by Jim C. Hines
“No,” Jig said. He wiggled free and sat down. “Haven’t you listened to his voice? Whatever he is, he’s not like any human I’ve heard.”
He told her how the second voice had taken control back in the Necromancer’s chamber. “Even Barius was afraid of him.”
Riana’s jaw tightened. She took a few steps after Ryslind, then stopped. Slamming her knife into a tree trunk, she swore angrily. “I hate bullies. He and his brother both. They expect you to do everything they want, and if you don’t, they threaten you.”
Jig shrugged. That was the way it had been with every goblin captain he had ever known. What did she expect? Ryslind was too powerful. For all they knew, he could have turned himself invisible and waited to see if they chased after him.
“Besides, if we kill him, how are we supposed to get through the lake?” He didn’t give her time to answer. “We should go back.”
He listened to make sure Riana was coming. After a few paces, he heard her follow, kicking sticks and rocks with every third step.
Good. Now if they could find their way back, everything would be just great. He looked around nervously. The sunlight was mostly gone, and the stars had begun to appear in the sky. Jig had never seen stars, but he found them a disappointment. The songs described them as pretty, but all he saw were weak dots of white light. They provided little light, and in the darkness, the roots had begun to attack his feet with abandon. Stars might be fine for surface-dwellers, he decided, but he’d trade them all to have the sun back.
Riana wasn’t having as much trouble. She eventually passed Jig, which was fine with him. If she could find the way back to their camp, he would happily let her lead the way.
“They’re going to kill you, you know,” she said casually.
Jig stopped. “Who are?” He grabbed his sword and looked around.
“Barius and Darnak. They’ll kill you as soon as they don’t need you anymore. If I’m lucky, they’ll toss me in prison.”
When he didn’t answer, she said, “What did you expect? You’re a goblin. I’m a thief. They’re not going to let us go once they find the rod and escape.”
He tried to think of a good argument. What reason did they have to kill him? He had helped them through the tunnels above. He had killed the Necromancer. But he suspected Riana was right. After all what reason did they have not to kill him?
“Darnak wouldn’t,” he said weakly. The dwarf wouldn’t have bothered to heal Jig only to kill him later. Not that Darnak’s help meant much. Barius was the leader, and he would be only too happy to put an end to Jig. Especially after that Rakachak incident.
“Everywhere I go, I meet men like him,” Riana muttered. “Follow them into Straum’s lair or let them toss me into the dungeons. They offer you a choice between hells and expect you to thank them for it.”
“They were going to kill you,” Jig blurted out. As long as they were discussing impending death, he thought she should know the truth.
“What?”
“Before, when you set off the Necromancer’s trap. They were going to kill you to keep you from turning into one of those dead things.”
She didn’t say anything, but Jig could see her playing with her knife. The starlight glittered on the twirling blade. “He would have, too,” she whispered. “Bastard.”
Jig nodded agreement.
“We should let them sleep and hope the ogres do find them. Or kill them ourselves. They deserve it.”
He wasn’t about to argue that point. But as Riana pointed out, they couldn’t escape either. Killing the others would only leave them that much more vulnerable to attack.
“Maybe we can kick them around a bit before we break the spell,” she said.
“I could use a knife and Darnak’s ink to draw some rude tattoos,” Jig offered. “What do you think Barius’s father would say if he came home with ‘Goblin-lover’ scrawled across his forehead?”
She grinned. “Or we could steal their clothes. Make them face Straum naked.” With a frown, she added, “Except that I don’t really want to see that. I’m going to have enough nightmares about this place without those images haunting me.”
“If we were back in goblin territory, we could rub their clothes in carrion-worm urine. That way they’d wake up surrounded by worms.” He didn’t mention that Porak had taught him this trick, nor that he had screamed loud enough to wake Straum himself when he felt the worms crawling over his legs.
Riana giggled. “And if we were on the surface, I’d boil some tea from poison ivy leaves and slip it into their waterskins.”
Jig laughed even harder once she explained what poison ivy was.
A while later, she said, “You should have warned me before you cut off my finger.” She didn’t sound angry, though. At least not at Jig.
“Sorry. I’ll say something next time.”
She chuckled. “Next time I’ll cut off something of yours in return, and it won’t be a finger.”
A few hours later, after backtracking twice, they managed to find Barius and Darnak. They lay as if dead, hands folded on their stomachs and their equipment placed to one side. The lantern, lit but shuttered, sat between them. Indeed it was the faint orange lantern light that Riana had spotted to guide them here.
Jig opened the lantern and sighed with relief as it lit up the woods around them. He could see again. As well as he ever did, at least.
“Ryslind’s glyphs?” Riana pointed at Barius’s face.
Two red lines traced a circular path around his forehead, starting at the eyebrows and merging by the bridge of the nose. Darnak had the same character inked onto his brow, though they had to shove his hair out of the way to see it.
“Ryslind said we could wake them up by breaking the glyph,” Riana said. Her eyes narrowed. “I’ll do it. You take the lantern and make sure nothing’s out there.”
“Why me?” Jig asked, looking around at the dark woods. The last thing he wanted was to go wandering alone.
Riana’s knife appeared in her hand. “Don’t argue, Jig.”
Right. He picked up the lantern and walked a few paces into the woods. “And she was complaining about bullies,” he muttered as he shone the light around. Despite the stars, the darkness here felt somehow bigger than Jig was used to. Up above, the lantern would have revealed solid walls. Here, darkness engulfed the light like a predator. If anything crept near, it would have to step directly in front of the lantern for Jig to notice.
A loud scream came from behind, and Jig immediately dropped the lantern. He started to run, stopped, ran back, and grabbed the lantern. Seconds later, he shifted it to his other hand and stuck his burned fingers into his mouth.
“Grab the lantern by the handle, stupid,” he muttered, voice muffled by his fingers.
Had he stopped to think, he might have run the other way, into the darkness. Instead he hurried back to the others, to find Darnak and Barius both awake and staring at something in the prince’s hand. No, not in his hand.
Riana sat on the ground in front of them both. She sounded deeply forlorn as she explained what had happened. “Ryslind cast a spell on you and escaped. He wants the rod for himself. He said we should leave. We came back as soon as we could.”
She shook her head sadly. “He said something about a spell that would let him look like you, Barius, to fool your father. I’m afraid that, for one of the spell ingredients, he had to cut off your finger.”
Jig bit his lip and hoped that neither the prince nor the dwarf could hear the satisfaction beneath Riana’s words.
“I’ll slay him myself,” Barius raged. He thrust the newly healed stump of his left ring finger in Darnak’s face.
Jig and Riana had stayed out of the way ever since the prince began his tantrum. Seeing the fury on Barius’s face, Jig took another step back, strategically putting a thick tree between himself and the prince.
“Once we’re home, I’ll take you to one of the healing temples. You’ve more than enough gold sitting around to buy
a simple regeneration. Besides, if he was wanting to finish you off, he’d have slit your throat rather than lay you out with a magic lullaby.” Darnak glanced at Riana and twirled a lock of his beard. “If it was your brother who was doing this, that is.”
“Of course it was him,” Barius snapped. “Fearful of my success, he seeks to steal the rod which is rightfully mine.”
Jig didn’t say anything. Darnak had so far kept his suspicions to himself, and Jig didn’t want to draw any attention he could avoid. At least Riana had the foresight to dispose of the finger. She had flung it far into the woods, then wiped her knife on the prince’s white shirt.
He found it peculiar the way these adventurers thought anything they found was “rightfully” theirs. Why couldn’t they come out and admit they were stealing from the monsters? Nothing wrong with that. Goblins and hobgoblins did it all the time. True, it was mostly hobgoblins stealing from the goblins, but that was part of life. Why this nonsense about the rod really belonging to Barius? Did he think Straum should rush out and present the rod to him? Should the goblins have given over their meager treasure because it “rightfully” belonged to Barius?
No wonder the prince was so bitter and angry. All that treasure was rightfully his, and none of the current owners were considerate enough to realize it.
“We should be off,” Barius snapped. “We’ve no time for slumber. If we are to catch my treacherous brother, we must leave at once.”
Barius had taken four steps before Darnak raised his voice and said, “Before you’re running too far, you might want to ask which way your brother was headed.”
Jig pointed. Barius straightened his shoulders and, refusing to make eye contact with Jig, turned and walked back the way Jig had indicated.
Darnak grabbed the lantern in one hand, hoisted his pack with the other, and followed. “Come on, then. He’ll be setting quite a trot until he burns off the worst of his temper.”
“Are you sure we should go after Ryslind in the dark?” Jig asked as he half jogged alongside the dwarf. “If we wait until the sun comes back . . . it does come back, doesn’t it?”
“Aye,” Darnak said. “And I could do with a long, nonmagical nap myself. But yon hothead won’t rest until he gets back at his brother, and if he has to, he’ll rip off his own eyelids to keep from sleeping.”
“Even though he knows Ryslind isn’t right in the head?” Jig grimaced. That had come out a bit more bluntly than he meant. Ryslind was a prince, after all, and Darnak might not take too kindly to hearing him insulted.
But the dwarf only chuckled. “Madmen in the noble line are as common as rat turds in the grain shed. Barius couldn’t care less about his brother’s sanity. He doesn’t care why Ryslind showed him up; he just knows he’s been made to look the fool. If it happens again, Barius won’t stop until one or the other is dead.” In a more serious tone, he added, “I expect it will be Barius who finds himself wearing a funeral shroud. A good fighter, but too impetuous. And Ryslind’s power is nothing to sneer at.”
He dipped his quill into the inkpot. “Enough talk. How many paces since that forked tree?”
The prince’s pace was not a good one for mapmaking, and Darnak valiantly tried to sketch their progress as he jogged. Ink had smeared his fingers up to the knuckles, and several drops of ink tracked across the map like tiny rivers. Even when the quill pierced the parchment, Darnak didn’t give up. “Always map the way in,” he said. “For it’s a far cry harder to do so on the way out.”
Jig didn’t bother to point out how useless the map had been so far. He was too busy watching the ground. The lantern made it easier to avoid stumbling, but not by much. The light leaped and twisted with Darnak’s every step, so the trees appeared to be moving. More than once, Jig gasped when his imagination turned a low branch into an arm reaching for his throat.
He still couldn’t understand this competition between the two princes. If matters were so strained between them, why wouldn’t they fight and finish the matter? Goblins would have exchanged insults, pounded one another with clubs or whatever was handy, and been done with it. Whoever walked away was in the right, and the loser, if he or she survived, would then acknowledge the other’s superiority. Why drag things out?
Based on Barius’s fury back at camp, he suspected things would finally be settled once they caught up with Ryslind. That too made Jig uncomfortable. For they needed Ryslind’s help to get out of this place. That would be difficult if Barius killed him. If the fight went the other way, as Darnak predicted, would Ryslind bother with the rest of them? Either outcome seemed to leave Jig stranded in the lower levels.
Maybe they wouldn’t fight at all. He hoped not, because he needed them both alive if he were to have any chance of escaping. If they did start to fight, maybe Jig would tell them it was Riana, not Ryslind, who took Barius’s finger. He didn’t want to betray Riana, but at least that scenario left a chance for Jig to get out alive. Riana would turn on Jig, Barius would turn on Riana, and all Jig would have to do was hope the prince was faster.
He thought Riana would understand. She would still try to kill him, but she would understand.
He hoped it wouldn’t come to that. Of everyone in the party, Riana was the only one Jig could even remotely relate to. The prince was too greedy, the dwarf too interested in his maps and his gods, and as for the wizard, Jig could only pray he never understood Ryslind’s mind.
“This is where you met the traitor?” Ever since they left camp, Barius had refused to call his brother by name.
Jig looked around. There was his firewood, scattered and forgotten. To the right, a pale round wound on a tree marked where Ryslind had torn his staff free. “Yes.”
Barius dropped to one knee and examined the ground. “His sandals are smooth soled, harder to track, but I see that he stood here while talking to you. Darnak, bring the light closer.”
Darnak drew a quick X and labeled it RYSLIND, then hurried over to Barius’s side.
“There.” Barius pointed. “That shallow dimple in the earth. That must be the indentation from his staff. Between his footprints and that staff, we can track him even in this black night.” He laughed. “My poor brother. Strong in art, but weak in flesh. He could never outmarch me in the field, even with a staff to support his weight.”
They continued through the woods until Jig lost track of time. His stomach grumbled angrily, and his vision narrowed to the patch of trail just ahead. His thoughts faded until he was aware of nothing more than the need to put one foot forward, then the other. His blisters were worse, and a painful dryness burned his eyes. All he wanted was to lie down. How long did the sun take to return? Surely they had been walking for days. Several days without food or water, and the only time they rested was when Darnak insisted on relieving himself, which he did frequently.
He probably drank too much dwarven ale, Jig thought. He had seen Darnak take several drinks as they hiked along. It’s probably the only thing that keeps him sane, living with humans all the time.
“Strange,” Barius mused as they walked. “The traitor fled in a different direction than the creature I had been tracking. Yet another indication that he knows something he refused to share.”
Perhaps he knew that chasing a creature that could kill three ogres was a stupid idea. As usual, Jig kept his thoughts to himself.
“He divined the Necromancer’s hiding place,” Barius continued. “Could he be strong enough to discover the rod’s location as well? The tales say it hides itself from magic, but why else would he go this way, if not to reach the rod before me?”
Wait, who found the Necromancer? No doubt Barius had already rewritten that incident in his memory, erasing Jig’s role so he wouldn’t have to admit to being upstaged by a goblin.
Near morning the forest began to thin. Jig only noticed because he wasn’t stumbling as often. The light had come so gradually he couldn’t say when he first began to see the faint gray outlines of the trees. Overhead the stars had faded until
only a few faint spots of light still showed.
Barius brought them to a halt at the edge of the woods. “Look.”
Jig stumbled forward to see what Barius had pointed to. He tried to rub the sleepiness from his eyes. One part of him knew he wasn’t imagining things, but another part knew equally well that he couldn’t be seeing what he his eyes told him was there.
“Odd lair for a dragon,” Darnak said. “And I’ve seen one or two in my time.”
Jig hadn’t. Maybe this was something other dragons did. Jig had never heard of such a thing, but his experience in the world was terribly limited. Tugging on Darnak’s sleeve, he asked, “Do all dragons own flower gardens?”
“First I’ve run across.”
It was an impressive garden, Jig admitted. He sat down and tried to take it all in.
The cavern ended about a quarter-mile away. The bowl-shaped wall rose about thirty feet to end at a tree-covered cliff. Large birds circled the cliff top, and even though Jig knew the sky, and therefore the birds, were all an illusion, he could still hear their harsh cries. Impressive as that magic was, it paled next to Straum’s gardens.
Thin snakes of water flowed down the cavern wall. Midway down, they hit a magical barrier and flowed into the air, where they curved around one another and looped back to form an arched overhang. It was like fine lace, but formed entirely of water. Streams split apart and split again. The patterns changed gradually, a row of intricate diamonds fading into a series of interlinked ovals, all formed by those shifting rays of water.
Accenting the magical overhang were numerous vines that blanketed the wall. Their purple flowers hid the rock so well, Jig wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that the cliff itself was nothing more than flower petals. The wind created waves of motion across the flowers, reminding Jig of the lake.
The true work of art was at ground level, where a huge flower mural stretched out for at least a hundred yards from the cliff. Jig couldn’t see well enough to discern the finer details, but he could tell the pictures were laid out to tell a story. On the left, a large green dragon flew with wings outstretched. Orange and red flowers created flaming breath. Another area seemed to depict the outside of the mountain. Jig wondered where Straum had found gray and brown flowers for that part of the mural.