The Kingdom - Clare B Dunkle - Hollow Kingdom 01 - The Hollow Kingdom
The child continued to wail pathetically. Kate looked up and down the hallway and held her bracelet toward the stained and spider-hung wooden rafters, but she saw no sign of it. In another minute, the door swung open beside her. Kate turned, almost falling as she slipped on a fat bug. A man stood in the doorway.
“Welcome, my dear!” he said in a gravelly voice. “Always a pleasure to have pretty callers. You’re looking for the baby, aren’t you? Why don’t you hold your magical jewelry a little higher and look at the wall there?”
Feeling that her lighted bracelet was rather unfortunately conspicuous, Kate nevertheless did as he suggested. At first she recoiled, seeing what appeared to be a large spider on the wall. Another moment’s examination and Kate felt distinctly sick. A shriveled, skeletal little hand was nailed into the brick beside her. Kate dropped her arm and turned back to the man, completely disgusted.
“Isn’t it clever?” he rasped. “Isn’t it an interesting bit of magic? It cries whenever a woman walks by because it’s still looking for its mother. Rather impractical, I’m afraid, since it won’t cry when a man comes in, but must we always be practical? Some things we do just for their own sake.” The man beckoned Kate into the room, and she walked in, but in another second she gave a loud cry and jumped back into the hall, the baby’s voice wailing once again beside her. “Oh, don’t be alarmed,” called out the man in his hoarse voice. “Come right in, and I’ll tell you all about it.”
Kate stepped slowly back into the small room, her hand over her mouth. In a large iron cage lit by two candelabra lay the decaying body of Hulk, his insides distended with gas. The tiny room was full of the most unbearable stench, and Kate could see that the large body was teaming with bugs and worms. She choked, sure she would vomit in the close space. The sorcerer came to stand beside her, gazing down at the dead feathered ape.
“Who says monsters don’t exist, eh?” he inquired gruffly. “You never expected to see such a sight in your life, and you’ll never guess where I found him. Not the Himalayas, no, not even the Andes, but right here in our own British Isles! He’s a goblin, my dear. They do exist, you know. Isn’t he a beauty?”
Trying to control her stomach, Kate concentrated all her energy on studying the sorcerer. The man was unremarkable in every way. He was of medium height and build, gray-haired and slovenly. His ordinary face might have belonged to any grandfather of Kate’s experience. But when he turned toward her, she discovered that his pupils were ruby red. She had seen many an unusual eyeball in the last year and a half, but every single one still had black at the center.
“Come along,” he said hoarsely, picking up one of the candelabra and leading her through a door at the other end of the small room. Kate found herself in a very large, low room, the original warehousing space of the building. The dancing lights of the candles and her own diamond bracelet could not illuminate its dim corners. The floor was littered with the remains of smashed boxes. She hooked her dress on a piece of packing crate and had to stoop to work it loose. When she turned around, the sorcerer was waving her courteously through a narrow doorway. She stepped through, trying to avoid a flattened bit of fur that looked as if it had once been alive. As she did so, the sorcerer pulled a door of iron bars out of the wall. He slammed it shut with a clang, and Kate was a prisoner.
“What are you doing?” she demanded in surprise, seizing the bars.
“I’m going to kill you,” rasped the man. “You’re obviously a powerful sorceress, and I’m not going to give you any more time to do your work.”
“I certainly am not!” said Kate indignantly, wondering how she would get out. When Charm bit him, it would have to locate the key and release her. “My coachman tried to kill me, and I was trying to find help. I saw a man walking this way, and I followed him.”
The sorcerer turned at the doorway, holding up the candelabrum. Those red pupils glowed eerily from that comfortable face.
“If you weren’t powerful in magic, your coachman would have succeeded in killing you and saved me the trouble,” he growled. Kate reflected unhappily that this was true. “Perhaps you can explain why you were snooping about my property with magical lights, but I doubt it. Not that it matters; I’d kill you, anyway. I can use your hair and your liver, and I think I have a spell that calls for your left ear, too.” He turned and went out.
“Charm,” called Kate quietly, “why didn’t you bite him? Don’t tell me he’s not a danger to the King’s Wife!”
Charm glided up from her sleeve and peered out through the bars at the gloomy space beyond. “You are in terrible danger, King’s Wife,” it hissed softly. “Only three King’s Wives before you have been in more danger. I cannot bite this man. He is what Thaydar was, a manifestation of the spirit. He can kill you, but if I try to bite him, I will seem to be biting the air.”
Kate glanced around her long, narrow prison in dismay. “But what can we do? How can I escape?”
“His body is elsewhere, like the King’s,” whispered Charm. “I must have a body to bite. You are the one hundred and sixty-eighth King’s Wife I have guarded, and you may be the last.”
“If his body is elsewhere,” said Kate firmly, “then you have to go find it. Surely he wouldn’t leave it too far away.”
Charm hissed for a few seconds and then unwound itself, gliding down to the floor at her feet. Now that she was finally rid of the snake that she had detested for so long, Kate felt horribly unprotected.
“Look everywhere, Charm. You have to save the kingdom,” she called. “Don’t worry about what happens to me.” The magic snake stopped and reared up to look back at her. It seemed like a long, thin bar of gold.
“I do worry, King’s Wife,” it hissed. “You are carrying the Heir. If you die, there will be no more Kings, and that means no more King’s Wives.”
“The Heir?” gasped Kate. “Charm! What are you talking about?”
“Your son, of course,” buzzed the snake. “Yours and the King’s. Stay alive until I return.”
“Wait!” cried Kate, but it whisked under the door and was gone.
Kate paced up and down for some time in the cell, turning this news over in her mind. So she was going to have a baby. Wouldn’t Marak be thrilled! She couldn’t wait to rescue him so that they could talk about it. I wonder what the baby will look like, she mused. Maybe my hair and Marak’s eyes. I’m not going to cry when I see him, she thought happily. And that sorcerer had better not try to hurt my baby!
A click at the far door told Kate that the sorcerer was returning. Bulk sidled through behind him, carrying a large, curved sword. Kate stared at him in astonishment. Although the goblins had a well-stocked weapons room, none of the King’s Guard carried anything but a knife. They relied on magic to subdue enemies.
“You were so interested in the dead goblin,” said the sorcerer, “that I thought you would enjoy being killed by his twin.”
“But how can you be sure he’s a goblin?” asked Kate. “He just looks like a funny monkey to me.”
The sorcerer turned to look at the pale ape, who crouched with the sword in his huge hands. “Oh, he’s a goblin. They all look different. I have sixty of the horrible monsters now, and they carry out any command. You would think, to look at them, that they were designed just for hell. They don’t even have to kill on their errands. People run at the sight of them.”
This speech made Kate absolutely furious. Bulk was not a horrible monster, and neither were any of the other goblins. They would have scorned stabbing a woman in the back, as the handsome Bingham had tried to do, and they certainly wouldn’t kill a guest in order to use her left ear. Kate glared at the avuncular sorcerer. How happy she would be to live with horrible monsters if she could only get away from him!
“That’s fascinating,” she said coldly. “How did you even know they existed? Did you just meet one by accident?”
“We’re wasting time.” The sorcerer hesitated. “But it’s such a good story, and a few minutes won’t matter.” Kate fervently hoped that he was wrong. “My brother is a doctor, and he wrote me a year ago, very excited about a new patient of his. This madman claimed he’d been enchanted by goblins, and you’ll never guess what they did. They stuck him to the ceiling! I couldn’t believe it when I saw him. I’d give anything to learn how to do it.”
The sorcerer couldn’t have wished for a better audience. Kate stared at him openmouthed. So he had learned about goblins from her very own guardian. Wouldn’t Marak be furious with himself when he learned that his revenge had endangered the whole kingdom!
“That fat man skittered back and forth across the ceiling like a bug,” continued the sorcerer, “telling me all about the goblins who stole his wards. Of course, no one but me believed him. Everyone was sure he had killed them himself. I wasn’t about to let another magician profit from his excellent information, so I killed him before I left. And you’ll never guess how I killed him!” Kate couldn’t speak. Her guardian, dead?
“I hanged him, of course!” The sorcerer burst into a loud, raucous laugh. “There he hung, neck snapped, feet dangling, but they dangled toward the ceiling! That big body twisting to and fro on the rope, pointing straight up into the air. What an unbelievable sight!”
Kate stared at the man, horrified beyond words. Hugh Roberts had meant real harm to his wards, but she could never have wished such an end for him. She remembered how he had looked crawling around on the ceiling and closed her eyes with a shudder.
“Well, time to kill you,” the man said abruptly. “I’ll be able to try something new tonight with that ear. Do you command that bracelet to light, or does it light by itself?”
“I don’t really know,” Kate said, gazing at it. “I don’t think I do anything.” In answer, it flared a little brighter. The sorcerer looked annoyed.
“Go ahead,” he told the feathered ape hoarsely, handing him a key. “Unlock the door and then kill her.” Bulk shuffled forward, head down. He turned the key in the lock, and Kate stepped through the open door. Bulk looked up at her, his yellow eyes strangely darkened, and shuffled back a step. Kate walked out into the room, stepping over the flat fur thing, and he moved farther away, looking at the floor.
“Now what’s happening?” growled the sorcerer. “Are you working a spell on him?” He crossed to the ape and stared at his face, slapping him a couple of times. Kate was surprised that his hand didn’t go right through. Maybe spirits could hit each other.
“Go kill her!” he demanded, pointing at Kate. The ape shook his head pitifully. Bright flames engulfed the feathery body, and he howled silently, writhing in torment. “Go kill her now!” But Bulk crouched down and hid his face.
“I can’t believe this!” The man eyed Kate uneasily. “I think he’s afraid of you. They lose their memory, voice, and hearing, so their fears are almost the only thing they have left. But why you?” Kate considered the question herself. Bulk must be afraid of being bitten, she thought. Every goblin was raised to know what the King’s Wife Charm could do.
“I’ll fetch another one,” the man muttered. This time he didn’t lock her up in the cell; in fact, Kate noticed that he gave her a rather wide berth as he headed for the door. Bulk disappeared after a minute. Kate hurried to try the two doors out of the large room, but both of them were locked. What a shame, she reflected bitterly, that this powerful sorceress couldn’t work a simple Unlock Spell.
The sorcerer came back with Sayada and Tinsel, a giant of a goblin with thick, corded silver-gray arms. Adele had named him for his hair, which fell like bright tin threads around his face. Neither goblin would approach Kate at all. The sorcerer bullied them and burned them, but they refused to lift their swords. The gray-haired man wiped the sweat from his face and studied the slight, pretty girl with real alarm.
“I can’t imagine what they think you’ll do,” he complained. “It’s times like this that I wish they could speak.”
“Maybe they’re just gentlemen,” Kate suggested calmly. “They certainly look like gentlemen to me.” The sorcerer stared at her in astonishment and turned to study the two phantoms. He had been sure she would scream at the sight of the one without a nose, but she gazed at the freakish creature as serenely as if she saw it every day. He hesitated, taken aback, trying to think what to do. Then he snapped his fingers in sudden inspiration.
“I know which one will kill you,” he said gleefully, turning to leave. “He’s the best one, the very best, and he’s not afraid of anything.”
Unlike you, thought Kate in disgust. You can take on helpless things without a qualm, but you’re afraid of one mysterious girl. She glanced up scornfully as he returned, his plain, comfortable face wreathed in smiles. Then she gasped. Right behind him was Marak, eyes on the ground, curved sword in his six-fingered hand.
“Oh, so you’re afraid of this one, eh?” The sorcerer turned to look at the silent goblin. “That’s funny, I don’t think he’s so bad. A little grotesque, but nothing compared to those nose holes, I would have said.”
Kate stepped forward quickly. “Marak,” she called out in goblin, “look at me. I’ve come to help you escape. Can’t you work any magic at all?” The goblin King didn’t even move. His face was shielded by his impossible hair as he leaned on the curved sword.
“No working spells on him!” barked the sorcerer. “I don’t want you damaging him! Now, kill her,” he commanded the goblin. Marak swung the sword up and stepped toward Kate without hesitation. She reflected bitterly that the sorcerer had been right to pick him out. The goblin King had nothing to fear from the King’s Wife Charm. He would never be bitten, no matter what he did. If only he would look at her!
“I wasn’t enchanting him, I was talking to him!” Kate said indignantly, stepping away from her husband’s advance. “I just said hello. Why didn’t he answer?”
“What, you know him?” shouted the man in disbelief. “Wait a minute,” he ordered, and Marak stopped at once, staring at the ground. “He only hears and knows what I hear and know. If I were out of the room, he’d hear nothing at all. What language was that? How do you know about goblins? Why are they afraid of you?”
“His name is Marak, and he is the King of the goblins,” she said, ignoring the questions. “He is a great magician, much greater than you will ever be, and he protects his people with his magic. He doesn’t need to carry around candles like you do. He lights the entire kingdom with his spells. And I asked him why he had a sword in his hands. He doesn’t need a sword. He kills with magic.”
The sorcerer looked excitedly at the motionless goblin King. “What a shame he can’t speak or remember! Have you watched the spells? Do you know the words?” Kate’s heart gave a leap. As the sorcerer talked, she saw Marak make a movement of his own. He was fingering the sword thoughtfully as if he were thinking about her last statement.
