Fanny awoke suddenly. The rain had stopped, and high in the domed sky the moon was breaching the clouds here and there.

How long had she been asleep? Close by either side of her the boys were still slumbering.

What had awakened her? Her thoughts turned immediately to the Kobalds. Had their pursuers discovered them?

Fanny peered out through the branches into the woods beyond. All seemed quiet and still. As stealthily as possible, Fanny disentangled herself from her somnolent siblings and crept out from under the vegetative shelter.

She was stiff, aching, and wet to the bone. And dreadfully hungry besides. Still she stretched gratefully as she stood under the trees. It must be at least two miles or more back to the house, whatever direction it lay in. Or perhaps even more than that, as Fanny began to realize just how wholly lost she and her siblings really were. She really had no idea whatsoever as to their whereabouts.

Yet even so there were matters of more pressing urgency. What was it that had awakened her? Furtively she looked to her surroundings, first around, then about, and then straight up.

A shock of horror tore through her being.

There, up in the tree limbs, were dozens of pairs of yellow, faintly luminous eyes staring down at her. Here and there, they were backed by the dark silhouette of a crouching Kobald.

Fanny opened her mouth to shout, to warn her brothers to run. But it was too late.

“Karaz!!!!!!!”

Upon the command the whole mass of the Kobalds began to move at once.

As Fanny began to run back a dark prickly net was dropped on her from above, and immediately she was tripped up in its tangle and fell hard upon the ground. The boys had awoken and came rushing out to their sister’s side, only to be themselves immediately pinned under another net. In another moment the Kobalds were scaling down the trees like so many brown spiders and surrounded their victims.

“See the nasty Eveling and her nasty cubs? See, see! They cannot defy His Dreadfulness!”

“Eeee! Yes! They shall see their folly, they shall!”

“They shall see, they shall see!”

A series of triumphant horns were sounded. Fanny lay struggling against the clinging net as she was poked and prodded by the gleeful Kobalds as they danced about.

Meanwhile, the Kobalds were a bit more circumspect in approaching the barbarians Howard. The two boys sat enclosed in their net in total silence, hands deep in their pockets. Whether or not they could have managed to hurl any projectiles from where they were was dubious to be sure, but the Kobalds did not appear to have any desire to put the question to the test. They milled about the boys at a distance, crouching and muttering petty curses. Eddy stuck his tongue out at one.

Another set of horns sounded, and Fanny lay still as from the crowd of Kobalds the king himself emerged.

King Brungus approached Fanny with a sad sort of look on his small brown face.

“We are unhappy. It is profoundly sorrowful to us that things should be coming to this.”

“Then why do this to us! Surely, what have I and my brothers ever done to you and your people? Please…..Your Majesty…..please, just let us go!”

“We are afraid we no longer have any choice like, even if we be so inclined. For behold!”

The diminutive king waved a grand arm towards the crowd, which gave way in a hush.

There under the trees, as the nearest Kobalds trembled visibly, were two great black wolves with gleaming red eyes. A sense of sheer terror swept over Fanny at the sight of the fey creatures as they bore down on her with their uncanny luminous stare. Right there the last of Fanny’s hopes sank as if swallowed up by the saturated earth beneath her.

The king turned again to face Fanny, his expression even sadder yet.

“See? There’s nothing we could do, not now, not even if we wanted to. We are sorry.”

The king turned to his people and began to issue commands.

With their victims still entangled in nets, the Kobalds began to wrap them round and round with stout and bristly rope. Fanny could hardly breath under the press of the winding bonds, and the poor boys were tied together back to back as one. A short while later they were carrying their immobilized prisoners aloft on makeshift litters. Escorted by the two great wolves, the whole of the assembly began to process into the woods with their captives totally helpless in their power.

Across brush and bramble went the malign procession, their forlorn prey jostled and shook and torn as they were rocked over uneven ground and through rending branches. Fanny couldn’t keep track of how long they proceeded this way, other than it seemed a torture wholly without end.

The moon had quit the stars and taken refuge below the horizon, unable to bear anymore to shine callously on the injustice of the earth below it. In the final darkness of the night the Kobalds seemed tense and subdued, and now and again one of the terrible wolves would alter its course to walk beside Fanny, boring into her with its harrowing eyes and searing breath. Nothing in her life had ever been so horrid before, and at length Fanny’s mind could conceive of nothing but hopelessness, anguish, and fear.

The suddenly, the ghastly procession stopped. There was muted chattering, and it seemed as if a few of the Kobalds had been sent ahead.

It seemed a lifetime that they remained there, motionless. Suddenly, Fanny was aware that King Brungus was standing close beside her head. He looked down at her with his yellow eyes, and despite his alien features Fanny could read perfectly well a look of guilt and sorrow.

Abruptly, the king’s brown hand snapped out from nowhere and into her face, and before she could jerk or bite or anything he had stuffed a small wad of some sort up one of her nostrils.

In the shock of the assault Fanny nearly cried out, but the just as quickly the king leaned close and whispered urgently in her ear.

“He’ll try to enslave ye, see? Dominate yer very spirit, he will. And he’ll use powerful black magic to do it. I don’t want that to happen, not again, not to anyone else. Keep breathing through yer nose, even if it’s hard, and don’t breath with yer mouth at all if ye can help it. Take care as best ye can, Miss Howard!”

With that, the king was gone as abruptly as he had appeared at her side a moment ago.

Fanny sniffed cautiously.

The strange little bundle was uncomfortable in her nose, and it was a bit hard to breathe past it. But when she did, there was a wholesome sort of smell, like pine trees and hearty wood fires. And with it, Fanny felt a sharper sense of alertness. Deeply, she felt a peculiar sensation that whatever this peculiar bit of matter so rudely thrust into the latter end of her sinuses was, it was there for her protection somehow.

Somewhere ahead there were anxious voices, and a tramping footstep very unlike that of a Kobald. A new voice joined that of the fey creatures, deep and accented. Fanny could not crane her neck at all see anything beyond the treetops above her, but she was certain that they had been joined by a man.

Abruptly, she was lifted up again, and she had the sense that she had begun the final leg of the journey to whatever fate the Kobalds were abandoning her.

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In a moment they were out of the wood, proceeding a little distance over a patch of smooth grass. All about, the dark was fading to an oppressed twilight as the dread night at last withdrew. Suddenly a darkness loomed above, and Fanny realized that she was being brought inside a structure, its stone vaults towering above her. She recognized the manner of stonework at once.

She was being brought inside a barrow.

First came a dark path, then a turn, and then the light of lanterns. Fanny was set on the ground, and Kobald hands began to work over her, undoing her bonds and liberating her from the ropes and net. When they were finished, the Kobalds withdrew.

Fanny sat up on the mossy stones, and blinked in the flickering light.

She was inside an enclosed chamber, the walls, ceiling and floor composed of flat, slate like stones. In the center there was a group of four upright megaliths about the size of an adult man each, surrounding a rectangular depression that probably constituted a tomb when the cairn was first erected eons ago by a people long forgotten. Before this, there was set a collapsable chair of the sort employed in military camps. All about lanterns were set haphazardly, filling the chamber with an erratic dance of wicked red light.

There were also other signs of recent habitation. Bedding, trunks, barrels, tools. In fact, it looked in every way like the barrow had been the had been the permanent home of several persons for quite a number of months at the very least. The disposition of articles had a distinctly settled and ordered appearance that bespoke long weeks of sustained encampment.

And there were voices.

From somewhere back down the tunnel from whence she had just been brought Fanny could hear a discussion underway.

“You have done well, Brungus. I had not expected you to bring her to earth this quickly.”

“As ever it pleases ye, sir! We Kobalds are ever helpful and obliging to our friends as they be needful.”

“You have my thanks. However, I was not quite ready to receive her, and I have other plans underway which I am now obliged to modify. I shall require your services further.”

“But…”

“You will dispatch your Kobalds to keep watch in the clearing. I am preparing a little reception, and your forces will supplement my own while I attend to the girl.”

“Now look here...”

“No arguments, Brungus! Not if you know what’s healthy for you and your people, and I think you do. You wouldn’t have dared serve me thus far already if you didn’t. You are in deep with us, Brungus, just as your people were long ago. We are fated to be allies. Go now, my servant will give you the rest of your instructions.”

“But!”

“Go, little goblin! Do as you are bidden!”

There was a shuffling and then a few more voices that were more subdued and this time inaudible. Then, a sound of approaching footsteps.

Two men entered. They looked like gentlemen, or at least men of education, who had been living quietly under primitive conditions in the outdoors for some time. They were dressed in greatcoats and were fully bearded, yet their clothes were neat and clean and of good quality, if showing signs of wear and weather, and their skin appeared to be naturally swarthy like those from the south.

And they carried with them a tangled bundle of rope and net which they set in a corner. It was Fanny’s brothers, tied together and lying limply on the cold floor. Fanny cried out in anguish to them, but there was no reply from the children, and the two men merely fixed her with an impassive stare. One then left the chamber the way he came, while the other stood on guard near where the boys lay.

The chamber was again filled with silence, yet there was an air of expectancy as though something important was to occur momentarily. The guard stood silent and motionless, and soon he was rejoined by his compatriot.

And then, he entered the room.

There was no question in Fanny’s mind that this was the man King Brungus had spoken of so fearfully. He was a heavy set sort of man, dressed much as any proper Gandish gentleman would, though his coat and breeches were of a peculiar shade of dirty green. His face was certainly familiar to Fanny, though she was certain she had never been introduced to the man. But from her conversation with the subjugated King of Kobalds, she knew his name.

This was without a doubt Gareth Larch, known otherwise as Kador.

Larch was not alone. He entered regally like a little king in his own domain, with a delicate accessory clinging primly to his left arm.

To Fanny’s astonishment, there promenading at the side of her captor, thin, shaky but smiling grandly, was Agatha Watson.

Agatha was dressed in the same revealing gown in which she had disappeared so many days ago, albeit somewhat the worse for attrition and worn with even more abandon and exposure than ever. She smiled when she met Fanny’s eye.

“Why, my dearest Miss Howard! How good it is that you are here with us! Soon you shall see what a good fortune it is that we share!”

Fanny was dumbfounded before this extraordinary greeting. She watched in consternation as Larch and Agatha proceeded to the center of the chamber within the circle of upright stones. Larch grandly took a seat on the field chair there, while Agatha reclined fawningly on the floor beneath him.

For a moment Larch sat there without speaking, lustfully stroking Agatha’s hair while gazing penetratively across at Fanny. Fanny met his offensive scrutiny with an even gaze and a sudden sense that she hated this man above every other scurrilous creature she’d ever come across.

At last Larch spoke.

“Welcome. Welcome, my dearest Fanny Howard. I have long been desirous to have you here.”

Fanny breathed deeply through fury clenched teeth. As she did so she nearly inhaled the peculiar wad in her nose as the scent of pine washed over her, and at this point she experienced a curious sensation that besides hating this foul being, she also had no fear of him.

“Oaf!”

Larch paused in his lascivious caress of Agatha as he stared across at Fanny with his eyes just a bit wider than before.

“....What?”

“Oaf. Cad. Disgusting rotter.”

“What are you….”

“I’m rattling off words and phrases with which you inspire me, Mr. Larch. Filthy scoundrel, pernicious louse, shameless bounder…”

“How….”

“Oh, but there is so much more! Do you realize, Mr. Larch, that you bear a remarkable resemblance to a grubworm? Not physically, no, on the outside you’re rather just a common, plain, overweight and overwhelmingly uninteresting man. No, it is your inner spirit with which I find the similarity, as displayed excellently by your depravedly boorish conduct. I wonder that you can ever manage to contemplate yourself without feeling violently ill….”

“I’ll have you know….”

“And furthermore! Do you realize that the whole village is out looking for you? You may have fooled them with your cowardly wiles into believing that some pirate did it, but it won’t work forever. They’ll find this place soon enough, and when they do I’d really hate to be in your shoes. They’ll be dangling a bit too far off the ground for my taste, sir. And while I’ve never fancied myself a bloodthirsty sort of woman, I think I shall take a certain satisfaction in witnessing your hanging even as I pray for your miserable soul, whatever there may be of it that’s worth salvaging.”

“Silence, wretched woman!”

“But I’ve hardly even begun telling you all about what a worthless odor you are!”

“Beelzebub, but you’re as intractable as Miss Bellingham was! But you will not escape me so easily as she did, and I’ll soon sort out your rebelliousness….”

“La-di-da, but don’t you wish you could?”

“I’ll break your very soul!”

“To break a thing you need another thing that’s stronger, and I don’t think you have anything within a lifetime’s grasp of yourself with which you can make a dent in my soul!”

“You are a vain, silly girl, Fanny Howard. You will soon know who is your master.”

“Pish tush and falderal! You ring loudly sir, but you are as empty and toneless as a miscast bell.”

Larch arose with strained dignity and made his way over to some stacked crates.

Fanny looked at Agatha. The latter was following Larch’s actions with an impassive gaze of unreserved admiration.

“Miss Watson, speak to me! What has this monster done to you?”

Agatha looked at Fanny, an expression of vacuous geniality on her supple features. Yet she shivered and sniffed when she spoke, and her voice was taut.

“Why, Kador is perfect! He is truly the greatest person I have ever known or will know! It has been such an adventure! You can’t imagine! I’ll admit, I was a bit frightened when I was first carried off, but Kador! Kador was so strong and gallant! I have never heard anything explained to me more clearly before. He is on a great mission, and I shall be at his side through it all. I belong to him, and I am his loving slave. And you will be too, you’ll see!”

“Agatha! Don’t be a little fool! Listen to reason! Larch has kidnapped you, torn from your friends and family against your will, and how he’s managed to dominate you this way I can’t guess, but for God’s sake think! Think Agatha!”

“I don’t need to. Kador, dear Kador, he does it for me.”

“Agatha!!”

“That will be enough! Be silent now, pet, while I deal with Fanny Howard’s temerity.”

Larch was approaching now, holding a brass bowl embossed with evil looking designs, containing what appeared to be a wine of peculiar hue and unwholesome texture.

Fanny leaped to her feet, but was immediately seized by the two other men who had hitherto been motionless. Larch’s servants held each of her arms in a crushing grip as Larch set the bowl of wine at her feet. He looked up at her with a wicked sort of smile on his face.

“Now you will learn who here is the master, my bumptious little girl!”

Fanny did not reply. She kicked the bowl, which struck Larch very nicely in the shin.

Larch was still cursing when from outside there came a frenzied chorus of wildly baying wolves.