The Kingdom - Clare B Dunkle - Hollow Kingdom 01 - The Hollow Kingdom Страница 16

They came to the end of the gravel walk. On the field beyond the green, the goblin groom waited with their horses. Kate stepped out of the shadow of the trees into bright moonlight. As she tilted her head to look at the full moon, she felt the grief of her loss sweep through her again. The goblin King had said she would never be outside after their marriage. Kate didn’t think she could endure it.

Marak was issuing orders. Seylin raced back toward the house, and Hulk and Bulk climbed onto two big draft horses and trotted off. Emily wandered over and took her hand. Kate looked down at her little sister. Her thin cheeks were flushed, and her eyes were bright with excitement. With Emily’s love of drama and of animals, she would enjoy every bit of goblin life. It was all so exaggerated, from the bright colors and rich decorations to the deformities of the creatures themselves. At last, life would hold all the variety Emily wanted.

After several minutes, Seylin came back at a run. “They both woke up well,” he reported to the King. “The man woke up in the middle of a sentence, and he looked around for a minute before he could find Roberts on the ceiling. Then I had to go wake up the woman. The bell was already ringing to call her to the study, so I don’t think she’ll notice that her tea was cold.”

They prepared to ride home. Kate noted that it was all happening pretty much as it would have a few days ago, and she wondered drearily if the extra time had been worthwhile. Thaydar boosted Emily up and then swung up behind her. Seylin sprang on behind Thaydar and wrapped his paws around the burly goblin’s waist.

“Listen to me, you occasional cat,” growled Thaydar, “there’d better be no claws this time, or you walk home! I don’t care if you fall off—I won’t be a pincushion.”

“Ready?” asked Marak, and he boosted Kate up onto his gray hunter. For a few seconds, she was alone on the horse. She wanted to seize the reins and dash away, but she realized that the magical bond that tied her to the King would pull her from the horse’s back. By the time she thought of this, he had already mounted behind her.

“Really, Kate, my own horse!” said the goblin reprovingly, just as if she had been speaking out loud. “I don’t think he’d have done it, but I’m glad you couldn’t try.” He glanced down at her face, raised in silent appeal to the moon. She didn’t seem to notice him at all. She couldn’t see anything but the moon and the stars near it, calling her across the vast gulf of darkness. They seemed to know her name, she thought sadly. If only she knew theirs.

Marak took one sharp look at the white face of his bride and urged his horse into a gallop. The horses raced through the silvery fields, running flat out. They cleared fences and crashed through bushes, throwing up a cloud of dust and small rocks in their wake. Emily, clinging to Thaydar, thought they were going to die, and Seylin forgot all about the warning not to use claws. But Kate knew nothing of the hair-raising ride. She saw nothing but the moon and stars. They seemed so close. Surely they could help her. She could almost hear words like the chimes of bells as they told her what she needed to do. She could see the moonbeams reaching down to her like silver hands, catching at the fleeing horse. Marak leaned down low, pulling her with him, and called for more speed.

Kate felt them shift as if the horse had stumbled. She took her eyes off the pursuing moon and glanced ahead. They were on a level field, but the horse’s racing feet were sinking into it as if it were quicksand. He was not slowing his gallop; if anything, he was running faster, his legs invisible below the earth. In another few seconds, Kate’s feet were gone, too, and just as if the field were a mist or sea, only the horse’s head plowed along above it. Waving grass stems and dirt clods raced by the edges of Marak’s black cloak. Now the horse’s head was gone, and the ground was rising up around her, lapping at her without waves until it reached her chest and then her neck. She screamed in terror, the goblin’s arms clamped tightly around her as she threw back her head for one last glimpse of the moon.

Total darkness surrounded them. Kate closed her eyes and hid her face in the goblin King’s chest, preferring to deal with a blindness that she caused and understood. After a few more seconds, the horse slowed down. Soon he was cantering and then walking, blowing from his run. She could feel the goblin relax, too, straightening up and loosening his hold on her. Kate cautiously opened her eyes. Polished rock walls and hanging lamps met her frightened gaze. She was back underground.

They came to an iron door just like the one she had come through with Seylin, though this one opened for the King without any questions. Beyond it was a wide room lined with horse stalls. Thaydar swung down from the saddle, cursing in goblin at Seylin, who had shredded his waistcoat. Emily could hardly stand up, so frightened had she been by the trip underground, but she was already asking questions. Marak lifted Kate to the ground, and their steaming, lathered horses were led away.

They emerged in a palace hallway. On one side was a line of doors; on the other, tall windows without glass displayed a spectacular view. They were high above a wide, bowl-shaped valley far larger than the one through which she had originally come, its space defined in the darkness by thousands of twinkling lights. Past the windowsill, she could see what must be the back of the palace, forming a straight wall down for several hundred feet. A large town nestled at the bottom of the palace, and across the valley, more towns were defined by other gatherings of lights. Between them were open areas crossed by lighted roads or canals.

Emily and Seylin leaned out a window farther than was safe, asking and answering in a chatter that wearied everyone but themselves. Marak walked over to the unlikely pair. “Seylin,” he said, “take M to get something to eat. I don’t think she’s been fed at all today.” Kate immediately felt guilty for not having thought of this herself. “The cooks will be at the ceremony, so you’ll need to find something on your own, and then you can bring M back up to the pages’ floor to pick an apartment. There should be some with windows free, and she’d better have one with a really good writing area like yours.”

Kate found this statement interesting, but Emily thought it was hilarious. “You can write?” she asked the big cat incredulously. “How do you hold a pen?”

“Not with his paws, although he’s tried,” answered Marak with an exasperated sigh. “Seylin, you’ve been a cat long enough for now. Change back, and this time stay changed for at least one full day.”

Seylin’s ears, head, and fluffy tail went down in total dejection. “Change back now?” he yowled pitifully. “But they’ll laugh at me.”

“Or perhaps your King didn’t just give you an order,” the goblin remarked.

There was a heartfelt sigh, and then a shimmer, and a tall boy in a black tunic and breeches stood where the cat had crouched. Kate and Emily stared. If they had expected anything, they had expected a goblin or a human, but Seylin was neither one. His neat black eyebrows curved upward where a human’s curved down, and his small ears pointed at the tips. His thick black hair curled in luxurious ringlets, his large black eyes were shaded by long, dark lashes, and his pale skin had a fine, silvery texture. Seylin was an extraordinarily handsome youth about thirteen years old. Except for the fact that his striking features wore an unusually glum expression, he could have been an angel in a painting by an Italian master.

“You see, they didn’t laugh,” observed the goblin King. “Now, go, and if you want to show M your new trick with the colored flames, do it somewhere away from low ceilings so you don’t leave a scorch mark.” The two turned and went off together, a little bashful at first, but Kate noticed that before they reached the end of the hallway, they were again deep in conversation.

“I never saw such a beautiful boy,” she murmured in complete amazement.

“Don’t ever let Seylin hear you say that,” Marak said. “He’d never forgive you. He’s a throwback, of course, almost pure elf, and in one of our finest high families, too, a goblin-goblin marriage. The parents were devastated. It hasn’t been easy for him, as you might well imagine. He tends to avoid the other children, but I’ve kept him close by, and he’s proved exceptional at magic. He’s very sensitive about his—well, I suppose you’d balk at the word abnormality—his difference, and since I taught him how to change shapes, he’s been a cat as much as possible.” He chuckled. “He seems to feel that if he’s a cat, people will forget that he’s not much of a goblin.”

Kate pondered this odd speech as they started off again down corridors and stairs. Her head was buzzing with bizarre sights and strange ideas, and she was very tired. It seemed to her that they walked for a long time without speaking, always going down. The windows vanished, and the halls became rougher, more like tunnels than hallways. Eventually Marak ushered her into a small cavelike room. It was lit by a lamp hanging high in the rounded ceiling. A table-high ledge stretched across one end, and before it protruded a chair-shaped hunk of stone, the simplest of furnishings left behind when the room was hollowed out.

Kate found the room too dim for her human eyes and stopped right inside the door to adjust. Marak crossed to an inner door and talked in goblin to someone beyond. Kate sat down on the stone seat and studied the ledge in front of her. Four golden circles lay there, along with an oddly fashioned golden drinking goblet that held some sort of dark liquid. She suddenly felt very nervous.

Marak put a shallow bowl of water and a towel in front of her. Then he laid his hands on the door they had come through and spoke aloud. It shuddered and clanked, and Kate jumped. “It’s all right,” he remarked, seeing her startled face, a hint of his normal amusement glinting in his serious eyes. “It’s purely ritual. I’ve just locked the door with magic. It was important in the old days when a King’s Bride might have hundreds of hysterical and highly magical kin storming the doors to rescue her before she could be made the King’s Wife. That’s a problem we’re not likely to face at this ceremony.”

He took a small bag from his pocket and threw a pinch of powder into the bowl. Taking her right hand in his left, he pushed both into the water and dried her wet hand on the towel. “Of course, I did wait until you were locked in before removing the Leashing Spell,” he admitted with a sigh. “You don’t have kin storming the doors, but sometimes I think you don’t need them. You do make me nervous, Kate.”

Kate looked uncertainly from the locked door to the odd assembly of items on the table. Was she trapped in this little room forever? There being only one chair, Marak sat down on the table, pushing his striped hair back with a big hand and studying her distressed face intently.

“Couldn’t the ceremony wait for just a little?” she begged. “I’m so tired; I’m used to sleeping at night. Just another few hours?”

Marak chuckled, his eyes lighting up with admiration as he looked at her. “Kate, what you could do with another few hours, I’d be terrified to see. You’d slip right through my fingers like a ghost. I promise you can sleep right after the wedding, sleep for days if you want to, but the ceremony’s critical, and it’s always done immediately.” Kate hung her head, discouraged.

“In our world, there’s nothing more important than the marriage of the King because that’s where the new King comes from, and that’s how the magic of the race continues. The ceremony tests the bride for certain qualifications, it makes indications about the future, it ensures that she stays underground where she’ll be safe, and it protects her against every kind of harm. The King’s Wife ceremony is completely practical and, therefore, largely unpleasant,” concluded the goblin with a resigned shrug.

Kate considered this information unhappily. Then she brightened.

“But I might fail some test, then?” she pointed out.

“Don’t get your hopes up, Kate. You’re ideal.” He watched her crestfallen expression with a smile. “But it goes beyond tests and protections. The point is that once it’s over, you’re one of us. Now, that doesn’t thrill you, but it does thrill my people. I don’t think you can understand what it means to them. Goblins are a close-knit, gregarious society. That’s our strength. The King’s Wife doesn’t become a goblin, of course, but she’s tremendously important, so the goblins are fascinated by her. If she waves her hand about in a certain way when she talks, all the goblin women copy her. If she prefers a certain color, everyone wears it. If she has a favorite flower, every goblin who goes outside tries to bring her one, and they adore her if it’s at all possible. Everyone adored my mother—my father, most of all.” Kate pictured Adele in this same room, years before, and wondered how she had felt.

Marak picked up one of the golden circlets and rolled it in his hands for a moment. “Enough about life beyond the ceremony,” he said with a sigh. “We both have to get ready. Kate, the King’s Bride is a captured bride, stolen, hysterical, weeping and wailing. That’s what usually happens. But you weren’t stolen; you came here willingly. You made a promise, and now you’re carrying it through. That’s very important,” he said seriously. “You need to remember that. Don’t kick up a fuss. Don’t make anyone drag you around. Keep up your dignity. It’ll help.

“The entire ceremony presumes a desperate captive woman of great magical powers. During the ceremony, she is shackled both magically and actually. No one speaks to her in a language she understands, and she herself is wordless. She is taken where she needs to go, and she has no control over what happens. Which means that you have the easy part. Everyone else does all the work.”

“But I don’t have any magical powers!” protested Kate. Marak glanced at her sharply.

“I don’t know how you could have,” he admitted, “but it makes no difference. The ceremony is always the same. If there’s no need for the precautions, we’ll never know. If there is need of them, they’re always in place.” Kate could see the rather brutal logic of this.

“At the end of the ceremony, it no longer matters whether you have tremendous magic or hordes of relations. No power on earth, including my own, can make you back into what you were before. You’re the King’s Wife from that moment on until one or the other of us dies, and you’re underground forever.”

Kate stared numbly at the gold circle in his big gray hands. As she watched, he clicked it open into two halves. Reaching down, he closed it again on her wrist. She lifted her hand in the dim light but could see no seam in the metal. An inch-wide golden bracelet followed the contours of her wrist as closely as if it had been designed just for her. Marak was already putting one on her other wrist. Then he knelt down and began unfastening her shoes. Feeling embarrassed, Kate did it herself, and he put the other bracelets on her bare ankles.

“Now, drink this,” he ordered, retrieving the goblet and setting it in front of her. He watched her carefully, both amused and a little irritated as her expression turned mutinous.