The Goblin King

by Shona Husk

  The detective leaned back in his seat. Without saying a word Eliza knew that he didn’t believe the lie. She held her breath waiting for him to ask again and force the truth out of her.

  “I’ll make sure you get your handbag back before you leave hospital. Have you got somewhere else to stay until your house is released?”

  She knew where she was going to stay—in a hotel far away from Steve. “Yes. Thank you.”

  Detective Griffin reached into his pocket and withdrew a business card. “You’ve had a rough couple of days. Have a think about things. Give me a call if you remember anything.”

  ***

  Roan appeared in Dai’s library and sat opposite his brother. A twenty-four-hour movie marathon chasing the night around the world had coated his tongue in salt and made his fingers greasy but accomplished little else. It was a poor substitute for an all-night bender, drinking until he couldn’t walk. These days even that small release was out of his reach. If he let control slide for just a moment, the curse would gobble him up without a burp.

  He set the almost empty bucket of popcorn down on the ivory map inlaid in the desk, where Australia should have been, where Eliza was. The ancient map, while beautiful, was incorrect and obsolete. Like every other map in the library, it belonged to a different time.

  Dai looked up from the shiny black tablet he was reading. Or translating? The two were almost one and the same when time wasn’t a factor. Between the two of them there wasn’t a language that had existed over the past two thousand years that they didn’t know. Most were dead, remembered only by cursed men. So much knowledge would be lost when they died. Such a waste of time, life, and learning.

  Dai didn’t take his eyes off the tablet. “That stuff will give a heart attack. All that butter and salt.”

  “How many buckets would that take?” Roan held up his hand as he reconsidered. “No, don’t tempt me.” It probably wouldn’t work anyway. He didn’t have a heart to stop.

  Dai set down his pencil and held out his hand. Roan reached into his pocket and pulled out a bag. He tossed Dai the multi-colored jelly snakes. There was no escaping where he’d been and he never hid it. There was no point. The candy was a small bribe for peace.

  “That your latest find?”

  His brother had never gathered gold the way a goblin should. Dai collected books and scrolls and tablets, anything that might refer to goblins, curses, or magic. The shelves were littered with relics. When they got full, Dai simply acquired another set of shelves. When the room got full, he had Roan enlarge the cavern. He wouldn’t be doing that again. He didn’t have enough soul to waste on renovations. If he’d known what damage the magic did, he would’ve been more restrained with its use.

  “Mmm. Where’s yours?” Dai said as the tail of a red snake disappeared into his mouth.

  “I took her back.” Roan licked his fingers and started worrying a dread, rolling it between his fingers. His fingers skipped over the beads; some of the gold and amber had been there for centuries. The first one he’d placed in his hair now adorned Eliza’s wrist. Sacrificed because he’d responded to a summons and granted her wish. His lips thinned. Now he owed her a second bead.

  “So you’ve been skulking around Delhi, or was it Mumbai?” Dai flicked the bag of snakes with his pencil.

  “Tumse matleb.” Roan squashed the popcorn bucket into dust. The dark magic of the Shadowlands was always calling to be used. It was easier to give in than to ignore it these days. Would it hurt when it took him?

  “I care because I’m your brother.”

  “Because your fate is tied to mine.” Today he resented Dai. If not for his brother, he would’ve given in already. Holding on to his humanity hurt like a rusted knife lodged in his back. Eliza had eased the wound before twisting the blade. Now he couldn’t get the itch out of his skin.

  They glared at each other. How many times could they have the same argument? Did it matter how he whiled away eternity? He preferred movies to books. Living people to dead trees. Life instead of legends.

  “I thought Eliza was keeping you human.”

  Roan shook his head. He wished that were true, that he could make it true. Make her agree to be his, but no woman wanted to be a goblin’s queen, banished to the land of nightmares—it’s why the Hoard resorted to kidnapping on the night of solstice. He wasn’t quite that close.

  His brother frowned and bit through a snake. He waved the green head at Roan. “You’ve lost ground?”

  Somewhere over the centuries his younger brother had become the guardian of his soul. Self-preservation or brotherly love, the result was the same. Dai would never let him fade. He might be king, but he answered to his advisor.

  “I’m running out of time. I can feel it with each breath.” It was the admission he knew would come eventually, but he wasn’t ready. Not yet.

  “You’re drawing too much from the Shadowlands.” Dai picked up his pencil and tapped it on the paper covered in unintelligible markings. “Stop using magic.”

  What he could speak, Dai could write and read. Roan’s writing was limited to Greek, Latin, and English, and that was only at Dai’s insistence that he would need it when the curse broke. His brother had always been more scholar than warrior.

  “The druid is still stronger.” Roan sighed. He both yearned for and dreaded their confrontation. For centuries, he had honed his use of the dark magic so he would be able to meet the druid on equal ground. But the price had been heavy, stealing more of his soul with each use of the magic. Was he even worth saving anymore? “I have to face him before I lose what is left of my soul.”

  “Don’t rush. While you live we have a chance.”

  “If I kill him, we could be free.” He said it as though it were fact, but in truth, killing the druid could just as easily bind them in the Shadowlands forever. But when there was no other option, it was worth trying. He’d be damned if he’d fade without putting up a fight.

  “And we may not.” Dai placed his hand over the tablet. His eyes were an unreadable tangle of thoughts. “If Eliza anchored your soul, why did you return her?”

  “She tested me.” Roan fisted his hand. “An itch worse than any gold lust. If I’d taken her to bed, I would’ve succumbed. Then where would you be, brother?”

  Dai closed his eyes. His fingers traced over the grooves in the tablet as if he were reading an ancient Braille. “She seemed willing.”

  Roan snorted. His hands still remembered the warmth of her skin gliding under him. The sweet taste of her mouth was like water to a man dying of thirst. “Yeah, like every woman, she dreams of waking next to a goblin.”

  “Did she ask to leave again?” The calm in Dai’s voice stemmed the bitter flow of thoughts.

  She hadn’t. But she wasn’t willing to stay as queen either. “She wanted a man. Not the Goblin King. Get out, Dai. Enjoy the Fixed Realm while you can. There is no cure to the poison in our blood.”

  “I’m not looking for a cure, just a way to stop you from fading to gray.” Dai made some more lines on the paper.

  Roan leaned forward. Dai was always looking for a cure. Something had changed. “What have you found?”

  “A really nice tomb under the Sahara.” Dai pointed to Africa on the map in his desk. “Tablets and trinkets. You’d like it.”

  “Goblins are supposed to take gold, not texts.” The curse had never settled on Dai the same way it had the rest of them. Those years of compulsory Roman education had changed him. They had given him more than just a thirst for knowledge and a hatred of Rome that ran deeper than Dai ever mentioned. But Roan didn’t pry. A man’s secrets were his own.

  Dai lifted his head, his dark blue eyes momentarily empty. “I did.” He pulled an ornate gold and lapis lazuli clasp out of his hair. “That’s how I know I’m sliding.”

  Roan’s golden heart grew colder and the ice spread to his ribs. His little brother was starting to fade and he had no way of stopping it. No way of preventing Dai from becoming goblin except de
ath. Unable to say anything, Roan drew the shadows to him and left Dai to his study. He went where he always went when he needed reminding of why he was fighting and why he couldn’t give in and fade—why the only choice was death. He went to see Gob.

  Yellow eyes wide and unblinking, Gob sat as he always did, like the lights were on, but no one was home. Roan sat on the floor unsure if Gob saw him or if he was lost in a mindless haze of unsatisfied gold-lust.

  The cell next to Gob was empty. The first time they’d caught two goblin scouts to study, both goblins had been dead within hours. Killing each other through the bars. Even jailed there had to be a pecking order. They’d been so crazy for status they’d been willing to die.

  The next time Roan was more careful. He’d caught only one scout and killed the other ones. It was too dangerous to let them live and report back, but it was no easier killing the goblins now than it had been at first. He only did it in defense. He told himself that keeping Gob here was better than killing him. Some days he wasn’t so sure.

  Gob spent his days alone unless Roan or Dai felt like facing their future.

  Roan pulled the rabbit he’d snatched from the Fixed Realm on his way down out of the bag. The animal was still warm in his hands. Scenting the meat, Gob threw himself at the bars. He lashed out and tried to grasp the out-of-reach flesh. It had been a while since Gob had eaten, yet starvation seemed to have no effect on goblins. It was as if the Shadowlands kept him alive and food was a luxury. A luxury Roan lacked the hunger for. He forced himself to eat and to act human because the alternative salivated in front of him like a mad dog.

  “Him wants meat.” Gob writhed and hissed with his face mashed against the bars.

  Roan sat back and waited. Sometimes the fit would last minutes, other times hours.

  “Who are you?”

  “Meat. Meat. Meat,” Gob whined. His voice changed from rage to wheedle. His fingers curled as he beckoned, pleading for pity.

  Disgust rose rancid and thick in the back of Roan’s throat, choking out hope that he would find something in Gob that would make fading palatable. He knew all goblins had been human once. A priest of a religion that had died unnoted by history had explained that greedy souls found a place where their dreams could be fulfilled. Gold and power. Roan forced himself to gaze into the goblin’s yellow eyes. No humanity remained in Gob.

  No humanity would remain in him. Everything he was would be stripped away like flesh off a carcass until only the bleached bones of need remained. His soul would truly be swapped for gold. Roan touched his torque. The sign of his kingship was locked around his neck until he died. The druid’s error in casting the curse had caused this aberration.

  Soul of a man. Heart of a goblin. What man desires let the gods make true.

  With those words Roan had suffocated. The dreamless dark had been replaced by endless gray and the horror of realizing they weren’t dead, or human, or goblin. He should be thankful the curse was incomplete and he’d had a chance—and a choice.

  Roan threw the rabbit through the bars, revulsion souring his blood. That would never be him. He would die first. Gob snatched the rabbit up, his eyes bright with lust. Roan walked away to the noise of breaking bones and the slurping of blood. That wasn’t living. That was a living death.

  And he wasn’t ready to die without seeing Eliza again. From the Fixed Realm her call pulled on him, drawing him to her the same way it had when she’d been younger and she’d dreamed of him. Back then he’d been able to resist. Now he couldn’t. But he also knew he couldn’t let her look upon the body he wore in her world. That of a goblin.

  Chapter 7

  Eliza’s breathing was the only noise in her room. No, not her room. A hotel—why wasn’t she at home? Roan skimmed her thoughts as she slept. Eliza’s house was still a crime scene. At the edges of her mind, swathed in fear, lurked her fiancé. She didn’t want to marry him. Roan frowned. She didn’t want to be near him.

  What bound her to Steve?

  He reached out his hand and touched the ends of her pale blond hair. He preferred the dark honey gold she’d had when she was younger. She flinched in her sleep as if feeling his cool touch. He stepped back, making sure the shadows hid him in case she woke. Her thoughts still pulled at him, strong like summons, ripping at his muscles as if her call remained unanswered. He was here with her, yet it wasn’t enough. She was dreaming of him, calling him to the Summerland.

  He gave in and let the sound of her voice lure him from the Fixed Realm to where she wanted him. At first he’d used nightmares to travel between worlds, then he’d learned to travel by will alone. Unlike true goblins, he could travel between realms. Dai thought it was because they still had a soul and were connected to the Fixed Realm. Once his soul was gone he would be like every other goblin, trapped in the Shadowlands until winter solstice. But Eliza’s pull was different from a summons. Lighter, clearer.

  The compulsion to go to Eliza left his body in peace as he arrived in a grassy field. Trees swept around three sides, a river on the other. The landscape was so familiar, yet so alien, like the Shadowlands had been colored in using the bright palette of a child. He inhaled the summer air, sweet with fresh grass. Then he closed his eyes for a moment and tried to remember when the world had been so pure. He couldn’t. This wasn’t the Fixed Realm. It was too perfect, as if all the best bits had been brought together in one place.

  On his back the sun was warm, and his skin didn’t burn the way it would in the Fixed Realm. But the heat didn’t reach his cold metal core. He opened his eyes and lifted his hand, examining his flesh by daylight for the first time in too long. He was human in appearance. Roan lifted his face to the sun. A simple pleasure he’d almost forgotten. Beads chimed as the breeze caressed his hair. It was too good to be real.

  And it wasn’t.

  This was the Summerland. Eliza had called him into her dream. She’d tried many times when she was younger and he’d been able to ignore the requests. Now he couldn’t. Now she fully believed in his existence and her visit to the Shadowlands had strengthened their connection.

  This was the place he had brought her so she wouldn’t have to look on his goblin body. It was where he’d given her the bead, and where she’d looked at him with something other than fear. It was where he could pretend to be human.

  The calf-high grass rippled and shied away from him as he walked toward Eliza, who was clad in a filmy nightgown. The sky was perfect summer blue and the sun shone brilliantly. Butterflies cavorted among the wildflowers of the field, only he noticed the gray clouds gathering on the horizon. He swallowed, not wanting her dream to end, but knowing he was already destroying it by being here.

  “Eliza.” Her name sounded like a prayer on his lips. He wasn’t hiding in the shadows and skulking through nightmares. He was safe and he was human. And he was with Eliza. She had called him and for the moment his soul was intact. The few delicate threads that tied it to his body held.

  She turned and her pink lips parted like a blossoming flower inviting a taste. “I was thinking of you.” She cocked her head and frowned, eclipsing the joy his presence had caused. “Are you real or a dream?”

  Roan took her hand, drawing her to him. “Real.”

  He should know better, but he couldn’t resist holding her again. “You called to me in your dream, and I couldn’t refuse.” That sounded better than saying he was too weak to resist her. He stepped close and brushed her hair behind her ear.

  Eliza grinned, brilliant and untainted. She threw her arms around his neck. The lightweight nightgown offered no protection to either of them. Her heart beat against his chest and echoed against his ribs. He slipped his arm around her. Her skin was warm from the endless sun and blue sky of her dream. Unable to stop himself, he leaned into her so his lips brushed hers. Her mouth opened offering more, a taste sweeter than the wild summer strawberries of his youth. And he couldn’t refuse. His body responded to her lightest touch and the hint of a suggestion that couldn’t be. He
shouldn’t be here.

  “You never came before.”

  Roan took a breath and released her. “I wanted to.”

  This was a dream, an escape, but for who? He ran his fingers through her hair, spun strands of sunlight that could bind him more firmly than any rope.

  Her fingers skimmed his cheek and his skin burned from within. “Why didn’t you? I wanted to see you again.”

  “Because this isn’t reality. And it isn’t right.” He caught her hand and tried to catch his breath.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  Roan watched the sunlight shimmer in her eyes, not sure what to say. Not wanting to break the spell, but not believing in the illusion. He told her the truth.

  “This is the Summerland.” The eternal perfection of a summer day. The high of life that would never die. Everything the Shadowlands wasn’t. “The land of dreams.”

  Around him a current flowed, pulsing with life and magic fed by the creation of imagination. Roan wanted to cover the field with pink flowers the same shade as her mouth. She was the perfection he was denied. He reached out to the magic to use it as he would in the Shadowlands, but it slipped from his hand as if he was trying to catch moonlight.

  At his feet the grass died. Then the blight spread. The color faded from the sky. The trees shed their leaves and twisted in grief.

  Eliza gasped and looked up at him. “It’s happening again.”

  The Shadowlands was once again taking over Eliza’s dream. There were no dreams for him. No escape. There was only one thing he could do to avoid dragging her into his nightmare.

  “It will always happen. I am not who you want me to be.” She was not who he needed her to be. Roan kissed her cheek and whispered in her ear, “Wake up, Eliza.”

  She shimmered and vanished, then returned to the Fixed Realm where she belonged. But her scent remained, clinging to his skin as if she were trying to hold onto him, pure like flowers just budding and untouched by his darkness. Roan opened his eyes. In the distance the last sliver of blue sky put up a brave fight against the gray before succumbing.