“Saw this place in the ogre village,” Moon-eye repeated.
Mudwort nodded. Her hands trembled, so affected were they by the intense heat and cold. She wanted to pull them free, but she found she couldn’t. It was as if the palms of her hands had fused to the glossy surface. She opened her mouth to plead to the goblin couple for help, but no sound emerged.
Moon-eye laid his hands opposite hers, fingers touching as they had under the earth in the ogre village. He threw back his head, as if to howl in pain, but he couldn’t make any sound either.
After a moment more, the hot and cold vanished. They felt nothing against their hands.
The stone beneath their skin was smooth and the same temperature as the rest of their bodies or the air. All traces of the pain they had felt were also banished. Mudwort looked both relieved and disappointed. There had been magic deep in the stone and inside the pain, and it was gone!
“Together, like in the village?” Moon-eye looked quizzically at her then nudged her fingers when she didn’t answer. “Like before? Please. Use the magic together.”
Mudwort glanced up, noting the goblins and hobgoblins keeping their distance on the steps. Direfang was still at the top, on the rim of the mountain. The Dark Knight called Kenosh was halfway down the steps and holding fast to a stone post that looked carved, not natural. The Dark Knight wizard and the skull man were at the edge of the basin, both staring, trying to decide but not yet stepping in her direction.
“Maybe the skull man and the wizard need permission,” said Moon-eye, noticing that Mudwort was watching the Dark Knights. “Slaves now, the skull man and the wizard must do as Direfang wants.”
Then Mudwort looked back at him, locking eyes with Moon-eye. “Together,” the red-skinned goblin finally said. “See what is beneath this rock, what is in it, and what it is about.”
Moon-eye gave her a lopsided grin as Graytoes wrapped her hands around her mate’s arm, cradling close, staring at Mudwort. “Careful,” Graytoes mouthed to Mudwort. “Be careful with Graytoes’ Heart.”
Mudwort felt the stone tingle beneath her, so faint it could almost have been her tired mind playing tricks. It was different than the precursor trembling of the earthquakes or the volcanoes erupting. There was no anger in the sensation that she could detect. But there was a peculiar rhythm to the tingling, like a pulse or someone inhaling and exhaling. The air stirred as if the very basin were breathing deeply. She’d not noticed a breeze before, not down there in the hollow.
Words … there were words flowing in the air. Mudwort couldn’t understand the strange words, could hardly hear them, but they were there all the same. The susurrus drew her senses down to the shiny black stone and up to the stars.
Moon-eye flew with her.
In their minds’ eyes, they looked down from the summit of the mountain, seeing a half dozen volcanoes still glowing to the north, all with ribbons of lava streaming from them. Two continued to erupt, the rivers of fire wide and threatening and filling the valley between spines in the Khalkists. Concentrating their effort, they looked farther to the north, to the place that used to be Steel Town. Only the mountain where they’d once mined ore could be recognized as a familiar landmark. The rest was devastation. They saw not a single stone or man from the camp. The ground was covered by dried magma, a sheet of wrinkled, bubbled blackness. Farther north and to the west, the wasted land stretched. Roads once used by many merchants and the Dark Knights were gone.
To the east stretched more destruction. Hardened lava flows covered scrubland and most of a once-busy merchant route. Horses had been caught in the lava flow, and men too, making strange trapped figures. Mudwort imagined that they’d died fast and horribly, as had so very, very many goblins.
“Lost too many goblins,” Mudwort muttered. “Lost not enough men.”
“Too many goblins,” Moon-eye agreed, sharing her opinion. “Left with a small army now.”
Mudwort looked to the south. “Direfang wants to go to the Plains of Dust, wherever that is. Together look there.”
“Plains of Dust,” Moon-eye said, having learned its name. He squeezed his good eye shut and drew his features together tightly. “See the Plains of Dust. Together.”
The air around them stirred again, stronger, bringing more words that none of the three goblins in the center of the mirrored basin could understand. The breeze blew warmer, though not uncomfortably so, and the floor of the basin tingled with a more pronounced rhythm. Other sounds could be heard behind them, goblins and hobgoblins chattering, some curiously and nervously edging down and out onto the basin.
Grallik watched with fascination. He looked up at Direfang, hoping for permission to approach the red-skinned goblin, but the hobgoblin was too far away and not paying any attention to him. The wizard took a deep breath and stepped forward.
35
Mudwort said there is magic in Moon-eye,” Graytoes said, encouraging her mate, alternately looking at him, the goblins venturing closer, and the reflected stars in the mirrored basin. “Use that magic, Moon-eye. See the Plains of Dust.”
The landscape Mudwort and Moon-eye looked down upon evanesced, and in its place the Khalkist Mountains rose into view. They flew above the highest peaks, whizzing so fast to the south that the range became a blur of grays and browns.
Graytoes gasped. In the gap between Moon-eye and Mudwort, the field of stars shimmered and revealed the mountains. Graytoes squeezed Moon-eye’s arm proudly.
The mountains whisked by and gave way to swampland, a riot of greens the likes of which none of the goblins hovering around them had ever seen. Millions of lizards, practically invisible with protective coloration, darted from under spreading ferns. Vines dotted with large red and purple blooms hung from thick forests of trees as tall as hills. There was water everywhere, most of it covered with a green film and hazes of insects. Mudwort could practically taste the brackishness and smell the loamy sod of the place.
Farther south their vision journeyed, finding a wide game trail that led through the heart of the swamp and past the ruins of a thatch village. Numerous parrots with bright plumage lined the tree branches there, taking flight when the snakes and monkeys came too close. Crocodiles and pangolin lined the banks of rivers. Everywhere insects clouded.
The buzz of goblin talk was drowned out in the ears of Mudwort and Moon-eye by the buzzing of the insect swarms and the growls of hidden creatures not reflected in the basin. They flew farther south, and the jungle finally thinned into a lush, green plain that stretched toward distant hills and woods.
“Said Moon-eye had magic, see? Mudwort was right. Moon-eye is magic.” Graytoes beamed with pride at her mate, then switched her gaze to Mudwort and again mouthed, “Be careful.”
Mudwort stared at the images reflected in the black stone, searching for people and creatures that could do harm to goblins. If that was where Direfang wanted to go, she wanted to make sure they weren’t being led into a place as misery-wrought as Neraka and Steel Town had been. She and Moon-eye spiraled upward, observing more of the land from a higher vantage point. There were villages and bands of centaurs and trails wide enough to accommodate wagons.
So there was plenty of land in the Plains of Dust, but it was not a vacant place. The two scrying goblins continued to spiral outward, searching, searching. Moon-eye somehow knew that Mudwort was looking for other goblins. Eventually they located a small band, hunting hares in a copse of birch trees. Later, they discovered a lone goblin hiding out for some purpose at the base of a big black willow.
“Always goblins are hunted,” Moon-eye said.
The goblins around them nodded in agreement.