Close Kin Read online

  For this lesson, Kate was learning how to heat an elvish cooking stone. The nocturnal elves saw perfectly well in the dark but were blind in the dazzling day. Their eyes were even more sensitive than those of the goblins, so they cooked on special stones that gave off no light. The dwarves had made such a stone for Marak, flat and about a foot square. It lay now on the floor at Kate’s feet, and a small metal pan full of water sat on it, waiting to be heated.

  “You remember what I taught you about heat spells,” Marak said, catching sight of Seylin and motioning for him not to disturb Kate. “They’re based in Nameshda, the Warrior constellation, and they focus on the Foot Star. Find the constellation in your mind and point to it.” Kate, eyes closed, pointed toward the floor by the writing desk. “That’s right, it hasn’t risen, so you need to get a good connection even though the ground is in the way. Reach to the Foot Star with one hand and with the other toward the stone as you say the spell. You should be able to feel the heat move by you on its way into the stone. Don’t try to do too much. Less is better than more.”

  Kate nodded and moved her other hand into position. Marak watched as her lips moved and then looked down to examine the pan of water.

  Seylin saw several things happen almost at once. Marak stepped back, throwing out his hand and giving a shout. All the water in the pan rushed up in a cloud of steam and whirled toward the King. When it reached his outstretched hand, the cloud splashed against an invisible wall and became a sheet of ice that fell to the floor and shattered. The metal pan melted with a sigh onto the stone, which was turning an alarming shade of cherry red.

  Marak shouted again, but Kate stood oblivious, hands still outstretched. With a zing, the painted golden snake around her neck awoke and looped itself about her arms, jerking them to her sides. Marak bent and touched the stone, instantly chilling it. It cracked into several pieces, and the melted pan solidified into a flattened disk with the handle still extending from its side.

  “What happened?” asked Kate curiously, opening her eyes.

  Marak didn’t look up. He was studying the wreckage of the cooking stone and pan, running his hand through his impossible hair. The golden snake twined back up to her shoulders and surveyed the damage, too.

  “Forty-seven King’s Wives have tried to kill the King,” it whispered calmly, “but only eight have tried to kill the King with elf magic.” Seylin noticed a hint of complacent pride in the snake’s sibilant voice.

  “Charm, you know perfectly well I didn’t try to kill the King!” said Kate in dismay. The snake looped around to study her innocent blue eyes. Then it let out a gentle hiss and collapsed back into painted sleep.

  “Oh, yes, you did, you bloodthirsty elf,” replied Marak. “It’s the Nameshda spells. Every time you’ve attempted a spell centered on the Warrior constellation, you’ve done some kind of damage. We don’t need to wonder what your family did for the elf King, Kate. They were high-ranking military lords who devoted their lives to butchering goblins. When you make contact with the Warrior constellation, your proud elf blood burns, and you want to wrap your hands around the nearest goblin throat you can find.”

  “That’s completely ridiculous!” exclaimed Kate. “Isn’t it?” she added uncertainly.

  For answer, Marak pried the pan off the shattered stone and held it out to her.

  “Do I lie?” he pointed out. “No more Nameshda spells for you. Seylin, you can see why the King has to be the one to teach magic to outsiders. They can be very unpredictable and dangerous.”

  He put the pan on his writing desk and studied his petite, golden-haired wife for a minute. She certainly didn’t look dangerous.

  “No defense spells of any kind, Kate—they’ll only strengthen your warrior tendencies. It’s risky when the magic begins teaching itself like that. No more lessons this week, and we’d better calm down your right hand for a few days to prevent accidents. Your magic is excited now, and it will want more blood.”

  He took Kate’s hand in both of his, the two right hands palm to palm, and stood motionless for a minute, frowning in concentration. After a few seconds, Kate tried to pull away.

  “Ow!” she said. “Ow! Marak, you’re hurting me!”

  The goblin ignored her as he finished the magic. Then he looked down at her distressed face with a smile.

  “That was your fault,” he said. “You didn’t want to give that power up, you elf assassin. You fought me to keep it. What killers your people must have been,” he added, surveying her with fond pride. “It’s lovely goblin revenge against your ancestors that I have you down here with me.”

  Kate poked at her hand, scowling. “My whole arm’s gone numb,” she complained.

  “And a very good thing, too,” remarked the King, rubbing it for her. “I can’t have you attacking our son the next time he comes running up to you. He’s a little young to understand why his mother would try to kill him, and I think his defense magic would catch you by surprise.”

  “Marak!” exclaimed Kate. “I’d better not learn magic at all, then. I don’t want to hurt anybody.”

  “Other than me, you mean?” laughed her husband. “Don’t fret. We’ll just have to find something else you’re good at besides killing people. Seylin, did you need to see me?”

  Kate kissed her husband good-bye and walked off down the hallway, still rubbing her arm. The dog stood up, stretching luxuriously from her front feet to her back feet, and trotted off after her mistress.

  Marak sat down at his desk and waved the young man to a stool. Seylin had always been Marak’s special protégé, sharing the King’s fascination with unusual magic, but he required a particular sort of handling. He wasn’t like a goblin in his nature. He was sensitive and easily upset by things, the effect of his strongly dominant elf blood. Marak could see that he was upset now.

  “Goblin King, I’m here to ask permission to leave the kingdom,” divulged the miserable Seylin.

  Marak’s astonishment didn’t show on his face. “When will you be coming back?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.” Seylin sighed. “I don’t think I will be coming back. I don’t think there’s much of a place for me here. I’m so different. I want to go live with my own people.”

  “Your own people,” mused Marak, his unmatched eyes shrewd, and the ghost of a smirk on his face. “Which people are those?”

  The unhappy young man dropped his gaze and studied his hands in awkward silence.

  “Seylin,” said Marak, “tell me what’s wrong because it’s something serious. At least, it had better be.”

  “I proposed to Em, and she rejected me,” muttered Seylin. “She said she wants to marry Thaydar.”

  Marak stared at and through him, concentrating on the news. Emily and his wife were sisters, but Emily had almost no elvish blood at all. The goblins called her a human. She had come to the kingdom voluntarily in order to be with her sister, and Marak had promised her that she would be allowed to choose her own husband one day. Emily and Seylin got along so well together that Marak had been sure of her choice, but here she was, picking a real goblin’s goblin over twice her age. With that kind of taste, Marak thought, she’d have been a good King’s Wife.

  “So now you want to find an elf bride,” he concluded. Seylin colored up in embarrassment.

  “I don’t know about that,” he answered. “I just want to find some elves.”

  “What makes you think there are elves to find?” demanded Marak. “The last elf King has been dead for over two hundred years, and when he died, the elvish race died, too.”

  “The goblins never did track down every last elf,” observed Seylin. “Some of the elf lords moved away during the elf harrowing, along with groups of refugees.”

  “Marak Whiteye knew that they were finished,” countered the King. “Most of the elf men died in battle. Their widows poured into the camps that remained, and there weren’t enough hunters to feed them. They were starving to death. Whiteye didn’t need to hunt them down.”
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  “Kate’s ancestor survived it,” noted Seylin. “And if she did, so could others.”

  “Kate’s ancestor had to marry a human man because her own people were dead, and she herself died almost a hundred years ago. These arguments don’t convince me, Seylin. Why are they convincing you?”

  The young man frowned at his hands again. He didn’t look up as he spoke.

  “I have a feeling about it. A feeling. That’s all. We were coming back from the trading journey when I first noticed it. One night, I sensed that elves were near me in the forest. I almost felt pulled out of my skin. I’ve been restless ever since. It was like a call.”

  “A call.” The King’s eyes blazed with excitement. “I always knew you were born elvish for a reason. It’s your magic—or it’s wishful thinking. I don’t know which. So now you want to go find your elves. And if you find them, are you going to tell your King about them?”

  “Well…” Seylin blushed again. “I don’t think they’d want me to. And I wouldn’t want them to…to come to harm…because of me.”

  “Come to harm?” echoed Marak contemptuously. “Seylin, stop thinking like an elf! You are who you are, and I am who I am because elf brides ‘came to harm.’ You just saw an elf bride not five minutes ago. Would you say that Kate came to harm?”

  “It can’t matter,” protested Seylin. “There must be so few elves left, if any. They need their own brides, or there won’t be any more elves at all.”

  “An excellent point,” agreed Marak. “But you’re not willing to leave the decision up to my good judgment?”

  The young man didn’t answer.

  “Oh, Seylin, you’re confused,” said Marak, chuckling. “Living with your people! You’ve spent too many years looking at your pretty face in the mirror.”

  In the silence that followed, the goblin King considered the proposed quest. It had possibilities, but that elf nature had to be free to do the hunting. Treat Seylin like a goblin, and the chance would be gone. Quite a chance for Seylin, quite a chance for the goblins. Maybe even a chance for the elves.

  “Very well, I give you permission to hunt for elves,” he said finally. “And here’s what I can do for you and your people. I won’t order anyone to follow you, and I won’t authorize any goblin to contact the elves you may find. I will authorize no raids for brides, and I won’t ask that you report to me. I will contact you, but I’ll do it in such a way that your elf friends won’t know, and you will be free to answer me or not. I won’t ask that you return to the kingdom, either, although I do hope that someday you will.”

  Seylin felt a profound relief. He had been worried about leading goblins to an elf colony, but now he could live among his people with a clear conscience.

  “There are only two conditions,” added Marak dispassionately. “First, you are and always will be my subject, and I will not allow one of my subjects to suffer attack. If anyone attacks you, even an elf, I have the right to protect you and take revenge. The day—no, the second—that you suffer violent harm at the hands of an elf, I cancel all my promises. That’s my obligation to you as your King because you are one of my people.”

  “That seems fair,” remarked the young man. “I can’t imagine anyone attacking me.” The goblin King just smiled at him. He knew Seylin couldn’t imagine it.

  “And the second condition,” he said, getting up and crossing to a drawer, “is that I need a lock of your hair and three drops of blood.” He returned with a pair of scissors, a small plate, and an object that looked like a golden tack.

  “Why?” demanded Seylin, immediately attracted by the thought of the magic.

  “If I told you it’s a keepsake, would you believe me?” chuckled Marak. He cut off one of Seylin’s black locks and arranged it carefully into a ring on the plate. Then, frowning absently, he stuck the young man’s finger and squeezed three drops onto the hair.

  “It’s a tracking spell,” guessed Seylin, “so you’ll know where I am. That’s good. I’m glad you’ll be looking after me.”

  “Seylin, Seylin,” Marak chided. “You can’t wait to leave here and find your people, but you’re glad your King is looking after you. I don’t know what will come from such a puzzle, but I’m anxious to find out. Here,” he added, reaching for paper and writing a short note, “give this to the storeroom clerks, and they’ll provide you with anything you need. Happy hunting for your people, but don’t stay away too long. Your King hopes that you’ll be back home with us soon.”

  After his unhappy subject left, Marak sat at his desk for an hour, working intently over the lock of hair, weaving three different colors of waxed thread around it to seal it inside a braided ring.

  “Guard, come!” he called, putting the finished ring into a drawer, and Tinsel appeared in the doorway. Tinsel wasn’t excessively tall, but he seemed like a giant because of his broad build, and his skin was a dull silver-gray. His silver hair was the most startling thing about him. It looked like something the dwarves had made, and the light glittering on it almost hurt the eyes.

  The goblin King surveyed his guard thoughtfully. Here was another strongly dominant elf cross, he thought to himself, rather good-looking as goblins went, with no distinctive deformities. Blue or silver skin often showed up when strong elf blood hit goblin blood, and often the strong elf crosses had those blue eyes. Tinsel would have been a good match for Emily’s age and elf ancestry, too, almost as good a match as Seylin. Marak studied the young guard a bit moodily. He’d have been a better match than Thaydar.

  “Now, why haven’t you been trying for young M yourself?” growled the King. “A handsome brute like you.”

  “Who, me?” asked Tinsel. “Thaydar and Seylin are both after her. Seylin and I were pages together, and Thaydar’s my boss.” He smiled his good-natured, slightly goofy smile. “That kind of trouble I don’t need.”

  No, he wouldn’t, considered Marak with a sigh. He’d find no fiercely competitive spirit here. Goblins generally got along, but Tinsel was beyond the pale. Remarkable for the calmness of his temper, he was just tremendously nice. This had led to a certain amount of teasing when he was a page, but Tinsel had developed a unique solution. He had picked up the tormentor and carried him around until the child promised to leave him alone.

  “Go find M for me, Tinsel,” said Marak resignedly. “I need to talk to her. I’ll be in my rooms.” He walked downstairs, thinking it over. Thaydar, of all goblins, and his Seylin gone from the kingdom entirely. He couldn’t wait to hear Emily’s side of this one.

  He sat down in his favorite reading chair and pulled A History of the Kings of England out of the bookcase. Over the years, the goblins who went out on trading journeys had brought Kate a number of books. She used them to teach the pages their English, and she read them for pleasure. Marak read them as much as she did. He thought that a careful king should study those peoples whose lands bordered his own. He always picked this particular book when he was depressed about kingdom concerns; it cheered him up to see how horribly the human kings managed.

  Kate lay on a couch nearby, her arm wrapped in a blanket and her lips moving as she read the book of elvish spells they were working through. She couldn’t do the magic this week, but she could at least study. A companionable silence settled over the room.

  “Do you know, Kate,” murmured Marak after a while, “I don’t believe these people have kings at all. Not a one of them does any healing or worries about the food crops.”

  Kate glanced up, trying to pay attention to her husband while remembering that deer health was governed by the Gilim constellation. She had always thought that elf magic would be about pretty things. It amazed her that so many of the spells had to do with deer.

  “Of course we have kings,” she answered firmly, good English citizen that she was. “Marak, what’s the Gilim constellation? I can’t place it.”

  “It’s the Milky Way,” he replied absently. “Gilim means ‘herd’ to the elves it looked like a herd of deer crossing a glade.”


  “Herd.” Kate digested this. “I like ‘Milky Way’ better. It sounds so much more romantic.”

  “Really?” Marak laughed. “I didn’t know there was anything romantic about having a pan of milk spilled over your head.” With a frown, Kate went back to her spell book.

  Emily hurried into the room without knocking, and Marak put down his book.

  “Finally, M,” he commented. “I’ve had Tinsel looking for you.”

  “Never mind about that,” said Emily breathlessly. “Marak, you have to do something! Brindle said that Seylin went off on a trip, and he told Brindle he isn’t coming back.”

  This looked like kingdom business, Kate decided, and she left the room to prepare for the day’s English classes. Emily had gotten into plenty of scrapes and adventures over the years, and she and Marak had had many heated discussions. Kate was glad to stay out of them whenever she could.

  “Yes, that’s true,” remarked Marak calmly. “Seylin asked me for permission to leave.”

  “But you can’t let him leave like that!” said Emily. “Seylin can’t just go away and not come back. Or maybe—maybe I could go with him,” she suggested, brightening.

  “M, you are not going with him,” answered the goblin King. “He left the kingdom just to get away from you.”

  “From me?” echoed Emily, sitting down on the couch. She stared at him in amazement. “But why?”

  “Congratulations on your choice of a husband,” said Marak by way of reply. “I know how pleased Thaydar must be. I haven’t talked to him yet, but I’m sure you have. I’d like to hold the wedding as soon as possible.”

  Emily gaped at him.

  “I don’t want to marry Thaydar!” she exclaimed.

  The goblin King returned her gaze impassively. “Didn’t you tell Seylin today that you wanted to marry Thaydar?”

  Emily tried to remember their conversation.

  “Well, yes and no,” she answered. “I told him that I’d rather marry Thaydar than him, but only because he was being so rude. He made Brindle’s little Penelope cry because he wouldn’t change into a cat.”