Beast & Crown #2

by Joel Ross

  “Jiyong,” she said gently, “we can’t dig that deep with goblins watching.”

  “Oh, right.”

  He spent the rest of the day sweeping the tunnels with his dragonhunger like a bloodhound sniffing after a trail. He could sense gems through the rock—ten feet, twenty feet, even thirty feet in—but nothing close enough to help them.

  “At least you’re getting stronger,” Chibo offered.

  Ji grunted. “It’s not helping.”

  And the evilqueen’s stronger, too, Nin said. Or at least not weaker. We need to find the ogres and warnscare them not to attack. If they do, the evilqueen will slaykill them all.

  “We’ll warn them,” Ji promised.

  We must! Nin’s mind-speak hummed with urgency. Or our family will die. Our mothers and fathers, all our tribes.

  Ji swallowed, feeling the weight of Nin’s desperation. He raised his voice and called to a goblin, “I beg your pardon, but please can you tell us about the ogres?”

  The goblin chuffed under its breath.

  “We heard that you’re working together,” Ji said. “That goblins are digging tunnels from the mountains to the city? For a surprise ogre attac-ka on the queen?”

  The goblin turned away sourly, one of its belly-arms scratching its bare neck. Which was another weird thing: these goblins didn’t wear collars, even though they’d lived in a pen. Of course, sometimes goblins shared collars. That way, while none of them was completely free, none was always enslaved.

  Ji asked another goblin about the ogres. It didn’t answer. Ji flattered a third goblin, lied to a fourth, and offered to play Seven Pebbles with two more. Running out of options, he even tried singing—just in case goblins like music. None of them told him anything useful. They barely said a dozen words to him and most of those were “patient” and “wait” and “stop singing, it hurts my ears.”

  So he followed them into the gloom, keeping his songs to himself and sniffing for gemstones.

  The next morning, a sudden clatter sounded from the tunnels ahead. The goblins veered into a side tunnel to avoid whatever was coming.

  “Nin,” Ji muttered to the ant lion on his collar. “See what’s making that noise.”

  A few ant lions must’ve peered around the corner, because a minute later Nin reported, A crowd of goblins is scurrywalking toward the human realm.

  “Why are they heading that way?”

  Roz’s granite-flecked brow furrowed. “And why are they keeping us apart?”

  We can’t tell. But the crowd is tremblescared and weepcrying. They look extremely able to miser.

  “Able to what?” Ji asked.

  To miser, Nin repeated.

  “Miserable,” Roz translated, tapping her elongated horn.

  “What’s wrong?’ Chibo asked.

  Goblin guards are kickshoving them onward.

  “Perhaps we’re wrong to think of all goblins as being alike,” Roz said.

  Sally snorted. “Goblins are goblins are goblins.”

  “People aren’t all the same,” Chibo said.

  “Yeah they are,” Ji said darkly.

  Over the next few hours, the tunnels widened. The hum of gemstones faded, even as Ji’s ability to sniff them out extended deeper into the bedrock. Torches flickered beside wall shrines displaying the pink potato-shaped rocks, and spiral designs gleamed in the walls.

  Then Sally’s ears pricked. “There’s a big open space ahead.”

  “Everyone watch out,” Ji murmured. “If the goblins are lying about bringing us to the Ogrelands, it may be a trap.”

  A faint roar sounded, like a distant waterfall. The goblins bustled around a corner and gestured toward a flight of stone stairs leading upward, wide enough for two carriages.

  “Whoa,” Ji said.

  Chibo’s emerald wings spread out from his hunchback. “Are those stairs?”

  “Yeah,” Sally growled. “And that’s the sound of goblins. Hundreds of them. Thousands.”

  “Wh-what about ogres?” Ji asked.

  “Just goblins, I think.”

  One of their goblin escorts knee-wobbled toward Roz. “The White Worm will see you now.”

  “That is . . . very kind.” Roz fiddled with the hem of her cloak. “And of course one should know of the White Worm. However, I’m sorry to admit that I do not. Who is—”

  “Our ka-ing!” the goblin said. “Our ka-aptain. Our ka-mmander.”

  “There’s a king?” Chibo fluted under his breath.

  “What an honor!” Roz rumbled to the goblin. “And will His Royal Highness, erm—”

  “Will he lead us to the ogres?” Sally demanded.

  “His Deepness,” the goblin chuffed.

  “His Deepness, of ka-orse,” Roz said. “I beg your pardon.”

  “Also called His Politeness,” the goblin said.

  “That’s a lovely title.”

  “And His Brutality.”

  “P-pardon?” Roz asked, while Sally’s tail lashed.

  “His Deepness will guide you.” The goblin gestured toward the stairs with a belly-arm. “We do not ka-eep the White Worm waiting.”

  Roz’s lips narrowed as she looked at Ji. Sally’s nose twitched and Chibo, nervous and edgy, prodded a wall shrine with the tip of one glowing wing. But they’d come too far to turn back—and they didn’t have anywhere else to go—so Ji politely bared his teeth to the goblin.

  “Than-ka you very much,” he said. “We are eager to meet His Politeness.”

  The goblins climbed the uneven steps. Ji stumbled when he followed, because his human—or half-human—feet couldn’t pivot into the lopsided stair slots. Still, he eventually stepped through the archway at the top.

  Beside him, Roz whispered, “Goodness me.”

  “What?” Chibo said. “What is it?”

  “We’re on a stairway,” Sally said, “carved high into the wall of a cavern.”

  “Not simply a cavern,” Roz said. “There’s an entire underground city spread out beneath us.”

  White marble streets wound around white marble domes with oval doors and round windows. White marble towers rose from the ground like gigantic stalagmites with stairs spiraling upward on their walls, while white marble upside-down towers hung from the ceiling like gigantic stalactites, connected to the regular towers with walkways. Goblins hunched and slouched everywhere, their knees bobbling and their belly-arms waving. Shafts of daylight fell from above, where wide circles opened to the upper world.

  “That’s a lot of goblins,” Sally growled.

  Roz pointed toward the middle of the city. “Look at the banner.”

  Wavy white columns encircled a stadium carved into the cavern floor. A massive throne rose at the far end of the stadium, and frost touched Ji’s heart when he saw the banner behind it. He couldn’t make out any details, but the design looked an awful lot like a picture of a tree with the rising sun.

  “That’s . . .” Sally cleared her throat. “That’s the symbol of the Summer Queen.”

  “Where?” Chibo squeaked. “Here? Where? Why?”

  Ji swallowed. “Hanging over the throne.”

  “Perhaps it’s the spoils of war,” Roz said with a gruff nervousness. “Perhaps the goblins won it in a battle.”

  Warspoils, Nin said in agreement. Goblins aren’t ogrestrong, but in battle they burst from underground and fwoomf! The earth gulpswallows dozens of their enemies.

  “Fwoomf,” Chibo repeated.

  “You ka-ome to the bowl,” a goblin said, and started down a stairway leading into the city.

  In the streets, goblins chuffed and barked at the sight of Ji and the others. Vendors sold strange fungus-foods from strange carts and goblin kids peered at them from strange doorways. Goblin soldiers knee-wobbled from alleys and joined the procession. Just a few at first. Then a few dozen. By the time they reached the wavy columns that stood sentry above the sunken stadium, hundreds of goblins marched behind them.

  “I thought we were meeting ogres,�
�� Chibo fluted. “To lead us to the Ogrelands.”

  “Maybe we are,” Ji said, taking his hand.

  Sally’s tufted ears flattened. “Maybe.”

  Past the wavy columns, the stadium opened in the floor, revealing an oval bowl big enough to hold hundreds of goblins. Twenty or thirty goblins knelt on mushroom-shaped stools, gnawing at rocks. Stone chips speckled the floor, the falling bits sounding like gravelly rain, and burly goblins surrounded the barn-sized throne, wielding clubs with jagged heads.

  “Elite guards,” Sally growled.

  “Perhaps elite guides,” Roz said faintly.

  “Yeah, that’s why they’ve got clubs.” Sally’s muzzle twitched. “To guide.”

  Halfway down the ramp into the bowl, Ji caught Roz frowning at a row of bars lining one wall. Prison cells. She didn’t say anything, though. The goblins zigzagged around mushroom-shaped stools, heading across the stadium. When they reached the huge throne, Ji craned his neck, looking toward the top. It was way too big for a goblin. Way too big for an ogre. Was the White Worm a giant? Where was he?

  “Kneel before the White Worm,” one of the goblin guards barked.

  Ji knelt. “Uh . . .”

  “We are honored,” Roz told the guard.

  “Speak for yourself,” Sally murmured.

  “Where is he?” Chibo asked. “Can you see him? I can’t see him.”

  “I’m not sure,” Ji told him. “I can’t—”

  “He is before you!” the goblin guard announced.

  Ji peered higher. The seat of the throne was twenty feet overhead, and it looked as empty as a sack of nothing.

  “His Deepness is ka-ind indeed to see us,” he said, because it sounded like the sort of thing you told a huge empty throne. “So generous! We are beyond happy to—”

  “I AM THE WHITE WORM,” a voice boomed from above. “GAZE UPON MY POWER AND TREMBLE!”

  The voice made Ji’s bones vibrate, and he tried to obey, he tried to gaze at the White Worm’s power—but he still didn’t see anything. He did tremble, though. That voice sounded like a giant chewing on piglets: he trembled plenty.

  “YOU KA-AME INTO MY HOLY PRESENCE TO BEG A BOON FROM THE WHITE WORM?”

  Beg a boon? Nin asked. Yes! We need to warnstop the ogres.

  “And find the Ice Witch,” Chibo whispered.

  “Y-yes, Your Deepness.” Roz pressed one hand to her chest. “We are friends to the goblins in the human city, and we as-ka that you—”

  “SPEA-KA UP, HALF HUMAN! I KA-ANNOT HEAR A WORD YOU ARE MUTTERING.”

  “I beg your pardon, Your Politeness!” Roz said, raising her voice. “We beg a boon! We hope that you will favor us with—”

  “IS YOUR HEAD INSIDE A SAC-KA OF FEATHERS? ARE YOU CHEWING A DUNG-SHROOM? I STILL KA-ANNOT HEAR YOU!”

  Ji chewed his lower lip. Should they run? They couldn’t: not with a hundred goblins in the bowl, a thousand in the city, and a huge, invisible, furious goblin king on the throne.

  “We beg a boon, Your Deepness!” Roz shouted. “We beg that you’ll lead us to the Ogrelands!”

  “WHO DARES SHOUT AT THE WHITE WORM?” the voice demanded. “RUDE! RUDE BEAST!”

  “I’m sorry, I—”

  “OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!” the White Worm bellowed. “CHOP THEIR NEC-KAS! FEED THE FUNGUS WITH THEIR BLOOD!”

  15

  THE GOBLIN GUARDS bobbled forward, clubs raised. Sally tensed, Chibo spread his wings, and Ji jumped to his feet.

  “We’re sorry!” Ji yelped. “We come in peace! We love Kultultul! We chew rocks for fun!”

  A squeal of laughter sounded from the throne; then a high-pitched voice said, “I’m ka-idding! Just ka-idding! Let them stay fully headed!”

  The goblin guards stopped and woofled. A few showed their teeth. Laughing? Hungry? Both?

  “Oh, did you see their faces?” the high-pitched voice continued. “I thought the scaly one was going to wet his widdershins!” The voice paused. “No? That is not the human saying?”

  Ji squinted toward the throne and saw a weird goblin standing at the edge of the seat. Even weirder than the average goblin: smaller and rounder, with six arms instead of four. Also, it was pink. Bright pink. Actually, it looked a lot like the misshapen pink potatoes in the wall shrines.

  “Send them up!” the pink goblin said, chuffing merrily. “With heads still attached for now!”

  The goblin guards woofled. “We obey, Your Deepness.”

  Ji gaped. That shrimpy six-armed pink goblin was the White Worm? How had such a booming voice come from such a little mouth, and changed to such a high-pitched squeal?

  The guards prodded Ji and the others toward a marble staircase that rose to the second level of the throne. At the top, a polished marble expanse stretched toward another throne—a regular-sized throne that stood atop the massive throne’s seat. More mushroom-stools dotted the throne floor, and goblins in white tunics clustered around the pink goblin.

  “So! You are the former humans!” The White Worm bustled forward to greet them, six arms spreading in welcome. “Transformed into something better. But only halfway. Too bad! Poor ka-reatures. You wish you’d been changed into goblins, you unluc-ka-y half humans!”

  “Y-yes, your majesty,” Roz stuttered. “If only—”

  The White Worm clapped his middle set of arms. “Offer our guests a seat!”

  Three white-clad goblins gestured toward mushroom-stools at the foot of the throne. Roz curtsied politely before sitting, while Ji perched on a stool near two goblins playing a furious game of Seven Pebbles. His mind whirled with questions. Where were the mountains? Where were the ogres? Why was the White Worm pink?

  The White Worm climbed onto the regular-sized throne, crossed four of his arms, scratched his belly with a fifth, and held a stone scepter with a sixth. “Tell me your tale, half humans, and I will help you or swallow you whole.”

  “Is he kidding again?” Chibo whispered.

  “No idea,” Ji said.

  He’s too small to wholeswallow you, Nin said. He’d have to chopslice you first, or pastegrind you into a chewy marmalade.

  Ji shot a stern look at the backpack, even though—thankfully—the goblins couldn’t hear Nin’s mind-speak.

  Roz told the White Worm about the Diadem Rite, the transformation, and their escape. “And now we must beg for your help. We need the Ice Witch to break this spell. We plan to ask the ogres how to find her—unless perhaps Your Politeness knows where she is?”

  The goblin king’s pink skin turned fish-belly white and his voice boomed out: “THE WHITE WORM KNOWS ALL!”

  “Yes, of course!” Roz blurted. “I’m sorry!”

  White! Nin said, as Ji’s heart thumped in his chest. We don’t like him when he’s white!

  The king snapped his stone scepter in two. “NEVER DOUBT MY KNOWLEDGE, HALF HUMANS!”

  “I beg your pardon. I meant no offense!”

  The White Worm turned pink again and snatched a new scepter from a stack beside his throne. “No need to apologize,” he told Roz in his squeakier voice. “It’s ka-wite all right. So, you need help reaching the Ogrelands?”

  Roz gulped. “Y-yes, Your Deepness.”

  “And what do you offer in return?”

  “Ah,” Roz said. “Er.”

  “How ka-an we serve you?” Ji asked.

  “An eka-cellent question, Scalyboots! That is the perfect thing to as-ka. How ka-an you serve me?”

  Trying to look eager and obedient, Ji watched the White Worm attentively. When the goblin didn’t continue, he said, “However Your Deepness wishes?”

  “Another good answer!” The White Worm rubbed his beaver teeth and asked Roz, “Do you know the rules of Seven Pebbles?”

  “I am sorry to say that we do not,” she said.

  “I am sorry to say that you do not!”

  “Er, well, to our great regret—”

  “To my great regret!”

  “Um,” Roz rumbled.

  “We’d
love to learn, Your Deepness,” Ji said. “Although we hear it’s a very subtle and complex g—” He coughed into his fist. “Strategic challenge.”

  “Eka-stremely challenging. Far beyond the ability of mere half humans.” The White Worm gestured toward the two goblins playing in front of them. “Observe. Look. And also . . .”

  “Yes, your majesty?” Roz asked when the goblin king trailed off.

  “Watch,” he finished.

  A spiral pattern of lumps—the game board—was carved into the floor between the two goblins. Each goblin held one pebble in each of its four hands. The first goblin placed a pebble on a lump, then took a pebble from another position. It placed two more and moved three. The other goblin placed four pebbles, one of which slid down a lump.

  “No doubt you are terribly jealous that you ka-annot understand!” the White Worm said. “You are filled with unshed tears?”

  “Y-yes.” Ji swallowed, thinking fast. He needed this blithering weirdo to help them reach the Ogrelands, which meant he needed to play along. “We would love to learn the rules, Your Majesty. If it’s allowed?”

  “Ha!” The White Worm hopped down from his throne. “You aim too high! Finding ogres is easier than ka-ompeting in Seven Pebbles.”

  “We beg your pardon—” Roz started.

  “But I am a good and generous ka-ing! So I shall show you. The rules are simple. Each ka-ontest of Seven Pebbles uses fifteen pebbles.”

  “But then—” Chibo fluted, “why is it called Seven Pebbles?”

  “Foolish half human!” The White Worm stared at Chibo. “What are you ka-alled?”

  “Me? I’m Chibo.”

  “And how many pebbles do you have?”

  His huge eyes widening, Chibo gazed at the White Worm. “Zero?”

  “But you are not ka-alled ‘Zero Pebbles’! You are ka-alled ‘Chibo.’ It is ka-alled ‘Seven Pebbles’ because that is its name.” The White Worm squeaked a laugh. “The rules! Listen ka-losely. You ka-an play a pebble from any of your hands, but you must play only those pebbles that weren’t played in any of the last three turns, unless one of them was played twice by one of your left hands in the previous eight turns, or five turns if your opponent’s teeth are shorter than yours, or if it is a pebble you played seven turns ago, or plan to play seven turns in the future—or six turns, in the lower tunnels—unless, of ka-ourse, it is one of your first five ka-ontests—in which ka-ase you withdraw three or one or two pebbles from the board, depending on the score and the pebbles and the moons.”