by Hilari Bell
“That might be, particularly if they left in as big a rush as you said. And some may not have wanted to go—they’re independent little creatures. Makenna’s the only person I’ve ever heard of who’s organized and led them.”
Seeing the respect in Todder’s face, it occurred to Jeriah that the tinker might not be quite as helpful as he sounded. He obviously cared about the sorceress. Why should he trust Jeriah, after all? He took a deep breath and forced himself to let it out slowly.
“If you worked with her, you must have known her goblin allies pretty well.”
“Not really. In fact, the only goblin I saw more than once was Cogswhallop, who was her second-in-command. The only thing they needed me for was to deal with other humans, to sell things for them”—he gestured at Fiddle—“and buy the things they couldn’t make.”
“So how did you contact them?”
“That was easy. All you had to do was pass the wall and they’d contact you. But your Master Lazur went and changed that. The Goblin Wood is probably the worst place in the Realm to look for goblins right now.”
“Then how can I contact them?” Jeriah demanded. “Much less find one who knew the sorceress?”
Todder shook his head. “I can’t make you any promises about the first part, but if you can talk to one of them, you can send word to the rest. The lass could get news from any corner of the Realm if the goblins knew it, and the Hierarch’s messages traveled slower than hers. As for how to contact them, my best suggestion is to use the traditional method.”
“What’s that?” Jeriah asked.
“You put out a bowl of milk.”
“That’s it?” Jeriah stared. “That’s your best suggestion?”
The tinker’s face was grave, but his eyes twinkled. “The good news is that it doesn’t matter where you try it—there are goblins everywhere.”
“But—”
“I’m sorry about your brother, but that’s all the advice I have to offer. I warned you it wouldn’t be much.” The humor had vanished from the tinker’s face. And he’d made no promises. Jeriah was on his own. But at least there were goblins elsewhere in the Realm, and if he could contact them anywhere…
“Then I might as well go…home. Oh, Gods.”
Todder Yon was too kind to laugh.
INTERLUDE
Tobin
TOBIN WAS CROSSING THE MEADOW to report to Makenna when he met Firka coming up the path. The goblin woman carried two human-size mugs of tea.
“She’s not stopped for a minute, much less a bite, since breakfast.” Firka sighed. “But you might as well drink yours. And don’t go telling me how busy you are, because I don’t care!”
“Give me her mug,” Tobin said. “I’ll get her to drink it.”
It had delighted him, over the past week, watching the subtle way the goblins took care of Makenna—and she needed it!
They hadn’t been in the Otherworld for a full day when she’d announced that if this place was habitable, she was going to find a way to open some gates and invite every goblin in the Realm in to join them. A whole empty world for the goblins’ sanctuary.
It gave the grieving goblins hope, for many of them had left parents, siblings, and close friends behind. It comforted Tobin too—and he knew how precarious that promise was. He had watched her creep out of the lean-to they shared to read Master Lazur’s spell books by moonlight.
She was too busy to read them during the day.
The goblin Makers who were laying out the new village sat with her now. The plan for the new village had been marked on a large stretch of smooth sand, since they had no paper to spare. Thadda, the best of the goblin Weavers, was waiting for the planning session to end, her apron full of some new plant fluff.
Tobin came up behind Makenna and looked over her shoulder at the drawing. It would be a big village, with plenty of room to grow. Someday it might grow into a goblin city, but for now…
“Just the houses we need,” Makenna was saying. “We’ll sit through at least one winter, make sure they’re not too severe, before we bring others in, so guest shelters can wait. The Greeners say they can get two harvests in before the cold comes, so shelter and food storage are the first priorities. I only want to make sure we’re laying things out with the future in mind, so that we won’t find ourselves tearing houses down in order to build mills next year.”
“Then I think we’re ready to start,” the Maker told her, rising to his feet. “I’ll give Master Tobin his turn now.” He nodded politely and departed.
Makenna looked up at Tobin. “You’re finally back? You’ll have to wait a bit, for Thadda’s…”
Thadda had noticed the tea mugs in Tobin’s hands and disappeared some time ago.
“She’s been waiting to talk to me for half a hour!” Makenna started to her feet to go look for the Weaver.
Tobin handed her a mug and sat down on a rock beside the village map. “She won’t come back till you’ve finished, so you might as well drink it. They’re right, you know. You work too hard.”
“I’m not working hard enough.” But she sat down and sipped the tea. “We’re all assuming that the seasons in this world are like the ones we’re used to, but what if instead of having all summer before us, we find winter sets in next month?”
“Then working yourself into the ground won’t have done any good, because the crops are growing as fast as the Greeners can make them. And if the seasons are the same length as back home…working yourself into the ground still won’t have done any good. I was raised on a country estate. You can’t rush the ripening of crops. Or much of anything, really.”
She cast him an amused glance. “I was raised in a war, where rushing a march can get you to the perfect site in time to ambush your enemy. And win because of it.”
“Not if your enemy is winter, and it’s your harvest doing the marching.”
She’d leaned back against the rock behind her and was sipping her tea. Relaxed, for once. Thadda would be proud of him.
“You took longer than I expected, checking out that bog,” she said. “Did you find something?”
“No danger of any kind,” Tobin told her. “And the Greeners found a root that tastes almost like a potato. We’ve all been eating them, and none of us have died yet, so you can add one more item to the things-we-can-eat list.”
“I hope it tastes better than some of the others,” Makenna said. “Nothing dangerous?”
“Not a thing,” Tobin repeated.
“If there was, if some swamp monster rose out of the muck and gnawed on your bones, it would be your own fault, anyway. You’re the one who insisted on coming along.”
“All my fault,” Tobin agreed, and suppressed a smile when she scowled at him.
She had stopped asking why he’d come through the gate, but she kept throwing out those hinting jabs.
Tobin wasn’t sure she’d ever figure it out, and he enjoyed keeping her guessing. She was a bit too compulsive in her desire to know everything, to control every aspect of this new world. It made her a great general—but his job was to keep her human, as well.
He hid another smile and sipped his tea.
CHAPTER 3
Jeriah
HOME. IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON when Jeriah pulled Glory to a stop at the top of the hill, gazing over the patchwork of scattered trees and greening fields that nestled in the curve of the Abo River. On a rise several miles to the south stood the mellow stone square that was Rovan Manor. Tobin, the heir, had loved this view, even in winter. Even in the early spring, when the fields showed nothing but mud. Even in the rain, he’d sit here. The memory held more amusement than grief. Jeriah refused to think of his brother as dead, or going to die; Tobin was merely missing, in need of rescue.
It was going to be ghastly, letting his family think Tobin was truly gone. But if he told them his plans, first his father would forbid him to risk it. “You’re my only living son. You have no right to take that chance.” Then Tami would insist on going with
him, and Senna would criticize his tactics. Jeriah’s lips twitched—maybe that was why the knights of legend always worked alone. Only his mother could be counted on for practical advice.
He lifted the reins, and Glory started down the hill, scenting her barn and the journey’s end.
Jeriah was riding into one of the scattered groves when the sound of cantering hoofbeats reached his ears. His hand went to the knife Todder had traded him. Jeriah had encountered several bands of refugees in the ten days it had taken him to get home. Ten days, pushing the horses as hard as he dared. Over a quarter of Tobin’s two months was gone—but he couldn’t return to Master Lazur until he got his father’s permission. The ragged refugees he’d met hadn’t delayed him, but Jeriah had learned the hard way that he might not always be so lucky.
It was only his father who rode around the bend. Only his father? Considering the news he carried, Jeriah would rather have faced bandits.
“Jeriah, what brings—” Then his father recognized Fiddle, and his open expression hardened. His horse’s legs were muddy, and his boots even muddier. He must have been out in the fields and seen Jeriah lingering on the hilltop.
The old man rode up and pulled his horse to a stop. The lines around his mouth looked as if they’d been carved with a chisel. His eyes traveled from Fiddle to his second son’s face. “Dead?”
“Well…ah…he’s gone. No, I don’t mean—”
“Don’t dance with it. Is he dead?” That clipped voice had always reduced Jeriah to incoherence.
“It’s not that simple.” As clearly as he could, Jeriah explained how Tobin had followed the sorceress, and what Master Lazur had told him about the Otherworld. The lines in his father’s face grew deeper, but he showed no other sign of grief. Jeriah was beginning to wonder if the old man was made of stone—Tobin was his favorite—when he saw that his father’s hands, tight on the reins, were shaking. His voice dried up and stopped.
“Perhaps it’s for the best.” His father’s voice roughened and he cleared his throat before he continued. “He was a traitor. Now that can be forgotten—at least by some. Will you break the news to your mother and sisters? Or would you rather I do it?”
Jeriah would a thousand times rather have had his father do this, but…“I saw what happened. They’ll want to hear it. I think I have to. For Tobin’s sake.”
He owed his family that much, at least.
Air rushed into his father’s lungs—had he dreaded that task as much as Jeriah did?
“In that case…there are things I still need to do today. Will you need me for this?”
Jeriah stared. It might be easier for him to lie to his mother and sisters without his father looking on, but…
“Don’t you want to be there? I mean, isn’t it your…?”
Responsibility.
“Necessary work doesn’t stop, even for death.” The words were hard, but the trembling in his father’s hands had spread to his voice.
Jeriah couldn’t remember his father shirking any responsibility, no matter how painful. Seeing him try to avoid this one told Jeriah exactly how much the news of Tobin’s death had hurt.
He couldn’t do this to his family. The price of this lie was too high.
“Father, there’s—”
“Work.” The old man’s face started to twist, the stone shattering. He spun his horse and cantered off.
“—something I have to tell you,” Jeriah finished, gazing at the empty road.
When he’d last come home—was it only a few months ago?—he’d planned to tell his father the truth, send him to get Tobin out of trouble, and then flee for his life. Had he met his father on the road that day, it would probably have happened just like that. Instead, Jeriah had seen his mother first.
His mouth tightened as he remembered waking in the locked attic, dizzy, disoriented, his mouth thick with the metallic taste of the drug she’d put in his tea. He remembered his fury and alarm when the girls told him, through the crack beneath the door where they pushed in bread, cheese, and nearly empty waterskins, that his mother intended that Tobin would continue to take Jeriah’s place, and his punishment. “Because the courts let heirs off much more lightly. You know that.”
It was true, but the thought of Tobin paying for his mistakes was intolerable. Jeriah had twisted the hinge off a trunk and filed away the wood around the latch till he could break down the door, but it had taken days.
By the time he’d reached the city, he’d been too late to do anything except pick Tobin up, in the field where the guard had dumped his unconscious body, and clean and treat his lacerated back.
Jeriah’s hands clenched on the reins, then loosened as he remembered Tobin trying not to laugh when Jeriah told him how Mother had drugged his tea. He’d made Jeriah promise to get the drugs away from her, and that wouldn’t be easy.
Jeriah wanted to tell their father the whole story, but Tobin begged him not to. A priest Mother knew had offered Tobin a chance to redeem himself, to win back his rank and honor. All he had to do was lead Master Lazur to the lair of a sorceress.
…I’m not a hero. I’ll be careful, and I’ll come back. I promise…
But Tobin hadn’t been careful, and he was going to need help getting back. Jeriah’s father would never allow his only remaining heir to go adventuring in the Otherworld. If Jeriah didn’t lie to his family, Tobin would die, so he had to lie, no matter how much it hurt. Anything to bring Tobin home.
Once Tobin was back, none of it would matter. He would tell his father the whole truth as soon as his brother was safe.
He rode into the courtyard, wincing at the curiosity and alarm on the faces of the grooms who took the riderless Fiddle. It wasn’t only because Tobin was the heir; the servants loved him for his own sake.
Jeriah climbed the worn stairs, dread slowing his steps. The huge doors opened before he reached them and Tamilee catapulted into his arms, all knobby elbows and flying ginger hair.
“Jeriah, Jeriah, how long can you stay? Is Tobin with you? Did you beat the barbarian goblins?” Ten-year-old Tami had a hard time keeping his mother’s complex schemes straight.
Sennahra had followed Tami into the hall, her serious face lit with a smile that almost made her pretty, but it began to fade the moment she saw Jeriah’s expression. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
Tami looked at him more closely then, her thin body tensing. “Is something wrong?”
Freckles stood out against Senna’s suddenly pale skin. “Tobin?”
Jeriah knew that even as she asked, she was waiting for him to deny it. Willing him to deny it, her fear growing as the silence stretched.
He couldn’t do this, he couldn’t….
If he didn’t, Tobin would die. For real.
“I’m so sorry,” Jeriah whispered. “So sorry. Tobin…he’s gone.”
His mother knew the moment she saw his face. Senna had taken them all up to the solarium. His mother sat on a bench between two tall windows, a basket of thread in her lap, and Jeriah saw her expression change even before Tamilee burst through the door and threw herself into her mother’s arms, sobbing with childish abandon.
“Tobin.” His mother was so pale, Jeriah feared she might faint, and for the first time in his memory she said nothing more, only stroking Tami’s hair as Jeriah repeated the same story he’d told his father. It was no easier the second time, and he wondered how many times he’d have to repeat it.
Their grief waked his own, constricting his throat till his voice husked into silence.
Tami was the one who broke it. “Will it hurt? When Tobin gets sick?”
Jeriah flinched. “No,” he said firmly. This was one lie he had no trouble telling. “He’ll just get tired, then he’ll fall asleep.”
Would the life-draining effect of the Otherworld hurt his brother? Jeriah had no idea, but from what the priest had said, it didn’t begin immediately, and he intended to get Tobin out long before he fell ill, so it wouldn’t matter.
“H
e won’t be hurt. I promise.”
His mother’s face was wet with tears, but her voice hardly quavered as she finally spoke. “Senna, dear one, will you take care of Tami for a while? Can you manage?”
Sennahra’s swollen eyes sharpened. She knew that note in her mother’s voice as well as Jeriah did, but she pulled Tami gently from her mother’s arms and led her toward the door without protest. Senna been born between Tobin and Jeriah, but she sometimes seemed older than both her brothers.
Jeriah took a deep breath and turned to face his mother. She was going to be harder to lie to than Tamilee. In fact, he wasn’t sure if he should lie to her—sometimes his mother had ideas. Her eyes were as red as Senna’s now, but not even weeping diminished her dark loveliness.
“Mother, I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry.” She pulled out a kerchief and blew her nose. “I don’t know what you have to be sorry for since it was my scheme from the beginning. I meant for him to redeem himself, not get lost, but since he has, we shall simply have to get him back! He’s not dead now, and he won’t be for over a month, so we’ve plenty of time. And I don’t know why I’m crying in this absurd way. I never cry, unless I can use it to get something I want.”
Jeriah began to laugh, and she wiped her face firmly and put the kerchief away.
“I knew I could count on you,” Jeriah told her. “You never give up.”
“Well, I should think so. Giving up would get me nothing but a dead son. And”—her voice quivered—“I couldn’t bear to have him dead, any more than I could let you die. Why don’t we follow him into this…this Otherworld and bring him back?”
“There are problems with that.” His mother paid close attention as Jeriah repeated everything Master Lazur had told him about the Otherworld. She was calm but her face was still pale, so he made her a cup of tea. And one for himself—Jeriah had resolved to never let her make tea for him again. He didn’t tell her his plans; she might come up with a better idea on her own. And she, of all his family, knew how to lie. She was silent for a time when he finished.