The Goblin Market (Into the Green) (21 page)

She owed it to her sister to carry on, but if there was any way she could escape the promise she’d made to Kothar, any way she could live this life she could almost see unraveling in front of her, she was going to do it. For once, she would do something for herself; Christina would be on her own.

“Come, Majesty, before you fall behind,” Gorigast called to them over his shoulder, and he was already starting forward again on their circling route around the knot. “I know the number now, but if we linger longer I might lose my way.”

“Of course,” Meredith thought that Gorigast looked like a disappointed old school teacher when he crossed his bony arms and tried to look stern, and as the first smile she’d worn all day began to draw the corner of her mouth upright, she reached for Him’s hand. “We’re right behind you.”

Him’s fingers were warm and seemed to gratefully stretch before wrapping her hand inside his. They huddled close together as they walked, and while before the heaviness of mood had kept conversation to a minimum, she began to feel that if they were going to make it through the Darkjnan Wald alive, they would have to keep as much of their good humor as possible.

“You spoke very little of your mother to me,” Him started. “When you did, there was this look about you and this light inside of your eyes. I want to know more about her.”

“What look?”

“This amazing look of reverence as though no being, alive nor dead, could ever touch her place in your heart.”

For a moment she looked away from him. “That is true enough, I suppose. She was incredibly beautiful, and she knew absolutely everything.”

"Of course she must have been beautiful to have been your mother.” Him watched her reaction with a secret joy.

“I really don’t look like her at all,” she admitted, “then, I suppose that would be so, since she really wasn’t my mother.” That thought was still so new to her, and she couldn’t imagine ever thinking of anyone else as her mother—even if she did get all her memories of her life before she’d gone Upland back. After a thoughtful silence, she finally went on “Christina, on the other hand...” she marveled at the likeness her sister shared with the woman who’d given birth to her, and how it only seemed to grow with each day. “Christina looks exactly like her, and her spirit is as free as the wind as well.”

“It is always the free of spirit who find themselves in predicaments like hers,” he said.

The defensive bone in her grew immediately reproachful of his observation, but before she could tell him what she thought, he tilted his gaze into hers and she couldn’t begin to deny what she had always known to be true. No matter that the market had been a trap for Meredith, Christina had walked into it all by herself, and most certainly not because she was innocently drawn. Christina was a great adventurer, always walking the boundary between the fantastic and mundane, and it was only a matter of time before she walked straight into the wrong adventure.

“Well, I suppose she is far braver than I.”

“Does that make you angry?”

She hadn’t noticed the edge on her voice until he’d pointed it out. “I’m not angry,” but she was angry, she realized.

Since the day she was born it seemed that Christina had done as she pleased, often doing the things Meredith herself dreamed of doing, but had always been unable because of her responsibilities.

“All right,” she softened under his scrutiny. “Perhaps I am a little bit angry, but not at her.”

“At you?”

“Maybe,” she mulled over it a moment. “Maybe my father, I don’t know. Sometimes my mother too. And now all this… Maybe I am made at her. Maybe I have a right to be.”

Him only nodded, and for a long stretch their conversation seemed to have ended, and then he said, “I think it’s fairly certain now that you’re the one on an adventure. All those years you spent away from your life here was one great adventure in its own right.

An uneasy laugh caught in the back of her throat. “I suppose.”

“Just look at all you’ve done for your sister. You stood up to Kothar, faced down his minions and now you travel the Wald so that you can face Kothar again and take back what he stole from you.”

“You make it sound so simple and heroic.”

“Meredith.” He grasped at her forearm so she had no choice but to stop and look up at him. “You are a heroine. Believe me when I tell you that in my brother’s village, even now the bards tune their harps to sing your story. ”

She had no answer save for a sharp gasp of disbelief that he quickly refuted with an earnest nod. They began walking again, barely paying attention to Gorigast in front of them.

“Well, I would like to think that I’ve done nothing that Christina would not do for me, were our roles reversed.”

But as soon as she said those words, Him’s disbelieving glance shot sideways to avoid her, and though she might never admit it aloud, she knew he was right. It wasn’t that Christina was spiteful or wicked. She simply wasn’t a caregiver. She had never needed to nurture or protect, having always known the security of Meredith’s watchful love. Many times her sister’s blatant disregard had driven Meredith crazy, but it changed nothing in the end. Meredith loved Christina more than life itself, and that was why making this sacrifice had felt so simple in the beginning.

“I do not doubt for a moment she is grateful to you for all you’ve done for her.” Him smiled over at her again, and then squeezed her fingers. “You give without expectation and ignore the pain of the sacrifice because you love. That is what makes you amazing,” he said, “what makes you a heroine.”

Wanting nothing more to do with the swelling of her own head, she quickly changed the subject. “Do you miss your father? You said he died when you were young. Did you know him well?”

“Not so well, no,” he shrugged, and Meredith could tell that their conversation made him uncomfortable. “He fathered many sons, and though I was his last he had given so much of himself already that it was as if he had nothing left for me. I inherited the wild hunt, governance of the woods, but only because it was I who was born with the part of his soul meant to take his place when he was gone. I am grateful for Sylvanus. He has always been like a father to me, more than a brother, and it was he who taught me what it was to be The Hunter.”

“Your father worried about his caring nature,” she said, not realizing the words she had just spoken. “He always feared that when the time came that Sylvanus would govern with his emotions rather than his intellect, but he turned out to be a fine leader in the end. I suppose he had to, didn’t he? With my aunt and uncle passed, with me gone…”

“You remember my father?” Him balked in surprise, but she was just as taken aback by her revelation as he was.

“I did,” she cried. “I mean I do, though not fully. I just remember it was something Sylvanus said when we were young, that your father thought him too emotional to make rational decisions—that he would make a lousy soldier and even lousier ruler if it came down to him to oversee the city.”

She watched unspoken sorrow draw itself into the lines in his face.

“Sylvanus has kept the peace in ways so few others would have dared, and that’s more than I can say for our forebears.”

Meredith nodded. There were a thousand questions she wanted to ask, questions she should have asked Sylvanus, and would probably never be given the chance. The vague recollection of that life, that past, hummed around the edges of her awareness and consumed her mind so that they spoke no more.

She was grateful, however, when Him leaned inward and lowered his arm over her so that he might draw her nearer to him as they walked. They stumbled awkwardly at first until they fell into each other’s rhythm. When she felt the brush of his lips atop her forehead, she felt a mixture of comfort and safety, at least for the moment.

“That’s two hundred and seventy-three...two hundred and seventy-three... yes, seventy-three...” Gorigast mumbled to himself as they meandered slowly behind him.

It had felt as though they had walked that constant circle for several hours, and since there was no sunlight there was no way to determine just how much time had passed since they’d crossed the bridge and entered into the darkness.

“Make ready to turn left, Majesty.” Gorigast turned around and smiled up at her. It was a desperate grin filled with the relentless desire to please.

“Please, Gorigast, stop calling me Majesty. My name is Meredith.”

“Shall I call you Queen Meredith?”

 “Just Meredith will be fine,” she withdrew from Him’s arm and studied their surroundings.

“Just Meredith it is then,” Gorigast nodded, but somehow Meredith didn’t believe it would be long before he was calling her Majesty again. “We turn left here.” Gorigast slipped through an opening in the landscape that seemed like a tear in the fabric of the Wald itself, and Meredith and Him stood transfixed on the other side.

“This place is an abomination,” Him muttered.

“You’re telling me.”

He reached for her hand, and together they crossed through eerie veil and into a new dimension of the Wald.

It was brighter than the land they’d left behind; that was the first thing Meredith noted. They had come out in the midst of a melancholy clearing lined by the gnarled corpses of trees. The landscape ahead was tinted silver, as though the sun’s light managed to claw through the thick atmosphere, and in the distance there lingered the lonely shadow of a mountain. There was certainly no sign of a castle, or any indication that they were even on the right path to the castle, but when Meredith moved to ask Gorigast where they were, she discovered he was nowhere in sight.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

When Gorigast stumbled through the veil, tripping over his own pant legs, he was quite surprised to have landed at the feet of the goblin king himself.

Kothar was not amused, as was obvious from his stern disposition and tightly pressed lips. The mud-flecked hem of his dark cloak seemed caught in some otherworldly breeze, and swayed perpetually against the backs of his calves. He pushed his tongue against the roof of his mouth, causing his cheeks to sink in just slightly, and then he released it with a harrowing tsk.

“My orders were simple, were they not, Gorigast?” He stepped forward so that the length of his shadow enshrouded the cowering elf at his feet. “Kill the hunter and bring me the girl. How complicated can that be?”

“S-s-s-sire, I wasn’t expecting you.”

“Obviously.” The soft leather soles of his boots made no sound as he approached. “Obviously you thought that this was all some kind of game.”

“No, no game, Sire,” he insisted with a furious shake of his head. “I was just bringing them into the glen and ...”

“Only just now bringing them to the glen?” Kothar reached down and plucked the elf up from the ground, his powerful grasp bruising the thin flesh around Gorigast’s arms as he raised him to eye level. “Do you realize how much time has been wasted already?” He lowered his face toward the squirming elf in his grasp whose dangling feet jerked as he twisted and writhed to free himself. “What is taking you so long?”

“N-n-nothing, Sire. It’s just that I...”

“Nothing? I find that very hard to believe. You’ve only now just come upon the glen.” He shook his head in disbelief. “Were you lost?” He already knew the answer. “I was sure that with my charm you’d have no trouble finding your way.”

“No trouble, Sire,” he shook his head in a furious denial. “No trouble. Please, I can explain...”

“And the Hunter,” Kothar went on, “curiously still alive.” He paused and lifted his ear toward the sound of Meredith and Him approaching. Returning his sharp gaze to Gorigast, he shook his head and sighed. “Tsk, tsk, tsk. I was so sure I’d chosen well with you, but you disappoint me. Perhaps I misjudged you and should find another to carry out this simplest of tasks.”

“Please, Sire, I won’t let you down, please.”

“You are running out of time.” Before Kothar loosened his fingers and dropped the elf into a shuddering puddle at his feet, he tightened his grip. “Now listen to me very carefully, Gorigast, for if you do not do exactly as I tell you, I will bring down such suffering upon you that you will beg for death, do we understand each other?”

Gorigast peered up through the thinning strands of his hair, his large eyes blurred by his own fear. He trembled so fiercely that when he nodded it was almost indiscernible.

“You are going to lead them through the glen and into the hedgerows, and directly to the Nether Lake. That is where you will lose the Hunter.” Kothar leaned back and crossed his arms as he studied the cowering creature before him. “Are we clear?”

“Y-yes, Sire.” His nod was over-eager, desperate. “The Nether Lake.”

“See that she comes to no harm.” The voices beyond the veil were just inches away when Kothar turned and began to walk away. “And remember,” he turned over his shoulder so quickly that wisps of his black hair clung to the sides of his face. “If you fail me, Gorigast, I’ll make you regret that you were ever born.”

 Before Gorigast could pick himself up from the ground, Kothar disappeared between the trees, and Meredith and Him crossed through the veil. He could hear her calling his name, and while the coward inside of him longed to run as far from the sound of her voice as he could, that very same coward knew that Kothar’s wrath would be far greater than any scorn that might come from the gentle lady he was leading straight toward doom.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Despite the fact that it was brighter than the thick copse they’d left behind, Meredith was not the least bit surprised when a fat droplet of rain fell from the overcast sky and landed on her forehead. Typical, yes, but after crossing the bridge into that dark new world, complaint now carried with it a sense of uselessness. It seemed a waste of breath to moan about it, but she did wish she had a cloak to shelter her from the rain, which began falling in earnest as if purposely thwarting their quest.

As though he had read her mind, Him maneuvered around in his pack and pulled out the blanket that sheltered them the night before. He laid it over her shoulders and drew the back up over her head in a makeshift hood.