The Goblin Gate

by Hilari Bell

  She clearly hadn’t forgotten their last meeting either—and her job was working for Master Lazur. Jeriah released her and took a step back. She seemed secure enough.

  “Then I’ll leave you to it, mistress.” He turned to go.

  “They’re not here,” she said.

  Embarrassing himself with this girl—again—was the last thing Jeriah wanted, but…

  “What’s not here? I’m just looking for something for the Hierarch to read.”

  “Master Lazur doesn’t keep any of his notes here,” she said as if he hadn’t spoken. “Particularly not the ones you’re looking for.”

  Heat flooded Jeriah’s face. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “The notes about opening gates. I don’t know where they are, but I do know Master Lazur put them somewhere safe. Safe from you. And the library isn’t, so they won’t be here.”

  Was there a hint of pity in those cool eyes? Jeriah, retreating in confusion, wasn’t sure.

  The fact that Mistress Koryn claimed the notes weren’t there meant nothing. In fact, her denial might mean the notes were more likely to be in the library. Or not. Jeriah sighed. Without the goblins’ assistance, a thorough search of the book-, scroll-, and paper-filled room would be impossible—particularly under the observant eyes of Master Lazur’s own clerk! He would simply have to wait for the goblins’ arrival.

  He tried to be patient, but it was hard. More days went by, and the goblins didn’t come. Almost two months had passed since Tobin had gone into the Otherworld—he had roughly a week before the sickness began to affect his brother, and then…Master Lazur had said the illness could last for several weeks—but what if the sickness moved swiftly with Tobin? It might only take another week for him to die!

  Jeriah had to get into the Otherworld with those spell notes now! But until the Lesser Ones and the goblins contacted him, there was nothing he could do but continue his search.

  The other squires speculated about why he was so snappish, and also why he ignored the inviting glances his good looks won him from the young girls at court. Jeriah snapped at them.

  One of his friends’ idle conversations about the barbarians reminded Jeriah of something he could offer the goblins—but even if he gained their services, where should he have them look? Start with the library, despite what Mistress Koryn had said. Then the locked temple storage? The public offices? The wine cellar, the food storage, under Master Goserian’s bed…Even if he found it, he couldn’t what? What in the Dark One’s name was keeping Daroo? And where were the lesser magic users who were supposed to contact him?

  More and more, Jeriah’s thoughts turned to Koryn—she might not know where the notes were, but he’d bet she could make a pretty good guess!

  He was looking across the dining hall at her table, again, when Marof said, “Don’t bother. She’s not interested in anything but dusty notes.”

  Marof was the most annoying of Jeriah’s friends—of course he’d be the one to notice.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But he couldn’t control the hot color rising in his face.

  “I’m talking about the fact that you’ve been watching the nettle queen for the last week,” Marof said. “And I grant you, those eyes of hers—”

  Jeriah didn’t want to listen to comments on Koryn’s eyes. Particularly from Marof, whose descriptions of a woman seldom focused on her face. “The nettle queen?”

  “Prickly as nettles.” Marof grinned at him. “And cold as ice. Not even you could make that one bloom. And if you’ve tried…well, that certainly explains why your temper’s been so short!”

  “Why does everyone always assume that all I want from a girl is—”

  “Don’t let him get to you,” Ranan interposed hastily. “He only says that because he got nowhere. And small blame to her, if she’s not feeling…Well, I’d give a girl who’s lost that much some time to recover before I made a move.”

  “Lost what?” Jeriah asked. “I thought…I assumed she was born crippled. Was there an accident?”

  If she’d just lost the use of that leg, no wonder she wasn’t interested in flirting!

  Three sets of eyes turned to him.

  “You don’t know?” Harell asked. “But it was the talk of…Oh, that’s right. You were in the north when she arrived.”

  “What don’t I know?” Sometimes it was hard to keep his friends on track.

  “Mistress Goserian is one of the Southlanders displaced by the barbarian surge,” Ranan told him. Then he grimaced. “‘Displaced’ is a euphemism. She lost her whole family in the attack. That’s why she came to live with her uncle. And that’s why flirting with her now is a really stupid—”

  “She might have been ready to forget about grieving for a while,” Marof snarled. “Sometimes people who’ve been hurt need to laugh a bit, or—”

  Jeriah wasn’t interested in Marof’s mistakes—he was too busy being appalled by his own.

  “Is that what happened to her leg? Did the barbarians…?”

  The barbarians cut the tendons in their prisoner’s legs to keep them from escaping. The thought of that happening to a girl he knew, even slightly, sickened Jeriah. He pushed his plate aside.

  “No, her leg was just broken,” Harell said. “Though I shouldn’t say ‘just.’ It took two healer priests working in shifts to get the bone to knit even half straight, and they say it will never heal completely. They carried her up from the Southlands on a stretcher. Reward for what she’d done.”

  With a badly broken leg that journey would be a nightmare. With all your family dead…Jeriah remembered what he’d felt like when Master Lazur told him Tobin was doomed, and his heart went out to the girl.

  On the other hand…maybe that accounted for the hint of pity he’d seen in her eyes? She’d lost her family. Surely she’d be willing to help him save his. He just needed to figure out how to approach her.

  “How did her leg get broken?” Jeriah asked. “And how did she escape, when the rest of her family didn’t? Since I wasn’t here when she arrived…”

  Four more days dragged past. His friends hadn’t known many details of Mistress Koryn’s ordeal, but what they knew was bad enough. Jeriah was still looking for an excuse to approach her, but the need to do something was becoming intolerable. His temper grew so short that his friends began avoiding him. He felt as if everyone were watching him, or trying to delay him in everything he did. It was almost a relief to be in Nevin’s company—he knew Nevin was his enemy.

  Jeriah thought about the goblins’ arrival all the time, so he should have been suspicious when he started to follow the Hierarch back to his room after Sunset Prayer and found the hem of his tabard tangled in the thorns of a flowering shrub. But as he bent to unfasten it, there was no thought in Jeriah’s mind except care for the fragile trim…until he saw Daroo’s eyes gazing at him from the depths of the bush.

  Alarm jolted through him. Jeriah was horribly aware of the crowd around them; the chatting priests and lords. The alert guards. Of all the stupid, reckless, dangerous…

  “The woods where we were before.” The voice was so soft, Jeriah couldn’t have made out the words if he hadn’t seen the child’s lips move.

  He nodded, trying to control his expression, his breathing, the rapid beat of his heart. Jeriah slipped his tabard free of the thorns and followed the Hierarch without a backward glance. Every muscle tensed, expecting the outcry that would mark the demon brat’s discovery. It didn’t come.

  The door swung shut behind Jeriah, cutting him off if the boy needed rescue. He’d have to trust Daroo to escape as unseen as he’d arrived—how did they do that?—and get to the woods himself as soon as he could.

  Jeriah followed the Hierarch into his bedchamber, where the menservants were already helping him out of his ceremonial robe.

  “There’s something I need to do this evening.” Jeriah pulled off his tunic, folded it rapidly into the chest, and put all his nervous energy into making his vo
ice commanding. “You are to put the Sunlord to bed. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Yes, sir, but—”

  “Just do it!” He dared not let them question him, or worse, send for Nevin. By morning he’d have made up an excuse. By morning it wouldn’t matter. Daroo had returned. He could finally do something!

  Down and down the torchlit central stairs. No uproar. No goblin children being hauled off by the sunsguard. The woods’ concealment embraced Jeriah, and some of his tension drained away. Where had he been when he’d talked to Daroo before? He hadn’t bothered to mark the spot, and now, in the darkness—

  “Too-too-wheer.” It could have been a bird call, but Jeriah had never heard one like it. “Too-too-wheer.” He followed the sound, struggling blindly though the underbrush.

  “Hello, hero. I understand you need our help. Again.”

  It took Jeriah several moments to find Cogswhallop’s sharp face amid the shadowy foliage above him. “Yes, I do.”

  Needing help embarrassed him less than it had before, perhaps because Daroo had already helped him so much. Was he becoming accustomed to goblin allies? Had Tobin felt like this?

  “Well then, have you got that cursed Decree repealed? I haven’t heard about it.”

  If Tobin had felt that way, then his brother had never been forced to bargain with them. “No, I haven’t.”

  Cogswhallop rose as if to leave. Jeriah was almost certain the goblin was bluffing, but he added swiftly. “There’s something else I think you’d be interested in. Something you’ll need soon. At least in the next few years.”

  “And what might that be?”

  “Do you know about the barbarians who are invading this land?” Jeriah asked. Cogswhallop snorted, and he hurried on, “Yes, of course you do. How do goblins get along with the barbarians?”

  “No worse than your kind does, but that’s not saying much. As far as we can tell there’s no goblins in any land the barbarians control. They regard us as a delicacy, I’m told, and they’re better at catching us than your folk are.”

  “So when they come, it’d be good if you had some defense against them.”

  “We don’t intend to be around when they get here.” But the goblin looked interested, anyway.

  “There’s an amulet their shamans make—it bestows the protection of their blood gods, or maybe it protects the wearer from the blood gods. We’ve never found a barbarian who didn’t wear one. And if you’re wearing one, they won’t hurt you.”

  The goblin shrugged, setting the leaves rustling. “It’d take more than an amulet to disguise one of us as a barbarian—we’re a bit shorter, you’ll note.”

  “It isn’t a matter of disguise. Some of our spies have been wearing these amulets when they’ve been discovered. As long as they’ve got the amulets, the barbarians won’t harm them. Even if they know what they are. I heard a witness talk about it once—they followed a spy all the way back to our lines, hoping he’d lose the amulet, but they never attacked him.”

  “Then why doesn’t your army wear them? Sounds like a sure way to win any battle.”

  “We considered that, but they’re very unholy. The priests say that if we wore them, we’d forfeit the Bright Gods’ favor….” Jeriah suddenly remembered that the Decree of Bright Magic had been passed so the army could keep the Bright Gods’ favor, and fell silent.

  “Aye. They’re powerful keen on that,” Cogswhallop drawled.

  “The amulet’s magic comes from human sacrifice,” said Jeriah. “I wouldn’t want to wear…Ah, that won’t bother you, will it?”

  The goblin thought about it. “It might bother us some, but it wouldn’t stop us. It’s not like we did the killing. It wouldn’t bother us at all to wear a copy—”

  “You can’t fake them,” Jeriah admitted. “We did try that. Their shamans detected it instantly.”

  “Humph. They’re not made of iron, are they?”

  “Copper.”

  “How many of these amulets are you offering, for a search of all the papers in a large guarded palace?”

  “Just one, but it will protect the person who wears it from any barbarians they meet, so—”

  “One? I’ve got thousands of folk to protect.” The goblin started to climb back up the tree. “One is almost worthless, hero.”

  “You don’t know that! One might save your life. Save lots of lives! Wait! I…I only know where one of them is.”

  The goblin paused. “If your army’s been collecting them, there must be hundreds, maybe even thousands, about.”

  “I suppose, but I don’t—”

  “Two hundred of these amulets, and we’ll search the palace for you.”

  “I couldn’t possibly get that many! I don’t—”

  “You’re the one who wants our help, human.”

  Cogswhallop was leaving.

  “Twenty!”

  The goblin turned back. “A hundred and twenty, perhaps.”

  They finally settled on “as many over fifty as you can get.” Jeriah was left with a nagging feeling that it had been too easy—though it hadn’t been easy at all!

  This time the goblins’ help would cost no one their home. All Jeriah had to do was find, and steal, fifty blood amulets. No, not easy, but the waiting was over. Jeriah only hoped this attempt at burglary would go better than the last one. He wasn’t incompetent. He had to start getting it right, getting it done…before Tobin’s time ran out.

  INTERLUDE

  Makenna

  “A WHOLE HILL? WITH TREES? That’s impossible!”

  Makenna couldn’t tell which of the goblins crowded around her had voiced that indignant cry—and she couldn’t blame them.

  “Possible or not,” Tobin said calmly, “the stream is gone. And we’ve been ready to leave for the new site for days, so I don’t see that the why of it makes much difference. We know what to do, and where we’ll go next.”

  This practical approach reassured the goblins so much that the whole lot of them burst into complaint.

  “You can moan all you want,” Makenna told them. “I’m fairly peeved about it myself. But moaning won’t get us to fresh water any sooner. So if I were you, I’d stop yapping and start taking down tents!”

  She put enough tartness into her voice that they departed, showing far less panic than she’d expected. That was largely because as soon as Tobin had returned, with news of another site, he’d started them packing. Learning why the stream had stopped had shaken them, but they were already prepared to move on.

  “You did a good job, making them ready to move,” she told Tobin as the last of the grumbling goblins departed.

  “I didn’t have to do much,” he said. “They’d already realized there was a good chance we’d have to leave. They started gathering up their possessions as soon as I told them I’d found a new stream. They’re not children—though it took me longer than it should to realize that.”

  “No, they’re not. But I have to wonder how they’ll react if this new stream of yours disappears too.”

  “Why would…?” Tobin’s voice trailed into appalled silence. “I’m sorry. I hadn’t thought it through that far. But if one mountain can move…”

  “…so could another. You’ve only had five minutes to think about it,” Makenna said. “I had several days. And if our enemy—If something like this could happen to one stream, then anything could happen to the next.”

  “Enemy?” Trust him to pick up on the one word she hoped he’d miss. “We’ve seen no sign of anyone, anywhere in this world. And I’ve been looking.”

  Makenna sighed. “Maybe I’ve been fighting too long. Maybe I’m seeing enemies where there’s nothing but accidents, and this new stream will run for a thousand years or more.”

  “If this was an accident, it’s the strangest I ever heard of,” Tobin said. “So maybe ‘enemy’ is the right conclusion. But at least it proves one thing.”

  “What?”

  “There’s plenty of magic somewhere in this world
. Because I can’t think of anything else that could move a hill like that.”

  Makenna snorted. “I don’t think the Hierarch, with all his priests assisting, could summon enough magic to move that hill. If that’s magic, it’s like none I’ve ever heard of.”

  Baffled silence fell between them. Makenna had been in command so long, she was surprised how much the worry and depression were lightened when she could share them.

  “Are you sorry you came jumping through that gate after us?” she asked softly. The Bright Gods knew he should be.

  “No.” There was no hesitation in the firm reply. “Are you?”

  “Since the immediate alternative was execution…no,” she said. “At least, not yet.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Jeriah

  “I TOLD HIM ONLY THE Hierarch’s squire could give him his medicine,” Nevin snarled. “I told him several times!”

  Master Lazur looked thoughtful. Master Kerratis looked angry.

  Jeriah didn’t remember Nevin saying anything of the kind. But he had to admit, at least to himself, that he ignored most of Nevin’s lectures.

  Nevin had been waiting outside the Hierarch’s room that morning, and had dragged Jeriah down to Master Lazur’s office all but breathing fire in his indignation. Trust Nevin to choose this morning to check on him. Jeriah didn’t mind being scolded—the bad part was still to come.

  “So the Hierarch didn’t get his medicine last night,” Master Lazur said neutrally. “What do you think, Kerratis? Will this cause problems?”

  “Missing one dose will do no harm, but to entrust this careless young—”

  “He should be whipped!” Nevin snapped. “Whipped and dismissed in dishonor. How could he—”

  “Calm down, Nevin. Master Kerratis says missing one dose won’t harm him. Though you did right to report it, and I thank you.” Master Lazur’s tone held a dismissal. Nevin ignored it.

  “Master, he isn’t fit to serve the Sunlord! He neglects his duties, he’s disrespectful, he—”