Goblin Quest (40 page)

“No,” he repeated in a whisper. Most of the flames had died, and Jig could see there was nothing he could do. Even if Shadowstar would have helped him heal a lowly fire-spider, it was too late. Smudge was dead.

Jig snarled as he attacked, leaping onto Barius and sinking his fangs into the prince’s sword arm. The sword hit the floor with a ring. Jig’s claws raked Barius’s body. Barius punched Jig in the head, but he didn’t even feel it. All he could see was Smudge’s crushed body. Tears blurred his vision as he bit down harder. His nails struggled to reach the flesh beneath the prince’s armor.

“Curse you,” Barius yelled. He wedged a knee against Jig’s chest and pushed. Jig scrambled for anything to hold on to. If Barius got free, it was over. One of Jig’s hands grabbed the prince’s shirt, the other clawed at his belt.

Barius broke away. Jig flew back, still clutching a piece of Barius’s shirt in one hand and something hard in the other. His head cracked against the floor. He wiped his eyes, and only then did he see what he had grabbed.

He had the Rod of Creation.

Barius saw it at the same time Jig did. He lunged for his sword. Jig scrambled to his feet and pointed the rod at Barius. “Stop!”

Barius froze.

“Look out!” Riana shouted.

Jig aimed the rod at Ryslind and Darnak, who stopped moving.

“You don’t even know how to use it,” Ryslind said. “Goblins have neither the strength of will nor the depth of mind for true magic.”

“Neither do you,” Riana snapped.

Jig felt his lips pull back into a feral grin. “
You
taught us how to use it,” he said. He turned on Barius, who had begun to reach toward his sword.

“You can’t destroy us,” Barius said. “The rod is incapable of taking life.”

“No matter what you do to us, we will find a way to reverse the effects,” Ryslind added. “I’ve enough art left to see to that.”

“Put the rod down, lad,” Darnak said. “You go your way, we’ll go ours.”

Jig didn’t have to look to know how the princes were taking that suggestion. “For how long?” he asked. “How long before they come back looking for more gold, or to get revenge on the goblin? When they get greedy for more treasure, they’re not going to
ask
us to let them through. You know what will happen.”

Darnak didn’t answer.

“It’s not as though you have a choice, goblin,” Barius said. He had begun to smile again, believing he had won. “My brother is correct. You cannot kill us, not with the rod, even if you could control its magic.”

Jig wavered. But then he saw the smoking web in the corner, and his arm tightened. “
You
controlled it,” he said. He bared his teeth. “I bet I can do better.”

The magic felt similar to the power Shadowstar had given him, but much more powerful. Jig felt as though his entire body were being crushed into the end of the rod and squeezed out the other side. He saw the prince stumble. His vision wavered, and his head began to pound. He concentrated on keeping himself whole. The rod tried to pull him apart, but Jig pulled back. He could feel the magic begin to work. He sensed the instant Barius’s body started to reshape itself.

“Barius!”

Ryslind’s voice, angry and panicked. He was trying to cast a spell of his own. Jig turned and pointed the rod at the wizard. Again the magic poured through him, halting Ryslind in midstride. White ice pierced Jig’s brain as the rod’s power broke through Ryslind’s hastily erected shields.
Backlash,
he thought, remembering what had happened when Barius used the rod.

But even as Jig fell, he saw that it had worked.

He had just enough strength left to point the rod at Darnak. He didn’t think he had enough strength left to use it, but Darnak wouldn’t know that. So the dwarf stood helpless, watching the two enormous trout that had been Ryslind and Barius flop about on the floor as they suffocated.

“Go away,” Jig croaked at Darnak.

The dwarf shook his head. Tears dripped into his beard. “I’ll not leave them.”

“I don’t want to kill you, too,” Jig said.
I don’t think I
can
, for that matter.
If the other goblins heard him now, they’d think his mind had slipped. How could he not want to kill a perfectly good dwarf?

“They are family to me,” Darnak said. “How can I go back to Wendel and Jeneve and tell them I watched their sons die?”

“Their sons were greedy fools,” Riana said. She didn’t bother to hide her satisfaction as she watched the gills of the Barius-fish stop moving.

“Aye,” Darnak agreed. “But they were still family.” With that he drew his club and walked toward Jig. He moved slowly, deliberately giving Jig time to use the rod.

Those few minutes had been enough for Jig to catch his breath. Was he strong enough to use the rod again? He didn’t think so. But was he ready to die and rejoin Shadowstar?

Jig sighed and grabbed the rod with both hands. Once again magic ripped through his body. He struggled to control it. He didn’t want to kill Darnak, and that made things harder. He figured out what he wanted to do and concentrated on a different shape.

Darnak fell. His body twisted and bulged. The walls spun, and Jig blacked out.

CHAPTER 19

Parting Gifts

Jig woke up to find Riana’s green eyes staring down at him. “My head hurts.”

He still had the rod in his hands. She hadn’t taken it from him. He wondered why. “What happened to Darnak?”

“You turned him into a bird,” she said. For once no trace of sarcasm tainted her voice. She sounded impressed. “He flew away a few minutes ago.”

“Good.” He grimaced. The room had begun to stink of fish. He glanced down the tunnel, wishing he could have seen what Darnak had looked like. “Was it a good bird?” he asked.

She giggled. “Ugliest thing I’ve ever seen. Brown, with a dirty black crest and sunken eyes. He could talk, too. Said to warn you there’d still be people coming after this place. Barius and Ryslind had other brothers, and they’ll want revenge.”

“I know.” He managed to sit up. “What will you do?”

Her eyes darkened. “What can I do?”

There
was the bitterness Jig was used to.

“Go back to being a thief?” She gestured at the treasure scattered around the room. “If I take any of this, someone will only kill me to get it.”

“You could always be an adventurer.”

She snorted. “I never want to go on another ‘adventure’ as long as I live. I hate the dark, I hate the cold, I hate all the monsters from those ugly worms to that great hulk of a dragon. No treasure is worth this. If that’s all I have to look forward to, you might as well kill me here and now. It would be a kindness.”

Jig grinned. Only when she cringed away did he remember that his fangs were probably still covered in Barius’s blood. Nor was his a reassuring face to begin with, even for a goblin. He looked around for something he could use to clean his teeth, and his searching eyes fell on the ashen remains of Smudge’s web. His eyes stung.

“Oh Smudge,” he mumbled. “I’m sorry.” He shouldn’t have let Barius get that close. An entire room, and he had led the prince straight to Smudge’s hiding spot.

He crawled over and picked up the crushed spider. He stroked the furry head, then tucked Smudge into his pouch. He would take care of the body later.

Using the Rod of Creation as a simple cane, Jig pushed himself up. He didn’t want to be here anymore. He wanted to go home.

“Wait,” Riana said. She bit her lip, then said, “What about me?”

Jig shrugged. Why should he care? He wondered if she had meant it, when she said it would be kinder to kill her.

“I don’t want to go back to that life.” She grabbed the lantern Darnak had dropped and hurried after Jig.

“You’ve changed. You’re not like the other goblins. Otherwise you would have killed Darnak. Well, I’ve changed too. I don’t want to be a thief anymore, but I don’t know how to be anything else. At least you can go back to your people. I’ve got nothing. I’m scared, Jig.”

He stopped. He knew how hard it must have been for Riana to say that. “I can give you all the gold in the world, but you said you don’t want it. What do you want?”

She began to cry. Why was everyone crying so much all of the sudden? First Jig, when Barius killed Smudge. Then Darnak, and now Riana. If this continued, they’d soon flood the whole mountain.

“I want to stop being afraid,” she said.

“Fine.” Jig grabbed the rod and used it before Riana could protest. A minute later, he was gasping for breath while Riana stared in amazement at her hands.

He had used Straum’s children as a model, but made a few changes. Where the dragonchildren had been a dusky bronze, Riana’s scales were pearly white. Her body was smaller, retaining her elven slenderness, but the muscles beneath those scales were as powerful as any dragonchild’s. Anyone who tried to hurt her would be lucky to walk away with their limbs attached. The scales should turn most blades. Only her eyes remained the same. Jig hadn’t wanted to change those wide green eyes. She glanced at her hands and laughed when she saw that Jig had restored her missing finger.

She craned her neck to see Jig’s other addition. Two wide, white wings spread across the tunnel.

“Can I fly?” she asked. She spoke with the same lisp as the other dragonchildren.

“I think so. You’ll probably want to practice, though.” He took a deep breath. “If you want, I can change you back. But you have to decide now. You won’t have another chance.”

She nodded slowly. “You’re going to seal the entrance?”

“Yes.”

Riana studied the sleek lines of her arms. Faster than Jig could follow, she punched a fist into the wall. Her delighted laugh echoed up the hall. “It didn’t even hurt. Jig, this is beautiful.”

He felt himself blushing. “Better than the bird?”

“Much better. I can go anywhere I want.” Her voice rose with excitement. “I can fly through the clouds, I could cross the oceans, and nobody can stop me.”

“You’ll be lonely,” Jig warned her. How could she not be? She was a monster now, and Jig had firsthand experience of how surface-dwellers treated monsters.

“I’m used to being lonely,” she said. “Besides, if a goblin and an elf can be friends, what’s to stop me from finding someone else out there?”

Jig had no answer to that, and he didn’t know how to respond to her claim of friendship. He couldn’t argue, either. Who ever heard of a goblin being friends with an elf? Who ever heard of a goblin being friends with anyone? But they had saved each other’s lives several times, which was also unheard of. He blushed. If he tried to say anything, he’d probably make a fool of himself. Still, it felt surprisingly good to have a friend.

“I, um, I should go,” he said. He blushed harder. “I have things I need to do.”

“I understand.” She rushed forward and pulled him into a hug he couldn’t have broken out of if his life depended on it. “Thanks, Jig.”

Then she was gone.

Feeling a strange mix of happiness and loss, Jig headed down the tunnel to close the entrance for good.

 

He took care of a few other tasks before heading back to the lair. He had a promise to keep to Tymalous Shadowstar. He took some time to redesign the shiny room. First, he shifted the glass tiles to form a clear image of the Autumn Star shining down on the best likeness Jig could manage of the god himself.

My nose isn’t that big,
Shadowstar protested.

The room itself remained empty, save for a small altar against the wall. For a while, Jig would likely be the only one to leave tokens of respect and thanks on that altar for the god. But he hoped to convince other goblins to do the same. If he could tell them of the things he had seen and learned, who knew what might happen? Shadowstar hadn’t exactly been thrilled at the idea of a whole horde of goblin followers, but it was, in his words,
A hell of a lot better than nothing.

At the base of the altar, an eight-pointed star marked the spot where Smudge had died. The fire-spider’s body was buried inside the floor. A fine web traced the outline of the star. Jig didn’t think the god would mind, and he wanted Smudge to have some sort of marker.

He left the gold and treasure where it was. What good would it do to bring it along? You couldn’t eat treasure.

But you
could
eat trout. Jig had to stop several times as he lugged the huge fish along behind him. He had strung a rope through their gills to make them easier to drag, but they still weighed the same as full-grown humans. By the time Jig reached the edge of goblin territory, his hands were sore and rope-burned.

“Who’s there?” challenged one of the guards.

Jig’s ears picked up the other one’s whispered, “It’s
him
.”