The Goblin War (2 page)

“Aye,” Cogswhallop confirmed. “It’s the priest’s own spell notes—all that’s known about the Otherworld, and casting gates. There’s a bit about these amulets as well, including how they’re made. Nasty, that.”

Makenna didn’t care. “Will they get us home?”

“Am I a hedgewitch?” Cogswhallop asked sardonically. “There’s a lady priest as thought they might, but she said you’d have to figure out a way to cast the spell, in the midst of a world that sucks up magic like a drunkard sucks up beer. Or a Bookerie sucks up knowledge.”

“I heard that.” Erebus popped his head through the tent flaps. He’d hardly left his post outside since Tobin had finally collapsed, and Cogswhallop must have passed him on the way in.

Their familiar bickering brought such a painful rush of joy that the tears started down Makenna’s cheeks once more. She had to swallow before she could speak.

“I’d appreciate it, Erebus, if you and your folks could go through these notes and organize them for me. If there’s anything on healing someone stricken sick by this world, Charba needs to hear it now. Then I need to see everything about the nature of the Otherworld, and any clue about building a gate out of it. I don’t care who’s looking to kill us back home. It’s got to be better than staying.”

Erebus cast Tobin a concerned glance and took the notes away at once. Cogswhallop cleared his throat.

“As to folks killing us, there’s been some changes since you’ve been gone, Gen’ral. Turns out the soldier’s brother isn’t quite the feckless fool we thought him.”

It didn’t sound like much, but from Cogswhallop that was high praise. Especially for a human. The same human whose bungled plots had put Tobin in the power of an evil priest and nearly gotten all of them killed. Makenna didn’t think much of Tobin’s brother Jeriah, no matter what he’d done recently.

Charba slipped into the tent, and Makenna led Cogswhallop out, guiltily glad to be away from the stench of illness and Tobin’s rasping breath. She was a terrible nurse. Evaluating a situation and deciding what action to take was something she was better at, but the story Cogswhallop told her strained that capability.

“So Master Lazur, the Dark One seize his bones, was cheating on his own people as well as trying to destroy us,” she finally summed it up. “And he got caught, and hanged, and now it’s safe for us to go back.”

“He didn’t so much get caught as young Jeriah exposed him,” Cogswhallop said. “He wants his brother back, and I more or less promised to deliver him—though I didn’t realize it was so urgent at the time. What’s going on here, Gen’ral?”

“It didn’t seem so bad when we first arrived,” Makenna told him. “The Greeners soon found plants we could eat. And it was beautiful.”

She gestured around them, although the lush forest no longer looked beautiful to her, and the drying lakebed stank.

“But then we tried to build. The Stoners were the first to come to me, when they started working on the foundations. They said the stone was funny. I was in the midst of settling some dispute, and . . . I just ignored it. We were beginning to notice the power drain, and there was so much else going on. . . .”

Cogswhallop listened quietly as she told him about stones that looked like granite but cracked like unfired clay. About timber that dried straight but warped a day after you pegged it into a wall.

“And then the stream dried up,” said Makenna. “No, that’s not right. The stream stopped. We went to bed with it bubbling away, and when we woke in the morning, there were only puddles among the rocks. I went with the scouts who tracked it back to see what had happened. There was a hill right across the streambed. A whole hill, with grass and well-grown trees. The second stream—”

“A whole hill?” Cogswhallop asked incredulously.

“With grown trees,” Makenna confirmed. “But it’s not such a feat as all that when you know the trick.”

“What trick?”

Makenna smiled grimly. “There’s a reason I asked the Bookeries to pull out any notes Lazur had on the nature of the Otherworld. Because I’ve come to think that the spirits themselves created it, shaping it out of magic like a child pinching clay. If that’s the case, it’s not so surprising that they could move a hill, or change the nature of wood and stone, or even drain a lake at will.”

Cogswhallop walked in silence for a several seconds. He must have arrived a little ahead of the rest of his party. Dozens of goblins ran among the tents, looking for loved ones amid shrieks of welcome. Joy glowed in their small, sharp-featured faces.

“Then it seems to me,” said Cogswhallop, “that you’d best be making peace with those spirit folk. If they can command the earth itself to change, there’s no way you can beat them.”

“We’ve tried that,” said Makenna. “They won’t talk to us, won’t let anyone but the children come near them. But the Bookeries have managed to piece together a little, from the bits the children have told us. As far as we can tell, they don’t want anyone to live in this world except them. They don’t like goblins, and they hate all humans with a bitter passion. They want us out, or dead, or both. The Bookeries say which one they want might vary a bit from one spirit to the next. They have no idea why the spirits hate us so much—though they’ve plenty of theories, which they argue about. . . . Well, you know Bookeries.”

“If you can’t make peace with them, then you’d best get out as soon as you can,” said Cogswhallop. “I shouldn’t be keeping you from those notes. I can tell you the rest of it later.”

A mob of goblin children darted past like swallows—Onny and Regg, reunited with their friend Daroo. They were heading in the direction of Tobin’s tent, where Onny and Regg had kept watch even more faithfully than Erebus.

Cogswhallop had been searching for his son when the gate closed, trapping him and his family in the real world. Trapping Makenna and her goblins in this one. But now, feeling magic seep back into her bones, Makenna knew she might finally have a chance to free them all.

The first attempt failed. The glowing gate runes still sank into the trees she’d chosen as an anchor, just as the healing runes she’d placed around Tobin’s bed had vanished into the ground.

The amulet he now wore—as did every goblin Makenna had dragged into this world with her—prevented more of his life energy from draining away, but he was still terrifyingly weak and had barely surfaced to consciousness a few times. He’d survived being carried to the next lake, and Charba said he’d probably grow stronger on his own, eventually. But Makenna wasn’t sure.

Master Lazur’s notes had revealed that all the humans who’d gone into this world without the ability to work magic had died within three months. And those who had magic must also have died at some point. At least, Makenna had seen no sign of them.

Ruthless as he’d been about collecting his information, the priest had learned less about the nature of the Otherworld than she had—though that didn’t surprise Makenna. She’d been living here for over two months; all Master Lazur had done was thrust a handful of condemned criminals through a gate, then open a few holes to get back reports.

The only part she hadn’t known already, aside from a few refinements on the gate spell, was his speculation that the spirits who controlled this world might be related to the barbarian’s “gods,” and that was why the barbarian blood amulets worked here.

If Makenna and the goblins couldn’t use magic to affect anything in this world, then getting their power back wouldn’t do much good.

“We’ve got to find a way to get the earth, or wood, or whatever, to stop sucking up the magic we’re trying to use on it,” she told Cogswhallop. “I think, given these notes on power sharing, that I could link together a group of goblins large enough that I
could
cast a gate. At least a small one.”

“But all our powers are different,” Cogswhallop objected. “The Greeners’ power only works on plants, the Stoners’ on stone, the Bookeries’ on useless scribbling.”

“Not so useless,” Erebus put in. “Galavan, in
Essential Nature of Things
, speculated that all magic was the same at its source. Maybe we could pass the pure form of it on to the mistress, and she could use it. Or perhaps passing it to her, or through her, might transform—”

“I think it would,” said Makenna, absently rubbing her amulet—a nervous habit a lot of them had adopted. “But none of that will do us any good unless we can keep our power from sinking into this world and feeding it. If this world is made of magic, maybe it needs to eat magic to survive? But if that’s the case, what does it eat if it doesn’t have folk like us?”

“Maybe it eats the spirits’ magic,” Cogswhallop said. “It may be eating thistledown and moonshine, but I don’t see how that helps us! We need a plan, Gen’ral.”

Makenna shook off speculation. “As it happens, I’ve got one. If the spirits control the nature of this world, then maybe one of them could stop it sucking up our magic long enough for us to cast a spell or two. That seem right to you?”

“Aye, could be. But they’ve shown precious little interest in helping us so far. And since the children started wearing the amulets, the spirits won’t even talk to them. Much less a ‘filthy human’ like you.”

“Then maybe it’s time to try something stronger than asking them nicely. You’re a fair hand at ambushes, Cogswhallop. Could you capture a spirit for me?”

He must have thinking along the same lines, for he answered instantly. “I might. The pen pusher tells me they’re avoiding these amulets like plague, so I’m thinking they might make a fair trap. And I’ve some ideas about where to set the snare as well. Though if I’m wrong about how they react, it might take one or two tries before we succeed.”

“Set your trap,” Makenna told him—and for once she’d no compunction about using those words. “And if you’re looking for a target, I know just the spirit I’d like to have a chat with.”

One of the things about the Otherworld Makenna found most disturbing was that it was so similar to the real world but not quite the same. It grew dark at night. The moon—now nearly full—sailed through the sky and changed its phases just like at home. But the stars around it formed different patterns, and they were too large, too bright. The scent of damp earth was familiar from dozens of night raids and watches, but the branches that brushed her face had a subtly alien smell.

“Are you certain the spirit will show up here?” she asked Cogswhallop.

“No,” he said promptly. “But digging a trench across that ridge is the simplest way to stop the stream that feeds this lake, the Stoners have their foundations built, and the woodworkers are starting on the frames. According to the others, that’s the stage they’d reached when the first stream vanished. It’s the closest thing to bait we’ve got.”

But although they watched till nearly sunrise, no spirit appeared, and the stream continued to flow.

Makenna had been a commander too long to let herself become impatient. They waited out the next two nights as well, crouched in the bushes above the small valley. On the fourth night, Makenna was almost asleep when Cogswhallop’s elbow dug into her ribs.

A column of water rose out of the stream, spinning, slowly coalescing into a human-shaped form. A woman’s form, Makenna saw with astonishment. Surely only creatures who bred required two genders. But she knew nothing about the spirits. Maybe they did breed. Maybe they had hordes of little spirits, and complained about having to cook for such a mob, while their husbands grumbled about how hard they’d worked trying to drive off the goblins all day.

If Erebus was right about these amulets repelling the spirits, she might have a chance to find out.

She leaned forward, heedless of the stones digging into her knees, and watched the water spirit flow up the stream to the place where the spirit would need to shape a trench across the ridge if she wanted to send the stream down a different course.

The spirit bent, laying shimmering hands against the ground, and before Makenna’s astonished gaze, the solid earth began to melt like butter on a hot griddle.

She’d guessed that the spirits could do this, but seeing solid rock crumble at the thing’s whim sent a chill down Makenna’s spine. She shrugged. She’d been frightened before; she never let it interfere with strategy.

Makenna waited till the spirit was fully involved in her earth shaping. Then she stood, silently raising an arm.

Even knowing where they were hiding, Makenna could hardly see the goblins as they crept forward. She gave them a few seconds to get into position; then her arm flashed down, and half a dozen amulets splashed into the stream—both above and below the spirit’s position.

They hadn’t known what to expect. Erebus could only speculate that the spirits, whom Master Lazur had also reported to be “repulsed” by the barbarians’ amulets, might be unable to pass them.

Makenna hadn’t expected the blood-curdling shriek the creature emitted. And she certainly hadn’t expected the ice that spread over the surface in curling splinters, stretching out from every amulet the goblins had cast into the stream, growing till they touched the spirit woman’s feet.

At that point Makenna half expected her to freeze to ice and die—and a lot of good that would do them! But although the ice ran partway up the woman’s skirts, the spirit remained flowing and alive, watching Makenna and her allies hurrying down the slope with an expression of hostility that looked downright human.

Makenna slowed her approach, strolling the last few yards.

Human shaped the spirit might be, but she didn’t appear to have bones, or blood, or any internal structure Makenna could see—and she was as transparent as the water she was made of. Water bound into that shape with magic, Makenna supposed, just like all else in this accursed place.

The creature hadn’t been schooled in the finer points of negotiating—she spoke first.

“Get those disgusting
things
out of my stream, human. Or you’ll never see water in this world again.”

Something that looked like that should have a crystalline voice, but instead the words bubbled like a boiling pot.

“I’d think the wood and meadow spirits might object to that,” Makenna told her. “Let me propose a different bargain. You stabilize this world so it stops sucking down every rune I set, and we’ll all leave. And take our amulets with us. How about that?”