In the Coils of the Snake

by Clare B. Dunkle

“For pity’s sake, Seylin!” exclaimed the goblin King. “What do I do about Miranda? I don’t want to marry some wailing elf girl. I want to marry her!”

  “I’m fond of her, too,” agreed Seylin bleakly. “But the King has to think of his people, and you know what an elf bride means for the magic of the Heir.”

  “I’ll tell you this, I refuse to give her up for some commonplace elf,” threatened Catspaw. “Not for anything less than a lord’s daughter.” He sighed. “But I suppose we have to plan for that possibility.”

  “She will still be a strong human bride,” noted Seylin. “Miranda’s settling in well, and she’ll get over her disappointment. She’d make an excellent bride for one of the strong elf crosses, to extend the elvish bloodlines. Tattoo would be a good choice. He has his father’s pleasant nature, and she knows him well. She and Sable are always together.”

  “Tattoo and my Miranda,” growled the goblin King. “I don’t like it at all! That infuriating elf! Why couldn’t he have shown up next week? Why did he feel he had to offer a bride? I would have signed his treaty.”

  “In the meantime,” said Seylin, “may I suggest that you embark on that triumphal tour of the dwarf mines that new goblin Kings always take? There’s no sense making Miranda suspicious if this all comes to nothing. You can be gone the whole six days.”

  “Ah, yes,” sighed Catspaw. “Days of being dragged through endless miles of four-foot-high corridors on a little stone sledge. But it’s best to get it out of the way before these elves come back. I don’t want you and Richard to speak of this business with anyone but each other, and have the elves and elf-human crosses assembled near the main door on the evening of the new moon.”

  Meanwhile, Miranda sat with Kate at the table overlooking the banquet hall. She was becoming more used to seeing monsters at mealtime, but it still affected her appetite. Instead, she studied Kate’s golden hair and perfect porcelain skin. Marak’s beautiful widow showed not the least tendency to age. Perhaps that was a benefit of being elvish.

  “Tell me something about the elves tonight,” said the sleepy girl as she snuggled down under the warmth of the covers. It was cold in her room, and she could see her breath when she talked.

  Her ugly guardian smiled at her from his chair and shook his striped hair out of his face. “What do you want to know about the silly elves? All right. Here’s your story. Once a very ugly human man met a very pretty elf man. The human was poor and miserable, gathering firewood in the winter twilight. His face had been disfigured by a ghastly burn. The elf was magnificent, tall and noble, and he was disgusted at the sight of the poor man. He reached out his hand to work magic, and the human knew that his last hour had come.

  ” ‘Spare me!’ he cried, dropping his sticks and falling at the feet of the elf. “I know I look awful, but I am a very intelligent man.’

  ” ‘You, intelligent?’ scoffed the elf. “Then I’ll let you go if you can answer a question. How many stars are in the sky above us?’

  “‘A hundred thousands,’ replied the human without a second’s hesitation.

  “‘That’s not right,’ declared the elf triumphantly. ‘It’s not even close.’

  “‘Of course it’s not right,’ agreed the human. ‘How would I know something like that? But you just said I had to give an answer. You never said it had to be right.’

  “Then the elf laughed heartily because elves love jokes and pranks. ‘You may go,’ he told the human. ‘But not looking like that.’ And he healed the human’s face.”

  “What happened when the human got home?” she asked. “Did his family know who he was? Were they glad?”

  “I can’t tell you that,” Marak admitted. “The human didn’t write that story, the elf did. That was Aganir Dalhamun, the elf King named Dust Cloud.”

  • • •

  Miranda smiled at the memory. It didn’t hurt so much to think about him now. She looked at the hideous shapes filling the huge room and felt a surge of affection. They were Marak’s goblins, after all. She loved them for that. And he had been right, just as he always was. She belonged here, even without him.

  Chapter Four

  Marak Catspaw came back from his tour of the mines late on the evening of the new moon and met the elves and elf-human crosses who had been summoned to the grove of jeweled trees near the goblins‘ front door. The crowd was larger than he had expected. Sable’s and Irina’s families had been spending the evening together, and they all had come to the meeting.

  “An elf lord is bringing elves back to our forests,” he told them. “I’m signing a treaty with him tonight. He wants to see you elves to make sure that you’re well treated, and for reasons that I won’t reveal yet, we need to do as he asks.” A stunned silence followed this announcement.

  “I… I don’t want to see an elf,” faltered Irina, holding her daughter-in-law Fay’s hand. “I don’t want to meet elves at all, not without Thaydar.” Her husband had died the year before, and she had taken the loss very hard.

  “I don’t need any elf man checking up on me,” declared Sable scornfully. “As if he really cared whether I lived or died.”

  “This is important to the kingdom,” replied the goblin King. “I have to bring you tonight. But you’re welcome to take along any of your family, if that would make you feel better.”

  “I’ll be there, Irina,” promised Tinsel, putting his arm around the unhappy woman. “I won’t let anyone bother you.” She smiled gratefully at the big silver goblin.

  “Why don’t you want to see an elf, Grands?” asked Fay’s little daughter. Trina was only five. She hugged Sable, looking up at her in excitement. “Grand Sable, I want to see an elf,” she announced.

  “Do you?” said the woman, giving her granddaughter a reluctant smile. “Elves aren’t everything you think they are. Of course I’ll come, Marak, since you need me, but I won’t smile and dance for him. And, Trina, you can come with me since you want to see an elf.”

  “He hasn’t asked to see the elf-human crosses, but he doesn’t know we have any,” continued Catspaw. “Mother? Em? Do you mind coming?”

  “Not at all,” answered Kate. “I’d like to see an elf, too.” Emily nodded her agreement.

  As they walked through the forest, the goblin King had Seylin explain to the small group about the proposed treaty and the offer of a bride. Kate was staggered and upset at the thought of what this would mean to Miranda and even more distressed at the thought of bringing home some poor elf girl. It would be worse than when Sable and Irina had come, even worse than her own awful wedding. But there was no sense worrying about what hadn’t happened yet. She couldn’t help feeling that what was about to happen was going to be thrilling.

  When they came through the double ring of oaks, Kate saw that the elves were already there. The elf lord had brought his entire band with him, even the children. Perhaps, she considered, it was something of an education for them: their first chance to see a real goblin.

  The elf lord wore a green tunic and cross-gartered breeches. He lacked any sort of emblem that might symbolize his status, and all the other elf men, were dressed as simply as their chief.

  The elf women wore plain, sleeveless dresses that fitted them closely to the waist and then flared into a full skirt that ended a little below the knee. Their soft hide shoes looked like slippers, and they had no stockings. The women wore their hair long, some with it pulled back and partly braided, but there was not so much as a hairpin among them. They wore no jewelry, no ribbons, and no lace. But they were all so lovely. Why should they care about fashion? They looked even more beautiful because of the simplicity of their clothing.

  Marak Catspaw and the elf lord met at the center of the circle to read the treaty that Seylin had prepared. Then they walked back toward the small group from the goblin kingdom. Catspaw wore the black shirt and breeches that belonged to the King’s Wife Ceremony, and over it the short black cape painted with golden letters that stood for his kingship. No matter how thi
s meeting ended, he clearly planned to marry tonight.

  Richard had assembled the elves and elf crosses in a short line for inspection. Seylin carried the book in which elf brides were registered and introduced them one by one.

  “This is Em, my wife of thirty-one years, a weak elf-human cross from one of the high elvish families,” Seylin said. “She volunteered to come to the goblin kingdom in order to accompany her sister.”

  “That was brave,” commented the lord quietly.

  Emily stepped forward, smiling at the tall elf. “Oh, not really,” she assured him cheerfully. “I’ve enjoyed every minute of it. Well, most of them, anyway. And I’m not really elf at all. Marak — the old Marak,” she added, glancing at Marak Catspaw, “always used to say that I was a model human.”

  “But the registry indicates that she is part elf,” corrected Seylin. “When the test was done, it showed up.”

  Nir listened courteously but didn’t look at the book. “I have my own test,” he said. “May I?” And he placed his hand on her hair. After a few seconds, the right side of Emily’s face began to shine with a very faint glimmer, but the left side remained unaffected. Seylin watched, fascinated. The elf lord dropped his hand.

  “Barely elf,” he told Emily, “but no goblin blood.” This last had the sound of a mild compliment, like a consolation prize.

  “Really?” asked Emily. “Mightn’t there be a little goblin in me? How can you be so sure?”

  Nir paused and then turned to Seylin. “May I test you just to show her?” he asked politely, and he put his hand on Seylin’s head. Instantly the right half of Seylin’s body glowed brightly, but the left half turned as black as ink. Seylin looked down at his arms with a sigh. The elf lord turned back to the surprised Emily.

  “You see,” he said, “your husband is a goblin. Powerfully elvish, but goblin nonetheless. He looks like an elf, and some of my people didn’t recognize him, but he knows what he is.”

  “Yes, I do now,” admitted Seylin, “but when I went out to find your people, I honestly thought I was an elf.”

  “Your King knew what you were,” remarked the elf lord. “He must have known.” And he glanced at Marak Catspaw with a troubled frown. When he turned back, he was facing Kate, and the frown vanished.

  “Here’s an elf,” he said, smiling, and Kate felt rather overwhelmed. Although she had long ago gotten used to being called an elf, the term had never had a real meaning for her. It was just an attribute, like being slender or being blond. Now she finally understood. It wasn’t that she was an elf, it was that she was one of the elves, a whole separate people with their own blood and ways. She was just a part of it, a part that had never known before that it was part of anything.

  “This is Kate,” announced Seylin, “the old King’s Wife and the mother of the new goblin King.”

  Kate saw the elf wince at these words, and he reached out and took one of her hands in his. He turned it over to reveal the scar from the King’s Wife Ceremony, the long, straight slash glimmering across her small palm. He didn’t study it as a goblin would, he just stood looking down at it, an expression of pained aversion on his face. Kate saw it as he did: a cruel deformity of a beautiful thing, a barbaric savagery. It was the emblem of a slavery to an evil cause. A wasted life, his face said, and another goblin at the end of it.

  He laid his hand on her head to test her, looking into her eyes. As he did Kate saw a vision. She was in another world, a forest more beautiful than she had ever seen. The sky glowed with a deep blue twilight, and stars hung overhead, as brilliant as colorful jewels. Sweet, haunting music floated on the air. But even as she saw this world, she knew that it was beyond her reach. It was a place that she could never find again. When he removed his hand, the vision faded, and she was in the truce circle once more.

  Everything that Kate had ever lost burst like a bubble in her mind: Til, her mother, her father, her great aunts, Hallow Hill, Charm, her dog. And then there was Marak, eyes closed, face stern, lying in the goblin Kings’ crypt. Maybe he still walked in some world beyond hers, but she didn’t know how to reach him. Lost. Hopelessly lost. He was gone from her, too. She could see his dead face before her eyes as the lovely melody drifted away.

  The elf lord turned to Seylin. “An elf cross, but more powerful than most of the members of my camp,” he commented, and then stopped short as she burst into tears.

  “Kate!” cried Emily, coming to hug her, and she put her head on Emily’s shoulder and wailed with grief. Seylin stared at her, astonished, and the goblin King looked stunned.

  “What did you do?” demanded Catspaw angrily. “What kind of magic was that?”

  “I don’t know,” said the elf, at a loss. “I tested her. I don’t know why it would make her cry.”

  “A test!” exclaimed the goblin in a fury. “Do you expect me to believe that? I’d like to see what you would do if I did that to one of your people!”

  “I’m sure you’ll have your chance,” murmured Nir bitterly.

  “It may be an aspect of elf healing,” suggested Seylin, “something only an elf could do for her. She needs to cry. She hasn’t cried over your father at all.”

  “Why would she cry over the goblin King?” asked Nir.

  “Because he’s dead,” snapped Marak Catspaw in an icy rage.

  “Because she loved him,” answered Seylin a little more helpfully.

  Nir’s frown deepened. He was genuinely distressed. He hadn’t meant to make the poor woman cry. Stars above, her life must have been abominable enough without that. He wondered what had happened. So often he didn’t understand his own magic. He turned back to Seylin, ignoring the outraged goblin King.

  “I won’t touch the others,” he promised, and he and Seylin walked on, leaving Kate sobbing in her sister’s arms.

  The two elf women stood together, and Tinsel had his arms around them both. Irina gazed at the ground, plucking nervously at her bracelets. Sable was glaring across the truce circle at the band of elves, and Nir turned to see what had attracted her attention. Willow stood there with his arm around his own wife. The elf lord turned back to look at Sable again, his gaze thoughtful.

  “These two are Irina and Sable, both brought to the kingdom thirty-one years ago,” Seylin announced.

  “I know their history,” he responded quietly. That they were elves he knew without needing to test them; he could feel it about them. And yet they weren’t his people. They didn’t even look like elves in their shiny, fussy dresses. Nir looked at the big gray goblin who was holding them, at his bright silver hair and blue eyes. Here was elf blood, too, he could tell, warped into grotesque ugliness.

  “Sable is from the high families,” said Seylin. Nir stared at her angry, fixed expression and the faint scars on her cheeks. “They both showed up as pure elf when their blood was tested.”

  The elf lord turned to Seylin, struggling to control his agitation.

  “Their blood?” he echoed, a gleam in his dark eyes. “How could blood go through a test?”

  “The goblin King mixed a number of ingredients with the blood,” Seylin answered. “I could show you the spell.”

  “You mean he bled them,” said the elf angrily, walking away from the enslaved women. “Tell me, does all goblin magic involve slicing open elves?” And he eyed the King with cold distaste.

  “Does all elf magic involve reducing women to wrecks?” countered Marak Catspaw with a steady glare. Nir glanced at the goblin King’s mother. She wasn’t crying anymore, but she still huddled in her sister’s arms. He felt himself growing even more angry at the inexplicable wrongness of it all. Something bumped into his leg, and he looked down into the face of Sable’s little granddaughter. Trina beamed up at him, her arms around his knees.

  “The pages laugh at me and say I’m an elf,” she said, “so I’m coming to live with you now because you’re an elf.”

  Nir knelt down, eye to eye with the little girl. He didn’t test her because he didn’t need to. She ha
d a lovely elvish face and long blond hair, but when he lifted her hands to look at them, they were a goblin’s hands. The slender elf fingers were unnaturally long and bony, and the fingernails twisted into claws. He stared at the little goblin paws, his anger ebbing away into sadness.

  “You’re very pretty,” he told her gently, “but you’re not an elf. If you came to live with me, all my children would start having nightmares. You can tell your pages that you were the most frightening thing the elf lord saw tonight. You’re more terrible than the fiercest monster because you’re a goblin who looks like an elf.” Trina giggled, pleased to be distinctive in some way even if she didn’t understand how, and Nir climbed slowly to his feet again, inexpressibly sad.

  “Well, elf lord, are you content?” asked Marak Catspaw, gesturing at the line of captured elves.

  “Content? No,” sighed Nir, still looking down at the bright little face. “But I can see that the women are treated humanely,” he added with an effort, glancing up. “At least they seem well fed.”

  “You’ll honor the terms of the treaty, then?” Catspaw continued, and the elf lord nodded.

  He walked over to his band of elves, the goblin King beside him. Nir brought the five unmarried women forward with a gesture, but they wouldn’t have been hard to pick out anyway. All five were sobbing in terror.

  “They speak only elvish,” he noted. “Shall I translate?”

  “I speak elvish,” responded the goblin King, annoyed.

  Catspaw surveyed their frightened faces. They were pretty enough, he thought moodily; for pity’s sake, all elf women were pretty. There was a sameness about these five that prevented any one from attracting attention. He thought of Miranda’s auburn hair and warm smile. It would take an amazing elf, he decided wrathfully, to make him give her up.

  But Marak Catspaw was a King who had trained his whole life for kingship, and he gave no sign of his feelings toward them. With great courtesy, he coaxed a name out of each sobbing girl. They wailed and turned away from the touch of that horrible paw, but he managed to test them for magic without provoking too much of an outburst. Nothing but a few sparks rewarded his patient efforts. They weren’t a very distinguished group. Not one was from the high families, and not one was worth his Miranda, he decided in relief.