Goblin Quest (8 page)

“I hope you're right,” said Skarper. “I hope we never hears another word about that rubbish old horn.”

But he was out of luck, because they had no sooner passed inside the wall than Fentongoose and Dr Prong came running out to meet them.

A “Hello, Henwyn,” might have been nice, Henwyn thought. Or even a “Henwyn, how pleased we are that you are still alive!” But the two old philosophers had no time for pleasantries of that sort.

“Skarper! Zeewa!” they shouted. “Do you still have the Elvenhorn?”

“Tell us you do! Tell us you did not give it to the Sheep Lords!”

“It is vitally important that, whatever happens, we must
not
let Prince Rhind take it!”

While Skarper and Zeewa had been fetching the Elvenhorn and exchanging it for Henwyn, Fentongoose and Doctor Prong had been hard at work in Fentongoose's library. This was an old guardhouse near the cheesery, its walls lined with badly made bookshelves on which the former sorcerer had arranged all the books and maps and scrolls and papers that he had been able to salvage from the goblins' bumwipe heaps. The Lych Lord, back in the days when he ruled Clovenstone, had gathered books from all the lands that he had conquered; so many books that, even though the goblins had been ripping them up to wipe their bottoms on for the past hundred years, the ones which were left still formed a collection bigger than any other in the Westlands.

Fentongoose delighted in his library. When he was not too busy trying to teach manners to the goblin hatchlings, he would spend his time reading and rearranging the books. Sometimes he arranged them alphabetically by title, sometimes by the name of the writer. Sometimes he grouped them by subject.

At present, they were arranged by age. The newest volumes – fine leather-bound folios and grimoires no more than a few hundred years old – were at one end of the long stretch of shelves. Beyond them lay older books – handwritten, with pages made of parchment and vellum instead of paper. Then came the tight-rolled scrolls, dating from a time before books had been invented, and the bundles of clay tablets, baked in the book ovens of Barragan in days of old. And stacked on the floor in the furthest, darkest corner of the library lay the stone books, which were not really books at all, just leaves of slate or black marble on which some long-ago scribes had scratched crude word-pictures.

Not many of these stone books had been gathered into the libraries of the Lych Lord, for they were rare. But the ones which had, had all survived because they were tougher by far than the books of baked clay, parchment or paper, and because the goblins never, ever used them for bumwipe – they were not very absorbent.

It was on one of these ancient stones that Fentongoose had found a reference to the Elvenhorn. “I knew I had seen it mentioned somewhere before,” he said, while Skarper, Zeewa, Henwyn, and a few goblins who were not still asleep came clustering round the big table in the middle of the library.

He and Dr Prong had spent all night trying to translate the ancient letters on the stone. They were faint and faded, and to untrained eyes they looked like rows and rows of tiny diagrams of different types of gate. Scrumpled and scribbled scraps of paper scattered on the floor showed what a struggle Prong and Fentongoose had had trying to tease out their meaning. But they had succeeded at last. What they had learned made everyone unhappy.

“
Chronicle of the Autumn Islands, Recounting Our Salvation from the Great and Terrible Cushions
,” read Dr Prong, his face close to the stone, the tip of his finger running along the lines of scratchy letters.

“I am not at all sure that ‘cushion' is the right translation for that word,” said Fentongoose. “We are still working on it.”

Dr Prong read on. “
For many years the peoples of these Isles have lived in terror of the dreadful Cushions which come from across the ocean from the land in the west.
There is a bit missing here – we could pick out only a few words – ‘fire', ‘death'…”

“I am almost
sure
that word cannot be cushion,” said Fentongoose.

“And ‘west' can't be right, either,” said Zeewa. “There is no land west of the Autumn Isles. The ocean stretches on for ever. Unless…”

“West of the Autumn Isles, down the path of the Setting Sun,” said Henwyn. “That is where Prince Rhind said Elvensea once lay.”

“
They came
,” said Dr Prong, impatient at all the interruptions, “
across the sea. And wherever they went, death and fire did follow.
But then it says,
In this year, in the month of Trevas-Billas
– the harvesting of the oats –
there came from the east in black ships seven wozzards.”

“I'm sure that says wizard, actually,” said Fentongoose. “There is no such thing as a wozzard.”

“Wozzard is quite definitely what it says here,” said Dr Prong firmly. “It must be an old-fashioned form of the word.”

“Well, it's a very silly one,” said Fentongoose. “But have it your own way.”

“Now, where was I?” said Prong, scowling at him. “Ah yes:
black ships … seven wozzards…”

“You see?” asked Fentongoose excitedly, turning to the listeners. “these wizards…”

“Wozzards!”

“These
wizards
must have been the Lych Lord and his six fellow sorcerers, the ones who helped him raise the Black Keep and build the seven towers of Clovenstone!”

Skarper and Henwyn both knew that story, which Fentongoose had first told them while they sat with Princess Ned in her old ship, balanced on Westerly Gate, on the evening of Henwyn's arrival at Clovenstone. Long ago, seven sorcerers had tamed the power of the slowsilver lake which lay beneath this place, and they had grown great and powerful and set out to right the wrongs of the world, until one of them had argued with the others, and cast them down, and become the Lych Lord. So this stone book came from a time before that happened – a time so long ago that it made you feel dizzy just imagining such a depth of years.

“
Seven
wozzards
,” said Dr Prong, going on with his reading in a loud voice, as if daring Fentongoose to interrupt again. “
These seven vowed that they would defeat the Cushions
. (Perhaps it says pillows? No, that still does not make sense…)
So they sailed into the west, despite our warnings, and we feared that they would be
… (Now, this word means, ‘to render something into a paste, or purée, by jumping up and down on it whilst wearing stone-soled sandals', but I do not think it is meant to be taken literally, I think it just means that they feared the seven wozzards would be killed. It is certainly a rather colourful way of putting it.)
However, seven nights later
(or possibly nine, or thirty six)
we beheld a mighty fire upon the western sky, as of a terrible battle raging. And the sea was troubled, and the sun grew dark. And soon after that, the wozzards in their seven ships returned to tell us that, by their magic, the Queen of Elvensea has been cast down, and her Cushions had been scattered…”

“So they were scatter cushions?” asked Skarper.

“…
and her land was sunk beneath the waves. Many of our ships have sailed there since, and our sailors report that there is nothing to be seen of it, only a wild waste of waters restlessly rolling.

“
The wozzards told us that they achieved all this through the use of a magical trumpet. This trumpet, having done its work, was cast into the depths of the sea, there to remain hidden until the world ends. Do not try to seek it, reader! One blast of that horn will part the waters, two shall raise the drowned land, and then the world will tremble again before the terror of the Cushions.
”

“Elves,” said Skarper. “That's what that word must mean. Nobody's scared of cushions, not really. They mean elves.”

“I am certain it is not elves,” said Dr Prong. “It is something else…”

“The land that the Lych Lord and his wozzard friends sank with this magic trumpet business,” said Henwyn, “that must be Elvensea, mustn't it? There can't be two sunken continents out in the Western Ocean.”

“But elves are good, aren't they?” Zeewa asked. “I mean, it was the Lych Lord who defeated them, and he was evil, so…”

“The Lych Lord was not always evil,” said Fentongoose. “Even if he was, you should not fall into the trap of thinking that his enemies were always good. There was wild magic in the world in those days. Perhaps the Lych Lord and his fellow sorcerers saw Elvensea as a threat to themselves – another land of magic, far out there in the Western Ocean, but not far enough for comfort. Perhaps the people of Elvensea – these elves, or cushions, or whatever we choose to call them – were really their bitter rivals? This old stone recalls a war between two powerful bands of magic-users. Clovenstone defeated Elvensea. But we must not imagine that the sorcerers of Elvensea were any less power-hungry or dangerous than them. Why else would the folk of the Autumn Isles have been so afraid of them?”

“I wish we'd never even heard of that blimmin' Elvenhorn,” said Skarper.

“But we have heard of it,” said Zeewa. “And now Prince Rhind has it, and he imagines the masters of Elvensea were good and kindly folk, and that everyone will thank him for waking their magic again.”

“Well, we must stop him!” said Skarper. “We don't want a load of blimmin' elf magic all over the place – it'll be a proper bother.”

“Rhind can't have got far,” said a small goblin called Spurtle. “He only set off at sunrise.”

“His horses are faster than any we have in Clovenstone,” said Henwyn.

“Goblins go fast!” said Yabber.

“Goblins can hunt!” said Libnog.

“Goblins can follow softling scents through marsh and moor and mountains,” said Spurtle.

“We ought to have a quest of our own!” said Skarper suddenly. “Why do only softlings and princes and such get to go on quests and have songs sung about them an' stuff? I say we should have our own goblin quest to fetch this Elvenhorn back and smash it, or plop it back into the deepliest depths of the sea, whichever is most convenient.”

Around the table, goblin eyes shone. They liked this idea. It had been brilliant last year when they had biffed those stupid dwarves and all the softlings had said what heroes they were. Now they would be heroes again.

“I'll go!” yelled Spikey Peet.

“An' me!” shouted Libnog.

“Me too!” said a dozen more.

“Steady!” said Fentongoose. “You can't all go – that wouldn't be a quest, it would just be chaos.”

“Seven sorcerers once set out from Clovenstone to defeat the power of Elvensea,” said Dr Prong. “Perhaps seven of us should go to make sure that it stays defeated. Also, seven is a very auspicious and magical number, and it will sound good if anyone writes songs about us.”

“I should go,” said Henwyn, “because it is sort of my fault that he was able to take the Elvenhorn in the first place.”

“Me too,” said Skarper. He could not say why, exactly; it was just a sudden, wild feeling that he had, a need to see lands he had never seen, and sail theseas he had read about while he was a hatchling in the bumwipe heaps. But it would be impossible to make his fellow goblins understand that, so he just said, “Me an Henwyn always go together. An Zeewa should go, cos she's a brilliant hunter. And what about Libnog? He's cunning and brave.”

“Hear that?” asked Libnog, looking round proudly at the other goblins. “Cunning and brave, that's me.”

Henwyn shook his head. “Libnog will be needed here.” He knew that Libnog was one of the few goblins with any brains; without him, the others could not be trusted to keep doing all the things that needed doing to keep Clovenstone running – they would just muck about.

“Awww,” said Libnog.

“But we'll take Spurtle,” said Henwyn, “because Spurtle is small and good at thieving things, and may be able to fetch the Elvenhorn out of Prince Rhind's camp without a fight…”

“Unless it's full moon of course!” jeered the other goblins. “Then Prince Rhind can have a nice sit down on him!”

Spurtle snarled at them. He had once fallen into the Slowsilver Lake, and although the effects had almost worn off, he still had a relapse once a month, on the night of the full moon, when he turned into a small but quite comfortable sofa. “I'll go,” he said.

“And Gutgust!” said Henwyn. “He may say nothing but ‘anchovies', but he is mighty in the thick of battle, and we shall need him if we
do
have to fight.”

“Anchovies!” said Gutgust happily, and Skarper realized that it was too late to argue, although Gutgustwasn't the goblin he would have chosen – Gutgust wasn't just mighty in the thick of battle, he was mighty thick.

“And who else?” asked Zeewa.

“Oooh, me, me, me!” shouted the other goblins, leaping up and down with their paws in the air.

“Won't you need a philosopher to help you?” asked Fentongoose.

“Help us with what?” said Skarper. “We know all about the Elvenhorn already. We just need to grab it. That doesn't take brains.”

“Besides,” said Henwyn hurriedly, “you and Dr Prong are needed here at Clovenstone, to keep an eye on things.”

“So who shall be the sixth and seventh members of your company?” asked Prong.

“Me an' Grumpling!” said a voice from behind him.

It was the voice of Flegg. He had come in unnoticed while they were all busy talking. Behind him in the open doorway stood the hulking form of Grumpling. Flegg strode boldly across the library to stand beside Henwyn. “Why should you get to pick everyone who goes, softling? The Elvenhorn was stolen from Grumpling by those Woolmarkers and their accomplices.” (He shot a sharp look at Skarper and Zeewa.) “It's only right that Grumpling should join the quest to recover it.”