“What happened?” Veka whispered. Slash’s jaw tightened, but he said nothing.
The dog snarled, attacking its own legs with even greater ferocity. The pixie didn’t appear to be coming back, so Veka crawled out from behind the tree.
“That dog will rip you apart,” Slash warned.
Veka was more curious than afraid. What had the pixie done?
She was almost at Walland’s body when she saw. The roots of the nearby trees had coiled around the dog’s paws, anchoring it to the ground. Smooth black bark crept up its legs. Blood and splinters sprayed from its panicked jaws, but the pixie’s magic was too strong. No matter how the dog struggled, the bark continued to spread. It had reached its hips by the time Slash joined her. The dog’s yelps grew higher in pitch, and foam dripped from its mouth as it panicked. Slash reached for the dog and nearly lost his fingers.
“That’s no way to die,” Slash said. “Can you stop this?”
Veka shook her head, too fascinated to lie.
He grabbed the end of his weapon and swung it like an oversize club against the dog’s neck. There was a loud crack, and the dog dropped.
“Stupid pixies.” Slash nudged Walland’s body with his toe. “The dog was just looking for a meal.”
“How did it get down here?” Veka asked. “I’ve never seen a dog like that before.”
“Probably came with a group of adventurers.” He pointed to a worn scrap of leather buckled around the dog’s neck. A few rusted spikes protruded from the collar, though most had torn away over time. “They bring their animals along on their little quests, get themselves killed, and their pets either wind up in some other creature’s belly, or they go feral like this poor thing. I remember one fellow who carried around a pair of trained ferrets who could disarm traps, chew through knots, all sorts of tricks.”
“What happened to them?” Veka asked.
“We caught one of his companions and tied her up for the tunnel cats. Sure enough, he sent his ferrets to free her while he fought the cats.” He grinned. “He should have taught them to be sure nobody had spread poison on the ropes they chewed.”
Veka turned her attention back to the dog. By now the tree had nearly consumed the body. Only the wrinkled face and one ear still showed, and soon those too disappeared. Tiny branches began to sprout from the dog-shaped stump.
The pixie had done this with nothing more than a wave of his hand. No wonder the ogres were so desperate for help.
Slash gave the wooden head a sympathetic pat. “What now?”
Veka didn’t hesitate. “Walland said they had taken over Straum’s lair. We’ll sneak into the lair and discover their secrets. That should give us the key to destroying them.”
For a long time Slash simply stared at her. When he finally spoke, he sounded almost resigned. “There’s something very wrong with you, even for a goblin.”
Veka didn’t answer. If she tried to explain, he’d only laugh at her. That, or he would go ahead and kill her.
But deep down, she knew. These pixies were her nemesis. Nemeses? It didn’t matter. The magic she had seen proved they were the archenemy she must defeat to finish her journey along the Hero’s Path. If she could overthrow these pixies, it would be a triumph unmatched in goblin history. Nobody would even remember Jig and his stupid song. When she returned, she would be Veka the Great. Veka the Mighty. Veka the Bold. She would have so many adjectives, the other goblins would take all morning just to greet her!
Better yet, Jig and the others might be in trouble. They had lost their ogre companion, after all. What a thrill it would be to rescue the great Jig Dragonslayer.
“Come on,” she said, tugging Slash by the arm. He wrenched free, staring at her as if she had suggested raw carrion-worms for dinner. He didn’t understand. The longer they stayed here, the more time Jig would have to save himself, and that would ruin everything.
She started to walk in the general direction of Straum’s cave. She wondered if the pixies would have spellbooks she could steal. She would have given anything for the kind of power she had just witnessed. Well, maybe not that spell in particular. The ability to make trees swallow your enemies wouldn’t be much use back in the stone tunnels and caves of the goblin lair. But if the pixies could do that, they certainly had other spells she could use.
Crunching footsteps told her Slash had decided to follow. The scowl on his face made it plain he would have preferred to leave her broken body here with the dog, but given what they faced, it was smarter to stick together.
That
was how a sidekick was supposed to behave.
Veka kept her ears twisted, tracking Slash’s footsteps to make sure he didn’t try to stab her in the back. Though he could just as easily throw his spear, if he really wanted her dead. But to do that, he would have to shift his weight, which she would also hear, thanks to the crunch of ice and snow. Hopefully that would give her enough warning to dive behind a tree.
Her enthusiasm began to wane the longer they walked. She found herself constantly stumbling over snow-covered roots or bumping into branches which dumped snow down her neck. The sky had begun to darken, making progress even more difficult. The last branch had nearly cost her an eye. “This whole place is out to get me,” she muttered.
By the time they reached the edge of the woods, Veka was hungry, cold, and soaked. Her only consolation was that Slash had been equally abused.
“Straum’s lair is there, the edge of the cavern,” Slash said.
“You think I don’t know that?” Veka tried to sound haughty and disdainful, but her stomach gurgled as she spoke, ruining the effect. She should have brought food, or at least grabbed a few bites of Walland.
A wide clearing separated them from the edge of the cavern. In Straum’s time, the dragon had kept that stretch empty so nobody would be able to sneak into his lair without being seen. Over the past year, shrubs and saplings had begun to pop up, though none were tall enough to use as proper cover.
Veka leaned on her staff as she studied the entrance to Straum’s lair. The horizontal crack was like a dark mouth in the cliff curving up before them. Vines hung over the entrance like unwashed hair. The ground closest to the cliff was overrun with dying wildflowers. Over the centuries, Straum had tried many things to relieve his boredom, including gardening. The sweet, rotten smell made her nose wrinkle.
A knotted rope hung down the cliff, courtesy of some early traveler. Even from here Veka could see it was frayed and useless.
She saw no sign of any guards. The pixies should be easy to spot. The one by Walland had lit up most brightly when he used his wings, but even when resting, he gave off as much light as a good lantern. If there was a pixie anywhere near that cave, Veka would see.
“Stay with me,” Veka said, stepping into the clearing.
Slash’s fingers snagged her cloak and yanked her back. She fell, banging her shoulder on a tree. “What are you doing?” she shouted, climbing to her feet and shaking her staff at him so hard one of the glass beads broke and fell into the snow.
“Keep your voice down, idiot! If you’re so eager to get yourself killed, at least let me do it.” He used his spear to knock her staff to one side. “Any hobgoblin child would know better than to go out there.”
Veka stared back out at the clearing. “It’s not even guarded.”
“Exactly.”
Veka’s fingers traced the outline of
The Path of the Hero
beneath her cloak, wondering if Josca included any instances of the Hero killing her own sidekick.
Then she spotted it. The body of a small rabbit, half buried in the snow. In the dying light, she had mistaken it for a bit of wood or dirt. She couldn’t see any blood, so it hadn’t been killed by predators. From the amount of snow on the rabbit, it had been dead a while. Someone could have killed it with a rock, she supposed. A number of goblins were quite good with rocks. But why would they leave the corpse?
No, this had to be a trap of some sort. Judging from the angle of the body, the rabbit had been coming from her left. It had died a bit short of the cave. The trap must cover the area in front of Straum’s lair. Using the rabbit as a marker to judge the distance, that meant it probably extended right up to the edge of the woods. A few steps and she would have triggered it.
That only made her angrier at Slash. A Hero shouldn’t need her sidekick to save her. She knelt, determined to figure this out for herself. Slash leaned against a tree with his arms folded, amusement plain on his face.
The land looked no different. Ice encased the grass and shrubs poking up from the snow. The grass was a bit taller here, maybe. And there were holes in the snow where the ice protruded, almost as if the grass had melted the newfallen snow around it. But if that was the case, why hadn’t the ice melted as well?
She pushed her staff forward, breaking bits of ice and snow. She glanced at Slash for some clue whether this was a good idea, but he only smirked. Her face burning, she jabbed the staff farther.
The ice didn’t break. She tried again. A bit of snow fell away, but the ice was solid as rock. It seemed to pulse with a dim red light. Another jab confirmed it. “There’s something inside the ice.”
The taller shards of ice were literal spikes. She could see it now, how they came to a sharper tip than the rest of the grass. They had to be magical, probably strong enough to pierce the leather soles of her boots, as well as her feet.
She crawled forward, using her staff to test and break the ice until she reached the closest of the spikes. With one finger, she brushed the snow away.
The base was as thick as her thumb, and appeared to extend a little way into the dirt. The ice was perfectly smooth, so clear she could see something coiled at the base. She gave it a quick tap.
The ice flashed red as a thin tendril uncoiled, shooting up to the very tip of the spike.
“Looks like the rabbit managed to hit two of them,” Slash said. “I’m guessing whatever’s inside is poisonous. Their prey dies on top of their little trap, and they get enough food to last for weeks.”
Veka’s stomach rumbled again at the mention of food. “So how do we get past them?”
“If it were me, I’d toss a bunch of goblins out there. The spikes would hold them in place, and all I’d have to do is stroll along the goblin path.”
What she needed was the ability to fly, like the pixies. If only she could make her levitation spell work. She pulled out her spellbook and opened it to the spell. The covers were cold on her hands where the copper was exposed through the peeling leather. The darkening sky made it almost impossible to read, even if she hadn’t accidentally burned the page, but it didn’t matter. She had long ago memorized every word on the page.
She knew the spell. Even though it had never worked before, it would work now. She had set foot on the Hero’s path. This was the time when her powers would blossom, giving her the means to complete her journey. She glanced at Slash. Should she warn him, or simply pluck him from the ground and drag him along behind her as she flew? The latter, she decided, smiling as she imagined his frightened cries.
Her fingers twisted through the binding charm, and she closed her eyes as she finished the spell, wrapping tendrils of magic around herself and her companion and hoisting them both from the ground.
Nothing happened. She couldn’t even complete the binding spell. Slash cleared his throat. “Go on, keep waving your hands like a madwoman. Maybe the little ice creatures will all get scared and run away.”
Veka blinked back tears. Heroes didn’t cry. Not even when their magic deserted them. She slammed the book shut.
The book . . . She stared at it for a long time. Perhaps the answer she needed was within her spellbook after all.
“You look like a fool,” Slash said.
Veka didn’t care. Planting the butt of her staff on the ground in front of her, she took another step. Already she was halfway across the clearing.
Strips of black cloth bound the copper covers of her spellbook to her feet. The ragged edge of her robe flapped behind her as she took another step. Red lights flashed beneath her feet. Elation at her success helped to ease the pain of ripping the covers from her spellbook. Most of the binding had torn in the process, and already the pages were separating. She had ripped an extra strip from her robe and used it to tie the pages together for now. She had hoped she would be able to repair the covers, but one look at the stiff, torn leather told her it was probably pointless.
“That doesn’t matter,” she whispered, taking another step. The pixies would have new books, better spells.
The ice gave way beneath her, and she clung to her staff to keep from falling. The end of the staff caught her in the chin, but she managed to keep her balance. She had reached the cliff, and the patch of ground here appeared to be natural. This was where the smell of dying flowers was strongest. Maybe the smell repelled the ice worms as well, or maybe Straum had done something to the soil to protect his garden. It didn’t matter. She was safe.
She slipped the copper plates from her feet and sent them spinning through the air toward Slash, then turned back to the cliff. By stretching, she could just reach the old rope hanging down from the cave. A quick tug snapped it, and dirt sprinkled her face as the rope fell. She spat and tossed the rope aside. An ogre could probably reach the lower lip of the cave, but it was well beyond her. Or Slash, for that matter.
Slash hopped down from the field of spikes and walked over to test the vines dangling down over the cave. One tore loose in his hand, and he tossed it aside. “Kneel.”
Veka raised her staff. “What?”
“Unless you have a better way to get up there?”
Oh. Veka looked up, then at Slash. “You should kneel. I’ll climb up and—”
“Break my spine,” Slash said flatly. He tossed the covers of her spellbook on the ground. “I’m taller, stronger, and lighter. If you’re serious about getting up there, this is the only way it’s going to happen.”