Where before the tunnels had largely been empty, devoid of traffic, as we approached the goblin-queen’s chamber we began to see more and more of her subjects. The corridors broadened and even grew loftier, achieving such heights that I could stand up straight, and we were challenged twice by armed and armoured posses of guards.
When they didn’t immediately back down, I brought them with me, under the merest touch of my influence. They came clattering along behind us under strict instruction to be as raucous as possible. By the time we came to a third gang of rake- and shovel-wielding goblins, we were a slowly-moving ball of baudy songs and general insanity.
One member of the third group elected to join us without me suggesting anything, throwing down her bin-lid shield and getting right into the groove with the others.
It was with some genuine reluctance that I left them at the throne room doors, but I realised I had to put my serious face on when I saw them. The doors at the end of the ‘hall’ were planes of living wood and vines which withdrew into the dirt walls, the floor and the ceiling as we came near, as though the knots of strange, leafy branches knew of our approach.
I reminded myself where I was and what I was doing. I stepped within, the twins just in front of me and Blofm just in front of them. We three mere mortals peered left and right as we moved down the aisle. I felt perturbed, and strengthened our shields just in case, trying my best to make out our surroundings in the muted rainbow gloom of a hundred radiant jars.
There were no rows of courtiers, no supplicants or revellers. The audience was comprised of trees, columns of dark pillars with their upper sections buried in the earth roof, casting long shadows across our path. Their branches swayed, their leaves rustled, although there was no wind my skin could discern. Huge white spiders the size of dinner-plates were the only true inhabitants I could make out, vast webs, thick like a ship’s rigging, coating almost every surface in sight. Thankfully, none of the webs had been permitted to cross the aisle – whether by virtue of some edict or simply due to the fact too many goblins traversed this path for the ropey strands to stay in place, I was unsure.
“Why does it always have to be spiders?” I muttered, hauling my useless leg behind me.
“Not afraid, are you?” Jar asked me without turning. He did a remarkable job of keeping the fear from his own voice, but the tremor of it was there, underlying the bravado.
“Not a bit,” I lied.
“Good.”
It wasn’t that spiders bothered me, but they reminded me of all my failures. Fintwyna, the headless heretic girl, and her paramour whose fury had almost ended my family. The descent into the eolastyr’s tower filled with demon-spiders, on that first fateful Incursion where Dustbringer had lost his life and his soul. I was carrying enough guilt, enough loss, that I was certain I could’ve found a portentous symbol anywhere I looked, if I only looked hard enough. But these creeping creatures, translucent under the myriad lights, were too close for comfort.
Walking was such a chore. The wraith was like a drug, and I was suffering withdrawal. But it wasn’t like the drugs used by lesser men. The change was at once both more profound and less insidious. Joining with it allowed me to ignore the woes of the flesh… yet it didn’t affect my mind, didn’t impose anything on me. If anything, it simply let my mind be itself, uncluttered by physical distractions, setting my true self free… The sheer length of this chamber was far greater than I’d expected, and I was almost at the point of calling for a break when the scintillating brightness in the distance came into sharp relief. Finally, I could make out the far wall of this throne room in all its lovely detail.
It was, of all things, the mural of a unicorn’s beautiful head, comprised of a thousands of white and yellow jars. The huge glowing depiction of Nentheleme had over a dozen goblin attendants. One was atop a tall narrow ladder, carefully removing a dim-looking jar from its place and replacing it with the one he carried under his arm. The two goblins at the foot of the ladder, ostensibly tasked with holding it steady, were instead competing with one another, sniggering while they kicked at its poles and lower rungs. Others still were employing their unique abilities to cling effortlessly to the wall, or to reawaken with a simple touch the radiance of the lightless insects brought down into their care.
Close to the wall beneath Nentheleme’s head was the throne – if it could be so-called. It was more like a ruined building than a single piece of furniture. Wooden slats, piles of stones, mounds of earth – everything beneath and around the queen added to the effect. She appeared to sit upon the broken roof of a long-since caved-in hovel, her cushions black soil, the arms of the seat unsmoothed oaken planks bristling with rusty nails.
If this queen was a goblin, I might as well have been one myself. She looked more like an overgrown fairy, or an extremely exaggerated elf. Certainly not what I’d expected. She was almost beautiful.
Why such a nubile and elegant sovereign had chosen such a poor dais, I had no answer. This wasn’t just her throne, really – this was her centre, the crux of her plane and her power. And yet she’d evidently saved all the lavishness afforded by her station for her personal attire. Earrings like pearly raindrops, a necklace of jade in shades of deep-sea green – these few delicately-wrought pieces complemented her silver-turquoise gown. Her chin tapered almost to a point, like her nose and her ears and the corners of her eyes – not green, those curious orbs, but a cool sky blue. Two diaphanous dragonfly wings were draped across her shoulders, their surfaces glistening like starry pools as they protruded out in front of her. The final touch, a circlet upon her brow, wasn’t ostentatious – a simple ring of shaped white stone, glittering with golden flecks of mica.
Was I supposed to bow? To introduce myself?
She made the first move.
“Welcome unto my sorry home, lord sorcerer.” There wasn’t a trace of apprehension in her voice; she adopted a conciliatory smile. Highborn were all the same, no matter what world you found them in. “Wouldst thou and thine deign to rest awhile? I fear I possess not the proper quarters to befit one of thy kindred – and yet more do I fear thy journey hence hath been a long and ungentle one. Thou shouldst, at least, sit whilst we converse, no?”
She sat forward, gesturing, and between one blink and the next a bench appeared in our midst, looking relatively smooth and splinter-free when compared with her own mess of a chair.
“I think I’ll stand,” I said, teetering.
Her smile hardened somewhat. Perfect white teeth were bared.
“I understand the legends amongst your peoples concerning mine own. Let it be said that I will not count it as a favour owed unto me in return, shouldst thou accept mine offer.”
I stared at her for a few seconds. Thankfully the twins were smart enough to wait for me to give some signal.
“Let it be said, then,” I prompted. “I’m dying to park my cart.”
She looked taken aback for a moment, then burst into laughter. Not cold, or shrill. Pure mirth.
“Ai! Ai! it is too much.” She wheezed for breath. “Very well, lord sorcerer; I shall dispense with all pretence. You and yours may sup freely of my wine!”
She beamed, and waved her hand eagerly at the bench.
“Errr.”
I looked at the twins – Jar gave me a puzzled glance in response, while Jaid was staring off at the unicorn’s image.
“What is this delay! Seat yourselves at once!”
I returned my gaze to the suddenly-petulant queen of the goblins. She stood, and the wooden boards creaked beneath her as she moved.
“Well, frankly, I don’t want your wine. I don’t want half-sentences. I need a guarantee…”
“Master.” Blofm spoke in her sovereign’s presence for the first time. “Master, she’s sayin’ it as formal as it gets. Suppin’ freely on ‘er wine – it’s like sayin’ –”
“I get it.” I heard the nervousness in my own voice, and squashed it down as best I could. “No… I won’t take anything from this place, anything, unless it’s to free it.”
“Free it?” the queen hissed. “The host who in all good grace doth deign to satisfy her guest shall not suffer blame when he asketh of her blood – nay, to tap of the very marrow in her bones – only to cast it carelessly aside. What wouldst thou of me? Tell me now, how durst thou so slight me, I who have been so contrite before thee?”
“She owns a unicorn. Bircanos!”
Jaid folded her arms and spun on her heel, facing away from the fey queen and screwing her eyes shut.
No fear of reprisal on my sister’s face. Just a scowl of fury.
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The ruler of the demi-plane matched it with a scowl of her own.
“And you own one of my subjects! Impudent wretch, don’t you dare turn your back on me!”
As she shrieked, pretence finally giving way to emotion, the queen lifted her hand and made another gesture. I felt something rake at Jaid’s shields, gouging deep into the outermost shell and splitting it into tatters of residual blue lines. It was only as it withdrew that I perceived a huge green shadow, like the paw of a gigantic unseen panther retracting back across the space towards its creator.
Jaid swayed, as though she wanted to spin back to face this strange, subterranean monarch – but Mortenn stubbornness won out. She clenched her jaw, kept facing away.
“Bircanos,” was all she muttered.
Blofm was still wittering, so I waved her into silence while I stepped in front of Jaid, covering her with my own shielding.
I cried out: “Nevael esai vi alim merreine elim tindamor!”
Do not speak so to the sister of the sorcerer.
The queen drew back her hand, well-scolded, bringing it close to her chest.
“I don’t care about your rules. I won’t be tricked, and I won’t sit.” I shuffled, bringing my feet closer together so I could draw myself up to my full height, and used my most imperious tone. “Now show me your true face. Show me, before I rip off your mask.”
The queen seemed to shiver, and melt –
And became the goblin she had been all along.
She wasn’t fat, not in any ordinary sense. The loose jowls of skin hanging down the sides of her face, the dripping earlobes – these pointed to the notion that she’d once been a far larger goblin. Or perhaps it was just age. The arms and legs poking out from her vast tattered garment were thin, almost emaciated. And yet – the stomach…
The stomach was like a demi-plane all of its own, barely connected to the rest of her body, grey surfaces bulging out of the bedraggled fabrics all over the place. It was as though a giant worm were coiled about her midriff, and it squirmed and rolled even when she wasn’t moving.
I saw now why the throne had creaked and bent beneath her when she’d stood. She hadn’t extended her illusion to cover her surroundings, either through a lack of perceived need or simply a lack of practice.
“I’m goddamn sick of illusionists,” I muttered.
“And I’m sick of sorcerers!” she whinged, her voice robbed of its former delicacy. “What are you doing here? Leave us alone!”
“I hear you have a unicorn for sale,” I said. “You’re an entrepreneurial folk, right?”
She sat down, cushioned by the tremendous belly. Ugly lips creased into a grey, smug smile, but there was dread in her gaze now.
“And what will you offer me, eh? My life?”
“Your queendom.”
She threw back her head, and now the tense laughter was as shrill as it came.
“My queendom? What – you’ll destroy all this? All of us?”
I psychically checked he’d recovered from his encounter with Lyanne’s zombie-giant, then let the crimson light cascade, placing my hand on Khikiriaz’s flank. The queen shrank back on her fleshy bulges, eyes popping. One of the goblin assistants almost fell from its perch once it copped a look at my ikistadreng.
“If need be, yes. You’ve got the face of the Goddess of Freedom up in lights shining down on you, and to make it you’re capturing things! What you’re doing –”
“Is no different to what you, to what any of you do!” The queen pointed at Blofm with a long, quivering finger, her eyes still on me. “We don’t have anything, any place except this! You think you’re different to me? We only wanna get better. We worship her. One day – one day we’ll be elves!”
“Who told you that?”
Jaroan’s voice shook me. He was staring at the queen like she’d just told him up was down. I was glad to see I wasn’t alone.
“Yeah,” I backed my brother up, “what in the Twelve Hells…?”
I felt Khikiriaz press his not-quite-fur into my hand at the mention of his home. The infernal substance of his being was like blurry hair on the surface but it swiftly condensed into a flesh tougher than lead.
Would the ‘fur’ hold a shape?
“It – has – been – promised!” The queen was all-out wailing now. “You think – you think you will get better? You will get worse! You will be like us, looking for something good to gnaw on!”
Something good? I’d left behind everything good about life already. There was no getting worse, not from here. No downwards when you were at rock bottom. Emrelet was the good. The dragon’s victim. My victim.
“But you won’t get better eating bits of a unicorn or kissing an elf.” I felt like I could pity her, suddenly. “You won’t heal. You’ll only hurt. You’ll hurt the light.”
“You think I don’t know that?” she hissed.
Her stomach rippled.
I trapped her gaze –
Nothing swam into my consciousness. No sense of essence. No feeling of control. No name.
After a few seconds she tossed her head, breaking eye contact, evidently feeling little more than a faint glimmer of the agony which should’ve awaited her.
“You’re stronger than any I’ve met in a long time,” she conceded, a devious smile splitting her haggard face, “but you’re nowt to my master. He isn’t gonna be pleased with you, wrecking the whole operation –”
“Of course, of course.” I waved an impatient hand. “Your powerful master – I suppose I should look out for his challenge. What’s his name, again?”
She cackled at that, saying nothing.
“Speak his name, or by Kultemeren I’ll see your throne levelled.”
Her glance met mine again, and finally, finally she was afraid.
“No!” she yelped, trying to sit forward and failing on the first try. “No! You don’t get it. I can’t say his name, I can’t tell anyone!”
“I’ve said my piece.” I was starting to feel irritated, watching her claw her way upright on the throne. The compulsion to end this foray into the otherworld and return to the comforts of Materium had been enhanced by my oath. “You’re a goblin-queen. If anyone can find a loophole, it’s you. Can you write it down? Tell a worm?”
Amongst her other abilities, I had a suspicion Blofm could speak to worms…
“It’s – it’s been so long.” Our host tugged at her spindly hairs as she moaned. “So long… But I –”
She suddenly straightened a little.
“Outta here! All o’ yer! Now!”
When she swung her arms to gesture at her attendants the huge ephemeral paws returned, batting them out of their perches. The glinting panther-claws sliced through the ladder, snicking it into wooden twigs, and the goblin atop it went tumbling like a leaf from a tree. Fortunately for him, he had some power that let him land as lightly as a leaf too, and he went sprinting off.
Seeing their queen’s fury, it didn’t take the attendants long to scurry out of sight, entering tunnels hidden in the shadows of the corners.
When she was satisfied they were gone, she sighed.
“I could tell you who he ain’t.”
“Who he isn’t? And I could infer…”
She raised a hand to stop me, looking thoroughly terrified now.
“I can tell you who he ain’t.” She spoke more loudly, with more firmness in her voice, but she was quivering worse than ever. “He ain’t an Ord, or a Nil. An Ulu, or a Tyr. He’s –”
“A Mal,” I breathed.
Mal… Malas?
“Like Prince Deathwyrm!” Jaroan muttered under his breath. “For real?”
“I didn’t tell you!” She was back to shrieking. “I said nothing!”
“I understand,” I called out.
For once, I really did. Working against the edicts of a master like him… How was she even capable of such a feat? His will should’ve overridden any loopholes in his wording. She should have obeyed.
Zel’s real master had been more capable…
Unless that was the point. Driven to the brink, the Queen of Moths might reveal this much. Enough to deter a potential aggressor. Enough to make someone who already wanted to leave turn tail and run, ushering his kid brother and sister along in front of him.
“But children?” Jaid said suddenly, looking at the queen in disdain. “What would he want with children?”
Blofm looked up, as if she were about to answer, but her former ruler held our attention. The distended monarch shook her head vigorously, loose jowls swinging left to right.
“They’re not for him – they’re for me! He told me… I have to grow my power! I have to stand strong for him when he calls for me!”
“What does she mean, for her?” Jaroan’s voice was quiet. I could tell he was feeling nauseous.
“It’s the only way to be free!” She patted her vast stomach with both hands, an action made almost comical by the sheer amount of tumourous skin extending out from her midriff – she could barely encompass a tenth of it in the span of her spindly arms. “I swallow them,” she almost whispered, reverence in her tone. “And their bits don’t get to go out. They stay in me, forever. They have such… such imagination…”
She never said the name.
I smiled as my mind was made up. At least I would soon be far from here.
No responsibilities.
I looked down at Blofm and addressed her directly.
“Why you ever thought she could tell you how to get better, I’ll never know.”
I scratched my mark in Khikiriaz’s substance – it wouldn’t last long, I knew, but he wouldn’t need long.
I released him and, still looking down, murmured, “Khalor.”
It was a foregone conclusion. She might’ve been the mistress here, might’ve been at the very eye of the storm of the energies she owned and manipulated. But the oath of Kultemeren was stronger. The will of the archmage was stronger. The cause – the need for justice – was stronger.
My demon went charging at the throne, moving faster and more eagerly than I thought I’d ever seen him move, and the Queen of Moths panicked. She swung her arms wildly, fingers splayed. Two green-tinted shadow-paws swept down at the ikistadreng to maul him, bat him aside, but he tossed his great black-antlered head to and fro, absorbing the first attack entirely, and deflecting the second so that it only struck a glancing blow at his flank. He barely lost any speed, his trajectory back on course in a split-second. Only a little blurry blood streamed behind him as he ran.
Her panic became absolute hysteria, and she let down all her walls.
“Vaylech, save me!” she screamed.
It almost took her too long to summon her moths from their hiding places in the riven wood and crevasses of her seat, thousands of the bugs coming streaming out to settle swiftly upon her misshapen body and coat her in their wings. These moths did not glow. They were dark grey, dark brown, black. Even beneath the second skin of living critters, draped like vast itching curtains across her distended stomach, I could make out the way she was shaking.
Khikiriaz laughed gutturally as he connected, head lowered –
The demon’s destructive force went rippling out, turning a vaguely throne-like mess of materials into a literal garbage-dump.
It didn’t stop there. The kinetic energies went through the piled dais and slammed into the back wall, cascading up and out, throwing earth and glass everywhere.
When the storm of splinters and dirt finally settled, the Queen of Moths was nowhere to be seen, and a thousand or more jars had been shattered, their lights set free to drift down across the throne room.
“She escaped, Master,” Khikiriaz growled glumly across at me in Infernal, tossing the detritus with one end of his antlers.
“Grel kasond oroz. Daugn sa kasagren! Kherem.”
I sent him home, then looked back at the others.
“We have a dungeon to find,” Jaid said firmly.
“Indeed we do. Lead on, good Flombom.”
My goblin visibly winced at that, but otherwise kept a thoughtful silence, leading the three of us away from the chaos of this creature’s lair, towards the tunnels through which the queen’s attendants had fled.
As soon as we were moving again, I was immediately reminded of my need to sit down and give my leg a rest.
“I should’ve taken her up on the bench thing, in spite of everything,” I grumbled. “How much could it’ve cost me, really?”
“Quit moaning and keep up,” Jar called back over his shoulder.
Jaid had well and truly surfaced out of her dazed state in her keenness to aid the lord of unicorns, the noble eldritch imprisoned somewhere around here by Mal Malas, and even she abandoned me, skipping ahead with the others towards the tunnel entrance, leaving me to drag my leg alone, wincing as I crossed the wreckage-strewn ground, beneath the dappled lights.
* * *