The Hollow Kingdom (21 page)

Kate became interested in one particular story that she found. The handwriting was easy to read, and she found several script characters that she knew, including the King's Wife Charm, repeated
quite frequently. So far, the charm had been nothing but a painted snake to her, and she wondered what it could have done.

"Marak," she said, coming over to him, "tell me about this one." The goblin King glanced up from his own page to study the story for a minute. Then he looked at her with a shrewd smile and shook his head.

"Let's read it tomorrow," he proposed cheerfully.

Kate's bad mood instantly returned. "You're keeping something from me," she accused.

"I certainly am," he agreed. "That story. Today's not the day for it."

Kate sat down across from him. "You're treating me like a child," she protested. "I went with you to court, and you promised to read these in return. I hate being read to like a child, and now you're hiding some secret as if I really am one. This is a story about a King's Wife, and I'm a King's Wife. I ought to know what it says."

The goblin King studied her for a minute. "All right," he said calmly, putting aside his own work, "but you're not happy about being a King's Wife right now, and this story isn't going to help. This is about the elf wife of a King who was four feet tall and dark green. She lived for only three years, and she tried to kill herself six different ways. The charm always saved her. One time she threw herself off our balcony into the lake valley, and the snake wound itself around a hook in the palace wall as they fell by."

Kate stared at him in horror. That poor woman, trapped just like she was. "Did she finally succeed?" she whispered.

Marak scanned the pages. "No," he said. "She died when the Heir was born. There were complications. He weighed twenty pounds."

Kate shivered, the hair rising on the back of her neck. Those hideous, deformed babies. Marak continued to read. "This is nice,"
he added. "He's written a tribute to her determination and resourcefulness."

Kate jumped to her feet. "You people are just ghastly!" she cried. The goblin King shook his striped hair out of his face and looked up at her with a smile.

"Which ones of us?" he asked.

"All of you! You wife stealers!"

"I didn't steal you," replied Marak complacently.

"But you're just like that other King!"

Marak laughed as he shut the book. "No," he retorted. "I'm not green."

Kate was beside herself. "You know what I mean!" she shouted. "You're one of them! The descendant of all those wife-stealing Kings!"

He thought about that as she marched from the room. "I'm the descendant of all those wives, too," he mused, but Kate had already slammed the door.

She roamed the stone gardens alone that evening, unable to calm down. When she went looking for her sister, she found that Emily had left with Seylin. Mindful of their elf blood, Marak let them go outside at night, provided they stayed leashed together. He trusted Seylin to come home, but he wasn't so sure about Emily. The distraught Kate took her sister's absence as a personal insult. How dare she come and go while Kate was trapped down here! Feeling betrayed, she headed for the front door.

"Hello, King's Wife," boomed the door politely but a little unhappily. It knew what these visits meant.

"Hello, door," said Kate decisively. "Please open up and let me through."

"But you're the King's Wife," protested the door.

"Yes, I know that," Kate said. "Please open up."

"But you have the symbol on you," the door added.

"I know that, too." Kate could feel it. The symbol was starting to smart.

"I can't open for the King's Wife," explained the door ponderously.

"Not even if I was on the outside?" Kate asked in sudden inspiration.

"But you're not," the door cautiously answered.

"But I could be," Kate insisted.

"How?" asked the door. And this Kate couldn't answer. She put her hand to her forehead as the letter began to throb.

"Let's say, just for the sake of argument, that I was on the outside," she suggested.

"What does that mean?" the door wanted to know.

"It means that I say something, and then we argue about it," explained Kate. "Assuming I'm on the outside, would you open then?"

"But you're not," said the door triumphantly.

"But I'm saying it for the sake of argument!" shouted the frustrated Kate.

"I'm arguing," said the door.

Marak came up then and put his arms around his harried wife, pulling her hand away from her forehead and replacing it with his own. Under his soothing magical touch, the pain slowly began to ebb.

"Do you know what's wrong, Kate?" he asked, holding her. "The same thing that was wrong last month. There's a full moon rising outside, and it's dancing night for the elves. You've known it all day, and it's making you miserable."

Kate started to protest that she wasn't an elf, but the longing for that full moon overwhelmed her. She thought of it rising above the
forest, riding up the vast sky, silvering everything it touched with its beautiful light. The goblin King felt her droop in his arms, exhausted and discouraged.

"Poor little elf, locked up underground," he said kindly. "Come on, let's go to bed."

"What is it?" he asked quietly.

"Do you write about me?" she asked. He nodded. "What kinds of things do you write?"

"The same sorts of things as the other Kings," he said. "What you love about your new life, what you hate."

"What do I love?" she wondered.

"It hasn't been very long," he answered, "but I think you love coming with me to my workroom."

Kate thought about that. As the realm's greatest magician, the goblin King worked magic all the time, whether he was healing illness, supporting building projects, or making sure the correct weather occurred. Sitting on her high stool, Kate watched him preparing and mixing things, and he showed her odd bits of magic as he studied and practiced. She enjoyed the magic; it was one of the things she was starting to appreciate about her unusual husband. The workroom was like a refuge to her. It was almost the only place in the entire kingdom where no one was watching her.

"I do love the workroom," she said softly. "What do I hate about my new life?"

"Being locked in," he answered. "Being stared at, being teased."

"If you know I hate being teased," she asked, "why do you always do it?"

"Because that's one of the things about your new life that
I
love," he chuckled. That made her smile. "And I write about the milestones that the Kings look for their wives to pass. The first time you spoke to me--that was when you met me. The first time you called me by name--that was the day after you came here. The first time you smiled at me--that was a week after you came here, but the first time you smiled because you were really glad to see me--that was only a month ago. The first time you were happy when you woke up in the morning, full of plans you wanted to accomplish ..." He fell silent.

"When was that?" Kate wanted to know.

"That one hasn't happened yet," he admitted. "Maybe tomorrow."

Kate shifted in his arms and laid her head against his chest. "Maybe so," she murmured, closing her eyes.

Part III
Darkness

One day, a year and a half after her marriage, Kate was sitting with the older pages and hearing their English lesson. Marak had asked her early on to help the pages improve their English because the most human-looking goblins, posing as gypsies, made frequent trading journeys outside the kingdom to sell watches and jewelry. This allowed them to buy silks, laces, and other luxury items, including the excellent tea that Marak enjoyed.

Kate's father, overseeing her education, had instilled in her a deep love of literature. Since the older pages already had an excellent grasp of English, she had decided to have them read some of that literature with her. Today one after another was reading out loud from Shakespeare's
Romeo and Juliet
, their grotesque faces solemn over the plight of the star-crossed lovers.

She looked up to see a member of the King's Guard at the door, and she dismissed the pages. The guard's round eyes were large with concern, and he was clacking his beak in agitation. "Hulk is missing," he told her, "and the King needs your help at the water mirror."

Kate considered his news as they hurried along. The feathered ape was so large that she couldn't imagine anything harming him. Surely it wouldn't turn out to be serious. She entered the big cavern to find Marak, his lieutenants, and a number of the Guard already there.

"I need to find Hulk with the water mirror, Kate," the King said, "but it's too bright for me to see now that the sun is up. We need
you to look with your daylight eyes and tell us something about where he is." Then he turned to the lapping sheet of water and held out his hand. The room blazed with light, and the goblins shielded their eyes. Kate squinted at the unaccustomed brightness, her own eyes now more used to the twilight than the sun, but she could see more than they could.

"It looks like it might be a closed wagon or carriage," she said finally. "I think those are horses at the front. It's moving, and the land around it is flat. I think there's water by the road. A big river, maybe. Not a lake. It's very blurry." She looked away as the mirror went dark again, her eyes watering.

"It's blurry because it's far away," said Marak. "It's well past the edges of my land. When I looked for Hulk earlier, I couldn't see him at all because something was blocking or hiding him. Someone has kidnapped him, probably with a trap because Hulk's too big to take by force. I suspect that magic was used to hide him, and the trap that caught him must have had some magic built into it as well. And now he's being moved in daylight when we can't counterattack. Who has him and why? Has anyone new been on the land?"

"No one has been in the Hill area," said Sayada, who with Thaydar was one of the two lieutenants. Sayada, although man shaped, had hands that looked like bird talons. He had no nose at all, just two holes in his face. "No one has come or gone from the estate grounds in the last several days. It may be that the intruder stayed in the Hollow Lake village. We don't monitor the traffic past the three roads there. Hulk was patrolling the lakefront last night, so he would have been close to the village."

The goblin King thought for a moment. "Bulk," he said, turning to Hulk's brother, "do you think you could fly in the bright light?" The ape, yellow eyes anxious, nodded quickly. Both apes could change to a bird form that could stand the daylight. Seylin was another who could venture outside at any time, his cat eyes
suited to either daylight or darkness. "Good," said Marak decisively. Turning to Kate, he asked, "Are you sure there were no hills? That the land was flat?"

"I think so," she answered hesitantly, "but I couldn't see very far. There may have been hills farther away."

"Probably the Liverpool road," suggested Thaydar when Marak shot him an inquiring glance. "But if that's the case, they've been traveling for hours and making good time."

"I was afraid of that," said Marak grimly. "My guess is that they started moving Hulk well before his watch was over. By the time we noticed him missing, he was probably at the edge of our land. Bulk, I can put you on the outskirts of the Hollow Lake village. Follow the Liverpool road as fast as you can to see if you can catch them. If you do catch up, stay with them as a bird. If you don't come back at twilight, we'll follow you. I should be able to track you as we move. Hulk will probably be hidden again after sunset, just as he was on our land. That's difficult magic," he added absently, eyes distant for a moment.

Bulk shimmered as he turned into a large, ugly bird, and Marak stepped to the water mirror.

"Kate, I need your help again," he said, taking her hand. "You'll have to tell me what I'm doing."

The mirror blazed, and Kate squinted into it. "It's the crossroads by the inn," she reported, and then, as it shifted, "we're following the lakeshore road away from the Hill. We've passed all the houses. Now the road is leaving the shore. There's a large oak tree on the right side."

"That's it," said Marak, one hand shielding his eyes. "Bulk, if you can't find them by the time the sun starts westering, come back so you can report at twilight." With a clack of his beak, Bulk took off into the mirror. Kate watched him soar into the sky over the road.

The mirror went dark again, and the goblins turned back to their King. He had done all he could for the moment. Now he pondered his next move, running his fingers through his striped hair as he turned the details over in his mind.

"I need Thaydar and Brindle to go to the inn tonight and find out who's been through. Thaydar, see if you can get Harry Bounce to drink with you back in the stables. He knows all the gossip. And if Hulk was caught in a trap, I would suspect that several were placed and that the enemy may have left the others behind. It would help tremendously if I could see one, and they're a constant danger till they're found. Turn out all the Guard to hunt for traps in a wide sweep of the lakeshore from the village around to the Hill.

"Sayada, we'll need a fast and magical force ready if Bulk doesn't return at twilight. I think it had better be you, me, Katoo, and Dibah. Two horses for each goblin, and light packs. I leave their contents up to you. Plan for a pursuit of four days. Thaydar, if you learn something interesting, follow us. We'll stay with the road, pitch tents at sunrise, and leave markers if we take a turning. Bring the trap with you if you find one.

"All of you spend today sleeping," he concluded, "and if you can't sleep, send word to me. I need you ready for tonight. Thaydar, on your way to your rooms, tell the pages to gather the Scholars in the library."

The sober goblins filed out. Marak continued to stand by the water mirror for another moment. "Do you know, Kate," he said thoughtfully, "the Guard should never come in so close to dawn. We don't even find out someone's missing until the sun's about to rise. It gives us no time to react. We should be doing cross-checks of the guards at regular intervals throughout the night, and they should come in at least an hour earlier. I don't know why I didn't think of it before."