The priest had been the easiest to talk into their venture. Grallik had never cared much for Horace because he seemed to lack the fierce, blind loyalty of the others. Grallik had noted Horace’s absence on several occasions when the Oath was recited at dawn. But the wizard appreciated the priest’s healing skills and so had set aside that dislike when he asked Horace if he wished to follow the goblins with him.
Horace had said he wanted to return to Ergoth, eventually, but that temporarily he would join with Grallik and offer his curative spells to the goblins. “Healing them, after all, has been my job,” Horace had said mirthlessly.
Sitting in the slave pen, Grallik recalled several nights past, sitting in another place-at the southern edge of Steel Town near where his workshop had been and where his tomes of spells had been swallowed by the crevice. Horace sat across from him then, tracing unrecognizable patterns in the dirt.
Horace had closed his eyes, the lids fluttering unnervingly, cheeks twitching. He mouthed words that Grallik could not discern. All of that went on for some time. Then Horace’s lips formed a tight line. Still with his eyes closed, he reached into a pocket in his tabard and pulled out four finger bones. By touch, he arranged the bones into a rectangle then cupped his hands just outside them.
“Zeboim, mother goddess, lead us from Iverton. Zeboim, called the Darkling Sea, take us from this camp.”
“Steel Town,” Grallik remembered whispering, in case the goddess might not know the given name of the place since it was so rarely spoken aloud. “Iverton, called Steel Town.”
“Our home is broken,” Horace had intoned. “Our brethren dead, our commander dead. Two dozen will leave here in the morning, carrying the wounded. Brother Grallik wishes us to take a different, daring course, mother goddess. He seeks to join the goblins, the creatures we’d cruelly enslaved.”
Grallik had nearly interrupted Horace at the word cruel. Slaves deserved no better, he felt, and how the goblins were treated was not truly cruel. It was what their station called for, the wizard believed. Still, he had held his tongue, continuing to observe the Ergothian priest.
“Brother Grallik seeks my company and that of two more knights. Four of us, too few to risk approaching such a force of creatures, foolish perhaps. But a greater foolishness, I think, to take too many other, unwilling knights with us and risk looking like a party made for war. Foolish because we risk the wrath of the slaves and also the Order.” Horace then had bowed his head, rearranging the bones slightly. “Zeboim, mother goddess, you know my heart is not with this knighthood. Zeboim, called the Maelstrom, called Rann on my home island, my true brothers are now dead, my true family is lost. And so I will accompany the Gray Robe until you lead me down another path, one that might take me someday back to Ergoth.”
Grallik had rocked back and forth, growing impatient with the priest and his religious prattle. The purpose of his magic, the wizard had thought, was to determine if they would live through their first encounter with the angry goblins.
One question!
If the priest didn’t hurry, one of the other knights might see them and grow curious and come to investigate. Grallik couldn’t risk his plan being discovered. Leaving the Order was not an easy thing, especially given everything that had happened at Steel Town. They’d be marked men, all four of them.
Commanders in Jelek and the city of Neraka would demote him surely. Never in his lifetime would he regain the title of guardian, let alone rise higher than that, as once he’d dreamed. In fact, he could be brought up on charges for losing Steel Town. Punishment on top of punishment! He could not stay with the Order. He could not bear the humiliation.
All Grallik wanted was to find the red-skinned goblin and discover what strange magic she possessed. He’d seen her work with another goblin to create a hole beneath his wall of fire-not by digging, but by some sort of spell. The Order was lost to him. All that was left was magic. His tomes were lost to him; he wanted to gain power another way, and the red-skinned goblin offered a new, exciting magic.
“Zeboim, mother goddess, you who are called Zebir Jotun, Zura the Maelstrom, and Zyr, have the goblins scattered?”
Grallik sat rock still. Finally, he mouthed.
The priest nodded, eyes closed but moving rapidly behind the lids. “They are largely together, the escaped slaves, but for a few gone to the winds. The goblins, they hold their army together to stay safe and strong. They go south along the spine of the land, the Khalkist Mountains. They leave the danger of Iverton for other dangers, confident in their numbers.”
Grallik edged closer. “Will we live, priest?” he whispered. “If we reach out to the goblins and seek to join with them, will we survive? Or is this some foolish, foolish gamble I intend? Ask the mother goddess that, Horace.”
The priest grew silent, his hands cupped in front of the new bone formation, muscles in his cheeks quivering. Grallik was about ready to poke the man, but then Horace’s lips started moving again. Grallik watched close and made out a few words: Zeboim, Iverton, slaves, breath. Then the priest leaned forward and traced a pattern in the dirt with his right index finger. It was the shell of a turtle, one of Zeboim’s symbols.
“Zeboim, mot her goddess, the goblin ar my rages. So many of our brethren the goblins have killed. Brutal, as if a blood fever seized them, pools of blood so thick the land here in this mining camp cannot soak it all up. Retreating blessedly, finally, the army took their kind with them to the east.”
Horace himself fell in the fight, next to a horse a hobgoblin had gutted, Grallik reflected. He thought the hobgoblin would gut the priest too and was surprised when the creature moved on. No doubt the priest looked dead or dying and not worth the effort, and it wasn’t until long minutes after the goblins had retreated that Horace finally stirred. The priest had tended himself, the familiar healing glow spreading from his fingertips to his own chest and legs, the cuts and wounds magically closing, repairing.
“We can find them, mother goddess, such an army leaves tracks easily followed. If we listen, we might hear them, as such an army cannot travel silently. But if we follow, wise Zeboim, will they kill us? Will their battle fever take hold again? Will we fall to their stolen weapons and their filthy claws? Will they kill the four of us, as they killed so many, many of our brethren? Or will they accept us into their camp?”
Grallik stared at the bones and wondered who they had belonged to, or what. He wondered how bones helped the priest divine the answers to his questions and if the goddess truly spoke to him. He might not have cared for the Ergothian, but he knew him to be a truthful man and the goddess worthy of respect. Grallik glanced at the turtle shell drawn in the dirt. But there was no trace of it any more, the ground hard and cracked where it had been. The priest’s spell was taking so long …
“They will not kill us, Grallik. The goblins, they will not kill any of us. They will listen to you and to me-though it will require much persuasion, and they will take us into their fold and be thankful for the healing I will give their injured.” Horace’s face was not as confident as his words.
Grallik jumped to his feet, tugging Horace up as soon as he’d replaced the bones in his pocket. “Then we must leave now, Skull Knight. Get out of Steel Town now and forever.”
Horace shook his head. “I am not a Skull Knight, Grallik. Not if I leave with you. Not anymore, so do not call me that. I am, however, always and forever a priest of Zeboim. And I, too, want to leave Iverton and its memories far behind.” He brushed at his tabard, trying to clean a splotch of blood. The gesture futile, he finally gave up. “But you are right, Gray Robe. We must leave now, or there will be no leaving.”