by Jim C. Hines
“It’s an illusion,” Riana told him. She ripped out a clump of grass and sniffed the roots. “No smell. The sun’s too orange, and I can only see one kind of tree.”
“How many kinds are there?” Jig asked.
Riana laughed. For a second the anger vanished and she looked like a child. “Hundreds. Thousands. Oaks as proud as the gods, willows that sway and dance in the wind. There are trees with leaves as pointed as rapiers, and trees that need rain but once every six months to survive. I’ve even seen trees only a foot tall that mimic their larger cousins in every way.” She laughed again at Jig’s delighted expression.
“Elves and trees,” Darnak grumbled. “Something unnatural about their love for plants. Besides, I thought you were a city type. Where’d you learn about trees?”
Riana’s face hardened. “I spent a month hiding out in an arboretum, behind the Monastery of Batoth.”
Darnak held up a hand. “Don’t tell me the details. I’m still the prince’s man, and I’d not like to be arresting you the second we leave this mountain.” Turning to Jig, he asked, “How is it that you’ve never seen the outdoors?”
“I just haven’t,” Jig said. Goblins didn’t go outside. They rarely ventured past the shiny room where he had first encountered the adventurers.
There was no reason for them to stay inside. No monster guarded the entrance, as far as he knew. The gate locked itself when closed, but it could be opened easily from within. Goblins simply felt no need to explore the surface. Everything they needed, the mountain provided.
Besides, goblins weren’t welcome outside. Throughout history, every surface-dweller who came through that gate saw goblins as vermin to be wiped out. Bad enough that the occasional party came through on a killing rampage every few months. The outside world must be even worse, with thousands of people who would put an arrow into Jig as soon as they saw him. His ears would end up on a trophy necklace before he made it ten feet past the gate.
Still, it might be worth sneaking out some night if I could see all of this. That led to another thought. I wonder if we’ll see stars while we’re down here. From a little way off, Barius stood and shouted, “Darnak, come and see this.”
Darnak and the others hurried over to join the prince. On the way, Jig noticed the tied and bruised body of the wizard stretched out in the grass. Ryslind glared at him as he passed, and Jig glanced away quickly. He hoped they wouldn’t untie Ryslind anytime soon. A hundred years should be long enough.
Barius stood over the huge body of an ogre. Jig yelped and grabbed for his sword when he saw it. But the ogre wasn’t moving. To judge by the deep slashes across its chest and throat, it would never move again.
He noticed that Darnak’s hand had also gone to his weapon, which made him feel a little better.
“You did this, lad?” Darnak sounded impressed.
“Not I.” Barius knelt and pointed to the cuts on the chest. “Three deep cuts, all in a row. A fourth scraped the skin here.”
“Claws. Aye, I see it.” Darnak chewed at his thumb. “But what beast could best an ogre?”
A good question, Jig thought as he stared at the body. He had never seen an ogre, and now he prayed he would never see a living example. It must have stood over eight feet high, with muscular arms as long as Jig was tall. Its callused green skin looked tough enough to serve as light armor. Ragged black hair topped a long, oval head. The teeth, while shorter than goblin teeth, still looked sharp enough to do serious damage. The huge mouth meant the ogre had a lot more of them, too.
Something shiny caught Jig’s eye. A battle-axe, six feet long and double-headed, lay discarded in the grass to one side. Jig bent down and grabbed the handle to take it back to the others.
The axe didn’t budge. Off-balance, Jig stumbled to the ground. Maybe they should come here instead . “I found something.”
Darnak whistled when he saw the axe. The dwarf could lift it, but he needed both hands to raise it in the air, and Jig doubted even Darnak could swing such an axe in a fight.
“You think he was waiting for whoever fell through?” Darnak asked.
“If so, then whatever slew the beast has my gratitude,” Barius said.
“Aye. So long as it’s not coming back for dessert, that is.”
The dwarf’s wary tone made Jig see the distant trees in a different light. What creatures might be hiding in those shadows? This place was so open, with too many places for an enemy to hide. He knew nothing of surface monsters, but anything that could destroy an ogre was, in Jig’s opinion, a good argument for staying in the tunnels.
“Strange, though.” Barius peered more closely at the wounds. “Whatever killed the ogre wasn’t interested in food. A kill such as this would feed an animal for days. Why then did it not at least drag the ogre off for safekeeping? Unless it was a territorial dispute, perhaps.”
He pointed to a patch of grass behind Riana. “The tracks lead back to the center of the field.”
Jig stared at the grass. It looked green, the same as everything else down here. Had madness now touched Barius, that he could communicate with plants?
“Spread out,” Barius ordered. “Search for anything unusual.”
As they retraced their path, Jig’s sharp ears caught Darnak’s grumbling comment. “A hundred feet underground, in a fake field beneath a fake sky, with an ogre slaughtered like no more than a rat to a cat, and he sends us to search for the unusual.”
They found two more ogres. Together with the first corpse, the bodies formed a rough triangle around the spot where the adventurers had appeared.
“Ambush?” Darnak asked.
“Most likely. By the time we recovered from the fall and drew our weapons, they would have been upon us.” Barius chewed his lip, one of the only times Jig had seen the prince show anxiety.
“Even if you and I could stand against such beasts, they still outnumbered us.” He clearly didn’t consider Riana or Jig worth counting.
The pit was a trap. Anyone who beat the Necromancer was supposed to die here. Sizing up the two-handed sword one ogre had dropped, Jig tried not to think about how long he would last in a fight against ogres, let alone whatever beast had killed them. Perhaps the party had arrived in the middle of a power struggle. Hobgoblins and goblins occasionally slaughtered each other when food ran short, when one group was caught stealing from the other, or when the younger warriors simply grew bored with bullying their own. Jig prayed that the creatures here would finish each other off before he had the poor luck to meet one.
Barius touched the wounds on the third ogre. “Whatever did this, it killed this one last.” He crawled around the grass for a few minutes. “It left for the woods, in this direction. We should follow.”
“What?” It came out more as a squeak, but Jig didn’t care. He must have misheard.
But Barius only nodded, a determined glint in his eyes. “This way we are the hunters instead of the prey. Better this than to sit and wait for it to creep up on us in the night, wouldn’t you say?”
“Maybe it only kills ogres?” Jig suggested weakly.
“It pains me to be saying it,” Darnak said, “but his highness could be right. Until we know the dangers of this place, we’ll be as children walking blindly into the bear’s cave.”
If we find those dangers, won’t we be walking blindly into the bear’s jaws? Jig didn’t say anything aloud, however. He knew Barius and the others too well to expect them to change their minds.
“Know thy enemy, eh Darnak?” Barius said cheerfully.
He was enjoying this. Jig’s mouth hung open in disbelief. He wanted to go chasing after this creature. “What about the rod?”
That made Barius pause, but only for a heartbeat. “We can’t pursue the rod with this monster at our heels. Nor do we know in which direction the rod may lie. We could be here for days, so it behooves us to learn as much as we can about this land.”
Jig pointed at Ryslind. “And him?” he started to ask. The words died when h
e saw the wizard’s face. Though the gag hid his mouth, the corners of his eyes had wrinkled with amusement as he watched Barius’s preparations.
“You know what it is, don’t you?” Jig asked softly.
Ryslind heard. The wrinkles deepened. Red eyes beckoned Jig closer.
He crossed the clearing, one hand on his sword. With his other hand, he reached for the gag. He hesitated, hand outstretched. Was this another trick?
Of course it was a trick. Ryslind was a surface-dweller, and a wizard to boot. Smudge remained cool on his shoulder, which should mean it was safe to remove the gag. Still he hesitated.
“I’ll kill you if you try any magic,” he warned.
Ryslind dipped his head in amused acknowledgment.
“As will I,” Darnak said from behind Jig. “I was coming to get him,” he explained. “Heard you talking. So go ahead, remove the gag. He knows we’ll brain him if it comes to that.”
Feeling more confident with the dwarf beside him, Jig tugged the rope down around Ryslind’s chin and pulled a balled rag out of his mouth. The wizard opened his mouth and inhaled deeply.
“Water,” he said hoarsely. Darnak held a waterskin to his lips, and Ryslind took several deep swallows. When he spoke again, his voice was smoother. “You will die for what you did, goblin.” He sounded cheerful about the prospect.
“Enough of that,” Darnak said. “You were telling us about the thing that did this. Or was that all a ploy to get free of the gag?”
“No ploy.” Ryslind smiled. “And there is no need to hunt for him. He will find you soon enough.”
“He?” Jig asked.
Ryslind nodded. “He is one of Straum’s . . . servants.”
“How would you know this, brother?” Barius had returned. Arms crossed, he glared down at the wizard. “What reason do we have for trusting your word?”
Ryslind chuckled. “Believe me or not, it makes no difference.”
The pit in Jig’s stomach grew deeper. For despite everything Ryslind had done, Jig believed him.
They untied Ryslind’s legs so he could walk with the party. At first, Barius had argued, preferring to build a travois to drag the wizard along.
“And how am I to fight if I’m lugging your brother behind me?” Darnak snapped. “I’m doubting the enemy will want to wait while I unstrap a blasted travois.”
For once Jig agreed with the prince. Tie Ryslind up and leave him that way. They all knew the wizard was mad. What was to stop him from killing them all? He had promised to use no magic, but who could trust the mind behind those eyes? As soon as their guard dropped, he would attack. Starting, Jig guessed, with the goblin who had insulted him back in the Necromancer’s throne room.
But as they reached the woods, it looked like Ryslind would keep his promise. He had not spoken a word, and his hands remained bound behind his back. Darnak walked at the end of their line, so he would see if Ryslind tried anything. So far, Ryslind had been content to follow along.
He still made Jig nervous. Especially the way he smiled at them. Like this was all a game, and only Ryslind knew the rules.
“The trail goes deeper into the woods,” Barius said. He squatted by a patch of bare dirt. “See here, the creature has left a partial print.”
Jig stared at the brown, scuffed dirt. He saw nothing, and wondered if Barius was hallucinating. To make his frustration worse, he had already become disoriented. He thought he could find his way back to the clearing if he had to, but he wasn’t certain. Being lost made him feel uncomfortably dependent on the others.
“Clawed, as we guessed,” Barius muttered. He stretched a hand out over the dirt. “Toes spread for balance. The print is deep, so I would guess we face a beast nearly as massive as the ogres. A lion, perhaps. But longer of toe.”
He eventually tired of studying dirt and said, “Come, let us continue.”
Jig waited for the others to pass by. He took an extra step back to let Ryslind go by, but the wizard only smiled at him. Falling into step beside Darnak, Jig whispered, “Are both of them mad? They prod one another like children. And the only reason we’re chasing this beast is because Barius refuses to back down in front of his brother. What’s wrong with them?”
Darnak sighed. “Earthmaker only knows what has happened to Ryslind. As for Barius, I’m afraid he sees the competition as being more important than the rest, even more important than his own life.”
He shook his head. He had resumed his duty as mapmaker, and he sketched small, bushy trees as they walked. A jagged line marked their progress into the woods. At the center of the map, Jig saw three bodies labeled BIG, DEAD OGRES.
“Barius has competed all his life, and he’s always lost. He’s the seventh son of King Wendel. That means he’s got no more chance to sit on that throne than you or I do, and he knows it. Even with three of his brothers dead on their manhood quests, he’s no more than an extra mouth to feed around the palace. A noble mouth, mind you, but still a burden. Sooner or later they’ll marry him off, give him a nice little plot of land somewhere out of the way, and forget he ever existed.”
“He grew up with his parents?” Jig asked dubiously.
Darnak stopped to blot a smudge of ink on his map. “Aye. What of it?”
He had known that the surface races often built separate homes for every mated pair and their offspring, but it still seemed like a waste of space. Then again, if these woods were any indication of the size of the surface, maybe they could afford the waste. And only seven brothers? Jig had grown up with dozens of cousins, all raised by the entire lair. Jig didn’t even know who his parents were. Nor did he care. That sort of thing simply didn’t matter.
“Isn’t that inefficient?” Jig asked. “To rely so much on the parents, I mean.”
“For a dwarven family, ’twould make no difference. For us, family is everything. Parents, cousins, grandparents, brothers and sisters, all of ’em squeeze together in one home and look after one another. But for Prince Barius, his parents were always busy ruling Adenkar. He grew up surrounded by servants and tutors, none of whom saw him as anything but one more spoiled Wendelson to care for.
“He’s quite a lonely boy, really. Most of the sons are. They began very early to compete for their parents’ attention. Who would be the best fencer, the swiftest rider, the most accurate shot with a bow? Barius fought in tournaments from the time he was thirteen. Never won, mind you, and once he wrecked his knee so badly it took me a week to straighten everything back out.
“He learned the lute, studied every book he could get a hold of, and once stayed out three nights in a row to catch a wolf that had been stalking the stables. It was never enough.”
Sighing, Darnak glanced up to make sure the brothers were too far away to hear. “There was always something more pressing, some treaty to negotiate or some ambassador to dine with. Even when Barius accomplished some grand feat, his older brothers were there to overshadow him. He hunted that wolf right after his oldest brother returned from slaying a rogue griffon to the south. I was proud of them both, but especially Barius. He stayed out in the rain and the cold, and killed that wolf with no more than a child’s training bow, whereas his brother had gone out with a full regiment of guards and slept in a sturdy tent. But how could Barius compete with his brother’s griffon?
“The quake that finally collapsed his tunnel was Ryslind. Ryslind set out one day and didn’t come back for two months. All of Adenkar searched for the lost prince, but he had vanished like shadows at midday. Rumors spread and multiplied faster than fleas on a beggar. ‘Ryslind had been abducted by elves, he had drowned in the Serpent River, he had run off to be with his spirit lover.’ Everyone had a different tale.
“Barius didn’t know what to believe, but he saw his chance for glory. He had always been a skilled hunter and tracker, and he declared that he would bring his brother back. Interrupted court to make his pronouncement, and made sure everyone heard. He spent a week in preparation, gathering horses and supplies and men
and maps, everything he thought he would need.
“And then Ryslind returned. Walked into the throne room just as calm and confident as ever. He had completed his quest, he told us. To demonstrate, he sent tiny bolts of blue lightning racing across the ceiling. Levitated his eldest brother into the air and left him there, shrieking like a banshee. Before, he struggled even to learn simple tricks and sleight of hand. But somehow, in those two months, he had become a master of his art.
“Barius was devastated. His brother, two years his junior, had outshone him. His heroic preparations made him look even more the fool.”
Darnak took a drink of ale to soothe his throat. “A year ago, that was. Then some idiot gave him the idea to go after the Rod of Creation. Wish I could get my hands on the fellow who suggested it. Everyone thought it suicide, but for Barius, it was the only thing that could surpass his brothers.”
By this point Jig was listening with only one ear. Darnak’s story simply confirmed his belief that the prince was mad. Given a place to live, food to eat, even people to wait on him and make sure his every wish was taken care of, Barius wanted more. He had to “prove himself.”
What was the point? Admittedly, Jig wasn’t sure he completely understood human motivation, even after Darnak’s explanation. But this whole quest sounded like nothing more than a search for the most spectacular death. What good was attention and recognition if you had to be ripped apart by an ogre-killing monster to get it? All this for a magical rod that, as far as Jig knew, Barius didn’t even want. He only wanted to be the one who found it. Or at least the one who died trying.
There was a reason “glory” rhymed with “gory,” Jig thought. He grinned at his cleverness. Maybe he could make up a song about the prince. He worked out the first stanza as he walked.
Barius the human prince came down in search of glory.