“Should have done this earlier,” Mudwort said to herself. “Might be sleeping, that shaman. Might not have anything interesting to watch.”
Below in the pass, most of the goblins slept. It appeared that even Direfang was resting. The Dark Knight priest and the wizard slept too, the latter because she’d robbed him of all his energy. The one called Kenosh looked over the other two knights.
“Loyal,” she pronounced the knight.
If the wizard wanted to learn her magic, he would first have to share his knowledge and craft. “The fire spells I want … before the wizard gets more from me. The fire spells before anything.”
There was no patch of dirt there for her to dig her fingers into, but she didn’t need dirt. She only burrowed her fingers into the ground because she liked the feel of it. So instead she drummed her nails against the stone she leaned against.
The young shaman … Mudwort concentrated. The one with red skin, but a different red than her own, the one who wore necklaces and nothing else and who might be sleeping, as late as it was.
“Probably sleeping, but hope not.” Mudwort closed her eyes, and the cavern appeared, the one with the domed ceiling and all the symbols carved in it. The place looked … different, and she studied it closely until she figured out what had changed. There were not as many torches as before, so it was a little darker. But her eyes were keen, and aided by her magic, she could pick out details. The carved symbols-there were more of them! They were not just on the dome, but high on the walls and stretching into the shadows.
It hadn’t been that long since she’d last looked in on those goblins. How had they been able to carve so much since then? Some of the newer symbols were darker, cut deeper into the stone. It wasn’t writing, not like the language of men or the language the dwarves had carved into their anvilaltar. Not that Mudwort could read any language. Goblins did not have a written language. But the newest symbols showed stick figures of hills and goblins, and there might have been marks that represented the passing of time and seasons, such as the images of the sun that were depicted in various sizes.
She gave up on deciphering the carved symbols and turned her attention to the cavern’s occupants, most of whom were indeed sleeping. Mudwort didn’t notice the young shaman at first glance, but there were plenty of goblins stretched out on the stone floor-more than had been when she looked before.
“Where is the shaman?” Mudwort rubbed her back against the stone a little harder, focusing, and the mountain’s pulse radiated a little stronger.
There were no familiar faces that she immediately recognized, but then, Mudwort remembered only paying close attention to the shaman and the large crystal that had been carried in on the shield. The goblins all looked so … primitive, she thought again; no clothes or shoes, crude spears at their sides, none of them with a metal blade of any sort. Likely they’d never raided a human camp for forged weapons.
Mudwort had not carried a weapon before their journey, but she wore a small knife in a sheath as they walked the trail. It was hooked on her belt between two of her pouches. Boliver had given it to her earlier that day, said he’d found it in one of the dwarf homes, found several of the knives and that she should have one. He took a slightly larger knife for himself, and he did not tell her what he’d done with the others.
She continued to scan the goblins, all of them seemingly well fed, many of them plump, a few even proportionately as thickset as the Ergothian priest. To never want for food- like those cave goblins-would be a good thing.
Ah, there she was! Mudwort recognized the necklaces that hung from the young shaman’s neck. She was sitting against the cavern wall, just like Mudwort, who continued to sit with her back against the mountain. The young shaman’s head was down, chin touching her chest, so Mudwort knew she was sleeping.
There was nothing interesting in watching her counterpart sleep. Mudwort thought about ending her spell and getting some sleep herself.
“A few moments more,” she decided. “Then sleep.” She concentrated, hearing the snores of many of the goblins in the cave. They sounded so much like her kinsmen sleeping along the trail below. But they did not repulse her as much as her kinsmen did; they did not carry the stink of sweat and dwarf and tylor blood. They did not-
The shaman stirred, picking up her head and yawning. Mudwort’s attention flew back to the shaman, eyes widening when she saw that it wasn’t the same shaman after all. She had wrinkles at the edges of her eyes, and her face was not so smooth. Her nose carried a thin scar, and another scar ran from her ear to her jaw. There was a bone hoop in her right ear, recently stuck there as it was crusted with blood from the piercing, and there was a feather and a bead on a string hanging from the left.
“Not the same shaman.” Though the necklaces were the same. The disappointment was thick in Mudwort’s voice. “No, not the same-”
Or was it?
The eyes were similar. So was the face, though it was older. The shaman’s mother perhaps?
“Years and years and years older. But how can that be?”
Mudwort tried to get more comfortable, pressing herself farther into the niche, and settling in to watch and puzzle out the age problem.
“A curse? A disease that withers?”
The goblins below called the shaman Saarh, Mudwort had understood on her previous magical visit. The name meant “prized one” or “treasure” or “princess.” Saarh rose and stretched, clenching and unclenching her fists, and picking her way through the sleeping goblins to stand in the center of the cavern under the dome. She twirled slowly, the beads around her neck clacking and the feather and bone hoop that hung from her ears fluttering. She was graceful, the most graceful goblin Mudwort had ever seen, and she moved so quietly that only the beads made any noise.
Saarh moved her fingers in a pattern as if they were spider legs and she were weaving a web. In response, some of the symbols in the dome glowed, winking on and off and throwing an odd, ghostly light over the goblins sleeping below.
How had Saarh aged so many years in such a short time? The question gnawed at Mudwort. Very, very curious, Mudwort thought. She still couldn’t say where in the world the cave was.
“Or when in the world,” she said, sudden realization dawning.
Mudwort shivered with the thought.
“When, when, when.”
Well more than a few days had passed in that cavern, that was for sure. It had been more like twenty years, judging from Saarh’s wrinkles. The shaman was middle aged. Mudwort couldn’t tell how she knew, but she realized that she wasn’t looking at the present. No curse or disease was responsible for Saarh’s aging. It was simply time.
Somehow, it must be that Mudwort had glimpsed the past when she first touched the cavern with her mind, and she was looking at the past still. The cavern and Saarh and all the goblins with their crude spears were not a part of Mudwort’s world.
Her mind had journeyed through the stone and into the past.