Chelsea and Swindle Read online

  I concentrated in the dark for five seconds and then saw it worked when light began to shine through my eyelids. I let my light spell float into the room and moved about within, shedding light in all directions. Her grandfather was not inside.

  After we checked that room, Mina said we had checked everywhere, so there was nothing left to do. She thanked us for our help and told us not to tell anyone about this place.

  “We won’t,” I said.

  Chapter 9 A Wood Nymph

  We had completed our first mission uneventfully.

  Night was coming and we didn’t want to spend it in the underground lab, so we went to the surface and camped out in a place that was clear enough to lie down and rest.

  Later that night, I awoke hearing Swindle mumble something. I rolled over and saw under the moonlight a strange, slender woman standing over Swin. She appeared to be no older than us. Her skin had a soft green glow. The young woman’s hair was the color of spinach; her complexion a light green like pond water. She wore a dress the color of grass that appeared to be made of silk.

  Her glow made her easy to see, yet the woods were very dark everywhere else, so I zapped my wand’s light to see better in the dark. The woman stepped back, shielding her eyes with her arms from the light. I reassured her. “It’s okay. It’s only magical light.”

  She seemed to calm down. I focused the light on Swin instead.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “I need your help,” the green girl said, ignoring my question.

  “What do you need us for?” I asked.

  “I’ve a tomb in my woods. And it has become…impure. I want your help.”

  “Impure?” Swin asked.

  “A poor goblin child was kidnapped by an adventurer and forced to reveal the location of their chiefs’ burial ground. They both ended up trapped within. I unsealed the tomb, and I found the goblin trapped inside. The adventurer was already dead, but it didn’t stay dead. Will you please help?”

  “Didn’t stay dead?” Swin asked, confused.

  “He has become undead,” said the green girl.

  “Yes, we will help,” I said before Swin could talk. I didn’t know if saying no was safe. “But we don’t know your name?” I asked.

  She did not speak for second. “Ash. My name is Ash.”

  We got our stuff together quickly.

  “Follow me, please,” she said.

  “What is she?” Swindle whispered to me while we hastily gather our stuff to follow her.

  “She’s a forest nymph. Similar to how a gardener makes a garden more beautiful. Only with forest nymphs, their life force and power are attached to the woods.”

  “Are these green people harmful?” Swindle asked.

  “Only if we threaten her or the woods. They generally tolerate people.”

  “What about the woodsman we saw?”

  “They allow woodsmen to take down some trees so others can get more light and grow stronger.”

  I decided to ask a few questions of our host. “You said there is an undead creature. Do you know what kind?” I asked, trying to catch up.

  She stopped, half-turned, and shook her head. “No, but it is making me sick because it’s in my woods.”

  “Ash, will you help us fight this thing?” I asked.

  “I can’t. The tomb is a place of death. It would be like one of you walking into a house that is on fire.”

  “You can do nothing?” I asked.

  “It’s down the hall and locked behind a closed door,” she said.

  “What’s the goblin name?” Swindle asked.

  “Tuk.”

  My wand’s light found the tomb. It was a stone structure that looked very old. Two large yellow eyes peered out.

  My light pointed at the eyes and found a little goblin in the tomb’s doorway. His eyes were twice the size of a human’s. His nose was flat as if broken, but the pictures in my books showed their noses were always flat. The goblin stood about knee high. Tuk might grow a bit more, but his kind never got much taller.

  “So you’re the goblin who was kidnapped?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  Without another word, we entered. The floors were dark gray stone. Above, thick webs were populated by spiders. Their bodies were the size of a fist and their legs twice as long as a human finger. My light made them crawl deeper into thick, dusty webs on the ceiling.

  “Will the spiders be trouble?” I asked.

  Tuk looked up to me. “No. I tried eating them. Bad for stomach.”

  “Oh, um, thanks for the tip.” Yuck.

  The goblin walked down a hall. “Be respectful. You are in a goblin tomb.”

  We followed Tuk.

  The stone wall had chiseling in the language of ancient humans. I’d seen the script in some of the magic books I read. Likely, the goblin tribe borrowed the tomb for their chiefs.

  Six strides ahead, near the end of the hall, came a loud pounding on a wooden door. With the beating came a sound like a dying calf’s last moans.

  A chill went down my spine.

  Fear was in Swindle’s eyes. “Stay back when I open the door.”

  I nodded, spear ready.

  Swin held his sickle at the ready. His eyes, unblinking, fixed on the door.

  Tuk squeaked open the door. There was silence from the other side while the door opened.

  What stood in the vault with gold coins at its feet was no longer human. Its eyes were dry and crusted with blood. It did not blink, but rather its eyes remained open as if in permanent shock. Every strand of white hair stood tall on its head. The rest of its hair lay in clumps on the floor as if pulled out a fistful at a time.

  Clop, clop. Its mouth kept opening and snapping shut.

  Nothing moved other than its mouth.

  Fear froze me.

  Tuk ended the standstill by yelling, “Come and get me!” He sounded eager still for vengeance.

  The thing lunged at Tuk but met my spear instead. I think it felt pain, because its face twisted as if hurt and a rotting breath jetted from the undead’s mouth.

  The monster leapt back into the room, landing on all fours. With a snarl, the monster leapt at me like deranged a frog.

  This time Swin was ready, hooking his sickle into the monster’s eye. I speared its neck, pinning it to the wall.

  The creature remained still.

  I heard only Swin’s heavy breathing and Tuk’s seething breath.

  I pulled out my spear and the undead plunked onto the ground.

  I stabbed it again. Nothing.

  From outside the tomb’s opening, Ash announced, “It’s dead. I can feel it.”

  Tuk said, “One down, three more adventurers to go.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked Tuk.

  “This was one of the adventurers who killed my tribe.” Tuk pointed to the undead creature. “Three more to go.”

  I had no time to worry about the goblin’s troubles with adventurers. What ran through my mind was that we survived.

  We got paid for the uneventful search of the necromancer’s lab. This fight was hell, and the irony was that helping the wood nymph was an unpaid mission.

  Chapter 10 Burn

  Outside, Ash looked relieved. The green woman smiled. “You have done me a great service. Could you take it out of my land and burn it?”

  I sighed. “After we rest.”

  Tuk ate with us by a fire. Ash gave us berries that she guessed we would like. “The woodsmen eat them,” she said.

  “Take me to the city, please,” Tuk said.

  The poor thing had no tribe. The city might not be good for him. All goblins in the city were poor. Maybe if he stayed with us, he would be fine.

  “You think the adventurers are there?” Swindle asked Tuk.

  Tuk did not speak for a second, and then said, “Yes.”

  “They’ll kill you,” I said. Taking him to the city was a bad idea. “Tuk, how old are you?”

  “Seven,” Tuk said.r />
  Ash had said he was young.

  “Why don’t you come to the orphanage with us, and we’ll see from there?” I figured over time Tuk would come to his senses.

  Tuk looked at me for a while and said, “Okay.”

  Before we moved the undead creature, I took a bottle out and let the ichor drip from its body. I had read in some books that undead ichor had value. I’d no doubt the necromancer’s granddaughter was a necromancer herself. Maybe I could sell it to her.

  While I filled my bottle, Swindle talked with Ash. I did not hear the words, but she seemed to have asked him a question from his tone. I heard her reply, “I believe this will help.” It seemed if she handed him something. Help with what?

  We dragged out the undead creature from the tomb and took it through the forest.

  “So, what made this creature?” Swindle asked.

  “Hate,” I said. “It hated Tuk for trapping it. That emotion took over when it died.”

  We got sticks that Ash gave us from dead dry trees and burned the body in a clearing. It smelled terrible—like rot and mildew clumped together.

  We returned to the King’s Road. On the way, we told Tuk our story of how we ended up in the forest. Tuk listened closely.

  “Were any of the ghouls half-goblin?” Tuk asked about the necromancy lab.

  “No, these where orc, human, or maybe elfish in appearance. Why?” I asked.

  “Ghouls turned a friend of mine.”

  “Horrible.”

  It wasn’t until we were in the city that Tuk jumped up and down excitedly and yelled, “Them, it’s them!” He did not point to any people, but to the four banners that hung from the barracks walls—one for each of the heroes of Ice Hills. They killed the orc chief Alquin.

  “That’s the one who became an undead.” Tuk pointed to the tapestry of the slender one with long copper hair; their scout and rumored former pirate. His hair was white when we saw him in the tomb. It must have paled upon becoming undead.

  “The rest were with him before he took me to the tombs.”

  “Those were the people?” I asked. “Don’t fight them. They’ll kill you.”

  “How strong can they be? You killed one.”

  “Yes, but it took two of us to kill him, and he was already dead,” I said. It said a lot about my life that I could say something like that.

  Tuk spat. “Like you said before, he was undead and strong. Killing is easy. People die easily. It is fear that shields tyrants from death. Those who are not afraid can kill the strongest man.”

  His words sounded wrong. No goblin that young, or even any goblin, could sound that intelligent. He sounded like a cynical elf or human. I wondered if we misunderstood the goblin people. Maybe he was an exception, but maybe there were more like him.

  Chapter 11 Home

  When we got back to the orphanage, the strangest thing happened. Dirk got better. Dirk only said, “Swin visited me, and I woke up feeling well.”

  I smiled and prepared food for him. Later, I got Swindle alone.

  “So, Dirk wakes up better without help of a priest?” I asked.

  “He’s just lucky, I guess,” Swin said.

  “You spoke to Ash while I got ichor from the undead creature.”

  Swin nodded.

  “You knew she might have something that could help Dirk.”

  He nodded again. “It was a guess actually.”

  I felt there was more to this. “You’re the reason Dirk got sick, right? The words of the priest who came said Dirk was cursed because he ‘helped a follower of an illegal god.’”

  “Yes, I think I’m the reason Dirk got sick.”

  “But why didn’t the gods make you sick and not him?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe they can’t.”

  “But then why are you a big deal? What did you do?”

  “Nothing…I’ve done nothing, yet.”

  I stared at him. Swindle said nothing for a while. “Has this God shown any interest in you?”

  “Something came to me one night. It told me it wanted to return to its people, but first the other fake gods had to be taken away. Whatever it was glowed like the sun in my room.”

  “That’s not just one of the illegal gods but the illegal god.”

  “I think the gods are evil. This God is not.”

  “So, you should have turned it down anyway.” I sat down on the floor and chose my next words carefully. “If something were to happen to you…”

  Swin nodded. “I wanted to turn it down, but it said it saw the good in me.”

  “Good in you? I’ve seen you pick your nose. Swin, you have to think this through. Other people still might get hurt. And what does it want from you?”

  “To bring about the destruction of the usurpers—the gods.”

  “Get out of this relationship.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  I looked in Swin’s eyes and saw he was serious, but I hoped he’d see reason. The gods cursed Dirk, but not Swin. That I found strange, but the gods never made full sense.

  But I also had other worries. Tuk. He’d been leaving the orphanage. I wondered what he was up to.

  One day I saw him sitting in Philosophers’ Square listening to the men debate one another. These were mostly old men in their retirement years, such as generals and logographers, with a few young students in between.

  Tuk was the only goblin who sat and listened. There were other goblins, but they were working in the square. One was selling dried fruit, and none seemed to be paying attention to the philosophical discourse.

  I sat there as I always did, but I did not invade Tuk’s space. It was Tuk who came to me. “My father would speak like them. Speaking is a weapon too. Speak right, speak smart, and you can make an enemy look silly.”

  “Is everything about fighting to you?”

  “With the right word you can get everything you want. So yes, it’s a fight, especially if you’re a goblin.”

  I thought about what he said. It seemed true the way he said it. Not for the first time, I wondered if perhaps goblins were not a lesser race.

  “I suppose you’re right, but there are more fun things than fighting, true?” I asked.

  “Yes. Like play?”

  I nodded.

  “No one wants to play with a goblin, and you are too old to play.”

  True again.

  Tuk’s attention turned to the philosophers who were busy debating revenge. Tuk growled. One old man said, “Revenge is always wrong, or most often wrong, because the one who is vengeful gives an undue load of hurt to the one who did the harming. The punishment seldom is of equal measure to the crime.”

  “You say it’s bad,” Tuk yelled, “yet you who live in the city know nothing. The city constables do vengeance for you, but a goblin knows harm and anger that goes untouched by justice.”

  “An articulate goblin,” said Purin, one of the philosophers. “Stay here, young man, and when you are an adult, join us. I doubt with you there will be a dull moment.”

  The others laughed and spoke on as if he hadn’t said anything.

  Chapter 12 Tuk

  Tuk often walked alone. While on one of these strolls, he was thinking long and hard about what the philosophers said when he heard a laugh. He turned his head to see who it was. Across the street he spied someone he recognized—the wizard who attacked his tribe. The city still had his banner hanging from the royal barracks with the others. He was talking with a friend. The wizard glanced Tuk’s way but, to tall folk, all goblins looked alike.

  Rage burned away all thoughts of philosophy. In its place were the final seconds of battle when the wizard killed his father. But this was not the time to show anger, so he covered his rage with a smile and leaned back against a lamppost trying to look casual.

  Tuk spied on the wizard from the corner of his eye. The man opened a door to a house.

  Knowing that goblin tribes made magical traps to protect their caves, he guessed that the wizard’s hou
se must be no different.

  Tuk wondered if he should wait. It was already getting dark, and the streets were empty.

  After waiting a few minutes, Tuk went to the front door. He knew how to check for magical traps in a manner that no human or elf would use. Father had taught him that elves and humans put themselves at a disadvantage with pride.

  Pride would not hold Tuk back. He peed on the door. There was no flicker of light or sparks, so therefore, no magical traps.

  He turned the knob. Locked. Tuk pulled out a set of lock picks. The goblin had traded for them with another orphan. He knew if the adventurers were living in the city, he’d need them. Besides, lock picks were something all goblins needed—they were all sneaks. Click. The door unlocked, and he was in. This scared Tuk. Too easy. But Tuk guessed it was merely that the wizard failed to think he was in any danger. He was the hero of the city. Surely, even if someone dared rob this hero, the wizard would be able to defend himself.

  The knife. Where is the knife? Tuk asked himself as he looked around. He kept his eyes and ears open for the wizard. He thought he heard on the edge of his hearing what sounded like heavy breathing. Perhaps the wizard was sleeping.

  The wizard’s place was different from the cave Tuk grew up in. Rather than piles of things like in a goblin warren, it was sparse. Why would a rich man have so little?

  He found the wizard asleep in his bed. Above the wizard’s bed was the knife Tuk’s father held when he died. It clearly was a trophy to the wizard. But why? Why?

  A plan came to the goblin. He would take the knife and cut the human’s throat to make it look like a robbery. They’d never guess a goblin child did it. They’d blame it on an orc or a human. It was the perfect murder.

  Tuk climbed the dresser and from there got his feet to the head of the bed. On his tiptoes, he reached for the knife. He lifted the knife from the hooks that cradled it above the bed.

  A cold, soft hand grabbed his leg.

  “What are you doing, you mongrel?” the wizard snarled.