They were taller than humans, with gray skin and long pointed ears and hair like dandelion puffs. They wore tight-fitting, elegant clothing in extravagant patterns and colors. Most of them had many rings hanging from their ears; some of the rings were plain gold or silver, some had chains hanging from them with tiny gems suspended at the ends, and some were thick bands of carved metal or gemstones. And I spotted one or two Goblins who had encased the tips of their pointed ears in filigreed metal. They didn’t wear any other jewelry except those ear ornaments.
Most of the Goblins stood behind the counters of their stalls feigning indifference, although their black eyes darted everywhere beneath half-closed eyelids. A few Goblins sauntered down the aisles between the booths and idly looked over what was on offer. Most of it was food. And it was really, really tempting-looking food. There were heaps and heaps of fruits, some I recognized, most I didn’t. There were trays of sparkling candies that looked like enormous jewels. There were pastries that looked like glazed carvings of some pale, pale wood, and some of them were dotted with succulent currants or glazed nuts, and others looked like fat little loaves bursting with nuts and preserved fruits. Interesting. It’s all sweet stuff. The sort of thing that would be the hardest to resist.
The rest was very much a mixed bag. Here was a stall full of dried roots, each one carefully labeled with a little tag; and there was a stall selling bunches of fresh herbs and packets of dried ones. Across from it was a stall selling… well, it looked as if it was selling parts of animals; there was a tray of feet, another of ears, a bunch of tails hung up in one corner, and the preserved heads of what looked like foxes, wolves, and badgers. One stall sold nothing but bones, most of them loose; but some were cunningly wired together. Another stall sold tightly rolled scrolls, which I assumed were probably magic spells ready to be cast by just reading them aloud. Although for all I know, they could have been maps.
We were not the only humans strolling the aisles between the stalls, but all of the others were—well, they didn’t look very much like us. They all looked like hardened adventurers; they were well armed, dressed in leather, often with chain-mail tunics on top; and they had expressionless faces and shuttered eyes. I knew that human magicians and both Light and Dark Fae were known to frequent the Goblin Market, but I didn’t see any here tonight, at least not that I recognized, although I suppose any of the adventurers who were perusing the wares could have been magicians. They don’t all wear robes and pointed hats.
The others kept close to me, although I thought they were being pretty good at not betraying how much this place unnerved them. It certainly unnerved me. A couple of the other humans gave us passing glances followed by little smiles. Not reassuring smiles. More like these children have no idea what they’ve gotten themselves into smiles. But no one spoke to us; I suppose they (rightly) figured that if we discovered that we needed help, we’d come to one of them, proverbial cap in hand.
Then there were the stalls displaying nothing. Some of these were Goblin mages willing to sell their services. But some sold information. The ones who sold information, according to what I had read, were designated by the sign of an eye above the stall.
So I looked for the sign of an eye, expecting either a painted sign or (just as likely) an actual eye preserved in some way. But what I spotted was a lot more unnerving.
It looked like a mirror, but in the mirror was a great big pea-green eye, complete with lids, that continuously scanned the crowd. And when it spotted us, it fixated on us and blinked rapidly. And the moment it began looking at us, the Goblin tending the booth turned to stare at us as well.
I gulped. So much for being subtle. There was no point in subterfuge. I led the others straight to the booth.
Ever since I was a little thing, I’ve collected odd objects. Very few of them are actually worth anything, but they are definitely very odd. While digging around in the forest behind our old home, I uncovered a series of lumps of black amber. I did some experimental carving on them, polishing them until they looked like strange, contorted flowers. No humans use black amber for jewelry because it’s not very pretty, and the results of my carving attempts looked so weird that I certainly would not have considered wearing them myself.
But magicians valued it highly. And I thought I would open the bargaining with them. So I put some steel in my backbone, stood tall, and looked up at the Goblin, doing my best to ignore the giant eye above us looking down at me. The Goblin’s eyes were the same shade of pea green as the eye on his stall. I fumbled in my belt pouch and brought out one of the black amber sculptures and put it on the counter in front of him.
I was watching his eyes rather than my own hands as I did this, and I thought I caught a flash of greed before he schooled his features into a mask of indifference. He raised an eyebrow at me, and I nodded and took my fingers off the sculpture so he could pick it up. He picked it up carefully between his elongated thumb and forefinger, both of which sported nails long and sharp enough to be called talons.
“Hmm,” he said. “Interesting. What is it you wish to know?”
I should start with the least important thing. “Where Lady Thornheart came from,” I said casually. “She wasn’t from Tirendell, or at least she hadn’t been here long.”
He smirked at me and pocketed the gem. “That’s easy. Nobody knows. But since that’s an unsatisfactory answer and not worth the price of your gem, I’ll add something else. The first anyone knows of her is that she appeared out of nowhere and took over the Shardstone Tower about a month before the christening where she got herself immolated. And I only got that much from the Hobs living near the tower. If you want to know more, you’ll have to go exploring there yourself.” And he leered at me, because obviously we were all far too young to go that deeply into Dark Fae lands and poke around the dwellings of dangerous Dark Fae.
Now he looked at me with expectant greed, because he surely knew—even if he didn’t recognize me—that this was just my first question. So I took a deep breath, reached into my pouch, and brought out two more carvings, placing them on the counter. “Now I want to know about something that might have happened approximately thirty years ago that involved the Serpent Sisters.”
“If you want to know about anything involving the sisters, you’ll need two more of those.”
“One more,” I said, and put my hand in my pouch while my other hand hovered over the carvings as if to take them back. He licked his lips, then nodded.
“One more then,” he agreed, and a third carving joined the other two.
“About thirty years ago, someone escaped from the sisters in the middle of the night,” I said, trying to choose my words carefully and watching his expression for the tiniest of signs that he recognized the situation I was describing. “She was advised to come here, to this market, to bargain for safe haven. Did she come here?”
“No,” he said quickly—too quickly, because a direct denial that she had come here meant that he knew what I was talking about and didn’t intend to give any additional information, or at least not without being paid a lot more for it. He scooped up the three carvings before I could touch them—he had answered the question—and deposited them somewhere under the counter.
I quickly fished out the last of my carvings, all five of them, and put them on the counter so I could ask who the escapee was. But to my astonishment, he shoved them back at me. “No more questions. At least not on that subject,” he said flatly, and before I could react, he raised his voice and called out, “Brothers! These young humans look hungry! I think we should feed them, don’t you?”
I got a cold feeling in the bottom of my gut, and the hair on the back of my neck rose. And out of the corner of my eye, I could see every other human in the market backing away from us and making their way as quickly as possible to the entrance. Some of them were even running, not caring what the Goblins thought.
I scooped up my carvings and stuffed them in the pouch as the others crowded closely around me.
“We appreciate your concern,” I replied, my voice cracking a little with strain. “But, really, that’s not necessary—”
“Oh,” he replied as the Goblin fruit sellers picked up some of their wares and began weighing them in their hands. “I do think it is. I really do.”
I motioned to the others that we needed to get out of there, although I am pretty sure they’d already figured that out. “I think we’ll just be on our way now,” I said with forced cheer. “It’s been a pleasure doing business with you.”
We clustered back-to-back and started to move toward the entrance. I was walking backward so I could cover our rear, and I couldn’t help but notice that we were the only humans left in the market now; everyone else had vanished. Goblins with fruit in their hands came from behind their stalls, huge grins on their faces. Since their teeth were all needle-pointed, this was anything but reassuring. “Keep moving,” I said under my breath. “Don’t stop. And keep your mouths shut. Don’t let anything get past your lips!”
The Goblin I’d been talking to emerged from behind his stall and accepted a beautiful purple thing that looked like a plum the size of an apple from another of his kind as he continued to advance on us. “I think they’ll change their minds after they get a taste of our wares, don’t you, my brothers?” he crooned.
And before I could blink, we were surrounded by Goblins, all of them with fruit in their hands. The first one held his giant plum up in front of my eyes and squeezed it slightly so it oozed juices from the punctures his nails made in the skin. The scent was like nothing I had ever smelled before, like honey and almonds and cherry blossoms, and it made my mouth water, it was that good. I didn’t say anything, though, because I was pretty sure that if my lips parted even a little, he’d shove that fruit into my mouth. I seized Elle’s hand with one hand and Nat’s with the other so the Goblins couldn’t separate us, and I fought down the rising panic that made me want to break and run.
We continued to head for the entrance as the Goblins crowded closer and closer, juices oozing from the fruit they held and intoxicating scents wafting over us until my eyes watered from the urge to taste them.
Then, with a lunge, the first Goblin rubbed the plum he held over my mouth. My teeth cut into my lower lip, and my lips hurt with how hard I was holding them together, and the scent was maddening. But terror kept me from giving in to it.
Now the Goblins were all over us, rubbing their prizes into whatever parts of us they could reach, shrieking “Eat! Eat!” at the tops of their lungs. I had pulp in my hair and juice in my eyes, and suddenly I was being dragged along backward by my hands as whoever was at the front of our group broke and began running for the entrance. I let go of the others’ hands and whirled and ran with them as the Goblins began pelting us with fruit.
But what would happen when we reached the entrance? We wouldn’t be safe! In fact, once we crossed out of the market, we’d be out of the neutral area! And then what? My mind gibbered with terror at the prospect.
At least we can draw our swords then!
But they outnumbered us three to one at least!
It was hard to run with fruit flying at us from every direction. “Eat! Eat!” the Goblins shrieked as they threw. “Come back, guests! Come and eat! Come join us and eat!”
I couldn’t see for the juice in my eyes, I was running blindly toward where I remembered the entrance to be, and I knew the others must be trying desperately not to get so much as a particle of fruit or a drop of juice into their mouths and not thinking much past that. The bright lights of the market were nothing more than haloed blobs as I tried to dash the juices out of my eyes and succeeded only in making my vision more blurry.
Then out of nowhere, a huge gust of hot wind buffeted us and nearly knocked me to the ground.
And we stumbled into something blue that was as big as a house and very warm.
“Fancy meeting you here, Miri!” said Serulan, his voice coming from far above me.
I crowded with the others into the shelter of his chest and finally managed to rub the juices out of my eyes with my sleeve just in time to see that we had crossed the threshold of the market. Serulan brought his head down to our level, his long neck curved in a graceful blue arc, and his face was almost nose to nose with the Goblin who had been bargaining with me.
“Hello, friend,” Serulan said in a cloyingly sweet tone of voice. “Is there anything I can do for you?”
The Goblin lost his grin. The fruits he’d been holding dropped from his hands to the ground as if he no longer had the strength to hold them. “No,” he said breathlessly. “No, there’s nothing you can do for me. Thank you.”
And then suddenly we were in darkness.
The Goblin Market had vanished.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A SOFT WHITE LIGHT APPEARED FROM BEHIND SERULAN’S right foreleg, and a moment later, the source of the light trotted quickly into the midst of us. It was Viridity, of course, who brought his own light with him in the form of his glowing horn. “All of you!” he exclaimed. “Crowd around me! Touch my horn! Miriam, help me with your magic as you did before!”
I didn’t think; I just did as he said as his beautiful little spiraled horn vanished under all our hands. Since my sword was sheathed, I fed him with every bit of Fae power I could muster, and the light from his horn leaked out from between our fingers, then became so powerful that it flashed for a moment right through our hands, blinding us all.
Then the light went out, exhaustion hit me like a hammer, my knees gave out, and I dropped to all fours on the bare earth, panting. And then I noticed something.
The tantalizing scents were gone, replaced by something harsh and bitter with a hint of rot.
“It’s safe to open your mouths now,” Viridity said, sounding very tired.
I looked up. His horn was glowing dimly, and he looked as tired as if he had run flat out for a mile.
“Argh!” Rob exclaimed, and retched. “Don’t lick your lips! It’s horrible!”
“Viridity purified the evil,” Serulan said, sounding very annoyed with us. “That’s what’s left.”
I scrubbed my mouth and face with the hem of my tunic and my sleeve as hard as I could, but when I opened my mouth… I could still taste it. Take all the worst things you’ve ever accidentally bitten into—the sourest, the bitterest, the most rancid. Mix them all up. It was like that but probably worse. Vomit would have been better. I spent a long time gagging and trying to control my stomach.
Finally, I looked up and saw that Giles was looking at me with an expression that said, You deserve this. He still held the horses, which were reacting to the stench we were soaked in with distaste and head tosses.
Serulan curved his head down to stare at all of us—but me in particular. “You are very, very lucky that Lobo realized what you were about to do,” he said sternly. “He came to Viridity and me and told us. He followed you to the market, and we followed him at a distance. If we hadn’t come when we did…”
He didn’t have to say anything more.
“Thank you, Serulan,” I replied, feeling worse than I had ever felt in my life. “Thank you, Viridity. I know that thanks are not enough, but that’s all I have.”
“Well,” Serulan said, sounding mollified. “You did save me, after all. Get on your horses if you can get them to stand still. You should be getting back before you’re missed. You should be all right without us now.”
I managed to create a light over our heads that the horses could see by, and we put them to a fast trot. I had no idea how long it had been since we left the palace, but Serulan was right—we had to get back before we were missed.
But when I stepped through the door in the oak with Star, I realized by the quiet in the gardens and the position of the stars that it had been longer than I had thought. And we were still a mess. The foul taste and smell had faded to almost nothing, but we had sticky stuff all over our faces and clothing, and fruit pulp in our hair. We were going to get looks and questio
ns from anyone of rank we might run into.
Well, maybe we can clean up at the pump at the stables enough to get to our rooms without anyone noticing something’s wrong.
I headed for the stable before Giles was more than partway through the door. And when I got there…
I knew we were in trouble when I was intercepted by one of the King’s guards, who was waiting for us at the stable. I knew we were in a lot of trouble when he told me sternly to wait until everyone had reached the stable, then had the stable boys take all our horses.
I knew that we were in much more serious trouble than I could have imagined when we were escorted up to the Privy Council Chamber, and I saw that Papa was wearing his crown and sitting in his throne, and that none of his councilors were with him.
Because this was the King, not Papa, I gave him a full bow rather than a curtsy since curtsies look stupid when you are wearing trews. The rest followed my lead. We stood there silently and waited for him to address us.
“Lady Miriam,” he said, after looking at us soberly for a very long time. “Explain yourself.”
So I did, taking my time about it and laying out my reasoning—but I didn’t say anything about asking about the Fae who was probably my grandmother because that seemed like a very bad idea, but I had to explain why a dragon had rescued us, which meant also confessing to that unauthorized expedition to help Serulan. And I could tell from the darkening of his expression that the King did not approve of that, either.
The King—not Papa when he was in this mood—pondered all this. “Lady Miriam,” he said very, very sternly. “I am gravely disappointed in you.”
I froze. I knew better than to try to speak. I just listened with my head bowed as he read me a long and entirely accurate lecture on exactly how careless and willful I had been, how I had let my impulsive nature lead my friends and me into a situation that could have had extremely serious consequences for all of us. He described exactly what it would have taken to rid us all of the addiction to Goblin fruit and how costly it would have been to Gerrold and the Crown. Many of the components were rare and expensive. One of them was available only from the same kingdom that had tried to invade us when I was a child. There was no telling what sort of concessions he would have had to make to get it out of them. “And whatever made you think that I had not sent agents of my own to the Goblin Market to discover what I could about Lady Thornheart?” he demanded, his tone so cold, it made me shiver. “Did you really think I was that foolish? Did you actually think I was not moving heaven and earth to discover why Aurora was the sudden target of the Dark Fae?”
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