A Spell Takes Root

by Keith Hendricks

“I don’t think so,” replied Huiln. “Kuilea!” But there was no response.

  On the ground, the light of the Abyss was not as bright, as the sprawling goblin cities emanated a fine haze even at the foothills of the mountains. A shrill wind set both of them shivering. Khyte, covered with sweat and goosebumps,

  unslung his backpack, stooped to get his red wool cloak, and wrapped it about him. Huiln unfolded a hemp sweater, and pulled it over his head.

  “Start walking,” said the goblin. “If we don’t keep our muscles warm, we won’t get to Kreona’s outskirts today.”

  “Here I am.” Kuilea had walked up behind them without either noticing.

  While Kuilea was a sinewy warrior, her brown pigtails, and the host of golden bangles swarming on her ear, made her seem less Huiln’s sister than his daughter. If her arms were thick, her chest was thicker, but what seemed to bulge most of all, contrary to the facts of measurement, were her bulbous silver eyes, inset in a golden, masklike face. Unlike Huiln, she wore not only a quartz-studded hauberk, but greaves and vambraces of a blue metal. Crossing her armor was a sash dyed with the image of a copper krupek superimposed over the goblin moon, the symbol of House Hwarn.

  “Kuilea?” said Huiln, sounding less surprised than annoyed, which Khyte took as confirmation. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m keeping an eye on my younger brother,” said the tanned gobliness, whose skin was more olive-hued than her brother. “And, as it turns out, an old friend. Or are you? How did we leave it? It’s been so long, and I have so many friends.”

  “You’re saying I’m forgettable.”

  “No, Khyte. Merely unmemorable.”

  “What a relief that you still know my name. And thank you for your help.”

  “You’re welcome. And if you want to apologize, I won’t count it against you.”

  “If I’m unmemorable, I have nothing for which to apologize.”

  Despite the familiar and uncomfortable sense that Khyte had misjudged a faithful friend, her missteps were equally loud. While they trusted Sarin Gelf, to whom coin and soul were flip sides, Huiln and Kuilea assumed Khyte was too selfish to care for rescuing an innocent, and deceived him to gain his involvement. His feelings were so bruised that he wanted to brain their good intentions. Huiln especially should know better, for that goblin had only survived their adventures by trusting Khyte’s instincts.

  Slipping into this imagined role was a part he had played before, just as he had acted the boyfriend before parting ways with Kuilea … Did the wicked become so by slipping into comfortable roles cast by others? Was it evil to mirror others’ preconceptions? Were not others’ bad intentions the original sin? This line of reasoning might have whittled Khyte down to nothing had he not then chosen to examine the otherworldly dagger he’d stolen from Sarin Gelf. Its preternatural polish reflected nothing but its own surface. Though he should see himself and Mt. Irutak in the blade, it was clean of everything except its own mirrored sheen and captured illumination.

  Khyte’s epiphany freed him from the Gordian knot of narcissism. Like the dagger, he would let nothing stick, nothing except light. As corruption was a game with many losers and no victors, he would entertain it only as a strategy to bewilder his opponents.

  Khyte had trodden this path several times, so that by now he tuned out most of the sights: a stone quarry, where goblins tore free granite; a derelict mine, with empty and cracked wooden boxes labeled tsacharen (explosives) as if the workers had dried up and blown away—or been blown up and swept away with the dust; a stream with windmills grinding irinalc, the goblin grain cultivated for bread and beer, and to thicken the soups, stews, and gravies that goblins cook in their pots; and the Last Wild Wood, a way station that tabled its patrons at the vast stumps of the last ancient trees of the Drenmach Forest, the old goblin woods that now figured only in tales and rhymes.

  They were greeted by the aroma of goblin pots a half-mile before they entered the gates, for goblins are gourmands that find excuses for eating at every time of the day; there is always something stewing in Kreona. Cavernous goblin pots held roasted vegetables; broiled, sauced, and glazed meats; steamed rice and potatoes; simmered soups and stews; and boiled the dumplings that were later turned on a spit to make the brown, flaky, crust of goblins’ twice-cooked bread.

  The goblin capitol was rife with restaurant culture, as cooking was a skill passed down in craft apprenticeships (save for noble houses, in which each heirloom recipe was jealously guarded). Restaurants were second only to residences in number and variety, and they had not stepped fifty feet into the city’s outskirts before they stumbled into the heady bouquet of a fondue emanating from a large brick building with front and back patios, and a sign reading the Copper Croc that had a nauseatingly cute design of a copper-colored crocodile poking its head out of a soup crock.

  Nahurian towns became cities by having a distinctive cuisine that catered to the local passion for food, and Kreona’s preeminent gourmet entree was undoubtedly fondue, with nearly a hundred establishments within its gates. That this one sat outside the gates did not bode well, Huiln argued, although he had a full stomach, and Khyte did not. All three knew that a restaurant on the outskirts would be owned either by an untested entrepreneur; an incompetent that failed in Kreona’s higher-rent districts; an eccentric that liked his clientele to travel a long way, and no doubt to wait in line and at table for an underwhelming spread; or a bumpkin that preferred the more rustic setting. Rather than arguing against these very good points, Khyte walked in and sat at one of many ominously empty tables.

  When Khyte was joined by Huiln and Kuilea, they were each served a bowl of pungent dip that did not look like a fondue or smell anything like milk, cream, or cheese. Redolent of cinnamon, apples, and pears, it made the young barbarian’s mouth water, and he fell upon it using the thick slabs of crusty bread provided as spoons. The waiter then returned with four clay cups and a copper-plated flagon that was chilled to the touch, and it rattled as Khyte poured ice and a cold goblin grog into their cups. When Khyte downed his portion, refilled his cup, then quaffed that too, the waiter doubled back with another full flagon.

  “Dessert first,” said Khyte, after wolfing down two fruit-smothered planks of bread. “Forget what I said, Huiln—I love Nahure!” Khyte’s face felt hot and he wiped sweat from his brow and stubble.

  “It’s not dessert,” said Huiln. “You’ve forgotten more than your manners. Chupore, the first bowl, is always sweet.”

  “Explain why I get free food when I haven’t asked for any. On my world, if I haven’t asked for it, it’s a gift. Could I walk out the door?”

  “We’d never do that, but yes,” answered Huiln, “chupore is gratis.”

  “Yes,” agreed Kuilea, “though you’d take away a reputation as an ill-mannered skinflint.”

  “Order anything,” said Khyte. “I’m paying.”

  At that moment, the waiter dropped off a steaming onion-legume fondue in smaller copper pots. Huiln shrugged weakly, pinched a baguette, ripped it in two, and dunked. Kuilea gave her brother the stink-eye, then snapped up her own bread.

  “My brother knows better,” she said. “You’re a visitor, and the three sister deities will strike us dead if you pay for anything today.”

  Khyte nodded, and ordered the cheapest thing on the menu that would fill his stomach: a fondue of cheese, potato, and red wine; Huiln ordered a fondue of cheese and white bean; and Kuilea ordered the three cheese fondue with sage and cranberries.

  “Why three sister deities? That’s thirty divine fingers to stick in your business. And in mine.” Khyte gulped down another cup of the icy goblin grog. Was it his fourth or fifth? He had stopped keeping track, as the waiter kept bringing flagons, and if Khyte didn’t think to fill the cups himself, Kuilea and Huiln were quick to pour as well.

  “Actually,” said Huiln, “it’s a hundred and ninety.” />
  “That’s ...” started Khyte. “... sixty-three and a third fingers apiece? Do they all have a different number of fingers? Don’t your gods look like goblins?”

  “Culanora does, except she has four arms, and nine fingers on each hand. The great spider, Lyspera, has none. Irutak has one hundred and fifty-four fingers, as she has eleven tentacles: the first has nine fingers, the second ten, and so forth.”

  “Brother had religious aspirations before he took his upward yearning and applied it to escaping our overbearing trinity and traveling the Five Worlds. Not to mention his part-time work, piling money sky-high for the Bankers’ Capital Building.”

  “Don’t talk that way about the Three,” said Huiln with what looked like sincerely pious fear.

  “Why? I’ve talked that way my whole life, so if I’m on their hit list, I should be dead a hundred times over.”

  “Your brain is dead a hundred times over.” Khyte laughed loudly, and when Kuilea scowled, rather than stopping his loud, drunken laughter, he redoubled his mirth. “All goblins are brain-dead.”

  This bit of theater got the attention of everyone in the restaurant, and six goblins at the next table stood up: half with hands on hips, and the other half remembering to keep a hold of their flagons. As the goblin idiom goes, “loose beer has legs”—if you turn your back, it will be on another table.

  “That didn’t sound right,” said one.

  “I’d say all humans stink like pigs,” said another, “if that wasn’t unfair to pigs.”

  Huiln, usually a peace broker, was silent. He leaned back in his chair as if inviting them to beat Khyte, and as if he wouldn’t do anything to stop it.

  A waiter pushed a cart with copper pots, bowls, plates, and extra baguettes to their table, where he parked it with care, so as not to run over toes. When the waiter lifted the first entree over the table with thick potholder gloves, he at last took stock of what was happening, and froze midway. When Khyte seized the gloves, and flung the hot, bubbling goo, the waiter was dragged haplessly half-way across the table. Scalding fondue clung to shirts and trousers, and seemed to drip from screams of pain and rage, as Khyte yanked the waiter back and set him on his feet.

  “Run,” Khyte told the waiter. “They’re too cheesed off to know friend from foe.”

  The most deeply dipped goblin screamed as his friends poured their drinks on him, and the beer spread the burn before it diluted the fondue. The victim pushed them aside, stripped his steaming shirt from a chest scored with red welts, and took off his pants with even less modesty, as his nether parts were even more fondue-ravaged. When Khyte snickered, the others pinned him against a latticed window, which rattled in its jambs.

  “Khyte’s homecomings are never easy,” said Kuilea.

  The goblin concept of “home” was more charitable, and affected how goblins thought of family life. Similar to ancient cultures that considered unrelated men and women sharing a roof—even for one night—married, similarly, one night in a goblin house made it your home too. You would think goblins would be loath to invite stranger’s home, but this belief did not affect their hospitality, as they considered it easier to trust one who was obligated. Indeed, it was customary for business contracts to be signed after one contractee had joined the other goblin’s house in this fashion. Moreover, Goblin patriarchs, their hands not tied by nepotism and primogeniture to bestow the labors of their long lives on litters of unworthy curs, were free to leave their estates to those not related by blood, so long as they were in the same House.

  Huiln looked away from her, then at Khyte. “You’re a horrible house guest,” he said. “And for a brother, you’re bottom of the barrel.”

  “You tell me three years after the fact?” Khyte laughed, and one of the goblins punched him in the mouth, spattering blood on the table. When another drew a knife from his cloak, Khyte stooped, yanking his grapplers down with him, as if to pull away from the brandished blade, then sprang up in an explosive twist of his torso and thrashing of his arms that brushed the goblins back. One flew against the knife point, and his piteous shriek sent another sprinting. Of the two able-bodied goblins that remained, the knife-fighter was disarmed when his woozy friend’s pierced shoulder dragged the dagger from his shaking fingers and the other staggered into the arms of a chair, so that he seemed a spectator to the brawl. Unbelievably, and with consummate panache, he faced the couple at the table, who were too elderly to run from the fracas, and started talking animatedly, as if always one of their party. While Kuilea and Huiln were indignant at Khyte’s remark, and Khyte was steamed at his so-called friends’ loyalty, all laughed at the goblin’s chutzpah.

  Common decency would consider it churlish and graceless to laugh at another’s cowardice, especially standing over one that was burned, another that was stabbed, and a table full of uneaten food. It was Huiln, a modest and sentimental goblin at heart, that regained his composure first—though being a goblin, it was the next realization that moved him the most. “Khyte, you fool,” he said, “we’ve only eaten our first course.”

  “Right,” Khyte said. He uncovered the bowls on the cart, then sat down with his entree. The strain of brawling and the explosion of scent—pungent cheese, thyme, caraway—from the unlidded, savory fondue combined to make his knees weak. As Khyte was an adept food-shoveler, he managed several mouthfuls before Huiln shouted, “Idiot! Get up, before the guards come!”

  Deliriously empty after three days in the Abyss, Khyte was bone-weary, starved, and thirsty as a drunk. He was going to have this meal, and damn the consequences. He donned his demi-gauntlets, seized the sides of the pot with his mailed palms, and drank the hot fondue. While he swallowed it too fast to savor it and it tore the inside of his mouth to torment him later, the liquid meal was so dizzyingly satisfying that he had no regrets. He set down the heavy bowl with a clatter, then chased it with a slug of wine. Parched as he was, even his water cup was as intoxicating as brandy, which was present in abundance. He alternated wine, water, and brandy as fast as he could, not looking up from the table, and seizing Kuilea and Huiln’s cups as well. Though he heard the silence in the inn, a near stillness in which his lip-smacking and slurping resounded, and the only other sound he noticed was rain drumming on the roof, he turned to the cart and took Kuilea’s meal in hand for his next course.

  Aside from Khyte, who was all mouth, hands, and elbows, shoveling in food and drink, the only movement was steam curling to the ceiling from the last lidded bowl on the cart. The elderly couple, the toughs, the wait staff, and even Kuilea and Huiln had all exited. That said, the restaurant wasn’t entirely empty: he could hear commotion behind the kitchen doors, and one table had not vacated. Realizing that there was yet one witness to his abominable behavior, Khyte turned to the other diner, prepared to offer some self-deprecating wit, when the tiny pang of his remorse was engulfed by the alarm of recognition.

  Not that he knew the cloaked woman’s cowled face, nor did he recognize her by stature, as her true figure was disguised, and every time he met her, she had different dimensions; he did not know her by her womanly attributes, either, though they had once been lovers, for she always affected mannish dress. What he recognized was the hilt of her sword, a baneful weapon that she had forged from a shard of Irtuak and a blade the goblins knew well, telling tales of the bearer’s adventures, as with her a piece of Nahure ventured into the Five Worlds.

  Long moments dragged, and Khyte, who had formerly fallen into his food with gusto and noise, had become silent, thinking that the only time he had fallen harder than today was when he fell for her. Though Khyte often regretted the way he ended it, it was neither guilt nor shame, but fear that subdued him, and panic vanquished hunger as well. As Khyte had left this unspeakably dangerous person in no small manner of distress, she undoubtedly hated his guts.

  The sword hilt jutted over blonde braids snaking through the folds of an aquamarine cloak. While her co
mplexion was disconcerting, as if the whiteness of paper, in aspiring to the yellow of a peach, flowered a crisp, fiery amber, Khyte was fixed by her golden irises, a stare that still held him in a pitcher plant of clinging contempt mingled with viscous longing. While her breasts were buxom, they seemed inflated just short of bad taste, as if held back less by their halter than by the restraint of an artist. This figure was drawn with a bold line that swelled as it brushed attributes that were earth-shattering before Khyte knew the monster they concealed. Her curves swerved and swayed until they wrecked his pulse, and if his mind now shrank from the horror, his lust was still immersed. Buildings might collapse, swords might ring, and mobs might roar, and Khyte would hear only the boom of Eurilda.

  Chapter 3

  Eurilda

  What have you done, Khyte?” Eurilda asked. “No, don’t tell me. I can already guess. Actually, you’ve found the next line of my new lyric: ‘What heartless beast slays without effort, thought, or grace?’ The meter needs work, but it fits you fine.”

  There was a time when Khyte approved her habit of writing bad poetry, because it distracted her from recognizing his faults, although at that time he was so naive that he didn’t know what they were. Eurilda was all too happy to recognize his faults for him: bully, braggart, cad, liar, glutton, cheat, knave … and later, disturbingly, speck, grub, and vermin. By that time, Khyte knew enough about Eurilda to understand that the latter slurs were probably the most honest of all—from her point of view.

  “Eurilda,” Khyte said, “I’m sorry.” As fear thawed, warmth returned to Khyte’s limbs, and a quivering smile to his face, for while she spoke with contempt, Eurilda wasn’t the kind to kill while savoring a laugh at her victim’s expense. No doubt he was in this position because he was, in many ways, her opposite. While he was carefree and insolent, she was so thoughtful that her insults were costumed as compliments; while thoughts became deeds in Khyte, Eurilda’s deeds embodied her thoughts. When Khyte called the legendary swordsman Nimor “merely adequate with a blade” and was speedily summoned to a duel, none looked happier than Eurilda, who not only arranged the event, but sent exquisitely engraved invitations bearing Khyte’s name in bold capitals, and Nimor’s in a dainty cursive, and she was about to charge admission for the purposes of awarding the winner a respectable purse when the challenger had the effrontery to call her the swag. She mushroomed so fast that the expanding toe of her boot knocked the offending onlooker down before the shudder of her descending fist dug a grave under the exploding corpse.