Horded - Kingdom Gone Book 2, page 7
“He said human,” Olin spat. “This isn’t a heart matter.”
“Torg believed she was his tir talus?” She squinted at Tal, pinned him in place and forced an answer with one lifting eyebrow.
“Yes, wise one. Torg believed this thing. The witch enchanted him.”
“Pagh!” Olin clicked, stamped and smote his staff hard against the ground. “Rubbish.”
“The time of human magic is long gone,” Gutra spoke like a chant, hollow and flat and full of power. “I would hear this story of Tal’s from its beginning.”
“I will tell you.” Tal took a slow breath. Not since his parents passed had Torg or he been inside the gaze of the Sol buta. He’d believed that eye would never turn to him again, nor to Torg unless his brother’s mate joined the sisterhood in her turn. For himself, he’d never imagined that honor, and the attention of one such as Gutra slicked his palms and made his feet itch to be at another task—any other task. “First, I found a…”
Vrau shouted close beside him. Tal flinched but kept his eyes on Gutra. To look away, to turn his back on the leader of the gobelin sisterhood would be unforgivably rude, but Vrau called his name next, and Dutat did as well. The horde’s attention shifted, and when Gutra herself finally looked, Tal gave in and turned around.
His crystal jutted through the pocket wall.
Tal peeled back his lips and gnashed his teeth together. His hand fell to his knife, but Dutat already stepped forward.
“Torg returns,” He neared the pocket wall, and Tal dove for him.
“No!” The horde silenced again. Dutat frowned at him. All of them did, judging, as if he had done this thing, as if Torg had not grown foolish and run off to play amongst humanity. “Torg wouldn’t need to use it here.”
“Dust!” It sounded like Gutra’s voice, but Tal couldn’t turn to verify it. He watched the crystal bobble and made up his mind before anyone could intercede.
He slipped right up to the membrane and fixed his gaze on his own viewing wand. The sigils were dark. They hadn’t been activated. The wielder was not Torg. They had no magic, and that made them a villain for certain. Tal thrust his arm through the pocket and snatched whatever wrist held his crystal. He latched his fingers tightly round and pulled the thief through.
She fell in a heap at his feet, sprawled in a wad of skirts, screaming like a pig. Dutat’s boot pressed into the small of her back. Tal pulled the crystal from her grip, eyed her carefully, and then nodded and waved the wand for the horde to witness.
“You see!” He shouted it. His redemption lived in the evidence he held. The horde clicked like a swarm of locusts. They snarled and stamped and flashed like fireflies against the night. Tal stood tall and proclaimed it to them all. “It’s her. This is Torg’s witch.”
Chapter Ten
Maera remembered where the imp’s hands had appeared. She’d sat just opposite the inn and the weaver had stood on her porch. She squinted at the empty space and aimed the crystal for the spot where a disembodied Tinker arm had retrieved its silver.
She inhaled and poked the crystal out. Nothing happened. Maera fished with it, stabbing the air and feeling more foolish by the moment. She knew it was here. He’d given her the tool. Maybe she just wasn’t using it correctly? The gobelin had assumed she’d know how to do it, but her stupid human blood would prevent her from making use of the magic in her grip. She bit her lip, poked again and let her frustration lend a touch of fury to the stabbing.
Tal, he’d said. Find Tal. My brother. Little good it would do if she couldn’t even find the pocket.
She wiggled the crystal and felt the first burn of frustration. It would swell if she continued to fail. There would be tears next, real ones, not the ones that only came for a purpose. She imagined the gobelin’s bleeding lips, still smiling despite their wounds, and moved the stone wand to the left, reached out a touch farther. The tip of the crystal vanished.
The suddenness of it made her gasp loud enough to risk discovery. She looked left and right, lifted her chin and eyed the dark windows around the courtyard. Any second, a candle could flare, a voice could shout and bring the mob down on her. She scanned each building, the alley openings, and then brought her eyes back to the crystal.
A knobby green hand covered it. Pointed nails wrapped around her wrist and Maera screamed as something dragged her forward, away from the well and into another world. She hollered again when she hit the ground. Her arms flailed. The stone was ripped from her hand. A boot landed on her spine and pressed her to the cold earth like a beetle.
The night filled with a hum like a thousand insects. She heard them stamp and hiss and knew what they were long before the voice overhead shouted in a foreign tongue. Maera had found the gobelins, but judging from the noises, the sound that rattled the night, she’d encountered far more of them than she’d expected.
One lifted her by the hair. She kicked her legs and tried to twist free of the grip, but it tugged her off balance. She had to throw her arms wide to remain upright. All around, green faces snarled. A giant fire cast them into shadowy monsters. She screamed again before she could clamp her jaw tight, before she could remember that she’d been looking for them. For a specific one of them, that is.
They spoke again, shouting and growling. The man holding her shook her, hard, and she nearly kissed the ground again. Find Tal. My brother. A little one, shorter than Maera, chattered to the others. He pointed from her to the moon and back, then snarled, stamping and waving his arms wide.
“Wait,” her voice cracked around the word and she had to swallow, to try again. “Wait, please!”
The little gobelin spun to face her. He curled his lip and showed her a row of pointed teeth. Still, she recognized his face, was almost certain she knew who he was.
“Tal. I remember you. You’re his brother.”
The gobelin hissed and bounced in place. He spoke her language, but his accent made the words hard to catch. “She lies. She’s taken him with her magic.”
Around them, the clattering and snarling shattered into a softer mumble. Maera saw her chance in their confusion. “No! He told me to find you. He gave me the crystal.”
“Lies!”
“SILENCE!” An ancient woman tottered forward. Her green wrinkles bordered on black, they were so dark in places. Her squint still flashed gold fire, but in thin slits instead of wide orbs. She wrapped her torso in layers of hand-woven cloth, and her steely hair hung loose far down her back. A braid at her temple was bound with a dangling leather strip decorated with feathers. She waddled closer to Maera and spoke slowly in clipped, precise human words. “Silence. I would hear her.”
“They locked him up.” Maera choked it out, hearing the desperation in her voice. She swallowed another lump and stared straight into that yellow gaze. “They’re going to kill him.”
“What do you care?” The woman whispered it, but the whole crowd stilled. The world waited like a caught breath for Maera’s answer. The old gobelin poked one gnarly finger in her direction. “Why do you care if they do?”
“Tir talus.” Maera said the first thing she could think of, the only words the gobelin had given her besides his brother’s name. That hadn’t gotten her anywhere, but this one, this tir talus, swept the gobelin horde into a new fury.
The grip on her hair slackened while its owner joined the arguing, so that Maera could roll the kink out of her neck and left shoulder. Her skirts had leaves and dirt smeared across them, but aside from a skinned knee, she hadn’t fared too poorly considering—at least not yet.
The gobelins were definitely divided on how to deal with her. She feared one group might be eyeing her for the stew pot, but the old woman and a huge man with furs piled across his shoulders seemed to be the two in charge. Their argument held her attention. It obviously weighed far more heavily on her future than the snarling masses around them.
She didn’t figure her input could help at this point. Aside from “Find Tal” and “Tir talus,” the gobelin hadn’t given her much to defend herself with. Maera took the moment to examine her surroundings instead. If she needed an escape, if she’d hoped to find a chink in the gobelin wall that held her, her appraisal came up empty.
A cluster of women huddled behind the old one. They faced off against a group of men, and she could only guess which side wanted her dead more than the other. Another forty or more of the tribe milled around behind them, and beyond that group, Maera could only see the shadows cast by the huge fire. Tents perhaps, rounded shapes and the glinting of more weapons.
Most of the gobelins dressed in leather pants, fur or cloth shirts and more straps and spikes than she could identify. The women wore skirts, but these were split and showed tight, leather breeches beneath, revealing the shape of legs that made Maera blush but also sparked a thread of jealousy. A girl could move in clothes like that. She could run, jump or ride without fighting yards of fabric. Even their arms were free, bare but for short traces of sleeve.
The argument settled into a series of growling clicks. Maera sensed her fate had already been decided. From the stances, the triumphant and conceding expressions, she assumed the old woman had won. What that meant for her, she could only guess.
While she waited, the little gobelin, the one she’d labeled the brother, Tal, crept close to her. He curled his lip and peered into her face. Maera stared back at him and then stuck out her tongue. His eyes stretched wide. They flashed, and a small line etched between his brows.
“They’re going to kill him,” she repeated it, but this time only for this one’s ears. Her words had an effect. She could see the concern brewing behind his disbelief and fury. “He needs our help, Tal.”
“Witch.” He hissed again, but it had lost its force. Maera shook her head and saw his lips tighten. His mind worked on sorting out the truth.
“He’s already hurt.” She pressed her luck, and saw his concern for his brother flare in his yellow eyes. This was Tal. Maera would have bet her life on it. She probably already had. “We have to help him, Tal.”
Too much. He flinched away from her and snarled. “Torg does not need your help, human.”
“Torg.” He hadn’t given her his name. Now, the sound of it ignited an anger of her own. “Torg sent me to find you. He gave me the crystal because he believed you would help him. He trusted you not to leave him there, not to do this!”
She reached up toward the hand still gripping her hair, and was lifted to her toes again for her trouble. Her scalp pulled and ached where the huge gobelin held on. That one was a brute, tall and broad and even more spiky than the others. She could see the bones around his neck, the string of dead rabbits and the huge, bloody white stag on the ground behind him. Him, she had no desire to argue with.
And yet, he answered for her case. “So you did leave him, Tal.”
“Only to come here. I came to get Torg help, human. You drew him astray to begin with.”
“But no one is helping him!” Maera heard the whine in her voice and hated it. The pitch worked, however. It got the gobelin leaders’ attention.
The big one set her back on her feet. If he held her hair a bit looser, if the hand on her back had a gentler touch to it, she couldn’t be certain. It felt different somehow, as did the mood of the horde when the huge leader and the hunched woman stepped forward together. It was the man who spoke, who crossed his huge arms over his chest and gave a sage jerk of his head.
“We have decided,” he announced, but Maera would have bet it had been the woman who’d decided. She read the smug expression on that face as a victory. The old woman had won their debate, and though the clan leader would deliver the news, it was her wrinkled face that grinned over the decision. “That you will go to Torg’s aid.”
The gobelin that held Maera’s hair spoke. He waved his free arm to another that could have been his twin. “Vrau and I will go with Tal.”
“No.” Again, the man spoke, but it was the old woman who shook her head. “Not you. Tal and the human will go. They will free Torg and return with him together.”
“But—”
“Dutat!” The bark came from both leaders. They exchanged another look, one that made plain exactly how disagreeable the chieftain found this decision. He turned to Torg’s brother and then to Maera, and his eyes held fire. “You two will do this. You will go, and we will see.”
What they would see, he didn’t outline. No matter. Maera knew enough of politics to understand they were at play here. Whatever the gobelins meant to discover, her life would hang on the swing of it. She nodded, ignored the gasp of the little green man beside her and waited for them to let her go.
She’d free this Torg. She owed him that for her part in his plight, but once he’d gotten away, once his brother and he were reunited, Maera would have to run for her life.
Chapter Eleven
“We should hurry.” The witch goaded him as if she meant to follow Olin’s and Gutra’s orders. “I don’t know how much time he has.”
Tal kept his back to her. He continued to dig through their belongings, strapping knives to his boots, his belt and the leather bands that crossed his chest. His quiver held all of their arrows combined, but he slung a second, shorter bow across his opposite arm. Then he eyed the camp he shared with his brother, searched the hides and parcels for any weapon he might have forgotten.
“You won’t need all that. We can’t fight them anyway. In case you haven’t worked that out, they have us outnumbered.”
He grunted and looked one last time. The human wanted to rush, well, so did he. But if hurrying played into her plans, then he wasn’t about to oblige her. No doubt, the minute they crossed into the pocket, her waiting army would destroy him as they had Torg. He clicked his teeth and then, when he couldn’t find another thing to pack, focused on the witch. “So we’ll just go and ask your people to give Torg back. Yes, I see it now.”
“Don’t you want to help him?”
“Do you mean to enchant me as well? Will you lead me away like a drunken faun?”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
He snorted and jumped up, spinning around to stare her dead in the eye. They stood about the same height, and she didn’t flinch when he growled a warning. “It means I’ve been found guilty and sent to pay for leaving Torg in your clutches.”
“What?” She frowned and looked around them. The horde had gone back to their business. Not one of the gobelins paid them any heed now, at least not directly. Tal caught the stolen looks, the sideways shaking of a few heads, but the human was far too dense to understand the ways of gobelins. She tried, matching his growl and then stomping her foot against the ground. “Do you really believe they wouldn’t even try to help him?”
“Torg is probably dead already.” He clicked at the thought, gnashed his fears away in a surge of anger. Torg lost to him, and he was saddled with the woman who’d done the deed. Maybe Olin meant for him to kill her. Maybe he’d capitulated to appease Gutra, but really meant for Tal to act in a different fashion. He’d seen no sign of it, nor had the chieftain shown any interest in communicating with him since the announcement. More likely he’d been banished for letting Torg fall, sent to his death to pay for his brother’s.
“Don’t you care?” She had a high voice that whined like the wind.
He hissed at her stupidity.
“Or maybe you’re afraid to go. You’re stalling now, and your brother could end up paying the price for it.”
“Human fool!” He grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her with him. The pocket wall curved around behind the campsite. Torg had chosen the spot for its proximity to the membrane. Now Tal dragged his brother’s destroyer to the barrier. He touched the wall, aligned the pockets and pulled her through with him into the spot where he’d last seen his brother, where his fire still smoldered. They’d been this close to safety, and they’d opted to wait. He should have seen in Torg’s face, should have guessed he’d meant to return for the girl.
“I’m a fool?” She eyed the well, the patch of bloody grass where the stag had lain, and grimaced. “I’m a fool. Well, it takes an even bigger one to miss what happened back there.”
Tal dropped into a crouch and withdrew the crystal wand from his belt, back where it belonged, and yet, now he’d need it to see again.
“Are you listening to me?”
“No.” He rubbed some fresh dust into the grooves.
“Well then you’re worse than a fool. I saw what that old woman did. I saw her face. You’d have to be completely blind not to see it.”
Tal sighed and peered up at her. Gutra and the Sol buta were a mystery to him. Despite his horror at their predicament, he couldn’t suppress his curiosity. What had the human made of the matriarch’s decision? He arched one brow and tilted his head sharply to the side.
“It’s a test,” she said. The annoying jut of her chin didn’t lessen the truth of her words any. “They’re testing us, idiot. And you’re already screwing it up.”
Tal pointed the crystal at her. He could strike her down easily here. Her blood would mingle with the stag’s, a fitting homage to Torg’s glory. Yet he saw Gutra’s challenge in her stance, in the way her hands settled on her hips and the way she stared and stared at him.
Testing us, she’d said. She’d picked up on his failure, yes, but why would the horde test the witch as well? Unless Gutra actually gave some weight to the tir talus claim.
“Well?” She buzzed at him, insect like, grating.
“How many?”
“Huh?”
“Outnumbered by how many?”
“If they know we're there, at least forty.” Her eyes dared him to challenge her. Forty was a lot of humans for one gobelin to slay. If she had any magic, he didn't figure she'd use it against them and if she didn't, they would never succeed.
