Page 21 of Close Kin


  The prince was shaping up to be a particularly promising ruler. From Kate, whose elvish roots almost certainly went back to the elf King’s lieutenants, Catspaw had inherited a stunning amount of military magic, and with it came a real enthusiasm for the art of war. The young prince gathered about himself boys from the high families to join him in goblin games of strategy and battle. Richard, gifted as well with military magic, became his favorite opponent.

  One day, when Til was close to fourteen years old, she came up the stairs to her parents’ floor to complain to them about some imagined offense. But she couldn’t even reach their rooms. Catspaw and Richard had taken over the broad hallway for their war games and had temporarily altered it past recognition. Instead of polished gold, the hall floor had erupted into miniature mountains, hills, valleys, and canyons. Over these, like ants, marched the phantom troops of the two warriors, who studied their ground and laid their plans. Behind the last mountain range, and before the doors that were her goal, the goblin guards watched the sport and made quiet wagers.

  “Get this junk out of the way!” she demanded, walking up behind Catspaw. “I have to see Papa.”

  Her foster brother was too busy to respond. He was in the middle of an assault against the vanguard of Richard’s army. The minuscule cavalry at his feet wheeled and charged, uttering faint war cries.

  “Marak isn’t at home,” one guard related. “He’s out inspecting the harvest, and the King’s Wife has gone for a walk.”

  The thwarted girl seethed with irritation. She aimed a kick at a marching column of Catspaw’s reinforcements, causing terrible slaughter. Tiny soldiers dragged their injured comrades out of danger. A chorus of quiet groans arose, like a regretful sigh.

  Catspaw knelt to resuscitate his fallen forces, irritated in his turn. “Til, no one wants you here,” he declared. “Go back to the pages’ floor.”

  Til felt both the truth and the injustice of this remark and drew herself up to her full height. She might not be magical royalty, but she was half a head taller than he was.

  “I’ll do what I like! I’ll never do what you say,” she declaimed dramatically. She noted with displeasure that the guards exchanged amused glances, and Richard looked up and grinned.

  “Of course you will,” remarked Catspaw. “When I’m the King, you’ll have to.”

  The veracity of this statement only infuriated the girl more. She struck out as best she could. “You’re going to be a terrible King,” she announced coldly. “Everyone knows it. They just don’t tell you.”

  Catspaw’s magic detected the lie at once. It didn’t bother the boy that there were witnesses to the insult. He lived his entire life out in public. Schooled by Kate to be a gentleman, he glanced over his shoulder and gave Til a condescending smile.

  “I wouldn’t dream of contradicting you,” he said and turned back to his battlefield.

  Til went on the attack again, but this time with more cunning. Combat of a social sort was her own special forte; she gained her greatest satisfaction from the embarrassment and discomfort of others. She knew the prince’s abilities, and she was also aware of his limitations. She worked out a battle plan of her own.

  “Mama cried when she first saw you,” she remarked.

  “I know she did,” responded Catspaw casually. “Seylin says that’s normal when an elf bride sees her baby.”

  “She didn’t cry because she was seeing any old goblin,” continued Til carefully. “She cried because of you. I heard her talking to Sable one day. She said she knows that you’ll never be a man like your father.”

  The prince’s magic found no lie in these statements because each one was perfectly true. Together, they formed a lie, but his magic couldn’t discern this. It didn’t occur to Catspaw that Kate might be pleased to have raised a son different in many ways from her husband. The prince had two serious weaknesses: his loving regard for his mother and his unspoken awe of his father. The goblin King cast a very long shadow over the boy, a shadow from which he might never be great enough to emerge. If Til had spent years trying to think up ways to hurt him, she couldn’t have found a better plan.

  The goblin prince turned to face his foster sister. Dead pale, eyes blazing, he held out his lion’s paw. A gust of wind swept across the landing and caught up the triumphant Til. She spun around in it, coming to rest against the wall, where she flattened out like a sheet of paper. In an instant, she was trapped in two inflexible dimensions. A full-length mirror hung on the wall now, with the struggling girl pinned inside.

  “I can’t move! I can’t breathe!” cried the desperate Til. She tried to turn her head, to move her arms, but there was nowhere to go. She had nothing but height, width, and a voice that was growing more frantic by the second.

  “‘To hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature,’” declared the boy from the depths of his fury. “That’s you—all surface. Nothing behind the show.” The mirror fell forward and hit the floor with a splintering crash. “Too bad, Til,” he added remorselessly. “Seven years of bad luck.”

  Seylin heard the sonorous explosion and ensuing shrieks and ran up the stairs two at a time. He found Til sitting by the wall, her face and hands crisscrossed by a net of red lines. He knelt down beside the hysterical girl and discovered that they were shallow cuts oozing blood.

  “What happened?” he asked Catspaw. His pupil’s expression was distant.

  “She shattered,” the boy calmly replied. “It’s only an illusion.” A second later, the bleeding lines were gone, but Til still sobbed with fear and rage. Seylin tried to put a comforting arm around her, but she shoved him away.

  “I’m surprised at you, Catspaw!” said the tutor, and his face showed his dismay. “You’re too old and far too powerful to be giving way to your temper! A king has to use his abilities to help and protect the weak. Apologize to Til at once.”

  Catspaw turned to the weeping girl.

  “I’m very sorry, Til, that you’re so weak and I’m so strong,” he told her in a steady voice. “I wish we could fight as equals. If you have any sense, you’ll stay away from me. I’m not an enemy you can handle.”

  Til gathered herself up with a glare at them all and went off down the stairs. Nonplussed, Seylin stared after her. He stood up and turned to confront his pupil, but what he saw astonished him further. There was a look of decision, of authority, on the boy’s face that he had never seen there before.

  “I will protect the weak,” declared the prince coldly. “But that doesn’t include my enemies. I’ll deal with them as I decide, and it’s going to be too bad for them if they’re weak.”

  Seylin understood what was happening. The prince’s childhood was ending. Before, Catspaw had always obeyed him simply because it was expected. He would doubtless continue to do so, but it would never again be automatic. It would be a magnanimous gesture from now on, a generous gift from a superior to his underling. And the day would come when his royal pupil wouldn’t obey him at all. Instead, Seylin noted with rueful unease, he himself would be the one who would obey.

  Catspaw was becoming a real goblin King.

  Special thanks to my editor, Reka Simonsen,

  for her prompt, good-humored guidance and her strong

  commitment to bringing out the best in her authors.

  Henry Holt and Company, LLC

  Publishers since 1866

  115 West 18th Street

  New York, New York 10011

  www.henryholt.com

  Henry Holt is a registered trademark of Henry Holt and Company, LLC

  Copyright © 2004 by Clare B. Dunkle

  All rights reserved.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Dunkle, Clare B.

  Close kin / Clare B. Dunkle.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Sequel to: The hollow kingdom.

  Summary: After the mostly human Emily rejects the elvish Seylin’s marriage proposal, both undertake separate quests to learn about their true na
tures and discover a royal elf and orphaned goblin to bring to the goblin kingdom.

  ISBN 978-1-4668-0382-4

  [1. Goblins—Fiction. 2. Elves—Fiction. 3. Magic—Fiction. 4. Marriage—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.D92115C1 2004

  [Fic]—dc22 2003057048

 


 

  Clare B. Dunkle, Close Kin

 


 

 
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