by Jim C. Hines
Raves for Goblin Quest:
“Goblin Quest is a hilarious ‘good read.’ One of the funniest dungeon-delving epics ever!”
—Ed Greenwood, author of Elminster: The Making of a Mage
“Most fantasy gamers read fantasy novels. Most fantasy gamers like to slay goblins for fun and profit. After Goblin Quest, most fantasy gamers are going to have a very hard time doing that. Jim C. Hines has given us a wonderful adventure from the goblin’s point of view, and it’s fantastic! I haven’t had this much fun reading a book in ages.”—Wil Wheaton, actor and author of Just a Geek
“Need a book that will make you smile, then grin, then laugh out loud? If your tickle spot’s the same as mine, Goblin Quest is the book you’re looking for. I love an unlikely hero and Jig the goblin is my kind of unlikely love! New kid Jim C. Hines is already an expert at the unlikely but lovable . . . who could beat Jig’s pet/ sidekick/companion animal Smudge, the fire-spider? Bonus 1: How to manage when your companion animal sets your hair on fire. Bonus 2: How to choose the right god to pray to. Bonus 3: Why you should never challenge a goblin to a duel.—I’m still laughing.”
—Janet Kagan, Hugo-winning author of Hellspark and Uhura’s Song
“If you’ve always kinda rooted for the little guy, even maybe had a bit of a place in your heart for the likes of Gollum, rather than the Boromirs and Gandalfs of the world, pick up Goblin Quest—just make sure you keep well away from Golaka’s stewpot.”—The SF Site
“This exciting adult fairy tale is filled with adventure and action, but the keys to the fantasy are Jig and the belief that the mythological creatures are real in the realm of Jim C. Hines.”—Midwest Book Reviews
Copyright © 2005, 2006 by Jim C. Hines.
All Rights Reserved.
DAW Book Collectors No. 1383.
DAW Books are distributed by Penguin Group (USA).
All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.
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First paperback printing, November 2006
eISBN : 978-1-101-08669-8
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Epigraph
CHAPTER 1 - Muck Duty
CHAPTER 2 - Barius’s Vital Weakness
CHAPTER 3 - History and Harmony
CHAPTER 4 - Jig’s Bright Idea
CHAPTER 5 - A Day at the Beach
CHAPTER 6 - More Needling
CHAPTER 7 - The Heat of Battle
CHAPTER 8 - Armed to the Teeth
CHAPTER 9 - Torment of the Gods
CHAPTER 10 - Falling Short of Expectations
CHAPTER 11 - Between Death and a Dark Pit
CHAPTER 12 - Big Prints, Mad Prince
CHAPTER 13 - Pointing Fingers
CHAPTER 14 - Straum Heads off a Possible Rebellion
CHAPTER 15 - Stirring Up Trouble
CHAPTER 16 - Fetching the Rod
CHAPTER 17 - In the Blink of an Eye
CHAPTER 18 - A Fatal Misstep
CHAPTER 19 - Parting Gifts
“We may be outnumbered. They may have magic and muscle on their side. But we’re goblins! We’re tough, we’re mean, and we’re more than a match for a few so-called heroes. Some of us will die, but for the survivors, this will be a victory to live forever in goblin memories.”
—Goblin captain (name unknown), shortly before his death by multiple stab wounds to the back.
CHAPTER 1
Muck Duty
Jig hated muck duty.
He didn’t mind the actual work. He liked the metallic smell of the distillation room, where week-old blood and toadstool residue dried in their trays. He never complained about having to scrape the pans as clean as possible and mix the residue with boiled fat, spiderwebs, and a dark green broth that smelled of rotting plants. He liked the way it all went from a lumpy soup to a smooth, gelatinous slime as he forced his stirring stick around and around in the giant bowl.
Walking around with the muck pot hanging awkwardly from his shoulder as he doled out gobs of the slow-burning stuff wasn’t so bad either. True, if he got careless, it would be easy to splatter a bit of muck onto his skin. Even when it wasn’t lit, the mixture could raise blisters in a matter of seconds. When burning, the yellow and green flames were almost impossible to extinguish, which was why they used muck to light the lair. But Jig was careful, and unlike most muck workers, he had survived for several years with all his fingers intact.
Jig would have been perfectly happy if he weren’t the only goblin his age who still got stuck with muck duty. It was a job for children. Goblins Jig’s age were supposed to be warriors, but the few times Jig had gone on patrol had only sealed his reputation as the clumsy runt of his generation.
He adjusted the thin handle on his shoulder. The goblin lair held forty-six fire bowls. Each one was little more than a hole in the dark red obsidian of the walls, with a palm-size depression at the bottom to hold two days’ worth of muck. Jig squinted at the fourth fire bowl, the last in the corridor that led out of the distillation room and into the main cavern.
To Jig the flame was nothing but a blur. He could bring the fire into better focus by squinting, but that required him to put his face closer to the fire than he liked. The triangle of flame flickered as his breath touched it. The bowl was nearly empty. Whoever made the rounds yesterday had been lazy, and Jig would have to relight many of the bowls before he was done.
“Lazy children,” he muttered angrily. He dipped a metal spatula into the muck pot and carefully scooped out a large blob. This he scraped into the dying fire bowl, where the flame whooshed and grew as it touched new fuel. He scraped as much muck from the spatula as he could, then extinguished it in the sack of sand on his belt. It wouldn’t do to return a still-burning spatula to his pot.
He passed into the main cavern, a roughly circular, high-ceilinged cave of hard obsidian. The walls felt greasy to the touch, the polish of the rock hidden beneath years of grime. While the muck fires gave off very little smoke, several centuries of “very little” had led to a blackened, soot-covered ceiling. The sweaty odor of five hundred goblins mixed with the powerful scent of Golaka’s cooking. Jig’s mouth began to water as he smelled a batch of pickled toadstools boiling in Golaka’s great cauldron.
Jig kept close to the wall as he worked. The faster he could finish his duties, the sooner he could eat.
But the other goblins weren’t going to make things easy. Five or six large goblins stood bunched around the closest fire bowl, watching him. Jig’s pointed ears twitched. He was too nearsighted to make out who was waiting there, but he could hear their amused whispers. Porak and his friends. This was going to hurt.
He thought about starting with the other side of the cavern. If he worked his way around to Porak’s spot, which would take at least an hour, maybe they would get bored and go away.
“And maybe Porak will make me honorary captain of his patrol,” Jig muttered. More likely they would circle around to meet him, and whatever they planned would be worse for having to make the effort.
Jig hunched lower and walked toward the group. Most of them were still eating, he noticed, and he tried to ignore his hunger. Po
rak grinned as Jig approached. Long fangs curved up toward his eyes, and his ears quivered with amusement. Several of his friends chuckled. Nobody moved out of the way.
“Cousin Jig. Muck duty, is it?” Porak asked. He scratched his bulbous nose with a clawed finger. “How long before you’re ready for real work?”
“Real work?” He kept out of their reach, ready at any moment to continue the long goblin tradition of running away.
“Glory, fighting, and bloodshed.” The goblins puffed up like rock lizards competing for a mate. Porak smiled, a warning sign if ever there was one. “We want you to come along on patrol.”
“I can’t.” He held up the muck bucket. “I’ve barely started.”
Porak laughed. “That can wait until they mix up a new batch of muck, one that hasn’t been contaminated.”
Jig watched Porak closely, trying to guess what that laugh meant. “The muck is fine,” he said cautiously.
Fingers seized Jig’s arms from behind. He squealed and twisted, but that only made the claws dig deeper. Stupid! He had been so intent on Porak that he ignored the others. “What are you doing?”
Porak held up a black rat by the tail. “Look at that,” he said. “I don’t know who’s more frightened, the rat or the runt.”
The goblins laughed as the rat flipped and jumped, trying to free itself. Jig forced himself to relax. They wanted him to struggle like the rat.
Porak stepped closer. “Everyone knows rat fur makes the fire bowls smell awful. A shame someone let this one into the mix.”
The rat struggled harder, prompting more laughter. The hands holding Jig relaxed. As fast as he could, Jig grabbed his spatula and flicked muck over his shoulder. A few drops landed on his arm, and he cringed as the skin blistered. But the goblin behind him took a far worse splash in the face. He howled and tried to wipe the muck off.
Had Jig been in a better mood, he would have reminded his captor that wiping would only spread the muck around. A louder howl told him the goblin had figured that out for himself.
The laughter of the others had only grown at this display. Jig glanced around for the easiest escape route, but before he could flee, Porak lunged forward.
“Not so fast, cousin.” He dropped the panicked rat into the muck pot. “Meet us for duty in two hours. Don’t make me come find you.”
The rat clawed toward the edge of the pot. Half its body was trapped in the muck, and its squeals grew higher as the muck burned through the fur. Jig couldn’t have saved it if he wanted to. Even if the pain-crazed rat escaped, all it took was one open flame and Jig would have a frantic, flaming rat on his hands.
“Sorry about this.” He put the spatula into the pot and grabbed his weapon, an old kitchen knife with a loose blade. Not much, but enough to put the rat out of its misery.
He cleaned off the blade, being extra careful to make sure no muck remained, then tucked it back into the sheath on his rope belt.
Well, at least he wasn’t on muck duty anymore. This was what he wanted, right? He was going on patrol. A clear step up in the world. So why wasn’t he happier? Goblins spent years waiting for the day they could go from lighting fire bowls to helping protect the lair from adventurers.
Maybe that was it. Odds were, if you spent long enough looking for adventurers, sooner or later you were going to find some. Adventurers didn’t fight fair. They brought magic swords and rings, wizards and spells, and warriors who cut through goblin patrols as quickly as Golaka’s spicy rat dumplings passed through the old chief.
Which reminded him, he still had a rat to dispose of. He headed for the kitchens.
Golaka herself was gone, but one of her helpers was there, chopping up an unidentifiable animal who had made the mistake of snooping around in the tunnels. Jig tossed the muck-soaked rat onto a nearby table.
“What are you doing with that slimy thing?”
Jig projected innocence as hard as he could. With a shrug, he said, “One of the others stole it from the kitchen. They wanted me to give it back before you noticed, so they wouldn’t get in trouble.”
The goblin poked at the greasy, shiny rat with a fork. “That’s muck! We can’t eat that.” His eyes narrowed. “Who was snooping around the kitchen, anyway?”
Jig shook his head. “Porak said he’d kill me if I told.” He covered his mouth and tried to look stupid. “Oops.”
“Porak, was it? Golaka will want to get her hands on that one.”
“Can I go now?” Jig slipped out of the kitchen without waiting for an answer. As he crossed the main cavern, he allowed himself to smile.
Surface-dwellers had an expression about the wrath of the gods. Since goblins didn’t really care for gods, they had an alternate expression—they called it the wrath of the chef.
“ ‘Rat or the runt’ indeed,” Jig said with satisfaction.
Jig stopped by the privies on his way to meet Porak and the others. Waiting until nobody was looking, he knelt and grabbed a red-spotted spider the size of his hand. The spider crawled up his arm and onto his head. It gave one of Jig’s ears a sharp nip before settling into his hair.
“Ow.” Jig rubbed his ear. “Stupid fire-spider.”
Smudge, the stupid fire-spider in question, ignored Jig’s complaint. He was probably upset that Jig had neglected him all day. But since taking Smudge along on muck duty would have been unwise, Jig refused to feel guilty. The last thing he had needed was a spider who grew hot when he sensed danger. If Smudge had been around when that goblin surprised Jig from behind, they all could have gone up in flames.
Jig met the others near the cavern exit. Of the twelve goblins, Jig was easily the smallest, and he tried to avoid the worst of the shoulder-punching and mock fighting.
“Ah, Jig, there you are.” Porak grinned. “Jig’s going to be joining us tonight.”
Unfriendly laughter spread through the group, and Jig forced himself not to cringe. Everything was going to be fine. He just had to prove himself. He could do this.
“Should we grab something to eat first?” someone asked.
“No.” Porak’s smile slipped, and Jig kept his face still to hide his amusement. “I think we’ll avoid the kitchens tonight.”
Jig wondered if anyone else guessed the origin of Porak’s black eye. Not that he was going to tell them.
“Let’s go,” Porak ordered, cutting off any protests.
They passed through a long tunnel until they reached an old glass statue of a goblin, the marker that defined the edge of goblin territory. It had stood there for generations, and was probably as old as the mountain itself. Nobody knew who had carved the statue. Being goblins, nobody particularly cared, either. A big rock would have marked the spot equally well.
Two large goblins stood guard, if boasting about their latest sexual conquests could be considered standing guard.
Jig shivered as they passed into neutral territory. He hoped nobody had seen, but he couldn’t help it. The underground inhabitants divided these tunnels among themselves. The goblins held the southern warrens. The larger hobgoblins took the warmer caverns to the west, farther from the entrance. Past the hobgoblins was the cold lake of the lizard-fish.
The lizard-fish were the worst, and goblins avoided them if they could. When food grew scarce, the chief would occasionally send goblins to the lake to hunt. This served two purposes. While the white-eyed creatures weren’t pretty to look at, they were edible, and food was food. Since several of the hunting party usually managed to prick themselves on the lizard-fish’s poisonous spines, these hunting parties also resulted in fewer mouths to feed.
Fortunately, the lizard-fish couldn’t leave the lake, and an uneasy truce kept the hobgoblins out of goblin territory. Simple fear kept the goblins from trespassing in hobgoblin territory.
Jig glanced back at the statue. That was a true goblin warrior, one who had supposedly killed no less than three humans before an angry mage turned him into a green stain on the wall. Made of molded, and in many places chipped, black g
lass, he was as tall as most humans, with huge fangs that nearly touched his eyes. The nose was round like a lakestone, and his single eye was narrow and mean. A glass rag covered the other eye, which stories said had been lost to a human’s sling stone. His ears were perked and wide, alert to the slightest sound. He was a real goblin, and even Porak paled in comparison.
Jig barely came to the statue’s shoulder. His only scar was a torn ear, and that “battle” had been with another goblin who wanted to rip off Smudge’s legs for fun. Jig’s arms and legs were like thin sticks, and his constant squint was nothing like the mean glare most goblins wore. On top of that, his voice was too high, and he had some sort of fungus growing on his toenails.
“Torches,” Porak ordered.
“This is dumb,” Jig grumbled as one of the others handed out torches. “Why not run ahead to warn any intruders that we’re coming? Maybe we should sing, too, in case they’re blind.”
Yellow nails closed on the blue-green skin of Jig’s shoulder, and he yelped. Smudge grew warm and scampered to Jig’s other shoulder.
“Because, young Jig, we’re going to send a scout ahead to make sure everything is clear.” Porak wasn’t smiling. “That’s called tactics.” He raised his voice so the others could hear.
“You have to be smart to stay alive down here. Look at our cousin Jig, talking to himself and so distracted that I walked right up without him noticing. If I were a human, I could have killed our scout while he babbled. Then where would we be?”
Jig cringed as the others laughed and nodded. So much for proving himself.
“We have to be alert. We have to be strong. We have to be tough.” With each pronouncement, Porak’s grip tightened, so that by the end, Jig squirmed to get away.