“Merrick, the dogs? Your pack?”
He ducked his head and rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. “I lost three of them. The rest are safely back where they came from.”
“The Colonel?” Linn asked, a little pang of worry for the dog hitting her.
“What?” he looked confused.
Linn realized she’d only named the dog after they were separated. “The big shepherd you assigned to me.”
“Oh, yeah. Tough boy. He was fine, just scratches. Wouldn’t leave your side until you were tucked into bed, actually.” Merrick smiled, and Linn smiled back. She had liked the big dog, and had come to appreciate Merrick’s motivation in assigning her a bodyguard.
“Ahem.” Deirdre said, not at all subtly. “Goblins?”
“Yeah, what about ‘em?” Merrick straddled a chair backwards and rested his folded arms on it. “I know we’ve had little skirmishes. Some nasty incidents.” He frowned hard. “Da used to tell stories, but it was silly stuff. And Uncle Lem... he flew in the war, and used to tell me stories, but Mam made him stop when I couldn’t sleep after one.”
“Mothers are spoilsports.” Linn said, as Theta walked in with an enormous tray of food.
She laughed. “Oh, what have I done now? Interrupted something?”
Linn jumped up from the stack of stones she was sitting on. “No, not you! Only Merrick’s Mom, who wouldn’t let his uncle tell him stories that gave him nightmares.”
Theta blinked. “Well, I think that sounds practical, actually.” She looked at the table. “Is there a place to put this?”
It took a couple of minutes and a flurry of papers for the teens to clear the loose papers off the table. They left the big book of goblin history in place. Bronwyn came in with a basket of glasses and a pitcher of something.
“A picnic in the library!” she said cheerfully. “Now, this is a first. Of course, the garden isn’t fit for it right now.”
“Oh, dear, the beautiful garden.” Linn said, taking a glass of the iced tea. She sipped and then looked into the glass. “This is... interesting.”
“Your mother showed me how to make that.” Bronwyn beamed. “I never thought of drinking tea cold. Added a bit of honey and lemon, and it’s right tasty.”
Linn nodded and deliberately took another very slow sip. “Thank you.” She told the little brown lady. “Are you any relation to Dugan?” She asked. There was a strong resemblance.
“Oh, heavens no. Only that we’re both Brownies, you know.” Bronwyn looked at the spread and then went out again, her skirts swishing.
“Brownies?” Linn looked at Merrick and Deirdre. “There are so many people I had no idea...”
“Brownies are connected to coblyns and goblins. All the little people are descended from the same people. I don’t know quite why they...” Dee spread her hands apart, indicating distances.
“I don’t think that’s as important as the beginning.” Linn had a feeling. She had always wondered where the coblyns came from. If her ancestors had come through from another universe, where had they come from? They certainly weren’t human.
“Well, the histories are more about the coblyns. I don’t precisely know why the goblins are so angry at us, and the king.” Deirdre leaned over the book, carefully turning pages. “They don’t seem to write, you see.”
“Not at all?” Blackie sounded scandalized, and Linn grinned at him.
“You don’t write, either. I think I just figured out why you prefer to be a cat.”
He stuck his tongue out at her, and Theta laughed. “I’m going to leave you lot to squabble amongst yourselves. If you want anything…” She got up and rubbed her behind. “Those stones are hard! If you want anything, you’re big enough to get it yourselves!” Theta sailed out the door, laughing.
Merrick looked at Linn, smiling. “Your mom is fun.”
“Yes, she is. She lets me get away with a lot, but not too much.”
Deirdre had a mouthful of pasty, which were evidently Bronwyn’s answer to pizza. She swallowed. “I didn’t say they didn’t write at all.”
Linn was used to her friend’s tenacity when it was a topic she wanted to discuss to the bitter end. “What did they write, then?”
“I’m surprised they could write.” Merrick growled. He glared at his pasty and then bit into it fiercely.
Linn sighed, her mind’s eye supplying her with plenty of reasons why he had that idea. The goblin gnawing at her leg, his eyes empty of any intelligence, only animal hunger. Linn rubbed her leg, feeling the sore patch where the bite had sunk in. Her mother’s healing had knitted the torn muscles, but full healing would take some time.
Deirdre crowed. “Here it is!”
The page in question was evidently not bound in, as she lifted it right out of the book. From the ragged edges, Linn didn’t think it had ever been. Deirdre walked over to the window, where Linn was perched on the stones again.
“It’s very faint, I need the light.” Dee explained, and Linn wiggled over to give her more. The pasty she was munching had been filled with cheese and sausage and was quite good. It was not helped as she got a whiff of the page Dee was holding.
“Whew! What is that smell?” Linn leaned away from her friend.
Merrick growled. “You don’t recognize it? It’s eau d’goblin. I reeked after the fighting.”
“What is that, written in blood?” The ink looked greenish.
“Wouldn’t surprise me.” Blackie came and leaned over Deirdre’s shoulder. “I can’t make heads or tails of that, Dee. What does it say?”
“I haven’t been able to make much of it out. That, and I think a lot of it is the same thing, repeated over and over. ‘Slaves, dogs, and dirt-nosers.’”
“Talking about goblins?” Linn asked. They certainly had seemed dirty.
“No, this is addressed to my great-great something great-grandfather. The goblins hate the coblyns. They think we sold out our race and chose to be, as this accuses, slaves.” Dee took the page back to the book and wiped her hands before picking up more food.
“So that is why they are attacking Mac’Lir?” Blackie sounded as mystified as Linn felt, although she would have said it with less food in her mouth.
“Well...” Deirdre curled up in one of the chairs, tucking her feet under her. “You know my line, the coblyns, left the caves and mines where we had dwelt for time immemorial. We were not slaves or servants to anyone, but the cadet branch, the Brownies, chose to assist the farmers. We were allied with the miners, and came to the New World with them, and in time, to Sanctuary, but that was after... other things.”
Linn remembered Deirdre telling her of a girlhood in the castle, and she didn’t know how old Sanctuary was, really. So many secrets. She sighed. Dee kept talking.
“The goblins were a few families, one clan, who chose to remain behind, in abandoned tunnels and mines, and they went very strange.”
“I’ll say!” Merrick exclaimed. “There was a bunch of them attacking one another, right in the middle of fighting. It was like they were just wanting to fight, it didn’t matter who.”
“They became the bitter imps of all the legends. The Brownies fought them in the shadows for a long time, trying to keep them from revealing all to the humans. Eventually, they were so reduced in number, they were considered no longer a threat. Only...”
“There were an awful lot of them yesterday.” Blackie interrupted.
“Just so.” Deirdre sounded a lot like Hypatia, Linn noted, smothering her smile in a bite of pasty. “We think... well, Dugan and I were talking a lot about this after, and before then Bronwyn, while we were hiding.”
She made herself smaller, and Spot padded over silently and rested his big head on the cushion next to her. Dee petted him and he rumbled into a deep purr.
“It’s ok, Dee.” Blackie came and patted her arm awkwardly. “We’re going to do something about it. But go on.”
“I’m ok. It was just... well, what we talked about was how many
there were. We think they must have been hiding, and breeding up their population to hold a war. I found a clue, in the book...”
“Where did you all come from? I mean the coblyns, and the gods.” Linn asked. “Your uncle, I think, gave me some clues, and Coyote gave me some, and I pieced it together, but not all of it.”
Dee sighed. “I’m not supposed to talk about it. The clue, in the book...”
“Dee, I’m going off on a very important mission in a day.” Linn pointed out. “I think I need as much information as I can get.”
“Let me tell you about this, and maybe that will be enough.” Deirdre sat up straight. “There was a brownie squad who managed to listen to a goblin plan. Dugan wouldn’t tell me what happened, but only two made it back here. What they said didn’t make much sense, until I was reading the book.
“In the book, about a millennia ago, the clan head who broke off the goblins, or those who would become goblins, left a long letter, proclaiming that our race had suffered at the hands of the gods long enough, and it was time for us to reclaim our own power, and return to our true home. He wrote that Lir, the most ancient of ancients, had in his secret place the key to returning to the lost home.”
“And Mac’Lir is Lir’s son.” Linn remembered that much of the Celtic myth class they had been taught.
Merrick shook his head. “No, Lir is Lir. Has always been, just with different names.”
“That happened a lot.” Linn thought of all the myths they had been taught. The ever-living, as Granny had called them, changed names and locales from time to time for concealment, or in the case of the Olympians, in an effort to keep power.
“Well, that explains why the goblins attacked as soon as they heard Mac’Lir was awake. They think he can get them back to their home.” Blackie mused.
“And their lost glory days. According to the goblins, they were in charge, in this legendary place, and the titans and their children were the servants.” Deirdre filled in. She fluttered her free hand. The other had a glass of the iced tea in it. Dee seemed to like that a lot more than Linn had. “Now, I know that’s not true. But whatever we once were, my people are now partners with those who were in charge then. Likely they were slaves, but we are as free as we want to be, unlike the goblins, who are enslaved by their own hatred and delusions.”
“So that is what I have to do. I have to beat the goblins to Mac’Lir’s secret place, which may hold the key to this lost universe where the gods and goblins came from, and protect it from them.” Linn slumped back against the wall.
A deep voice answered her. “Not exactly. And not alone.”
They all jumped to their feet as Mac’Lir walked into the room.
“M’- m’Lord!” Merrick stammered.
“Sit, sit. Boy, you must learn to treat me more like she does.” Mac’Lir gestured at Linn. “The age of kings has passed, and I was never that happy to be one, anyway.”
The young people all sat, and Mac’Lir stood, clasping his hands behind his back and looking down at the open book on the table. “What I need from you, Daughter of Fire, is the new knowledge, mingled with the old magic.”
“It’s not magic, sir.” Linn protested.
“Oh, I know that now. I am... I would have said I was learning, a thousand years all at once, but I came to find that I am remembering. And what is magic? That word will do well enough.”
“Someone once told me that technology, sufficiently advanced, became indistinguishable from magic.” Linn shot back at him.
“Ah! My dear girl, this is why you are perfect for the task.”
Linn subsided. Mac’Lir had an air about him. She just didn’t want to argue with him, or not much, anyway. He smiled down at her. “I’m old fashioned, girl. Bear with me.”
He really was a charming old fellow. Linn smiled back.
“I am remembering.” Mac’Lir turned back to the book. “I suppose that is what I have been trying to do, when I accumulated all these records, and left standing orders to keep adding to the library. Which seems to have grown like a weed patch.” He wandered into the shelves, still talking. “I know what they say, that I am the oldest of the ancients. But it isn’t true.”
He reappeared, a cobweb on his fingers where he had wiped it out of his hair. He was shaking his hand to dislodge it. “I am not the oldest. But I have lived so long, I have outlived my own memories. What is left is as cobwebby and dusty as this collection of knowledge. Which is why I need you, Daughter of Fire.”
“To do what?” She asked. Maybe this time he would answer.
Chapter 13
“I need you to answer questions we have forgotten how to ask.” Mac’Lir carefully turned a page in the book. “This, I can grasp, answer, and fight against. But what secrets lie elsewhere, I cannot. You, perhaps, can. Magic; as you say, technology.”
That word sounded odd coming from him, as he didn’t pronounce it quite correctly.
“So I am going to be looking at technology,” she asked, wanting clarity, “when I get where you send me... us?”
All of them were paying attention now. Mac’Lir looked around the room, at five sets of bright eyes. “I am not sending all of you, fear not, little daughter.”
He was addressing Deirdre, who nodded a little. Then he spoke to Linn again.
“Yes, but you may not recognize it. You must strain your imagination, I expect.” Mac’Lir walked toward the door. “You will leave tomorrow afternoon. I am not sending you until your mother gives me leave, but I cannot wait much longer.”
“I’m ready.” Linn told him.
He paused in the doorway, looking down at her. “I know you are, brave girl.”
He was gone before Linn could respond. “I’m no hero.”
Deirdre snorted from her chair. “Yes, you are.”
“What? All I did was charge headlong into a fight. I’m not even supposed to be in a battle, the grown-ups have worked hard enough to protect all of us kids.” Linn stood up and winced as her leg pulled on the regrowing muscle.
“You were spectacularly heroic in battle.” Dee pointed out, laughing. “Dancing on a troll?”
“I wasn’t dancing! Merrick...” Linn turned to him.
“Unh-uh. I was under the darned thing.” He raised his injured hand, fending her off. “Hey, ow!”
Linn had batted him on the back of the head. “Why didn’t you tell me that before? I didn’t mean to drop a troll on you.”
“Linn, you didn’t mean to, but it was the only thing you could have done.” Blackie broke in. “Well, okay, you could have run away like a smart person...”
Merrick laughed. “I’m not mad at you, Linn. If you hadn’t dropped it on me, it would have smashed me flatter.”
Linn shivered. “I’m trying really hard not to think too much about the whole scene. I could have lost any of you. And I kept looking down... for Dee.”
Linn walked over to her friend and knelt by the chair. “I was so afraid I’d find you, or Spot, out there.”
“I was sensibly hiding in the wine cellar, with all who could not sally forth. I know my limitations.” Dee’s lip wobbled, betraying her calm tone.
“You’re the smart one of us.” Linn reassured her. “It was a stinky, beastly, painful experience.”
“Yeah.” Merrick unfolded himself from the chair. “You’re lucky you were out of it. Look, Dee, you’re the brain. I haven’t known you long, but you have more smarts than... well, okay, maybe not more than Linn. But different.”
“So you’re the brawn?” Deirdre giggled. “You are smart too. C’mon, Blackie, what are you?”
“Oh, I’m lazy.” The tall boy sprawled out in his chair. “I was running for the gate. Stopped to fend off the nasty little monsters along my way.”
“You’re a terrible liar, Blackie.” Deirdre rapped her knuckles on Linn’s head.
“Ow, what was that for?” Linn rubbed her skull.
“Stop sitting at my feet. I’m not an invalid or your mother.” Deirdre poi
nted at the table. “But you can get me a pasty, now you’re up.”
Linn obligingly handed her one from the section Bronwyn had said were sweets, and got one for herself. “Well, who wants to come with me?”
She looked at them, they had all stopped chewing or talking and were staring at her. “What? I’m the one being sent, it’s my job. I’m not going to assume you’re trailing along, unless you want it. It might be dangerous. Dee, you’re staying here, and I need you to keep digging...” Linn pointed with the hand that held her pastry, scattering crumbs. Deirdre squeaked indignantly. “Sorry. Yeah, anyway... I’m only taking volunteers.”
Merrick snorted. “You’re dreadful at recruitment.”
“Wasn’t trying to recruit.” Linn pointed out, sitting back on her stones.
“You know I’m coming.” Blackie said quietly.
Linn nodded. One day she was going to have a long talk with him about following her everywhere, and what was up with that? But it would wait. She would have missed him badly.
“And me.” Merrick stretched. “But after a good night’s sleep.”
Spot nodded at Linn, and rested his chin on Dee’s arm again, almost knocking her off the chair as she had been getting up. “You big buffoon,” the little coblyn girl rubbed his ears. “We need to clean up,” she informed the group tartly.
“Sorry about the crumbs.” Linn shoved the last bite in her mouth, and started piling the glasses and pitcher onto the nearly empty platter. Dee produced a little whisk broom, and Blackie was handed a rag to wipe off the table. Merrick hoisted the book.
“Oof! Dee, how do you manage this thing? It’s made of lead...”
She took it from him. “No, just leather over wood panels, and various papers and vellums.”
“You’re stronger than you look.” He released the book to her and picked up the platter. “See you all in the morning.”
Linn found herself back in her room shortly, and sat on the bed. She felt like someone had opened a tap and let all her energy run out. Finally alone, she touched her face gingerly. If anything, the places where the acid had burned felt smoother than the old skin. It was sore if she pressed, but didn’t hurt otherwise. Unlike her leg, which was aching, a mass of charley horses marching up and down with nails in their shoes. Linn flopped backward on the bed with a whimper.
The God's Wolfling (Children of Myth Book 2) Page 10