by Philip Reeve
“Awww,” said Libnog.
“But we’ll take Spurtle,” said Henwyn, “because Spurtle is small and good at thieving things, and may be able to fetch the Elvenhorn out of Prince Rhind’s camp without a fight…”
“Unless it’s full moon of course!” jeered the other goblins. “Then Prince Rhind can have a nice sit down on him!”
Spurtle snarled at them. He had once fallen into the Slowsilver Lake, and although the effects had almost worn off, he still had a relapse once a month, on the night of the full moon, when he turned into a small but quite comfortable sofa. “I’ll go,” he said.
“And Gutgust!” said Henwyn. “He may say nothing but ‘anchovies’, but he is mighty in the thick of battle, and we shall need him if we do have to fight.”
“Anchovies!” said Gutgust happily, and Skarper realized that it was too late to argue, although Gutgustwasn’t the goblin he would have chosen – Gutgust wasn’t just mighty in the thick of battle, he was mighty thick.
“And who else?” asked Zeewa.
“Oooh, me, me, me!” shouted the other goblins, leaping up and down with their paws in the air.
“Won’t you need a philosopher to help you?” asked Fentongoose.
“Help us with what?” said Skarper. “We know all about the Elvenhorn already. We just need to grab it. That doesn’t take brains.”
“Besides,” said Henwyn hurriedly, “you and Dr Prong are needed here at Clovenstone, to keep an eye on things.”
“So who shall be the sixth and seventh members of your company?” asked Prong.
“Me an’ Grumpling!” said a voice from behind him.
It was the voice of Flegg. He had come in unnoticed while they were all busy talking. Behind him in the open doorway stood the hulking form of Grumpling. Flegg strode boldly across the library to stand beside Henwyn. “Why should you get to pick everyone who goes, softling? The Elvenhorn was stolen from Grumpling by those Woolmarkers and their accomplices.” (He shot a sharp look at Skarper and Zeewa.) “It’s only right that Grumpling should join the quest to recover it.”
“No!” said Skarper. “Don’t listen to Flegg! He’s up to something! He betrayed me and Zeewa even though we helped him out of the pooin holes. And as for Grumpling, who’d want him along on a quest?”
Henwyn was inclined to agree, but Zeewa said, “No. Let Grumpling come. Flegg is right, a Chilli Hat should come with us.”
“I’d rather he went with you on your quest than stopped here causing nuisance for the rest of us,” said Libnog.
Grumpling beckoned Flegg back to him and whispered loudly, “What’s this thing I’ve got to go on?”
“A quest, O mighty Grumpling,” Flegg whispered back.
“What’s that?”
“It’s my way of getting back your scratchbackler.”
“Oh…” Grumpling looked dimly satisfied, but Flegg wasn’t.
“I shall come too,” he announced.
Henwyn shook his head. “Sorry, Flegg. We need strong, brave goblins for this business, and you are neither.”
Flegg looked horrified. He liked being Grumpling’s favourite. If he was left here alone, the other Chilli Hats would make his life a misery, and quite a short misery. Not only that, he was forming vague plans about getting this powerful Elvenhorn for himself. It sounded much too useful to be chucked into the sea by goody-goodies or used as a back scratcher by an idiot.
“Ah, but I am Grumpling’s servant and advisor. And think how useful I will be if poets and people do write songs about us, and they need something to rhyme with ‘egg’ or ‘leg’. Besides, I am clever and wily.”
“Cunning and slimy, more like,” said Skarper. “What if Flegg betrays us again?”
“Why would I do that?” asked Flegg, all innocence. “I’m a goblin, Skarper, same as you. I don’t want this old elfy magic woken up any more than you do.”
“Well, I suppose…” said Skarper.
“Don’t worry,” said Zeewa softly, and she fingered the blade of the spear which she had been repairing. “If he tries to double-cross us, my spear is thirsty.”
“So be it!” said Henwyn. “Let us make ready! We shall not take horses, because goblins go faster on foot, and I always fall off. But we shall need travelling garb, and provisions for a long journey. Some of those little cheesy biscuits would be nice. We shall leave before sundown!”
The room emptied, people and goblins swirling out through the small doorway like water down a drain. Soon only Dr Prong was left, still stooped over the ancient stone on the table.
“It is not ‘elves’,” he muttered to himself, staring at the ancient scratches. “And it cannot really be ‘cushions’. So what is that word? What waits at Elvensea?”
Remember that horn blast that had woken the giant, Fraddon, startled the boglins, and upset the dragonets? Its echoes had faded now from Clovenstone. But, like a ripple spreading in a clear pool where a bird has brushed the water’s surface, the sound kept travelling onwards and outwards. It was just a whisper now, faint beyond the hearing of any mortal thing. It had trembled the veins of ore in dwarf mines on the Nibbled Coast, and merged for a moment with the cry of the gulls where the white surf surged and splashed upon the beaches of the Autumn Isles. Far out across the Western Ocean it flew, over the sea’s great silences and the slop and ripple of the big, slow waves.
And at last it came to the place where, all those long centuries before, the island of Elvensea had foundered like a vast stone ship.
There was no ear there to hear it. There was nothing but the empty sea and the empty sky and the silent music of the Elvenhorn. But the sea was listening. Slowly the waves began to change – not their shapes, but their motion and their direction. If you had been out there in a boat (and you are very lucky that you were not out there in a boat) you might not have noticed what was happening for a long time. But if you had been hanging high above the sea, perhaps as a guest aboard a handy cloud, you would have been able to watch as the waves rearranged themselves into a spiral, and began to turn; slowly at first, and then faster and faster, as if a gigantic, invisible spoon was stirring that part of the ocean. A whirlpool was forming, its centre dipping down and down through the fish-filled fathoms until right at the bottom of it, in the heart of a pit of rushing water, a domed roof appeared, and around it stone towers, and below it the shapes of other walls and turrets all blurred with barnacles and shining mounds of weed.
Nothing else happened. The whirlpool whirled, the drowned towers stood silent in its depths, and that was all. Elvensea was waiting for the second horn blast.
Henwyn and Zeewa prepared carefully for the quest, loading their packs with the things they thought would be most useful: ropes, maps, tinder boxes, spare socks and drawers, bread, dried fruit, and a wheel of Clovenstone Blue. The goblins packed carelessly, slinging any old thing into their packs, forgetting things they’d need and weighing themselves down instead with trinkets that would be too heavy to carry far, and which they would lose interest in and sling into the roadside bushes before they’d gone five miles from Westerly Gate. They all made sure they had good weapons with them, though the short, sharp swords that goblins loved best, and, in Grumpling’s case, two massive old battleaxes, which he strapped crosswise to his back.
Henwyn was still not happy about bringing Grumpling and Flegg on the quest. Who would be? They were horrible. He was glad to be taking them away from Clovenstone, but he wished he had a few larger goblins who could help him deal with Grumpling if Grumpling made trouble on the way. Gutgust was the only one big enough to fight Grumpling, and there was only one of Gutgust. He wished the trolls were around, but they had still not returned from their camping trip.
When everything was ready at last, and the goodbyes had been said, and the company was setting off along the road to Westerly Gate, he went on ahead of them and made his way to the place w
here Fraddon had stood all winter, in the clearing where Princess Ned’s first garden had been. The garden was almost invisible now, and you had to look quite hard to make out the shapes of flower beds and beanpoles among the thick weeds and young trees. Fraddon was vanishing too; as tall and still as the trees around him, with ivy growing up his legs and moss hanging from his woody hair. Young twiglings peered down at Henwyn from his beard.
Henwyn sat down on a mossy stone beside the stream and looked up at the old giant. Fraddon was smaller than he had been two years before, when they’d first met. Giants grow down, not up; they dwindle as they age, like mountains. Once, long before Henwyn’s time, Fraddon had been big enough to scoop the ship carrying Princess Ned out of the sea and carry it home under his arm. Now, his head did not reach higher than the highest trees. But he would still be able to pick up a goblin of Grumpling’s size and stuff him in his pocket, if Grumpling misbehaved.
“Fraddon,” said Henwyn, “a new peril has arisen. Skarper and Zeewa and me and some of the goblins are going to try and stop it. Will you come with us on the quest? Your great long legs could catch up with Prince Rhind in no time. If you came, we wouldn’t need a quest, probably.”
Fraddon’s eyes were closed. There was no telling whether he had heard or not, or whether he was even awake. He swayed gently as the wind blew across the treetops. The twiglings skittered and giggled in his beard, peeking down at Henwyn with their black button eyes.
“Old Fraddon doesn’t hear you, human being,” said one of the twiglings. “You talk too fast for him. Move too fast. Think too fast. Live too fast and die too soon. He listens to the trees now, not you humans and your little buzzing voices.”
“Is this peril you’re talking about a peril to trees?” asked another.
Henwyn didn’t think it was. Elves liked trees, didn’t they? In the stories they were always wandering around in woods, tending the young saplings and punishing anyone who tried to cut them down. If Prince Rhind woke the elves’ magic, the twiglings would probably be grateful. Fraddon would probably be glad. Maybe the peril that Fentongoose and Dr Prong believed was coming was only perilous for people, and goblins.
He missed Fraddon, though. He missed his big, rumbly voice, his giant kindness. He sat on the stone and watched him, and wished there was something he could say or do that would make Fraddon happy again. But he knew the old giant’s heart was broken, and broken hearts take ages to heal, even normal-sized ones.
And then, through the trees, he heard Skarper and the others making their way towards the gate. Goblin voices raised in song echoed through the woods, making the twiglings hiss and quiver, then sending them scampering into hiding.
Goblin Quest!
Goblin Quest!
From Clovenstone into the west,
We’ll show them goblins are the best.
From mighty Clovenstone we come,
We’ll kick Prince Rhind up his woolly bum.
Our blades are bright,
Our songs are fine,
Though we do sometimes try to fit far too many syllables into one line.
Goblin Quest!
Goblin Quest!
Henwyn sighed. If I were a proper hero, he thought, I could make a rousing speech and Fraddon would wake up and come with us and all would be well. But I’m not, and I can’t, and he won’t.
So he slipped down off his rocky perch, and went to join the goblins.
Prawl had never been a very good sorcerer, and he had never been a very good rider, either. The mare on which he was mounted clearly thought he was a fool. As Prince Rhind’s company made their way into the wild country north-west of Clovenstone she kept wearily trying to knock him off against each tree and boulder that they passed, as if he were an annoying burr that had got caught in her coat. Whenever they stopped to let the horses drink at a stream or river, she would lower her head with such suddenness that Prawl would go somersaulting over her neck and land with a splash in the water.
After the third time it happened, Prince Rhind made him ride in the wagon.
“Your clever brain must not be harmed, Prawl,” he said. “We shall have need of your wisdom when we reach Elvensea.”
But Prawl didn’t feel very wise as he joggled along on the wagon’s seat next to Mistress Ninnis. He would sooner have been riding ahead with Breenge and her brother, and he sighed wistfully as he watched her draw further and further ahead.
“She must think I’m an idiot,” he said.
“Who, Lady Breenge?” asked the cook, cheerful as ever. “Oh, she has always thought you are an idiot; she didn’t need to see you falling off a horse to convince her of it.”
It was evening. Long shadows stretched across the heathland. The road they were following wound along the top of the steep, wooded valley of the River Oeth. On either side bare hills of heather and gorse stretched to the horizons. The smoke of a few distant farms rose straight up into the windless air. The bowl of the sky was deep blue, waiting for the first stars.
“They are following,” said Ninnis suddenly.
“Who are?” asked Prawl, who had been lost in thoughts of Breenge.
The cook turned her head and looked at Prawl with her twinkling, bird-bright eyes. “The boy and the girl and a bunch o’ them goblin friends of yours from Clovenstone.”
“How can you possibly know that?” asked Prawl. He twisted round to look back, but there was no sign of anyone following the wagon, only the pale road unwinding behind it into the evening hills.
“I have the sight,” said Ninnis softly.
“The what?”
“The second sight. I should have thought a mighty sorcerer like you would know all about it. I see things that are happening far away, and sometimes things that haven’t happened yet.”
“Oh, that sort of second sight.”
“Your friends are just setting out through Westerly Gate. They have not brought horses with them, but goblins are quick on their feet and won’t mind travelling by night while we are resting. They’ll catch us sometime tomorrow, I reckon.”
Prawl shook his head. “I cannot see any of that! You should be Rhind’s sorcerer, not me!”
Ninnis chuckled. “Why, he’d not want an old biddy like me as his court sorcerer! Besides which, I prefer pies to potions.”
“But at least you have some magic about you. I have none at all.”
“Well, don’t tell His Highness that, or he will fire you and I shall have no one to talk to on this journey but proud Lady Breenge.” She nudged him and winked. “I tell you what! If you want to impress the prince and that sister of his, you catch up with him and tell him what I just told you. Only make out it was you that had the vision, not me.”
Rhind and Breenge were about half a mile ahead of the lumbering wagon. They had reined in their horses at a place where the road dipped steeply down into a dark wood. Rhind had dismounted and gone down into the trees on foot, as if to spy out the way ahead. When Prawl ran up to where Breenge waited he saw why. Nailed to a birch which grew beside the road was a board, and painted on the board was a depressed-looking skull and the words RODE CLOSED and DANGER.
Many travellers had already taken heed of that sign; Prawl could see where horses and perhaps a wagon or two had struck off on a different route which led around the wood, through the rock-strewn heathland behind. But the detour looked difficult, and Rhind was an impatient sort of prince. He wanted to be sure that some danger really lurked among those trees before he took the trouble to go around them. That was why he had gone on ahead to check.
He was climbing back up out of the tree-shadows as Prawl arrived. His face was grim. “There are bones among the trees,” he said. “I reckon something lives down there. Troll, maybe, or something worse. There are probably all sorts of strange things in these hills since the Slowsilver Star came.”
“Well, blast!” said Breenge.
“Then I suppose we must take the other path, and rejoin the river road further on.”
“T’would be best, sister,” said Rhind. “I fear no mortal enemy, but against these magical creatures I’d sooner not fight unless I have to. Not with night coming on.”
Breenge noticed Prawl waiting nearby. “What do you want?” she snapped.
Prawl blushed. Stammering, he told Breenge and her brother about the party that had left Clovenstone.
“There!” said Breenge, when he had finished. “We shall have mortal enemies to battle after all! We shall lie in wait for these goblins and their friends, and kill them all.”
“I say,” cried Prawl, “that’s a bit extreme! (Though ever so brave and spirited of you, of course, Lady Breenge.)”
“No, sister,” said Rhind. “Why would we waste our time and risk our lives to ambush a parcel of goblins? They are fickle, feckless creatures who will probably lose interest in pursuing us after a few miles. And if they do make it this far…”
He leaned over and used the hilt of his sword to knock the warning sign free of the two rusty nails which held it to the tree. Then he tossed it away down the hillside where the thick bracken hid it from view.
“We shall ride as far as the edge of the trees down there, then turn uphill to join the new path. By the time those creatures get here it will be dark, and they will think our tracks lead into the trees. The thing in the woods will deal with them.”
“Trolls do eat goblins, I suppose?” asked Breenge.
“It might not be a troll,” said Rhind. “But from the look of all those bones down there I’d say it eats just about anybody.”
Night had fallen by the time the travellers from Clovenstone arrived at that place. Even the goblins, with their sharp, twilight-loving eyes, did not notice the warning sign that Rhind had cast into the bracken. Only Skarper sensed anything wrong. Looking ahead at the pale ribbon of road dipping into the trees he said, “Why don’t we camp here tonight, and go through those woods tomorrow when the sun is up?”