Sable stood silently, holding on to her composure with a supreme effort. How long, she wondered, before the goblin caves? Where were the others, and when would they start the torture? Were they like humans, who kept their animals in little cages until they were ready to enjoy the slaughter? Now the monster was talking to her again. “…keepsakes…anything you want…won’t be coming back…” He stopped talking and looked at her. She stared at him helplessly. What did he want her to do?
“I don’t think she can understand me, Seylin,” said Tinsel thoughtfully. “This has been too much of a shock. Do you know if there’s anything she might want to take with her?” He looked at the elf woman doubtfully as he said this. If her stained and ragged clothes were typical of the rest of her possessions, they should all be burned as soon as possible.
“Sable! Your father’s book!” exclaimed Seylin, and he went back into the cave and returned with the old camp chronicle. “I’ll keep it for you. You can have it whenever you want.”
They set off into the night, following Brindle’s lead, and walked the hours away. They soon left the elves’ little forest behind. Sable watched the half-moon rise. They were on a snowy trail along the ridge of a hill, and the white fields around them were completely bare of trees. She had never before left her network of groves, and the enormity of the landscape unsettled her. It allowed her to see more of the stars that were appearing and disappearing in the cloudy sky, but it made her feel very unsafe. Tinsel watched her frightened face and could imagine what she was thinking. He knew from his page classes that elves never left the cover of the trees.
“I know you’d rather be in the forest,” he said to her in a low voice. “But we’re going this way because we’ll be home faster. We’ll be in the kingdom the night after tomorrow night, and then we’ll be married. I know you don’t want to marry a goblin, but I’m not so bad.”
Sable continued to stare at the fields as if she hadn’t heard. She wished that she hadn’t. Her shock was wearing off, and the fear that they were about to cause her horrible pain was slowly ebbing away, but the reality of her situation was becoming clearer. She was finding it harder to ignore the bizarre shapes of the goblins and the strange new landscapes that they were walking through. She couldn’t help understanding now the things that they said. And, worst of all, she had come to realize that she wasn’t being dragged off to be bred to monsters, but to this monster, the one that had her by the hand. It wasn’t just, as Thorn had always said, a story to frighten children. It was true, and this monster kept talking about it.
So did the other monster, the one that held Irina on the horse. Poor Irina, she was so terrified. He looked simply frightful. He had two long white teeth at the corners of his mouth, and his eyes were like a cat’s. His voice was loud and gravelly, and he boomed when he laughed. Sable winced, looking at him and at the other outlandish shapes, at the sharp teeth, the long ears, the claws, the big twisted bodies. Golden cat-eyes, green cat-eyes, dark orange eyes with no white to them, like a bird’s. It could have been one of them holding her now. She shivered a little.
At least the goblin that held her hand was quiet, and he didn’t look like they did. He was a strange color, but he had normal hands, normal teeth, and normal ears. She tilted her head to look up at him, and those blue elf-eyes looked down into hers. He smiled at her serious face, and she looked away again quickly.
Shaky from the shock and terribly tired, she watched her feet stepping and stepping into the snowy tracks made by the others. The monotony of the endless motion dragged on her low spirits, and she stumbled along, half asleep.
Irina had almost cried herself out. Earlier in the night, she had alternated between screaming and fainting, and the fainting had been a real relief for the poor girl. Later, she had alternated between shrieking and crying, but neither of them had proved as satisfactory as the fainting. Now she was sobbing rather listlessly. It was beginning to occur to her that none of the methods she had tried so far was really improving the situation.
“What are you crying about?” growled Thaydar cheerfully. “No one’s hurting you. No one’s being mean. What’s the matter, anyway?”
“I don’t like horses,” sobbed Irina. “Not except to eat.”
“Well, don’t you worry,” said Thaydar. “You can walk if you want to. And once we’re home and married, you won’t ever have to see another horse as long as you live.”
“I don’t want to marry you!” wailed Irina, rubbing her hand across her eyes. She was starting to see halos around everything, she had cried for so long.
“Sure, you do,” answered Thaydar with such confidence that Irina felt confused. “Why wouldn’t you want to marry me?”
“Because you look so scary,” she sobbed.
“But that’s good,” Thaydar told her serenely. “I’m a goblin. We’re supposed to look scary.” Irina thought about this. She decided it was probably true. “Don’t worry, you’ll get used to me in no time, and then you won’t think I’m scary anymore.”
“Really?” asked Irina hopefully. She didn’t like being scared. It had worn her out.
“Really,” he growled. “Now, don’t cry anymore. A beautiful girl like you shouldn’t ever have anything to cry about.” Irina gulped and looked up at the fanged goblin. He smiled broadly at her, but she didn’t faint.
“You—you think I’m beautiful?” she sniffled in a tone of wonder.
“I think you’re very beautiful,” he assured her.
“Then I’m pretty?” she asked, wiping her runny nose on the back of her hand.
“You’re the prettiest thing I ever saw,” he declared firmly.
Irina sat up a little straighter and forgot to cry for a minute.
“Then I’m not ugly and clumsy?” she wanted to know.
“Anyone who calls you that,” roared Thaydar, “should be pummeled and horsewhipped!”
Irina thought about Thorn and Willow being pummeled and horsewhipped and broke into a little giggle. Then she looked at her goblin champion with new eyes. He was so big and strong and scary, he could just about do it, too.
“Does that mean I won’t have to do the butchering where we’re going?” she asked in a tone of great discovery.
“A little thing like you, with her hands all covered with dead sheep?” boomed Thaydar. “You must be joking!”
“No, she’s not joking,” interrupted Seylin. “The men made Sable and Irina do all the butchering. They had a rule that the ugly people butchered, and they said that meant the two women.”
The cat-eyed lieutenant looked at the charming girl he held and felt deeply and righteously indignant. “Well, not anymore!” he promised stoutly. “My wife won’t do any butchering she doesn’t want to do.”
“Oh!” breathed Irina with shining eyes. Now, that was a good reason to be the scary goblin’s wife.
“No wonder your dress is all covered with stains!” fumed Thaydar. “We’ll get rid of it right away, and you’ll have some nice clothes. Ten dresses, twelve, fourteen, as many as you want. I can’t wait to see you in a nice green satin to match your eyes.”
“But it’s winter,” protested Irina doubtfully. “Don’t I have to wear brown?”
“You can wear any color you want,” insisted the goblin. Irina’s eyes grew large.
“Can I have a blue dress?” she whispered in awe. Elves never wore blue, but it was her favorite color.
“Of course you can have a blue dress,” growled Thaydar, smiling at her.
“Can I—can I have a red dress?” she faltered. She knew elves would never, ever wear red, but when fresh blood spilled onto the snow, it was so rich and magnificent.
“You can have a red dress, too,” promised her goblin warmly, and Irina was beside herself with delight. All her life, she had hated her coarse, ugly clothes. She looked up at those terrifying cat-eyes and gave Thaydar a happy smile.
“What about a yellow dress?” she wanted to know.
Thaydar was feeling a little bes
ide himself, too. He’d sought Emily’s hand in marriage for the honor of an elf-cross bride, and he’d left the kingdom intent on the honor of a pure elf bride. He had been terribly proud of the beauty of his hysterical captive, but when Irina smiled at him, with those lovely green eyes, those perfect white teeth, and that adorable little chin, his tough old soldier’s heart just turned to mush. Thaydar’s life was never the same again. Making Irina smile became one of the goals of his existence, starting from that moment.
“You can have five yellow dresses,” he promised. It worked. She smiled again. “Make that ten.” Her smile grew bigger.
“Now you’re just being silly,” she said. He was glad she could tell because he wasn’t entirely sure. Emily grinned, listening to them, and Katoo and Brindle exchanged glances. Who would have thought, their eyes told each other, that the boss was such an idiot?
Sable roused herself to the dreary reality of slavery. She looked at the snowy barrenness around them, and a lump came into her throat. This treeless wasteland was as frightening as the goblins were. It made her situation even harder to endure. She stared at the path before her feet, listening dully to the crunch of the snow, the growl of the goblins’ voices, the thump of the horse’s hooves, and Irina. Poor Irina. Sable looked up with a start. Poor Irina was—laughing?
“…and we’ll have a little girl and a little boy,” Thaydar was dreamily expounding for his giggling bride. “The little girl just as pretty as her mother is, and the little boy with fangs. And they’ll be pages, and you’ll go to court to see them serving their turn by the King’s throne, all dressed up in their uniforms, and you’ll just be so proud—”
“You’ll be dead,” interrupted a clear voice. Irina’s face went pale. Thaydar turned, astounded at the intrusion. It was the other elf bride.
“What did you say?” he roared.
They stopped. All those animal eyes were staring at Sable now. She flinched and ducked her head nervously, but she was too upset not to speak.
“You’ll be dead, Irina,” she said, “with that very first baby. You’ll die before you even see its face. We both will—you know that’s just a woman’s life. He’s telling you a lie.”
Irina began to sob, and Thaydar was furious. “Goblins never lie!” he thundered angrily, and Sable flinched again at the sight of those blazing eyes.
“She doesn’t know that, Thaydar,” observed Tinsel reasonably. “That must be some old scary tale the elf girls told each other about marrying goblins. It’s not true, Sable. Having a goblin’s baby isn’t different from having an elf’s baby.”
Sable looked up at his friendly blue eyes with a little feeling of relief, but she was confused at his apparent sincerity.
“It doesn’t matter whether the father’s a goblin or an elf,” she told him in a low voice. “That’s just what happens when women have a child. Women have to die, that’s how babies are born.” Tinsel looked down at her sober face, puzzled as well.
“What a load of rubbish!” roared Thaydar. “Women survive childbirth every day.” Sable winced at his loud voice and looked around nervously at all those strange eyes again.
“My wife’s still alive after two,” observed Brindle helpfully.
“I have both my grandmothers,” added Katoo, his striped tabby face thoughtful. “And my mother’s still alive, and she had quadruplets.”
“But I think you cat folk are different,” cautioned Brindle. “It’s always quadruplets with you; that’s not really normal.”
Sable stared at the serious faces of the monsters, losing her confidence. Why would they try to talk her out of something so obvious? It must be a trick.
“Maybe goblin women aren’t like that,” she said. “Maybe just elf women are that way. But I know it’s the truth. I know! I’ve seen the women die.”
“She’s right,” said Seylin in the pause that followed. “Elf women are different from goblin women. They have a very hard time with childbirth, and they can’t survive it without magic. I understand what happened now. Sable has the camp chronicle, and her great-great-grandfather’s last entry told of a terrible accident. Almost all of the women were asphyxiated in one night. But the elf lord said that something even worse had happened, and now I know what it was. They lost the birthing magic. Only those dead women knew it. From that day on, the women in the camp were doomed to die in childbirth.
“I suppose they just told the little girls that that was the way life was,” he conjectured. “And by the time Sable was born, they wouldn’t have remembered anything different. Of course! That’s why you didn’t want to marry Thorn!” he said in a tone of discovery.
Sable drew her breath in sharply, feeling trapped by the revelation. Now all the monsters knew that she’d refused her marriage out of fear.
“But, Sable,” he continued earnestly, “you don’t have to worry about that anymore. We have entire books of elvish birthing magic. I can show them to you when we get home.”
Sable glared at the elf. He called that torture chamber a home! And how dare he play on her weakness like that, trying to trick her now that he knew she was a coward!
“I don’t want to learn anything from you, you traitor!” she hissed. “The goblins’ tame elf, going out and finding them fresh blood. I begged you to leave so the goblins wouldn’t come, and you promised me I was safe. You’ve never done anything but lie.”
Seylin’s face fell, and he looked away.
“That’s not fair!” cried Emily. “He didn’t know that we were coming!”
“It’s all right, Em.” He sighed. “She has a point.”
“I don’t think you could call Seylin a traitor,” said Tinsel. “Both his parents are goblins.” Sable stared at Seylin in horror and bewilderment. That handsome elf, a goblin’s son? What other frightful things would they tell her, and how could she tell which were true? “He’s right, Sable,” continued Tinsel. “We know lots of healing magic. You’re not going to die like that.”
“I don’t believe you!” she cried desperately. “I don’t believe any of you. You’re just telling us what we want to hear. You’re trying to calm us with promises that nothing bad will happen because you think we’re cowardly and weak.”
“We don’t think you’re a coward,” protested Tinsel mildly, but Sable wouldn’t look at him anymore. “Well, we can tell you things, but you don’t have to believe us. Maybe it’s better if we showed you something. I’ve been wanting to try this.” And he dropped his pack onto the snowy ground and began to rummage through it.
“Oh, good,” said Seylin, looking up again. “I’ve been wanting to try it, too.”
Sable held her breath. What were they going to try? She refused to look at the monsters; she wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of seeing that she was afraid. After a minute, she felt something wet on her scarred cheek. She tried to jerk her head away, but the monster was holding her jaw.
“It’s all right,” he said. “It’s just a cream.”
Now she felt it on her other cheek. Then both cheeks grew warm, very warm, as if they were close to a fire. Alarmed, she tried to raise her hands to rub the stuff off, but he stopped her. Everyone was staring at her with intense interest. She began to panic in earnest.
“What are you doing to me?” she cried.
Tinsel turned her face, studying the cheeks with satisfaction.
“I healed your scars,” he said. “I wasn’t sure if it would work on such old wounds, but it did very well. There’s just a thin white line left on each side.”
He let go of her hands, and she reached up to touch her cheeks. They were smooth and flat now. She couldn’t feel the scars at all.
“I’m glad they’re not gone altogether,” he added quietly. “They must have taken such courage to make.”
Sable’s heart was pounding. In a dream, or in a nightmare, she turned frightened eyes on the others.
“Oh, Sable, you’re so beautiful!” exclaimed Irina happily.
Sable’s hands began to shake.
Her scars! They had kept her safe. She wasn’t safe now. She didn’t want those eyes staring at her anymore. She covered her cheeks with her shaking hands and turned away. The silver monster put his arms around her, shielding her from the others, and his sympathy made it harder to be brave. She moved her fingers against her cheeks, but her scars were really gone. She drew her breath in quick gasps, trying not to cry.
“You see,” said Thaydar grandly to his bride, “that’s the kind of magic we can do.” Irina was terribly impressed. All Thorn could do was make rabbits.
“Then does that mean I won’t die?” she asked in a small voice. She looked at her goblin hopefully. He always had an answer.
“My wife,” growled Thaydar with conviction, “is not going to die in childbirth.”
Irina thought about this for a minute. It wasn’t hard to make up her mind.
“Then I want to be your wife,” she announced, “because I don’t want to die like that. When Laurel did, it really sounded like it hurt.”
“You clever girl!” cried Thaydar admiringly, and that sweet face beamed up at him. Behind him, Emily grinned at Seylin and rolled her eyes.
Chapter Thirteen
They stopped a short time later to make camp in a little thicket. Tinsel took Sable off to one side and sat down, wrapping her in his cloak.
“No, I can’t leave her,” he said when hailed by the other busy goblins. “The last time I relied on the Leashing Spell, she tried to run off and nearly hurt herself.”
Emily and Irina sat in the middle of camp while their bridegrooms set up tents. Thaydar had given Irina a necklace, and Emily watched her happily studying it in a small round mirror one of the goblin men had brought with him.
“I left my own mirror back home,” she told Emily. “I wasn’t awake when we left. Thaydar says when we get married I’ll have a mirror so big I can see myself in it from head to toe, but I don’t know how I’ll be able to lift it. Do you think my present’s pretty?”
“Yes,” admitted Emily, noting that Thaydar had even made sure to match his fiancée’s eyes. He would have been given a description of her, of course, but he wouldn’t have had much time to prepare. Now, that was clever planning. No wonder he was Marak’s top military man.