The Goblin Corps (28 page)

It was not to be.

The Grieving Mountains were, and are to this day, far less prone to activity than the great Brimstone Mountain range; nevertheless, some few of its peaks belch their fair share of smoke and lava. So it was on that long-ago morning, when the mountains heaved in the throes of tremors felt beyond the boundaries of Kirol Syrreth and one of the highest of the Grieving Mountains obliterated itself from within. Ash blackened the sky for weeks on end, and the Sea of Tears seemed coated solid with filth. Seemingly endless flows poured from the mountains and over the beaches, sending walls of steam sky-high, where they wrestled the waiting waters.

Jureb Nahl itself was far enough from the eruption to survive the initial blast, and its citizens were learned enough to persevere through the years of drought and famine that followed. But when the plains proved saturated with slow leakage from the Sea of Tears—when the people of Jureb Nahl realized that their lands had dropped, only a few feet but more than enough, below the water table—the people knew they were surely lost.

Still they did not surrender immediately. They dammed the worst of the torrents and rebuilt much of Jureb Nahl on the highest ground they had. All for naught; the waters continued to rise, turning the once-fertile grasslands into a sodden, saltwater marsh. And eventually, though their tears fell in quantity enough to cause a flood of their own, the last stubborn inhabitants of Jureb Nahl packed up and wandered away.

For a century the waters continued to rise, but eventually the bedrock beneath the Grieving Mountains shifted once again. The swamp was cut off from the Sea of Tears. Over the intervening centuries, subterranean springs in the roots of the mountains transformed the saltwater marsh to fresh, and such life as inhabits other swamps gradually appeared there as well. The birds and the bugs, the serpents and the toads—these bothered nobody at all. But other things—perhaps attracted by the ancient ruins and the lore that was said to survive within, perhaps just more of Kirol Syrreth’s monsters—were said to dwell in Jureb Nahl. Only legends, perhaps, but the disappearance of many who wandered into the marsh was enough to give the place a bad reputation among the inhabitants of Rurrahk, and eventually all of Kirol Syrreth.

And this was where Queen Anne wanted to send them. Maybe it wasn’t too late to go back to the Steppes?

“Your Majesty,” Gork asked, obviously having trouble controlling his voice, “if I may…?”

She smiled, her expression brighter than the impossible summer light. “You wish to know why I would send you to such a place.”

“Well, yes.”

She studied the flowers around her with a critical eye, poking gently at a few petals that apparently weren’t doing what she wanted. “Somewhere within the swamps, my little one, there stands a tower. Once it was home to a wizard by the name of Trelaine, who hoped to unearth the knowledge of Jureb Nahl’s lost libraries. He’s long dead now, of course. Rumor has it he allowed an experiment to get out of control and blew himself into a thin yet meaty sauce. The tower has been abandoned for the long centuries since.”

“But,” Cræosh interjected, “if he blew himself up—”

“You should still find a sufficiency of his bones to serve my needs. I don’t require much. Here.” She reached out, offering a small bronze brooch in her cupped palm. The orc growled something awful as Katim lashed out and snagged the trinket before he could accept it.

Queen Anne didn’t seem to care which of them held it. “I’ve had that made specially, to prevent any confusion. Between Trelaine’s experiments and the hazards of the region, there could be a great many remains to be found. The brooch should differentiate the wizard’s bones from any others.”

“Back up a page and read it to me again,” Cræosh said. “What hazards are we talking about, exactly?”

“I fear I couldn’t begin to say, my children. I’ve never been.” Then, at their expressions, she just shrugged. “If it were easy…” she said again.

Fezeill leaned over toward the gremlin and whispered, “I wonder if it’s too late to request a transfer to something safer. Plague cleanup, perhaps, or dragon slaying.”

Gimmol snorted. “Tell you what:
You
ask her.”

Oddly, the doppelganger refrained.

“My little kobold,” Queen Anne said suddenly, “would you step forward for just a moment?”

There wasn’t any choice. Eyes threatening to bulge from his head—perhaps they, at least, could escape—Gork shuffled forward. “Y-yes, Your Majesty?”

“You know more about the swamps than anyone else here. You’ve seen them, have you not?”

“Well, not exactly, Your Majesty. That is, I grew up in Rurrahk, so I know the nearby mountains. But I’ve never actually been to the swamps themselves.”

“Oh. Well, I suppose that will have to do. You’ll have a short hike, but it’s faster than walking the whole way.”

Katim felt a sinking feeling in the pits of her stomachs, particularly the lowest. “You’re going to…teleport us?” She’d hated letting Shreckt do it, and she trusted humans even less than she did demons.

Not that Queen Anne seemed particularly interested in her feelings. “Of course I am. We wouldn’t want you to have to walk all that way, would we?”

“Umm.” Cræosh hedged. “Actually, if it’s all the same to you…”

The queen’s face tightened, just a little. “Which, of course, it isn’t,” the orc said quickly, “or you wouldn’t have brought it up. Never mind, then.”

“That’s better. As I was saying, though, Gork has the most direct experience with that part of the country. I’ll need to pull the image from his mind in order to properly target the spell.”

Gork actually yipped, a sound not unlike that produced by a small dog. A small dog who’d been goosed by a bear.
“What?”

“Well, I can’t well send you someplace I’ve never seen, can I? I could just pick a distance and a direction, but how would I know where to set you down, or what obstacles to avoid? Do you
want
to appear inside a tree, or under a mountain?”

“But…But…”

“Relax, dear one,” she said, gently caressing his face. “Be at ease. I promise you, there will be no loss of memory, no damage to your mind. The process is completely safe.”

“Well, okay…”

“Usually.”

The queen placed eight fingers atop the kobold’s head, tucked her thumbs under her palms, and began humming softly. Despite himself, Gork tensed.

“I’d suggest you not do that,” the queen told him, ceasing her single-toned vocalization for just an instant. “I’ve been told that the pain isn’t
quite
as excruciating if you don’t fight it.”

“Okay, I—
what?”

It was, of course, far too late. It felt as if the fingers she’d placed upon his head had become ice and begun burrowing through his skull. Every muscle in his body tried to flex at once, threatening to rip itself free of bone and tendon. As though flipping through a book or a sheaf of scrolls, Queen Anne began with his most recent memories, reviewing his approach through the garden, his meal, his forced bath. No, this was far too recent. She skipped back through the years, ignoring some chunks, focusing on others, unaware or uncaring that every instant was an eternity of torment to the kobold. He didn’t even have enough presence of mind to be grateful that she’d overlooked his collaboration with the dakórren.

Finally, as he drowned in a violently rolling sea of pain, he saw it: an image of the Grieving Mountains, clear as the day he’d first stepped into the outer world. He felt her grasp it, study it from all possible angles—and then, with a sudden rush of pressure, he was free. His ears clogged and popped three or four times in succession, and his head ached worse than it had after his coming-of-age ceremony, but already that pain was fading. Another moment, and it felt an exhausting, but already forgotten, dream.

He tried to think back, then, to his days in Rurrahk, feeling nostalgic for the first time in years, and instead he found himself reliving the battle with the first yeti in the tundra. “What…?” He thought about that battle, then, and instead saw himself, at age six, picking his first pocket (a traveling merchant, if it matters).

“What did you do?” he screeched, forgetting for the moment to whom he spoke.

Queen Anne took no offense at his tone. “Your memories are a little scrambled,” she said. “Some confusion, some absentmindedness. It’s an unavoidable side effect. Don’t fret over it, dear. Your mind will sort itself out shortly. A few hours, perhaps a few days at most.

“Now, my children, why don’t you all go and gather whatever equipment or clothing you feel you might need? I’m ready whenever you are. Cræosh, Katim, please be certain Gork doesn’t forget to pack anything important.”

Hefting her pack over her shoulder, Katim moved down the hall, ready to join the others and get this damn fool errand started. Some strides ahead, the orc’s door hung open, and as she passed, she saw him crawling around on the floor, peering under the bed.

Don’t bother asking. Don’t bother asking.

Katim sighed, and asked.

“Looking for my money,” Cræosh told her, rising to his feet and twisting until a series of pops ran up his spine. “I figure, if she’s gonna treat us like whores, we deserve to get paid what whores do.”

“You refer, of course…to Queen Anne?”

“C’mon, Dog-face, you can’t tell me you’re comfortable with this. She needs special ingredients for her magics, she knows exactly where to find ‘em, and she couldn’t spare
anyone
to go looking until we came along? This whole thing smells worse than an ogre’s afterbirth.” He paused. “Or the dakórren’s offer, for that matter. I’m getting tired of people lying about what they want from me.”

“Perhaps you should think…of this as a compliment. Perhaps…she felt it was too dangerous…for anyone else available.”

“And that’s supposed to make me feel better why?”

Katim shrugged. “Yes, a similar thought had…occurred to me. And do you…know what I plan to do…about it?”

“What?”

“Nothing. You, of course…may tell Queen Anne where to stick…her orders, but I’d prefer…to be elsewhere at the time.”

The troll resumed her walk, and was unsurprised when the orc joined her without further complaint.

And again, finally, she couldn’t resist asking. “You hung around on…the floor in there just
waiting
…for one of us to come by and…ask, didn’t you?”

“Pick up the pace, Dog-face, or we’ll be late.”

The teleportation, despite the goblins’ various misgivings, wasn’t particularly unpleasant. Some of them might even get used to it.

Eventually.

The squad instantly scattered, backs toward one another—which was ostensibly safer than turning their backs toward
unknown
danger, but only just—and studied their new surroundings. To the north and east rose jagged foothills, spreading and maturing into equally jagged mountains. (Gork, alone among the squad, refused even to look at them.) To the south and west were patchy grasslands and copses of spindly trees that would eventually give way to the swamps of Jureb Nahl.

“All right,” Cræosh said, satisfied that the immediate area was secure. “We’re here, wherever the fuck ‘here’ is. Gork?”

“Oh.” The kobold blinked away visions of his life as a kit in the winding kobold caves. “Right. We’re exactly where Queen Anne said: foothills of the Grieving Mountains, a little south of Rurrahk, and about twenty miles from the swamp.” The queen, he knew, could have dropped them nearer to the latter—but that would also have meant dropping them nearer to the former, and Gork had privately convinced her, with some impassioned pleading, of what a wonderful idea that wasn’t.

Some of the others weren’t so happy about it.

“Twenty miles?” Fezeill groused. “Really?”

“What’s the matter, shapeshifter?” Cræosh asked. “You forget how to make feet?”

“Go to hell, swine.”

Rather than allow either to press the issue, Katim and Gork pivoted as one and marched west. Fezeill watched them for a long moment and then folded in on himself. The result, when his body ceased writhing, was a long-tailed troglodyte. Distant cousins of the kobolds, they were a race known for their vicious temper—and for rarely appearing, except at the height of summer, outside the magma-and spring-heated caverns of the Brimstone Mountains. The broad, webbed feet and the rudderlike tail would, however, serve Fezeill well in the waters of Jureb Nahl.

But…

“Hey, lizard-breath!” Gork called. “You were the one bitching about how long a walk we’ve got. You wanna be cold that whole time?”

Two tiny slits peered at the kobold over a brown-scaled snout. “I wisssh to get usssed to the body,” the reptilian thing hissed. “How often do you think I have to ussse this ssstupid form?”

“You sound like you’re leaking,” Gork said.

Cræosh shook his head. “Nah. Actually reminds me of a young lady I met a few years back. Huge gap, like you wouldn’t believe, where her front teeth should’ve been. Ugly as hell and you couldn’t understand half of what she said, but let me tell you, there are advantages to…”

Katim almost sprinted ahead, apparently determined to outdistance the orc’s voice before she was subjected to the rest of that sentence.

“I believe,” Fezeill said blithely as they gazed across the murky waters, “that the appropriate resssponse isss ‘Now what?’”

The Demon Squad had arrived at the outer reaches of Jureb Nahl just before dark the previous night. Staring directly into the setting sun, they’d been unable to get more than a cursory look at the place, and it had been unanimously decided—although neither Jhurpess nor Belrotha had known what “unanimously” meant—that they’d make camp there before dusk fell and head into the marsh come morning. Nothing worse than mosquitoes had disturbed their sleep, and they’d risen with the dawn, marched a few dozen yards farther west, and gotten their first really good impression of just what their task actually entailed.

“It ain’t gonna be a whole lot of fun,” Cræosh agreed. They were already up to their ankles in near-stagnant water; the filth and various aquatic vermin had already gone to work on feet and disposition both.