Death March

MUDWORT’S PRICE

The sky was as red as Spikehollow’s bottle. The setting sun had colored the low-hanging clouds crimson, and the goblins stared at it, oddly quiet. They’d left the shade of the pine trees days before and were at a point where Mudwort said the river would soon widen and head straight to the sea. More goblins and hobgoblins had joined them, the army’s numbers swelling to close to two thousand.

Where had they all come from? Direfang asked Mudwort days past.

Mudwort shrugged and found something to busy herself with. She did not want to tell Direfang that she’d been calling through the stone to their kinsmen, summoning them to join the horde.

She sat apart from the rest of the goblins, her thoughts churning. Direfang had confessed to her that he’d changed his mind about the Qualinesti Forest. It was too far away; the clans would drift apart long before they reached the place. And she hadn’t been able to find a faster route to travel to the forest.

“There are too many of us now,” he told her. “We will attract attention if we march directly to the Qualinesti Forest. So we will go first to the Plains of Dust … if this army will walk that far.”

Mudwort wanted-needed-to reach the forest. She couldn’t tell Direfang why because she couldn’t provide a solid reason to herself. But her mind had touched something there when she’d been looking for a home for the army, when she’d mingled her magic with Moon-eye’s and Boliver’s. And that something lured her; she couldn’t say why, but she couldn’t resist.

Her fingers drummed across the ground, twirling in the grass as she softly hummed. She’d heard some of the newcomers speculate that something bad was coming because the sky had turned the shade of blood.

They were silly to be superstitious.

There was no nervousness in the ground, so Mudwort was not worried about any “bad somethings.” She was instead worried about Direfang turning his army of goblins away from her goal.

It had become so easy to let her mind drift through the earth and flow like water in any direction she wanted. It was easier still when she held one of the uncut blue stones from her pouch. There was an uneven fracture to that particular stone. It was the color of one of the blue bottles that had been plucked from the glass tree, but it was clear on one end and darker at the bottom. There were others in the pouch that were prettier, but that one had already warmed to her touch; she held the blue stone pressed against her palm.

She thought she might look in on the shaman Saarh, journey through the stone and years and find the cave again. But since she had established that the cave and the shaman were lodged in the past, that wasn’t an immediate concern. There would be time for such matters later. She had a much more important mission at the moment.

Her mind traveled southwest, flowing through the sea when she came to it and hurrying along-she didn’t like the sensation of being surrounded by water. She touched the shore of the swamp and continued due west. Faster and faster she traveled through the earth, ignoring all the interesting things she came across that had been buried in the ground by men or by time.

She came upon another range of mountains, and her senses rose as she touched them, feeling limestone that had been veined and pocked on the surface by heavy rains and deeper by underground streams. There were sections of sandstone too, and graywacke, basalt, and obsidian, the last of which was cool and smooth and almost tempted her to stop her travels so she could enjoy the sensation.

Abruptly she reached the forest, which began on the other side of the range. Her mind skimmed the surface of the ground, weaving around the trunks and slowing to feel the pulse of the land.

“Where is it?” she whispered to herself. “The very special something is here. Somewhere here.”

Mudwort was so engrossed in her search she didn’t hear the wizard and Kenosh approaching her. Both had been sitting nearby, watching her. Grallik cautioned Kenosh to keep quiet as they crept closer.

She’d only journeyed there once before, that time when she and Moon-eye and Boliver had looked for a land for all the goblins to live in. They were inside the top of a mountain when they cast that seeing spell; she couldn’t recall the name of the place in the mountain, but the skull man had told it to her-a place of religious or arcane significance for humans. She couldn’t remember why it was so important. But she remembered the priest said it was a repository of power, and the magic had come easily to her there.

“Where is it? What is it?”

Refusing to give up, she sent her mind deeper into the ground, teasing the very ends of the roots of the great trees. She felt water rushing over her, the earth damp and rich there, and she passed through ground that was so hard packed it could pass for stone. Mudwort was growing tired; she had put so much energy into her spell. Her palm ached from pressing the blue stone so hard against it.

“Where?”

At last she found it, the place where the pulse grew so strong that it sounded hard and harsh in her head. She stopped humming and sucked in a breath.

“What is it?”

Her mind wrapped around the power. Yes, it was magic, terribly unusual and potent magic. Like a bug attracted to lantern light, she slipped toward the magic. She would ascertain how deep the magic was hidden later on, as well as where precisely the magic was in the forest. She would make a second trip, perhaps, for that information.

Something was wrapped around the magical thing, a rotting cloth that at one time must have been fine and elaborate. There were thin, metallic threads running through the cloth-silver and gold and platinum. Tiny pearls had been sewn into a pattern, the details of which she couldn’t make out. Someone had treasured the powerful artifact, burying it so no one else could find it and wrapping it in such a fine, fine piece of fancy cloth. A dark thought flitted through her mind: was the something so powerful that someone feared it and buried it to keep it out of the wrong hands?

“Doesn’t matter,” she muttered. “These are the right hands.” She happily twirled her fingers in the dirt and basked in the eldritch aura of the wrapped object. She tried to peer past the cloth but could see very little beyond the wrapping. The something was wood, but it had metal bits in it, and gems.

When exhaustion claimed her and she finally released the spell and opened her eyes, she spotted the wizard nearby. He was talking to the Dark Knight Kenosh, asking him how he felt.

Kenosh didn’t look so good, Mudwort thought. His face was flushed, beyond the sunburn he’d developed, and he was sweating even though it was not overly warm. He was coughing, and his nose was bleeding.

Mudwort got up and put more distance between herself and the sick knight. She had no intention of catching whatever malady was going around. Until she’d seen Kenosh, she thought the bug was limited to goblins and hobgoblins. Spikehollow had been one of those sick in days past, but the skull man had cured him.

However, in the past day or so, more goblins had come down with the strange illness, all of them sweating, coughing and shivering. Their suffering made Mudwort nervous. Too bad there were not a dozen skull men to tend to the sick.

The wizard followed her. She crossed her arms and tapped her foot, all the while still holding the blue gem against her palm.

“Mudwort …”

She glared at him.

“Your magic …” The wizard swallowed, looking her up and down. “I … You’ve tempted me, Mudwort.” He looked her in the eyes, the first time he’d done so without glancing away. “You took me along on your spell the other night and I am grateful. You have tempted me sorely with your magic. I want you to teach me, Mudwort, teach me how to combine spells with another, how to work the earth magic with another … wizard.”

“Shaman,” she corrected him. She liked the sound of that word better.

“Yes, well, shaman, then. I want-I need to know how to wield this magic.” He swallowed hard again and coughed- not the same type of coughing sound the sick ones made, more like a nervous cough, Mudwort thought. “I followed you, all of you, from Steel Town just to learn this magic. I’ve risked everything, Mudwort, to learn this amazing magic.” He knelt down so he was eye level with her. “Teach me. Please.”

She let a silence settle between them. In the silence she heard the chatter of goblins watching the sunset. The sky was full of birds, and she heard their faint, melodic cries. She heard Kenosh coughing and others making sick sounds, and there was Direfang calling for the skull man. Saro-Saro called for the skull man too.

“There is a price, wizard, for this magic.”

“Grallik. My name is Grallik.”

“A price.” She didn’t care about his name.

He nodded. “Any price. Anything … anything within my power.” The wizard was begging her as he’d begged Direfang for food.

“Direfang does not want to go to the forest … Grallik.”

“The Qualinesti Forest. He has changed his mind?”

“Yes. Direfang says it is too far, that the clans will splinter before that. Says the Plains of Dust is better for now. But Direfang might stop the march even before the Plains of Dust. Might stop soon because of the sick ones. Might stop because feet are sore and goblins are tired.” She hunched forward.

“And you prefer to go to the forest.”

“It would be a good place for goblins,” she answered almost too quickly.

“So this price …” Grallik did not take his eyes from hers. “This price for learning your magic …?”

“Is to make Direfang go to the forest,” Mudwort finished, huffing for emphasis.

Grallik laughed. “I am a slave here, Mudwort. I’ve no power over Foreman Direfang. He’ll not listen to me, and getting Horace to charm him with a spell-if that’s what you are thinking-wouldn’t last very long. I’ve watched Direfang. He listens to you all the time. You’re the only one who could convince him.”

“Not this time,” she shot back.

Kenosh coughed louder and longer, a wracking spasm that caused Mudwort and Grallik to turn and look at him. Kenosh was doubled over, a bloody line of drool trickling from his mouth.

“Kenosh,” Grallik said in a hushed voice. “The last one of my talon.”

“He is sick like goblins are sick. The skull man will mend the Dark Knight after mending goblins. If there is any mending left.”

“I will talk to Foreman Direfang,” Grallik whispered.

“Talk well,” Mudwort said. “Be convincing. That is the price.”

When Grallik turned back to look at the red-skinned goblin, she was gone.

Horace worked late into the night, moving from one goblin to the next, shaking his head ruefully when inspecting each patient but offering sympathetic words in the goblin tongue.

“The skull man learned goblinspeak fast,” Direfang observed, hovering close behind the priest.

“I have a talent for languages,” Horace replied. He was kneeling next to Spikehollow, who was wrapped in the colorful quilt. “I tended you before. I’d thought the sick chased away from you.”

Spikehollow opened his mouth to reply, but nothing came out. His lips quivered in his chill, and pink bubbles formed at the corners of his mouth. His teeth clacked together as he shivered all over.

Pippa stood nearby, darting in concernedly to touch his forehead. “Spikehollow burns,” she said to the priest. “Sweats and shivers. They have come back. It is a bad sick, isn’t it?”

Horace nodded. “Bad. Yes, very.” He pulled back the quilt and lifted up Spikehollow’s tunic, the words to a healing enchantment tumbling out as he worked. His hand glowed orange. “Oh, my.”

He stared at Spikehollow’s waist, and his eyes traveled up and locked onto the young goblin’s neck. Horace could see well that evening. There was a riot of stars overhead, and along the riverbank there was nothing to block the light from twinkling down.

There was a swollen black knob on Spikehollow’s neck, another in the pit of the goblin’s arm, and one protruding from his side.

“This is a very bad sick,” Horace echoed.