Bulk shimmered as he turned into a large, ugly bird, and Marak stepped to the water mirror.
“Kate, I need your help again,” he said, taking her hand. “You’ll have to tell me what I’m doing.”
The mirror blazed, and Kate squinted into it. “It’s the crossroads by the inn,” she reported, and then, as it shifted, “we’re following the lakeshore road away from the Hill. We’ve passed all the houses. Now the road is leaving the shore. There’s a large oak tree on the right side.”
“That’s it,” said Marak, one hand shielding his eyes. “Bulk, if you can’t find them by the time the sun starts westering, come back so you can report at twilight.” With a clack of his beak, Bulk took off into the mirror. Kate watched him soar into the sky over the road.
The mirror went dark again, and the goblins turned back to their King. He had done all he could for the moment. Now he pondered his next move, running his fingers through his striped hair as he turned the details over in his mind.
“I need Thaydar and Brindle to go to the inn tonight and find out who’s been through. Thaydar, see if you can get Harry Bounce to drink with you back in the stables. He knows all the gossip. And if Hulk was caught in a trap, I would suspect that several were placed and that the enemy may have left the others behind. It would help tremendously if I could see one, and they’re a constant danger till they’re found. Turn out all the Guard to hunt for traps in a wide sweep of the lakeshore from the village around to the Hill.
“Sayada, we’ll need a fast and magical force ready if Bulk doesn’t return at twilight. I think it had better be you, me, Katoo, and Dibah. Two horses for each goblin, and light packs. I leave their contents up to you. Plan for a pursuit of four days. Thaydar, if you learn something interesting, follow us. We’ll stay with the road, pitch tents at sunrise, and leave markers if we take a turning. Bring the trap with you if you find one.
“All of you spend today sleeping,” he concluded, “and if you can’t sleep, send word to me. I need you ready for tonight. Thaydar, on your way to your rooms, tell the pages to gather the Scholars in the library.”
The sober goblins filed out. Marak continued to stand by the water mirror for another moment. “Do you know, Kate,” he said thoughtfully, “the Guard should never come in so close to dawn. We don’t even find out someone’s missing until the sun’s about to rise. It gives us no time to react. We should be doing cross-checks of the guards at regular intervals throughout the night, and they should come in at least an hour earlier. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.”
“Has a guard ever been missing before?” asked Kate as they walked toward the library.
“No,” said Marak, “that’s just it. No member of the King’s Guard has been attacked in my reign. We’ve gotten sloppy now that the elves are gone. Well,” he amended, glancing at her, “almost gone.” He gave a wry smile. “I think the guards felt they were mainly out on bouquet detail.”
The Scholars began filling the library. There were eight goblins, five female and three male. Several of them were very old, but not all were, and none of them showed their years. Goblins didn’t usually age. They simply grew up.
“Aside from skirmishes with elves,” Marak asked the assembled Scholars, “has a member of the King’s Guard ever been kidnapped before?”
There was silence while they considered this.
One Scholar had long fangs, like Thaydar, and was clicking them with a fingernail while he thought. “About two hundred years ago,” he said, “a goblin guard changed to wolf form was caged for a local hunt. Does that help?”
“Not really,” answered Marak. “We have a member of the Guard kidnapped in his regular goblin form by an enemy who has used magic to hide him and probably used magic to help trap him. Now the enemy is moving him rapidly away from our land in the daylight and across fields. I want to know if anything like it has ever happened before.”
“During the day and across fields,” one commented thoughtfully. “That rules out any elves we may not know of,” and she glanced in Kate’s direction. Kate frowned. She didn’t like being thought of as an elf.
“Yes, it’s not elves,” said Marak patiently. The Scholars always rethought things that he had already told them, but he tried not to let it annoy him. He knew they worked better when they didn’t feel rushed.
“In my time there were a number of kidnappings,” said a very small goblin, almost a gnome. “But none involved magic.”
“There was something like it in my time,” said another. “That was in the reign of Marak Horsetooth. A sorcerer from Rome who had studied texts from Egypt kidnapped a goblin using magic. The King freed him and turned the sorcerer into a toad. Then he stepped on him.”
Kate winced. She had never cared for goblin revenge. She didn’t really understand it.
“I’d like to see that text,” said Marak. There was another moment of silence.
“I believe I remember something useful,” said a quiet goblin. Her skin was a light silver-gray, and she had white hair. Kate liked her because she always spoke so gently. Marak could have told Kate that she was just identifying with another strong elf cross.
“In the old country,” continued the elvish goblin, “there were pagan priests who used magic to hunt goblins. That was one factor, along with the elf migration, that led to our leaving the land.”
“Hunting,” mused Marak. “How? And why?”
“I believe with traps,” she answered. “They used the goblin blood to work magic, to lure the demons and buy favors. I’ll show you the texts as soon as I find them.”
“Blood,” echoed Marak pensively. Deeply distressed, Kate thought of Hulk. He always looked so sad and patient, and he never spoke. He had brought her water lilies just last week. Perhaps he had stepped into a trap trying to reach one for her.
“Kate, I need you to help me with ingredients,” the goblin King said as they left the library. In the workroom, he walked to his spell books and ran a finger across their spines.
“If Bulk doesn’t come back, I have to take whatever I’ll need with me. I think I’m facing a human adversary, but that also means a demon adversary, according to my training. The human thinks he controls the demon and has him as a servant. Really, the demon has made promises to the human in exchange for certain payments, and he collects the human’s soul upon death.
“My problem is how to fight the two of them,” declared Marak. “The demon is quite beyond my abilities. Demons are very powerful, and they love destruction and pain. They would enjoy making a goblin suffer. But this one wants his sorcerer’s soul. If the man dies soon enough, the demon will be satisfied, so I need spells that kill, and kill quickly.”
Marak brought several books over to the writing desk and made a list of the desired spells. Kate could read goblin pretty well now, but she didn’t look at the list. She didn’t want to know what the spells would do.
All that day Kate found, measured, and pounded ingredients. Meanwhile, Marak copied and learned the spells. Late in the afternoon, he mixed the ingredients she had prepared into the potions he needed. Then he finally lay down to rest up for the night ahead. But Bulk came back at sundown. He had flown for so many hours, Marak had to treat his arms with salve, but he hadn’t found the wagon that held his brother.
Kate woke the next morning to find Marak already up. The Guard had returned with a trap, and the Scholars were examining it. To Kate, it looked like an ordinary wolf trap with symbols on it, but Marak was very grim. He refused to touch it with his bare hands.
“The writing is Egyptian,” he told her. “You’d think we’re far enough from the old lands to be safe from their spells, but more and more humans are traveling back and forth these days.”