Goblin Hero (6 page)

“Run,” she said.

“What’s that?” asked Slash.

Veka used her staff to fling the broken lantern forward, causing several lizard-fish to dodge out of the way. Slash sprayed a few more as he spun and ran after her.

Sand sank and shifted beneath Veka’s feet as she fled. Shadows leaped crazily ahead of her as Slash swung his spear around, nearly setting Veka’s hair and robes on fire. She couldn’t tell if it was deliberate or not.

She was concentrating so hard on running, she nearly missed the tunnel. Only when her feet slapped solid rock did she realize they had made it. She turned around.

Outside, the lizard-fish waited, climbing atop one another in their eagerness, but never leaving the security of the sand.

Behind her, Slash was removing his lantern from the spear. He raised it high, examining the inside of the tunnel.

The rock was smooth and polished, far brighter than the grimy obsidian of the goblin tunnels. Puddles splashed beneath their feet with each step. She could see tiny snails in several of the puddles.

Slash’s foot crunched three of them as he looked around. The sound echoed strangely.

The tunnel was too cramped, so she had to hold her staff parallel to the wall to keep from banging it. “Come on,” she whispered.

She found herself hunching as she walked, and forced herself to lift her chin and straighten her spine. Heroes didn’t slouch. They stood proud and tall.

But how often did Heroes travel through a lakebed tunnel, with all that water held back by nothing but a thin layer of rock? The silence was nearly as palpable as the moisture in the air.

Sweat dripped down her back. Cold water dripped onto her neck. She flattened her ears and kept walking. The tunnel sloped downward, following the bottom of the lakebed deeper and deeper.

The end of the tunnel was a black hole in the dark, glistening stone of the floor. A ladder made of the same magically shaped obsidian led down from the far edge.

“Give me the lantern.” Moving the blue flame over the hole, she dropped her staff into the room below. The clatter sounded terribly loud after passing through the tunnel, but nothing happened. With the lantern heating her left arm, Veka climbed down into the throne room of the legendary Necromancer.

The walls and floor were black marble, thick with dust. She could see footprints where Jig and the others had come down. A glass mosaic covered the ceiling, reminding her a bit of the one in Jig’s temple, though the images here were abstract and meaningless. The smell of preservatives and old bat guano made her sneeze.

Behind her, Slash was humming as he climbed down the ladder. Veka’s jaw tightened as she recognized “The Song of Jig.” She picked up her staff, horribly tempted to break it over Slash’s head, but it was too late. The melody had already wormed its way into her mind. She thrust the lantern back into his hand, hoping the muck would splash his wrist, but no such luck.

How did that verse go? Something about corpses leaping from the shadows, until the noble, valiant, wonderful Jig managed to slay the Necromancer. She turned, searching the darkness for any hint of movement. There was none, of course. Goblins and hobgoblins alike had passed through here many times since Jig’s little adventure, and not one had been torn apart by the animated dead.

Another pit on the opposite side of the room led down to the dragon’s realm. Like the lake tunnel, this was a magical shortcut left by that same band of adventurers. They had used magic to carve their own path through the mountain, including the stone ladder on the far side of the pit. Veka’s envy was so strong she could taste it, like the backwash of good slug tea. She stared, wondering what it would be like to have the power to reshape the stone itself.

She squinted and moved closer to the edge. “Cover the lantern.”

The blue light diminished, and gradually Veka’s vision adapted enough to see the faint silver light shimmering below. The ladder should have extended all the way to the ground below, but the rungs rippled and shimmered, and the bottom half didn’t seem to exist at all.

“What is that?” asked Slash.

“I don’t know. Whatever the ogres were afraid of, it’s—”

“The ogres were
afraid
?” Slash asked. He stared at the pit, then at Veka.

“The ogres have been hunted down and wiped out,” she said. “There are only a handful left. That’s why this one came to us for help.”

Slash was still staring, his spear hanging loosely in his hand. “And you want to go down there?”

“We should move quickly,” Veka said. “I don’t know what’s happening to the ladder, but I don’t trust—”

That was as far as she got before Slash’s foot slammed into her backside, launching her headfirst into the pit.

CHAPTER 3

—Brother Darnak Stonesplitter, Dwarven Priest

 

 

 

As Jig climbed down into the cavern where the ogres made their home, the first thing he noticed was the cold. The wind made him shiver, especially where it slipped up his sleeves and down his back.

The second thing he noticed was that the last few rungs of the ladder were too insubstantial to support his weight. Unfortunately, he noticed this only when his feet slipped through the rungs, dropping him onto his backside.

He looked up to warn the others, then groaned. Braf had never been an attractive goblin, but from this angle . . .

“Something’s wrong with the ladder,” Jig said, turning away to retrieve his lantern. He scooped sand from a pouch on his belt to extinguish the flames. “The last three rungs aren’t completely there.”

“Like Braf,” Grell said.

Jig ignored her. He was too busy trying to absorb the changes to this place. When the dragon Straum lived here, he had used his magic to recreate the outside world. Straum had been trapped, doomed to remain as a guardian for various treasures, so he had done everything in his power to make himself at home. Jig remembered blue skies overhead, the unnaturally bright light of a false sun, the rustling sound the trees made in the wind, like the slithering of a thousand snakes.

Some elements of Straum’s world had been illusory, such as the sun that crossed the sky each day. Others were real, like the trees and plants Straum had spread throughout the cavern, feeding them with his own magic until his woods were a match for anything in the outside world.

Those trees were bare and skeletal now, encased in a thin layer of ice. The ice was everywhere. The whole place had a faint smoky smell, reminding him of the crude forge back at the goblin lair.

Jig knelt, and the grass crunched beneath his knees. He broke off a single blade and studied it. Was he only imagining the silver swirl of light trapped within the ice? Frigid water trickled down his palm as the ice melted. The grass inside was brown and brittle.

He blinked and squinted, flicking the grass aside to study his own hand. His skin appeared faded, having taken on a faint bronze pallor. Looking around, he saw the same metallic tinge everywhere. The ice sparkled silver, and the trees had the dull tarnish of old lead. The illusory sky had a dull gray glow, and there was no sign of Straum’s false sun, which Jig appreciated. Even knowing it was an illusion, he had always half expected the sun to fall on him.

“Hideous, isn’t it?” Walland said, dropping down beside Jig. “The change was slow at first. Cold winds coming from Straum’s cave. Frost spreading over the grass each morning. The leaves withered and disappeared. And then there’s the snow.” He spread his arms to indicate the silver flakes floating down around them. Already they had begun to stick to the lenses of Jig’s spectacles, blurring his vision.

Grunting and swearing marked the arrival of Braf, who either hadn’t heard or had forgotten Jig’s warning about the ladder. He got to his feet, brushing ice and snow from his clothes as he moved around behind Jig.

“Someone get me off this stupid thing,” Grell shouted. Her canes were hooked over her belt, and she clung to the ladder with both hands. One foot gingerly poked the rung below. Black specks shot away from the rung as her sandal passed through it.

Wordlessly, Walland reached over and plucked her from the ladder.

“Where do we go?” asked Braf, making Jig jump. One of the first rules of survival was never to let another goblin get behind you, yet here he was, gaping at the trees and giving Braf a clear shot at his back.

They promised they wouldn’t kill me until we dealt with the ogres
. Not that a goblin promise was worth much, but fear of Walland’s retribution might carry a bit more weight. And since whatever problems the ogres were having would probably kill them all, he really shouldn’t have to worry about Braf.

A rustling at his waist made him glance down. Smudge was using his forelegs to push his way out of the small pouch on Jig’s belt. Smudge’s head appeared, took in the world around him, and promptly disappeared again. Jig wished he could do the same.

He started to tie the lantern to his belt, trying to find a place where the hot metal wouldn’t burn his legs. Finally he hooked the handle over the hilt of the sword, so the metal rested against the scabbard. He ended up shifting several pouches to the other side of his belt to balance its weight.

Walland tilted his head and sniffed the air. He turned slowly, his eyes scouring the trees around the clearing. He took a step, paused, and turned again. Jig had no idea what he was looking for, but if possible, the ogre’s behavior was making Jig even more anxious.

“You do know where you’re going, don’t you?” asked Grell.

Walland cupped one hand over his eyes and searched the sky, nearly bumping his head on the ladder as he circled.

Grell snorted. “He reminds me of a deranged rat the kids used to keep as a pet, until one of the older girls ate him.”

“Just making sure we weren’t seen,” Walland said.

“Maybe we should go find the other ogres,” Jig said. The longer they stayed in this clearing, the faster they would be caught and killed, and Jig preferred to postpone that as long as possible. “You told us there were some who had escaped whatever’s been hunting you?”

To Jig’s left, a small creature waddled out of the woods to stare. It resembled a cluster of icicles with a wrinkled pink face and a long snout. The icy spines glistened with color that changed from blue to green to purple with every movement. It seemed to be sneaking up on a pair of glowing orange bugs, the same kind that had been bothering Jig back in his temple. The bugs flew lower, circling the creature again and again. A bright spark leaped from one of the spines near its head, and the insect dropped dead. The creature pounced, shoving the bug into its mouth with both paws.

“What is that thing?” Jig asked.

“We’ve had all sorts of strange creatures creeping into our woods,” Walland said. He scooped Grell up, holding her so she sat on his forearm with her canes dangling down and her heels kicking Walland’s thighs. “Quickly. We don’t have much time.”

Soon Jig and Braf were running as fast as they could to keep up. Ice and grass crunched beneath their feet as they followed Walland into the woods. The ogre carried his club in his free hand. He didn’t bother to stop for trees or low-hanging branches. Instead, that huge club smashed them out of his way, leaving Jig to wipe chunks of wood and ice from his face. Even if the falling snow hid their footprints, all an enemy would have to do was follow the path of destruction. But Jig was breathing too hard to say anything.

He could hear Grell swearing over the noise. Her voice shook with each step, giving her curses a choppy rhythm, almost a marching chant. An extremely vulgar and angry chant, but so were a good number of goblin songs.

As he ran, Jig occasionally saw movement to either side: a flash of white light that disappeared among the branches, a bit of snow shifting and crumbling, a shadow leaping away, brushing through bare shrubs as it fled. Nothing attacked them though. Not yet, at least.

Finally Walland slowed to a jog, momentarily stopping Grell’s complaints until she could adjust to the slower rhythm. “Where are we going?” Jig asked, wiping sweat from his face.

Walland pointed. “That fallen tree over there.” The tree appeared freshly toppled. The base of the trunk was wider than Braf’s neck. Only a thin shell of ice coated the upper part of the tree. Given how hard the ice and snow were falling, Jig guessed the tree had been chopped down no more than a day before.

A closer look suggested “chopped” was the wrong word. Some of the trunk showed the toothy bite of an ax, but the rest was splintered, as if someone had grown impatient and simply shoved the tree down with his bare hands.

The branches shivered, sending bits of ice into the snow. Jig stopped in midstep. Behind the tree, partially concealed by broken branches, lay another ogre.