Beast & Crown #2

by Joel Ross

  “With six mighty limbs, I choose six pebbles,” the White Worm told Ji. “With two feeble twigs, you choose two. I will beat you in four turns.”

  “I’ll win in three,” Ji said, feeling a thrum of power in his chest.

  The White Worm giggled. “Nobody wins in three! Three is not possible!”

  “You’ll see.”

  “I’ll see you chopped into pieces,” the White Worm replied. “And you will fertilize the fungus farms.”

  The goblin king plucked a pebble from the black tray, a roundish stone that looked like dirty quartz, cloudy and angular.

  Except it wasn’t quartz.

  Not even close.

  The king chose another pebble, then another. “Does the half human even know how to choose? Which are best to ka-pture, and which to slide?”

  Ji kept his eyes on the tray. “Different pebbles do different things?”

  A scornful woofling sounded. A few goblins muttered “foolish two-arms” and “half-human halfwit.”

  “You know nothing!” the White Worm chortled, and chose the rest of his pebbles.

  “My turn?” Ji asked, his heart beating fast.

  “Yes, yes!” the White Worm chuffed. “Try your best, you gormless gekko.”

  Of the initial fifteen pebbles, only nine remained. Ji choose the nearest one, and a mocking mutter spread through the spectators.

  “Not that one!” the White Worm scoffed. “That is the worst of the bunch.”

  Ji tested the weight of the pebble in his palm. “Feels okay to me.”

  “Four turns,” the White Worm said, his beady eye gleaming. “And then eleven pieces.”

  That time, Ji didn’t feel a shiver of fear. He grabbed his second pebble and scanned the crowd for the mean-looking goblin, his heart beating with a slow thump thud, thump thud.

  “My move,” the White Worm said, sliding a pebble onto the board.

  The crowd said, “Ooooh.”

  With a trembling hand, Ji placed one of his pebbles.

  The crowd said, “Ka!”

  The White Worm dropped another pebble onto the board.

  The crowd said, “Ahhhh!”

  Ji plucked two pebbles from the board.

  “That is not allowed!” the White Worm said.

  “No?” Ji swiped a handful of pebbles from the tray. “Then how about this?”

  The White Worm paled. “You thin-ka you can cheat the glorious White Worm? CHOP HIM NOW! YOUR KA-APTAIN KA-MMANDS YOU!”

  17

  JI CLOSED HIS fists around the pebbles . . . except they weren’t pebbles.

  They were diamonds.

  After he’d honed his dragonhunger in the goblin tunnels, he’d been able to sense them from his cell. At least, he’d thought they were gems. But now heat surged through his arms, lava boiled his blood—and a fireball erupted from his eyes.

  The blast caught the goblin king in the chest and flung him off the throne. Six white arms flailed as the White Worm hurtled across the stadium. He slammed to the ground, ricocheted off a half dozen mushroom-stools, and lay still except for a vague waving of his belly-arms.

  The elite guards swarmed at Ji, shouting in Goblish.

  Two more diamonds turned black in Ji’s hands as he swept eye-flames at the guards.

  They dove aside, screaming in Goblish.

  “Behind you!” Sally yelled from the cell. “Duck!”

  Ji fell to the ground and a club whistled past his head. When he spun, his eye-flames scorched a char mark across the throne before sweeping at the goblin who’d attacked him.

  The stone club glowed cherry red in the goblin’s fist. The goblin howled and fled, and another diamond crumbled in Ji’s hands. Two more cracked when he swept his burning gaze around the fleeing, terrified guards. Then he spotted the mean-looking one with the keys.

  “You!” he shouted. “Stop right there!”

  The mean-looking goblin leaped away, but a fireball blasted it to the ground.

  “Give me the keys,” Ji snarled.

  The goblin fainted.

  “That works,” Ji said, and tugged the key ring from its belt.

  Panicked woofles sounded across the city, along with the uneven clatter of running goblins. A gong—maybe a warning bell—echoed through the cavern, and the keys jingled in Ji’s hand. His fists throbbed. He wanted to burn. He wanted to set fire to the stone and drink the souls of his enemies. A fathomless dragonhunger seized his heart, and he teetered on the edge of forgetting himself.

  “Jiyong!” Roz called.

  Ji shook himself. Right. The cell. He trotted down the throne stairs to the cell, ash trailing between his fingers as diamonds crumbled in his palms.

  “The pebbles were gems?” Sally asked from inside the bars.

  “Diamonds,” he told her.

  Her ears flattened. “You knew? You knew they were diamonds all this time and didn’t say anything?”

  “I didn’t know!” Ji’s hand shook when he shoved the key in the lock. “Not for sure. Not until I got close.”

  “You didn’t know?” she growled. “That’s even worse. You risked playing that stupid game without knowing the pebbles were diamonds?”

  He unlocked the cell door. “Sort of.”

  “I’m going to chop your head off myself!” Sally grabbed the keys from his hand and bounded deeper into the cell to free Roz.

  A wave of weakness made Ji’s legs tremble. Using dragonfire exhausted him. He scanned the throne and stadium, afraid of a goblin attack, afraid of the White Worm—and afraid of himself. A smoky haze covered the city, drifting past domes and towers. He heard chuffing sobs over the fearful woofling and the echoing gong. The weeping sounded like goblin children, and nausea coiled in Ji’s stomach.

  A crack sounded inside the cell as Roz broke the metal chest to free Nin. Ji gripped the remaining diamonds harder. Heat scalded his palms and spread into his heart. He eyed the soldiers gathering at the top of the stadium ramp. He stoked his fire even though he was already dizzy, already weak.

  Roz stepped beside him, adjusting the straps of Nin’s dirt-filled backpack. Emerald-green light flickered as Chibo landed beside him and Sally followed, her hackles raised and her claws flexing.

  “How do we get out of here?” she growled.

  Roz pointed her horn toward the stalagmite towers. “I presume we climb one of those. Though they don’t seem to reach the roof.”

  “You must ka-limb to the top of that tower.” Chiptooth’s belly-arm pointed to an upside-down tower. “Past the marka-tplace, aka-ross that bridge there. You will find a glowhole to the surface.”

  “Thanks,” Chibo piped.

  “C’mon,” Sally growled. “Let’s move.”

  Roz smiled at Chiptooth and helped Ji toward the ramp rising to the city streets. Nin babbled mind-speak that Ji couldn’t take in over the roar of fire in his ears, while Sally suddenly looked backward.

  She tossed the key ring to Chiptooth. “Unlock the other prisoners.”

  “You are ka-ind,” Chiptooth told her. “And your heart is mighty.”

  Sally scowled with embarrassment. “Thanks.”

  “I will free them,” Chiptooth promised. “We will join the rebels.”

  “That’s very brave.”

  “It’s very necessary.”

  “I’m—” Sally stood a little straighter. “I’m glad to meet someone fighting for what matters. Fighting with honor.”

  “Honor,” Chiptooth said, showing both belly-palms to Sally, “is the highest form of politeness.”

  She mirrored the gesture with her paws. “Good luck-ka.”

  After Chiptooth rushed off to unlock the cells, Roz glanced at Sally. “Apparently all goblins aren’t alike.”

  Sally grunted at her, then prowled up the ramp toward the city streets. She led the way past the wavy columns, toward a wide intersection—and frowned at the soldiers gathering in the crossroads.

  Watch out! Three ant lions crawled from the backpack onto Roz’
s shoulder. More goblinfighters ahead!

  “Stop right there!” Sally barked at the goblins. “Or the lizard cooks you!”

  With a spark of panic, Ji sent flames roaring upward. The soldiers in the crossroads chuffed and raised their belly-arms in surrender.

  “Yeah,” Sally snarled at them. “That’s what I thought.”

  Ji lowered his head and opened his fists. A pile of ashes filled one palm and a single half-burned diamond nestled in the other: only enough for one final blast.

  Farther into the city, goblin parents stood with goblin children in marble doorways. Vendors trembled at stalls, and a silence fell—except for the sound of the gong. Nobody bothered them. Not at the squares, not at the marketplace. Not as they climbed up the first tower or crossed a bridge to the downward-facing tower. Uneven steps—built for goblin knees—zigzagged upward, past wall niches displaying pink potatoes.

  “Maybe that’s why the goblins in that crossroads didn’t attack,” Roz rumbled. “Because the White Worm is not able to lead them.”

  “Either that,” Sally said, “or they’re scared of Ji’s eyeballs.”

  He showed her the last cracked diamond in his hand. “Good thing they don’t know I’m almost out of gems.”

  “What?” she growled. “You were bluffing?”

  “Nah,” he said. “You were bluffing.”

  “And you say I’m a bad liar,” she said, her muzzle lifting in a grin.

  In a round chamber at the top of the tower, a hole opened in the ceiling: an exit to the surface. “Where’s the ladder?” Chibo fluted. “I don’t see a ladder.”

  “Neither do we,” Ji told him.

  Sally growled. “Sounds like the White Worm is conscious again. The goblin army is gathering. We need to go before—”

  “Never fear!” Chibo piped, and flew through the hole in the ceiling.

  “Get back here!” Sally yelled after him.

  “Chibo?” Roz rumbled. “Chibo!”

  Silence from above.

  “Chibo!” Sally shouted.

  “Roz,” Ji said, “can you throw Sally through the—”

  A ladder fell through the hole; then Chibo’s face appeared. “Sprites do that.”

  When Ji reached the top of the ladder, the sunlight brought tears to his eyes. A squat, ramshackle watchtower stood above him in the middle of a lifeless plain. A few other towers rose nearby, each with a ladder descending into a skylight of the goblin city.

  He took a steadying breath. The breeze smelled fresh after the sickly-sweet air of the goblin city, and the cracked earth was a reddish brown. A few clusters of cacti broke up the flatness. Mountains rose in the distance, over green foothills and a wide band of what looked like dirty snow.

  “What is this place?” Sally asked, her ears twitching.

  “The Clay Plains,” Roz rumbled, struggling up the ladder behind her. “We’re no longer in the Summer Realm. The Clay Plains! I never imagined I’d see them.”

  “What do they look like?” Chibo asked, hovering overhead. “All I see is a big flat nothing.”

  “That’s what they look like,” Sally told him.

  The redflats? Nin asked, with a thrill of excitement. We are not far from the Ogrelands! When we were a cublet, we used to sit outside our mother’s ridge and peeksee the redflats!

  “Which way are the ogres?” Ji asked, scratching the lumps on his forehead.

  Roz pointed. “East.”

  Just past the Gravewoods.

  “That’s what ogres call the Shield Wall, yes?” Roz asked.

  One of the ant lions on her backpack nodded. But we ogres are ashamed to chattalk about the Gravewoods.

  “At least tell us what kind of wall it is,” Ji said.

  The evilmagic kind.

  “Are the goblins chasing us?” Chibo landed and retracted his wings. “Can you see the mountains? Did I totally save the day?”

  Ji looked away from the ant lions on the backpack. “No, yes, and totally.”

  Chibo beamed. “Cool.”

  “The White Worm’s coming,” Sally said. “There’s nowhere to hide for miles and Ji’s out of gems.”

  “He has one diamond left, I believe.” Roz gestured toward the wooden towers. “Enough to burn the towers and ladders so the goblins can’t follow us.”

  Ji drew on the last scraps of power in the diamond. Heat scorched through his arm to his chest and exploded from his eyes. The rough-hewn logs of the tower charred, but didn’t catch fire.

  “C’mon, Ji!” Sally growled. “You couldn’t toast bread with that much flame. You couldn’t light a candle.”

  “You couldn’t wilt a lettuce leaf!” Chibo piped.

  You couldn’t sleepylull a baby! Nin said.

  “Um,” Sally said. “Ogres lull babies to sleep with fire?”

  Not with feeblesparks like that!

  “Would you shut your mouths?” Ji grunted, blasting more dragonfire through his eyes.

  The watchtower burst into flames like a haystack in a lava flow. As Ji set fire to the other towers, the diamond turned to dust in his fist. He opened his hand to watch the last of the ashes—the last gem—waft away.

  “Very thorough,” Roz said, a little too calmly. “However, there is a slight drawback.”

  “What now?” Ji demanded, weak from shooting fire.

  “Well, the queen’s troops will see the smoke.”

  Ji cursed, and Chibo piped, “They’ll find us! We’ve got to run, we’ve got to fly! They’ll know exactly where we are!”

  “No, they’ll know exactly where we were.” Sally gazed across the plain. “I don’t see them yet. We just have to reach the mountains before they catch us.”

  The red-brown earth grew lighter as they hiked eastward, away from the plumes of smoke. After an hour, a coarse bluish grass covered the cracked ground. Roz said that a long time ago the Clay Plain had been a marsh, until the Summer Queen seized power. Then the water dried, the plants withered, and nothing remained but layers of terra-cotta.

  “Like the warriors in the city?” Sally asked.

  Roz nodded. “Some claim that Summer Queens shape terra-cotta warriors from this soil. Others say they use holy magic to bind their most dangerous enemies into their service.”

  Which turns them into clayfighters? Nin asked.

  “There are rumors of a spell that transforms the queens’ enemies into mindless lumps of obedience.”

  “Wait,” Sally said, her ears swiveling. “I hear them. They’re coming!”

  “Who?” Chibo asked. “The goblins?”

  “No.” She pointed toward the Summer Realm. “The queen’s soldiers. A lot of them—a whole army.”

  When Ji shaded his eyes to look, an ant lion hopped from his hair to his sleeve. In the distance, a flock of birds wheeled around a stand of cacti. Nothing else moved.

  “How far away are they?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Sally said. “Maybe half a day?”

  “Have they seen us?”

  “I don’t think so. They’re riding toward the goblin city. But we kind of stand out on this flat field of nothing.”

  Like the ogres say, Nin told them. Nothing hides in the redflats except clay and melons. Golly!

  Ji blinked at the backpack. “Golly?”

  Melons. Golly.

  “Melancholy?” Roz suggested. “Nothing hides in the redflats except clay and melancholy. That’s rather poetic.”

  “Forget poetry,” Ji said. “Keep moving before the army spots us.”

  “Not us,” Roz rumbled, hunching her shoulders. “They won’t spot us. They’ll spot me. The big, lumbering, ungainly troll.”

  Ji glowered at Roz and marched toward the foothills. Even without a gem, he felt inflamed and overheated. Stupid Roz. Like it was her fault for being tall. Like any of them thought for a second that she was a burden.

  The big lumbergainly half troll, Nin said. Nobody is a truetroll until Beginning.

  “Beginning what?” Sally
asked.

  “Beginning” is passagerite, a ceremony that turns the wisest ogres into trolls.

  “A troll is just a wise ogre?” Chibo questioned.

  All cubs turn into ogres. Some ogres turn into trolls. When an ogre’s wisdom flows pure, the tribe gathers for a passagerite of Beginning. A thunderclap ceremony, a grandsolemn test of the soul.

  “So Roz isn’t a true troll because she wasn’t clapped by thunder?” Chibo asked.

  “If a troll is just a wise ogre,” Sally asked Nin, “how come they look different?”

  When cubs choose female or male, Nin explained, they change into ogres. When wisdom chooses ogres? They also change.

  “Ogres are weird,” Sally said.

  Clouds gathered overhead. Gritty air stung Ji’s nose. When the crunching of the red-brown plain ended, the ground turned softer. The sun dipped toward the horizon, and the scent of the foothills rose on the breeze: the sweet perfume of black soil and flowering trees. Dusk fell and a gentle slope rose toward meadows and woods.

  Eventually Ji and the others made camp in the light of two quarter-moons. Only two moons, thankfully. There was nowhere to hide if the kumiho appeared.

  Ji slept fitfully until Roz shook him awake. “Good morning!”

  He peered at the predawn light. “Not morning yet.”

  “Not good, either.” Sally frowned toward the Clay Plains. “The queen’s army is still following us. And there’s troublenews bigbad.”

  Troublebad bignews, Nin corrected, as two ant lions waggled their antennae.

  Ji sat up. “What’s wrong?”

  “The goblin army is above ground, and they’re also heading this way.”

  “No way,” Chibo said, rubbing his eyes. “They’re both after us?”

  “A few armies don’t matter,” Ji said. “We just need to find the Ice Witch.”

  “A few armies don’t matter?” Sally peered at Ji. “Did you really just say that?”

  “They don’t matter at all,” Ji told her with a grin. “Not if they can’t catch us.”

  18

  THE WOODS THICKENED as they traveled higher into the foothills. Monkeys chattered and insects darted through the dappled shade. Meadows stretched beneath the mountains, and the band of “dirty snow” that Ji had spotted from the goblin watchtower looked like pale marble.