, I just want one. And you’re not doing anything to get it for me.”
Don’t shout, he ordered himself. Shouting at an Elf would get him deported; and though on one level nothing would please him more, it’d be such a shame to get thrown out now, with possibly the biggest score in legal history practically within his grasp. “You’re quite right,” he said. “I’m sorry, I was being, um, human. You know what we’re like. Butterfly minds. The wood from the trees, that sort of thing. That’s why I’m so glad I’ve had this opportunity to work with Elves, the chance to learn intellectual discipline and the ability to focus.”
Maybe her cold blue dead-fish eyes softened a little. “That’s all right, then,” she said. “Now, get on with getting me a new violin, and we’ll say no more about it.”
“Of course.”
She waited a moment or so. “Well? What are you going to do?”
He nodded eagerly. “Probably the best thing, if you agree, would be if I issue proceedings. I thought maybe if I apply for a writ of certiorari in the Chancery division, leading to an interlocutory hearing to establish due cause, coupled with an application for a Treluviel injunction, pleading res ipsa loquitur, I could then move to join further multiple defendants on an ad hoc basis once we reach the exchange of pleadings stage, without prejudice to other causes further or in the alternative that might emerge in the light of secondary documentary evidence becoming available during the discovery process. Or do you think I’m barking up the wrong tree entirely?”
She looked at him as though he’d just turned into a fish. “No,” she said, “no, that sounds pretty good to me. I mean, that’s what I’d do, if it was me.”
“Absolutely. And if the counter-pleadings give rise to counterclaims requiring issue of further interlocutory proceedings before the deputy registrar, we can always register an intent to proceed, with reservation of evidence in chief pending resolution of the primary claim at first instance, subject to appeal in chambers on any relevant points of law.”
“Well of course we can. That’s just basic common sense, really.”
“Of course it is. Although, while we’re on the subject, if we get hit with a Glorfangel interdiction during arguments in camera, do you think we should move for dismissal or lodge a payment into court subject to order, with an associated petition for exemplary costs?”
She opened her mouth and closed it a couple of times, but no words came out. He counted up to five in his head, then added, “You’re quite right, it’s best to play that sort of thing by ear when the time comes. I mean, that’s what people like me are for, so that the real decision-makers don’t get bogged down in de minimis trivia.” He smiled. “Like I said, that’s what’s so good about working with Elves. They see things so clearly.”
Well, that was phase one, Shutting Up The Client, successfully completed; now on with phase two. Once she’d gone, John sat down in his comfortable chair next to the window and reached for the huge wad of documents he’d gone to so much trouble to squeeze out of the miserable pointy-eared bastards down at Consolidated Records.
Elves, as is universally acknowledged, make the best civil servants in the known world. Only Elves truly understand that the real function of the official archivist is to preserve everything while at the same time making it impossible to find; that way, the information is protected from officials, and the officials are protected from the information, and everybody can sleep easy in their beds, or their office chairs if they’re in one of the higher administrative grades. Since the passing of the Freedom of Information Acts, over a thousand years ago, anyone could go down to the archive and look at anything he liked; the proviso, which made all the difference, was that the archive staff were under no obligation to help him find what he was looking for. Since the lives of 99.967 per cent of Elves are dominated by copy deadlines, the school run and the need to dress for dinner parties, nobody had the time to go rummaging about in dusty old boxes for the stuff that might actually mean something. No Elf, anyway.
John the Lawyer squinted, and held a page up to the light. He’d had to copy all this stuff himself, and since he was a lawyer his handwriting at its best looked like other people’s crossings-out. Never mind; he remembered this bit so clearly he didn’t really need the transcript. It was the wizard’s original application, made three thousand and four years ago, for planning and zoning permission to build the Wizard’s House at Sair Carathorn, the seat of his power.
Three thousand years ago, of course, slap bang in the middle of the Second Age, the mountainous deserts around Sair Carathorn were still impenetrable forest, part of the realm and under the jurisdiction of the Elvenhome Sylvan District Council. Back then, when dwarves, goblins and men still wore animal skins and hunted with flint spears, and even the Elves were only just coming to terms with the three great pillars of civilisation − movable type, classified advertisements and the Sunday colour supplement–the power of the Elven bureaucrats had not yet waned into the pale shadow of itself that had survived into the late Third Age. Wielding the might of the Three Rings (like the One Ring but, inevitably in context, in triplicate), the officers of the ESDC had held sway from the Blue Mountains right across the plains to the Sea; and every castle, fortress, township, manor house, cottage, pigsty, woodshed and hayrick had needed planning consent from the Elder Folk before anyone could do so much as dig a hole in the ground or hammer in a gatepost. Such was their authority that even the wizard, lately arrived from the Shining Lands, had bowed low before them and filled out Form 188C (Residential); a copy of which, tran
scribed by the light of a guttering candle stub, now lay on John’s knee as he struggled to decipher his own lamentably obscure squiggles.
Most of it–here through 677–were just the usual official stuff; but at the back, where he’d known it would be, was the building regulations inspector’s report, with a full specification and plans and elevations in the approved format. As he read, occasionally stopping to leaf through the pages of his Old Middle High Elvish dictionary, John’s face slowly changed; from a smile to a hungry grin, from a grin to a worried frown. And then he stopped, as though turned to stone, and sat staring at the drawings for a long, long time.
Surely not, he thought. It can’t be.
While he’d been copying it, his mind had been on other things; the cold, the rats, the inordinately long interval between meals. Now, when he came to consider it carefully, with the bright light of a summer afternoon blazing in through the unshuttered window, he didn’t just suspect, he knew. That shape; that set of two concentric circles surrounding a hollow void; the section between the two circles raised into high relief and contoured into a continuous semicircle. He’d seen it before, once long ago, and in the most unlikely place he could possibly imagine—
“Oh come on,” he said aloud. Then, as if suddenly conscious of what he held in his hands, he covered the page with a bit of scrap paper and put it down on the floor.
No. Surely not.
It took him a long time to nerve himself to take another look. This time he concentrated on the text, in particular the annotations and explanatory notes. The concentric circles surrounded a hole in the back wall of the main storehouse in the deepest vault below Sair Carathorn. It was described in the report simply as access port, which could mean anything. Reading between the lines, the building inspector seemed to have assumed it was part of the plumbing, a subject which Elves find quite distasteful and prefer not to dwell on. A sinkhole, sump or soakaway, the inspector appeared to have thought, and was content to leave it at that.