Goblin Nation

EARTH BOWLS

Mudwort spread out a piece of thatch that had blown off someone’s roof. She knelt on the edge of it, not wanting to get her knees in the mud left behind from the morning’s downpour. She liked the feel of the earth against her fingers, and soon she would be sticking her arms deep into it, but she didn’t want to dirty her legs and her tunic that hung practically to her ankles. Mudwort was particular about the few items of clothing she possessed.

She leaned forward and set her fingertips against the ground. It felt cool and she treasured the sensation for a moment, as it was pleasant and she was feeling annoyed. Annoyed, flustered, aggravated, verging on angry-she was all of those things, and more. It was not her fault that all the other goblins built shoddy homes. It was not her fault Direfang had selected such a forsaken place for their city rather than up against a mountain, where they could find caves and wouldn’t have to spend their days building and sweating and muddying and tearing their clothes. She should not be tasked with that; her home was finished, warm and fine and perfect, and she should not have to help the others build something as perfect as hers.

Direfang had clan leaders nearby, studying her home. She saw them when she craned her neck around a spindly willow birch, poking at the sides of her place and probably digging out some of her river clay mortar. She should have built her home far, far away, where Direfang would not have seen its fine construction. It would have saved her the work she was about to do.

She took a deep breath and let her fingers sink in. Happy was the dirt in that spot. Sated with water, worms crawled deeper into the ground, and she sensed that seeds were awakening near the surface. She would send her senses far away from there, from Direfang’s blown-down city; she’d find the goblins she spied in the long-ago times and search for the spear. Finding it was far more important than helping the clans build homes.

She’d wanted to come to the forest because of the spear, it’s true. When sending out her call for goblins, she’d accidentally discovered she could search through the earth not just in the present time, but through the past. Decades past, centuries probably, she discovered her counterpart, a young shaman who wore a great many necklaces and led her people out of the mountain caves and into the forest where food was plentiful. The shaman came across a great magical spear that was said to have been Chislev’s, Mudwort saw. Then Mudwort lost sight of the shaman and the spear, too many other things occupying her attention.

She should look for that spear that very minute.

But Direfang hovered nearby, watching, waiting, demanding that she help him build the city. She could almost hear his foot tapping anxiously, his mind racing.

Find the shaman in the past. More important, find the spear.

It had been during one of her mental forays through the earth, looking for the spear, that she’d first noticed the dwellings the long-ago goblins were building. They dug holes in the ground and smoothed the sides and cleared the weeds and rocks-a few of them using magic to make the task go faster. They used short logs for walls, as she had, weaving cattails and reeds to keep them together and make a dense roof, using clay from the river and dung from animals to mortar the logs tight. Each home was at the same time in the earth and above the earth.

Like Mudwort’s fine, fine home.

She closed her eyes and coaxed the earth to become as malleable as soft clay, and she began to mold it. When Direfang had watched her shape the ground after leaving Steel Town, he told her she was a sculptor … then he had to explain just what that meant, and about clay and mugs and small statues representing great heroes and worthless gods, all made by someone who could work clay with her fingers.

Only she used her mind.

Mudwort pictured the depressions the goblins in the past had made and the one she herself had formed for her own home. She imagined the dirt around her hollowing itself, and beneath the surface she cupped her hand.

She heard a gasp over her shoulder and nearly lost her concentration. It was followed by whispers, and though she wanted to know what was being said, she forced all the words and other sounds away. There was only the earth.

It took several minutes for the dirt to obey, forming a bowl shape similar to her cupped hand. Mudwort remembered the bowl-house was going to be for Graytoes and Umay, and perhaps for Jando-Jando, who had made it more than clear he wanted to be Graytoes’ mate. It did not need to be large, for only three, but Mudwort knew Direfang was fond of Graytoes, so she made the depression a little deeper, the sides wider. Besides, there could well be baby goblins in Graytoes’s future, and the family could use the space.

There was another gasp, and Mudwort opened her eyes, rolled her shoulders, and spotted Graytoes over there cradling Umay. Jando-Jando was several yards back, struggling with an armload of logs. Mudwort gauged the size of the thickest of the logs then walked around the exterior of the depression, grinding her thumb into the lip and ordering the earth to do her bidding, careful not to get the hem of her tunic muddy. Big holes appeared, a foot deep. As she continued her walk, Jando-Jando fitted one of the logs into the first hole then moved along the next.

She paid attention to the chatter from all the goblins who had crept closer to watch and discuss the goings-on.

“Mudwort will build all the homes.”

“Not the homes of the Fernwold clan.”

“It is like a cave.”

“But it will be better than a cave. Wonderful.”

The last came from Cari, who promptly ordered Keth to start digging a hole inside their home. The Boarhunters’ home-in-progress was one of the few that had not fallen in the storm.

When Mudwort had finished making the holes for Jando-Jando’s posts, she picked up her thatch mat and padded a few yards away to another bare spot of ground. She didn’t know who the next home would be for, and she didn’t care. Kneeling on the mat, she touched her fingers to the damp earth and after several long minutes she had the beginnings of another depression.

It was after her fourth earth bowl that she shook out her shoulders and rubbed her temples wearily. Her head ached from the mental effort of moving the ground. Direfang still watched her, proud and pleased, no longer a stern expression on his craggy face.

She looked to the bluff and padded toward it. Still attuned to the earth, she felt his heavy footfalls behind her. Mudwort walked faster then scampered down the bluff, stepping past the foundation of the Fishgatherers’ home and to the edge of the river. She hiked up her tunic and stepped into the cool wetness. The water swirled around her ankles. Like most goblins, she couldn’t swim. But she could see the bottom there through the silt-laced water. It felt good, and she ruffled her toes in the sediment.

“Many more bowls needed today, Mudwort.” Direfang stood a few feet back, looking stern again.

“Tired. Hard work.” Holding the hem of her tunic in one hand, she bent and cupped some water with the other, raising it to her mouth for a drink then dipping it into the river again so she could splash water on her face. She tarried in the shallows, hoping he would leave. But she finally gave up and joined him. “Head hurts, Direfang.”

“Get the others to help.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“Thya has magic. Saw you and Thya and Grallik talking to the ground. Others too.”

Mudwort had thought about combining magic with the others, but a part of her hadn’t wanted to share the making of the earth bowls. It was her magic, not theirs. She scowled and dug her heel into the river clay.

“So tired, Direfang.”

“So much work to be done, Mudwort.”

He left her, climbing a low section of the bluff. Plants had grown there, but the goblins going to and from the river had uprooted them or smashed them, leaving a clear path. Mudwort waited until the top of Direfang’s head disappeared before she scurried after him.

“Find Thya,” Mudwort said to a youngling carrying a bundle of twigs. “Find Draath,” she said to another. When the young female cocked her head, Mudwort added, “The goblin with three tiny elf heads.”

She didn’t have to look for Grallik. He was close by, watching her; he met her eyes through a sea of activity and approached.

“Direfang spoke with me,” he began. His eyes glistened, and she knew it was because the wizard actually looked forward to the chance to mingle magic. “But fire is my true purview, Mudwort. You know that. I’m not sure that I can-”

“Then don’t try,” she retorted. She stalked away, picking out a spot for the next bowl.

“But I will try,” he said just loud enough for her to hear as he followed. The rest of his words were lost in the scampering of goblin feet and the sounds of broken walls and roofs being torn apart. Everywhere the rebuilding was beginning.

Mudwort continued to use her mat, though Thya, Draath, and Grallik kneeled in the dirt to form a circle with her. She studied their faces: Thya’s was always hard to read, as she was a stoic soul who seemed to show little emotion; Draath was an enigma, and he looked angry when he cast magic, but she thought it was merely the way his features knitted together when he concentrated; Grallik could not hide his eagerness. The half-elf wizard had rankled her from the moment he joined the goblin army, and more than once Mudwort had wished him dead.

But he’d proven himself too valuable. There was energy in his scarred body and in his mind that she siphoned whenever they joined arcane forces. Too, some spells came so easily to him-anything to do with fire. Mudwort coveted such magics and continued to learn from the half-elf wizard, tugging the nuances of the enchantments from his memory, likely without him knowing it. So she would put up with him for as long as he continued to be useful. She thrust all musings of the wizard, Thya, and Draath to the back of her mind; it would be unfortunate if they picked up on what she was thinking about them.

The quartet sunk their hands into the earth, touching fingers beneath the surface. It was at the same time a distinctly uncomfortable and a wildly thrilling experience to join magic with another. She imagined she felt Draath’s breath on her face and could hear through Thya’s ears; she thought she was staring in wonder with Grallik’s keen halfelf eyes, and yet she was in command of all her faculties and senses.

She pictured the homes from the long-ago time and watched with the other three as the ancient clan dug the earthen bowls with crude tools-a few using their magic. They watched as the scene shifted to goblins driving posts into the ground and weaving thatch and small branches. At the same time, she willed the ground to shape itself.

Draath’s mind was the first to join hers. His magic was very strong, she could tell, and that frightened her a little. It had a dark and dangerous feel. Thya joined next, a raw talent that needed training, and finally Grallik, who seemed astonished that he could work earth magic. Before the wizard had only “seen” through the ground with Mudwort. But there she taught him-no, forced him-to sculpt the ground.

“Imagine that the dirt forms a hollow spot,” Mudwort told the others. “Like a bowl, an empty spot in a tree, the shell with its nut gone, the shape of a bird’s nest.”

She passed her mental image along to the other three, and within moments they were sinking. Rather than form the depression next to them, they formed it under themselves. And when Grallik’s shoulders met the lip of the ground behind their backs, they stopped. It took little time. It took longer to smooth the bowl, and remove from it a rock the size of a hobgoblin’s head.

Thya made the holes for the posts, Grallik closely watching, while Mudwort and Draath selected the next piece of ground.

“Not here,” she told Draath, moving on.

Draath turned his head to what looked like an uncomfortable angle and tipped his chin up. Mudwort had learned that the gesture meant the same thing as “why?” or “explain.”

“There are too many rocks, and the root from that old tree spreads to here and here and here.”

From Draath came a repeat of the gesture.

“The earth talks and says those things are beneath the surface. It talks quite plainly to those who want to hear it.” She shuffled farther from the edge of the bluff, the balls of her feet dragging in the moist earth; she loved the feel of it against her soles.

“Only little rocks here,” she said, placing her mat down and sitting cross-legged in the center. Draath took the spot to her right.

“Few of the Skinweavers have this magic,” he said. “Most of the Skinweavers have other talents.”

Like shrinking pieces of elves, Mudwort thought.

She found his voice ugly. His lips moved, but it sounded as if he talked through his nose or had a perpetual cold. Nor did she like the disgusting heads that were tied to his belt by their hanks of hair. Mudwort was certain she did not like elves, though she’d known only one half-elf, Grallik. But she did not care for humans like the Dark Knights, and elves were no doubt just as bad. She’d not heard any good tales of elves, so she couldn’t imagine why Draath and his fellows would want to carry hunks of dead elves with them, banging against their hips and their legs as they walked.

She shuddered.

“Is something bad, Mudwort?” Draath seemed genuinely concerned.

She didn’t have to answer. Thya and Grallik arrived, and they got busy joining their magic to make another hole.

Mudwort’s legs and arms felt as heavy as stone when Direfang called a break to the work. A group of Boarhunters had lived up to their name, dragging the carcasses of several boars into a clearing. Other clans set to work skinning the animals and chattered that the Fernwold clan had killed a bear. Grallik, looking as tired as Mudwort had ever seen him, was tasked with starting a fire to cook most of the meat; a few clans preferred raw flesh.

Thya slept at the rim of an earth bowl. Draath paced, looking at the carcasses and alternately wringing his hands and patting his stomach. He did not appear as fatigued as she, and when Direfang approached, the Skinweaver met him halfway. Mudwort decided to pull more energy from Draath when Direfang asked them to dig more bowls the next day. She would not take so much from Thya and Grallik and perhaps Sallor, who Draath called a minor shaman, or an old Flamegrass clansman who could work stone with a touch-all who would be helping the next day.

“Draath wants to see under the spire,” Direfang told her. Mudwort didn’t know why she should care. She did not care about the spire or about Draath beyond his usefulness with spells. “Draath is very curious,” Direfang added.

Mudwort shrugged and stretched her arms above her head; the moist dirt on her arms was drying and fell off in pieces like beetles brushed away.

“Work again soon, Mudwort. So much to be done.” Direfang stood over her, his shadow a line that stretched across her and cast a darkness over her, hanging into the most recently dug depression. “Work before the meat is cooked. Work some more.”

She didn’t say anything for a while, didn’t even look up to meet his gaze. Instead she thought wistfully about the spear again.

“The homes will be better for all the work,” he said. “Sturdy to withstand the wind. All of them fine like Mudwort’s.” He continued to talk, but she had stopped listening, wrapping her mind around the spear and thinking about the journey there, which had been arduous, but which was not filled with work and work and more work. She was tired of the journey and the work.

“No more work this day, Direfang,” she said finally. “Tired.” She gestured to Thya, who, soundly snoring, was oblivious to anything around her. “Done today.”

Direfang rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “Too much to do, Mudwort.”

“Ever the foreman,” she cut back. She tried to sound mean, but there was little strength in her voice. “How is this freedom? Same as slave mines. Work. Work. Work.”

“Tomorrow, then,” he said. The hobgoblin’s voice was softer, and for a moment she thought he might apologize for being so pushy. But apologies were a sign of weakness, for him or her. “Tomorrow dig more earth bowls. Many, many more.”

She leaned back on her elbows and felt him walk away and felt the vibrations from Thya’s snores. She was aware of other activities too. Several groups of goblins were hard at work physically digging the earth bowls. Among the supplies Grallik had purchased before their voyage were an assortment of shovels and picks, which at first the goblins had considered a waste. Suddenly they were a treasure. Some goblins were digging at the ground with their hands.

Most had decided to build homes as sturdy and earth-bound as Mudwort’s.

And only she knew that they were building very near the place the ancient clan once called home.

Her spear could not be so terribly far away.