Veka grinned in anticipation. Here was the battle she had dreamed about. Veka the Sorceress against Jig Dragonslayer. The new Hero stepping forth to vanquish the old. He had suppressed her for so long, but finally she was ready. She would have to make sure at least one of his companions survived to take the story back to the goblins and the hobgoblins. Grell would probably be the best choice. Slash was a hobgoblin, and Braf would mess everything up in the telling.
Veka strode toward the front edge of the tunnel, where it rose out of the lake. Here atop the arching stone, she had the advantage of height. Jig would have to scramble up to face her. Would it be better to wait for him, or should she strike him down as he climbed? The former would make a better story, but she might be wiser to kill Jig when he was most vulnerable. Strictly speaking, that might not be the most heroic decision, but it was certainly a goblin decision. She cast another levitation spell, lifting one of the lizard-fish and floating it spine-first toward Jig’s back. She would plunge those spines into Jig’s neck as he climbed, and—
The lizard-fish squealed in pain as a rock smashed it aside. Braf! She clenched her teeth, wishing she had tossed Braf into the middle of the lake, but there was no time. Jig was almost upon her. She braced herself, releasing the rest of the lizard-fish as she prepared to strike.
Jig disappeared.
Veka’s mouth opened in disbelief. Jig had run straight into the tunnel. He hadn’t even stopped to fight her. He was fleeing to the Necromancer’s domain. What kind of Hero ran right past his enemy without even a token exchange of insults?
She stepped to the edge.
“What are you doing?” asked Snixle.
“The Necromancer’s home was a maze of tunnels,” she said. “Jig could disappear in there for days, and we’d never find him.”
“You promised me Jig Dragonslayer,” complained Snixle.
“Relax. We’ll get him.” Snixle was such a whiner. A wave of her hand cleared the lizard-fish from the tunnel mouth. Another spell gathered the flaming rags from the sand, summoning them to Veka. Jig might be fast, but he couldn’t have reached the end of the tunnel yet.
Her magic compressed the rags into a single ball as she prepared to fire the flames into the tunnel. He would be badly burned, but he should survive. With the fire hovering over her hand, she jumped to the sand below.
Snixle screamed as Jig’s broken sword took Veka in the chest.
Veka could hear lizard-fish splashing back into the lake. There was sand in her hair, and Jig’s knees dug into her belly. Every time she inhaled, someone punched her in the chest. No, that was the sword. There was tremendous pressure, but less pain than she would have imagined.
Her body began to spasm as her lungs fought harder and harder for breath. “Snixle?” Her lips formed the word, but no sound came out.
Someone was shouting. Jig? He appeared to be in pain. With an effort, Veka managed to focus her eyes. Only one set of eyes . . . how odd.
Jig’s arm was twisted at a painful angle, still lashed to the sword which had sunk into Veka’s body. He must have wrenched his shoulder when Veka fell.
She would have laughed, had she been able to catch her breath. The only injury Jig had taken in his fight with Veka, and he had done it to himself.
Through watering eyes, she saw Grell come up beside Jig, carefully carrying a burning lizard-fish for light.
“Help me get her on her side,” Jig said.
Grell was no use, but Veka felt a large boot slide beneath her shoulder, kicking her to one side. Jig flopped into the sand.
“Thanks, Slash,” Jig said, spitting sand. He braced his feet on Veka’s chest and yanked.
A true Hero would have made one final, defiant declaration as her blood spilled onto the sand, but all Veka could manage was a whimpered “Ouch.” Then she passed out.
When she awoke, she found her face pressed against Slash’s back. There was no light, but the smell of hobgoblin hair grease was unmistakable. Her arms were around his neck, and her feet dragged along the rock as he hauled her through the tunnel.
“Jig, she’s drooling again,” the hobgoblin complained. “It’s gross.”
“Could be worse,” Braf said. “At least she’s not bleeding on you.”
Slash groaned, and Veka felt him swallow.
“You’re alive?” Veka asked. It came out a dry croak. “All of you?”
Slash dropped her. Her fangs cut into her cheeks as her jaw hit the ground.
“The lizard-fish all fled back into the water when you dropped your spell,” Jig said. “You kept them out of the lake for too long. Their skin was dry and cracked, and they were climbing over one another to get back.”
So once again Jig had escaped unscathed. An entire army of lizard-fish, and he had won. All her power, and she was the one who had taken a sword through the stomach.
Hesitantly, afraid of what she might feel, she reached down to where she had felt the horrible pinching sensation of Jig’s sword. There was a ragged hole in her cloak. Both the cloak and the shirt beneath were still sticky with blood. But her skin was soft and whole. Jig had healed her.
“You were under a pixie spell,” Jig said. “They’ve been controlling you since you left Straum’s cave.”
Veka kept silent. Let him believe the pixies were responsible.
“What happened after you ran away?” Jig continued. She could hear him sitting down beside her, his sword dragging on the rock.
“I descended,” she whispered. Her hands automatically moved to check her pockets. Both books were still there. She pulled out
The Path of the Hero
, holding it with both hands. “I descended through darkness and sludge and tunnel cats, and emerged into the silver light of Straum’s cavern.”
Her eyes watered as she quoted chapter five. “ ‘The Hero’s Path shall descend into darkness, but upon the Hero’s return, her symbolic rebirth, she shall have the power to triumph.’ That’s what Josca said. And I descended!” Her hands shook so hard she could barely hold the book. “I descended and returned, and you stabbed me!”
“You were trying to kill us,” Braf said.
“You don’t understand,” Veka said, tears tickling her face. “I was supposed to be strong. Jig wasn’t supposed to beat me. All that magic, and he still beat me.”
She flung the book away. Pages flapped, and the book thumped against the tunnel wall.
“Watch it,” snapped Slash. “Stupid goblin. Jig should have left you for the lizard-fish. Gods know there’s enough of you to go around.”
Veka sniffed. She couldn’t summon up the slightest bit of anger at Slash’s jab. It was no different from the taunts goblins had flung at her all her life. Slash was right. Jig should have left her to die. Now there would be new songs of Jig Dragonslayer and his victory over Vast Veka at the lake.
“I did everything Josca said,” she mumbled. She had followed the Path, descended into darkness, acquired an admittedly unusual mentor, and returned to face her greatest challenge. But Josca said the Hero was supposed to win.
“The pixies said the queen had come into our world,” Jig was saying. “Do you know where she went? How many pixies are we up against? Where are all their ogres?”
“I don’t know,” Veka whispered.
The Hero was supposed to win.
“She’s useless,” Slash said.
“Like a hobgoblin guard who’s afraid of blood?” asked Braf.
“Shut up, both of you,” snapped Jig. “The pixies will know Veka’s no longer enchanted. Next they’ll probably send their ogres up to wipe us out.”
Jig had beaten her.
“So what?” asked Braf. “They’ll have to go through the hobgoblins before they can get to us.”
“You rat-eating coward!” shouted Slash.
“We’ve taken the brunt of every group of adventurers, explorers, and heroes who ever came to this mountain,” Braf shouted back. “It’s about time you hobgoblins took a turn.”
“Or else the pixies could wait and let us kill each other,” Grell said.
Veka coughed and spat. Evidently she had gotten a bit of blood in her throat after Jig stabbed her. It tasted awful. “Snixle said something about bringing the queen to her new home.”
“Snixle?” asked Braf.
“The pixie who . . . who controlled me.” She flushed, ashamed. Let them think it was Snixle who had lost the fight against Jig Dragonslayer, not Veka.
“Where was this home?” Jig asked. “In Straum’s cavern, or somewhere else?”
She shook her head. “He didn’t say.”
“Why leave Straum’s cave at all?” Slash asked. “That’s the safest place in the whole mountain. In all those years, how many adventurers ever reached the dragon?”
“The cave is too cramped for pixies,” Jig muttered. He was sitting so close. She could reach into her cloak and pull out her knife. In the darkness he would never know it was coming.
No, his pet fire-spider would know. Smudge would warn Jig, and Jig would stab her again. No matter what she tried, Jig would beat her. Just as he had beaten the dragon and the Necromancer. Just as he had beaten the pixies who tried to capture him. Just as he had beaten her at the lake, destroying Snixle’s spell.
“How did you overcome the pixie’s control over me?” she asked.
“Steel,” Jig said. He sounded distracted. “The pixies called it death-metal. Something about it disrupts their magic. That’s how we freed Slash. When he got stabbed . . .” His voice grew faint, barely even a whisper. “Oh, no.”
“What?” asked Grell.
“The pixies told me I opened the way for them when I killed Straum,” he said softly. “They said it was my fault. Do you remember what Straum’s lair was like, right after he died?”
“Full of clutter and junk,” said Braf. “Books, pots, paintings, coins, armor, every bit of garbage that old lizard had collected in his lifetime.”
“Including weapons and armor,” said Jig. “Every sword, every knife, every shield and breastplate, all of it was mounted on the cave walls. He lined the whole cave with steel, and after he died—”
“We picked the place clean,” said Braf. “Oh. Whoops.”
Veka felt herself nodding. “Snixle said it took powerful magic to open a gateway. The greatest concentration of magic over here would have been Straum’s cave, where the dragon’s own power had seeped into the rock over thousands of years.”
“We should get back to the lair,” Jig said. “We’ll send some of the goblins to help the hobgoblins, in case the ogres come up through the lake.”
“Kralk will never agree to that,” Veka said.
Slash began to chuckle. “I don’t think Kralk’s going to object too much, seeing how she’s dead.”
“Dead?” Veka asked. “Then who . . . ?” She didn’t finish the question. She knew. Who else could it be? While Veka had been descending and returning and wasting her time trying to master pixie magic, Jig had not only fought off ogres and pixies, he had taken control of the goblins as well.
“Come on,” said Jig.
Veka trudged along behind them. Her foot brushed her copy of
The Path of the Hero
where it had fallen. She hesitated, then continued after the others.
Veka remained silent as Slash tried to convince the hobgoblin guards she was their prisoner and that Jig was taking her back to the goblin lair to make her pay for what she had done. The hobgoblins were reluctant at first. One kept twitching the leash to his tunnel cat and talking about how hungry the beast was.
Then Jig stepped forward. He looked filthy and exhausted. In that pitifully small, squeaky voice of his, he said, “We fought through an army of enchanted lizard-fish to get this goblin.” He grabbed his sword in both hands and pointed the bloody tip at the closest guard. “Move aside.”
The hobgoblins backed down. Jig was small, his weapon was laughable, and any one of the guards could have killed him bare-handed, but they backed down. How did he do it? He didn’t boast, he didn’t raise his voice, he didn’t even try to threaten them. He simply . . . told them the truth.
Jig had defeated the lizard-fish, and Veka as well, and the hobgoblins knew it. They knew what Jig Dragonslayer could do. Jig didn’t have to boast. He simply had to remind them who he was. Jig was a Hero.
Two goblins stood outside the goblin lair, and they actually appeared to be standing guard.
“Come with us,” said Jig. The guards grinned. Why wouldn’t they? Jig had just ordered them to stop working.
Veka could feel the tension the moment she stepped into the lair. The muck pits were all full and burning. Goblins cast wary looks at the entrance until they saw who it was. A pair of young goblins outside the kitchen were strangely quiet as they played Stake the Rat. From the look of it, the female had a three-rat lead.
“Now what?” asked Slash.
Jig raised his battered sword over his head and slammed it three times against the ground. Sparks flew from the steel, and a shard of metal broke away, but it got the goblins’ attention.
Jig took a deep breath. “The pixies and the ogres have taken over the lower caverns. Soon they’ll be coming after us. I’m betting they’ll come through the lake to attack the hobgoblins.”
Immediately the goblins began to whisper to one another, setting odds and making wagers. A few goblins gave a tentative cheer. Veka kept her attention on Jig. His face shone with sweat, and his clothes were torn and bloody. His sword arm hung limp at his side, and he kept playing with his right fang. Hardly the picture of a Hero.
Jig swallowed and said, “So we’re going to help them.”
Silence blanketed the lair, broken only by the occasional cough.
“Help the hobgoblins or the pixies?” someone asked.
“The hobgoblins,” Jig said.
“Why?”
Veka could see Jig searching the crowd, trying to pick out the speaker. Not that it mattered. Every goblin was silently asking the same thing.
“Why not let the hobgoblins wear them down, then we can finish off whoever survives?” yelled another goblin. Veka thought it was one of the guards from outside, but she wasn’t sure.