The Hollow Kingdom Page 13
“I don’t think you’ll spend much time on Kate’s land, anyway. The Stamp of Truth is a permanent charm. The doctor, here, will wake up never even knowing he was asleep. He’ll ask you why you look so upset, and you’ll tell him all about it. It’s going to be very amusing, your descriptions of us all.”
Hugh’s anxious eyes widened as he realized what this would mean. Kate looked at the sleeping Dr. Thatcher. He was far too well educated ever to believe in goblins, especially goblins right in the room with him and somehow escaping his notice. She imagined his interested look as her guardian related his incredible tale. Hugh Roberts would soon be in the asylum himself.
“But when Kate ordered you off her property,” concluded Marak, “I don’t think that she wanted to wait, so from this moment forward, you are forbidden to set foot on her land.”
Hugh Roberts stared at him, completely baffled. “I’ll do my best,” he promised shakily. “I give you my word.”
“Oh, I think you’ll surprise yourself,” the goblin King murmured absently. “Bulk?”
The great ape seized Hugh by the head and arm. Thaydar came up and caught the other arm, stepping down firmly on Hugh’s feet. Marak reached into his pocket and pulled out a tiny jar. Kneeling, he held it close to the floor, upside down. He removed the stopper, but nothing dripped out. Then he positioned the bottle below Hugh’s arm and turned it quickly upright. A drop splashed upward onto the man’s arm.
Before Kate’s astonished eyes, the terrified Hugh began to tilt. As Thaydar stepped back, Hugh’s feet slipped out from under his chair and flipped up over his head. In a few seconds, he was entirely upside down, balancing in the air, screaming and twisting. Bulk still held the other arm. He extended his own feathery arm as far as he could, pushing the man higher and higher into the air. Then he let go. Hugh whizzed through the air like a great bat and flopped grotesquely onto the ceiling.
Marak crossed quickly to Kate, who clutched the fireplace in an attack of dizziness. He put an arm around her and stared up at Hugh Roberts crawling about on the ceiling like a wasp. The big man pushed himself upright, feet stuck on the ceiling plaster and head pointing straight down. He stood swaying, goggling down at them, his round face frantic with terror. His wig didn’t even fall off.
“You’re not allowed to set foot on Kate’s land,” Marak reminded him evenly. “Well, actually, any land. Now, I understand that the doctor here is fascinated by preternatural forms of insanity. Kate tells me he believes the mind can perform impossible feats when it gives way to madness. Things not explainable in the everyday world.” He paused, watching as Hugh Roberts scrabbled about above him. “You should exceed his wildest expectations.”
The big man gibbered down at them, clawing at the walls, and then, making a rush across the ceiling, he tangled himself in the chandelier. Kate couldn’t bear it any longer. He looked like some huge cockroach. She put her head down and stared at the floor as Marak shepherded her from the room. The quiet goblins filed out of the house, Hugh Roberts’s screams echoing down the hall behind them.
Chapter Nine
The goblins left by the front door. Kate stumbled, dazed, down the wide steps, Marak’s protective arm holding her upright. She could still hear her guardian’s screams behind them, and she put her hands over her ears to block out the sound. The chilly night breeze revived her a little as they crunched along a gravel walk. They were filing down one of the tree-lined edges of the Hallow Hill green, leaving the Hall and forest behind.
Kate glanced up at her strange companion’s implacable face. He knew exactly how miserable she was at the thought of the life he had planned for her. He even knew how miserable she was going to be about things she hadn’t thought of yet. She shivered, thinking of a hideous goblin baby. She wondered if Adele had cried for days at her first sight of him.
The goblin King knew all this, and he could just shrug it off, completely pitiless, but he could exact an appalling price for her misery from a human who he thought should have tried to prevent it. Kate cautiously pulled her hands away from her ears. She couldn’t hear her guardian’s screams anymore, but she had a swift image of him flopping about on the ceiling, and she shivered again. Marak paused in their walk, frowning, to pull his cloak around her slight shoulders.
But then, Kate considered, her father would say to be fair. It was true that the goblin King had been trying to capture her, but it was also true that he hadn’t succeeded. She had walked in unannounced and promised to be his wife, and she had set the condition herself. He had immediately marshaled his forces to meet the terms of the agreement. He had taken her along to watch him accomplish his part, and she had promised to go back when it was done. She had even picked the revenge herself, although she’d had no idea what her simple statement would become in the hands of a magical monster.
They came to the end of the gravel walk. On the field beyond the green, the goblin groom waited with their horses. Kate stepped out of the shadow of the trees into bright moonlight. As she tilted her head to look at the full moon, she felt the grief of her loss sweep through her again. The goblin King had said she would never be outside after their marriage. Kate didn’t think she could endure it.
Marak was issuing orders. Seylin raced back toward the house, and Hulk and Bulk climbed onto two big draft horses and trotted off. Emily wandered over and took her hand. Kate looked down at her little sister. Her thin cheeks were flushed, and her eyes were bright with excitement. With Emily’s love of drama and of animals, she would enjoy every bit of goblin life. It was all so exaggerated, from the bright colors and rich decorations to the deformities of the creatures themselves. At last, life would hold all the variety Emily wanted.
After several minutes, Seylin came back at a run. “They both woke up well,” he reported to the King. “The man woke up in the middle of a sentence, and he looked around for a minute before he could find Roberts on the ceiling. Then I had to go wake up the woman. The bell was already ringing to call her to the study, so I don’t think she’ll notice that her tea was cold.”
They prepared to ride home. Kate noted that it was all happening pretty much as it would have a few days ago, and she wondered drearily if the extra time had been worthwhile. Thaydar boosted Emily up and then swung up behind her. Seylin sprang on behind Thaydar and wrapped his paws around the burly goblin’s waist.
“Listen to me, you occasional cat,” growled Thaydar, “there’d better be no claws this time, or you walk home! I don’t care if you fall off—I won’t be a pincushion.”
“Ready?” asked Marak, and he boosted Kate up onto his gray hunter. For a few seconds, she was alone on the horse. She wanted to seize the reins and dash away, but she realized that the magical bond that tied her to the King would pull her from the horse’s back. By the time she thought of this, he had already mounted behind her.
“Really, Kate, my own horse!” said the goblin reprovingly, just as if she had been speaking out loud. “I don’t think he’d have done it, but I’m glad you couldn’t try.” He glanced down at her face, raised in silent appeal to the moon. She didn’t seem to notice him at all. She couldn’t see anything but the moon and the stars near it, calling her across the vast gulf of darkness. They seemed to know her name, she thought sadly. If only she knew theirs.
Marak took one sharp look at the white face of his bride and urged his horse into a gallop. The horses raced through the silvery fields, running flat out. They cleared fences and crashed through bushes, throwing up a cloud of dust and small rocks in their wake. Emily, clinging to Thaydar, thought they were going to die, and Seylin forgot all about the warning not to use claws. But Kate knew nothing of the hair-raising ride. She saw nothing but the moon and stars. They seemed so close. Surely they could help her. She could almost hear words like the chimes of bells as they told her what she needed to do. She could see the moonbeams reaching down to her like silver hands, catching at the fleeing horse. Marak leaned down low, pulling her with him, and called for more speed.
Total darkness surrounded them. Kate closed her eyes and hid her face in the goblin King’s chest, preferring to deal with a blindness that she caused and understood. After a few more seconds, the horse slowed down. Soon he was cantering and then walking, blowing from his run. She could feel the goblin relax, too, straightening up and loosening his hold on her. Kate cautiously opened her eyes. Polished rock walls and hanging lamps met her frightened gaze. She was back underground.
They came to an iron door just like the one she had come through with Seylin, though this one opened for the King without any questions. Beyond it was a wide room lined with horse stalls. Thaydar swung down from the saddle, cursing in goblin at Seylin, who had shredded his waistcoat. Emily could hardly stand up, so frightened had she been by the trip underground, but she was already asking questions. Marak lifted Kate to the ground, and their steaming, lathered horses were led away.
They emerged in a palace hallway. On one side was a line of doors; on the other, tall windows without glass displayed a spectacular view. They were high above a wide, bowl-shaped valley far larger than the one through which she had originally come, its space defined in the darkness by thousands of twinkling lights. Past the windowsill, she could see what must be the back of the palace, forming a straight wall down for several hundred feet. A large town nestled at the bottom of the palace, and across the valley, more towns were defined by other gatherings of lights. Between them were open areas crossed by lighted roads or canals.
Emily and Seylin leaned out a window farther than was safe, asking and answering in a chatter that wearied everyone but themselves. Marak walked over to the unlikely pair. “Seylin,” he said, “take M to get something to eat. I don’t think she’s been fed at all today.” Kate immediately felt guilty for not having thought of this herself. “The cooks will be at the ceremony, so you’ll need to find something on your own, and then you can bring M back up to the pages’ floor to pick an apartment. There should be some with windows free, and she’d better have one with a really good writing area like yours.”
Kate found this statement interesting, but Emily thought it was hilarious. “You can write?” she asked the big cat incredulously. “How do you hold a pen?”
“Not with his paws, although he’s tried,” answered Marak with an exasperated sigh. “Seylin, you’ve been a cat long enough for now. Change back, and this time stay changed for at least one full day.”
Seylin’s ears, head, and fluffy tail went down in total dejection. “Change back now?” he yowled pitifully. “But they’ll laugh at me.”
“Or perhaps your King didn’t just give you an order,” the goblin remarked.
There was a heartfelt sigh, and then a shimmer, and a tall boy in a black tunic and breeches stood where the cat had crouched. Kate and Emily stared. If they had expected anything, they had expected a goblin or a human, but Seylin was neither one. His neat black eyebrows curved upward where a human’s curved down, and his small ears pointed at the tips. His thick black hair curled in luxurious ringlets, his large black eyes were shaded by long, dark lashes, and his pale skin had a fine, silvery texture. Seylin was an extraordinarily handsome youth about thirteen years old. Except for the fact that his striking features wore an unusually glum expression, he could have been an angel in a painting by an Italian master.
“You see, they didn’t laugh,” observed the goblin King. “Now, go, and if you want to show M your new trick with the colored flames, do it somewhere away from low ceilings so you don’t leave a scorch mark.” The two turned and went off together, a little bashful at first, but Kate noticed that before they reached the end of the hallway, they were again deep in conversation.
“I never saw such a beautiful boy,” she murmured in complete amazement.
“Don’t ever let Seylin hear you say that,” Marak said. “He’d never forgive you. He’s a throwback, of course, almost pure elf, and in one of our finest high families, too, a goblin-goblin marriage. The parents were devastated. It hasn’t been easy for him, as you might well imagine. He tends to avoid the other children, but I’ve kept him close by, and he’s proved exceptional at magic. He’s very sensitive about his—well, I suppose you’d balk at the word abnormality—his difference, and since I taught him how to change shapes, he’s been a cat as much as possible.” He chuckled. “He seems to feel that if he’s a cat, people will forget that he’s not much of a goblin.”
Kate pondered this odd speech as they started off again down corridors and stairs. Her head was buzzing with bizarre sights and strange ideas, and she was very tired. It seemed to her that they walked for a long time without speaking, always going down. The windows vanished, and the halls became rougher, more like tunnels than hallways. Eventually Marak ushered her into a small cavelike room. It was lit by a lamp hanging high in the rounded ceiling. A table-high ledge stretched across one end, and before it protruded a chair-shaped hunk of stone, the simplest of furnishings left behind when the room was hollowed out.
Kate found the room too dim for her human eyes and stopped right inside the door to adjust. Marak crossed to an inner door and talked in goblin to someone beyond. Kate sat down on the stone seat and studied the ledge in front of her. Four golden circles lay there, along with an oddly fashioned golden drinking goblet that held some sort of dark liquid. She suddenly felt very nervous.
Marak put a shallow bowl of water and a towel in front of her. Then he laid his hands on the door they had come through and spoke aloud. It shuddered and clanked, and Kate jumped. “It’s all right,” he remarked, seeing her startled face, a hint of his normal amusement glinting in his serious eyes. “It’s purely ritual. I’ve just locked the door with magic. It was important in the old days when a King’s Bride might have hundreds of hysterical and highly magical kin storming the doors to rescue her before she could be made the King’s Wife. That’s a problem we’re not likely to face at this ceremony.”
He took a small bag from his pocket and threw a pinch of powder into the bowl. Taking her right hand in his left, he pushed both into the water and dried her wet hand on the towel. “Of course, I did wait until you were locked in before removing the Leashing Spell,” he admitted with a sigh. “You don’t have kin storming the doors, but sometimes I think you don’t need them. You do make me nervous, Kate.”
Kate looked uncertainly from the locked door to the odd assembly of items on the table. Was she trapped in this little room forever? There being only one chair, Marak sat down on the table, pushing his striped hair back with a big hand and studying her distressed face intently.
“Couldn’t the ceremony wait for just a little?” she begged. “I’m so tired; I’m used to sleeping at night. Just another few hours?”
Marak chuckled, his eyes lighting up with admiration as he looked at her. “Kate, what you could do with another few hours, I’d be terrified to see. You’d slip right through my fingers like a ghost. I promise you can sleep right after the wedding, sleep for days if you want to, but the ceremony’s critical, and it’s always done immediately.” Kate hung her head, discouraged.
“In our world, there’s nothing more important than the marriage of the King because that’s where the new King comes from, and that’s how the magic of the race continues. The cer
emony tests the bride for certain qualifications, it makes indications about the future, it ensures that she stays underground where she’ll be safe, and it protects her against every kind of harm. The King’s Wife ceremony is completely practical and, therefore, largely unpleasant,” concluded the goblin with a resigned shrug.
Kate considered this information unhappily. Then she brightened.
“But I might fail some test, then?” she pointed out.
“Don’t get your hopes up, Kate. You’re ideal.” He watched her crestfallen expression with a smile. “But it goes beyond tests and protections. The point is that once it’s over, you’re one of us. Now, that doesn’t thrill you, but it does thrill my people. I don’t think you can understand what it means to them. Goblins are a close-knit, gregarious society. That’s our strength. The King’s Wife doesn’t become a goblin, of course, but she’s tremendously important, so the goblins are fascinated by her. If she waves her hand about in a certain way when she talks, all the goblin women copy her. If she prefers a certain color, everyone wears it. If she has a favorite flower, every goblin who goes outside tries to bring her one, and they adore her if it’s at all possible. Everyone adored my mother—my father, most of all.” Kate pictured Adele in this same room, years before, and wondered how she had felt.
Marak picked up one of the golden circlets and rolled it in his hands for a moment. “Enough about life beyond the ceremony,” he said with a sigh. “We both have to get ready. Kate, the King’s Bride is a captured bride, stolen, hysterical, weeping and wailing. That’s what usually happens. But you weren’t stolen; you came here willingly. You made a promise, and now you’re carrying it through. That’s very important,” he said seriously. “You need to remember that. Don’t kick up a fuss. Don’t make anyone drag you around. Keep up your dignity. It’ll help.