“I have a dad?” asked Richard in amazement.
“Doesn’t everybody?” noted Brindle. “Had a dad, is more like it. Mandrake died a couple of years ago, and that’s lucky for him. Marak was so angry when he found out about you that I thought he’d kill us all. I’m not even old enough to be your dad, and I still shook in my boots.”
Richard’s face fell. “The King didn’t like it, eh?”
“Didn’t like it?! He set a door on fire just by touching it, he was in such a temper! He called in every man who had been outside the kingdom, and he said that if anything like that ever happened again we’d every one of us be sorry.”
“I’ve never been the kind who could please a king,” said the boy with a sigh.
“Don’t worry,” said Brindle. “It’s not your problem. Look here, now. Watch me make these beans jump into the pot.”
“Lumme!” exclaimed Richard, and Brindle laughed at his expression.
“It’s better with bacon, but we didn’t bring any. Here, I’ll teach you the spell.”
Sable fell asleep fairly easily, but she woke up screaming again. She was very apprehensive about leaving the world she knew and going down into the goblin caves. As the evening wore on and they drew closer to the kingdom, she became quieter and quieter.
“Are you sure the goblin King will let me marry you, Tinsel?” she asked anxiously.
“I’m positive,” said Tinsel. “He wants you to be happy.”
“I don’t know why he would want that,” said Sable suspiciously. “Not if he’s the goblin King.”
The goblin King figured very prominently in the elves’ scary stories. Human slaves had modified many of these from the ghost stories they knew in order to entertain the little elf children. The goblin King acted in some like a ghost, in some like an ogre, and in some like the devil himself. What he almost never acted like was an authentic goblin King, but Sable didn’t know that.
Tinsel knew perfectly well why the goblin King would want her to be happy. Marak had reminded the whole party about it before they had left. The First Fathers of the two races were tremendously intelligent, but they were something like amateur experimenters. Neither elves nor goblins reproduced with the careless ease of the human race. Elf women didn’t have the problem of sterility that goblins often had, but they were terribly sensitive to their surroundings. Unhappy elf women bore only one child, whereas happy ones bore three or four. Marak needed as many children as he could get from these last remaining elves to shore up his magical high families, and he had made very sure that his goblins understood this.
The party had been skirting forested hills for some time, and Sable could tell by their excited chatter that the goblins were nearing home. Now they left the forest to cross rolling fields again, and she felt a little relieved. There couldn’t be a cave out here, she thought. But she was wrong.
“Close your eyes,” warned Tinsel. “I don’t want you to be frightened.” Faint with dread, she felt them walking down a long slope.
When Tinsel uncovered her eyes, Sable gasped. They weren’t in a field anymore. They were walking through a long, thin cavern, and her sky was now black stone. The light was very bright, and she could see that not one thing lived here, not a plant, not a field mouse, not a bug. They came to the end of this cavern, and a metal wall faced them. They were trapped, thought Sable in a panic. They would die here in this dead place.
“Welcome, elf brides!” boomed a massive voice, and Sable cringed in fear. “It’s so nice to see pretty elves again.” The iron wall swung forward, and the party walked through. Then it shut with a clang. “Do come see me sometimes,” it invited, “even though I can’t let you out.”
The next cave was large, and horses lived in it; Sable could see their long faces poking out from little rooms on the sides. But the ceiling of this huge room seemed so low, she felt as if it were pushing down to crush her. She felt sick, and she found that she was shaking from head to foot.
From the stable they entered a suite of rooms designed for the reception and marriage of elves, where the goblin men removed the Leashing Spell at a large basin of water. They stopped in a big square waiting room decorated with lavish magnificence, the walls and ceiling covered with golden mosaics of the design that the dwarves liked best. To please the other races, dwarves sometimes made stone plants and flowers, but they never understood the point of making a rock look like something it wasn’t. Their own art aimed at bringing out the natural beauty of stone and metal in intricate progressions and patterns of different colors.
Sable blinked in the bright light and studied the ceiling right above her, dazzled by the glittering tiles. She longed for the simple clutter of the forest, with its living creatures, its gentle movements, and its high, high ceiling of stars.
When she looked down again, a new goblin was standing before them. He was hideous, with eyes of two colors and stiff hair that rustled and moved like a living thing. His lips were brown, as if they were smeared with dried blood; his teeth were like sharp metal knives; and his skin was dreadfully pale, as if he were one of the walking dead.
“Welcome, elf brides, to my kingdom,” the corpselike wraith said pleasantly. “And while I understand that you aren’t yet glad to be here, you may rest assured that I am very glad to have you here. An especially warm welcome to Sable,” and those eyes slid to her face. “It’s been many a long year since we greeted a lord’s daughter in this room.” The bicolor eyes, brilliant in that deathly paleness, bored into her like coals. Sable shivered and hid her face against Tinsel’s chest.
“During the journey,” continued the voice, “you have had some time to become acquainted with the bridegrooms I picked out for you. I don’t expect you to be pleased about your marriages, but if you have any specific objections to make about your bridegrooms, I will be happy to listen to them and see what I can do. Irina, please come with me. Thaydar will wait for you. We’ll talk for a few minutes in the next room, and then you’ll come back here.”
Marak walked into a small room that was decorated as lavishly as the larger one. Against the far wall stood an elaborate stone throne that was carved out of one block. Before the throne was a stone table, its gray-veined surface highly polished, and on the other side of the table was a simple square stool of stone protruding from the floor.
Marak crossed to the throne and sat down on it, considering the elf girl before him. Less sensitive than Sable, Irina was also better prepared. She had been listening to Thaydar’s stories about the goblin King for the last two nights, and she even knew something about what he would look like. Nevertheless, she was taken aback by his bizarre appearance and by all the unfamiliar sights. She wished Thaydar could be there with her.
“Please sit down,” Marak urged, gesturing to the stool beside her. Irina looked at the stone seat without much comprehension. Elves didn’t use furniture, so she wasn’t accustomed to chairs. When she continued to stand, Marak left the matter alone.
“Tell me, do you have any objection to marrying Thaydar?” he asked. “Has anything he’s said or done upset you?”
Irina’s eyes were wandering in a bewildered manner around the room and back to him. She had thought she understood what her new life would be like, but now she was beginning to doubt it. Maybe Sable was right. Maybe Thaydar had just been telling her what she wanted to hear.
“He said—he said—that I wouldn’t have to butcher,” she stammered, looking at the King a little anxiously.
“That upset you?” asked Marak, amused. But he didn’t laugh. Kate had specifically warned him not to.
“Oh! No,” amended Irina. “I really hate to butcher.”
“I promise you won’t have to,” said the goblin King graciously, and the girl relaxed a little.
“Do you like Thaydar?” he asked with interest.
“Oh, yes,” confided Irina. “He knows all kinds of things, and he’s just so strong and scary, and he doesn’t ever let anybody tease me.”
“Did
my goblins tease you?” asked Marak in surprise.
“No,” said Irina, “but he would have pummeled them if they had. And he said I could have, oh, all kind of things, dresses and mirrors and presents.” She looked at the goblin King hopefully. She was starting to regain her confidence.
“He’ll give them to you,” promised Marak. “Thaydar is a very important goblin in this kingdom, and he can have anything he wants. You’re right that he knows things. He’s my military commander, and he advises me. If I were to die, he would take over running the kingdom until my son was old enough to rule.”
“Oh,” said Irina, tremendously impressed. Kings and kingdoms sounded so grand. “Thaydar says I’m pretty,” she told him with innocent satisfaction. “He says I’m the prettiest thing he ever saw.”
“I’m sure he wouldn’t lie,” commented the goblin King helpfully.
“Am I the prettiest thing you ever saw?” she asked. Marak fixed her with a thoughtful gaze.
“No,” he answered steadily. “My wife is the prettiest thing I ever saw.”
Irina considered this.
“I think that’s so sweet,” she said, beaming at him. Marak propped his chin on his hands and gave her an encouraging smile.
“So you don’t mind marrying Thaydar,” he concluded. “Is there anything else that’s worrying you? Anything you’d like to mention?”
“There is one thing,” she confessed reluctantly. “I’m not old enough to be married yet, not for six months.”
“So you’re seventeen?” inquired the goblin King.
“I don’t know,” said Irina.
“I think it would be fine for you to be married now,” said Marak cautiously, watching her face. “Does that bother you?”
“No,” answered the elf girl carelessly. “Thaydar says it’s just a lot of nonsense.”
Marak grinned. “I’m sure he’s right,” he said. “Thaydar knows all kinds of things.”
The group waited quietly in the large room. Long stone benches ringed the walls on three sides, but no one sat down.
The door opened, and Irina emerged.
“Sparks came out of my hand,” she giggled to her bridegroom.
“That’s wonderful!” said Thaydar warmly.
Seylin smiled to himself. It wasn’t exactly wonderful. Marak had tested her for magical ability, and she was moderately but not thrillingly gifted. Emily sighed. When he had tested her, not even one spark had shown up.
“Sable,” called Marak from the door. He could tell that the other elf was almost fainting with fear. Excellent, he thought with well-concealed glee. Her magical instinct was alert to the danger of goblins, the same sixth sense that had kept Kate fighting to stay away from him. Sable was an aristocrat, there was no doubt about it.
It’s a trick, thought Sable, beside herself with dread. She would go through the door, and they would lock her up; they would torture her and work horrible magic. When Tinsel let her go, she clung to his hands.
“It’s all right,” he told her in a low voice. “I’ll be waiting right here.”
She remembered her dignity. She walked quietly into the small room, her eyes on the floor, somehow managing to pass the goblin King. She didn’t look around as Irina had because she didn’t want to see what was coming. When she heard the door shut behind her, she closed her eyes tightly. Marak walked by her and around the table, studying her attentively as he passed.
“Sable, please sit down,” he invited. “And you’ll need to open your eyes in order to find your seat,” he added helpfully.
Sable stole a quick glance around the room, found the stone stool, and sat down on its edge, head down, clutching her hands together tightly.
“The direct descendant of the noble family Sabul,” mused Marak, looking at his prize capture with acquisitive eyes. “One of the elf King’s eighteen camp lords, among the highest of the high elves. There is nothing in a goblin King’s power that I wouldn’t do to make you happy in your marriage and happy in my kingdom. And look at me when I speak to you,” he added pleasantly. “That’s how business is conducted.”
Sable glanced up at him, wincing. Marak smiled at her.
“That’s better,” he said. “I don’t look as bad as you think. I want you to be happy, Sable. I want it very badly. So why don’t you tell me what’s bothering you because you don’t look very happy at the moment.”
“I can’t live down here!” she burst out desperately. “Nothing lives here, not a tree, not a blade of grass. I can’t even remember how many doors are between me and the stars now, and I can’t breathe anymore!”
“Spoken like a true elf,” remarked the goblin King approvingly. “We’ll take those problems one at a time. The feeling of not being able to breathe is called claustrophobia, and it’s very common in new elf brides. The thing to remember is that air can pass freely through spaces where you are not permitted to go. Even in small rooms like this one, you can usually feel moving air. Do this.” He held his hand up in front of him, and Sable raised her shaking hand to copy. She could feel a tiny breeze flowing past it, and her breathing relaxed slightly.
“Blades of grass. We have lots and lots of those, and we have lots of sheep that eat them. We don’t allow either one indoors, but you can visit them anytime you like. Trees. We don’t have any real trees, but we do have a grove of pretend trees put in for the sake of the elves. They won’t fool you, but you may find they do you a certain amount of good anyway, and if you decide you don’t like them, please do me a favor and don’t breathe a word of it to the dwarves.
“Stars,” he continued. “Stars we don’t have, no stars of any kind. Elf brides in the old days simply had to live without them, and they weren’t happy about that. But you don’t have a race of kinsmen outside waiting to liberate you, so I think I can offer you a compromise. As long as I see you trying to settle into kingdom life, I’ll let you go outside for the night of each full moon. Do you think that will help make up for the lack of stars?”
Sable had been afraid she would never see the night sky again, but now she would see it in just three weeks. She began to lose her fright of the wraithlike goblin King, and the relief showed on her face. Tinsel was telling the truth, and so was he. He did want her to be happy.
“My goblins have relayed to me your fears about childbirth and the shocking condition of life in your camp,” continued Marak. “I want to assure you that what was normal in your camp is not normal at all, and I certainly wouldn’t authorize your marriage if I thought death would be the result.”
“Why would you care?” she whispered. “It’s just what happens.”
“I care because you’re my prisoner and not my subject,” he responded. “I could order one of my subjects to certain death, in battle, for instance, if that death were truly necessary. But you’re a defenseless prisoner who has committed no crime, so I can’t have you killed no matter what the profit might be. It would be demeaning to my kingship.”
There was a small silence, and Sable decided that he expected her to speak.
“Thank you for explaining that you don’t think I’ll die,” she said.
“But you don’t believe me,” commented the goblin King. He paused and thought for a minute.
“Beauty meant everything to the First Fathers of the elves,” he reflected. “It’s a goal that causes problems in elf magic and elf culture, but nowhere is the problem of beauty so great as when the elf woman goes into labor. You elf women are petite and slender, with lovely, tiny bones, but an elf baby is longer-limbed and older than babies of other races, not like an ugly newborn at all. When a fine boned, small elf woman tries to deliver this larger, older baby, death is the logical result. With magic, birth is uncomfortable but achievable. Without magic, another process eventually sets in which usually allows the child to be born but always takes the life of the mother.”
Sable found it hard to believe that magic could make such a difference and that all the elf men in her band would lie. “We were told
that women have to die so babies can be born,” she said. “Magic might just help sometimes.”
“So you would say that the occasional woman might be saved by magic,” suggested Marak, “but that the race was set up with the mother’s death in mind.” Sable nodded. “Not possible, and I can prove it to you.” He hesitated. “At least, I think I can,” he added, looking at her sharply. “Have you learned any math at all? Anything about numbers?”
“Do you mean counting?” asked Sable. “I can count up to eighteen.
“It’s like counting,” Marak said, “and you’re smart, even if you’re untaught. We’ll give it a try. The race of elves came from fifteen First Fathers, and at one point in history there were about four thousand elves. That’s a huge number, Sable—that’s like counting the stars in the sky.”
Sable was impressed. So many elves. So much company. How nice it would have been.
“Now, you notice that the number gets bigger, much bigger. Let’s see if we can do that when the mother dies in childbirth.”
He pulled open a shallow drawer in the table and brought out some shiny gold objects that looked like sharp pins sticking up from flat bases. Sable watched him, secretly a little flattered. Only her father had ever tried to teach her things. Thorn didn’t usually explain himself at all. He just insisted that he was right.
“Here is your elf couple,” said the goblin King, setting up two of the golden spikes before her. “A man and his wife. But the woman can have only one child, and then she dies.”
He advanced another pin. “Here’s the child. It took two parents to produce only one child. When the older generation dies away,” and he covered up the two pins with his hand, “there won’t be more elves than before. The mother has left a child to replace herself, but the father has no child to replace him.”
Sable stared at the pins. She thought about Alder and Rose having just Irina, and Hemlock and May having just Willow. There weren’t more elves than before, there were fewer.