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  The goblin King’s face lit up with amusement. “Seylin was proposing marriage to you,” he cried, “and you wanted him to change into a cat?”

  “Marriage?” gasped Emily. “He never mentioned marriage! He said that he wouldn’t always be a guard, and he didn’t have much to offer, but—Oh…” She trailed off, stunned.

  Marak was helpless with laughter.

  “Oh,” he agreed when he recovered, wiping his eyes. “You certainly conveyed a clear refusal, anyway, as well as a clear preference for Thaydar. M, I told you that you were free to choose your own husband, and it’s high time. Cats aside, which man do you want to marry?”

  Emily continued to look dazed.

  “I don’t really know,” she confessed. “I don’t want to marry anybody. Why do I have to?”

  Her brother-in-law rested his cheek on his hand and studied her affectionately. “What would you have said to Seylin if you’d known he was proposing?”

  Emily shrugged. “I don’t know,” she admitted reluctantly. “I don’t want Seylin to go away and not come back. But he’s been the worst nuisance this year, standing around and goggling at me. He’s never been less fun.”

  “Seylin finally realized that he loved you,” pointed out the goblin King.

  “Well, he didn’t act like he loved me,” complained the young woman. “All he did was grumble at me and act embarrassed. Why does it have to be like this? We were always such good friends.”

  Because sooner or later we all grow up, Marak reflected, and I should have known that Seylin would do it first. Lighthearted Emily was showing no real interest in growing up. It was time to give her a shove in the right direction.

  “M, I have bad news,” he announced. “Seylin thinks you’re marrying Thaydar, so he’s left the kingdom to find an elf bride. I’m afraid you’ll have to put him completely out of your mind.”

  “An elf bride! There aren’t any elves left!” protested the girl.

  “Seylin thinks there are,” observed Marak. “He thinks he almost met some, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s right. He doesn’t intend to return, so he’s no longer a suitable choice for you. I’ll give you a couple of months to decide on a goblin man you’d prefer, and if you can’t do that, I’ll marry you to Thaydar. You expressed a preference for him, however briefly.”

  Emily stared at him in astonishment.

  “But—but—Marak!” she spluttered.

  “Seylin’s quest is very important,” cautioned her brother-in-law. “I refuse to allow you to interfere. Don’t waste your time thinking about him. He has better things to do than remember past sweethearts, and so do you.”

  “I’m past?” exclaimed Emily furiously. “Me? Past?”

  “I’m glad that’s settled,” commented Marak, standing up. “Time for court. As soon as you have that name, I’ll be pleased to hear it.”

  He left, and Emily sat there, feeling completely stunned. So that was where Seylin had gone! He wanted to find an elf girl. Someone prettier than she was. Someone magical and fascinating. He didn’t even care about her.

  Meanwhile, Seylin huddled in the woods of Hallow Hill, in the black cat shape that Emily loved. Probably Marak had already performed the wedding ceremony, he thought. Probably she was kissing Thaydar right this minute. She’d found herself a real goblin. She didn’t even care about him.

  Chapter Two

  Kate was waiting for her husband in the hallway outside their rooms, and they walked downstairs together.

  “What’s all this about Seylin leaving?” she wanted to know.

  “M didn’t notice that he was proposing to her,” explained Marak. “Think of that—she didn’t even notice! Seylin wanted to follow an odd feeling he’s had and go away to hunt for elves. He thinks she’s decided to marry Thaydar.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a good match,” said Kate unhappily.

  “I don’t know,” mused Marak. “It’s not the one I would have wanted, but my military commander is amazingly patient. And he’s trained for combat situations.” Kate didn’t laugh.

  “Poor Seylin!” she said. “He must be so mortified, he’ll never come back home. And he’ll certainly never consider asking her to marry him again. I don’t think Em is at all suited to Thaydar. They’ll make each other completely miserable.”

  “That’s the most likely result,” agreed Marak happily. Kate gave him a surprised glance. He was scheming again. There was nothing the clever goblin loved more than an impossibly tangled problem. “How’s the arm?” he asked.

  “It’s better,” she assured him as he felt and flexed it. “It tingles every now and then, that’s all.”

  “Poor little elf! Elves who attack the goblin King never win,” he said. “Speaking of battles, did you choose a roommate for Til? The new pages move into their rooms in a few weeks.”

  “Yes, I did,” answered his wife. Her magical snake, Charm, had named the little girl Kate had rescued from the sorcerer’s lair Matilda, but they had called her Til almost from the start. “We thought Bony’s oldest girl would be a good choice. It’s going to be such a hard adjustment for Til.”

  “It’s going to be a hard adjustment for the pages,” remarked the goblin King. “That girl is even worse than M was. She’s a terror.”

  “She’s young,” countered Kate. Her voice was sad. “Marak, don’t you think she’s too young to leave us?”

  “No, I don’t, and neither do you. Kate, every mother in the high families goes through this. All the pages move to the pages’ floor; that’s how they make important friendships.”

  “But Catspaw!” objected Kate, thinking of her young goblin son. “He’ll miss her so. They’ve never been apart.”

  “They’ve never stopped fighting, either. His magic’s developing so fast, he’ll probably wind up killing her if we don’t separate them. He’s already singed her hair off twice, and last week I caught him changing her into a duck.”

  Kate left Marak outside the great throne room. Court began, and the stately room buzzed with well-dressed goblins. Marak was listening patiently to a complaint against one of the dwarves who lived in the palace when Emily appeared at the edge of the crowd.

  “That dwarf’s been moving the wall between our apartments a little bit each day,” declared a goblin. “My bedroom keeps getting smaller and smaller. The furniture won’t fit.”

  “Rubbish!” scoffed the dwarf. “I never did.” Emily maneuvered until she was right behind him and began gesturing significantly to Marak.

  “Did you measure your bedroom?” the King inquired of the goblin.

  “I did, but the tape measure’s metal, so it does just what he wants! The numbers keep getting closer together, but the measurement stays the same. And there’s barely room for the bed now. My clothes are in the hall!”

  Marak turned to the dwarf, but Emily had shouldered past him. “I have to talk to you!” she whispered frantically.

  “Just a moment,” the goblin King said graciously to the crowd, and he escorted the young woman from the dais. He opened the door of a small anteroom and motioned her inside.

  “Why do you insist on interrupting me while I’m holding court?” he demanded.

  “It’s important,” pleaded Emily. “Marak, just this once!”

  “It isn’t just this once. Every few weeks I look up and there you are, hopping around as if you have an incurable twitch.”

  “But it’s urgent! I need to speak to you as soon as possible!”

  “All right,” promised the goblin King. “I’ll be back as soon as possible.” He left her in the anteroom and locked the door. Three hours later, he unlocked it again. “Now, why did you need to speak to me?”

  Emily was sitting on the floor unraveling a gold tassel. She glared at her brother-in-law.

  “As soon as possible? I could have died in here!”

  “I don’t see how,” he remarked thoughtfully, looking around the room. “And I couldn’t possibly see you until court was over. We had a v
ery busy morning. You’ve been crying,” he added, pleased to have noticed. He had learned to detect these sorts of things during the eight years that the sisters had been in his underground realm.

  “Of course not,” said Emily tartly, and the goblin let the matter pass. “Marak, I want to go outside the kingdom, but for some reason the iron doors won’t let me out.”

  “I told them not to,” he replied. “Why do you need to go out?”

  “I want to spend some time outside the kingdom, and I don’t see why I shouldn’t be allowed to.”

  “How long?” asked Marak.

  Emily hesitated. “I don’t know. Maybe just a few days. Or maybe longer. It depends on how long things take.”

  “A quest?”

  Emily nodded.

  “What a remarkable coincidence! Two quests in one day. What exactly are you going to find?”

  “My human nature,” replied Emily solemnly. She had practiced for this moment. She sat in dignified silence while the goblin King laughed.

  “Your human nature?” he hooted. “You won’t have to look very far! Why do you persist in lying to me when you know I can tell?”

  “I’m not lying,” asserted the girl. “Allow me to quote to you from that indispensable manual, The Care and Maintenance of Human Brides.” She produced the battered old volume from behind her back.

  “You’ve been rifling through my workroom again,” observed Marak, and his voice had a dangerous edge. During Emily’s checkered career with the pages, she had sat through many a tense moment with her brother-in-law, and she knew every dangerous edge his voice possessed. This one was only annoyance. She decided to ignore it.

  “‘The human bride should, if possible, be left in her natural surroundings until maturity,’” she intoned. “‘This allows the distinctive nature of her race the full time to develop. If called into the kingdom too quickly, she loses the opportunity to try her human traits in their proper setting. Her subsequent strength of character may be diminished.’” She put down the book and gazed severely at the goblin. “You didn’t do that with me.”

  Marak grinned. “And just look at your weakness of character! M, this is absurd, and you know it. Give me back my book, and stay out of my workroom.”

  The young woman handed over the book, struggling to control herself.

  “It isn’t absurd!” she insisted. “I’ve lived down here so long, I don’t remember what it’s like outside. I want to go see it again. I’ve lost something out there. It’s something I want, Marak. Or something I think I want. I need to find it again. I need to find out.”

  The goblin King pushed his hair out of his face and paused for a moment, deep in thought. “What if you don’t find what you’re looking for?” he asked.

  Emily’s face fell. She hadn’t considered defeat. She never did.

  “I’ll come back and get married,” she said. “To anybody.”

  Her brother-in-law studied her shrewdly.

  “M, there’s something you need to know,” he said, choosing his words with care. “If you go hunting outside, you’ll find what I want you to find. And nothing more. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” she muttered. “But I still want to try.”

  “All right. You can try. But I’ll have to send someone with you. You don’t have a shred of magic to protect you out there.”

  Emily brightened a little. “Tinsel could go.”

  “And Tinsel could fall into line with any idiotic plan you think up. Tinsel’s too nice, and he’s never been a match for your clever talk. None of your page friends have been, for that matter. I’ll send someone else. You may leave tomorrow morning. Come see me in the workroom right after breakfast; I need to work some tracking magic. Then I’ll let you out. I’ll have your escort waiting in the guardroom with an adequate pack.”

  “But—what’s wrong with leaving this evening?” demanded Emily, mentally calculating how far Seylin might have traveled. “It won’t take that long to get ready, and the trading carts always leave at night.”

  “M, you don’t want to live like a goblin,” reproved Marak, his eyes bright. “Up at dawn, that’s how your people live. Remember, you’re seeking your human nature.” His shouts of laughter followed her as she stomped off down the hall.

  Emily hardly slept that night. It didn’t matter that Marak had laughed at her. The goblin King had fallen for her arguments, and Seylin was as good as found. He would be upset at first, of course, but a few well-chosen words and he would see that it was all nonsense. Better yet, she could make him see that it was all his fault, and he would give up the idea of an elf bride. Once back in the kingdom, she could stall them both on the marriage issue. Not that it would be such a bad idea to marry Seylin eventually, but having to talk over every plan with another person before you did anything sounded awfully boring. Married people were always so serious.

  In the morning, the goblin King was perfectly cordial. As he cut a lock of her hair and pricked her finger, he delivered a few words of advice on life in the human world. Emily didn’t pay any attention. She wouldn’t be in the human world very long. She asked him discreet questions about Seylin’s quest instead, and he was surprisingly cooperative. He told her about Seylin’s odd feeling while he was on his trading journey and about the promises Marak had made not to interfere.

  “I told him I wouldn’t order anyone to follow him,” he observed. “I informed the assembly at breakfast about his search for elves and forbade them to contact the elves he may find. You should have been there. You would have learned more than you’re learning now, and you would have started your journey with a decent meal.”

  “I’m not hungry,” she assured him absently. The goblins were ordered not to contact any elves, she noticed, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t contact Seylin. Her escort might protest this course of action, but she would soon talk him around. Goblins were entirely too docile, she reflected. The King’s magic didn’t allow them to disobey.

  “Enjoy your quest,” he said as he solicitously healed the pinprick. “I suppose I should wish you good luck.”

  Emily smiled. “My luck has always been good,” she informed him.

  Marak smiled back. Amusement glinted in his odd-colored eyes, but, then, he was always amused about something.

  “Who are you sending with me?” she wanted to know.

  “Someone I can count on,” he answered vaguely. “A good companion for a quest in the human world.”

  Emily should have been more suspicious.

  She left her monkey in the care of a fellow page and hurried to the guardroom. It was empty except for one short, heavyset figure wearing a voluminous black cloak, leaning over and rummaging in a large pack. The figure straightened up and turned around, and Emily let out a howl of dismay.

  “EM!” The voice screeched like a knife blade scratching slate. “What is this nonsense about your trudging around outside on some ridiculous hunt? This is one of your sly tricks again, isn’t it? Well? Answer me!”

  The woman peering accusingly at Emily had translucent light green skin, and Emily had once told another page that she was as wide as she was tall. Her eyes were so pale that the pupil and a dark gray ring at the edge of the iris were their only color. The goblins called them white eyes, and their stare was disagreeably mesmerizing. Her mouth was very broad and lipless, rather like that of a frog, with large yellow teeth that leaned to and fro at odd angles. Her hair, strangely enough, was as beautiful as Kate’s: golden, curling locks that she wore pulled back in a modest bun. The whole effect of her appearance was dismally unpleasant. She was simply too ugly for words.

  “Ruby! I can’t believe it!” exclaimed Emily. She turned to the silent walls. “Marak!” she cried. “Is this your idea of a joke?”

  “I’ll thank you to call me Lore-Master Ruby, you little minx,” snapped the woman. “And I don’t want to hear any more disrespectful complaints against our King.”

  Ruby’s charming name had nothing to do with the gems
tone; it was very close to the goblin word for “teacher.” Her happy parents had given her the name after the midwife had detected a strong talent for this profession in their newborn. Ruby was one of many goblin women with no interest in marriage. She had been teaching, according to the pages, since the Dawn of Time. She devoted herself wholeheartedly to the education of young minds, and no teacher ever worked harder, but generations of wretched pages wished that she hadn’t.

  To say that she was Emily’s least favorite teacher would be a dreadful understatement. It would be more accurate to say that she was Emily’s most hated teacher. Lore-Master Ruby was an expert who taught about all things human, and she knew her subject inside and out. Her classes were the most thorough and her tests were the most difficult of any that the pages encountered. But one fact was abundantly clear, from the very first lesson to the last word on the very last test: Lore-Master Ruby absolutely loathed the human race.

  Emily and Ruby had fought for years. Their battlefield was the classroom, and the other pages were the fascinated spectators. Ruby relished the opportunity to point out the inferiorities of humans, and Emily, with her inattentiveness, her quarrelsome nature, and her shrewd manner, was an ideal example.

  By trial and error, Emily had found the perfect revenge. Day after day, she ignored the lessons, reading her own books during class. She never once did the assignments or turned in any homework. But she earned a perfect score on every one of Ruby’s fabulously hard tests. None of the other goblins ever managed it. Only Seylin even came close.

  Ruby ground her yellow teeth with rage over those perfect scores, which made all her careful teaching seem unnecessary. She knew how Emily would gloat the next day in class. “It’s so easy,” she would say cheerfully to the other pages, showing off her test. “But I suppose it’s one of those things only a human can do.”

  Now Emily faced her foe again in the empty guardroom. “Did the King actually choose you to accompany me?” she demanded.