Jig climbed a bit lower, thinking hard. “Braf, back when I was trying to get the goblins to help the hobgoblins, you told them they should do it because we’d be able to gloat. What made you say that?”
“Because it’s true!”
Maybe, but it had also been the perfect thing to say, the pebble that had started a rock slide, bringing the lair around to Jig’s plan. Just as Braf had done later, outside Kralk’s quarters, when he mocked Slash. Once again Braf had helped to persuade the goblins to do exactly what Jig wanted them to do.
Jig squinted up through sweat-smeared lenses, and in that instant, he saw it. Braf was studying Jig . . . trying to figure out whether Jig had guessed his secret? The expression vanished as soon as Jig noticed, but it was too late.
“You’re not as dumb as you pretend to be, are you?” Jig whispered.
Braf’s eyes narrowed. Suddenly Jig was very aware of exactly how big and strong Braf was. And Jig’s sword was pointed down toward his feet, with no easy way to lift it here in the cramped confines of the pit.
“Maybe,” Braf said, his voice as quiet as Jig’s.
They were still at least a body’s length ahead of the next closest goblin. Higher up Jig could hear Grell cursing and trying to rearrange her canes. Slash was swearing right back, threatening to cut the rope that held her harness. Others still stood around up top, waiting to follow.
Jig turned his attention back to Braf. “Then why—”
“You’d do the same thing if you were me.”
Jig stared, not understanding.
“How does a goblin captain take command of his group?” Braf asked.
“The same way a goblin becomes chief. Kill the former captain, along with anyone else who opposes you.”
“Look at me, Jig. Big, strong, and threatening. If you’re . . . well, someone like you, you’ll see me as a bully, and you’ll try to kill me in my sleep. If you’re a warrior, you’ll see me as competition. If you’re a captain, you see me as a threat. If you don’t kill me outright, you’ll send me out to fight tunnel cats or ogres or order me to march into a hobgoblin trap. You think it’s coincidence there are no old goblin warriors?”
Slowly, Jig shook his head.
“So I play dumb. I drop my weapon. I let others play their stupid tricks.” He grimaced and rubbed his nose. “I didn’t expect to get a fang punched up my nose, but the point is, if I’m dumb, I’m not a threat. The teasing and the jokes are annoying but better than the alternative. Oh, and a carrion-worm is about to crawl onto your hand.”
Jig yanked his hand away from the wall, which knocked his back and shoulder into the rough stone. The pale, segmented worm was almost as big as his arm. Jig waited until the worm squirmed away, dropping into the darkness with a bit of charred meat and bone clutched in its black pincers.
“So why do you let Grell hit you all the time?” Jig asked.
Braf laughed. “Grell knows what I’m doing. She helps me. I can pretend to be stupid, and she stops me before I do anything too dangerous.” He gave Jig a sheepish smile. “It’s kind of fun.”
“Fun?”
“Sure. You’re always so uptight, so afraid of messing everything up. With me, people expect it.” His smile faded. “Naturally, if you tell anyone, I’ll strip the skin from your body and feed it to the worms.”
“Naturally,” said Jig.
Braf grinned. “Hey, when did it get so cold down here?”
Sweating and warm from climbing, Jig hadn’t really noticed, but Braf was right. The stone was cool to the touch, and the air below . . . “Can someone lower one of those lanterns?”
A flare of heat from Smudge warned him just in time. Jig twisted, pressing himself to one side as a burning muck lantern tumbled past, splattering green flames as it went. Braf swore and flicked a bit of muck from his arm. Overhead, goblins yelled and cried out in pain as they tried to pat themselves out. Then the goblin who had dropped the lantern squealed as his fellows pummeled him for his mistake.
Still, it did what Jig needed. The droplets of burning muck illuminated a silver fog creeping slowly up the pit below.
“Where are we?” The words echoed through the abandoned cavern.
Jig wasn’t sure who had asked the question. He could feel the heat of the goblins gathered behind him. He took a few steps to the side, trying to get his back to the wall. He probably didn’t need to worry. These goblins hadn’t seen the pixies’ world yet, and they were too shaken to think about killing him . . . at least for the moment.
The rippling texture of the obsidian combined with the lead-colored frost created the illusion of being surrounded by molten metal. The light of their lanterns had taken on the same bronze tinge he remembered from his excursion into Straum’s cavern.
Shadowstar? Can you hear me?
Silence. The pixies’ world was expanding much faster than he had expected. That couldn’t be good.
Jig looked around, and for one panicked moment he wasn’t sure which tunnel led out to the pit. Everything was so different with the fog and the snow. They had come from the right, hadn’t they? Rubbing his fang, he began following the cavern wall. His sword dragged lines through the frost beside him.
“This looks a bit like our lair,” Braf commented.
Jig glanced around. Braf was right. The cavern was larger, but he could easily imagine goblins or hobgoblins making a home of this place. He hadn’t seen much the last time he was here, being too eager to escape, but now he looked more closely. Bits of rotted rope still circled one of the obsidian pillars, far too old to have been left by the ogres. When they reached the tunnel, Jig spotted a rusted hinge hanging from a scrap of wood beside the opening. He tried to pry it free, and the wood crumbled in his hand.
Jig had never heard of goblins living this far down, but clearly someone used to inhabit this cavern. Their own lair might look like this one day, if they failed to stop the pixies.
“Keep your weapons ready,” Jig said as he stepped into the tunnel. “The last time we were here, we faced ogres and pixies both.”
“And rock serpents,” Braf piped up. “Don’t forget about them!”
The response from the other goblins was less than enthusiastic. Jig saw several glance longingly into the cavern, no doubt wondering if they would be better off climbing back through the garbage. Veka remained at the rear of the group. She hadn’t spoken at all since they left the goblin lair. He still wasn’t sure bringing her along was such a great idea, but so far she seemed safe enough, if a bit subdued.
“Come on,” Jig said, hurrying into the tunnel.
They passed a mass of carrion-worms, a knee-high mound of the squirming creatures huddled together to one side of the tunnel. They seemed to be climbing over one another, all trying to get to the top of the pile.
“They’re freezing to death,” Grell said. “They pile together for warmth. We do something similar with the babies, tossing them all into a single crib when the air gets too chilly.” She kept her arms close to her chest, and she kept stamping her feet. She was wearing an old pair of sandals, and her toes had already begun to turn a paler shade of blue.
The cold appeared to be even harder on the rock serpents. Jig saw several snakes coiled into tight spirals for warmth. They weren’t dead—one snake still struck out when a goblin poked it with his sword—but the snake’s reflexes were so slow the goblin actually survived the attack. For all practical purposes, the tunnel was unguarded.
“Smother the lanterns,” Jig whispered. As the flames died, he began to make out the open space at the end of the tunnel. A long stiff shape lay on the ground near the edge: Veka’s staff, right where it had fallen when Slash kicked her in the head. Jig glanced back. Veka had seen it too. She stepped past him, her eyes never leaving the staff. Several of the beads and cords broke free as she pried the staff up, leaving a perfect impression of the wood in the frost and ice. Jig wrapped his good hand around the handle of his sword, wondering if Veka was about to try something heroic again. But she seemed content to stand there staring at the staff.
Jig edged around her, wondering if the pixies had damaged her brain. Some of the other goblins were pointing and whispering. Jig heard muffled laughter. They hadn’t seen what Veka could do, back at the lake. He held his breath, but Veka appeared deaf to their jokes.
Praying it stayed that way, Jig crept to the edge of the tunnel. Wind blew snow and dirt into his face. The buzzing of wings warned him, but even so, when he looked out into the pit and saw the swarm of pixies darting through the darkness, he found himself wondering if he should just throw himself over the edge. At least that way he might hit one on the way down.
They had changed the pit itself. Shimmering silver bubbles, each one larger than Jig himself, covered the walls. In most places, the bubbles pressed against each other, their sides flattening where they touched. In one spot the bubbles were two or three layers thick.
As Jig watched, a pair of green pixies flew out to hover near a bare patch of rock. These were smaller than the pixies Jig had seen before, and they had only two wings, not four. Their lights faded somewhat as they touched the stone. When they drew back their hands, a thin transparent bubble followed. Ripples of color spread across the bubble’s surface as it grew. The pixies floated, motionless except for the blur of their wings, as the bubble grew. When it was as large as the others, they dropped away. The color continued to spread across the bubble’s surface, rings bouncing back and forth before gradually fading to a more uniform silver.
One of the green pixies pressed her hand against the bubble. Her hand disappeared, and the pixie squeezed through the surface and disappeared inside the silver shell. Her companion floated back, allowing the wind to carry him up until he reached another patch of bare rock.
“What is it?” Braf asked.
Jig took a deep breath. “They’re building a hive.”
The other goblins had crept up behind Jig, straining to see into the pit. A younger goblin, Grop, was leaning so far out that his shadow was visible on the roof of the tunnel. Jig grabbed him by the hair and yanked him back.
“How are we supposed to fight that?” Grop asked, rubbing his head.
“Quiet,” Jig snapped. He didn’t think anyone could hear them over the wind, but he wasn’t about to take any chances. He lay down in the frost and peered up, toward the old bridge connecting the Necromancer’s tunnels. A handful of pixies buzzed around the bridge. Darker shapes resolved into ogre warriors as a pixie flew past. Wonderful.
“It gets worse,” Veka said.
Jig didn’t even blink. “Of course it does.”
She pointed down to the thickest cluster of bubbles, down where the pixie tunnel emerged from Straum’s cavern. “The queen is down there.”
“Are you sure?”
Veka nodded. “It’s hard to describe. I can feel their magic, like a wind.”
“Do you think maybe, just maybe, that could be the wind?” Slash said.
Veka ignored him. “It’s like she’s sucking the magic into herself and drawing the rest of the pixies to her. Not physically, but their magic, their minds, everything about them revolves around the queen.”
Jig adjusted his spectacles. He thought he saw a spot of pure white light below, but it was hard to be sure. What had Pynne said?
None can look upon a pixie queen without loving her
.
Either that light wasn’t the queen, or Jig was too far away to be affected. The only thing he felt was sheer, gut-churning fear.
“We should go back,” said Grop. “We can help the others barricade the lair and—”
“And what?” asked Jig. The pixies were moving too quickly. Look what they had accomplished in a single day. “Why didn’t they leave guards in this tunnel?”
“This crack isn’t easy to see from out there,” said Veka. “The overhang makes it look like part of the rock. The pixies aren’t telepathic. If you killed the only two who found the tunnel, they might not know about it yet. And Snixle . . . he didn’t tell anyone about me and Slash.”
“Lucky us,” Slash muttered.
Jig peeked into the pit again, trying to see how high the pixie’s world reached. Only the occasional spark marked the expanding border between their world and his own, but that border appeared to be well past the Necromancer’s old bridge. “They needed weeks to take over Straum’s cavern,” Jig whispered. At this rate their world would overtake the goblin lair within a day at most.
“We need to cut off the source of their magic,” said Veka.
“I know that,” Jig snapped. “I thought we could destroy their gateway after we killed the queen and eradicated her army of pixies. And then I figured I’d resurrect Straum the dragon and use his breath to toast my breakfast rats.”
He closed his eyes, trying to calm himself. Why worry about future battles when he probably wouldn’t survive this one?
“Are you sure we shouldn’t go back?” asked another of the goblins, Var.
Jig shook his head. They were spreading too quickly. If he and the others left, that hive would fill the pit by the time they returned. “The pixies are like insects,” he said. Magical bugs with ogre slaves and enough magic to conquer the whole mountain, but bugs nonetheless. “What do you do when you find wasps building a nest in the lair?”
“Burn it,” said Var.
“Knock it down and use a stick to hide it in Captain Kollock’s chamber pot,” muttered Grop.
Jig grinned despite his fear, wishing he had thought to try that. “Everything the pixies do, they do for their queen. We attack the nest, kill the queen, and their whole purpose for coming here is gone.”
Grell scratched her ear. “You know, I’ve seen wasps get pretty riled up when someone pokes their nest. Even if we manage to kill the queen, we’re still going to have an army of angry pixies after our hides.”
“We’ll have that anyway,” Jig said. He was trying very hard not to count the number of bubbles. How long would it take them to produce a pixie for every chamber in that nest? If pixies reproduced as quickly as they did everything else . . .