by Jon Jacks
The goblin looked her up and down, his mouth crinkling a little in disgust at her truly filthy state.
‘I didn’t get filthy!’ he pointed out, drawing her attention to his immaculately clean clothes.
She looked him up and down, her mouth pouting in suspicion.
‘Yes, how is it tha– the fairy dust!’ She pointed accusingly at the pouch the goblin was holding. ‘You used it just to keep clean?’
‘It saves me having a bath! I don’t like baths!’
‘Arrghh! This is crazy!’
Helen clenched her fists in frustration.
‘They’re only relatively minor spells,’ the goblin said defensively. ‘The way I see it, I can hardly be accused of tempting the darker realms when I’m limiting myself to just providing the necessities of life!’
‘But I’d heard that a speck of fairy dust – not that I ever believed it, naturally! – could conjure up a whole palace–’
‘A whole kingdom more like!’ the goblin corrected her proudly.
Helen glared all the more at him.
The goblin made a placating waving of his hands.
‘Look, look,’ he protested, ‘that’s what I mean when I say I’m not putting myself at risk of being overrun by the darkness: how can I be accused of being greedy for power, when I’m turning down the chance to rule a kingdom–’
‘And choosing a ham sandwich instead? I think anyone could accuse you of being stupid! If you’re so scared of using it, why not just sell it? You could easily make enough money to live comfortably for the rest of your life!’
‘A single speck is literally worth a kingdom!’ the goblin said. ‘Who could afford to buy that, let alone a whole pouch? I’ve–’
He stopped, his brow furrowing in puzzlement.
With narrowed eyes, he stared suspiciously at Helen.
‘Why am I having to tell you all this? Didn’t you say you’d heard the story of the Box of Fools?’
‘Well, heard of it…’ Helen said, a little flustered by the goblin catching her out in her lie.
Fortunately for her, before the goblin could question her further they were both distracted by a dulled metallic clank coming from the machinery lying beyond the wall.
‘What’s that?’ the goblin asked curiously, straining his ears to hear more, silently moving closer towards the wall, waving a hand to quieten Helen.
‘It sounds like there’s something moving around in another room…’
Like the goblin, Helen was keeping her breathing to a minimum as she tried to listen out for any more sounds of clanking.
They didn’t hear any more sounds of knocking.
But they did hear what could have been a mumbling wail.
The goblin glanced Helen’s way, returning her own stare of amazement.
‘It sounds like there’s someone still alive in there!’
*
Chapter 24
‘But…I searched everywhere! There can’t be anyone in there!’
The goblin was completely bemused.
‘It sounded like they were in the machinery,’ Helen pointed out.
‘Sure, and – of course – I’ve explored amongst all the cogs and gears I could get to: I wanted to try and work out why this great beast had just suddenly come to a halt!’
‘All the ones you could get to? What about the ones you couldn’t get to?’
‘Well, somewhat surprisingly, perhaps, I didn’t search amongst the cogs I couldn’t get to!’
‘What about the inspection hatch? Did you try that?’
‘I would have done, if I’d found one!’
‘In the story: the Rourans find one on the outside.’
‘On the outside? What sort of war machine has a hatch on the outside?’
‘It was just a story: perhaps the–’
‘No: you might be right!’
The goblin’s eye lit up.
‘I mean, all the cogs connecting the neck to the body: they’re so complicated, you can’t get to them from inside! But yes, they might have had no choice but to put the hatch on the outside; hiding it under the neck!’
The minute speck of dust between his fingers forgotten, he carelessly threw it aside has he rushed for the ladder that would take them back outside.
‘Let’s find it,’ he yelled excitedly. ‘I might even find out why this great lump of a thing isn’t working anymore!’
*
Scrabbling along the thick branches the elephant had fallen against, the goblin soon found the inspection hatch.
As he’d guessed, it wasn’t really that easy to find, the elephant’s head and vast ears veiling it from view.
He didn’t even need to hack away at any branches this time to open the hatch.
He clambered inside, closely followed by an equally intrigued Helen.
‘It’s bigger in here than I’d expected,’ the goblin wheezed elatedly, making his way along a gangway suspended between the elaborate arrays of huge cogs.
‘Who’s there? Who is it?’ a voice cried out, coming from the darkness lying deeper amongst the maze of complicated gearing.
Amongst that darkness, there was a light, the yellowed glow of an oil lantern.
And in the light of that lantern, Helen caught a glimpse of the man who was shouting out to them.
It was a man dressed in rags.
A man with yellow, heavily scarred skin.
It was the humbled man.
*
Chapter 25
‘It’s impossible! You’re dead: you died long ago!’
Helen was bewildered. The humbled man stared back at her with almost equally uncomprehending eyes.
‘And yet here I am,’ he replied with what could have been a triumphant sneer, ‘so I must be alive!’
‘You were killed! And even if the story’s wrong, it was all so long ago…’
‘Then whatever story you’ve heard must be wrong,’ the man replied, pointing out as he spoke that what little remained of his ragged garb had been caught in the gears of the elephant’s mechanism. ‘I wonder,’ he added, speaking more politely, ‘could you help me free myself?’
‘This is why the elephant’s not working!’ the goblin declared jubilant, eagerly rushing forward to try and pull the man’s clothes free of the stilled workings.
‘Wait, no! Stop!’
Urgently reaching out towards him, Helen managed to grab the goblin’s shoulder and pull him back.
‘He’s diseased, remember? The story?’
The man’s eyes were abruptly more globular and hateful than she had first noticed, drawing her attention to the gauntness of his face, the yellowed, parchment-like flesh. His whole skin, especially that of his bared arms and chest, his spindly legs, was horrendously scarred, as if the worms of the earth had already decided to devour him, squirming everywhere all over him.
Many of the scars had healed long ago, while those writhing over the more ancient ones were in some cases still quite fresh wounds: indeed, there was a scrawl across the inside of his leg that was still bleeding.
He was little more than a badly reanimated corpse, and the mere sight of him made Helen feel intensely wary of him. If he had been locked within this elephant for as long as its crew – and surely that was the case, for it was surely his own garment that had brought the unfortunate beast to a complete and sudden halt – then he should have starved, or died of thirst, for there didn’t appear to be any way he could have accessed either food or water.
It wasn’t natural, this form of life.
It could only be maintained by use of the very darkest of the arts.
No wonder the Great Khan had been shocked, even horrified, by the man’s appearance!
‘Diseased?’ The man was quite obviously affronted by Helen’s warning to the goblin, his face trembling with what could have been rage as well as any illness. ‘I’m not diseased! I’m a man who places reaching out to God above all other mundane, Earthly considerations!’
It was enough for the goblin, whose urge to get the elephant working once more overrode all other considerations.
‘In the story I heard,’ he declared, shrugging himself free of Helen’s grip and rushing forward once more, ‘he was fine!’
He pulled hard on the ragged cloth, expecting it to shred away easily in his hands. But he was surprised to find that the thread refused to tear or, when it did, at last, appear to split, it seemed to rapidly repair itself as if alive.
‘I can’t…’
‘I have tried that,’ the man pointed out wearily. ‘I wouldn’t have remained trapped here if it had all been so easy!’
Helen was horrified to find herself briefly wondering if they should leave him trapped here: there was something odious about him, something that made her own flesh crawl, the way it does when you’re naturally repulsed by things your instincts are telling you to stay clear of.
‘I need something sharp,’ the goblin announced, silently cursing himself as he patted his empty scabbard.
He’d left his dagger behind on the table when they’d prepared to eat. Noticing that Helen had also left hers behind in their rush to discover the source of the noises, he began to frenziedly look around amongst the many arrays of gears for any tools that he could use to free the man and the cogs.
‘If you aren’t diseased,’ Helen asked the man suspiciously, her eyes little more than slits, ‘then why would the Great Khan fear you?’
‘Ah, so some of the story you’ve heard is true then!’ he replied with a satisfied smile and a slight, congratulatory bow of his head towards Helen. ‘Naturally, he feared me because he had heard of me, recognising me from the tales that he had heard.
‘Tales of you?’
Helen scowled in disbelief.
‘Well, you’ve obviously heard of one, haven’t you?’ he observed with triumphant smirk.
‘A tale of the war elephant,’ Helen said, smartly correcting him before adding more suspiciously, ‘Why would there be any tales of you?’
‘Because, as you can see for yourself,’ he said, theatrically holding out his arms, ‘I have discovered the secret of eternal life!’
*
Chapter 26
The goblin returned, excitedly wielding a variety of rusty tools, including what could have been a smaller form of a saw. This was the tool he chose to hack once again at the man’s ragged garment as he tried to free it from being entangled amongst the cogs.
Strangely, the saw seemed to Helen to be making little more progress than the goblin’s earlier attempts. He cursed and spat in frustration, the saw rapidly blunting, such that he had to toss it aside and use in its place what could have been a huge set of shears.
‘What sort of thread is this? As soon as I cut through a few threads, they grow again, like it’s hair!’ he exclaimed, bewildered. ‘I’ve got to cut through a whole clump of the strands all at once, almost as if…’
He paused, as if fearful of continuing, of admitting what he was thinking.
‘…as if I have to cut off a complete limb, rather than just cutting into it, and giving it chance to recover.’
Helen hardly heard him. Her attention had been drawn to the cross hanging around the man’s neck: a cross exactly like the one Serverus wore.
Hadn’t Serverus once said that the cross was a symbol of life, maybe even eternal life?
Was that this man’s secret?
‘That cross…’ she began uncertainly, her eyes locked upon its strangely curved form.
‘You know of it?’
The man seemed surprised but also impressed.
‘The cross of an older god…’ she murmured doubtfully, wondering if it was wise to talk of such things.
‘An old god indeed,’ the man chuckled slimily, gratified by Helen’s obvious interest. ‘And yet he himself was based upon the even older Asari – I have seen many ancient tracts; indeed, have made certain judicial, more pertinent corrections to them – from whom he took the symbol of an eye lying within his resting place.’
As the man held out the bone cross towards Helen, she saw that the engraving upon it differed to the one upon Serverus’s version of it. This engraving was one of an eye within a triangle.
They both ignored the goblin as, with another curse, he reached for and took up another tool.
Swinging around a little, the man drew Helen’s attention to a number of steeply angled air shafts that allowed small yet precise views of the still dark, snowy sky.
‘My incarceration had its benefits, for it gave me time to study what many falsely believe to be his constellation.’
He now drew her attention to a representation of the star cluster Helen recognised as being the Hunter, one which he’d drawn within the dust upon the floor close by him.
She knew of the Hunter, had seen it rise above an ancient earthwork figure of a giant carved into the side of large hill not far from here; his right arm raised and holding a club, his left extended, bearing a shield.
The giant was also rudely naked, and in readiness – as the local women would ribaldry jest – ‘to go off spreading his seed, unlike the poor man in the stars!’ For the Hunter, of course, had what many referred to as his sword hanging between his legs; but even Helen knew no man would be so foolish as to wear a sword in such a way!
Besides, around its very tip, you could see the seed being spread, an area where the stars themselves were constantly erupting into being.
Yet Helen couldn’t see the connection between this grouping of stars and the god of the cross the man wore.
‘Why falsely?’ she asked curiously, referring to the way he had claimed that ‘many falsely believe’ it to be the god’s constellation.
‘Well so many assume it portrays the god rising to life once more after his murder and dismemberment by his enemy,’ the man answered elatedly, talking to her as if to a fellow illuminati, one who would appreciate the genius of his insights, ‘but of course the histories tell us that he is reborn as his son after his wife takes his seed!’
As he spoke, he retrieved a thin staff leaning against the cogs and pointed towards his drawing on the floor, towards the tip where new stars were continually being seeded.
‘So that, of course, is the god himself! The “Toe-star”, as the ancients called it, for it’s where their king would first place his foot before ascending into the heavens: the very start of the ladder of the spine, up which the seed will be drawn!’
Helen saw that the star did indeed appear to be an eye in the middle of a triangle, if a triangle with its top sheared off.
‘The sons of Horus, the four pillars of the heavens,’ the man continued, ignoring the goblin still wearily struggling to free him and pointing out not only the four corner stars enclosing the eye but also a four-beamed cross similar to the one engraved on Serverus’s necklace, ‘the four lower levels of the seven pillars leading us to the heavens.’
He deftly and swiftly drew a few arrows, indicating how the lower trapezium forming the Hunter’s lower torso could spin around the central star where the vertebrae crossed the waist: and its stars would directly overlay the stars of the identically shaped upper trapezium, including the two higher stars representing the shoulders that, Helen recalled, glowed especially brightly – one like a flickering red flame, the other as if it were sparkling water. The descending ‘sword’ had similarly now swung upright, as it appeared within the ancient earthwork giant, its new position represented here by the pillar-like, four beamed cross.
‘The magnificent Magdala, the Tower of Osiris; containing a soul about to rise up and be freed,’ the man said, pointing once again towards the pillar-like cross with a mischievous grin as he noted Helen’s embarrassment.
Next, he deftly drew an oval around the two shoulder stars, including within it three higher stars that – Helen also recalled – glowed faintly within the sky.
‘The King’s Constellation,’ the man said, before quickly indicating the two shoulder stars once more, ‘th
e “armpits” of Jachin and Boaz being your new jumping off point upwards into the next three levels commonly known as the Moon Mansion–’
He halted his excited discourse abruptly, as if suddenly aware that he was divulging too much.
‘Done it!’ the goblin yelled out jubilantly, having at last cut through the cloth’s remarkably resilient threads.
*
As soon as the man was cut free, the threads caught up in the cogs instantly dried up and withered, as fallen leaves will eventually do. No longer remaining connected to the man, and no longer serving any purpose, they either fell aside or crumbled away to nothing, unclogging the gears.
The man stumbled a little, prompting Helen to instinctively lurch forward to support him, recognising that he might no longer be sure how to walk after remaining here for so long. She immediately regretted clasping hold of him, his skin as cold and slippery as she imagined a serpent’s might be.
She wanted to leave this man as soon as she could.
Her mind screamed at her that he wasn’t to be trusted.
Everything about him was repulsive.
The way he limply hung in her arms, such that the goblin had to rush forward and help her support his heavily slumping body, only added to her impression that his every action had to be observed and treated with suspicion.
But why would he pretend that he was unable to support himself?
Perhaps she was being unfair on him.
He seemed to lack all strength. His body was just a lumpen mass, which appeared incapable of following any orders from his brain. A rag doll would have been easier to carry between them.
Helping him manoeuvre along the narrow walk way was difficult, helping him clamber through the narrow hatch more difficult still.
Helen was the first to slither through, turning around and standing precariously on the nearest branch to aid the goblin as he laboriously attempted to lower the man down towards her. She reached out for first his legs and then, as more of his body came through the hatch, his waist, gradually guiding his own feet towards the branch she was standing upon.