The Goblin War
THE
GOBLIN
WAR
HILARI BELL
Dedication
For those wonderful readers who’ve been sending me fan email, posting great online reviews, and talking up my books to others who might like them—you know who you are. But what you may not know is how much I appreciate you!
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter 1 - Makenna
Chapter 2 - Tobin
Chapter 3 - Jeriah
Chapter 4 - Makenna
Chapter 5 - Tobin
Chapter 6 - Jeriah
Chapter 7 - Makenna
Chapter 8 - Tobin
Chapter 9 - Jeriah
Chapter 10 - Makenna
Chapter 11 - Tobin
Chapter 12 - Jeriah
Chapter 13 - Makenna
Chapter 14 - Tobin
Chapter 15 - Jeriah
About the Author
Also by Hilari Bell
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
S
HE WAS BEATEN.
S
HE’D NEVER
accepted that before; not when the villagers she’d grown up with had drowned her mother. Not even when she’d taken her goblins to war against the whole human race. But now she knew that, sooner or later, the spirits were going to win.
Probably sooner.
Makenna gazed out between the flaps of the big tent. Goblins were only two feet tall, so several dozen goblin families had sacrificed the tents they’d carried through the gate with them to create a shelter for Tobin. And others had donated the thread to sew it together, after the nettle flax that had seemed so sturdy and promising had turned fragile as cobwebs almost as soon as it left the spindle.
There was something wrong with the very fabric of the Otherworld, but it wasn’t until Makenna had tried to investigate what was happening to their building materials that she’d realized what it was. She had thought her magic was weaker because she’d drained herself casting the gate, but the goblins’ magic had vanished too—because the Otherworld itself was draining all of them.
Makenna scowled at the array of goblin tents scattered along the shore—a shore that had receded almost a hundred yards in the scant week they’d been camped here. At least the spirits hadn’t been able to make the whole lake dis-appear overnight, but the stream that had fed it had dried to a trickle in the first day, and the lake itself was vanishing at an unnatural rate. It would be gone in another week. The nearest lake her scouts had found was smaller than this one, and far enough off that they needed to set out for it now, before food grew scarcer. Before the evaporating water grew more foul.
They had to have water, therefore they had to leave. Makenna had ordered the goblins to take down their tents and prepare to depart . . . but she knew why they hadn’t obeyed her.
Tobin’s ordinary face was thin now, and flushed with fever, his brown hair wet with sweat. Makenna wasn’t a healer—that had been her mother’s gift. But even before Charba told her, she’d known that Tobin was too weak to survive another move. The last one had been hard enough, even though the goblins had carried him on the stretcher they’d rigged, using new-cut pines for the poles. When those poles had rotted and broken within a day, they’d simply cut more. Tobin had been conscious then, some of the time, and he’d hated being a burden. But he could no more stop the drain of strength from his body than the rest of them could halt the slow seeping away of their magic. And none of the goblins was willing to leave their soldier behind.
“He saved us all from that priest’s army,” Miggy had told her. “So we’re indebted. Even if this place isn’t exactly working out.”
Isn’t working out.
What a kind way to avoid saying that Makenna had led them to their deaths.
Tobin would only be the first. The Greeners already had to go too far afield to find enough edible wild plants to feed them, and they couldn’t simply move from lake to lake forever. And even if they managed to adapt to that roving life, scavenging enough to survive, the spirits would find some other way to destroy them.
It was Regg’s little brother, Root, who’d told Makenna that the strange inhabitants of this place called themselves spirits. They’d let no one but the youngest of the goblin children close enough to learn even that much. But Makenna was enough of a tactician to read their purpose from their actions. They were trying to drive the invaders out of their world, just as she’d driven so many settlers out of the Goblin Wood. And like her, they really didn’t care if they killed a few in the doing.
Makenna rubbed her face with her hands, brushing away tears, but the facts didn’t change. She should leave Tobin behind. With inadequate food and spoiling water, they’d soon be too weak to pack up and escape themselves. Since Tobin couldn’t survive being moved, they had to leave him . . . and she couldn’t, no more than the goblins could.
He’d risked his life for her, and for her people. How could she abandon him to die alone?
As the goblins’ commander, could she do anything else?
She was wasting precious water, allowing the tears to roll down her face, when a small hand fell on her shoulder.
“Gen’ral?”
Cogswhallop was the only goblin who called her that, but she’d missed him so much, so often mistaken another’s voice for his, that she didn’t lift her head.
The hand on her shoulder tightened and shook her. “I thought you’d more iron in you than to sit there spouting like a lass at the first sign of trouble. We’re not beat yet.”
No other goblin spoke to her with that gruff tenderness. Makenna’s eyes snapped open.
“Cogswhallop?”
If this world started throwing hallucinations at them, they were done for—but the familiar long-nosed face didn’t vanish.
Cogswhallop snorted. “You didn’t think you could leave me behind for long, did you? A good thing too, from what I’m seeing here. Bend down.”
Still half disbelieving his presence, Makenna bent her head.
Cogswhallop slipped a chain over it, the green and brown of unpolished copper, and a crude medallion thumped against her chest. It was round, with runes inscribed around a hole in the middle—though they were nothing like the runes in her mother’s books.
“What’s . . . ?”
The moment her fingers closed around the medallion, the aching drain on Makenna’s magic stopped, as abruptly as turning off a tap. Makenna stared at her small lieutenant for a moment—then she pulled off the chain and spun to slap the charm against the exposed flesh of Tobin’s throat.
If she’d hoped for a miracle, it didn’t happen. Perhaps his eyelids fluttered, but they’d done that before in his feverish dreams.
“It should stop the life drain,” Cogswhallop told her. “But I don’t know much more than that. And we’ve enough to go round.”
Another chain fell over her head, and she slipped a hand under Tobin’s sweat-soaked hair and pulled the chain of the first amulet around his neck, settling the medallion against his damp skin.
“Will it save him?” She had a thousand questions, but that was the one that mattered.
“I don’t know,” Cogswhallop admitted. “But the answer may be here.” He pulled out a bundle of notes, in a neat cramped hand that Makenna recognized. Her breath caught.