22. Darkness

“I found this journal laying where I left it. But I feel… different. Some other goblin. Some other shaman. The bone stylus feels strange in my hands, and even my own skin feels odd sagging upon my frail frame.

The plan—

The plan—

The dwarves were able to create explosives, which quite abruptly, thoroughly and assuredly obliterated the tunnels which we had hoped to dig to reach their fortress.

Hundreds were killed instantly, dozens crushed within moments, while many unfortunate kin were trapped beneath the earth where they died of hunger or thirst.

I was not so lucky.

Trapped, yes. Hungry, yes. Thirsty—I have never been so thirsty in my life.

I could not move an inch and barely breathe with all the weight of that rock and stone, and I wanted more than anything to scream, or to die, or to—

I was freed. Eventually.

Best not to lament on the details. Nor how many Moons had passed before I was found. Or why a search was conducted so long after the event. No need to worry that of all the days that Zalak was not with us, it was that day. Or that the once lithe Chief is now the self-styled King of the Goblins.

I keep thinking of that day when I thought he was supporting me, showing my immortality, but I wonder now whether he was trying to kill me in truth and declaring me as Small King only to usurp me.

In any case, King Zalak was the one who found me. Smiling as if we had parted ways not long ago. And as if he were not at all surprised to find me buried so deep beneath the earth.

But then he told me what I already knew. ‘Malek sent me.’

For the ancient voice had spoken to me once more. And though I thought at first it was madness born of my being trapped in the blackness by the dread unending weight of the earth, it offered me freedom in exchange for my help. To which I readily agreed.”

“I am angry, I am angry, I am angry,” cried Fragor, his voice higher and far more sullen than before. He then followed the words with a high pitched, ear splitting hum.

Thing had not gone well.

So far as Astrid understood it, the Void Walker had healed her, so that she might convince Fragor to enter the tunnels, but his healing of her had harmed him. This she guessed because his powers had limits, and he had pushed himself beyond them.

She had managed to convince the giant troll to become less giant, but then the tunnels had gone from gloomy and large to black and narrow. Luckily, she was still haunted, by Edda’s rent spirit or some other figure, because she still managed to keep forward.

Until, of course, they’d reached a dead end.

There was light here, at least. Pale blue worms glowed luminescent as they crawled their way from moss to moss or rock to rock.

“Try to be calm,” Astrid suggested, though her own voice shook unnervingly. Fragor was running well short of wax, and even though he was now only the size of a large man—perhaps the waxy green brother of Hjorvarth—he could still eat her, or the Void Walker, if he so chose.

“Where going, Acid?” Fragor asked more ponderously.

“I suppose we’ll have to turn around,” she said, watching as liquid gathered at the tapered tip of a hanging rock, dripping noisily to the pool below. Each resonant drop seemed to mark her waning hopes like sand sifting from a glass.

Her vision swam, and she found herself in another cave, lit by a crackling brazier, and there stood Lazarus, with his lithe frame and ungainly head, staring at a grimy hourglass while flames roared beside him.

Shaking her head, she was back in the pale blue chamber of earth and stone. She did not understand why she was seeing visions of Lazarus. His story had already ended. And she had never dreamed of goblins before. Only dwarves, and elves, and men. And there was that one dream where Hjorvarth was talking to a giant rat in a fanciful red robe.

The Void Walker clicked his tongue. “You went the wrong way.”

He was smirking up at her from the cavern floor, slumped up against damp stone, while a pair of luminescent worms crawled over the ebony skin of his neck and shoulder.

“Hard to see in the dark.”

“Even with so many ghosts…?” he asked.

“Ghosts!” shouted Fragor. “Where is they?”

“A question for Altonian scholars,” answered the black man, now he rose to his feet and dusted off his fibrous skirt. He plucked a glowing worm from his neck. “Let us go.”

“Fragor is running short of wax,” said Astrid.

“Yes. You must shrink again, my friend,” said the Void Walker. “And we must leave the ghosts behind. I did not wish for this, but we have no other choice.”

“For what?” Astrid asked, after Fragor had finished angrily humming.

“We will walk The Void.”

***

“It’s freezing,” complained Astrid, but despite the dread cold cloaking her and burrowing under her pale skin, she wasn’t shivering. She felt almost dead.

The world around her was like the midnight sky, but full of bright lights in all manner of colors and patterns.

“Walk as I do,” warned the Void Walker, glancing back at her with fear in his dark eyes. “This is not our place. Or mine. One step in this world, might be leagues in yours.”

Astrid lowered her gaze, tracking the man’s black heels and shadowing his footfalls. “Who’s place is this?”

“Many. But… The Populate rule here. Lizards,” he added, smirking back at her. “Cold as the void. As strange, as well.”

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“Will Fragor be safe?” Astrid then asked. The troll had refused to shrink, or to listen, and so The Void Walker had opened a portal in the cavern floor, through which Fragor dropped and disappeared. The black man had promised they would meet him soon.

“Safer than here,” he answered as if the fact amused him. “Quiet now. Our words echo through the thoughts and dreams of friends and foes alike.”

Astrid wasn’t sure what that meant, or if she believed him, as she’d started to think he was far more interest in speed and silence than explaining who he was or why he was helping her. Fragor knew that the black man had healed her but not more than that.

The cold worsened to a freezing, numbing sensation.

Astrid’s could hear her heart beating slow and heavy in her chest.

The Void Walker raised a hand up ahead as if to stay her. His tongue clicked.

Then a pair of strange creatures appeared up ahead. Half as tall as a man, covered in scaly, shiny skin of bronze. Their eyes bulged from their wide heads like curious frogs.

The Void Walker shook his head, and waved an arm as if to shoo them aside.

Strange, reverberative whispers began, and Astrid could hear what sounded like the black man’s voice, only much quieter and his lips were not moving.

She could hear fragments of sentences spoken in wise, disapproving voices.

‘Unwelcome.’

‘Defilement.’

‘Betrayal.’

Then came a single word spoken clearly and firmly in the Void Walker’s harsh tone.

‘Gah’rul.’

The pair of creatures blinked, their lids slow and sticky, and turned to one another.

‘Untrue.’

‘Impossible.’

“I am no liar,” the Void Walker growled aloud. “Blame Avenpark. Or any other. I am preserving the Cycle. If you get in my way—”

Childlike laughter sounded out above his warning, and the scaled creatures exhaled nosily as if they were amused.

‘Dry.’

‘Weak.’

‘Powerless.’

“What are you…?” a curious, alien voice then spoke in Astrid’s mind. “So bright.”

Astrid looked around for the speaker, but the bronze pair were still focused on the Void Walker, and then a creature with gold scales appeared before her, and she startled.

Stumbling back, she threw out her arms to try and regain her balance, but her ankle twisted and she tripped. Astrid glimpsed the wide panicked eyes of the Void Walker, but then he, and all three of the serpents sloughed and twisted like crushed clay. Then all the myriad stars of the Void whirred and danced all around until sputtering out to darkness.

***

“Strange…” came a crone’s ancient voice that crackled with age. “Not dead. Not alive. You’re lucky that you landed here. Well… not lucky, but not unlucky, either. You could have had that shining soul of yours gobbled up by a frightful monster.”

The muffled sounds of great waves crashing, and the rocking motion of the hard floor beneath, made Astrid think she had ended up in a large, dark boat. But the ground lay too cold and hard to be wood, so it must have been stone.

“Where am I…?” she asked, her voice disquieted. “I was—”

“Lost,” the crone finished. “Still are, I’m afraid.”

Her eyes adjusting to the dark, Astrid glimpsed a vast ceiling overhead, huge rusting chandeliers swaying worryingly back and forth. Roots and branches crawled over brickwork and burst through roof and walls, as if some great temple had surrendered to nature. When she managed to rise, disgust and terror threatened to overwhelm her.

The vast space of stone benches, fractured statues, and golden ornamentation lay littered with skeletal corpses, while at the far back of the room, on a raised throne of bones sat a desiccated corpse of a frail old woman in a tattered black robe. Her ribs were exposed, jutting out from emaciated skin, while her eyes glittered like onyx in a rotting skull that had been cracked badly open.

“Do not be afeared,” said the crone’s voice, as if she were a kindly grandmother. “I will not hurt you, bright girl. I could not… even if I wished to. I am as lost as you are.”

“I need to… get back. To the Midderlands Pass,” Astrid confusedly insisted.

“Why…?”

“I—well, for the box. I need to find the box.”

“What’s inside?”

“I don’t know.”

“That’s a shame,” murmured the crone. “To come such a long way in ignorance.”

“Edda says that it is important. And she knew everything there is to know.”

“And who is Edda?”

“She is… was my grandmother.”

“Dead now,” the withered figure guessed. “Like me and all my followers.”

Astrid took a few steps towards the thrown, her footfalls soft and muddled by a carpet of damp moss. “You look dead. But you’re still… speaking.”

“In your mind,” the crone’s voice agreed. “It’s hard to kill a god. Fully. But not too difficult to wound and imprison one. I think I would have preferred true death.”

“You are a god of death?”

The question was met with pained, rattling laughter, that echoed from the skeletal corpse itself. “No. I am… was… the Goddess of Wisdom. The Mother of Mothers, some called me. To mirror the King of Kings. But his sword proved sharper than my wit.”

“I’ve not heard those names.”

“And why should you?” she lazily countered. “We are not your gods, bright girl.”

“No…?”

“My people have bronze skin, burnished by the Sun,” the crone answered, almost as if with pride. “You are pale like a ghost. And soon you will be a ghost just like all these here. Stripped down to the bones by wily rats and slithering insects. Unless…”

“Unless?”

“I have been alone for so long. Tell me a story, girl, and I will sustain you.”

“I don’t want to be sustained,” replied Astrid. “I want to be free. I need—”

“—to find a box,” the crone finished without patience. “I told you, bright girl. I am trapped here. And I am a god. You are trapped here. And you are not a god. If I cannot break the cage, then neither can you. But there is some hope. One day… the cage will break itself. But I have badly lost track of time, so I know not whether it is tomorrow, or eons from now. So there is a chance—slim, admittedly—that sustenance will free you.”

“How does the cage break?”

“Tell me a story, and I tell you one in return. But I asked first. And I can cause your skin to wither just as easily as I can preserve your flesh. So… do not anger me, ghost.”

“I could tell you about The Void Walker,” Astrid said.

“No,” grated the crone. “That story hasn’t happened yet. And I know all the words.”

“Do you know of Horvorr?”

“What is it?” asked the crone. “A settlement, a person, or a place?”

“It is a settlement. Founded by goblins, and—”

“What is a goblin?”

“A goblin…?” Astrid repeated. “What do you mean? It is a goblin, of course.”

“Ghost,” the crone snarled out a singular warning.

“They are like men. Only most are smaller, and they range from the size of a child to the size of a tower. Some have magics, and those they call shamans. There are no men and no women, and they all birth into a pool of acrid liquid by regurgitating sacks. They are a beastly people, and most folk fear them, and flee from them or else kill them.”

“Hm,” murmured the desiccated god. “What magic do they have?”

“With respect, you asked me to tell a story,” answered Astrid. “How can I manage that with your constant interruptions?”

Rage like a wave of restless fire pulsed over Astrid’s cold flesh, but then abated. “Fine,” whispered the crone quietly. “You may proceed.”