by Joel Ross
Ji stared at the king in bafflement. He made even less sense than Nin talking about a pickled beet. Heck, he made less sense than a pickled beet talking about Nin.
“That is merely the first rule,” the White Worm announced. “We ka-all it ‘Rule Six.’”
Chibo giggled, a little hysterically.
“A fascinating ka-ontest, and such a ka-lear explanation!” Ji enthused, reaching for a pebble. “So with my two hands, I can pick up two pebbles—”
“DO NOT TOUCH!” the White Worm bellowed, paling to a milky color. “FILTHY HALF HUMAN! “
Ji jerked his hand back. “Sorry! Sorry!”
“OFF WITH HIS HANDS! OFF WITH HIS WRISTS! OFF WITH HIS FINGERS!”
“Wait—” Ji blurted when a goblin guard shuffled toward him. “No! I didn’t touch anything!”
“Oh, that is ka-wite fine, then.” The White Worm pinkened and waved the guard away. “Let Scalyboots ka-eep his hands. He only has two, after all! Two hands. Poor humans.”
“Th-thanks,” Ji stammered. “I didn’t know.”
“Of ka-ourse you cannot touch pebbles without an invitation!” the White Worm scoffed. “Only goblins truly understand Seven Pebbles. Too ka-omplex for your simple minds.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
The White Worm gestured to the game being played on the ground. “And some goblins play terribly! Loo-ka at these two dolts. Disgraceful. Terrible! Chop off their heads if they ka-annot play better.” When the guards merely gazed at him, he said, “Chop-chop! Start chopping!”
The guards grabbed the two goblins and dragged them away.
“Surely you can’t execute them because . . .” Roz gave a weak smile. “Are you jesting again, Your Politeness?”
“Ha ha!” the White Worm said. “No.”
“You cannot—” Roz started.
“Seven Pebbles is a serious ka-ontest! And when played with the royal pebbles? The world itself shakes!”
“The—the royal pebbles?” Ji asked.
The goblin king pointed his stone scepter directly overhead, at a stalactite jutting down from the cavern roof. A dozen strings dangled from the stalactite, swaying in the air sixty feet above the throne. No. Fifteen strings, each one knotted around an angular stone that looked like a cloudy quartz crystal.
“Behold the most glorious set of pebbles in the underground realm!” the White Worm declared. “As I am the best player.” He peered at Ji. “Ah! You like-a them, don’t you, Scalyboots?”
“Yeah.” Ji stared at the pebbles. They didn’t look like much, but there was something royal about them. “I mean, yes, Your Goblinificence.”
“They are royal.” Swirls of white appeared on the White Worm’s skin. “ANYONE WHO WISHES TO RULE MUST BEAT ME IN SEVEN PEBBLES!” The swirls faded. “If they win, they are the new ka-ing. And if they lose . . .”
“You chop off their heads?” Ji guessed.
“And their nec-kas,” the White Worm agreed.
Ask about the ogres! Nin said. We need to warnscare them not to attack the city now that the evilqueen is strong again!
“Ask about the Ice Witch,” Sally murmured.
“We should not waste your majesty’s time,” Roz told the White Worm, with a tremulous smile. “If you’d just point us toward the ogres, we’ll be on our way.”
“Of ka-orse!” the White Worm said grandly. “You wish to find the ogres? Simple! Just ka-limb from the city and head toward the mountains until . . .”
“Until what?” Chibo asked, learning forward.
“Until you reach the mountains!” The White Worm chuffed a laugh. “There is only one problem.”
“What’s that, Your Deepness?” Roz asked.
“I obey the Summer Queen,” he said, his pink skin paling to white. “AND SHE TOLD ME TO LOC-KA YOU UP.”
Ji gasped—and the goblin guards attacked.
16
JI WOKE INSIDE one of the stone cells that lined the bowl, his head aching from getting bashed with a stone club. He groaned and rolled onto his side.
“Here,” someone said, and gave him a damp cloth. “This will help.”
“Thanks,” Ji said.
“Than-ka you for than-ka-ing me,” the voice said.
A goblin! A goblin was bending over him—and getting ready to smash the rest of his head in!
“Hey!” Ji scrambled to his feet. “Get away from me!”
“I am sorry to say that I ka-annot,” the goblin chuffed, gesturing with a belly-arm. “I am a prisoner too, I beg pardon.”
“Oh.” Ji unballed his fists. “What did you do?”
The goblin showed his chipped teeth nervously. “Gave you a wet rag? Perhaps too wet? Not wet enough?”
“No, I mean, why are you locked up? Did—” Ji stopped and scanned the cell. “Where are my friends?”
Dozens of goblins huddled on the ground and dozens more hunched in neighboring cells. To Ji’s relief, a furry heap of hobgoblin snored in his own cell. Chibo lay beside Sally, while Roz slumped unconscious in a section of the cell with heavier bars, a metal chest on the ground near her.
“Sally!” Ji trotted closer. “Roz! Are you okay?”
“They are alive, I am happy to say,” the chip-toothed goblin told him, following along. “But, I am less happy to say, they are only alive be-ka-ause the White Worm—”
“Mighty worm, powerful worm,” the other goblins murmured.
“—plans to hand you over to the ka-ween’s soldiers.”
“Well, he won’t,” Ji said, kneeling beside Sally. She was breathing steadily, and when he prodded one of her ears, it twitched.
The goblin cocked its head. “I beg your pardon?”
“We’ll stop him.”
“The White Worm—”
“His Deepness, His Brutality,” the other goblins murmured.
“—always gets what he wants.”
Chibo was shivering, so Ji asked the goblins for a blanket to cover him, then checked on Roz. Ji dimly remembered that she’d knocked a dozen goblin guards aside before the White Worm joined the fray. When he turned white, he was even stronger than a troll.
“Roz?” Ji asked, fear squeezing his chest. “Are you okay?”
She took a shuddering breath in her cell-within-a-cell.
“Roz, say something!”
“Muh,” she moaned, raising her head. “Ji?”
“Hush,” he told her. “Go back to sleep. You rest. I’ve got this.”
“Yuh,” she said, lowering her head.
Ji watched her and wanted to cry. From anger, from helplessness. From coming so far and ending up in a cell. They’d escaped knights and kumiho—and a stupid pink potato-shaped goblin caught them? Why did the White Worm obey the Summer Queen anyway? Didn’t he know she enslaved goblins? And where was Nin?
Ji wiped his face and knocked on the metal chest. “Nin? Are you in there?”
Sneakyji! Are you in there?
“What? No. I’m right here.”
We’re right here too! Where is here?
“You’re locked in a chest inside a goblin prison. Are you okay?”
We are snug as a skunk in a trunk. Also, we are tremblescared and terrified.
“Me, too,” Ji said. “I’d wet my widdershins, if I knew what that meant.”
You will find a way out.
“There are bars so thick that even Roz can’t smash them.”
You are not Smashyji, Nin told him. You are Sneakyji.
Except how was he supposed to sneak out of a dungeon in the middle of a goblin city? Ji paced in the cell, weaving past clusters of frightened goblins. He glowered through the bars at the White Worm, who stood at a banquet table stuffing his face with three of his hands while a fourth scratched his bottom and the last two scolded one of his attendants. Then the royal pebbles caught Ji’s attention. Fifteen pebbles dangled in the air a hundred feet away, like the most boring wind chimes in the world.
“How long before the queen’s soldiers get here?” h
e asked Chiptooth. “It must take days just to tell her we’re here.”
“I am very sorry,” Chiptooth told him. “They are already on the way. The White Worm—”
“All-knowing Worm,” the other goblins murmured.
“—sent messengers days ago, while you were in the tunnels.”
“They’re already coming?” Ji rubbed his face. “Do they even know the way?”
“Yes, the human ka-ween visits every several years.”
“The queen comes here? The Summer Queen? Why?”
“To chec-ka on the White Worm—”
“Glorious Worm, ka-lever Worm,” the others muttered.
“—and tell him how many goblins to send.”
“To send where?”
“To the humans.”
Ji frowned. “What? Why?”
“To wor-ka in the human mines and ka-rypts and tunnels,” Chiptooth chuffed sadly. “That is why we are here. The ka-ing chose us to serve, and now he will give us to the humans.”
“Forever,” the other goblins murmured. “And our children, and their children . . .”
A gasp sounded from Roz’s cage-within-a-cage. “The king gives goblins to the Summer Queen?” she asked, rising to her knees. “He betrays his own people for her?”
“Every goblin ka-ing does this,” Chiptooth said, bobbing its head. “Sends thousands of goblins to wor-ka for the humans. That is the price of peace.”
“That’s not peace,” Ji said, and watched the goblin king waddle in front of his throne. The White Worm looked like a fool, but this was no joke. Sending goblins to live in pens, to die in slavery? This was evil.
“In every generation,” Chiptooth said, “the Summer Ka-ween grants a new White Worm—”
“Terrible Worm, brutal Worm,” the other goblins muttered.
“—the strength to rule us. In the olden days we were many tribes, and free. Now there is only one tribe. And the rebels.”
“What rebels?” Sally asked, sitting up with Chibo’s head in her lap.
“Goblins who wor-ka against both thrones.”
“You mean the goblins who are helping the ogres?” Roz asked Chiptooth. “They’re rebels? They don’t follow the king?”
“Yes. They fight to stop the human ka-ween, so the White Worm—”
“Greedy and treacherous Worm.”
“—will fall. If the ogres attac-ka soon, they will be vika-torious. She is wea-ka.”
Roz bowed her head. “I’m sorry, but the queen’s not weak anymore. She’s become strong again.”
The goblin prisoners waved their belly-arms in horror, and Chiptooth said, “Please tell us this is not the truth! Please! She is still wea-ka!”
“We’re pretty sure she’s strong again,” Ji said. “Though we don’t know how.”
“Er.” Roz cleared her throat. “We have a theory.”
“We do?” Ji asked.
“To grow stronger, the queen must weaken someone else. That is how her magic works.”
“Right,” Sally growled. “Balance.”
“Do you recall the nobleman in the library coach talking about a blue-bat plague? And all the dead blue-bats at the water clock?”
“Poor little guys,” Chibo fluted sadly.
“You think she killed them,” Sally growled to Roz. “You think the queen wiped out the blue-bats and drained their power to strengthen herself.”
“Yes.”
“Why them?” Chibo asked, almost wailing. “Why blue-bats?”
“Perhaps she needed the sort of magic they have? Or perhaps they were simply the easiest targets.”
A wordless feeling of despair came from Nin. So she is realtruly strong again? Ogres will not survive if we don’t warnscare them. The ogres will not survive.
Roz rumbled softly to Nin, while Sally lashed her tail. Chibo spoke with the goblins, who woofled in reply. Asking questions, offering comfort. A few of the younger goblins wept, but Ji turned away, his gaze sweeping the white marble stadium through the cell bars. How long before the queen’s soldiers came? And who would lead them? Posey and Nichol? Mr. Ioso and Prince Brace? All of them together?
It didn’t matter. Once they arrived, Ji and the others didn’t have a chance. They’d be sacrificed to strengthen the Summer Realm—to keep the goblins enslaved, the ogres beaten, and the crown forever triumphant.
The sunlight streaming through the holes in the cavern roof dimmed as dusk fell in the world outside. Torches flickered to life around the marble city. Chuffed songs echoed in the streets and a busy woofling came from the marketplace.
But in the cells, fearful silence reigned. The goblins hunched together. Roz and Chibo dozed off, still weakened from the fight, while Sally picked flecks of gravel from her tail. Soon only Ji was awake. He rested his lumpy forehead on a cell bar and watched bonfires blaze across the goblin city, casting a dull yellow light.
The fires roared higher. Flames spewed like snake tails.
A booming voice shouted, “Off with his neck!”
Six giant hands played Seven Pebbles—and Ji was one of the pebbles, scraping across a playing board. Chunks of diamond slid across the lumpy spirals—
Ji woke with start, his face pressed to the bars.
Dawn’s light glowed through the holes in the roof. Ji used the trench in the corner, ate some mushrooms, and returned to the bars. For a moment, he glowered toward the White Worm, who was polishing his teeth atop the giant throne. Then Ji’s gaze lingered on the dangling royal pebbles. He didn’t know why. Seven Pebbles couldn’t help them, despite his stupid dream. Nothing could help them, with the Summer Queen’s soldiers galloping closer every minute. Fear dug a pit in his stomach, a hollow ache behind his belly button. A greedy, needy, hungry feeling . . .
“Oh,” he breathed. “I guess sniffing those rocks paid off after all.”
“He said something!” Sally called to Roz.
Ji jerked in surprise. He hadn’t seen Sally standing beside him.
“And what, pray tell,” Roz asked, “did he say?”
“Something about sniffing rocks.”
Rocks sniffsmell delicious! Nin said.
Ji’s pulse pounded in his chest. “I need to challenge the White Worm to a game.”
“Of Seven Pebbles?” Sally asked.
“Hey!” Ji shouted toward the throne. “Hey, White Worm!”
Sally grabbed his arm. “If you lose, they’ll chop your head off.”
“I won’t lose,” he said. “Hey! Wormy!”
“Do you know how to play?” Chibo fluted, gliding beside him.
“Of course not,” Ji scoffed. “Now help me get his attention!”
Sally lashed her tail and called to Roz. “Should we help him?”
“Jiyong, what—” Roz started.
“Wormy!” Ji yelled. “Hey, potato-face! You look like a turnip and you smell like a beet!”
Beets smell fishexcellent, Nin said. And insulting a skullnumb goblin king is not exactly brilly ant.
“Jiyong!” Roz rumbled. “The king is the best player among the goblins, and he has six arms!” She turned to Chiptooth. “You cannot win against someone with more arms, right?”
“You are right, I’m sorry to say,” Chiptooth said. “It is impossible to beat the White Worm—”
“Cunning Worm, evil Worm,” the others muttered.
“—at Seven Pebbles, even with four arms.”
“I challenge you to a game of Seven Pebbles!” Ji hollered across the bowl.
“WHO DARES?” the White Worm boomed, so loud that the goblins near him fell to their knees. “WHO DARES INSULT THE MIGHTY WHITE WORM!”
“I’ll mash you like a pink potato!” Ji shouted—which was not a sentence he’d ever dreamed he’d bellow at a goblin king across an underground city.
Still, it seemed to work. A dozen elite guards marched toward him, clubbing any goblin who got in the way. In a minute, they clustered outside his cell, barking in Goblish. The goblin prisoners knelt while a me
an-looking guard pulled a key ring from its belt and unlocked the door.
“Sally, that one,” Ji said, staring at the mean-looking guard. “Remember that goblin.”
Her ears twitched. “Why?”
“Because that’s the one with the key,” he whispered, and turned toward the goblin guards. “I need Sally to come with me.”
The mean-looking goblin made a rude gesture and barked at the other guards, who grabbed Ji.
“I need her,” he repeated as they were pulled from the cell. “For the challenge!”
“Let me come!” Sally growled.
The guards slammed the door in her face and dragged Ji away. Fortunately, the mean-looking guard stayed with him as they crossed the bowl and climbed to the throne platform. Less fortunately, it shoved Ji to the marble floor. “Kneel before His Deepness!”
“Sure,” Ji said, ignoring the pain in his knees. “Then I’ll crush His Creepness at Seven Pebbles.”
The White Worm lightened to the color of spoiled cream. “LOWER THE ROYAL PEBBLES AND WATCH YOUR KA-ING DESTROY”—he pinkened—“this foolish half human and chop him into eleven pieces!”
Ji swayed fearfully. “Eleven pieces” was way too specific. It sounded like the White Worm had chopped people into ten and twelve pieces, but hadn’t been quite satisfied. Also, Ji had thought he had a great plan but now he wasn’t so sure: his life depended on the royal pebbles.
“I’ve defeated a hundred masters of Seven Pebbles,” the White Worm snarled, twirling his scepter with three of his arms. “When I beat the old White Worm, I won his throne. He was the best player in a century. Until me.”
“And you were the best,” Ji said, his voice barely wavering, “until me.”
A white-clad courtier stepped behind the throne and turned a crank, which lowered the royal pebbles from the stalactite. Sixty feet overhead. Fifty feet. When they were at forty feet, Ji felt a surge of relief so strong that he barely noticed the pebbles being lowered the rest of the way to the throne.
But a minute later, two goblins arranged the pebbles on a black tray and offered them to the White Worm. “Your choice to choose, all-knowing Worm,” they chanted in unison.