In The Coils Of The Snake (6 page)

“Will I notice
any difference?” she asked.

“Yes and no,”
admitted Marak Catspaw. “The doors still won’t let you go outside, but
they’ll treat you with more respect.”

A little uncertain,
Miranda thought about being his wife, living
in
luxury, locked in by those iron doors. There certainly wasn’t
much left
to worry about, was there? What a tidy future. She just wished she would stop
feeling so edgy about it.

It
was Sable who finally pieced together the clues and saw
through Miranda’s pretense. The elf woman listened to
her son Tat
too’s
descriptions of the erratic behavior of the King’s Bride and felt
wholeheartedly
sorry for the girl. It was clear to her that Miranda
was struggling to find her place in the kingdom, and this was some
thing
Sable could understand. She herself had not had an easy time finding her place
in life.

The
black-haired woman combined in one person the sensitivity
of an elf and the frankness of a goblin. Polite and
distrustful, Miranda
never
mentioned her problems, so Sable did it for her. “Goblins take
getting used to,” she told Miranda matter-of-factly,
and the girl felt as if
a
weight had dropped from her shoulders. Miranda was too reserved
to come by for a visit, so the elf woman kept inviting
her over until the
visits became
routine.

“You’re losing
weight,” Sable remarked one morning as she
opened her door for the girl. “I have bread and cheese for you in
the
basket on the table. Tattoo,” she added crisply, leaning out into the
hallway to speak to the young man posted at Miranda’s door,
“I’ve mended your Guard cloak — again. Come
by for it once you’re
off duty, and be more careful next time.”

Miranda
walked into Sable’s forest room and looked around
with
pleasure. The large space was full of dwarfimade trees, hung with tangled cloth
greenery, and small fish swam in an ornamental pool by the door. The illusion
of a stretch of shadowy woodland worked particularly well for Miranda because
she couldn’t distin
guish much in the dim
light. She sat down on a cushion at the
strange low table that was only
a few inches from the ground.

“One week left
until your wedding,” noted the elf woman. “It’s a shame that it won’t
be held at the full moon. Weddings and full moons belong together.”

Miranda
gave a grimace and rubbed her palms where the knives
would
cut them. “I’ll be glad when it’s over. Catspaw says he will
be, too.”

“He’s
Marak now,” Sable observed. “You should call him that.”
Miranda just frowned by way of an answer. She hadn’t yet
promoted him into that exalted position, as the elf woman knew perfectly well.

A small silence fell
over the room as Miranda pulled food from the basket and Sable began working on
one of her math problems. She sketched it out rapidly in three dimensions a few
inches above
the table, silvery lines and
circles appearing as she drew. Then she set
it all into motion.

Miranda
watched the silver figure spin in the air, wobbling slightly
as it turned. “Sable,
did you always like it here?” she asked.

“I
was frantic when I first came,” the woman answered absently,
jotting down
numbers. She paused and gazed off into space. “I remember how hard it was
to get used to the bright light. My eyes would start stinging after a few
hours.”

“Bright!”
murmured Miranda. She could barely distinguish colors in the gloom. “Did
you ever try to escape?”

“No,”
answered Sable. “I couldn’t go back. My people would have hunted me down.
You don’t know what elf men are like, Miranda. They’re horrible brutes. I don’t
think they’re born with a heart in their bodies.”

Miranda
pondered this interesting disclosure. “Isn’t Seylin an elf
man?”
she asked. “He’s not a brute. Marak never said that elf men were horrible,
just that they were pretty and silly.”

“Of course
Seylin isn’t an elf,” replied Sable. “He’s a goblin; he
just looks like an elf. And Marak never had to live
with them like
I did.”

All
in all, it was a strange coincidence that Miranda learned what
elf men were like that day. That very night, an elf man
returned to his
ancestral home, and
Miranda’s tidy future began to crumble.

Marak
Catspaw and his two lieutenants stood outside the cliff face
that concealed the entrance
to the goblins’ underground kingdom,
studying
the early night sky. The northern constellation that the elves
called the King’s Throne was glowing very
brightly. The W of stars
appeared to flicker and flash.

Seylin was beside
himself with excitement. “It’s the traditional summons to a truce meeting!”
he exclaimed. “A meeting between goblins and elves. But how?”

“And not just
any summons, but the highest level,” reflected Marak Catspaw. “Adviser,
what do you advise me to do?”

“Go, of course,”
replied Seylin. “The goblin King always went
personally to a King’s Throne summons. And I certainly advise you
to
bring us along. I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”

The
three of them walked through the whispering forest not far
from the Hallow Hill mansion, where Til was holding a
supper
party, and up the hill
toward the old truce circle, wondering what it
might contain. Its double ring of ancient oak trees
guarded that
secret well, the massive trunks
blocking completely any view of what lay within. Marak Catspaw was pleased and
intrigued. Some elves still existed, then, and they still remembered their
manners,
unlike Sable and Irina’s savage
band. Perhaps his reign would prove
important. Richard was remembering
the last time he had faced elves, and they had tried to turn him into a rabbit.
They wouldn’t
find that so easy to do this
time. Seylin was attempting to recall useful
lore from his studies, but the thought of elves blotted out all else.
His
powerful elf blood gave him a powerful interest in the subject. The
goblin Scholars believed that he himself had
found the very last elves
thirty years before. It had been the
disappointment of his life that they were so primitive.

The men passed
through the rings of gnarled, hoary trees that
enclosed the crown of the hill and walked to the center of the large,
open circle of turf within. The half moon lit them
with its pale
light. A single elf stepped out of the shadows and walked
over to join them.

When Seylin had
hunted for elves in his youth, he had hunted
for
an elf like this. The man was noble and stately, and he was
dressed as his people had always dressed. He wore
a sleeveless, belted
tunic and loose
breeches of dark green cloth cross-gartered up to the
knee, leather straps wrapping around the lower
legs in X patterns to
hold the
breeches close to the calves. His short boots were of soft deer
hide. Over tunic and breeches, he wore a dark
green cloak, the hood
pushed back,
and at his belt was a proper elf knife sheathed in
leather. The belt
lacked the sophistication of a buckle. It simply
crossed through a loop in one end and knotted over itself, the free end
hanging. No metal, noted Seylin: the cloak tied
with leather thongs.
True elves, he knew, hated metal.

The man who wore
this true elf clothing was a true elf in every sense. The smooth skin of his
pale face glimmered with a silvery
sheen in
the moonlight, and his eyes were large and black. His black
locks clustered around the pale, high forehead
and fringed the edge of his face, just brushing the cheekbones. In the back,
thick, loosely curl
ing hair just
reached the lowered hood. Seylin shared with this stranger
the impatient
eyebrows that slanted up where a human’s eyebrows
slanted down and the well-formed, pointed ears that showed through
the black hair. But even to Seylin, who saw an elf
every day in
the mirror, this stranger’s appearance was remarkable.
Strong and strikingly handsome, he possessed a cold authority that demanded
respect. The chronicles told tales of great warrior lords who had slaughtered
goblins like sheep. This man could be such a warrior, concluded Seylin.

The goblin King
merely noted a properly dressed elf man who had the black eyes of an
aristocrat. Good, he thought: a rival with
manners
and distinction. His reign might turn out to be quite
interesting.

For a moment, none
of them spoke. Seylin was too excited.
Richard
knew his place. Marak Catspaw didn’t intend to speak first.
What the stranger felt, knew, or intended was
impossible to guess. His
expression was very guarded. His eyes betrayed
only the slightest
gleam at the sight of
the goblins, the faintest hint of fascinated distaste.

“I have to
speak to Marak, the goblin King,” he informed them in English.

“I am Marak,
the goblin King,” replied Catspaw. “These are Richard and Seylin, my
lieutenants.”

The
elf turned toward Seylin, his manner relaxing somewhat. “I
know
of you,” he said. “You are the goblin who showed himself to be a
friend to my people. Even though you raided for brides, you didn’t murder the
men. You left them in safety and provided them with supplies.”

“We did that on
the orders of the old goblin King,” answered Seylin.

The
elf paused, and his expression once again became guarded.
“The old goblin King,” he murmured, looking at
Catspaw. “You
are a new goblin
King. And unmarried.”

His
tone was hostile. Seylin considered the matter from his point
of
view. The most dangerous thing in the elf world was an unmar
ried goblin King. The Kings had always tried to
capture brides from
the very highest noble families.

“A good guess,”
replied Catspaw calmly. “And who are you?”

“My
people call me Nir,” said the elf. This revealed nothing.
Nir
was
only a polite term of address, the elvish word for “lord.”

“What
sort of lord are you?” demanded Seylin. “Did your
ancestors lead a camp? What is your proper name?”
But the elf just
glanced at him and
then turned back to the goblin King. He plainly intended to stay with business.

“I
am here to propose a treaty,” he announced. “My people were
widely scattered after the death of our King, and we have
been
hunted down to a handful. Over the last
twenty years, I have gathered all of the remaining elves.”

“All of the
elves you could find,” corrected Marak Catspaw.

“All of the
remaining elves,” declared the lord in a firm voice.
“In order for my people to survive, we have
to come back to our own
land and
live in our own forest. I need the goblin King to swear that
he will do what is best for the elves. He must
swear not to hunt us or
allow brides to be taken during his reign. We
must be able to live freely on our land, with no goblins spying on us.”

“How many elves
are left?” asked Marak Catspaw.

The lord hesitated
as if he were ashamed. “Sixty-seven,” he replied bitterly.

“Such a treaty
is reasonable,” mused the goblin King. “We
couldn’t raid such a small number for brides and expect the elves to
survive
it.”

“But
that isn’t all,” continued the stranger. “You goblins took the
magic
books from my people so that we couldn’t defend ourselves.
We lack many spells that we need to survive,
spells for healing and
for making our way of life. I must have those
books back.”

“That
you can’t have,” answered the goblin King. “We use those
books
ourselves.”

The
elf lord’s expression hardened. “The books belong to us,
and you have your own magic,” he said heatedly. “What
do you need
with ours?”