“I know. I’m sorry, Mother.”
“Are you truly? Isn’t it enough that Thistle is wasting her time schooling for apprenticeship? Has your father poisoned your mind too? At least if you learned at the mill, you’d have a trade, but your numbers are so poor. You can support her as a skilled hunter.”
Spicy couldn’t keep the tremor out of his voice. “But I could join Thistle for schooling.”
“You were tested. Your letters aren’t good enough either. You know that.”
“But that was five years ago! I’ve improved since then. I’ve done a lot of work on my own. You have to have me tested again. I can be an apprentice if you just give me a chance.”
“I’m sorry, Spicy. You were tested, and against my wishes. Your skills lie elsewhere. Now off to the fire. Share the moment with your friends.”
The general mood at the fire had improved, but it was the last place he wanted to be.
A few of the mothers led the rest in the song “My Hearth, My Home.” An old matron stood and chanted a prayer for the safe return of the hunters. Then a new song started up, “Ganjo the Goat,” which got the kids involved.
A jug of rice wine was passed among the grown-ups. Blackberry pie was served. Thistle sat with her friends, who chatted and sang along. Rime was with the other hunters, nodding attentively as an older man with a missing leg told a tale with expansive gestures and plenty of sound effects.
Spicy’s mother went to sit with the village’s most recent bride, Jinty Grundle, married just the previous winter. The goblin woman was suckling a pair of twins. Spicy’s mother took one of them and cradled him in her arms.
No one paid Spicy any attention. He rose and slunk back into the shadows.
Who would care if he wasn’t there?
Something funny happened that elicited a round of laughter from those closest to the fire. Edging further into the shadows, he made his way to the wall near the mill.
The singing from the village center was now a distant sound almost drowned out by the chirping of crickets. He felt himself grow calmer.
Friends, his mother had called the other goblins. Rime, sure. But the others?
Even if his reading skills weren’t as sharp as Thistle’s, Somni’s books took him someplace that wasn’t Boarhead. If he were the apprentice, he could stay in that world forever.
Beyond the mill was a home on stilts built among the treetops. Spicy walked as silently as he could.
A line of silver smoke rose through the stone chimney. A semicircle of stumps outside marked the open-air classroom where Sage Somni taught his larger classes on the weekends.
But the real knowledge was imparted one-on-one to his advanced students, including Thistle. During the late hours, Somni might be alone, and often oblivious to anyone sneaking in to use his books. If Spicy was lucky, the old goblin might be asleep.
Spicy ascended the steps, careful to avoid the smallest creak in the boards. On a high beam a glyph of a watching eye stared down at him. Spicy dutifully avoided looking at it. Why Somni kept an image of man-magic on his home had never made sense. At the door, he pressed his ear against the wood. It was silent inside. Somni’s voice was resonant, and if he were giving instruction Spicy would know it.
Spicy grasped the handle and tried to open the door. As usual it was unlocked. He stuck his head inside.
A few candles were lit, throwing a honey glow around the cluttered two main rooms. Stacks of books and loose papers lay everywhere, some haphazardly placed next to extinguished candles that dribbled frozen wax down onto the table. More tomes were neatly stashed into the many bookcases occupying the room. Rolled-up maps were tucked away into wall organizers. One master map, which Spicy had spent hours studying, was pulled out and rested on a wooden frame. Its myriad tiny geographic features, labeled but mysterious, proved endlessly fascinating.
Several markings similar to the glyph were interspersed throughout the map, including one of a dragon with two eyes that seemed to stare at Spicy anytime he looked at the map. Yet Somni would never take time to explain them, insisting Spicy stick to the basic lessons of reading before moving on to anything more advanced.
A massive chair was pushed out next to a center table, on which a half-eaten plate of meat topped with berry compote over a bed of rice rested next to a massive open codex. The dish was cold.
Spicy looked at the giant page of neat script. His fingertips played along the textured page. The illuminated border was fanciful scrollwork wrapping around the tiny illustration of a symbol being drawn by a hand with an extended finger. The red and green lines melded to black as they formed a giant letter T.
“The third ice age,” the page began.
He had to read it one word at a time. It was a history written in script by human hands. The one codex page alone must have taken weeks or a month to produce and was much more difficult to read than anything in the primers. Many of the books collected were of concise woodblock printing or had even been produced by letterpress. He had to pause to sound out a few of the longer words. The grammar made following the run-on sentence difficult. But soon he was lost in the page as it described the world before now.
“Spicy!”
He jumped.
The purple-skinned goblin who entered the room had a wrinkled face and a gray sweep of hair. Somni puttered forward, and as Spicy turned to face him his hand bumped the dish with Somni’s supper and sent it crashing to the floor. Rice and shards of the shattered plate flew everywhere.
“What are you doing here?” Somni snapped.
Spicy got on his knees and began scooping up pieces of broken plate. “I’m sorry. I’m cleaning it up.”
Moving past him, Somni eased down onto the chair and watched. Spicy dumped the debris into a bucket. Using a rag, he scooped up the spilled food. He dumped it outside into a rubbish pit and then drew water from a spigot mounted on the bottom of a metal tank. As he returned and began scrubbing down the floor, Somni shook his head.
“You shouldn’t be in here at this hour. It’s late. This is my study time. Even my students are away with their assignments. And isn’t there a gathering? I can hear the songs.”
“I just wanted to read.”
“Then come in on the weekend when I can assign a more advanced student to help you after classes.”
“I don’t need an apprentice to help me. I know my letters.”
Somni humphed. “You’re just afraid I’ll assign your sister to you.”
“I’m as smart as she is.”
“Are you? You think because you can recite your alphabet and read a page of words that you’ve earned a place here? Don’t answer that—I know what you’ll say. You were tested like the others. You have to face the fact that I can only take a handful of students. We need hunters. We need warriors. We need people who will be sure we survive the winter and the one that follows.”
Spicy rinsed the rag and wrung it dry. “This is just as important.”
Somni smiled a sad smile. “Oh that it were, boy. But it isn’t. The story of yesterday is meaningless if we can’t be assured we’ll have a tomorrow. Now you’ve already ruined my supper. Take the bucket and go.”
Spicy hesitated. “You’re reading about the third ice age. There were two others?”
“That depends on the source. Human books are all over the place with their history. The naming of ages and dates are arbitrary, as I’ve explained to you before. This third age is the most recent but the least documented. It dates back to when our village was barely a handful of rice farmers and our confederacy was little more than a collective of farms.”
“The Second Age of Provers.”
“Yes. But I know your trick. Don’t distract me with your questions. Your mother will be upset I’m entertaining you and with your father among the missing, the last thing she needs is for you to be disobeying her and getting into trouble. You should be home. You have your chores to do. I have mine.”
“You say he’s missing.”
&nb
sp; Somni grunted. “Missing. Delayed. Don’t try to catch me with semantics. You can look that one up this weekend. Now don’t break anything else on your way out.”
Struggling to rise, Somni made his way into the back room, where Spicy spotted a pack half-full of notebooks by the doorway. A sleeping roll and bundles of food and a metal canteen were all gathered together near it.
“You’re leaving?” Spicy asked.
“And you’re still here. Will I have to drag you out by your ears, or will you find the door on your own?”
“When will you be back?”
“I haven’t left yet. Off with you!”
Spicy headed for the door. He paused to take a final look at the open codex page. Drank it in. Believed he could smell the paper, as if it breathed out its own special oxygen. Somni hadn’t followed, so Spicy took one of the books from a stack piled on a chair and slid it under his shirt. He closed the door softly as he left.
His heart raced as he returned home. He now had pages and pages he could lose himself in, never mind the book’s title or subject. His failure at the hunt would fall away out of mind. The sharp words of Preemie and the others would die like a fading echo.
First, he would have to sneak back home.
Hopefully his mother would still be at the fire. Then he would need to conceal the book, which was easy enough. He was responsible for washing his own sheets and making his own bed each day. But it was dark out and he couldn’t risk lighting a candle. Reading would have to wait for tomorrow.
As he stuck to the shadows and made his way along the wall by the mill, the songs from the center of the village continued. But the crickets were silent. The sharp screech of an owl gave him pause. Something was off about the bird’s cry. It was too loud and it echoed for a moment.
Spicy waited for the sound to repeat, but it didn’t.
He hurried home.
Chapter Three
Morning in Spicy’s house allowed little in the way of reading time. His routine of washing up in the basin and eating breakfast hadn’t given him the opportunity to even check the title of his borrowed book, now tucked under his bedroll. But just like every morning, even now when his father was missing, his mother had prepared breakfast and the house was spotless.
His sister, Thistle, wore her brown locks up in ribbons of blue. Her fingers were stained from using the charcoal pencils for her apprentice work. She handed Spicy a bowl of rice and red beans.
“You didn’t have those ribbons yesterday,” Spicy said.
“They were a present. Rime gave them to me yesterday evening at the fire.”
Mother was already out front washing out her own breakfast bowl in a bucket of dishwater. She peered in through the open door periodically as Spicy and Thistle ate.
“You know what Rime wants,” Spicy said in a low voice.
“I think he’s sweet.”
“He just wants to nail you.”
Thistle made a face. “You’re a pig. He tells me you missed yesterday. And that One Stone and the others were picking on you.”
“Among his other faults, Rime has a big mouth. So I hear Sage Somni is going somewhere.”
“Oh? And who told you that?”
Spicy set down a spoonful of rice and leaned close. “He did. I was by last night.”
“You’re not supposed to go over and bother him,” Thistle hissed. “If Mother finds out—”
“She won’t. And you’re not going to say anything.”
Thistle’s lips curled into a wicked smile. “And what if I do? Mother. Oh, Mother,” she mock-called. “Spicy’s been a naughty little goblin. No, he hasn’t gotten into the sweets. It’s not even him sneaking a peek in through the Grundles’ bedroom shutters while they’re making babies. He visited the old sage again and was reading. Maybe even stole another book. Such a naughty, naughty little brother.”
“Quit it.”
“Don’t worry. I probably won’t say anything. For now. I guess it depends on what my silence is worth.”
Their mother entered and pointed outside. “Go wash your dishes, both of you. I have to get to the fields.”
As Spicy and Thistle ate their last mouthfuls and cleaned their bowls, he said, “I was thinking I’d stay home today. My stomach is unsettled. Perhaps the deer meat wasn’t cooked enough.”
His mother was lacing her sandals. “You’ll do no such thing. You’ll be with Huntmaster Sorrel this morning, and you’ll continue working on your skills with the other boys. We’ve been over this.”
Spicy was silent and his jaw clenched.
“Or,” his mother continued, “you come with me to the paddies. Your choice.”
Bowl washed, he gathered his bow and arrows and pulled on his shoes. Rime was waiting for him at the end of the row of homes and they went down to the hunting lodge together.
Instructions for the group of young hunters had been brief. Huntmaster Sorrel was old and easily distracted. Rime had a game of asking Sorrel about events of the Old War or any number of raids or great hunts or feats of bravery from the prior huntmasters. The lesson would become a meandering story. As the huntmaster was half-blind, it meant they could slip away. And they did.
The whitetail from the day before had been consumed. Its bones would be in the day’s soup. The village needed to eat again, and the young hunters were charged with catching small game to complement the food stores.
Spicy and Rime paired off as the other boys all vied to work alongside One Stone.
As they were heading off down the trail, Preemie and a younger boy just old enough to string his bow blocked Spicy’s path.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Preemie said. “The Bark Trail is for hunters. You can take the upper ridge.”
Spicy tried to step past but Preemie shoved him.
“I don’t want the upper ridge,” Spicy said, avoiding eye contact. “There’s never anything there.”
“It’s not like you’re going to catch anything anyway. You’re blind from all the time you spend trying to read. You can’t track and you can’t shoot worth a damn.”
Rime elbowed past the younger boy and squared off with Preemie. “We’re going down to the mud pond. If you don’t want to hunt near us, you go somewhere else.”
Preemie put a hand on Rime but Rime knocked it away. They pushed each other. A few other young hunters gathered. One snickered. “Get him, Preemie,” someone hissed. One Stone was now watching. And Huntmaster Sorrel was nowhere in sight.
Preemie and Rime were about equal in height. They exchanged punches and tried to kick each other. Soon their arms were locked and each was trying to throw the other to the ground.
“Stop it!” Spicy said. He pulled Rime back. Both he and Preemie were breathing hard and staring daggers. “The Bark Trail is yours. It looked dead, anyway. We’ll be up on the ridge.”
The boys dispersed. Spicy helped gather Rime’s equipment and pulled him along to the trailhead near the north rice field.
“You can’t let them tell you what to do,” Rime said. “You shouldn’t have left the fire. One Stone noticed.”
“What difference does it make what they think?”
Rime sighed. “It’s clear you don’t want to be a hunter. That’s something you’ll have to work out with your mom and dad. But you don’t have to be so obvious about it is all I’m saying. Where are you going?”
Spicy pointed up the trail.
“There’s nothing on the ridge. We won’t catch anything.”
“You can go with the others then.”
Rime shrugged. “And run the risk of you telling your sister I didn’t protect you? No thanks. Now walk quieter. You’ll spook the squirrels.”
After three hours along the ridge that crested the northwestern hills, they hadn’t caught anything. By then Spicy was almost dragging his bow. Rime shuffled his feet.
“We should go down to the mud pond,” Rime said. “At least we can try to catch some cray.”
“That’s what the other
s will be doing if they’ve come up empty.”
“So? You going to stay up here forever? Spicy, you won’t become an apprentice sage. Unless you take on a skill with one of the artisans, you’re going to have to learn to hunt. And like it or not, you’ll be living with Preemie and One Stone and the others for a long time. Why not get it over with and face them down? I’ll have your back. You know I will.”
Spicy plucked some grass seeds and flung them. Rime had always had his back. Ever since the day Spicy had noticed Rime was afraid of swimming and had taken the time to teach him when the other boys weren’t around, Rime had stood up for him, even though it was the last thing Spicy wanted.
“Not today,” Spicy said.
The morning haze had burned off. While it wasn’t a hot day, the humidity and exertion made both boys sweat. The grass on the top of the ridge buzzed with grasshoppers and clicked with beetles. The shrieking jay birds had been complaining ever since the goblins had reached the crest.
Rime stopped to work a stone from his moccasin. Spicy continued along the trail and then paused. The screech of an owl pierced the air. The sound silenced the jays. Even the insects grew quiet.
“Did you hear that?” Spicy asked.
Rime slipped his shoe back on his foot. “Hear what?”
“The owl.”
“It’s the middle of the day. There’s no owls.”
“I didn’t say owls, I said owl, and it was loud.”
The trail led straight up to a copse of oak that made a pool of black shadows. The sun burned down bright on Spicy. He shielded his eyes. Strained his ears. Smelled the air as he had seen his father do when engaging his senses while hunting. He was certain there had been other sounds just beyond his range of hearing.
In the hard dirt he tried to read the signs of what had passed. Was that a partial hoof track of a horse or was it his imagination? Goblins didn’t usually use horses. Humans did. And except for the odd traveling merchant, humans hadn’t been seen among the hills of Athra since the Old War.
The Goblin Reign Boxed Set Page 2