Goblinopolis, The Tol Chronicles, Book 1 (17 page)

“Whuzzat?”

Hnuppa sighed, “Main Menu>Options>Mode
>Arcane. It uses magic to heterodyne the radio frequency transmission and boost it.”

Kurg punched at his comm until it took on a faint orange glow. He looked pleased with himself. “There. Got it.”

“Yer a reg’lar jene-yus,” Ballop’ril chimed in.

Hnuppa frowned. “Yikes. Don’t encourage him.”

The bugbear grinned at him.

“Bewlie? Bewlie, this is Kurg. We had a little setback on the road. The pram’s gonna have to have some, uh, work. Yes, this one, too. I need you to send someone down with the remote broadcast dray to get us. No, I haven’t made it to Selpla yet. Yes, it’s still raining. No, we’re sort of dry: I used an amulet. A dryness amulet. No, he’s fine. Listen, tell whoever to get his rear in gear. We’re just north of Dreadmost, on the main road. Hard to miss.”

During Kurg’s conversation, Ballop’ril had been fidgeting with something in his pocket. Hnuppa noticed a pronounced bulge in that location, but he wasn’t sure that it hadn’t been there before, so he said nothing. Bugbears weren’t known as thieves, particularly—not that he knew much about them at all, of course.

“Looks like we’ve got an hour or two to kill,” Kurg reported. “What shall we do, play a game?” He clapped his rather misshapen hands together in a childlike way.

Hnuppa cocked his head and peered inquisitively at Kurg. It was sometimes hard to tell if his boss was kidding. “
Capital
idea,” he enthused sardonically, “Let’s play ‘spot the brain cell.’ I’ll go first.” He shielded his eyes with one hand and made a half circle, as though scanning the horizon. “I got nothin,’” he said, shaking his head and making an exaggerated sad face.

Ballop’ril started laughing at this
bon mot
; at least that’s what Hnuppa assumed he was doing. Kurg wasn’t laughing with him this time, though. He was staring in stunned amazement at something over Hnuppa’s right shoulder.

Hnuppa noticed Kurg’s odd behavior after a few seconds and swiveled around, following his gaze. His initial impression was that a new mountain had somehow formed behind them—he was relatively certain there hadn’t been one there previously. There could be no debate over its existence now, however. As Kurg continued to gape, Hnuppa couldn’t help but think that he’d seldom, if ever, seen his boss at a loss for words.

It became apparent after a minute or so of gawking that this was not a sedentary topological feature but in fact an animate object. It moved toward them visibly, albeit gradually, the lower half of it undulating slightly as it progressed. The occasional bouncing boulder or small rock slide punctuated the behemoth’s slow and deliberate movements.

Hnuppa glanced over at Kurg. He still seemed disinclined or unable to speak, so Hnuppa decided to take the reins.

“What
is
that?” It was not a profoundly-worded question, but it needed to be asked.

“Don’t you worry none. It’s for me.” The reply came from the bugbear, about whose presence Hnuppa had momentarily forgotten.

Both Hnuppa and Kurg turned to stare at him.

“What the smek do you mean, it’s ‘for you’?” Kurg exploded, his dumbness apparently having finally worn off.

“I mean,” Ballop’ril explained calmly, “That I summoned it. Well, not so much ‘summoned’ as arranged to have it meet me here. It’s under geas to find me.”

This was obviously too much for Kurg. His mouth slammed shut and he sat heavily in a puddle, splashing Hnuppa up to the knees. The dryness amulet clearly had no influence over water already inside its effect radius.

“Let me get this straight: you placed a
mountain
under geas?” asked Hnuppa incredulously, wiping his soaked pants without much efficacy.

“Yeah. I live in that mountain and I’m sort of a homebody, see? I figured if I’m ever more than a kilometer from home, I’m probably lost. So I put a geas on my home to come and find me when that happens.”

“OK, ten out of ten for convenience, but an entire mountain? Why not just enchant some object to lead you back—a wooden avian or whatever?” His eyes suddenly narrowed, “Where did you get a magical artifact of sufficient power to do this, anyway? I’ve never seen an enchantment on this scale in person before.”

“It weren’t no artifact, at all. It were a spell I conjured up on me own.”

“
You
cast a geas that affected an entire
mountain
?” Hnuppa was torn by skepticism on the one hand and the incontrovertible evidence of his eyes on the other.

“Yep, I did.” It was a matter-of-fact reply, and Ballop’ril apparently felt no need to explain further. The bugbear turned and headed off up the newly-arrived versant, leaving Hnuppa unsatisfied and sputtering. He suddenly felt a hand on his shoulder.

“I just recognized that guy,” Kurg said, softly. “That was Ballop’ril of Qoplebarq.”

It took a few seconds for the name to register, then a few more to overcome the incredulity. “
Ballop’ril
?” Hnuppa finally managed to squeak out, “Shouldn’t he be
dead
by now? He was an old legend when I was in school.”

“You’d think so. However, I suppose when you’re the only bugbear ever to reach Magineer status, you have ways to keep yourself from growing old at the usual pace. How long do bugbears normally live, anyway?”

“He wasn’t actually a Magineer, though.”

“He never officially held the office, no. But the Council agreed that he was qualified, despite not being a goblin. He just decided not to commit himself to a life of being in the constant spotlight, I guess.”

“Hmm. Teacher told us he was involved in something that the Council didn’t feel was proper for a Magineer, and that’s why he was asked not to accept the position.”

“As far as I know, the only unsavory activity he was involved in was simply being a bugbear in the first place. That in itself was enough to give the Council heartburn. They’re pretty conservative when it comes to any race but goblins occupying the magineer positions.”

“Maybe we should have asked him give us his side of the story.”

Kurg stared thoughtfully at the lumbering mountain receding in the distance. “Something tells me he wouldn’t have been happy about that,” he replied finally.

The rain was intensifying. Flooding on a massive scale seemed imminent, but Kurg and Hnuppa didn’t see much they could do about it. They found the highest ground that still allowed them to watch the roadway and hunkered down, trying not to slip in the mud. The amulet kept rain from soaking them directly, but it didn’t stop runoff water cascading down on them from higher elevations. Hnuppa was thinking about the lowlands that lay around Dreadmost.

“I hope we can actually
get
to Selpla when the dray does finally make it.”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“The water’s pretty deep even here. It looks like it’s all been coming up from the south, too. It’s liable to be seriously flooded down Dreadmost way. The roads may not even be passable.”

“I don’t care if the roads are open or not. We’ve got to get Selpla and her crew back.”

“I had no idea you were so gung-ho about the wellbeing of your employees. Maybe I’ve been misjudging you all this time.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Kurg snapped, taken aback, “Selpla has footage that we need for the weekend broadcast, and I won’t have time to string together enough stock if we don’t get it from her.”

Hnuppa grinned. “Ah, good. My world view is still intact.”

“What the smek is that supposed to mean?” Kurg sounded more ticked off than Hnuppa would have expected. He must be stressed by their run of bad fortune.

“Nothing. Hey, look: here comes the dray!” What excellent timing. He owed whoever was driving a pint of razzle for helping him dodge a Kurg-shaped bullet.

The driver to whom the pint of razzle was owed turned out to be a lugubrious old gaffer named Slud. Most of the time he was a shadowy denizen of the labyrinthine catwalks above and below the studio sound stages, but occasionally he ran errands for Bewlie. Dreadmost was probably a little further than he was accustomed to driving on these clerical excursions, but this was something of an emergency, after all.

The dray clattered to a halt in the dead center of a large puddle, making it impossible to get to any of the doors without wading. It was a large and rather cumbersome-looking vehicle, originally designed to hold all the equipment for remote broadcasting but now refitted with bench seats and used primarily to cart investors and major advertisers to and from the overland carriage station and hotels during their periodic visitations. These visitations—which were really more akin to inspections—Kurg was fond of claiming were the principal reason for his ever-growing ulcer collection (goblins have complex stomachs with up to six chambers, so there’s plenty of room). He motioned for Slud to pull forward out of the pond, but the old goblin ignored him. Throwing up his hands in disgust, Kurg slogged through the dirty water toward the dray, followed closely by Hnuppa, who was chuckling as quietly as he could. It wasn’t quietly enough.

“What’s so smekkin’ funny?” Kurg growled, stepping in a pothole and splashing water in his face as he stumbled. Hnuppa tried to restrain himself, but the sight of Kurg soaking wet with the still-activated dryness amulet hanging around his neck was too much.

“Bwaaahahahah!” he bellowed, unable to frame any actually coherent reply.

Kurg glared evilly in his direction, but Hnuppa couldn’t stop laughing. He was still chuckling as he climbed into the dray next to his soggy boss.

“There’s about a gumjillion goblins who’d love to have your job, you know,” Kurg said, arms folded across his chest.

“Maybe,” replied Hnuppa, “but that’s only because they don’t fully comprehend the working conditions.”

The dray chugged away through the ankle-deep water.

“What, you mean slogging through the torrential rain?”

“No, I mean putting up with you as a boss.”

“All right, that’s it. You can just smekkin’ walk. Pull over!” Kurg barked at the driver. Slud ignored him. “Pull over, I said!” No reaction.

“What, is this guy smekkin’
deaf
?”

“Pretty much. He’s also my uncle, incidentally.” Hnuppa started chuckling again.

Kurg sat there and steamed in his own pungent juices. Hnuppa knew there’d be a price to pay for this later, but right now he was going to enjoy Kurg’s discomfiture as much as possible.

They still had a few kilometers before reaching Dreadmost itself, although they weren’t sure exactly where Selpla was at the moment in relation to that fine metropolis. They figured their paths would intersect somewhere along the road.

Selpla had a certain odd knack for finding company vehicles under difficult conditions, as evidenced by the time several years prior when she’d managed to pick a pram driven by Kurg’s ex-boss out of a crowd of some three hundred vehicles at a rally for charity. She’d broken a talon trying to pry open a package of dripple-beast chips in the stands and wanted to get a manicure as soon as was goblinly possible. Seeing his car approaching, she made one of those split-second judgments for which she was infamous and leapt down onto the road. She avoided getting run over by the other racers somehow, then flagged him down and managed to convince him to leave the rally to take her to the manicurist. When asked later how she’d accomplished this, Selpla replied, “I don’t know. He was very cooperative. He seemed sort of quiet, though, like he was thinking about something real hard.”

That person left the station’s employ shortly thereafter, and Kurg was promoted to take his place. In a way, then, he owed his job to Selpla. It was common knowledge around the station that Selpla had something of a crush on Hnuppa, so Kurg put up with more than he ordinarily would from him for her sake. There was nevertheless a limit to his indulgence, but Hnuppa was quite adept at pulling back just a hair’s breadth from crossing that line.

He was amused by Kurg’s brusque manner, and pushing his buttons had become one of the twisted little pleasures that kept Hnuppa relatively happy in his job. Kurg seemed to take that in his stride, at least most of the time. Once he’d suspended Hnuppa for a day as a result of a practical joke gone somewhat awry, but Hnuppa looked at it as an unexpected day off (sans pay, admittedly) and held no grudge. Besides, he had gotten one smek of a good laugh out of the episode.

The rain seemed to be getting worse, if that was possible, as they drove south. Hnuppa couldn’t even see the pavement from his vantage point in the back seat, but Slud seemed to be having no difficulty keeping the dray on the road. He steered rather stiffly, but he obviously was totally focused on his duties. Hnuppa knew that once Slud committed himself to a thing, only some great act of divine wrath could pull him away from it. He couldn’t imagine a better pilot for this sort of weather.

Kurg didn’t know Slud very well and wasn’t nearly as confident in the gnarled old goblin’s navigational prowess. He gripped the armrests of the front passenger’s seat as though he were struggling against a gale force wind. Hnuppa thought about suggesting that he relax but thought better of it. Kurg seemed to thrive on high anxiety.