Goblin Hero (37 page)

“I stole it from her,” Slash said. His face was bruised and bloody, either from being dropped into the ice crevasse, or from the pixies’ rough handling. “No hobgoblin would trust a rat-eating goblin with something this important.”

One of the pixies flew toward Slash and plucked the box from his hand. “What is it?”

“There’s no magic in that,” said another. “If they think their little toys are powerful enough to scratch our gate, they’re delusional.”

Veka glanced at the pole-arm Snixle and Wholoo had been using against the sparks. Was that enough iron to scratch the gate? Probably not or they never would have used it here. She needed something bigger. A spell powerful enough to kill this stupid serpent and destroy the portal at the same time.

While she was at it, why not wish for the pixie queen’s unconditional surrender to Veka the Sorceress?

“How do you open it?” asked the pixie, studying the box. “I see no hinges—No, I see it now. Clever workmanship.” He pressed one end of the box. “The lid pops open like so, and—”

Even Veka’s goblin ears could barely make out the sharp
twang
from the box. The pixie screamed and flung the box away. A slender pin protruded from the center of his palm. Smoke rose from the wound.

“Kill him!” the pixie screamed. Moltiki rushed away, closing the distance to Slash before the poor hobgoblin had taken a single step. Moltiki’s body blocked her view as he lunged, and then the giant snake drew back. Slash dangled from the snake’s jaw. Moltiki’s fangs had pierced the hobgoblin’s leg. Slash flailed about, shouting in pain.

“No!” Before Veka even realized what she was doing, she had wrapped a spell around the pole-arm and launched it at the snake. The steel blade cut through the scales and lodged deep within the neck. Moltiki roared in pain. Slash dropped to the ground and didn’t move.

“Get the goblin, get the goblin!” screamed another pixie.

The pole-arm was embedded too deeply in the snake for Veka’s magic to remove it. She cast a second spell, grabbing her staff from where it had fallen and sending it spinning through the air. The whirling ends batted one pixie aside, then smashed a second. She shot the staff at a third pixie, but this one waved a hand, and the staff disintegrated. So she flung Wholoo’s body at the pixie instead. She missed, but it bought her time to scramble around behind the hill.

Two pixies down, a third with a metal pin through his hand. That left two uninjured, along with one bleeding, very angry snake. She could try again to control it, but—

No. She stared at the hill, remembering Snixle’s words.
Necromancy is like wearing a corpse.
But the magic was the same as she had used on the lizard-fish.

Straum had been dead for an entire year. His bones were warped and fused by pixie magic. She had never tried to control anything so big, or so dead.

And if she didn’t try now, she would be snake food.

Blood dripped into her eye. When had she cut her head? Not that it mattered. As the pixies regrouped, she pressed her body against the hill and cast her spell.

Snixle had taught her that pixie magic was practically a living thing. So were Straum’s remains. The dragon might be dead, but those bones were still warm with power. They welcomed Veka’s magic, drawing her spell into themselves like a starving goblin stuffing himself in Golaka’s storerooms.

Her vision blurred and darkened. Her joints felt like ice, stiff and cold. She slipped to her knees as the magic threatened to crush her. No, it wasn’t the magic. It was Straum’s remains. The weight of those massive bones pressed her to the ground, grinding her into the ice and stone. She couldn’t hear. She couldn’t see. Where were the pixies, the giant serpent? Moltiki could be rearing back to strike, and she wouldn’t even know.

She fought to stand, but her body wouldn’t obey. Straum’s body. Magic and ice and decay had turned the skeleton into a solid mass of bone. She would have to break the bones to move them. This had been a mistake. How could she have been so foolish? She tried to release the spell, but even in death, Straum was too powerful. His body sucked Veka’s power and refused to let her go. She was inside Straum’s bones, but she couldn’t move them. She would have laughed at the absurdity, but even that was beyond her.

Veka felt nothing. No cold, no pain, nothing but magic. The river of magic pouring from the portal in her mouth, the currents flowing through the room, the tiny spot of warmth on her side . . . no, that was Veka herself, felt through Straum’s body. Her jaw throbbed, as if she had tried to swallow one of Slash’s goblin prickers. Was that the portal causing her such pain?

There was Moltiki, crawling around the front of the hill toward Veka.

Would she even feel the strike, or would her existence simply end? Worse yet, would her mind remain trapped inside Straum’s skeleton, blind and deaf and forever unable to move? Despair began to weigh her down as much as the bones themselves.

Time seemed slower, trapped inside the dragon. She could feel each ripple of Moltiki’s muscular body as the great snake drew back to strike. The pixies darted about, sending currents through the magic like bugs on the lake.

As she waited for the serpent to finish her, a single thought wormed through her mind.
Jig would have found a way.

Anger burned through despair. Jig
always
found a way. He always won. Veka was the one who got captured by a pixie peon or eaten by a flaming serpent or stabbed through the gut by
Jig Dragonslayer
! Jig had slain Straum, and Veka wasn’t even strong enough to overcome the power in the dragon’s dead bones. It wasn’t fair!

The portal pulsed in her jaw as waves of magic poured from the pixies’ world. Veka tried to shut out everything except that portal. Forget the pixies. Forget Moltiki. Forget Slash. She didn’t even know if the hobgoblin was still alive.

Jig would have succeeded. So would she. Straining every bone in her neck and jaw until they felt ready to shatter, Veka wrenched Straum’s head to one side and snapped the great jaws down on the serpent.

There was a moment of tremendous pressure. She thought about the younger goblins who, when harassed by mosquitoes and other bloodsuckers, would pull their skin taut to trap the bugs in place. Blood would continue to bloat the mosquitoes until they exploded. At that moment, Veka felt a great sympathy for those poor bugs.

The skull shattered, and Veka lost consciousness.

 

Rough hands shook Veka’s arm. She opened her eyes and wished she hadn’t. The light felt like knives going straight to her brain. “No goblin should have to wake up to that ugly face,” she mumbled, shoving Slash away.

“About time you woke up.” Slash sat against the wall of the cave. He had wrapped torn singed strips of her cloak around his leg. Water dripped down from the melting ice.

Veka looked around. Moltiki’s body had been cut completely in half, either by Straum’s jaws or by the explosion that followed. Huge shards of bone littered the cave floor. If the pent-up magic had done that to a dragon’s bones, she wondered how bad the damage had been on the pixies’ side of the portal.

She reached up to touch her face. Her fangs had driven right through her cheeks when she clamped Straum’s jaws down around the serpent.

Blue blood. She stared at her hands. The metallic glow of the pixies’ world was gone.

Slash was holding up one hand to block the sight of her blood. “Do you mind?”

She wiped her hands on her apron. “That box. What was it?”

“Needle trap. I pried it out of one of the Necromancer’s doors a few months back. Dipped the needle in lizard-fish poison for good measure.” He pointed to the pixie who lay dead near the tunnel entrance. “I had been planning to install it in a little chest and leave it in front of the goblin lair.”

He gave a sheepish shrug. “The chief only told us not to kill goblins. Is it my fault if you hurt yourselves on one of my toys?”

Veka was too exhausted to do anything but shake her head. Even that was a mistake. The bones in her neck popped and cracked, shooting pain down her spine. All she wanted was to lie down and sleep for the next few days.

“How do you think Jig did?” Slash asked.

Veka snorted. “He’s probably back at the goblin lair, sipping klak beer while the other goblins make up new verses for ‘The Song of Jig.’ ”

Slash chuckled. “Forget ‘The Song of Jig.’ I want to know what they’re going to sing about this.” He waved an arm to encompass the snake, the bone debris, the dead pixies, and the multicolored slush dripping from the walls and ceiling. “I’ll tell you this much, though. The first goblin to call me ‘Slash’ in a song gets a lizard-fish spine in her boot.”

Veka stared at the scar running down his face. For the first time she thought to wonder how it had happened. “Who did that to you?”

He flushed. “I did it myself. An ax trap I was working on misfired.” He shrugged. “Could be worse. You should see what my friend Marxa looked like after her fire trap went off prematurely.”

Veka nodded absently. Reality was gradually beginning to seep through her shock. She was still alive. The portal was destroyed. The pixies had all died or fled.

She glanced at the tattered remains of her cloak, wondering what had happened to Snixle. She had forgotten all about him when she tossed away the burning cloak. If he had remained inside her pocket, she would have been able to smell his burned remains. She crawled over and poked the cloak. A bit of ash floated free, all that remained of her spellbook.

“Hey, Veka.” Slash still wouldn’t look at her. “That snake was going to kill me. One more bite. . . .” He grimaced and touched the bloody bandages on his leg. “I mean, if you hadn’t stabbed him like that. He . . . you . . .” He shook his head. “Sorry, I can’t say it. Not to a goblin. If the other hobgoblins found out a stupid, fat, ugly rat-eater like you had saved my life, they—”

“Shut up, Slash.” Veka rolled her eyes. After everything else she had been through, the hobgoblin’s insults were no more bothersome than gnats. The normal kind, not the orange pixie gnats. Besides, if he got too uppity, she could still bounce him off a few walls. “You’re welcome.”

She tried to stand up, and her head began to pound. “Forget that,” she muttered. With the portal closed, she had to try several times to cast her levitation spell. The pixies’ magic was still here, but it was dissipating fast, like smoke in the wind. Eventually she managed to tap into that fading power. Ever so gently, she lifted herself from the ground. A second spell scooped Slash after her. Together they floated out of Straum’s lair and into the wider cavern, toward home.

CHAPTER 17

“Well,
that
didn’t go quite the way we had planned.”

—Poppink the Pixie

 

 

 

Jig had experienced plenty of unpleasant awakenings in his life, from the time he woke up to find a group of goblins preparing to drop a baby rock serpent in his mouth to the time he discovered Smudge building a web in his loincloth. This one topped them all. Not only was Tymalous Shadowstar’s voice booming loudly enough to crack his skull, but when he finally opened his eyes, Braf’s face filled his vision.

Braf grinned so widely a bit of drool slipped from his lower lip. “It worked! You’re alive!”

You weren’t joking, were you?
asked Shadowstar.
Less than a day, and already you’ve got goblins trying to kill you.

Jig groaned and sat up. “Yes, I’m alive.” He stopped. The pain in his back was gone. Drying blood covered his vest, but the wound itself had disappeared.
Why am I alive?

Jig stared, trying to absorb that piece of information. Braf had healed him. Braf, who was now standing next to Jig. Standing on two bare, perfectly healthy feet. Grell sat on the ground behind him, tending a small fire. She had taken the remains of Jig’s muck pouch and set the whole thing aflame.

The tunnels were the same red and black obsidian he was used to. The flames rising from his muck pouch were a healthy green. This was the chamber where he had fought the pixie queen. Without the sparkle of magic and the flurry of pixie lights, Jig barely recognized the place. The blood on the ground gave it away though. A sticky blue puddle showed where Jig had passed out.

Noroka still lay face first on the ground, snoring loudly. “You healed her too?”

Braf nodded. “Those pixies broke her nose pretty good, but she wasn’t dead.”

“Pixies. Right.” Jig looked out at the bottomless pit. “How many others survived?”

“Counting us?” Grell asked. “Maybe five or six. I’m not counting you, because you should have been dead. Would have been, if Braf hadn’t stuck his finger in your back and—”