Goblin Nation

by Jean Rabe

She found his voice ugly. His lips moved, but it sounded as if he talked through his nose or had a perpetual cold. Nor did she like the disgusting heads that were tied to his belt by their hanks of hair. Mudwort was certain she did not like elves, though she’d known only one half-elf, Grallik. But she did not care for humans like the Dark Knights, and elves were no doubt just as bad. She’d not heard any good tales of elves, so she couldn’t imagine why Draath and his fellows would want to carry hunks of dead elves with them, banging against their hips and their legs as they walked.

  She shuddered.

  “Is something bad, Mudwort?” Draath seemed genuinely concerned.

  She didn’t have to answer. Thya and Grallik arrived, and they got busy joining their magic to make another hole.

  Mudwort’s legs and arms felt as heavy as stone when Direfang called a break to the work. A group of Boarhunters had lived up to their name, dragging the carcasses of several boars into a clearing. Other clans set to work skinning the animals and chattered that the Fernwold clan had killed a bear. Grallik, looking as tired as Mudwort had ever seen him, was tasked with starting a fire to cook most of the meat; a few clans preferred raw flesh.

  Thya slept at the rim of an earth bowl. Draath paced, looking at the carcasses and alternately wringing his hands and patting his stomach. He did not appear as fatigued as she, and when Direfang approached, the Skinweaver met him halfway. Mudwort decided to pull more energy from Draath when Direfang asked them to dig more bowls the next day. She would not take so much from Thya and Grallik and perhaps Sallor, who Draath called a minor shaman, or an old Flamegrass clansman who could work stone with a touch—all who would be helping the next day.

  “Draath wants to see under the spire,” Direfang told her. Mudwort didn’t know why she should care. She did not care about the spire or about Draath beyond his usefulness with spells. “Draath is very curious,” Direfang added.

  Mudwort shrugged and stretched her arms above her head; the moist dirt on her arms was drying and fell off in pieces like beetles brushed away.

  “Work again soon, Mudwort. So much to be done.” Direfang stood over her, his shadow a line that stretched across her and cast a darkness over her, hanging into the most recently dug depression. “Work before the meat is cooked. Work some more.”

  She didn’t say anything for a while, didn’t even look up to meet his gaze. Instead she thought wistfully about the spear again.

  “The homes will be better for all the work,” he said. “Sturdy to withstand the wind. All of them fine like Mudwort’s.” He continued to talk, but she had stopped listening, wrapping her mind around the spear and thinking about the journey there, which had been arduous, but which was not filled with work and work and more work. She was tired of the journey and the work.

  “No more work this day, Direfang,” she said finally. “Tired.” She gestured to Thya, who, soundly snoring, was oblivious to anything around her. “Done today.”

  Direfang rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “Too much to do, Mudwort.”

  “Ever the foreman,” she cut back. She tried to sound mean, but there was little strength in her voice. “How is this freedom? Same as slave mines. Work. Work. Work.”

  “Tomorrow, then,” he said. The hobgoblin’s voice was softer, and for a moment she thought he might apologize for being so pushy. But apologies were a sign of weakness, for him or her. “Tomorrow dig more earth bowls. Many, many more.”

  She leaned back on her elbows and felt him walk away and felt the vibrations from Thya’s snores. She was aware of other activities too. Several groups of goblins were hard at work physically digging the earth bowls. Among the supplies Grallik had purchased before their voyage were an assortment of shovels and picks, which at first the goblins had considered a waste. Suddenly they were a treasure. Some goblins were digging at the ground with their hands.

  Most had decided to build homes as sturdy and earth-bound as Mudwort’s.

  And only she knew that they were building very near the place the ancient clan once called home.

  Her spear could not be so terribly far away.

  9

  THE STONETELLERS

  MUDWORT’S QUEST

  Direfang did not understand. He simply was not capable of understanding, Mudwort realized, at least not right at that moment.

  She dug the ball of her foot into the ground and fumed. Direfang wasn’t stupid; otherwise he would not have proven the champion who won their freedom from their Dark Knight taskmasters, and he would not have led them from Steel Town to their blessed forest.

  But he couldn’t seem to look beyond himself and whatever plans he had churning in his brain about their fledgling goblin nation and the city he was building. He was being selfish—even though he claimed to be thinking about the goblins as a whole.

  She deserved a turn at being selfish too. “Work.” She cursed. “Work. Work. Work.” Direfang understood only work and ordering the clans around. He’d done that for years when he was a foreman in the Dark Knight mines in Neraka—work and telling others to work.

  He was still doing it.

  Single-minded and bent on building this damnable goblin city.

  “Dig more bowls,” he’d told Mudwort just minutes before. “For goblin homes. Dig many more today. Small and big ones.”

  She’d dug plenty already, done more than her share of the work in building the city.

  City? It wasn’t a city, not yet. It wouldn’t be a city until a lot of time had passed and a great deal more work was put into it. And too much of that work would fall on her narrow shoulders.

  Her magic had made her valuable to the clans, perhaps too valuable.

  And yes, she would dig more, for Direfang. Without him she’d still be in a slave pen in Neraka.

  But not anymore. Not. Anymore.

  Let the other goblins dig with shovels. And let Thya, Draath, Grallik, Sallor, and a handful of others who knew how use magic dig the new buildings with their minds.

  She’d more than earned some time alone.

  So when Direfang was occupied with Graytoes and Jando-Jando several minutes earlier, she’d slipped away. She’d made sure Grallik hadn’t been watching her—as that seemed to be his sole hobby so he could advance his magic. If he’d been watching, Direfang certainly would have been alerted to her escape.

  After a few miles, she paused behind a half-dead oak and peeked around it, just to make sure the wizard wasn’t sneaking along after her—and that no one else was following, for that matter.

  No one.

  Still, just to be certain, she squatted and touched the fingers of her right hand to a patch of dirt between the tree’s knobby roots. Her senses flowed down her arms and into the earth. She was instantly surrounded by the sensation of husks of dead insects, small rocks imprinted with fern leaves, and thick worms lazily burrowing. The feeling was pleasurable, and she lingered for a moment before spurring her senses on.

  “The blame is here,” she said, thumping her chest. If she’d not sent her senses through the earth upon leaving Steel Town, she’d not have helped all of it to happen—the goblins living in those woods; the homes they’d constructed; her being responsible for homes like those ancient ones, which involved digging the bowls in the earth. She’d made herself far too useful and important. “S’dard! Should have stayed quiet.

  “Should have stayed quiet. Quiet. Quiet.” She’d managed to stay quiet about precisely why she had wanted to come to the Qualinesti Forest—the thing in the earth had lured her there—and why she, in turn, had lured Direfang and the goblin horde.

  “The Qualinesti Forest, Direfang,” she’d told him long weeks past. “That is the place for a goblin nation. Not the Plains of Dust. There are goblins in the forest, goblins elsewhere. Goblins on an island with a stairway of great energy—saw that. Goblins everywhere, scattered, weak.” She also knew of the goblins in Northern Ergoth but had no desire to join them.

  There was strength and power in the forest, a great magical pow
er, and that was what she desired.

  Chislev’s spear, it was, the weapon of a god for whom she had no respect. Mudwort, like the rest of the goblins in Direfang’s army, had no faith in the gods. But the weapon … she would respect that when she wrapped her fingers around the haft of the spear, which she would do soon. It would be Mudwort’s spear then, not Chislev’s. If the god had still wanted it, the god would have it. The thing would not be buried.

  The god had thrown it away.

  She knew it possessed arcane powers, she’d recognized that in her earth visions when she’d glimpsed a goblin shaman from ancient times who’d found and wielded the spear.

  Soon Mudwort would be powerful too.

  She continued to send her senses back in time, intending to look for where the goblins were building their city, wanting to make sure that no one was following her. She expected to feel their feet pressing against the ground, the weight of so many of them crushing her and making it difficult to breathe. But that didn’t happen. Though she looked hard and long, she couldn’t find them, nor their infant city. Mudwort could not even sense Direfang, or Thya and Draath and Grallik.

  “Do not understand,” she muttered. Her magic wasn’t working. She should have witnessed goblins digging earth bowls, cutting trees, and tanning hides—goblins acting civilized. She couldn’t even see the river that flowed by the bluff, nor spot the spire stone that Direfang had been obsessed with.

  “Should go back,” she said, worried that something might have befallen the entire community. Maybe it was the earth under the city! Maybe something in the ground was blocking her magic, a type of rock that was foreign to her. Or perhaps she had dug so many bowls the ground was angry with her and would not let her senses travel through it.

  That must be it. “The earth is mad.” Mudwort thumped her knee against the ground. “Nothing. See nothing.”

  Direfang and Grallik, Qel and Orvago? The latter both odd-looking and easy to spot. But she couldn’t see them no matter how hard she concentrated.

  “Forget them,” she decided. She grinned broadly and spiraled her senses out farther, no longer interested in the goblins and their earth bowls that her mind couldn’t see and instead intent on finding Chislev’s lost weapon. It wasn’t so horribly far away—she’d sensed that earlier—not so far that she couldn’t reach it in a long day’s walk. That’s why she’d approved Direfang’s plan to build the goblin city on the bluff. She did not want them going farther south and taking her farther away from her prize.

  “Where?” she hissed. “Where? Where? Where?” The spear had been easy to find before, its power tugging her. “Find it. Do not let thoughts of Direfang distract. Think of only the spear.” She couldn’t say how long her mind ranged through the forest, several long minutes certainly, judging that the sun was higher and was cutting through the branches of the half-dead oak and had started to burn her shoulders.

  “There. There is the thing Chislev does not care about.” The spear had a pulse, she finally realized, like a living thing, though she knew it wasn’t living. The pulse was waves of magical energy. The pulse was at the same time soothing and jarring, and she sat motionless for a while, letting the waves ripple through her.

  The god had been stupid to leave such a thing behind. And the ancient shaman who had discovered it … why had she left it? What had become of her? Mudwort rose and stretched and rubbed her legs, which had become sore from lingering in one position for so long. She continued to focus on the energy of the spear, envisioning a thread between her and it.

  One thought only: Follow the thread and gain the spear.

  “Find it.”

  Then what?

  Return to Direfang’s infant city.

  Then what?

  She’d puzzle that out later.

  Mudwort glided along to the rhythm she felt in the pulse of the magic, fingers trailing down to twirl in the tops of patches of saw grass then across tickly reeds and cattails growing along a thin stream. She closed her eyes at one point, picturing the connection between her and the spear as a glowing, wonderful string that continued to pull her farther from bossy Direfang and the horde of smelly, chattering goblins, ever closer to her wonderful prize. Her toes sank into the stream bank, and she vaguely registered the cool, agreeable sensation. She felt the brittle vines of dead flowers and the smooth ones of those living, inhaled deep the sweet scent and held it.

  She should have left the others days before to pursue her goal, shouldn’t have dug so many bowls while the spear waited for her. She’d worked only as hard as she did because of Direfang, her closest—perhaps only—friend. She felt some loyalty to him and believed she owed him something since he rescued her from crumbling Steel Town.

  Maybe that debt was paid finally, and maybe she’d leave them all behind forever once she had the spear. She would have to endure no more press of dirt-caked, sweat-reeking goblins and hobgoblins, no more stares from the half-elf wizard who craved magic. It would be just her and the forest and all of its good smells.

  And Chislev’s spear.

  She opened her eyes when her foot caught on something. Glancing down, she spotted a bony arm ending in things that looked like fingers but were not quite fingers. Strings of dried muscles held the bony arm together. The sight almost caused her to lose her thread of thought. Concentrating, she kicked at the bone and discovered it was thick and long and probably had belonged to a bear or a creature as big as one.

  A bloodrager? Hardly a trace of flesh on it, the forest scavengers had picked it clean, just the few strings of muscle that looked as hardened as the bones. It could make a useful tool, so she picked it up and shook it until what had been its paw fell free.

  Mudwort wrapped her fingers around the bony arm, just as she intended to wrap her fingers around the spear. She carried it as she cut across a plot of trillium, imagining the bone was her magical spear. That made it easier to concentrate on the pulse and to block out everything else. She even managed to push away the shushing of the wind-jostled leaves and the musical chitter of the little birds nesting overhead. She ignored the play of the soft breeze against her face and the still-burning heat of the sun on her shoulders as she stepped under gaps in the canopy.

  Then, all of a sudden, fingers dug into her arms and lifted her, snapping the wavelength that connected her to Chislev’s spear. In her surprise she dropped the bone, which her captor immediately slammed his heel on and broke. At first she thought Direfang had somehow followed her and was bringing her back to dig more bowls. But after a heartbeat she realized Direfang would not have been so violent and hurtful, would not have ruined the bone, and would have said something nice to her.

  She kicked furiously, and twisted this way and that to see which offending hobgoblin had dared to disturb her. Or perhaps it was that pesky gnoll Orvago.

  “S’dard!” she snarled. “Fool! Ignorant gnoll!”

  “It’s a small one,” the human voice shot back. “Can’t tell if it’s young.”

  She twisted harder and managed a glance over her shoulder. The sun glinted off the plate armor of a Dark Knight, practically blinding her. Her heart seized and she fought for breath. Dark Knights here? So far from Steel Town and Neraka? Not possible! Where was she?

  But it was not a dream. The mailed fingers felt like rock shards digging into her flesh.

  “S’dard!” she cried.

  She should not have left Direfang and the others. She should have stayed and dug more bowls. She should have looked for the spear later.

  “And a feisty one.”

  She should have come after the spear later, after more work was done, when she would have been safe.

  “Take care that it does not bite you,” a second voice said. “We’ve no healer with us. Remember, goblins carry disease.”

  She should have searched with Sully or Gnasher or even with the damnable wizard … with someone who might have watched her back and seen the knights coming. Coming from where? Why?

  “Aye, Tannen
, I’d not want to catch some malady from this pitiful thing.”

  Mudwort understood most of their words, having listened to the knights at Steel Town and more recently studying the language of Grallik. The words burned in her belly. She hated Dark Knights more than anything. What were they doing in these woods? Why hadn’t she stayed to dig more bowls? She needed to be free!

  The knight squeezed her arms even tighter, the pain becoming everything and nearly making her pass out. Then he eased his grip and shook her, as if she were some little carcass a mongrel dog had gotten a firm hold of.

  “It has clothes, Tannen. It might be one of them.”

  “If it is one of them, we’ll be looking at a promotion.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her captor shake his head and utter a word she took as a curse. “Not for only one of them, a promotion. We’ll need to find a big goblin nest.”

  The second knight stepped in front of Mudwort, his black tabard filling her vision. She had to look up to take him all in. He didn’t wear a helmet, and his black hair was slicked back against the sides of his sweaty face as if he’d oiled it. His skin was the color of milk, though his nose was rosy from the sun. She thought his eyes too small, reminding her of those of a pig, and there were little lines around them, suggesting he had some age to him.

  “Maybe she’ll take us to a big nest after all.”

  Mudwort launched a gob of spit that struck the knight’s thin lips. He made a gagging sound and slapped her so hard, the colors of the forest sickeningly swirled with the black of his tabard.

  “She understood me. Zocci said some of them speak the common tongue.”

  “Pray to the gods she does understand,” the one holding her replied. He was the one the milk-skinned man had called Tannen.

  The one called Tannen shifted her, tucking her under his arm and holding her so tightly, she feared her ribs would break. She could manage only little breaths, and when she struggled to get her arms out so she could claw at him, he squeezed harder.

  “Pray that she’s from a very big nest. Let’s take her to Zocci and find out just where she’s from.”