In The Coils Of The Snake (8 page)

“I’ll
be there, Irina,” promised Tinsel, putting his arm around
the
unhappy woman. “I won’t let anyone bother you.” She smiled gratefully
at the big silver goblin.

“Why don’t you
want to see an elf, Grands?” asked Fay’s little daughter. Trina was only
five. She hugged Sable, looking up at her in excitement. “Grand Sable, I
want to see an elf,” she announced.

“Do
you?” said the woman, giving her granddaughter a reluctant
smile.
“Elves aren’t everything you think they are. Of course I’ll
come, Marak, since you need me, but I won’t smile
and dance for him.
And, Trina, you can come with me since you want to
see an elf.”

“He hasn’t
asked to see the elf-human crosses, but he doesn’t know we have any,” continued
Catspaw. “Mother? Em? Do you mind coming?”

“Not at all,”
answered Kate. “I’d like to see an elf, too.” Emily nodded her
agreement.

As they walked
through the forest, the goblin King had Seylin
explain to the small group about the proposed treaty and the offer of
a
bride. Kate was staggered and upset at the thought of what this would mean to
Miranda and even more distressed at the thought of
bringing home some poor elf girl. It would be worse than when
Sable and Irina had come, even worse than her own
awful wedding.
But there was no sense worrying about what hadn’t
happened yet. She couldn’t help feeling that what was about to happen was going
to be thrilling.

When
they came through the double ring of oaks, Kate saw that
the elves were already there. The elf lord had brought
his entire band
with
him, even the children. Perhaps, she considered, it was some
thing of an education for them: their first chance to see
a real goblin.

The
elf lord wore a green tunic and cross-gartered breeches. He
lacked
any sort of emblem that might symbolize his status, and all the other elf men,
were dressed as simply as their chief.

The elf women wore
plain, sleeveless dresses that fitted them
closely
to the waist and then flared into a full skirt that ended a little
below
the knee. Their soft hide shoes looked like slippers, and they
had no stockings.
The women wore their hair long, some with it
pulled
back and partly braided, but there was not so much as a hair
pin among
them. They wore no jewelry, no ribbons, and no lace. But they were all so
lovely. Why should they care about fashion? They looked even more beautiful
because of the simplicity of their clothing.

Marak
Catspaw and the elf lord met at the center of the circle to
read
the treaty that Seylin had prepared. Then they walked back
toward the small group from the goblin kingdom.
Catspaw wore the
black shirt and breeches that belonged to the King’s
Wife Cere
mony, and over it the short black
cape painted with golden let
ters that stood for his kingship. No matter
how this meeting ended, he clearly planned to marry tonight.

Richard
had assembled the elves and elf crosses in a short line for
inspection.
Seylin carried the book in which elf brides were registered and introduced them
one by one.

“This
is Em, my wife of thirty-one years, a weak elf-human cross
from one of the high elvish families,” Seylin said.
“She volunteered
to come to the
goblin kingdom in order to accompany her sister.”

“That was
brave,” commented the lord quietly.

Emily stepped
forward, smiling at the tall elf. “Oh, not really,” she assured him
cheerfully. “I’ve enjoyed every minute of it. Well,
most of them, anyway. And I’m not really elf at
all. Marak — the old
Marak,” she
added, glancing at Marak Catspaw, “always used to say
that I was a
model human.”

“But
the registry indicates that she is part elf,” corrected Seylin.
“When
the test was done, it showed up.”

Nir listened
courteously but didn’t look at the book. “I have my own test,” he
said. “May I?” And he placed his hand on her hair. After a few
seconds, the right side of Emily’s face began to shine with a very faint
glimmer, but the left side remained unaffected. Seylin watched, fascinated. The
elf lord dropped his hand.

“Barely
elf,” he told Emily, “but no goblin blood.” This last had
the sound of a mild
compliment, like a consolation prize.

“Really?”
asked Emily. “Mightn’t there be a little goblin in me? How can you be so
sure?”

Nir paused and then
turned to Seylin. “May I test you just to
show her?” he asked politely, and he put his hand on Seylin’s head.
Instantly the right half of Seylin’s body glowed brightly, but the left
half
turned as black as ink. Seylin looked down at his arms with a sigh. The elf
lord turned back to the surprised Emily.

“You
see,” he said, “your husband is a goblin. Powerfully elvish, but
goblin nonetheless. He looks like an elf, and some of my people
didn’t
recognize him, but he knows what he is.”

“Yes, I do now,”
admitted Seylin, “but when I went out to find your people, I honestly
thought I was an elf.”

“Your King knew
what you were,” remarked the elf lord. “He
must have known.” And he glanced at Marak Catspaw with a
troubled
frown. When he turned back, he was facing Kate, and the frown vanished.

“Here’s an elf,”
he said, smiling, and Kate felt rather over
whelmed.
Although she had long ago gotten used to being called an
elf, the term
had never had a real meaning for her. It was just an
attribute, like being slender or being blond. Now she finally under
stood.
It wasn’t that she was an elf, it was that she was one of the elves, a whole
separate people with their own blood and ways. She was just a part of it, a
part that had never known before that it was part of anything.

“This is Kate,”
announced Seylin, “the old King’s Wife and the mother of the new goblin
King.”

Kate saw the elf
wince at these words, and he reached out and
took
one of her hands in his. He turned it over to reveal the scar from
the King’s Wife Ceremony, the long, straight slash
glimmering
across her small palm. He didn’t study it as a goblin would,
he just
stood
looking down at it, an expression of pained aversion on his face. Kate saw it
as he did: a cruel deformity of a beautiful thing, a
barbaric savagery. It was the emblem of a slavery to an evil cause. A
wasted
life, his face said, and another goblin at the end of it.

He
laid his hand on her head to test her, looking into her eyes. As he did Kate
saw a vision. She was in another world, a forest more
beautiful
than she had ever seen. The sky glowed with a deep blue twilight, and stars
hung overhead, as brilliant as colorful jewels. Sweet, haunting music floated
on the air. But even as she saw this
world,
she knew that it was beyond her reach. It was a place that she
could never find again. When he removed his hand,
the vision
faded, and she was in the truce circle once more.

Everything that Kate
had ever lost burst like a bubble in her mind: Til, her mother, her father, her
great aunts, Hallow Hill,
Charm, her dog.
And then there was Marak, eyes closed, face stern,
lying in the goblin Kings’ crypt. Maybe he still
walked in some
world beyond hers, but she didn’t know how to reach him.
Lost.
Hopelessly lost. He was gone from
her, too. She could see his dead
face before her eyes as the lovely
melody drifted away.

The elf lord turned
to Seylin. “An elf cross, but more powerful than most of the members of my
camp,” he commented, and then stopped short as she burst into tears.

“Kate!”
cried Emily, coming to hug her, and she put her head on Emily’s shoulder and
wailed with grief. Seylin stared at her, aston
ished,
and the goblin King looked stunned.

“What did you
do?” demanded Catspaw angrily. “What kind of magic was that?”

“I don’t know,”
said the elf, at a loss. “I tested her. I don’t know why it would make her
cry.”

“A test!”
exclaimed the goblin in a fury. “Do you expect me to
believe that? I’d like to see what you would do
if I did that to one of
your people!”

“I’m sure you’ll
have your chance,” murmured Nir bitterly.

“It may be an
aspect of elf healing,” suggested Seylin, “some
thing only an elf could do for her. She needs to
cry. She hasn’t cried
over your father at all.”

“Why would she
cry over the goblin King?” asked Nir.

“Because he’s
dead,” snapped Marak Catspaw in an icy rage.

“Because
she loved him,” answered Seylin a little more helpfully.

Nir’s frown
deepened. He was genuinely distressed. He hadn’t
meant to make the poor woman cry. Stars above, her life must have
been
abominable enough without that. He wondered what had hap
pened. So often he didn’t understand his own magic. He turned
back
to Seylin, ignoring the outraged goblin King.

“I
won’t touch the others,” he promised, and he and Seylin
walked
on, leaving Kate sobbing in her sister’s arms.

The two elf women
stood together, and Tinsel had his arms around them both. Irina gazed at the
ground, plucking nervously at
her bracelets.
Sable was glaring across the truce circle at the band of elves, and Nir turned
to see what had attracted her attention. Willow
stood there with his arm
around his own wife. The elf lord turned back to look at Sable again, his gaze
thoughtful.

“These two are
Irina and Sable, both brought to the kingdom thirty-one years ago,” Seylin
announced.

“I
know their history,” he responded quietly. That they were
elves
he knew without needing to test them; he could feel it about them. And yet they
weren’t his people. They didn’t even look like
elves in their shiny, fussy dresses. Nir looked at the big gray goblin
who
was holding them, at his bright silver hair and blue eyes. Here was elf blood,
too, he could tell, warped into grotesque ugliness.

“Sable is from
the high families,” said Seylin. Nir stared at her
angry, fixed expression and the faint scars on her cheeks. “They
both
showed up as pure elf when their blood was tested.”

The elf lord turned
to Seylin, struggling to control his agitation.

“Their blood?”
he echoed, a gleam in his dark eyes. “How could blood go through a test?”

“The
goblin King mixed a number of ingredients with the
blood,”
Seylin answered. “I could show you the spell.”

“You mean he
bled them,” said the elf angrily, walking away from the enslaved women. “Tell
me, does all goblin magic involve slicing open elves?” And he eyed the
King with cold distaste.

“Does
all elf magic involve reducing women to wrecks?” coun
tered
Marak Catspaw with a steady glare. Nir glanced at the goblin King’s mother. She
wasn’t crying anymore, but she still huddled in her sister’s arms. He felt
himself growing even more angry at the inexplicable wrongness of it all.
Something bumped into his leg, and he looked down into the face of Sable’s
little granddaughter. Trina beamed up at him, her arms around his knees.

“The pages
laugh at me and say I’m an elf,” she said, “so I’m coming to live
with you now because you’re an elf.”

Nir knelt down, eye
to eye with the little girl. He didn’t test her because he didn’t need to. She
had a lovely elvish face and long
blond
hair, but when he lifted her hands to look at them, they were a
goblin’s
hands. The slender elf fingers were unnaturally long and bony, and the
fingernails twisted into claws. He stared at the little goblin paws, his anger
ebbing away into sadness.

“You’re
very pretty,” he told her gently, “but
you’re not an elf. If you came to live with me, all my children would start
having night
mares. You can tell your pages that you were the most
frightening
thing the elf lord saw tonight.
You’re more terrible than the fiercest
monster
because you’re a goblin who looks like an elf.” Trina giggled,
pleased
to be distinctive in some way even if she didn’t understand how, and Nir
climbed slowly to his feet again, inexpressibly sad.