Marak walked into the clearing, stopping just inside the circle of trees. Emily gave a gasp of dismay and scrambled to her feet. She was getting her first good look at the goblin King.
Marak grinned, showing his dark teeth. “Kate, you’re a treasure,” he declared. “I don’t know how you know things, but you do. You’re exactly right. I can’t do anything to make you leave this place. Anything magical, anything actual. All force is completely forbidden here because this is the elves’ and goblins’ truce circle.” He sighed. “And once again, I just wish I knew how you know it.”
Kate struggled to her feet, wild hope making her giddy.
“We’re safe here,” she told her sister. She turned triumphantly to face the goblin King. “And you might as well leave. We’ll be staying here all night where you can’t hurt us.”
The wiry goblin smiled at her. “Now, who ever gave you the idea that I would hurt you?” He shook the striped hair out of his brilliant eyes. “No, force is not allowed at all within this circle. You are free to do whatever you want to do. Or whatever you’re persuaded to do. Elves and goblins aren’t susceptible to persuasion spells, so there’s no protection against them.” He leered at the two sisters. “Let’s see, Kate,” he suggested. “I think what you really want to do right now is walk over to me.”
Kate stiffened at once, her confidence evaporating. “I certainly do not!” she gasped. Marak’s big, bony face wore an amused grin.
“No?” he asked coolly. His voice dropped, becoming quiet and gentle. “Walk toward me, Kate, first the left foot and then the right. You want to come away with me.” He continued in a steady murmur, the pleasant voice almost a singsong. Kate felt her resistance begin to fade. He was so convincing. It all sounded so easy. She found herself taking a step.
“Em, help!” Kate cried out in dread, but before her sister could come to her aid, Marak’s voice quickened a trifle.
“And M, you want to sit right down and watch her,” he went on smoothly. Emily plopped down on the grass. “You just wonder what all the fuss is about.” His even voice continued, rising and falling, almost without words. Emily watched Kate tottering step by step toward the edge of the circle, her teeth gritted, hands clenched, desperately trying to stop herself. And Emily wondered, indeed, what all the fuss was about.
Kate was almost to the first circle of trees. The goblin King kept up the quiet rhythm, stepping away from her back between the oaks. His smile was triumphant as he reached out to her. Kate gave a strangled cry. As he disappeared from view, she felt the magic pull weaken just a little. It was her only chance. She turned and bashed her head as hard as she could against the trunk nearest to her. With a sigh, she crumpled at the foot of the tree. The moonlit world winked into darkness.
Chapter Five
Emily came to her senses. Feet flying, she dashed to her sister’s side, but Marak reached Kate first. He rolled her over, a stream of foreign words issuing emphatically from his lips. Emily flinched, afraid of magical lightning or some other powerful result, but no spell was underway. Marak was just venting his sorely tried feelings in the capable goblin tongue.
“Leave her alone,” Emily cried. Marak paid no attention. He snapped his fingers in the air, and a small silvery globe appeared. It was not as bright as a candle, but it shed a soft light. Marak moved it to a spot about three feet above Kate’s face. When he released it, the shining globe hovered obediently in the air.
By its silver light, Emily could see a large, shallow wound across her sister’s forehead. Blood was running in a dark stream into her hair and across her closed eyelids, and a shadowed bruise was already spreading under the skin around her eyes. The goblin murmured something under his breath, pressing his fingers into the wound. He pulled them away and wiped Kate’s forehead with his cloak. The wound stopped bleeding. Emily watched it closely, but no fresh trickles flowed from it to join the dark tracks congealing in Kate’s hair.
The goblin walked away, licking his bloody fingers, and came back a minute later with a small bag in his hand. He knelt again by Kate. Loosening the bag, he scooped out a small quantity of cream and carefully smeared it across the open wound. As he did so, the wound bubbled, flattened, and formed a sudden skin. Within a few seconds, it had healed without a trace.
Emily stared openmouthed at the goblin as he applied minute dabs of cream, frowning with deep concentration, his coarse, striped hair falling over his bony face. As he smoothed the salve down the side of Kate’s nose and underneath her eye, the bruise melted back into fair skin. He took a somewhat generous dollop and pressed it onto her forehead over the spot where the wound had been, murmuring something under his breath. Emily watched the cream vanish as if he had driven it through the skin.
Kate began to groan and twitch. Marak quickly caught her face between his hands. He laid all six fingers of his right hand on her brow, and she relaxed again into slumber.
“You really can work magic!” breathed Emily, staring at her weird companion in awe. Marak flicked her a glance from those gleaming bicolor eyes and then went on with his work. He ran his fingertips speculatively over Kate’s eyes and nose. He ran them along her temples and down her neck. Emily sat back, hugging her knees to her chest, and studied the busy goblin King. Kate was right: He did look pretty frightful. His pointed ears poked out through his shaggy hair like a dog’s. In fact, he looked about as ugly as anything she had ever seen, but Emily was ready to forgive a great deal in someone who could work magic. He didn’t seem so ghastly, really. She mulled over what Kate had told her that afternoon and what Agatha had said in the clearing.
“Kate says you want her to be your new wife,” she began.
“That’s right,” he murmured, applying salve to a bloody knee he had found. Emily watched in excitement as the scab bubbled away. In a few seconds the knee was whole and undamaged. Real magic, right before her eyes.
“But she doesn’t want to be your wife,” she pointed out. Marak had reached the filthy, ragged sock on the foot with no shoe. He pressed his knotted hand on the bottom of her foot and sighed in exasperation, reaching for the salve.
“That doesn’t really matter,” he remarked inattentively. “The King’s Wife is always a captured bride.”
“I think that’s the most vile thing I ever heard,” declared Emily forcefully. So what if he could work magic! “How could you suggest such an awful thing? No wonder she doesn’t want to marry you!”
Marak paused, cradling the foot in one gray hand, and looked up sharply. “So Kate doesn’t want to be my wife,” he said, and grinned, showing his sharp, dark teeth. Emily flinched and decided that he was rather ghastly after all. “Well, young M, just what do you suggest I do? The goblin King can’t marry his own kind. Should I go about holding hands and making sheep’s eyes at farmers’ daughters till some girl decides to give goblin life a try? And what if she balks at the first sight of her subjects or panics halfway through the ceremony? Do I peck her a fond kiss farewell and start all over again?” He gave a short laugh at the thought. “A long life my race would have if we Kings behaved like that. No, the King’s Wife is always a capture. It’s the only prudent way.” He went back to his ministrations on the torn-up foot.
Emily considered that this was the most splendidly evil speech she had heard in her whole short life. She was lost in admiration of its appalling wickedness. Then she frowned again, stabbed with a sudden concern.
“But Kate loves being outside under the moon and the stars,” she said. “If you marry her, couldn’t she at least come out sometimes?”
“No,” said Marak flatly. “But she’ll settle in. They always do.”
“Did your first wife settle in?” asked Emily. Marak fixed her with a glare.
“My first wife went mad,” he said abruptly. “She didn’t believe in goblins.” He went back to his work. “I found her by the lakeshore one evening, picking flowers, and I took her home there and then. But it seems the fool’s mother had gone mad, and she was always waiting
her turn. She fainted during the wedding ceremony, and we never had another lucid word out of her. She believed we were just some sort of dream she was having, a delusion in her mind. I studied magic tirelessly after that, trying to find a cure, but I found nothing, absolutely nothing, that would touch pure human madness.” He shook his head, sharp teeth bared and a look of disgust stamped on his pallid face.
Emily watched the strange creature silently for a moment, thinking about that poor stolen woman. “Kate says she’ll never survive it,” she insisted anxiously. “She says she knows it’ll kill her.”
“Is that so?” remarked the goblin, failing to sound impressed. He had concluded the search for injuries. He pressed his long, bony fingers on Kate’s forehead again. “And what is she going to die of, exactly?”
Emily told him Mrs. Bigelow’s story about the cold, dank caves under the Hill. She told him about the hideous things that lived there and about the poor goblin brides, their hair turning white and their skin growing gray, nursing their squalling goblin brats in the dripping caverns far from the sun.
Marak threw back his head and laughed. Reaching up, he extinguished the little orb. Then he turned to Emily. “And you believed her, did you?” he hooted. “Really, M, what a tale!”
“But you live underground, don’t you?” she persisted.
“We live under the Hill, yes,” he affirmed.
“And is it—really awful—in those caves underground?”
“It is more beautiful than you could possibly imagine,” he said impatiently.
Emily pondered this statement. More beautiful than she could imagine. She considered the dank backdrop of her gaunt, white-haired goblin bride and added some sparkle to the cave walls. More beautiful still. She put in a subterranean stream and shiny rock formations. More beautiful than that. She sighed and gave it up.
“If you steal Kate, would you steal me, too?” Her voice trembled.
Marak was studying the sleeping Kate. He glanced up and grinned at her. “A little young, aren’t you, to be a goblin bride?” he teased. “All ready to have your hair turn white in those dripping caves underground?”
“But you said—” Emily began as Marak chuckled. “Anyway,” she concluded unhappily, “she’s all the family I have. I just don’t want to be left behind.”
The goblin stopped laughing. “Agatha’s right,” he remarked. “You have a lot of pluck.” A small silence reigned. He was watching the unconscious Kate narrowly, the way the cook watched rising bread or baking pies. Emily wondered what he was looking for. She thought about the dwarf woman and what she had told them.
“Agatha says there aren’t any more elves,” she told him sadly. “Did the goblins kill them all?”
Marak didn’t look up from the sleeping Kate. “They destroyed themselves,” he answered absently. “They didn’t want to survive. We goblins stole elf brides, of course, but that was a good thing for the pretty elves. It gave them unity, something to strive against. Otherwise, they were likely to just wander off in all directions. They always were a little too good for this world.” Somehow this didn’t sound like a compliment.
“Their last King didn’t bother to find a new wife when his first wife died childless. Then he died unexpectedly, and that was the beginning of the end. My great-great-grandfather met with the elves on this very spot and offered to take them in with us. There’s a colony of dwarves like that who live under my command. But they said no.” Marak snorted. “Catch an elf living underground,” he said scornfully.
“We hunted the elf women tirelessly after that, to get the good of the blood before it was all gone. Oh, an elf would tell you quite a tale of woe, with sadness written all across his pretty face. But it wasn’t our fault they died out. They did it to themselves. Batty stargazers,” he added with relish.
Emily stared around in amazement. Elves and goblins had met right here. She tried to imagine them, beautiful and ugly, tall and short, noble and frightful. No wonder she loved this magical place. The goblin King watched Kate closely, laying his big hands on either side of her face again. He turned in abrupt decision.
“What I want to know is—” Emily began, but Marak leaned forward swiftly and put his six fingers on her brow. Then he caught her as she toppled and laid her down gently in the grass.
“What you want to know is almost everything,” he remarked to her sleeping form. Then he turned back to her sister.
Long, dreary hours passed while Kate tossed in unhappy dreams. Finally she sat up in bed with a jerk, jarred out of sleep. She stared around futilely at the thick blackness of the room. Not one ray of light crept in past the curtain. Kate stumbled through the gloom, clutching the furniture, because the room was so dark that she couldn’t see where to step. She tried to light her candle, but not even a spark broke the inky darkness around her. Moving by feel, she quitted her room and edged down the hall. She crept into Emily’s room and shook her sleeping form.
“Em, wake up!” she begged, shaking and shaking, but Emily just flopped limply in her arms like a giant doll. Another fruitless attempt to light Emily’s candle and another hideous trip through the dark. She thought she heard a chuckle as she stumbled across the hall. She wrenched open Prim’s door and slammed it shut behind her, but Aunt Prim lay like the dead in the darkness, not even breathing. Kate stood in indecision, afraid to touch her. Was that tapping at the window? A twig, or fingers? Kate fled the dark room, leaving her aunt’s body behind in the night.
Out in the hall again, she was sure she heard a whisper. It came closer and closer, but no footsteps came with it. Kate began to sob in panic and strike out against the blackness. Clinging to the banister, she sank down on the stairs. The whisper was coming close again, and she couldn’t get away. She hid her blind face against her arms and huddled on the stairs, a hunted, trapped animal, all alone in the dark.
“Kate, look at me,” Marak said in a commanding voice. He took her hand in his, kneeling beside her. Kate closed her eyes tightly in dread, throwing out a hand to catch at the banister and drag herself away from him. Instead, she felt soft grass, a tree trunk. She opened her eyes. White moonlight flooded in, and the blackness was gone, but the nightmare was still very real. He was bending over her. He had caught her at last.
“Look at me,” Marak ordered again, and Kate looked up into those odd-colored eyes. He knelt close by her, holding her hand in his strong, knotted fingers. Kate closed her eyes to block out the horrible sight, drawing in shallow breaths.
“And did we have a pleasant sleep?” he inquired sweetly. “Nice dreams?” Kate shivered and kept her eyes tightly shut. “No, not a nice dream,” the goblin remarked with satisfaction. “So you spent a little time stumbling around in the dark. And no worse than you deserved, either, for smacking yourself into a tree. What a fool stunt, Kate.”
Kate’s breathing slowed, and she began to remember where she was. She sat up a little unsteadily, pulling away from him. She was free of the nightmare, and her mind was beginning to work. She frowned as thoughts began to connect themselves.
Marak studied the sullen face. “No gratitude at all?” he asked. “Not one kind word for patching you up after you tried to batter your brains in?” Kate’s hand rose to her forehead, and she felt about for a bump. Then it traveled to her hair and encountered the dried blood. She retraced the track of blood. No break in the skin. No pain, no soreness. She stared at the goblin, eyes round with surprise.
“Kate,” he told her seriously, “that was a stupid thing to do. What if I hadn’t been here? What if you had died? I lie awake worrying about what’s happening to you out here. You could be falling down a well, or breaking a leg, or catching a fever. What if you need my help, and I can’t come in time?”
Kate continued to prod her forehead, feeling rather foolish. If he hadn’t been here, she certainly wouldn’t have run into the tree. Need his help? Why would she need his help? She couldn’t imagine wanting him anywhere near her, broken leg or not.
“And wh
at were you doing, anyway, wandering around the woods at night? I wasn’t expecting that,” he admitted. “I thought you’d be barring yourself in your room or maybe locking yourself in a wardrobe.” He chuckled at the thought. “What happened?” he asked, grinning at her. “Did you come looking for me?”
“Of course we weren’t looking for you,” Kate said warily, moving a little farther away from him. She spied Emily lying in the grass, and her heart almost stopped.
“What did you do to her?” she cried.
“I answered her questions,” Marak said carelessly. “Almost all of them.” He leaned back contentedly against a tree trunk. As Kate began to shake her sister, he added, “Leave her alone. She’ll wake up when I tell her to.” He laughed. “Did you know that she wants to be stolen by goblins? She actually asked me.”
Kate’s heart sank. The world was going horribly wrong. A few weeks ago she had been sitting with her sister in this very spot under the stars, perfectly happy. Now a grotesque monster was haunting her and menacing her with a terrible future. Poor Em lay motionless, locked in his magical control. Kate looked down anxiously at her sleeping face. They had to find some way to escape.
“We found out what really happened to Adele Roberts,” she said quietly.
“Oh, really?” asked Marak, interested. “Well, don’t look so tragic about it,” he smirked as she raised her sad eyes to his. “My mother’s life was happy enough.”
Kate gloomily thought about the unlikely possibility of Adele having had a happy life. What terror and loathing she must have felt, captured by freakish monsters and locked away in a dark cavern far below the earth! An airless tomb, thought Kate in horror. A living tomb from which that bright, brave girl was never able to escape.
“I’m not going down there!” she cried desperately. “I won’t go down into those dark caves away from the light, away from the stars. I won’t live underground in some ghastly hole, sealed off from the air under mountains of rock.”