“Thya?”
There was plenty of blood spreading away from Thya, but curiously, none stuck to the spear.
“Thya’s dead,” Mudwort murmured to herself.
As heavy as the weapon should have been, given its size and make-up, it had felt insubstantial in Mudwort’s hands. It had been so easy to kill Thya with it.
Mudwort kneeled and stared at Thya’s corpse.
“Didn’t mean to kill you, Thya. Sorry.” Thya had died so quickly, Mudwort hadn’t the chance to apologize. “Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.”
Was that what the trees had meant when their leaves whispered “danger”? That the spear was so sharp, it was dangerous?
Mudwort rocked forward and rubbed a smudge of dirt off Thya’s face. Then she willed the ground to open up and bury the goblin. She stared blankly as the earth did her bidding.
Someday, she would have to tell Direfang that Thya had died … but not how it had happened. Never that, not how it had happened. Of course she’d tell Direfang only if she ever saw him again. She had no intention of returning to his ruined city and accidentally killing other goblins who drew too close to her treasure.
Would she ever see Direfang again?
MEETING DIREFANG
Mudwort blinked furiously, looking all around. Where had the daylight gone? She preferred twilight to sunshine, her eyes saw better in the half-dark, so it wasn’t hard for her to sort through the shadows. Daylight had suddenly vanished.
And where were the trees?
For that matter, where was the grass and her prized spear?
Her stomach climbed up into her throat with the shocking realization that she was no longer in the magical clearing but was back inside the hated Dark Knight mines in Neraka.
In place of the beautiful spear, she held a rusty pickaxe. And instead of the fine Dark Knight shirt she’d fashioned into a tunic, she wore a reeking, threadbare rag that didn’t wholly cover her body. Mudwort’s feet were bare and calloused, her fingers calloused too. She ached all over, especially across her shoulders and down her back-where she always hurt the worst when she mined that damnable ore.
Had the spear been a dream?
“Sour mind, Mudwort has.” That was said by a gray-skinned goblin with a hump in the middle of his back. She’d seen him in the mines several times before, but she didn’t know his name. She never asked any of the workers their names, not wanting to be encumbered by friendship or even a passing conviviality. Names invited conversation, and Mudwort did not like to talk to her kinsmen.
“Sour mind. Talks to rocks. Talks to the pick. Talks to self. Sour, sour mind. Stinky mind.” The humpbacked one spit a gob of phlegm between his feet and faced the wall. Placing one hand on it for support, he raised his pick over a stooped shoulder and brought it sparking against the stone.
There were other goblins in the chamber. Six of them boasted gray skin like the humpbacked one; they called their clan Fellowship of Clay. Mudwort hadn’t asked for the clan name, she’d just heard it several times in reference to the gray-skins. Another six were red-skinned like herself, but it was a different shade of red and they belonged to another clan, one she didn’t know the name of. Thirteen goblins all told, including herself, were mining in one of the deepest chambers in a recently opened mineshaft.
The air there was stale and close, filled with the scent of ore, dirt, and stone, and coupled with the stench of goblins who had gone too long a time without being rained on. Mudwort longed for the fresh air of the clearing-even if that had been a dream.
There wasn’t a light in the chamber, but a bulky lantern hung just beyond the entrance, out in the long tunnel that led up to other chambers where more goblins mined. Its flame cast a hellish glow that caught suspended stone dust amid the murky background.
“Sour mind, Mudwort. Work. Work or die,” Humpbacked said.
She stretched her thin fingers to the wall and felt the vibrations of each pick striking the stone, hurting it. Mudwort couldn’t explain how she knew, but she knew that the stone was in pain from the miners chipping away at it and from the ore that ran through it like veins in a goblin’s body. She found the stone more interesting than the goblins and hobgoblins, and certainly more interesting than her Dark Knight enemies.
“Work or be whipped,” chimed in a red-skinned goblin.
Others also talked about her sour mind, but she ignored them, listening instead to the stone that complained beneath her fingertips. It was old, Mudwort sensed, older than anything, and it did not seem to mind that chunks of it filled with ore were being removed. The ore … itched … was the word Mudwort decided upon. But it did not like to be struck by the picks.
“There is no other way,” she told it as she struck the stone herself so everyone would stop staring at her. Mudwort was more precise, not just chipping away at the wall like the Fellowship of Clay clansmen. She struck only where the ore was, and the stone complained less and less as the hours went on.
Mudwort filled up one sack and lugged it up the tunnel. Sometimes goblins were stationed partway up, and they would take the sacks from the deeper-down workers. It was more efficient that way. But that day no goblins were waiting in the tunnel, so Mudwort had to struggle with the sack all the way up to the surface. Her legs burned by the time she rose above ground, and her eyes burned from the brightness of the midday sun. It glared down on dusty, desolate, ugly Steel Town, a place she had come to hate almost as much as she hated the Dark Knights.
She dropped the sack just beyond the entrance and stared down at the horrid excuse for a city. Rows of Dark Knights stood at attention, reciting their Oath or Measure or whatever they were calling it. Wasted words drifted up to her lofty position.
“Work or die.” That was barked by a Dark Knight stationed at the mine entrance just behind her. He said the words in goblinspeak; a smattering of the knights knew just enough goblinspeak to help them order the slaves around. “Work or die.”
She grumbled and trudged back down the tunnel, taking a fresh sack with her. Too many goblins worked that day. When she’d watched the knights below, she’d also caught a glimpse of the slave pens. There were always goblins there, as the knights worked the slaves in shifts. But there weren’t as many as normal, meaning that the shifts would be longer and the breaks shorter or nonexistent with more goblins mining. The knights needed the ore for something urgent-a battle maybe, Mudwort thought.
“Bring the dream back,” she said as she returned to the chamber and snatched up her pick again. She wanted to be back in the orderly clearing with the magical spear and all the wonderful smells around her and the promise of blueberries nearby to fill her stomach. She didn’t want such a wretched reality.
She touched her fingers to the wall again, searching for the spot where the stone itched the most. Retrieving the best and most chunks of ore brought rewards, and that might mean a shorter shift.
“Nervous,” she muttering to herself, sensing what the stone felt. “Itchy, but nervous more. Anxious and worried.” Mudwort squatted and touched the floor; she didn’t get the same feelings from that stone. Moving around the chamber and ignoring taunts of “Sour-minded s’dard,” she touched the stone again and again.
She circled back to the first spot, near where the humpbacked goblin still worked. He used two hands on the pick handle, swinging it clumsily, for he was tired.
“Stone is nervous here,” she told him. “Don’t like the feeling. It is worried. It is weak.” Her eyebrows rose, realizing she was right; that was what the wall was trying to tell her. “Weak like an old, old goblin. Brittle.”
The humpbacked gray-skin spit another gob of phlegm, shook his head, and struck the wall harder.
Mudwort waved her arm to get his clansmen’s attention. “This wall will break,” she announced. “This ceiling will fall. It is weak like an old, old goblin.”