As Asrăthiel took in her surroundings the trow-wives dressed her in an ankle-length shift—which they called a sark—of white cambric bordered with lace, and proceeded to coif her hair. While this was going on, the damsel plagued the wights with questions.
‘What will happen to the two other prisoners? What will happen to me?’
All the little goodies said by way of reply was, ‘We dinnae ken! Nae bothy kens!’
‘Am I permitted to send a letter to my family? Where are the women of goblinkind? Will you please refrain from pulling my hair?’ When she made this protest they shrieked and gibbered, instantly becoming much gentler with their handling. They peered at her earnestly from mournful eyes, over their long, drooping noses, giving the impression of being as dimwitted as they were quaint. Asrăthiel, however, had learned never to underestimate eldritch wights.
Numerous tall, star-filled windows pierced the walls, overlooking sharp valleys, and glittering precipices, and cupped mountain tarns.
‘It is night once again,’ the damsel said to herself in perplexity. ‘How long did it take to reach here from the Wuthering Moors? Only a few hours? Or was it a whole day, and now night has fallen once more? Yet I do not recall the sun being in the sky during our journey. Perhaps the goblins enveloped us in their mist and blocked it out.’ Her eldritch handmaidens could offer no solution to the mystery, though they were able to explain other matters.
‘What happens during the day, when the sun shines fiercely?’ she asked of them. ‘Do its golden rays not shine through the glass? Does it not scald your masters?’
‘An the briggit days, dem draps is closet,’ the trow-wives said, ‘aber sin oor maisters wisht dem draps kit open o’er the day, dem draw mist.’
Which Asrăthiel took to mean that on sunny days the window curtains—of finest silver mesh, with black lining—were drawn across the panes, but if the goblins wanted the curtains open in daytime, they would conjure mists to dilute the sun’s radiance.
‘Are they weathermasters, then, your masters?’ she demanded inquisitively.
‘Nay, ainly dem can draw mist.’
Which she understood to indicate that the goblins possessed the power to summon water vapours such as clouds, mists, fog, brume and haze, to diffuse the light of the sun, but they did not wield the brí.
‘Does the touch of sunlight destroy them?’
‘Nay. Dem can dure’t, aber dem liken it not.’
‘They can tolerate it, but they do not love it?’
‘Aye, guidlady.’
Some of the wights fluttered nimbly around their charge, weaving tiny gems through her hair; moonstones of shimmering iridescence, amethysts and rock crystals. Others lurked in the shadows of these singular apartments, snooping, poking their long noses around corners, or nursing trow-babies wrapped in fringed shawls. They gave her nothing to eat, perhaps anticipating the promised banquet; but she felt no hunger and was content to drink water from the spout in the wall.
At length they brought a sumptuous gown of foam and cerulean moonlight to sheath the damsel in, but she had grown impatient with their skulking and fussing, and bade them go away and leave her in peace.
‘Mun make thysel’ fit for t’feast, guidlady,’ they twittered anxiously as she saw them off.
Ignoring their instructions she put aside the dress. She wondered how she could bring herself to dress up in finery and go to a party after the horrors she had witnessed so lately, the slaying of Conall Gearnach, good men falling beneath goblin swords while trying to save her. Again she puzzled, how was she to traffic with this enemy? And how would they traffic with her?
The cambric shift was flimsy, yet she did not feel at all cold in these airy chambers. As usual, her mother’s gift of invulnerability kept her warm. Alone with her thoughts she took time to ponder whether Zaravaz had been giving veiled threats when he told her to hoard her pleas, but at length she concluded it was more of his banter and dismissed the notion. He had said, ‘Fear not, I will not deal hard with you,’ but then again, goblin conceptions of gentle treatment might be quite at variance with human ideas. Yet, if they were going to do mischief to her, they would hardly be sending handmaidens to look after her, would they? Unless, of course, she were in some way being ‘primed for the kill’ like hand-fed livestock. Her opinions veered back and forth. If she were to be insulted, then surely it was unlikely the trows would be concerned about pulling her hair. It seemed certain they had been ordered to treat her well. Indeed she seemed to have some sort of dominion over them, for they acquiesced to her requests. Should that be so, maybe she could ask her captors, when she next saw them, if they would let her send a note to Avalloc informing him that she was well. It gave her much distress, knowing how he and the rest of her household must be suffering since she had been taken by the goblins.
Having thrown off her fears and feeling much refreshed after her ablutions, she was afflicted with a desire to discover more about this fascinating citadel; to explore it on her own, without being accompanied and directed by scores of shuffling trow-wives. If ever she found herself directly threatened, it would be useful to know something of the layout. The intentions of the goblin king were unclear. That he was perilous was a certainty; perhaps she would locate some hidden escape route to save her in extremity, should William’s worst fears be realised.
Additionally, she felt reluctant to attend this goblin feast. If it were such a banquet as promised they would all be in attendance, the unseelie knights, while she, their plunder, would be alone and friendless in the crowd. More than that, she wished to put off meeting with a certain member of that eldritch chivalry, one so unsettling she refused even to think of his name. The mental turmoil that his presence engendered in her was so overwhelming that she did not how to deal with it, and she wished to postpone such an encounter until she could make better sense of its inevitable effects. To her chagrin, all ideology became suspended whenever she set eyes on him. Always haunting her thoughts, jostling against concern and longing for the loved ones she had left behind, was an image of that compelling face with the black-lashed, violet eyes. To convince herself she was not longing to behold him again as soon as possible, she decided to deliberately make herself inaccessible, and late for the goblin banquet.
Another, more wayward element also motivated her behaviour. It vexed her that the goblin king disturbed her so absolutely, by his mere existence. To vex him in return was a form of revenge; furthermore, although she was loathe to admit it, some inexplicable inner perversity made her wish to discover what might occur if she provoked him, even if it were to wrath.
After she was sure the trows had dispersed, she tiptoed from the room on her bare feet. Taking note of her bearings she left her apartments and headed off through the citadel, exploring halls and galleries illumined by torch and moon and mirror, and great floor-to-ceiling windows teeming with brilliant galaxies. Instinctively she extended her awareness beyond the walls, sensing the familiar weather patterns of high-altitude country: extremely low pressure and temperature, strong winds, mist gathering in the valleys. Outside, the air temperature had dropped below its dew point, and was becoming saturated. Cold air was flowing downhill, to settle in hollows and depressions. Lower summits were wreathed in thick white vapours. Above the Winter snowline, where the citadel was situated, the tallest peaks were interfering with wind and cloud patterns, forcing currents to ascend or descend as they streamed over their higher summits. Gales were screaming through the upper crags at high speeds. Asrăthiel speculated that the alpine winds could gust at more than twice that rate, driven against such steep heights. Far off, lightning flashed on the summit of Storth Cynros.
But the slim knives of the fast, honed winds could not penetrate the fastness of the Silver Goblins. Not so much as a breath or a whisper found a chink.
The complex of caverns and halls was extensive; part natural rock formations, part eldritch design. Outflung branches and adjuncts conceivably went running throughout the northern ra
nges for miles, connected by such underground passages as the damsel now traversed, or such steep overground roads as she sighted from the windows; or dizzying bridges like those she stepped across, some with parapets, some without, obviously all unsafe for mortalkind.
Winding stairs with diamond balustrades she ascended, and the centre of each tread was indented by a gentle curve, worn by the passage of pedestrians over an immense time span. She passed thin, pouring water-curtains veiling archways, and narrow waterfalls hissing with white noise enough to flood one’s skull, and fenestrations jutting out over wild rocky gorges. Along chiming quadrangles and galleries with floors of polished morion she tiptoed on her bare feet, and amongst fluted colonnades whose stanchions culminated in extravagantly sculpted capitals and volutes. On still lakes floated tall-prowed silver boats or gondolas, carved with grotesqueries. Her explorations took her further, through crystal-ceilinged atria ornamented by masks with jewelled orbits. She sighed with wonder at pergolas and arbours entwined by silver metal serpents, whose eyes were perfect shards of white jade, royal azel and transparent topaz.
At length her wanderings led her to an elongated cavern, low-roofed and tubelike or cylindrical in shape, which looked to have been hollowed out by the natural action of water. Concave walls, floor and ceiling were lined with veins of silver and copper, and encrusted with gems. From her schoolroom studies the damsel knew that this was a pipe vein, a mineral-lined cavern left behind after the ebbing and draining of some ancient subterranean stream.
Near at hand, a cresset flamed in an ornate silver sconce. After taking possession of it she held it up and drew it near the wall to inspect the polished stones more closely. They flashed with the colours of rubies and sapphires, but were probably garnets and clusters of assorted spinels; there was the rose-red of balas ruby spinel, the purple-red of almandine spinel, the orange of rubicelle and the blue of sapphire spinel, as well as the green of chlorspinel. The lore of the underground had always interested the weathermage. It was pleasing to find these pretty gems lavishly embedded in their native matrix.
As she moved to examine another section the flicker of an unlikely shadow on the opposite wall startled her. Hearing a low moan she turned around quickly, raising the cresset high, expecting to behold some stooping, limping trow that had been stalking her.
A human man was standing there.
The man cringed from the torchlight, squinting as if unaccustomed to brightness. Asrăthiel’s sudden indrawn breath was a hiss that echoed in the tunnel’s quietude.
‘Who are you? What are you doing here?’
This was indeed an unexpected meeting. Aside from the two miserable hostages of Zaravaz, the damsel had presumed she was the only other human being in the citadel. This man was fair-haired, with watery eyes the bluish hue of diluted milk. Stringy was his visage, gaunt his slouching frame. His short-cropped hair was flaccid, greasy and wispy. He might have lived through forty Winters, perhaps, but they must all have been exceptionally hard. Beneath the ingrained filth his flesh was as pale as the tentacles of a deep-sea cephalopod. He was dressed in dirty rags, and his hands—his hands! Those appendages were no longer anything partly human. Hard and blackened, they looked like charred hen’s feet.
‘Who are you?’ Asrăthiel questioned again, somewhat in alarm.
‘The light, the light,’ murmured the man, lifting his elbow as if to ward off an attack. He stepped backwards.
Likewise Asrăthiel retreated with the torch, so that a veil of twilight shifted and settled around the fellow. ‘Is that better? Tell me who you are.’
After a few abortive attempts to form words the man mumbled, ‘I am hardly recalling my name.’ He drooled, speaking disconnectedly as if he were half-asleep, or as if his tongue had thickened in his mouth, or he had forgotten how to talk. Asrăthiel thought his accent sounded familiar.
‘Are you a captive of the goblins? Do they keep you imprisoned?’
‘I cannot find the way out.’
The fellow’s whining, unctuous tone made Asrăthiel’s skin crawl. He was less a man than some horrid wormlike monster, a sham of a human being slithering in the nethermost regions of the underworld. She thought he might be partially blind; his eyes had a burned and weeping look. Stains of old blood dribbled down his cheeks.
‘Are you human?’ It was wise to make sure.
‘Once I was.’
‘If you once were, so you must still be, for it is not possible to change that.’ At least, the damsel thought, I have always believed that it is not possible. Am I still human?
‘I have not seen the sky for many years,’ mumbled the creature with the hands of an aged corpse.
‘Who brought you here? Was it the goblins?’
‘No, a man. A vile man. He buried me alive.’
‘But you survived!’
‘Yes I survived,’ said the pale fellow. ‘And I delved. And I found something.’
He might be deluded. He might have dreamed he found some item of importance, though alighting on a stone. Still, in a place like this there must be plenty of secrets to stumble upon.
‘What did you find? Bones? Jewels?’
‘I found them.’ Wrapping his skinny arms about his chest the man whimpered, ‘Cold. My ribs be a-cold.’
‘Come near the flames. They will warm you.’
The fellow stole closer, timidly, and Asrăthiel extended the cresset towards him, but he made a sudden lunge and she threw it at his feet, recoiling in disgust. A pool of burning pitch spilled. The man squatted on the floor, warming his mummified hands at the guttering fires.
‘If you try to harm me,’ said the weathermage, ‘I will hurl you along this tunnel and outside, right through one of the windows. Then you will feel the cold. I can do that—never doubt it, for I am powerful.’ Dispensing threats was a form of self-defence. Ironically, Asrăthiel felt supremely vulnerable, alone with this creature in the jewelled pipe-tunnel, in the heart of an eldritch fastness.
The fellow moaned. ‘What year is it?’ he mewled.
She told him. Perhaps, she thought, he was simple-minded. ‘How did you come to be in this pipe vein?’ she asked. ‘Have you been following me?’
‘The hilltings came crowding from a doorway. Then you were coming after. Yes, I was following you. I have not seen you here before.’ He added vaguely, ‘You look like someone I once knew.’
Between pity and revulsion, the damsel was burning with curiosity. ‘How came you here to this citadel? Tell me your story,’ she invited, seating herself on the floor at a cautious distance. ‘Tell me. Maybe I will be able to help you.’
The wretch’s teeth chattered, he shuddered, he rocked back and forth and spoke syllables of nonsense. Despite all that, gradually he revealed his tale.
After the ‘vile man’, his persecutor, had buried him alive beneath the mountains, he had been faced with a choice: either stay where he was, alone in the darkness, or start moving and try to find something better. He chose to become a burrower. He told Asrăthiel that he had spent years digging in the ground and shifting rocks, breaking through from cavern to cavern, traversing from tunnel to tunnel, trying to find a way out of his lonely dungeon.
Years? she wondered, sceptically. What is there to eat down there in the darkness? Did you dine entirely on cave lice? Or is your story all delusion? But she nodded, and said nothing to interrupt his fascinating narrative.
He was lost, he said, for he did not know how to find an exit to the outer world. As he delved and blundered through the underground, he unintentionally disturbed certain manifestations that had been lying dormant. Some began to waken.
Working his way blindly along beneath the mountains, miraculously unscathed by their sudden flares of volcanic fires, improbably clinging to life despite lack of proper nourishment, the man with dead hands had accidentally tunnelled his way into a remote region where, unbeknownst to him, twenty-five thousand deadly and immortal warriors were entombed within a shell of bullion; a great cavern meticulou
sly lined with gold leaf, and thickly veined with the precious ore.
‘You found the golden caves!’ exclaimed the damsel. ‘Weathermasters imprisoned the wicked ones there when the Goblin Wars ended. They sealed them in for all time, that they might nevermore cause mischief to the human race.’ Open-mouthed with incredulity she stared at the cowering creature. ‘And you set them free!’
‘Forgive me, lady!’ snivelled the misery, grovelling. ‘How could I be knowing? I was digging. I sought only my own freedom.’
‘Go on with your recital,’ Asrăthiel said. She found it difficult to tolerate this woeful toady, yet at the same time she sympathised with his plight.
‘It was the Silver Goblins there, but the knowledge was not at me,’ repeated the fellow self-pityingly. ‘I was only pushing big rocks, and scraping gravel, and hand-scratching. And then I shifted a stone, and punched a hole, and the terrible light was spearing through.’
‘What light?’
‘A shining of silver—the power of the goblins maybe, caged all those centuries. And I was being drawn to the source of it, and I squeezed right into the cave. Then they seized hold of me.’ The man squeezed shut his eyes, as if trying to shut out a sight too horrific to behold. He refused to continue his tale until Asrăthiel persuaded him with much coaxing. Eventually, little by little, it was revealed in incoherent fragments, which the damsel pieced together.
It had been impossible for the captive goblins to slide themselves through the narrow aperture created by the man they had lured to their aid. They would necessarily have come into contact with the gold in the surrounding matrix. Persuading the burrower with threats, they forced him to move the gold-veined rocks that they themselves and their kobolds could not touch. In terror, he obeyed. Being a weakling, he was only able to widen the gap by degrees, while the imprisoned horde chafed impatiently, unable to hasten the process but tormenting their thrall whenever he slowed. It took the labourer weeks to widen the breach enough for goblins to pass through without brushing against the gold that would have seared them.
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