Goblins Vs Dwarves (14 page)

The tunnels down which Etty led Skarper were busy with bustling dwarves, but she found him an old cloak and a spare miner's helmet, and they did not give him more than the briefest of glances as he hurried along at her side. Etty was more worried that they would notice her: the red tabs on her cloak collar marked her as a member of the night shift, who were all meant to be sleeping at this hour.

Luckily the passing dwarves had other things to think about. The Head had set them a challenge. It was the biggest feat of engineering that dwarves had undertaken in that age of the world. They were all busy making sure it worked.

Etty led Skarper out of a side passage and into a wider tunnel; a big delve that ran straight as an arrow for as far as he could see in either direction. A fat pipe ran along it, much like the pipes which he had glimpsed earlier in other tunnels, further west. The pipe passed through a stone-built shed in which a diremole trotted endlessly in a big wheel, turning a series of cogs and shafts.

“That's a pumping station,” said Etty. “There are dozens of them, one every few miles. This pipe goes under the roots of the Bonehill Mountains all the way to Delverdale.”

“So if it ends at Delverdale,” said Skarper, “where does it start?”

“At Clovenstone,” said Etty. “In the slowsilver lake beneath Meneth Eskern. The attack last night was staged to stop you hearing our diggers and diremoles at work as they drove their last mine through the crag and tapped the slowsilver. Now all Clovenstone's slowsilver is being pumped north to Delverdale.”

Skarper gawped. He tried to imagine the slowsilver gushing and gurgling through that pipe. He couldn't. Slowsilver wasn't like other substances. Slowsilver was magic. It did what it wanted, not what you told it to. It spat out eggstones, or formed itself into shimmery firefrost stairs.

“You can't pump slowsilver!” he blurted.

“Dwarven iron is proof against all magic,” Etty said. “Dwarves learned that long ago. So you see, we have got our slowsilver after all, and there will be no need for more fighting.”

“But . . . but . . . but. . .” Skarper hopped and jittered like fat in a hot pan. “You can't! You mustn't! Slowsilver is the heart of Clovenstone! It's where goblins come from! If you take our lava lake away, you're taking our whole future from us!”

Etty bit her lip again. “It's the Head's orders, Skarper, and the Head knows best. The Head probably has a much better use for all this slowsilver. . .”

“What, better than making goblins?” asked Skarper. “We don't live for ever, you know. A hundred years or so and then we crumble back into stone. That's if we don't get stabbed or strangled or squashed or splatted first, and stabbings and stranglings and squashings and splattings happen to goblins a
lot
; we're very accident prone. What will happen when all the goblins living now are gone, and there isn't any lava lake to spit out eggstones and make new goblin hatchlings? There won't be any goblins left! What sort of a world will it be without goblins?”

“A better one, of course,” Etty started to say, because that was what she'd been taught to believe, all her life. The trouble was, she didn't really believe it any more. She'd been told that goblins were mindless, savage monsters, but Skarper wasn't mindless, or savage, or even particularly monstery.
The Head Knows Best and the Head Knows All
, she told herself. But it seemed the Head didn't know all about goblins.

She looked down at her feet and listened to the soft, sad sighing of the pipe as it carried Clovenstone's lava lake away.

“I'm sorry,” she said.

“Well, sorry's not much good!” complained Skarper. “Sorry won't fetch our slowsilver back! We have to do something! You have to stop it! Block the pipe, or make it flow the other way or something!”

“I can't!” said Etty. She drew Skarper aside into the shadows near the tunnel wall as a gang of dwarf workers came by, listening to the pipe with long brass ear trumpets to check that the stuff inside was flowing smoothly. By the time they had gone past, Etty had made another decision.

“We must talk to the Head,” she said. “You and me, Skarper. We'll go to Delverdale and tell the Head that goblins these days aren't like the goblins of old. Perhaps . . . perhaps the Head doesn't understand how things have changed.”

Skarper pricked up his ears and nodded cautiously. He thought it might be worth a try. After all, if these dwarves were stupid enough to do whatever a big brass head told them to, maybe a really cunning goblin like him could trick them somehow. He'd creep inside that head and say loudly in a head-ish voice, “Goblins are all right! Put that slowsilver back where you found it!” Or he could just grab a hammer and smash the head to bits. Goblins were good at smashing stuff to bits.

“How far is it to Delverdale?” he asked.

“More than a hundred miles,” said Etty.

“And over the mountains!” Skarper's ears drooped. “That will take weeks!”

“Under the mountains,” Etty corrected him. “And it won't take more than a day, not if we go by railway.”

Her eyes shone. It could be done; she was sure it could. Every dwarf had the right to lay their troubles and complaints before the Brazen Head, and although she had never actually heard of any dwarf who'd done so, she was sure the Head would hear her, and decide what was best for dwarves and goblins.

Skarper just looked blank. “What's a railway?” he wondered.

 

Slowsilver was not the only thing the dwarves were sending home to Delverdale. Wherever they went they sought out veins of ore, seams of coal, diamonds, crystals, and all the fruits of the underworld. Some of these things they used in the places where they were mined: coal to heat their furnaces, iron to make new tools. Most was sent north, however, to the great smithies and storerooms of Delverdale. To make this easier, they had a built a railway. A set of iron rails snaked under the Bonehills, and along these rails there trundled carts full of ore and precious stones. On the uphill stretches the carts were hooked to winches powered by diremoles. On the downhill sections they rolled free, and gravity did the work. The dwarf engineers were so clever that very few diremole winches were needed: the track had been planned in such a way that the carts picked up enough speed on the downhill stretches to carry them up all but the steepest inclines.

The railhead was in a huge, noisy cavern, into which a dozen tunnels opened. Ore and coal from all the mines of the Bonehills were brought there, and tipped into little high-sided wooden carts which waited on the rails. When eight or ten carts were filled they were linked together by dwarf labourers and shoved off down the track, vanishing into the low, dark mouth of a tunnel which opened at the cavern's end.

It all looked like chaos to Skarper, but Etty understood the system well enough. She led him quickly through the toiling gangs of workers, between the waiting heaps of coal and ore. A train of carts was being linked together by big metal hooks. Etty and Skarper hung back watching, waiting nervously for the right moment. Above them, hanging from the cavern's roof, a huge banner with a likeness of the Brazen Head stared down, rippling in some underground breeze.

As they watched, the last cart was filled with ore and linked on to the train. Dwarfs took hold of handles on the sides of each cart and started to wheel them down the track. “Now!” said Etty. She grabbed Skarper's paw and they ran forward together. The railway dwarves, used to their steady, unchanging routine, were too confused to do anything but keep pushing as the goblin and the girl ran past them and scrambled up on to the leading cart.

“Hey!” said one of the dwarves. “Get off there! That's not allowed!”

“No!” said Etty. She started to throw chunks of ore over the cart's side, making a nest where she and Skarper could sit on the knobbly cargo. The dwarves pushing the cart along shouted again, but there was nothing they could do; the heavy carts were moving under their own momentum now, coasting down an incline towards the tunnel mouth. The ones shoving Etty and Skarper's cart along did their best to slow it, but it was too heavy and moving too fast, and the dwarves holding the handles of the carts behind kept pushing, breaking into a run as the carts moved faster and faster.

“Etty!” roared a voice, louder than the rattle of the wheels on the tracks.

“Oh crikey!” said Etty.

Her father had arrived in the cavern. He was running along beside the rumbling carts, with Langstone and and another dwarf puffing and panting behind him. “You come down off of there, young lady!” he bellowed.

“I can't, Father!” Etty shouted back.

“She can't,” agreed one of the dwarves pushing the carts. “It's moving too fast. Won't stop now till Moledale Steep.”

“Etty!” yelled Durgar.

“I'm sorry, Father!” she called back.

“Etty, DUCK!” her father shouted.

Etty and Skarper both looked round, and saw just in time what he meant. The mouth of the tunnel was rushing towards them. It was a low tunnel, just high enough for a fully laden cart of ore to pass through. The dwarves had hacked it through the living rock of the mountains, and they hadn't wasted any effort by making it higher than it needed to be: high enough to take a fully laden cart with a goblin and a girl on top, for instance.

Squeaking with fright, Skarper and Etty threw themselves flat on top of the ore and tried to press themselves down into it. Everything went black as the cart rushed into the tunnel, and all the noises of the cavern, the shouts of Durgar and the other dwarves, were suddenly cut off, replaced by the echoing rattle of the wheels on the tracks.

Henwyn and Zeewa set off again across the marshes, but although they followed the same track that had brought them to the Houses of the Dead, something had altered, and they were soon lost. The mist swirled around them again, thicker than ever. The path twisted and turned in ways that it had not that morning, as if the whole dank maze of reed beds, pools and ruins had rearranged itself while they were talking with the Gatekeeper. Within twenty minutes, Henwyn no longer had any idea of the way to the Inner Wall, nor could he have found his way back to the Houses of the Dead.

Of course, he could not admit that to Zeewa.

“It's perfectly all right,” he said, pulling his boot out of a black, sucking mudhole which had almost swallowed him. “Wrong turning. We'll bear left a little. Soon hit higher ground, and maybe this mist will clear.”

Zeewa did not look as if she believed him. “I am certain we have passed that building before,” she said.

They sent Kosi on ahead as path-finder again. Being a ghost, he was able to float above the travellers and spy out the way, but being tied to Zeewa by the wizard's curse, as if by invisible string, he could not float very far above them; not high enough to see over the mist and tell them if they were still heading towards the Inner Wall. Several times he found good, broad tracks leading through the reeds and ruins, but each time the path petered out and vanished after a few hundred yards.

Then, at last, they struck one which did seem to be going somewhere, following the route of an old paved street, now half swallowed by the mire. The ground seemed to rise beneath Henwyn's and Zeewa's feet as they hurried along it, Kosi gliding in front of them, the storm of other ghosts following close behind. Ahead, through the mist, the shape of a large building loomed.

“Have we walked in a circle?” asked Zeewa. “Is that one of the Houses of the Dead?”

“It could be,” said Henwyn, although it looked a bit too lumpy to be a tomb. Then he stepped through a last veil of mist and saw it clearly, and realized just how lost they were. The winding paths they'd followed had led them into the heart of the mire. He stood staring at the crumpled ruins of the boglin king's hall, Bospoldew, with the wide dark mere in front of where the dampdrake dwelled.

“We have come the wrong way!” he said. “This accursed mist. . .” He remembered the strange traps and snares which Poldew of the Mire had woven from the marsh mists. Poldew was dead, but maybe other boglins had power over the mists as well. As he thought back, it seemed to Henwyn that ever since they left the Houses of the Dead the mist had been misleading them; hiding the right path and herding them along the wrong one, until it had brought them here.

Zeewa kicked angrily at a tussock and crouched down, weeping with frustration. Her ghosts fluttered anxiously, and Kosi went close to her and tried to lay a hand on her shoulder, but of course it slid straight through. Looking at his pale, transparent face, Henwyn realized that the young ghost was in love with Zeewa. He felt rather pleased with himself for noticing that, because he didn't usually understand other people's feelings very clearly. Then he felt sorry for Kosi, because it must be sad to be in love with somebody who was alive when you were just a ghost and couldn't even hold her hand.

Tau the ghost lion growled suddenly, soft and low, and Henwyn drew his sword and spun around, eyes on the reeds and the ruined hall, thoughts of love forgotten. “This is a bad place,” he said. “We must go at once!”

Kosi said suddenly, “There are creatures moving. All around us.”

“Where?” asked Henwyn. He sensed the cold black eyes of boglins watching him, but he couldn't see anything.

“Behind the mist,” said Kosi. “Behind the reeds.”

Zeewa stood up, pulling her stabbing spear from its quiver, shrugging her shield off her shoulder.

The reeds rustled, and the boglins were there. They had surrounded the travellers, making a ragged circle which slowly shrank and tightened as they came out of their hiding places and stalked forward. Froglike they were; speckled and bow-legged, with broad mouths and bulging eyes, and they moved like frogs on their long web-toed feet. But in their hands they carried glass knives and stone-tipped spears, and some wore armour made from old roof slates. They looked curiously at Zeewa's ghosts, and a few flicked out their long sticky tongues trying to catch phantom flies, but they were not afraid. One, a little larger than the rest, hopped right up to Henwyn and stood sniffing at him.

“We mean you no harm,” said Henwyn. “We are lost, and found our way here by accident. We were looking for our way home from the Houses of the Dead, but we took a wrong turning in all this mist and came by chance to Bospoldew.”

“Not called that any more,” croaked the boglin. “It's Bosfetter now. That's my name, see. Fetter of the Mire. I'm king in the reed maze now. Got any crumbles?”

“What?” said Henwyn.

“Crumbles,” said the boglin, and licked his lips. “The lady leaves it for us sometimes, down by the Inner Wall. Tasty.”

Henwyn remembered the morning – it seemed like years ago – when he and Skarper had talked to Princess Ned while she sat watching for boglins, with a dish of fresh apple crumble cooling on a tussock. How the boglins had made off with it so slyly, while no one was looking. He said, “I don't actually have any with me now, but I'm sure that if you let us go. . .”

“So you been to the Houses of the Dead,” said Fetter. His big golden eyes peered up intently at Henwyn's face. “We saw you. We watched. Nothing at the Houses of the Dead but old bones, old moaning ghosts. Why do you want to go there?”

“My friend Zeewa wished to talk to those ghosts,” said Henwyn. He glanced behind him, past the hall, towards the mere. He was afraid that while Fetter kept him talking, the dreadful dampdrake might be rising again, ready to gobble him up and Zeewa too.

Fetter of the Mire guessed what was on his mind, and gurgled with laughter. “Scared, are you, warmblood?”

“Well,” said Henwyn, “it's just that last time I was here, your dampdrake. . .”

Fetter's long mouth turned downwards in a sad frown. The other goblins muttered dolefully. “Dampdrake all gone,” said one.

“No more dampdrake,” said another.

“It is the burrowers,” said Fetter. “They have driven him away, our dear, darling dampdrake.”

“Burrowers?” asked Henwyn. “You mean dwarves? They have been tunnelling here, too? Under the mire? I should have thought they would have drowned!”

“Under the mire is the stone,” said Fetter. “Under the stone the burrowers dig their holes. Bash, crash, shake, shudder. The dampdrake doesn't like it. He has gone; left us and swum away, through the secret waters, away into the big marsh in the north.”

“Good riddance!” said Henwyn, very relieved, and then hastily added, “I mean, what a terrible shame!”, because he knew the dampdrake was important to the boglins; it was their god and their pet, and they loved it.

“Burrowings must stop,” said Fetter.

That reminded Henwyn of the dwarves. What were they doing under this part of Clovenstone? There had been no attacks on the northern stretch of the Inner Wall. He had seen no sign of molehills rising in the north. “They must be very deep,” he said aloud. “I wonder what they are doing down there?”

“Tunnelling,” said Fetter. “Just one tunnel they have been making; very long, very straight. Boglins listen. We puts our ears to the floors of the meres and we hears. Clanging things they have down there; bong, clong. Bangings and hammerings, and diggings. They came from the west, and they made their burrow long and straight, and last night, while you warmbloods were busy fighting, they dug through the foot of the crag to where the lava lies. Like poking a hole in a wineskin; like sucking broth through a straw. You go back to your princess lady, warmblood. You tell her that. Tell her she must stop the burrowings. Also, send more crumbles, please.”

Fetter stepped backwards, and as he did so the mist seemed to thicken, swallowing him and all the other boglins. At the same time, a patch on the far side of the hall thinned, and sunlight shone there, lighting up the entrance to a broad track that led away through the reeds.

“Fetter!” shouted Henwyn.

There was no answer. The reeds rustled. The boglins were gone.

Zeewa looked uneasily towards the gap in the mist and the path through the reeds. Kosi said, “Is it a trick? Are they hoping to trap you?”

Henwyn shook his head. “If they had wanted to kill us they could have done so easily. I think he was granting us safe passage. What did he mean, ‘sucking broth through a straw'?”

“Does he want Ned to send him soup as well as more crumble?” wondered Zeewa.

Henwyn shook his head. The Muskish girl had never seen the lake of slowsilver lava under Meneth Eskern. Henwyn had, and he was starting to get an unsettling idea about what the boglin king had meant.

“This is important!” he said. “We must warn Ned and the others at once!”

“Why? What is it?” asked Zeewa, running beside him as he turned and hurried towards the path which Fetter had revealed. It stretched away ahead of them through the reeds, with thick walls of mist towering up on either side, and at its far end, very dimly, the sun was shining on the battlements of the Inner Wall.

“I'm not certain,” said Henwyn. “But I think . . . I think all our battling was in vain. I think the dwarves have won!”