The handwriting changed abruptly. The letters were poorly formed, the entries short. He frowned for a long minute over a passage before he could understand it. The writer was mixing elvish and English in the most bizarre fashion. All he could gather was that several slaves had escaped because the Camp Spell broke. That must have been the last time they had a properly working camp perimeter.
On the next page, he found little more than lists of births and deaths. New handwriting, and the elvish numbers and dates were gone. Now the entries were nothing but English written very clumsily in the elvish phonetic hooking script. Some of them were almost impossible to decipher. He read one out loud, running his finger under the line, and Sable came to his rescue.
“That’s from my grandfather,” she said. “My father told me about it, when the last slave died. She was an old human woman who raised the children. All the other slaves were long gone because by then they could get away, but she stayed because she’d been there since she was young and she loved the children so. My father said the whole band, more than twenty of them there were then, they cried for days when she died. She was like the mother to the whole camp, that woman, and Father said he never cried so hard for an elf as he did when that ugly old human died.
“Here’s my father’s writing,” she continued, turning the page, and Seylin stared in dismay. Only the most rudimentary of elf characters sounded out the English names. Instead of “born,” a star next to the name. Instead of “dead,” a cross. A human must have taught her father that—maybe the old human woman he remembered so fondly. Here were the elves of the current camp. Ro-we, Rowan. La-ha-ril, Laurel, that was the woman whose death Thorn had failed to record. And then, somewhat crude, but confident and clear, the name of Lord Sabul, with a star for birth and a stick figure in a dress to show the gender.
“That’s me,” said Sable, touching it with her finger. “That’s when I was born.”
Seylin shifted on the cave floor and flipped back to the first page, with its elegant, curling script and capable, crisp prose. And then to the last. Scrawled English names, symbols, and picture writing. Blots and scratches on the page. He imagined the last Lord Sabul sitting in this filthy cave in his filthy rags, trying his best to carry on the lord’s duty of updating the camp chronicles. And now they didn’t even have a lord. The camp leader was nothing more than its meanest, toughest member, ruling because of his ambition and his fists. Seylin shook his head sadly as he flipped through the pages again. Nine generations since the death of the last elf King, and the Top Shield Star Camp was finished.
He glanced up out of his reverie to meet a pair of stern blue eyes and was surprised at the look of authority he saw. Perhaps he’d started lamenting the end of the elves too soon. The daughter of the last Lord of the Top Shield Star Camp wasn’t finished yet.
“You know how to read, how to work spells we don’t know, and how to speak elvish,” she said quietly. “Your clothing is well made, and you almost have more of it than we have in the whole rest of our camp.”
“Yes,” confirmed Seylin.
“But you say you’re the last elf,” she added, carefully watching his face.
“Yes,” insisted Seylin unhappily. He was in for it now.
“Thorn is wrong about you,” she said. “Your women aren’t dead. Such fine clothing—there were many women weaving and sewing where you came from.”
“Where I came from, the men worked weaving and sewing as well as the women,” said Seylin. “Thorn’s not wrong. I’m alone. I lost the woman I loved.”
“Who did you lose her to?” asked Sable. The young elf wouldn’t answer. She watched him for a moment, but he didn’t meet her eyes.
“You’re a danger,” she concluded. “Or you bring danger. I can feel it. My father would have driven you out of camp.”
“Then your father would have made a mistake,” declared Seylin. “I only want to help. I can teach you things. Elvish and spells, things to help you survive.”
The scarred woman shook her head.
“Thorn won’t let you teach anything. If he doesn’t know it, he won’t learn it from you, and he won’t let us learn it. He’s the best hunter and the best fighter, and that’s how he wants it. You should leave, Seylin. There’s no place for you here.”
She got up quickly, put the book away, and went back to her work. Seylin sat where she had left him, in the shadow of the tents. There was no place for him here. There was no place for him anywhere. The only place he belonged was with Emily, and he had lost that place forever. I should have sat on her couch and argued with her all day long, he thought. I should have changed into a cat and then danced for her. How could I have let her go so easily, over a little pride? How could I have run away and let her marry Thaydar?
Em, what are you doing now? he wondered. Do you ever think about me? I want to come home to you.
Emily was having problems of her own. She hadn’t been to London since she was a little girl. She had plenty of money and plenty of things to see, and she had expected to enjoy herself thoroughly, but her dour goblin companion was ruining all her fun. Everywhere they went, Ruby quoted appropriate facts from her lessons, but she didn’t seem impressed by anything. All she saw was filth and ineptitude. Emily was running out of patience.
They were walking along in the twilight by the handsome old buildings of Parliament. The smoke of thousands of dinner fires hung in the still sky, and crowds of people tugged them to and fro. Changed into her normal shape and carefully hooded, Ruby stomped along the brick pavement.
“Humans,” she remarked with grim satisfaction. “Mercy! How they do smell!”
“Didn’t you think that Westminster Abbey was beautiful?” asked the young woman, trying not to notice a withered beggar who kept thrusting a hand in her face.
“The burial place of Chaucer,” grunted Ruby. “And most of the English kings.” Emily waited, but Ruby said nothing more. She took that to mean no.
“What about Saint Paul’s Cathedral?” she inquired. “You can’t tell me that wasn’t astounding!”
“Designed in the baroque style by Christopher Wren,” intoned the teacher, “who died in 1723. The dome is higher than the goblin King’s throne room. Of course, Wren wasn’t trying to fit it underground. It pleased the eye, I suppose, but it’s nothing like what the dwarves could have made.”
“Ruby, that’s just it!” exclaimed Emily in annoyance. “The dwarves didn’t build it, and magic didn’t, either. We humans made it with our own hands and tools, out of our own minds. We made it the hard way. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
“I’d say that one fine building out of all this mess is hardly worth tears of joy,” snapped the old goblin. “You humans run around all day long creating chaos and trouble, and then you want credit for every little good work.”
“But you don’t know what it’s like to be a human,” insisted Emily, shouldering her way past a chestnut vendor’s stand. “We aren’t like you goblins. We don’t have a magical king to make sure we do the right things. You do whatever you’re told, but we have to decide what we should do. It’s a hard life, and no one looks after us. If we do any good at all, that’s saying something.”
The goblin woman stopped walking, struck by this line of reasoning.
“I hadn’t thought about that,” she said slowly. “You don’t have anyone to help you. I don’t think I’d want to be a human. It sounds terribly lonely.”
“There, you see—” began Emily in triumph, but she didn’t have time to finish. Ruby gave a cry of fury and caught a passing boy by the hand.
“This is exactly what I expect from humans!” she exulted with delighted wrath. “Just as soon as I begin to see good in them, a smelly little thief pops up. Come here, young man,” she ordered, dragging the culprit to the edge of the crowd. “I’ll teach you to pick my pocket! I’m going to give you a lesson you’ll never forget!” And, standing close to a lighted window, she threw back her hood.
Her victim g
ave a squawk of surprise. Then he burst out laughing. He reached up his free hand and plucked the big battered hat from his head.
The boy might have been around ten, but it was hard to be sure. His grimy face and ragged frame were terribly thin, and he was twisted over by a badly hunched back. His greasy hair looked as if it might turn out to be white, and his eyes were a penetrating golden-green. His sharp ears flipped over at the tips, and his widely grinning mouth showed one fang, the matching fang having fallen victim to a fistfight. The hand holding the hat didn’t end in fingertips. It ended in inch-long claws.
“You’re ugly as me, ma’am!” he crowed joyfully. “You’re ugly enough to be my mum!”
Ruby stared in amazement at her elated captive, almost unable to move.
“I don’t know what this means,” she muttered in shock.
“I do,” volunteered Emily, examining their find. “Your smelly little human thief is a goblin.”
The two bemused women took their prisoner to the nearest public house and watched him wolf down a plateful of sausages. Emily had never seen food disappear so fast without the aid of magic.
“What’s your name?” demanded Ruby in her sternest classroom voice. “Where are your parents? Who’s your mother?”
The child studied his empty plate philosophically and pushed it away with a sigh. “The name’s Richard,” he answered. “I’ve got no parents. Never did have, as a matter of fact.”
Emily nudged her companion. “His father must be one of the goblin men from the trading journeys.”
“Impossible!” declared her former teacher. “Goblins don’t behave like that! At least, they almost never—well, I didn’t think they did—oh, I don’t know what to think.”
“Don’t mind me,” recommended the urchin in mollifying tones. “No need to get upset. Thank you kindly for the fodder. I’d better be getting back.”
He stood up to go, but Ruby came to herself with a jerk. “You sit down,” she ordered firmly. “I have to decide what to do. I’ll need to send a message to the King at once. Oh, dear! I’ve almost forgotten how to do that.”
“The king!” Richard’s pale green eyes widened in distress. “There’s no call to involve the authorities, is there, now? I’ve not harmed you, you’ve not harmed me, it was all just a bit of convivial good sport.”
Emily smiled at the youngster’s appealing tone. “We’re not talking about the same king you know. We—or rather, you and Ruby—you have a different king.”
Richard digested this information. A whole new world opened up before him.
“You mean ugly people have a king all their own?” he whispered.
“Yes, we do,” confirmed Ruby. “He doesn’t know about you yet, but he’ll want to see you right away.”
The skinny boy couldn’t contain his astonishment. “You don’t mean meet me?” he marveled. “Me? A king and all? Standing in the same room? ‘Hello, Richard, how’s the lad,’ and a friendly slap on the back?”
“I hardly think he’ll slap it,” said the teacher with a frown. “He’ll want to start mending it right away. I’ve never seen such a bad back before. It’s going to take months before you can stand up straight.”
Richard gawked at her for a few seconds, but he was a wise boy. He didn’t waste time on questions.
“All right,” he announced in a businesslike tone. “If a king’s that anxious to see me, I won’t be the one to say nay. But I have to go get my family. I’m not leaving them behind.” He stood up and made for the door.
“Family!” exclaimed Ruby.
“You said you didn’t have parents,” protested Emily, catching up to him.
“No more have I, but a man’s got to have a family.” He led the way through the crowd outside.
They followed Richard up narrow streets and down little alleys and through the closed lanes that led from one tangle of decrepit buildings to another. He dragged them through a tiny opening, up some steps, through an attic that connected several apartments, down a ladder, along a cellar wall, and then up more dangerous stairs into another little attic.
There, in the dusky twilight glow coming through a tiny, paper-covered window, the two women found the goblin child’s family. A little human boy and girl lay asleep on a filthy blanket, twins no more than six years old. Ruby knelt down and lit a goblin flame to study them. It accented their strawberry-blond hair and played up the rosy color of their thin cheeks.
“I found Jack and Martha crying in a cellar,” Richard explained. “I’ve taken care of them since they could barely talk. I’m teaching Jack the trade because a man’s got to have a profession, but I don’t let ’em run any risks. Say, Jack,” he said, nudging the boy, and the children awoke, blinking at the newcomers gravely.
“What’s up, Rich?” asked the little boy. “Who’s the green lady?”
“Guess what I’ve found!” said Richard in excitement. “A bunch of people just like me!”
“Pretty hair,” said little Martha with a happy smile. She stood up and stretched out one small hand to pat the astonished Ruby on her bun.
“That’s my family,” announced Richard to his new companions. “Aren’t they beautiful?” he added wistfully.
“They certainly are,” said Emily. “They’re as nice a family as anyone could want.”
Ruby put her arms around the young twins, and the sleepy children cuddled up to her, sharing the warmth of her cloak. She held them close in breathless wonder. Ruby had finally found something in the human world to love.
Chapter Eight
Sleet fell outside the elves’ cave, and an icy wind blew through the bare trees. Although it was twilight, the forest was already very dark. Thorn was angry at Sable because she had had another nightmare and had woken them up with her screams. At the evening meal, he once again made sure that she had no food.
The meal finished, each found some indoor activity to do. Willow continued scraping hides, Thorn began cutting out leather pieces for a new pair of boots, and Rowan sat cross-legged, sewing another patch onto his heavily patched tunic. Sable continued stitching rabbit skins together, probably to make the lining of a new winter cloak. She wouldn’t be the one to wear it, Seylin thought gloomily. Her own clothes were so old and tattered that they would have been little use as rags.
Irina knelt by the cave wall, weaving the shuttle of a hand loom back and forth. The loom was nothing more than two long rods with holes bored in them. Coarse yarn had been threaded through these holes like the many strings of a harp. Irina pushed the shuttle across the row, over one string, under the next, pulling yarn between them. At the end of each line, she tamped her yarn down against all the other lines below it, and the cloth was bigger by the thickness of that piece of yarn. Watching her drudge her way through the slow work, Seylin realized why the elves’ clothing was so frightful.
Seylin himself had no work to do. His clothes didn’t need patching, and he didn’t need to repair anything. He didn’t really want to learn how to scrape a hide, either, so he decided to oil his boots. He buffed off the dirt with a towel, took a small flask from his pack, and began to rub oil into the leather. When it came right down to it, he thought, he was just playing at being a member of this band, pretending to take part in a life-style that meant survival or death to them. There’s no place for you here, Sable had said. He knew that she was right.
“Seylin?” He jumped guiltily, but it was only Irina speaking from her loom. “Did your band know any new stories?” She turned around to look at him, her smudged face eager and her green eyes bright. “Do you know something different? We just know the same old boring stories we’ve always told.”
“He hasn’t heard our stories,” observed Rowan. “How’s he supposed to know if his stories are new or old and boring?”
“Don’t be mean,” pouted Irina, missing the point entirely. “Come on, Seylin, tell us something new.”
“And make sure we haven’t heard it before,” prompted Rowan, grinning at Thorn.
> Now, this was something that Seylin could provide. He recalled his favorite tales. What might they not know?
“Do you know the story of the last elf King’s Wife?” he asked. Irina shook her head. That was a nice story, then, and gracefully told in the elvish chronicles.
“This took place in the reign of Marak Whiteye and Aganir U-Sakar, the elf King named New Moon. New Moon, the last elf King, was handsome and vain, a moody and fickle King. Born not from love, but from the hatred of his father and mother, he had no interest in the trials of marriage and long remained alone. Condemned, as all the Kings before him, to marry a human bride, he rebelled against the thought of bringing home someone with such imperfect looks, and his advisers proposed different women to him without success. So went the battle, year after year, until the eighteenth year of his reign, when the master of Hallow Hill brought home his own bride to wed in the chapel on his estate.
“The young master, William, and Belinda, his betrothed, were deeply in love with each other. They had not yet exchanged marriage vows, but they had already sealed their promise of love with a pair of golden lockets. While their friends danced, William and Belinda wandered together under the moon, lost to everything else. As they talked about the lifetime of happiness they would share, the elf King watched them from the shadows of the forest. He studied that lovely young face, alight with joy, and his proud heart was satisfied. After years of stubborn waiting, he had found what he wanted. Here was a human woman whose looks would not disgrace him.
“The elves stole Belinda on the night before her wedding, and her new bridegroom was displeased at the bitter tears she shed. As the women led her away to prepare her for the ceremony, she begged to keep her locket, but the King just laughed and assured her that she wouldn’t want it long. After the ceremony, he gave her the drink that would take away her former life. She cried as she drank it but stopped when she put the goblet down. New Moon’s face was the first thing she saw, and she remembered nothing else. The elf King took her hand and danced with her among his court, and Belinda shed no more tears for her lost William.