The Goblin Wood

by Hilari Bell

  “But—” Tobin felt like he was trying to wade through molasses. Conversation with his mother often had that effect. “But surely the other conspirators named Jeri. You’ll never be able to pull it off!” Unbelievable that Jeriah had agreed to this.

  “Well, that’s been very fortunate. One of the guards mentioned you’d been arrested, and the other conspirators must have guessed what happened, for they’ve all named you as their accomplice. I expect they’re trying to keep their real people free. And I must say, they’ve been very nice about it, for they’ve been saying you were hardly involved in the conspiracy, and Jeriah assures me that he was in it up to his teeth!”

  “Mother, you can’t possibly expect me to take the blame for Jeri.”

  “You’ve done it before.”

  “When he was a child! This is different!”

  “Yes. It’s much more serious.”

  There was a tap on the door and the guard opened it. “This is all the time I can give you, lady. My watch is almost up.”

  “Of course. I’m grateful you managed this much,” said his mother, giving the guard the lovely smile that turned any man who didn’t know her into putty. “Just one more minute, please?”

  The guard smiled and withdrew, and she turned back to Tobin.

  “I know it’s a lot to ask, my dear, but you’ve always looked after him for me, and the consequences would be so much worse for him than for you, and—”

  “It’s a lot to ask,” said Tobin bitterly. “Is this what Jeri wants?”

  His mother’s eyes shifted. “No one can force you to do anything. But you were always the one who saw all the sides of everything. I can’t think where you get it from. Perhaps your father, but he’s so unyielding when he finally makes up his mind, that it doesn’t seem at all—”

  The guard’s face appeared in the peephole. “Lady, you’ve got to go!”

  “Tobin, please, think of the consequences for—”

  “I have to think about all the consequences,” said Tobin. “For everyone.” He had long since learned to be firm with his mother.

  “But—”

  She was still talking when the guard pulled her out. The cell seemed quieter than it had before.

  Jeriah had always been her favorite, just as Tobin was his father’s. Both he and Jeri had accepted that, though hearing it voiced still stung. But she was fighting now to save both her sons. Tobin knew there was nothing she wouldn’t sacrifice in that cause, including his own feelings. And his father’s.

  He had never really understood his parents’ marriage. They dealt well with each other, on the surface. But as Tobin grew older, he had realized more and more how they both went their own way—his father wrapped up in the estate, his mother in correspondence with a vast number of powerful friends. It was through her influence that Jeriah had been offered the chance to enter the Hierarch’s service. A chance now lost forever. Or was it?

  How could she not have told his father? And how could Jeri possibly have accepted that? Jeriah might be impulsive, but he wasn’t a coward. Tobin would have sworn Jeriah would never let him take the blame for something like this. But a week ago, he’d have sworn his brother would never be involved in treason, either.

  His heart felt as cold as the stones beneath his pacing feet. He would sooner have doubted the sunrise than Jeriah’s love.

  But in the end, that didn’t matter. It didn’t matter whether his mother loved Jeriah best, or whether his father believed Tobin had betrayed the principles he’d tried so hard to teach both his sons, or even if Jeriah loved him at all. What mattered was that Tobin loved them. He would save what he could—whatever it might cost.

  Tobin found it difficult to concentrate as the court’s Speaker announced the charges. He’d been standing for some time, awaiting his turn, and his feet were tired. The light from the windows hurt his eyes, which had adapted to the dark after all these days. At least he was warm.

  “…listened willingly, in his weakness, to those who plotted against the sacred Hierarch himself…”

  They’d let him bathe and shave and given him clean clothes, but he still felt soiled and weary to his bones. Neither his mother nor Jeriah was here—his father had probably forbidden them to come. His father sat in the first row of the audience, directly behind the seven lords and priests who were judging him, but he’d looked at Tobin only once—a scorching glance that made Tobin’s stomach twist sickly.

  To his father things were either right or wrong—no middle ground. The muddled mixture of good and bad that Tobin so often perceived under the surface of things was invisible to his father.

  “…agreed to work with the Dark One’s minions, who sought to bring chaos to our dear land. It was only by the Seven Bright Ones’ grace that he had no time to act on his evil intent…”

  His mother had visited him twice in the past three days. On her last visit, she assured him that his father had everything fixed. She didn’t know how much of the carefully hoarded savings his father had been forced to sacrifice, what pieces of the estate, as dear to him as his own body. How much honor had he lost, saving a son he believed to be a traitor? Look at me, Father. I didn’t do it. I’ve kept my honor! But his father continued to stare into middle distance. The Speaker had reached the evidence now. His words were markedly less florid.

  “…seen running away from the meeting where we arrested the traitors. Three guards and three trackers were sent after him. He lost them for a time, in the garden pools, but the dogs picked up his scent again and…”

  …were following Jeri back to the dormitory, where he’d have gotten in safely if I hadn’t stopped him. How could my brother have gotten involved in this? Stupid, stupid, stupid. And typical of Jeriah. He was always involved in some sort of wild scheme.

  His mother said no one suspected Jeri. Why should they? A fifteen-year-old squire was an unlikely conspirator. Tobin had been wondering all week why the traitors had recruited his hare-brained brother. If Jeriah had visited him, he could have asked. He swallowed against the tightness of his throat. There were probably plenty of reasons why Jeri hadn’t come to see him. He’d understand his brother’s seeming abandonment perfectly—as soon as he knew what they were.

  Jeriah’s absence had hurt him even more than his father’s, for he hadn’t expected his father to come, and he had counted on Jeri’s support.

  None of his friends had come to see him, either, but that had dismayed him less—befriending a “traitor” would be dangerous these days. But surely Jeri—

  “Sir Tobin! Do you plead guilty or innocent?” The Speaker sounded as if he was repeating himself, and Tobin, who’d been “Sir” Tobin less than a year and didn’t always respond to the title, felt heat rise in his face.

  His father wasn’t looking at him, but his expression was harder than a statue’s. Right and wrong, all mixed together.

  “Well, Sir Tobin, do you plea—”

  “Guilty,” said Tobin hastily. Forgive me, Father, I have to. “Guilty, sir.”

  A sigh rustled through the room. His father’s distant stare never wavered, but the flesh of his face tightened until you could almost see the skull beneath the skin. Sorry, sorry, sorry.

  The Speaker consulted briefly with the council of judges and turned. “Then hear your punishment, Sir Tobin.”

  That hadn’t taken long! They had probably decided on his sentence days ago, when his father bribed them. This was a farce, not a trial. Tobin closed his eyes, lest the sudden flare of anger show. Perhaps the traitors had a point—some things needed to be changed.

  “Because of your service on the battlefield, because of your youth, and because your involvement with the evil that threatened us was relatively slight, the Hierarch, in his beneficence, has chosen to show you the mercy of the Seven Bright Ones.”

  Tobin shivered. How much of the estate—

  “Instead of a traitor’s death, you will be stripped of the knighthood you have befouled, and you will know the scorn of your peers.
”

  Tobin’s eyes snapped open, a chill racing through him. The “scorn of his peers” would be expressed with the lash. It was the most humiliating punishment that could be given a knight, short of death. He should have expected it, for treason. He was lucky they’d agreed to let him live.

  Tobin bowed acceptance. He knew he had behaved with honor. No one else’s opinion mattered. At least it shouldn’t matter.

  “Sir Tarsin, you said you wished to address the court before we call the next case.”

  “Yes.” Tobin’s father rose and met his eyes. Cold, all the way to the bottom. The trial had been real after all, but his father had been the judge, and the judgment had fallen against him. His heart beat faster. Father, please!

  “I will not suffer a traitor to take my lands—to sit in my house.” His father’s eyes never left Tobin now, filled with anger, determination, and grief. “I deny this man. He is not my heir. He is no longer my son. And if he ever comes onto my land, I will have the servants beat him off like a thief. Let the Speaker take my words and make them law.”

  Exclamations of surprise rippled through the room, but Tobin barely heard them. His eyes filled and he lowered them, grateful that he could no longer meet his father’s gaze. He could feel it, though, proud and anguished. It never left him until the guards led him out of sight.

  Tobin let the tears fall as he walked down the corridors in the guards’ grasp. Jeri and his mother should have told his father the truth. They should have told him. But if they had, would his father have abandoned Jeriah to face the Hierarch’s wrath alone? This went beyond anger, touching the unyielding core of his father’s honor. But now—

  The guards opened a door, shoved him through, and closed it behind him. Tobin tripped over the fringe of a finely woven rug and looked up, startled.

  This wasn’t a cell. Expensive rugs covered the floor, their colors bright in the sunlight streaming through the windows. Bookshelves lined the walls, and a tall, lean priest rose from behind a desk and gestured for him to take a chair.

  “Sit down, Sir Tobin. Should I be saying ‘Sir’ Tobin? No, I see I shouldn’t, but sit down anyway.”

  Tobin sank numbly into the chair and the priest reseated himself and gazed at him over steepled fingers. He had the lined, ascetic face of a scholar, but he moved easily, like a man much younger than he appeared to be.

  “Let’s get the trivial things out of the way,” he said. “My name is Master Lazur, and I don’t care if you’re guilty or not. The conspiracy is crushed, the leaders dead, so it no longer matters. I have no desire to prosecute your brother, either.” He smiled and waved off Tobin’s attempted protest. “If that’s the man you’re protecting. If it’s not, fine. As I said, I don’t care. There are more serious matters at stake.”

  As Tobin wondered dazedly what could be more serious than treason, the priest leaned forward and said, “Tobin, you just lost your home, your family, your rank, and your honor. Would you be interested in a chance to win them back?”

  CHAPTER 6

  The Knight

  “Who do I have to kill?” asked Tobin, astonished.

  Master Lazur’s eyes widened.

  “That was a jest,” Tobin told him swiftly. “I didn’t mean…”

  Master Lazur had composed his expression—but still something gave his thoughts away.

  “You do want me to kill someone!” Tobin rose to his feet. “I’m not an assassin. Not for anybody—not for any reason. Find some other traitor to do your dirty work.”

  The priest neither moved nor spoke as Tobin went to the door and yanked it open. The two guards outside glanced at Master Lazur and shifted to block Tobin’s path.

  They were both armed, and he wasn’t. He couldn’t get out. Several seconds passed. One of the guards reached out and closed the door. Tobin stared at it, his back to the priest. He felt almost as foolish as he was furious.

  “Come back and sit down,” said Master Lazur quietly, “and listen. When I’ve finished, if you still want to leave, I’ll let you. Surely it will do no harm for you to hear me out?”

  Tobin returned to his chair and sat down, glaring at the priest.

  “It isn’t as bad as you think.” Master Lazur was smiling, a charming smile of genuine amusement. Tobin didn’t respond, and the smile faded.

  “I’d best start at the beginning.” The priest rose and paced across the room. The sunlight from the window picked out the seven-rayed sun inside five circles on his plain robe. A priest of the fifth circle was powerful—only two levels below the council itself. But Tobin was no one’s killer.

  “You’ve been fighting the barbarians on the border for three winters now. Have you noticed a pattern?”

  Tobin remained silent.

  “Perhaps you haven’t,” the priest went on. “Not in just three years. Let me give you a wider view. The barbarians have been attacking our southern border every winter for fifteen years now—every year there are more of them, fighting with greater ferocity. Since the first attack, we’ve had to move our defended border back toward the midlands four times.”

  The grinding, bloody chaos of the great retreat two years ago echoed in Tobin’s memory as the priest went on.

  “In the early years, we assumed the attackers were only bandits. We thought they’d give up if we proved too tough for them.”

  Tobin frowned. His commander had told him that, just three years ago, but no one believed it now.

  “When the attacks increased in size and became better organized, the southland lords were forced to call on the Hierarch for help. We sent spies in among the barbarians and discovered the reason for the attacks.”

  “But they’re cannibals!” Tobin exclaimed. “How could your spies—”

  Master Lazur’s gaze was cool. “A spy does whatever he must, to survive and complete his mission. You should remember that. Our spies discovered that the barbarians are attacking our land because theirs is dying. A long drought is beginning on the other side of the desert. Each year the rainfall is less, and their soil is poor and easily overfarmed. Each year, more are forced from their homes, to flood our borders. In four or five years, we estimate they will hold most of the southlands. Then they’ll be able to fight us all year round. Their magic is different from ours. At first we thought it must come from the Dark One, but the spies say the barbarians worship no gods at all. Wherever it comes from, their magic is very strong. You’ve probably seen yourself how even strong winds fail to affect their arrows’ flight. Or how muddy ground firms under their feet, how strong they are, and how fast their wounds heal. Our battle priests are barely holding their own. And there are too many of them for us to defeat.”

  “But there must be a way to stop them! Could—could we just give them the southlands? Since you say they’re going to take them anyway?”

  “It’s impossible to negotiate with the barbarians.”

  “Why? If we sent an ambassador, surely they’d listen—”

  “We did. And they may have listened, for all we know. But then they ate the ambassador. And the next one we sent. After that, we stopped asking for volunteers.”

  Tobin’s stomach twisted. “So you sent spies. But surely—”

  Master Lazur shook his head. “They regard anyone except themselves as animals. They won’t negotiate with animals.”

  “Then…” Tobin’s mouth was dry, remembering things he’d seen in border villages the barbarians had overrun. “Then we have to defend the border. We can recruit more troops, if the need is this great.”

  “We can. And we’ll have to. But you’ve been fighting on the border for the past three years. Do you think, even with more troops, we could defend our present border all year round?”

  Tobin shook his head thoughtfully. “We might during the winter. We can take men off the farms then. But in spring the farmers have to plant, or we’ll all starve.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But part of the problem is that the southern border is so wide, so open.
If we fought in a more defensible place, we might be able to hold them!”

  Master Lazur smiled and pulled a scroll off a shelf. “It took the Hierarch’s council more than ten years to reach that conclusion. Or at least, to accept the consequences.” He unrolled the scroll and a map of the known world lay before Tobin. “You’re a knight. Find me a border we could defend against a barbarian force eight times the size of the one you’re fighting now.”

  “Eight times!”

  “That’s how many there are. When the drought has driven them out, they’ll all come here, so find us a defensible border.”

  Tobin turned shocked eyes to the map. Sea to the east and west. In the far south lay the desert, with the unexplored lands of the barbarians beyond. In the far north, past the vast expanse of the goblin woods, the map trailed off into a great white plain of ice and snow. Between the desert and the goblin woods lay the Realm of the Bright Gods.

  First the southlands—rolling, rocky hills, dry and warm and dusty. Poor soil for crops, but the best wine in the realm.

  Above them, the midland plains—grassy, flat, and fertile with the great rivers twisting through them and the low-lying wetlands off to the east. The heart of the realm, wider and even less defensible than the south. Tobin’s eyes sought the curve in the Abo River that bounded his home, and sickness twisted through his stomach.

  North of the midlands were the light woodlands—poorer crops, but they produced timber and furs. The land narrowed here. Fewer miles to hold, but the barbarians could slip an army through those woods, man by man, and nothing could stop them. And that was where the realm ended, at the narrowest point where the great goblin wall…

  The great wall, stretching right across the narrowest part of the continent, ten feet high and six feet thick—the army could hold that wall against all the barbarians in the world, but…

  “But that’s the northern border of the realm! There’s nothing beyond it but the deep woods, and then the ice! We couldn’t possibly—”

  “Move the whole realm behind that wall over the next ten to fifteen years? It’s already begun. What do you think happened to the southern villagers when the border passed over their lands? The ones we were able to evacuate have moved north and resettled. Since we understood the situation, we’ve been trying to talk them into traveling all the way to the north woods and settling beyond the wall. Most refuse to believe the barbarians will make it that far, and they settle in the midlands. Only a few of them have been wise enough to see the truth and gone all the way, to build anew on the other side of the wall. And these are people who’ve already been driven out of their homes!” Master Lazur sighed. “Even with the enforcement of the Decree, which consolidated our power, we haven’t been able to persuade anyone else to start moving. And we can’t really begin to try, until—”