“Thanks.” I dusted off my pants and readjusted my jacket. “Nice work,” I said as we both emerged into the courtyard. “Wow.”
Bordered by a colonnade, the centre of the royal palace was overgrown by golden vines and pink wisteria. Weeds and grasses broke through ornate marble tiles, some having toppled decorative outdoor chairs. Children of the goddess, the trees and flowers had reclaimed what would’ve once been their domain. Incredible.
An impressive entablature not only held the columns and pediments in place, but was decorated by a breathtaking frieze. The story of the goddess giving birth to the first fairies played out in frozen marble images, each one executed with mastery by a true artist.
Turning on the spot, Amir scanned the palace. As he did, small pebbles cracked beneath his feet, breaking the dense, eerie silence that had descended on us the moment we stopped speaking. The quietude seemed alive, somehow.
“Wow, indeed,” he said. “This palace is much larger than the one at home.” He waved his arm, indicating the length of the building and its many doorways.
“It’s certainly spectacular.” I took in more details of the scene. Windowpanes beyond the pillars were caked with dust. One door had been irreparably scarred by a ghastly wound, perhaps the result of an axe. Had someone else made it this far? I realised there were several possible exits from the courtyard. “But, which way do we go? I count four towers.”
“Hmm.” He rubbed the back of his hand against his cheek. “Good point. How are we to know which one she will be in?” He looked past me, his eyes glassy and wide. “I’d say that she’s in the north tower.”
“Why? How do you know?”
“Because of them.” He pointed with his chin, and I turned around.
“By the goddess.” I gulped, hardly able to believe what was happening in front of us. Four waist-height statues lined up in front of the north alcove were changing colour, the stone flaking away like leaves in the wind, leaving behind repulsive, scaly skin afflicted by oozy sores. Stumpy fingers and toes started to wriggle as the trapped entities became aware of their wakeful state, the final shards of rock falling from their putrid bodies.
I’d never actually seen such creatures in real life. They were the stuff of nightmares and feverish dreams.
“Goblins,” Amir said dryly.
I nodded. “Goblins.”
Chapter Four
“NOW MIGHT BE the time for that sword to make an appearance.” As I whispered, I stepped backwards, slowly, quietly. If the stories I’d heard about goblins were true, they possessed an immunity to my magical attacks.
The goblin on the left opened its bulging orange eyes and blinked like someone who’d been staring at the sun and needed to adjust their vision. A globule of thick, yellow pus pushed its way out of the corner of the creature’s left eye. My stomach churned.
“Amir?”
“Yes,” he replied in a low voice, his backward steps mirroring mine. “Give me a moment.” He started to draw his sword from its scabbard, taking care to do so quietly. As the other three goblins shook their limbs and licked their thick, cracked lips, the one on the left let out a fearful cry. Somehow shrill and deep all at once, the discordant noise tore through my head as sure as any spike. I crouched and wrapped my arms around my head. Amir used the opportunity to release his sword in one confident motion.
“Talia. The pillars.” He pointed with his sword, and I nodded as I stood up.
Orange. Black. White. Yellow. Each pair of eyes stared at us, each different in colour and shape, yet equally penetrative. Why were they just staring at us? Orange Eyes opened his mouth to reveal six stumpy flat teeth and two long stained fangs. He cocked his head and groaned. In unison, the four of them took a single step forward. I could feel their gaze in the bottom of my stomach, clawing at my insides like angry insects.
“What are they doing?” I whispered. “They’re not attacking.”
“I’ve no idea,” Amir replied. “But they’re definitely locked onto us. Let’s move.”
The moment I turned, the goblin quad leapt forward. I yelled out as they charged us. Yellow Eyes pulled something long and tubular from his pocket. He pinched it between his swollen dirt-brown lips and blew. A projectile flew toward us. Amir flung his sword out and deflected the dart. It skittered across the pebbles covering the ground.
“Go!” He pushed me toward the thick columns a few metres to our left. My heart thundered as we sprinted. The clamour of the goblins’ armour as they moved grew louder, as did my own breathing.
I skirted around a column and crouched down, but the prince wasn’t with me. The distinct scrape of metal against metal echoed all around. I tried to peek past the edge of the column, but another dart flew towards me. I didn’t pull back fast enough, and the sharp point clipped the top of my ear. I hissed and took cover again, protecting the hot wound with my hand as I leaned back. Sounds of battle continued to rage somewhere within the courtyard.
“Dammit!” I elbowed the stone behind me angrily. I needed to get out there. I needed to help. He couldn’t hold off four assailants at once, even with the advantage of height.
A growl, a thud, a yelp.
Amir! Pushing up off my knees, I jumped to full height and ran back into the courtyard. My feet nearly slid out from under me when I saw the dead body on the ground. The dead, human body.
“What are you doing?” Amir yelled over his shoulder as he continued to parry. To thrust. To dodge. “Get back!” Three goblins circled him, lunging and prodding, but somehow, in a flurry of steps and swings, he continued to protect himself. His face glistened with sweat. He bit into his bottom lip, grunting under his strain.
I threw my hands up. “Mentem revocare caeli!” A strong blast of air hit the trio. They flew backwards, one hitting a column with a frightful howl and then falling limp against the ground. He was breathing, but unconscious. The other two skidded along the loose ground like stones across a lake. As soon as they came to a halt, they shook their heads and worked to stand up.
Amir used the distraction to rush back to me. Sucking in deep breaths of air, he wiped the back of his hand across his forehead. “Please. Hide,” he panted. “Suspect your magic can’t hurt them.”
“Not directly. But I can make it harder for them to move.” I needed to help, to do something. We had to keep going. I’d had my doubts before, but in that moment, as we faced something I truly thought might stop us from reaching our destination, I knew it was our destiny to find Aurora. No matter how it might change my fate, or Amir’s, we had to get to her. I’d make sure we found a way.
White Eyes made it to his feet first, his glassy stare fixed upon us as he sidestepped towards his companions. It seemed they preferred to attack as a group.
“Where did he come from?” I asked. Amir followed my gaze to the fair-haired young man lying on the ground in a naked heap. Whoever he’d been, he made a tragically beautiful corpse. “And where did Yellow Eyes go?”
“It’s him,” Amir replied. His chest heaved as he watched our three attackers regrouping with the same intensity of an eagle stalking its prey. “That’s the other goblin. I bested him, he hit the ground, then transformed.”
“I don’t under—”
He shouldered me and forced me back a step, running forwards to meet the recovered goblins. Tired as he might have been, the prince seemed to be holding them off effectively. I wanted to help him, but I could sense their immunity to my direct attacks. A web surrounded them, much like the one that divided this world from the Other. The best I could do was throw things at them. Slow them down. Despite my guilt at doing so, I turned and knelt next to the handsome man—barely more than a boy—who’d been lost to this realm.
“Who are you?” I whispered, leaning down. I pressed my ear to his chest and a hand to his stomach. The chill invading his skin frightened me, but I needed answers. Drawing in a breath, I closed my eyes. His spirit was about to cross the veil. I called out to him. He turned, and I gasped at the sig
ht of his beautiful brown eyes. They were icy and sad, yet somehow full of empathy. If I’d had more time, I would have drawn him to me, into my arms. Though I knew nothing of his origins, not even his name, the scale of his loss was both obvious and immeasurable.
Somewhere in the distance, the clash of swords and the scuffling of boots registered. Amir still lived.
I repeated my question to the boy’s spirit, and his face softened. He pulled at his dark brown cloak, shifting it aside to expose the regalia stitched into his tunic. A blazing golden dragon, it stood on its hind legs, short, scaly arms reaching for the sky. The royal emblem of the family Rose. The family who’d ruled Oldpass for centuries.
“You’re a prince,” I whispered, my heart heavy. “You’re Aurora’s brother.”
The young man nodded, a thick strand of chestnut-coloured hair obscuring one of his eyes as he did. The goblins weren’t goblins at all. They were the four teenage sons of the queen and king. Two sets of twins. Everyone had assumed the boys were, like their older sister, asleep somewhere in the city, breathing, yet not aging. Resting, yet not at peace. Those poor boys had been afflicted by something much worse. Such a transformation spell, trapping both their memories and their bodies, would have left them aware of the passage of time. For a hundred years, the goblins would have remained frozen inside their stone prisons, bloodthirsty and frustrated, yet totally unaware of their own identities and completely incapable of movement. Until we passed some invisible threshold that woke them up, called them to arms to protect the curse that facilitated their torment. Aurora might have been the linchpin of Tanit’s machinations, but she was by no means its only victim, nor its most afflicted. This madness had to come to an end.
My chest ached as the prince, no more than seventeen years old, started to cry, his face silently pleading with me. Though he’d not discovered his voice—the transition to the Other World could be jarring to any freshly deceased person—his message was as clear as any I’d ever received.
Please. Save my family.
“I will,” I replied. “I promise!” His form started to glow and then distort, as though he were being swallowed up by a rippling body of water. It was the ethereal veil. He was moving beyond the space that hung between our worlds into a place I could not follow. With a final shimmering reflection, his form disappeared. I wiped the tears away from my face, straightened my spine, and willed my projected form to return to my body.
Only moments had passed, yet the prince’s body felt even colder beneath me. I sat upright and looked down at him. The gaping wound in his chest no longer bled. “We will release them,” I told him, my voice as determined as my thoughts. My ear throbbed where the dart had cut away part of my flesh, but I pushed the pain aside as I stood.
“Amir!” The ferocity in my voice shocked even me. The prince of Grimvein, my friend, had stood his ground bravely. A gash to his cheek trickled blood but was the only wound I could see.
“What is it?” he called out, as he rolled to avoid another attack. Fatigue invaded his limbs. I could see the dull, throbbing blackness of it clouding his body.
“You need to stop.”
“Stop?” My prince hissed as Black Eyes slashed at his belly at the same time Orange Eyes punched him in the side. He’d not been able to avoid both attacks, and a thin line of red bled through the front of his tunic. “That’s a good way to get me killed.”
“Then, run!” I shrieked. I needed him to get away. To let me see all three goblins at once. There could be nothing between them and me. Incantations are one of the most powerful, yet most dangerous forms of magic. If my words encountered any physical barriers, the force with which I imbued them might be distorted. The results could be disastrous. “Head for one of the doors. Anything. Just get out of the way.”
“I hope you know—” He kicked at a goblin, knocking its small blade to the ground. “—what you’re doing.”
I hoped so, too. Amir twisted his body in an impressive evasion, withdrawing from the fray and running toward the column I’d been hiding behind. The three cursed princes snarled and huffed as they gave chase.
With nothing between myself and the goblins, I pulled my arms in to my chest, drawing every scrap of the divine in the air towards me. As I spoke, I laced each syllable with the energy I’d collected, as well as the innate magic that’d always lived within me. It was a warming sensation that never ceased to make me feel both energised and terrified.
“Memoriala Mandetis!”
The collective howl released by the brothers reverberated through my bones, as though they felt ecstasy, torment, and release all at once. They each toppled over as their memories raged within them, clawing through their bodies, fighting for purchase in their discoloured minds. Amir watched them in disbelief, his mouth hanging open in a demented sneer. I’d never seen him appear…ugly. So, he was as imperfect as the rest of us, after all.
“What’s happening?” he yelled, hunching over.
“They’re fighting to find their way home,” I replied. “We can do no more.”
The wails of the goblin brothers grew deeper but quieter as they writhed on the ground, the pebbles crackling beneath them adding to the unnatural cacophony. Their skin changed colour as though it might turn back to stone, yet it did not harden.
“Enough!” Orange Eyes called out in a human-sounding voice, thrashing his arms to the side. His fingers elongated, his legs reached outward, the marbled complexion melting away to expose a milky cinnamon tone. The changes seemed to cause him no pain, nor did his bones creak or crack as they rearranged. No, the reformation of the Oldpass prince didn’t hurt because he wasn’t being broken. He was being repaired, his essence refilling the mould to which it belonged.
“By the goddess,” Amir said as he fell to his knees. “They’re people.”
Silver armour fell away from the restored prince’s body as his two brothers continued to struggle nearby. Their memories swarmed troubled minds. Traces of the images and thoughts seeping through their muscles were visible like a cleansing misty cloud. The problem was that they themselves could not seem to decide what images were real and which were propagated by Tanit’s curse.
Amir rushed forward, unfastened his cloak, and threw it about the now-naked body of what used to be the goblin with orange eyes. The fair-skinned teenager tapped Amir’s hand gratefully and then pulled the cloak tighter about himself. This must’ve been the twin of the boy lying dead on the ground across the courtyard, their thoughtful chocolate-brown eyes and smooth cheekbones identical. He rolled onto his stomach and pushed up onto his hands and knees before releasing a horrid cough. A pungent, thick fluid fell out of his mouth and onto the ground as he continued to cough and gag. I could practically taste the bile in my own throat as I looked on, my stomach squirming.
As though the disturbing expulsion were some sort of signal, his two brothers flung their arms outward as he’d done moments earlier, their legs stiffening and lengthening as their own transformations began. Pus-ridden, angry orbs dissolved, replaced by humanistic brown eyes. Straight auburn hair pushed through the changing skin atop their heads, stopping short at their ears.
These two were younger, perhaps fourteen or so. As their older sibling stood unsteadily, the younger twins coughed up the remnants of Tanit’s spell, their naked backs heaving with the effort. I wished I could help them somehow, help them erase the bitter, awful taste of dark magic from their mouths and their souls, but there was nothing more I could do. The eldest brother stood to his full height, though he was several centimetres shorter than Amir, who remained behind him, sword still in hand.
“I’m Callum. The firstborn prince of Oldpass.” The young man’s lips trembled, his eyes weary. His words projected confidence, though the rest of him did not. “Who are you?”
“This is my prince.” I pointed. “His Highness Amir of Grimvein.”
Callum turned from me to Amir and back again. “I know of no Amir in Grimvein. Their rulers have only daughters. I am to
marry their eldest in four years, should we still wish to do so.” Oh, no. Another person he has lost. Were we rescuing these people or damning them?
“Talia tells the truth,” Amir said calmly. “My parents are the king and queen of Grimvein. A great deal has happened since you were last here.”
“Yes.” He looked about the dilapidated courtyard, his gaze somehow detached and discerning at the same time.
The young man looked to his brothers, who sat awkwardly on the ground, attempting to cover their bodies with their hands. Before I could speak again, he rushed through the same doorway the four goblin statues had been guarding.
He returned moments later with cloaks and passed them to the boys. “Where is Anton?”
I took a step forward and pressed my palm to Callum’s cheek. He flinched but did not pull away. Poor man. He had not been touched in nearly a hundred years. Though he might not remember exactly what’d happened, he would sense his isolation. He felt it.
“I’m sorry. We…we didn’t know.”
“He is here,” Amir said as he stepped aside, revealing their fallen brother. Anton. “It was me. I did this.”
Callum’s younger brothers half ran, half crawled towards Anton’s body. One stopped a few feet short and fell back again, unable to close the distance entirely. The other gingerly touched his fingertips to Anton’s grey face. Callum looked on, stoic and still.
After a few tortuously long moments, he spoke in a deadpan voice. “He’s dead.”
Amir and I both nodded.
By the goddess. If only I could change it. If only I could rewrite the rules of magic, drag Anton’s spirit back through the veil, and restore it to the lifeless vessel that now rested in a pool of its own blood. If I’d left them as goblins, they would have never realised what had happened. The time that had passed. The people they’d lost. They’d never have known that Amir had killed their brother.
Once Upon the Rainbow, Volume Two Page 18