Goblin Nation

by Jean Rabe

  Opaque in the center and where it joined the haft, the stone was translucent along the edges, all of it with a vitreous luster. A silver band wrapped around the spear just below the obsidian tip. Dangling from it were dark yellow feathers. Despite the passing of time and lying under the earth, the feathers appeared as if they’d just been plucked from a bird.

  None of the birds in the trees around the clearing matched the coloration of the feathers, however. Mudwort cocked her head. The birds were still perched in the various trees, but they’d all stopped chirping and singing. It was deathly silent.

  She stood and grasped the spear firmly, eyes scanning the woods around her. Something had spooked the birds, and though she couldn’t see anything, she was a little spooked too.

  “Nothing,” she said after a moment. “There’s nothing there. There’s nothing to be frightened of.”

  She looked at the spear again—her spear. The feathers were Chislev’s symbol. Mudwort knew that only because Saarh had said so. She’d heard the long-ago shaman talking about the god in one of the mystic journeys she’d taken through the earth. Saarh was foolish to worship a god that would leave behind such a beautiful, magical thing, Mudwort thought. Through the centuries goblins had learned to abandon the gods, just as the gods had abandoned the goblins.

  And just as Chislev had abandoned the spear.

  “Nothing to be afraid of.” Mudwort shook off her nervousness and decided perhaps she had spooked the birds by splitting the earth and bringing the great artifact up from its long slumber. She held the spear above her head like a warrior might.

  “Oh!” The sunlight set the spear to fairly glowing. All the gems and inlaid metal sparkled and sent little shards of color spiraling away. “Incredible.”

  Mudwort nearly dropped the spear in surprise when she heard a voice other than her own.

  “That certainly is incredible and beautiful.” Standing at the base of one of the ash trees was Thya.

  27

  THE STONETELLERS

  AT LAST, THIS IS MUDWORT’S SPEAR

  Thya’s eyes shifted between Mudwort and the spear, her gaze finally settling on Mudwort, whose eyes were narrowed suspiciously.

  “An amazing thing Mudwort has found,” Thya said amiably. She shuffled forward, one hand drifting to her belt to worry at a small brass buckle, the other reaching forward. “Grallik said Mudwort was looking for something. Grallik will be surprised at just what Mudwort has found.”

  Mudwort raised her upper lip, but the snarl was lost on Thya, who was busy staring at the spear. A large crow launched itself from a high branch, cawing loudly and sending some of the sparrows flying in all directions.

  Thya held out both her hands and wiggled her fingers.

  “No, Thya. At last, this is Mudwort’s spear. Only Mudwort’s.”

  “Just want to hold it,” Thya cooed. “Just for a moment. Beautiful. Nothing more beautiful than that.”

  Thya was right, Mudwort thought. She’d never seen anything more glorious. The sapphire necklace she kept hidden paled next to the spear’s display of sparkling colors. The haft of the spear slightly warmed against her palm, the dizzying sensation fainter but still present … something else was present too. Something she couldn’t see or decipher. What?

  “What?” Mudwort asked aloud.

  An answer came but she couldn’t quite make it out.

  Voices?

  Mudwort heard Thya, asking just to touch the spear or to look at it up closer. She heard the leaves too, repeating “hope” and “wonder” and other words she couldn’t distinguish because Thya continued babbling. She heard another voice, a somewhat familiar voice, Mudwort thought. If Thya would just be quiet, maybe she could hear.

  “Stop talking, Thya.”

  “Just one touch.”

  “No, Thya. I told you, this is Mudwort’s spear. Mudwort’s only. Go away.” She knew she’d never be able to go back to Direfang’s city. She couldn’t risk Thya or someone else stealing her treasure while she slept. “Come no closer.”

  Thya stopped about five feet away, a hurt expression on her face. “One touch?”

  Mudwort shook her head vehemently.

  “That’s not a goblin spear. It’s much too long. And goblins would not make anything like that. Could not make anything like that. Mudwort, that is so beautiful. Where was it?”

  More questions tumbled out of Thya: How did Mudwort learn about the spear? How did she find it? Who made it? Was it magic?

  “Of course it’s magic.” Thya answered her own question. “Smells like magic. A very strong magic smell.” She wriggled her nose and took another step, edging closer. “Just a little touch, Mudwort, please. Hard to follow the footprints here. So much walking. Walk. Walk. Walk. Just one touch.”

  Mudwort shook her head fiercely and held the spear in front of her, threatening. Thya looked surprised and shuffled back.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Sorry, Mudwort. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.” Thya cast her head down then looked up, her expression growing brighter. “Direfang and Orvago think the Dark Knights are coming. That would be a good weapon against them, a beautiful and magical weapon. Direfang will be pleased. It will kill a lot of Dark Knights. Maybe it will scare all the Dark Knights away.” She gestured with her head for Mudwort to follow her back the way they’d come. “I can walk with Mudwort.”

  “I stay here,” Mudwort said resolutely. “Mudwort can stay right here.”

  “Mudwort isn’t coming back to the city?”

  Mudwort thrust out her chin. “There is no city to go back to. S’dard to think the ruins are a city. Flattened, burned, all gone. Don’t need to be there. A waste of time, that place is.”

  Thya’s eyes narrowed. “Mudwort has to come back. Direfang needs—”

  “Direfang doesn’t need this spear.”

  Thya pointed at Mudwort, her little face screwed up into a venomous expression. “Direfang needs Mudwort. Needs Mudwort’s magic. The Dark Knights are searching for goblins and—”

  “No.”

  “Desperately need Mudwort to help fight the—”

  “The Dark Knights won’t find this goblin,” Mudwort retorted. Another crow launched itself from a tree and was followed by another, both cawing loudly. “Direfang neither.”

  “Mudwort is—”

  “Never going back there, Thya. Tell Direfang good-bye.”

  Thya looked despondent. “Sharing spells and helping the city is very important, Mudwort. Graytoes loves Mudwort. Graytoes and Umay.”

  “Umay,” the leaves whispered. Again, the goblin word for hope. The leaves spoke other words too: danger, warning, wonder, magic. But maybe they spoke nothing and Mudwort only imagined things in her confusion and anger at the intrusive goblin.

  “No! Stay back, Thya!” Mudwort hadn’t intended to physically lash out at Thya. She had enjoyed Thya’s company and sharing spells and listening to her clan’s tales of their villages on the far side of the Nerakan mountains. But then Thya had lunged forward, maybe to touch the spear, maybe to grab it, and Mudwort brought the spear up quickly, level and firm.

  The spear tip penetrated the other goblin’s belly, sinking in like a hot coal dropped in a snowdrift. Thya’s eyes grew so wide in surprise that Mudwort thought they might pop out of her leathery head.

  Thya’s mouth dropped open, in astonishment or perhaps to say some admonishing words to Mudwort. But the spear sank in deeper, the tip coming out Thya’s back. She sagged and Mudwort caught her weight and eased her to the ground, pulling the spear free.

  “Thya?”

  There was plenty of blood spreading away from Thya, but curiously, none stuck to the spear.

  “Thya’s dead,” Mudwort murmured to herself.

  As heavy as the weapon should have been, given its size and make-up, it had felt insubstantial in Mudwort’s hands. It had been so easy to kill Thya with it.

  Mudwort kneeled and stared at Thya’s corpse.

  “Didn’t mean to kill you, Thya. Sorry.”
Thya had died so quickly, Mudwort hadn’t the chance to apologize. “Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.”

  Was that what the trees had meant when their leaves whispered “danger”? That the spear was so sharp, it was dangerous?

  Mudwort rocked forward and rubbed a smudge of dirt off Thya’s face. Then she willed the ground to open up and bury the goblin. She stared blankly as the earth did her bidding.

  Someday, she would have to tell Direfang that Thya had died … but not how it had happened. Never that, not how it had happened. Of course she’d tell Direfang only if she ever saw him again. She had no intention of returning to his ruined city and accidentally killing other goblins who drew too close to her treasure.

  Would she ever see Direfang again?

  28

  THE STONETELLERS

  MEETING DIREFANG

  Mudwort blinked furiously, looking all around. Where had the daylight gone? She preferred twilight to sunshine, her eyes saw better in the half-dark, so it wasn’t hard for her to sort through the shadows. Daylight had suddenly vanished.

  And where were the trees?

  For that matter, where was the grass and her prized spear?

  Her stomach climbed up into her throat with the shocking realization that she was no longer in the magical clearing but was back inside the hated Dark Knight mines in Neraka.

  In place of the beautiful spear, she held a rusty pickaxe. And instead of the fine Dark Knight shirt she’d fashioned into a tunic, she wore a reeking, threadbare rag that didn’t wholly cover her body. Mudwort’s feet were bare and calloused, her fingers calloused too. She ached all over, especially across her shoulders and down her back—where she always hurt the worst when she mined that damnable ore.

  Had the spear been a dream?

  “Sour mind, Mudwort has.” That was said by a gray-skinned goblin with a hump in the middle of his back. She’d seen him in the mines several times before, but she didn’t know his name. She never asked any of the workers their names, not wanting to be encumbered by friendship or even a passing conviviality. Names invited conversation, and Mudwort did not like to talk to her kinsmen.

  “Sour mind. Talks to rocks. Talks to the pick. Talks to self. Sour, sour mind. Stinky mind.” The humpbacked one spit a gob of phlegm between his feet and faced the wall. Placing one hand on it for support, he raised his pick over a stooped shoulder and brought it sparking against the stone.

  There were other goblins in the chamber. Six of them boasted gray skin like the humpbacked one; they called their clan Fellowship of Clay. Mudwort hadn’t asked for the clan name, she’d just heard it several times in reference to the gray-skins. Another six were red-skinned like herself, but it was a different shade of red and they belonged to another clan, one she didn’t know the name of. Thirteen goblins all told, including herself, were mining in one of the deepest chambers in a recently opened mineshaft.

  The air there was stale and close, filled with the scent of ore, dirt, and stone, and coupled with the stench of goblins who had gone too long a time without being rained on. Mudwort longed for the fresh air of the clearing—even if that had been a dream.

  There wasn’t a light in the chamber, but a bulky lantern hung just beyond the entrance, out in the long tunnel that led up to other chambers where more goblins mined. Its flame cast a hellish glow that caught suspended stone dust amid the murky background.

  “Sour mind, Mudwort. Work. Work or die,” Humpbacked said.

  She stretched her thin fingers to the wall and felt the vibrations of each pick striking the stone, hurting it. Mudwort couldn’t explain how she knew, but she knew that the stone was in pain from the miners chipping away at it and from the ore that ran through it like veins in a goblin’s body. She found the stone more interesting than the goblins and hobgoblins, and certainly more interesting than her Dark Knight enemies.

  “Work or be whipped,” chimed in a red-skinned goblin.

  Others also talked about her sour mind, but she ignored them, listening instead to the stone that complained beneath her fingertips. It was old, Mudwort sensed, older than anything, and it did not seem to mind that chunks of it filled with ore were being removed. The ore … itched … was the word Mudwort decided upon. But it did not like to be struck by the picks.

  “There is no other way,” she told it as she struck the stone herself so everyone would stop staring at her. Mudwort was more precise, not just chipping away at the wall like the Fellowship of Clay clansmen. She struck only where the ore was, and the stone complained less and less as the hours went on.

  Mudwort filled up one sack and lugged it up the tunnel. Sometimes goblins were stationed partway up, and they would take the sacks from the deeper-down workers. It was more efficient that way. But that day no goblins were waiting in the tunnel, so Mudwort had to struggle with the sack all the way up to the surface. Her legs burned by the time she rose above ground, and her eyes burned from the brightness of the midday sun. It glared down on dusty, desolate, ugly Steel Town, a place she had come to hate almost as much as she hated the Dark Knights.

  She dropped the sack just beyond the entrance and stared down at the horrid excuse for a city. Rows of Dark Knights stood at attention, reciting their Oath or Measure or whatever they were calling it. Wasted words drifted up to her lofty position.

  “Work or die.” That was barked by a Dark Knight stationed at the mine entrance just behind her. He said the words in goblinspeak; a smattering of the knights knew just enough goblinspeak to help them order the slaves around. “Work or die.”

  She grumbled and trudged back down the tunnel, taking a fresh sack with her. Too many goblins worked that day. When she’d watched the knights below, she’d also caught a glimpse of the slave pens. There were always goblins there, as the knights worked the slaves in shifts. But there weren’t as many as normal, meaning that the shifts would be longer and the breaks shorter or nonexistent with more goblins mining. The knights needed the ore for something urgent—a battle maybe, Mudwort thought.

  “Bring the dream back,” she said as she returned to the chamber and snatched up her pick again. She wanted to be back in the orderly clearing with the magical spear and all the wonderful smells around her and the promise of blueberries nearby to fill her stomach. She didn’t want such a wretched reality.

  She touched her fingers to the wall again, searching for the spot where the stone itched the most. Retrieving the best and most chunks of ore brought rewards, and that might mean a shorter shift.

  “Nervous,” she muttering to herself, sensing what the stone felt. “Itchy, but nervous more. Anxious and worried.” Mudwort squatted and touched the floor; she didn’t get the same feelings from that stone. Moving around the chamber and ignoring taunts of “Sour-minded s’dard,” she touched the stone again and again.

  She circled back to the first spot, near where the humpbacked goblin still worked. He used two hands on the pick handle, swinging it clumsily, for he was tired.

  “Stone is nervous here,” she told him. “Don’t like the feeling. It is worried. It is weak.” Her eyebrows rose, realizing she was right; that was what the wall was trying to tell her. “Weak like an old, old goblin. Brittle.”

  The humpbacked gray-skin spit another gob of phlegm, shook his head, and struck the wall harder.

  Mudwort waved her arm to get his clansmen’s attention. “This wall will break,” she announced. “This ceiling will fall. It is weak like an old, old goblin.”

  “The only thing weak is Mudwort’s mind.” The humpbacked goblin sneered. “Sad, sour mind. Go away, Mudwort.”

  “Work or die.” That said by a hobgoblin Mudwort had not seen in the mines before. Obviously a foreman, as he wore a whip at his side; he stood in the center of the chamber, slightly stooped because he was taller than the ceiling was high.

  An unsightly hobgoblin, he wore a rotting ear hanging on a leather thong around his neck … and was missing one of his own ears. It had been cut off, or bit off in a fight, and so he was wearing it as pun
ishment. He had a few old scars and a few fresh ones. His eyes were as dark as coal and fixed on Mudwort.

  “Work or die,” he repeated.

  Mudwort nearly obeyed, thinking she might head for the opposite wall and away from the one she somehow knew would collapse. Instead she puffed out her small chest, gesturing behind her.

  “The stone is nervous,” she informed the hobgoblin. “It is frail and will fall. The ceiling will come down and squash the Fellowship of Clay. The stone will—”

  The hobgoblin irritably waved her silent and went over to the offending wall, tugging back the gray-skinned goblin and his clansmen. He dutifully inspected the stone then shrugged, returned to the center of the chamber, and ordered them all back to work.

  With a shrug Mudwort went over to the opposite wall, finding a spot to work between two red-skinned goblins, who made it clear they were not happy with her presence. She found a section where the stone was itchy, where she thought it would be safe. She worked fast, even though her arms and back protested.

  “Work or die,” she muttered. “Work and die.”

  She’d just managed to fill her ore sack and reach the entrance to the chamber when, behind her, she heard a sharp crack followed instantly by a rumble. She jumped ahead and scurried up, dragging her sack; to leave it would be to risk punishment. Shouts followed, and there came another rumble, though fainter. Mudwort coughed. Stone dust filtered into the tunnel from where the ceiling had collapsed.

  Two red-skinned goblins pressed by her, waving their hands in front of their faces and coughing worse than Mudwort. One turned and pointed a finger at her.

  “Mudwort did something to make the ceiling fall. Mudwort killed Gobber.”

  So finally Mudwort knew the name of the humpbacked goblin. “Gobber will be remembered,” she told the red-skinned goblin, who shook his fist and hurried away.