The Maelstrom

  “Toby’s been studying Kolbyt, but I’ve been studying Toby,” David revealed. “A smee’s greatest skill is his ability to mimic another creature’s aura. I think I can create an illusion that will do the same. We’re going to become goblins, Max. I’ll be Skeedle and you’ll be our bodyguard. Choose a name.”

  “Hrunta, I guess,” said Max, recalling a thuggish Broadbrim he’d once met. “But I don’t speak goblin.”

  “Relax,” said David. “Nobody bothers speaking to the bodyguard; just grunt. Toby, see if you can become Kolbyt.”

  “I shall relish the change,” declared the hag.

  A moment later, Kolbyt stood next to them—complete with the goblin’s hat, leather armor, wolf pelts, and iron-soled shoes. Max pinched the pelt between his fingers.

  “How do you do that?” he wondered. “Do you just create the clothes out of thin air?”

  “Ouch!” exclaimed Toby, swatting his hand. “No, I do not—you are ruining the elasticity of my magnificent epidermis. Everything you see is smee. In fact—OH!”

  The startled smee backed away from him. Max was puzzled until David handed him a mirror. Within its surface, he did not see his own face but that of a toady-faced goblin with a forelock of black hair and a lipless mouth that stretched from ear to ear. As Max smiled, the ghastly reflection did likewise, revealing several rows of sharp, mossy incisors.

  “Is that really you?” Toby whispered.

  “Of course it’s me,” Max laughed. He did not feel any different; looking down, he saw his same hand and the same Red Branch tattoo. But Cooper had taught Max that mirrors reflect all illusions, and according to this mirror, others would see Max as a barrel-chested Broadbrim with clay-colored skin and bloodshot eyes.

  Toby leaned forward and sniffed him. “David,” he exclaimed, “you’ve created an illusion that’s … that’s almost smee-worthy!”

  “Yes,” said David thoughtfully. “I think I have. Let’s—”

  A faint tremor shook the earth, causing the mules to stamp and bray. Skeedle shrieked and hurried back to them, spilling oats from his canvas sack. He stopped dead at the sight of them.

  “Wh-where’s Max?” he gasped. “What have you done with him?”

  “I’m right here, Skeedle,” said Max calmly. The goblin merely gaped. “It’s just an illusion. You and Kolbyt can head back now. Which wagon should we take?”

  “Th-the big one,” replied the goblin, still staring suspiciously. Summoning his courage, he darted forward and poked Max on the shoulder.

  “It’s really me,” said Max, smiling.

  “You even sound … and smell like a Broadbrim!” whispered the goblin.

  “Music to my ears. You’ll be okay on the road back?”

  “I think so,” the goblin chirped. “If trouble comes, I’ll run. I don’t need to run fast, just faster than Kolbyt.” Skeedle grinned, revealing six sharp teeth as he hugged Max. Turning, he barked out something to his cousin, who gazed over, grunted dully at the new disguises, and began transferring crates to the larger wagon. Taking Max’s arm, Skeedle walked him over to the mules, explaining their individual temperaments and quirks.

  “And don’t hold the reins too tight,” he cautioned. “Petunia has a sore tooth. When you’re done with them, sell them to someone kind. Or just set them loose. They know the way home.”

  “Got it,” said Max. He turned to Toby, who was already sitting up in the driver’s seat. “Do you know our inventory?”

  “To the ounce and ingot,” sighed the smee. “Kolbyt might be dense, but not when it comes to what his cousin borrowed. He recited it in his sleep.”

  “I guess this is it, then, Skeedle,” said Max, shaking the goblin’s hand. “Thank you for all your help. I expect the next time I see you, you’ll be sitting on Plümpka’s throne.”

  “Maybe.” Skeedle blushed, removing his hat and twiddling his fingers. “If he doesn’t eat me first.”

  While Kolbyt turned the smaller wagon about, the rest of the group said their goodbyes. Upon seeing David take his own guise, Skeedle clapped and circled the sorcerer to assess him from various angles. Satisfied, the goblin hopped aboard Kolbyt’s wagon and waved his hat farewell. Shaking the reins, Kolbyt barked impatiently at the mules and the cousins began their long, clopping journey back to Broadbrim Mountain.

  “A prince among goblins,” Max remarked, climbing up into the driver’s seat next to Toby.

  “You set a rather low bar,” scoffed Toby, sounding peevish. “Your ‘prince’ just left us in the middle of nowhere with four gassy mules and no more chocolate. Meanwhile, the thankless smee remains steadfast after serving as a steed, masquerading as a hag, and suffering that brute’s attentions.”

  “Don’t be so dramatic,” said Max. “Kolbyt said he just wanted to look at you.”

  “He was not a goblin of his word.”

  As they drove on, however, Max had to admit that Skeedle’s fears seemed justified. There did appear to be something sinister to the landscape, a watchful silence that nipped and worried at the edges of his mind. As the afternoon waned, he found that he’d grown quiet, ignoring the smee’s incessant gripes and philosophizing as the mules plodded on.

  It was nearly twilight and they were coming over a barren rise when Max finally saw his first bird of the day. It streaked past the wagon, a large crow whose throaty cries startled Toby from sleep.

  “Wh-what’s that?” murmured the smee, blinking stupidly.

  But Max was speechless.

  He had never seen such an astonishing sprawl of bodies. So many corpses littered the vale below that they nearly dammed the river, forcing its waters to spill over its banks to turn half the plain into a bloody marsh. Broken bodies and equipment stretched as far as Max could see—a grisly feast for thousands of crows that flapped and hopped about the shocking carnage. When the slouching smee made to sit up, Max finally found his voice.

  “Don’t look. Shut your eyes and keep them shut.”

  Toby instantly clamped his hands over face. “What is it?” he hissed.

  “A battlefield,” said Max, searching for words. “A graveyard … a massacre. Thousands dead.”

  “Humans?”

  “Some,” said Max, sweeping the field with his spyglass. “Mostly vyes … ogres and ettins … some of those riders that overtook us on the road. A few banners are Aamon’s, but most belong to Prusias. It seems things aren’t going so well for the King of Blys. Most of the casualties are his.”

  Some movement caught Max’s eye and he trained his glass on a shallow depression near the edge of a thick wood. Scavengers were there, humans dressed in rags robbing the bodies of the dead. Most kept to the fringe of the forest, stripping the fallen of their armor and weapons and tossing the spoils into great sacks that they dragged away. They were a wretched-looking lot, and Max wondered if they would attack the goblin wagon. At least they’d largely cleared the road of bodies, Max thought. Reaching back, he rapped on the wagon’s front shutters.

  “What is it?” mumbled David, sounding sleepy.

  “Come take a look.”

  A minute later, David stood by the nervous, champing mules and gazed down at the valley with a sad, contemplative expression. He pointed to a distant billow of black smoke rising from hills beyond the forest.

  “I’d guess that’s coming from the brayma’s palace,” he reflected. “Prusias may have bitten off more than he can chew with Aamon.”

  “Let’s get going,” said Max, twisting about to scan their surroundings. “It doesn’t do any good to sit up here for all to see.”

  They descended the slope, passing the first body some hundred yards from the summit. Max tried to keep his eyes straight ahead, but it was impossible not to stare at the mounds of mangled vyes and men, arrow-riddled ogres in bronze breastplates, and two-headed ettins, all half submerged in cloudy pools of river water. The crows screamed at the wagon as they passed, a shrill chorus that drove the mules into a braying panic. Gripping the reins, Max held
them to the road’s center as the wagon lurched and bumped along.

  The living disturbed him as much as the dead. While the fallen were an appalling spectacle, the scavengers moved like hungry phantoms among them, dark shapes that stole about the battlefield, crouching over corpses and digging through the scattered wreckage of tents, chariots, and palanquins. Many of the combatants had dressed splendidly for battle—brilliant silk pennons, embossed shields, and magnificent armor of enameled plate. But the stark realities of war had stripped them of their glory; these trappings had been trampled and churned into the raw earth until they were as muddy and tattered as their owners.

  I guess we know why it was so quiet.

  Shaking the reins, Max urged the mules to a quicker pace as several scavengers came too close for comfort. He studied them as the wagon hurried ahead, men and women with hollow, ghoulish faces. They stared at the wagon, dully registering its occupants before resuming their work with knives and fingers and teeth.

  “Can I look now?” whispered Toby.

  “No.”

  Max did not allow the smee to open his eyes for another twenty minutes, not until the last of the bodies were in their wake. He could now make out the source of smoke and saw David had been correct. Rising from a distant hilltop crowned with charred trees was a burning castle, its bailey, towers, and parapets little more than a brittle armature as it vomited plumes of black smoke into the lilac sky.

  That night they camped away from the road, hiding the wagon behind a copse of alders and willows that lined an icy stream. While Toby strapped feedbags to the mules, Max looked in on David.

  He found his roommate sitting in the back, propped against a cushion and scratching a nib ever so carefully on a sheet of spypaper.

  “Just a minute,” he muttered. “I’m almost finished.” Blowing on the ink, he held the page up to the lantern so that its warmth would hasten the drying.

  “Are you writing Sir Alistair?” asked Max.

  “Ms. Richter. She left us a third sheet whose twin she keeps. I updated her on our progress and told her about the battlefield.”

  “Any word on Cooper?”

  “No. I think if there was news—good or bad—she’d have written.”

  Max nodded and tried to smile, but his spirits were low. The horrors of the battlefield lingered in his mind. Rubbing his temples, he stared at the lantern’s golden light.

  “What if there is no Piter’s Folly?” he wondered aloud. “What if it’s just a burned-out hulk like that castle?”

  David shrugged. “Then we’ll gather whatever information we can and continue the search for Madam Petra. If we can’t find her, we’ll go home. War doesn’t come with guarantees; we just have to do our best and hope that it’s enough. Get some rest, Max. You’re worn out. I’ll keep watch with Toby.”

  Max was dead asleep in a warm nest of blankets when a thunderclap shook him awake. Bolting upright, he blinked stupidly out the window as he got his bearings. He’d been asleep for much longer than he’d intended, for they were on the move again and climbing uphill. Wind howled outside, bombarding the wagon with an icy mixture of sleet and rain. Pushing aside a cask of phosphoroil, Max peered through the small shutter that was just behind the driver’s seat. David and Toby were hunched low, each disguised as goblins, as the smee drove the mules through the storm.

  “Where are we?” Max yelled, struggling to be heard above the wind.

  David turned to him, his eyes frosted slits. “Close!” he shouted back. “Ten, maybe fifteen miles. We should be there by dawn.”

  “Do you want me to drive?”

  “I want you to brew some coffee!”

  By morning, the weather had calmed. When Toby brought the wagon to a stop, Max climbed out and gazed around. The rain had dwindled to a steady drizzle, but the storm’s fury was evident in every icy pool and battered branch. Max caught the smell of cooking fires on the wind, its aroma a welcome comfort after so many days on the road. Piter’s Folly was just ahead. Through his glass, Max caught glimpses of the town amid the fogbanks below.

  Once David renewed Max’s illusion, the three squeezed next to one another on the driver’s bench and eased the wagon downhill. Training his glass on the settlement, Max made out more details as the morning mists retreated.

  Piter’s Folly was built upon a wooded isle in the midst of an enormous gray lake. Apparently, the settlement had outgrown these limits, for many other buildings had been constructed upon platforms and rafts that radiated out from the isle like the spokes of a wheel. Smoke trickled from makeshift chimneys, and Max even heard the lowing calls of cattle carry across the still morning. His heart beat excitedly. The town seemed relatively unscathed by the war, and there still appeared to be thousands of people living here. Since Astaroth’s rise to power, Max had not seen such a large settlement of free humans beyond Rowan’s borders. He had often wondered whether any existed.

  Once they reached level ground, a lane diverged from the road and curved toward the shoreline. Arriving at the water’s edge, they discovered a heavy bell suspended from a pole near the end of a short pier. Stretching out, Toby rang the bell with all his might. Its notes echoed eerily across the lake, drowning out the loons and the lapping waves upon the pebbled sand. Moments later, there was an answering call from out in the gray mist.

  “A ferryman will come,” explained Toby, settling back under his blanket. “Remember, don’t act too friendly. The humans need the goblins, but they don’t like them much. I’ll do the talking.”

  Max nodded and peered out into the gloom while the loons and bitterns called in the cold, wet morning. Thirty minutes passed before a shape emerged from the haze—a flat-bottomed raft capable of ferrying several wagons across. A dozen grim-looking men stood about its periphery, leaning on long oars that dripped with lake mud. The leader squinted at the caravan and its three passengers. He barked something irritably in a Slavic-sounding language.

  “I don’t understand,” said Toby nervously.

  “Where are other wagons?” inquired the man, his words slow and suspicious. “You ring bell three times. Three rings means three wagons. I bring more men for three wagons. You pay for three wagons.”

  “Oh,” said the smee. “I didn’t know. Three it is, then, but we’re in a hurry.”

  The man laughed bitterly. “Aren’t we all?”

  Max handed Toby some coins. Once they tossed the exorbitant fee across, the ferrymen used their long poles to position the raft against the dock. Hurrying off, the men helped lead the mules aboard and secured the heavy wagon at the raft’s center with a system of ropes. The workers were brisk and efficient but offered no greetings or conversation as they went about their business. Many were badly scarred, missing fingers or limping from some past injury. Max imagined each must have survived untold horrors before arriving at Piter’s Folly, where there was safety in numbers and the lake’s deep waters served as an enormous moat.

  “What you bring?” asked the leader, glancing at the wagon once the ferry had pushed off.

  “Coffee,” replied Toby. “Some sugar. Two casks of phosphoroil and a hundred iron ingots.”

  “You should have brought more iron,” the ferryman grunted. “Blacksmiths are busy. People want weapons before they leave.”

  “Leave?” asked David. “Where are they going?”

  The man shrugged and lit a pipe of strong, black tobacco. “West … north … wherever they can. Aamon’s winning the war, little goblin. His armies will be here soon. I hear his scouts have passed in the night. Prusias may leave us be, but Aamon will not. No humans live in Dùn. Soon none will live here.”

  As they sculled ahead, the town slowly emerged as a cluster of brown and gray shapes against the morning gloom. Now Max could hear hammers and saws, a woman’s call. They passed moored platforms where crops were growing in floating soil beds. A small cottage loomed into view at the end of a long dock. A bundled little boy was sitting at the end, dangling a hook into the water while the m
utt at his side waited patiently for his breakfast. Upon sighting the goblins, the boy stiffened. His dark eyes followed them until they had eased past and out of sight.

  They passed a number of similar houses and floating gardens before they reached the town’s main dock. Anchored to the island, the landing was already crowded with crates and baggage and anxious residents. It appeared the ferryman was correct and many intended to flee before Aamon’s forces arrived. It was a chaotic scene, and it was clear that some were displeased with the ferryman for transporting goblins when time was scarce and many desired passage across.

  Ignoring the hissing rebukes and angry muttering, the ferryman tossed ropes to his associates, who moored the raft against the pier. Clearing a path through the multitude, the ferryman and his workers led the mules and wagon down the ramp and gruffly reminded the crowd that honest travelers were to be left to their business, lest trade should wither. Cuffing a youth who was prying at the caravan doors, the ferryman repeated his admonition in a louder voice. He was apparently a person of some influence, for the throng withdrew so that the caravan now had an unobstructed path to the island’s narrow lanes. Emptying his pipe, the ferryman came around to where Toby was waiting anxiously.

  “I can’t take you back until nightfall. If I were you, I would not haggle too hard. Watch yourself and meet me here when the bell rings for evening watch.”

  Toby nodded and gave the man several coppers by way of gratitude. Shaking the reins, he called out to the mules and they clopped forward, brushing past the crowd and down into the lane.

  The way was relatively narrow but well maintained, encircling the island while smaller lanes branched off, leading to grazing pastures and gardens, shops and dwellings. Everywhere, there were cats slinking about in their wake or darting across their path. Toby shivered at the sight of them.

  “I don’t like cats,” he confessed. “Don’t like the way they look at me—like they know a secret.”

  “I wonder why there are so many,” said Max.