by Jim C. Hines
No. Part of being a Hero was making your own way, like Jig was doing.
“I wanted to prove I was better than he was.” She tried again to create a light, but as before, nothing happened. “Better than all of them.”
“Oh.” Slash stepped past her. “Well come on, where is it?”
Veka wiped her nose on her sleeve. “Where is what?”
“This secret runoff of yours.”
“I don’t understand. You’re not going to kill me?”
He snorted. “With enslaved ogres going after the hobgoblins up above, and Jig fighting the bulk of the pixies down here, I’m starting to think you’ve got the best idea. Straum’s cavern might be the safest place in this whole cursed mountain.” His voice changed, becoming quieter. “It’s not like I’d be much use in battle anyway.”
The very first casualty would leave him passed out on the ground. For the first time Veka wondered what it had been like for him, a hobgoblin warrior who couldn’t bear the sight of blood.
“This way, I think,” she said. She raised her ears, listening for the sound of water, but either they weren’t close enough to hear it, or else the water had frozen in the cold. “Tap your weapon along the other side of the tunnel, near the bottom. Let me know if you find it.”
Slash sighed as he began rapping his hook-tooth against the rock. “Just promise me we won’t have to climb through any more garbage.”
Veka found the crack eventually. The water had indeed frozen, turning the rocks even more treacherous. The algae and slime were dying, but enough life remained for her to use them to help control her descent. She moved faster than before, thinking about Jig and the other goblins.
Her staff she simply dropped. It clattered down a short distance before getting stuck. She kicked it again, knocking the end loose so it fell a bit more. Above her head Slash yelped as his feet slipped. Like Veka’s staff, he fell only a short way before catching himself on the rock. She couldn’t hear everything he said under his breath, but she caught her name, along with the phrase “. . . grind her into tunnel cat kibble.”
Though she never would have admitted it, especially to Slash, she felt better with the hobgoblin along.
“There,” she whispered. Below her feet, silver light outlined a jagged opening. Her staff had dropped through and now lay in the snow and ice below.
She squinted, waiting for her eyes to adjust. She could probably use pixie magic to levitate herself down. Her backside was still bruised from the last time.
Slash made the point moot, losing his grip and falling hard enough to knock her free. With frozen, dying algae still twined around her hand, she slipped into the open air and landed, once again, on her behind. This time Slash came with her. His legs slammed into her stomach, knocking the wind from her lungs.
“Graceful, as always,” he said, resting his head in the snow.
The top of the cavern appeared to be much lower than before. If she held one end of her staff, she would be able to tap the rock overhead. She rolled onto her side, wincing as the movement revealed new bruises on her elbow and shoulder. “We’re here.”
Here was an enormous slab of silver ice. The top of the cavern wasn’t low at all. Instead the ice lifted them to the height of the trees. Veka could see withered treetops poking through various spots. The slab itself had cracked and broken in places, leaving the surface slightly tilted. Pushing herself to her knees, Veka could feel her body starting to slide to the right, away from the crack. She grabbed her staff and jabbed the end against the ice for balance.
The ice directly beneath the opening overhead was smooth, almost like a puddle. Water must have continued to drip down after the cavern froze. She wiped her hand on her robe, leaving a dark, damp algae stain.
“Which way?” asked Slash.
Fog and snow swirled through the air, and the ice made every direction the same. She closed her eyes, concentrating on the flow of the magic. Down here it was strong enough to make her feel like she was standing in the center of a river. A fast river, deep enough to cover her head and strong enough so she nearly fell.
Veka pointed toward the source of the flow. That should be the gateway, clear on the far side of the cavern. Tightening her cloak, she took one step, lost her footing, and began to slide down the ice. She tried to grab a tuft of pine tree in passing, but the brown branch snapped off in her hand, and then she was falling. Again.
This time snow cushioned her landing. She found herself in a canyon of ice, three times as tall as any ogre. The gap was barely wide enough for her to fit. The fog was thickest here, curling up from the snow and the icy walls.
She could hear Slash laughing as he made his way after her. She closed her eyes again, tapping into the magic to cast a quick levitation spell, just enough to nudge the hobgoblin behind the knees. Moments later Slash plunged into the snow beside her, cursing.
The ice had a copper, cloudy hue when viewed from down here. Veka imagined a huge slab covering the entire cavern, then fragmenting into uneven blocks like these. Was this what the pixie world was like, a world of ice and fog and cold? That would explain their glow at least. It would be the only way for them to find one another.
“This way,” she said. The canyon didn’t go in precisely the right direction, but she could always levitate them out and over the ice. For now though, staying down here kept them out of sight of any pixies who might have stayed behind.
Then again, trying to cross the ice above offered the possibility of sending Slash for another spill.
Reluctantly, she decided to stick with the canyon. The ice walls closed in on them before they had walked very far, but the slab on the right tilted upward enough for them to crawl beneath the edge. Veka sighed and tightened her robe, then dropped to her knees. A short distance away, she could see a triangle of light from the far side of the slab. It should be a simple matter to scoot beneath it and continue along the other side. Keeping her staff in one hand, she began to crawl past a thick tree trunk that rose right through the ice.
She had only gone a short distance when Slash seized her ankle. Veka yelped and twisted, and Slash slammed into the ice above them.
“Sorry,” Veka said. A part of her was delighted at how easily she had used magic to defend herself, but her heart was still pounding too hard to truly enjoy it.
Slash’s hands and knees dug long gouges through the flattened, muddy earth as he tried to break free, but his body remained pinned to the ice overhead. After a few more undignified attempts to pull himself down, he asked, “Would you mind?”
She dropped him.
“Stupid goblin witch,” Slash muttered. Silver clouds floated from his mouth as he spoke. “I ought to let you keep going for that.”
Veka hesitated. “What do you mean?”
“Look at the ground,” Slash said. “Dead and dying grass, broken splinters that used to be saplings, a few stray vines, and muddy ice overhead. Except for that spot right in front of you.”
Veka stared, trying to understand. “So there’s a puddle. Do you think it might have something to do with all the ice?”
“Do you see any other puddles? It’s a trap. Look at the ice.”
Most of the ice was rough and muddy, full of stones and twigs and at least one buck-toothed squirrel still clutching a nut in his claws. He had probably frozen to death and been trapped in the swift-forming ice. If she hadn’t been in such a hurry, she would have chipped him free to see if the meat was still good.
Directly in front of her, however, the ice was clear and clean. A few bronze-colored vines crept around the edges, defining a roughly circular patch. Clusters of swollen globules dangled from the vines by knife-like leaves. Within the clear patch, long needles of ice hung like the malachite formations back at the lizard-fish lake. She could see water dripping from the ends. They looked a bit like the ice spikes she had seen in front of Straum’s lair, but these were thinner, and she saw no sign of the wormlike creatures she remembered. As she watched, a drop of wa
ter fell from one of the spikes. “What is it?”
Slash reached into one of the pouches on his belt and pulled out several metal objects no wider than his thumb. Each one had four barbed spikes protruding from the center.
“Goblin prickers,” he explained, grinning. “You scatter them on the ground and wait for some dumb goblin to run past. If you’re feeling really nasty, you do it near a tunnel cat lair. The goblin steps on the pricker. His scream wakes up the cats. The cats smell the blood, and we sit back and make wagers on how far the goblin will be able to limp before the cats get him.”
He crawled past her and tossed one of the goblin prickers into the puddle. The instant it hit the water, the ice above exploded. A coiled snake of gold fire streaked to the ground and seized the goblin pricker in its mouth.
The snake was fairly small, about the size of the average carrion-worm. Veka could see several sets of rudimentary wings pressed flat against its burning scales. The snake wasn’t truly on fire, she saw. Like the pixies, it gave off a great deal of heat, light, and sparks. Those sparks brightened, turning almost white as the snake realized what it had caught. Water splashed as the snake flailed its head, trying to rid itself of the goblin pricker. One of the barbs had stuck in its lower jaw. Smoke trailed from the snake’s mouth.
“I guess they aren’t too fond of steel either,” Slash said.
Eventually the snake dislocated its own jaw, then used its fangs to rip the goblin pricker free. With its wings folded back like armor, it shot up into the ice and disappeared.
Slash scooted ahead to reclaim his goblin pricker. “I doubt the pixies did this. The labor-to-victim ratio is all wrong: too much work for too few victims. This is a natural trap, probably how that thing hunts for food. Lizard-fish do something similar. They’ll hide in the sand beneath the water, waving their spines until some stupid cave fish swims over to take a nibble.”
Veka rolled onto her back, trying to see where the snake had gone. How many more might there be? Snakes could be the least of the predators. She squinted, imagining she could see faint lines of light wiggling through the hazy silver ice.
Her back scraped the damp ice overhead as she turned around. “We need to get out of here. We’ll go over the ice and hope they don’t spot us. That will be faster anyway.”
Slash was still muttering about goblin indecisiveness as he followed her out from beneath the ice. When they reached the canyon, Veka wiped damp, muddy hair from her face and stared at the sky.
“How many of those goblin pricks do you have?” she asked.
“Goblin prickers,” Slash said. “Eight, though one is still a little slimy from that snake. Poor fellow.”
Veka stared, but he appeared serious. He really felt sorry for the snake that would have killed them. Hobgoblins were weird. “Give them to me.”
He handed her a small jingling pouch. She pulled out one of the goblin prickers and tried to levitate it. Almost immediately the metal grew so hot she had to fling it away. The pricker bounced off the ice and dropped to the ground, completely unaffected by her spell.
“Interesting strategy,” said Slash. “How exactly is this going to get us to Straum’s cave?”
“Shut up.” While she waited for the first goblin pricker to cool, she pulled out another and examined it more closely. The whole thing was steel, rusted a bit toward the center, but gleaming brightly at the points. She drove one of the goblin pricker’s barbs deep into the wood of her staff, then concentrated.
The staff began to float. She could feel heat coming from the metal, but as long as she focused her spell on the wood, she could control it. “Help me find more wood. Small pieces, but solid enough to hold a goblin pricker without splitting.”
After a bit of scrounging, they gathered enough broken branches for all eight prickers. She embedded each one into a chunk of wood. The last goblin pricker ripped a long splinter from her staff when she pulled it free. She grimaced and rubbed the wood. She would have to sand that out with a rock later, assuming she survived. She tucked most of the goblin prickers back into her pouch, but kept a few in her hand just in case. “Ready?”
“Ready for what?” Slash asked.
Veka grinned and waved her staff. Ideally her robe should have fluttered around her feet as she floated into the air, but after her aborted crawl through the mud, all it did was drip a bit. A casual glance at Slash was all she needed to summon the hobgoblin up after her.
“You’d better know what you’re doing this time,” Slash snapped. “Otherwise I’ll give you a lot worse than a kick in the head.”
They flew over the cracked plain of ice, the wind ruffling her cloak. She spun Slash over and raised him higher, until his nose nearly scraped the top of the cavern, then brought him back down. “Keep an eye out for pixies. Most of them will probably be with the queen, but there may still be a few down here with us.”
She flew between the protruding treetops, trying to stay as low as possible. Avoiding the brown, dying branches was easy enough. Keeping Slash from crashing through them was trickier. More than once she heard him plotting her death and spitting dead leaves from his mouth.
Veka grinned and increased their speed.
At most Veka had expected to face only a handful of pixie guards. She had been correct. Only five pixies perched on the rock around the entrance to Straum’s lair, clinging to the icy stone like glowing flies. A sixth stood on the back of what might have been a cousin to the winged burning snake that had tried to ambush them beneath the ice. The only real difference was that this snake was as wide as Slash’s thick head, and long enough to wrap its body around them both from head to toe without a bit of space between the coils.
“So much for sneaking in,” said Slash.
Veka guided herself and Slash down behind the top of a nearby tree. Dry papery leaves offered some cover, assuming the pixies hadn’t already spotted them. The snake reared up, wings fluttering as it looked around. It actually left the ground, flying low over the ice as it hunted. A tongue of green fire flicked from its mouth. She could feel tremors passing through the magic around her, like waves in a pool. The snake was tasting the magic, searching for them. For her. The instant she tried to cast a spell, the huge snake would find her.
“Amateurs,” she muttered.
“What are you talking about?”
She pointed to the snake. “Making giant versions of normal creatures. It’s a fairly basic bit of magic. Most apprentices learn to do it in their first year of studies. There were notes in my spellbook. Giant bats, giant rats, giant snakes, giant earwigs . . . most of the time they all die within a few days. The larger body isn’t proportioned right. But occasionally someone gets lucky. That’s why you get giant weasels rampaging through a village, or giant toads hopping around and crushing people, or giant dung beetles rampaging across the country in search of giant privies.”
“Can you do it?” Slash asked. “Better yet, can you undo it?”
Veka flushed. “The notes in my book . . . they weren’t complete.”
Slash didn’t say anything. She almost wished he would.
She opened her hands, staring at the goblin prickers she had carried. Her palms were dotted with blood from clutching them too hard. She hadn’t even felt the spikes pierce her skin.
They were outnumbered. Any magic she used would give them away. Not to mention that six pixies could bring a lot more magic to bear than a single goblin. And then there was the giant flaming snake.
“What next?” Slash asked.
Veka had no idea. She stared at him, then back at the pixies. Jig would have found a way.
The thought made her stomach hurt. Jig would have slain not only the pixies, but the giant snake as well.
No, he wouldn’t. That was the sort of thing a Hero from her book would do, but Jig wasn’t like that, whatever “The Song of Jig” said. He would have done something different. Something unexpected. Something goblinish . . .
“I think I have an idea,” she whisper
ed.
CHAPTER 15
“Hero or coward, they all taste the same with a bit of harkol sauce.”
—Golaka, Goblin Chef
Jig’s hands shook as he watched Braf throw his rock. It arced through the air toward the silver bubbles on the far wall. Would the pixies attack en masse, or would they see Braf standing alone and decide he wasn’t worth a full assault? If they sent only a few pixies, the goblins might have a chance.
The rock hit one of the silver bubbles and stuck.
Nothing happened. Jig glanced at Braf, who shrugged. Eventually another of the two-winged pixies flew up to investigate the rock. This one was orange in color. He glanced up, then back at the bubble. With both hands he pried the rock free and dropped it into the pit. He whistled loudly, presumably to warn the pixies below to watch out for falling rock.
“Tough nest,” Braf muttered.
“Yes, it is,” said Jig.
The pixie was already descending toward a lower cluster of bubbles.
Movement up above drew Jig’s attention. Apparently one of the pixies up on the bridge had noticed something. He started to fly lower, in the general direction of Braf and the others.
“Can you hit him?” Jig asked.
Braf produced another rock and let fly. The pixie tried to spin out of the way, but he was too slow. Purple sparks exploded as the pixie spiraled downward, his light fading.
Two more pixies hopped off the bridge, searching for their attacker. These were the four-winged pixies, who seemed to be the warriors and guards. Jig could see the ogres peering down as well. “Them too?”
Another rock flew. This time the pixies managed to dodge, though the rock did hit an ogre on the shoulder. The ogre didn’t appear to notice. One of the pixies pointed toward Braf. “Get him!”
The enslaved ogres leaped from the bridge and began to plummet into the pit.