In The Coils Of The Snake (35 page)

“Why didn’t the
true elf King step forward to lead his people
once
the impostor was dead?” demanded Catspaw. “He would have
had
the magic to know he should do it.”

“He couldn’t
because Lord Ash, the true King, was dead long
before the impostor,” said Seylin. “He died before New Moon
even
married. Clear signs of his real
identity were present in his life.
He
married three different elf women, and the first two died child
less.
That’s because the elf King, like the goblin King, can’t have a
child until his magic matures, some time past the
age of forty. Lord
Ash’s magic doubtless got rid of the first two wives,
just as this elf King’s first wife, Kara, knew that his magic was getting rid
of her, and as Arianna was instinctively afraid that his magic would do to her,
too.

“Then Lord Ash’s
niece was stolen by the goblins, and he was determined to rescue her. Because
he was really the elf King, no member of the Guard could withstand him, and he
fought all the way to the iron door, destroying every goblin in his path. Then
the
iron door called on the goblin King to
save it. If the Kings had
fought together as you two did, the goblin
King would have recognized his opponent, but he brought down the ceiling on
Lord Ash
instead, and that killed the last
true elf King. His young elf wife
bore
her dead husband a son, but the child was a great disappoint
ment. He had
almost no magic at all.

“What
happens next is lost in the confusion of the elf harrowing,
but it’s easy enough to guess. One Lord Ash followed
another:
plain, unremarkable elves. The powerful
magic of the elf Kings
stayed dormant
because they were the sons of elf women. At last one
final Lord Ash came
along: lonely, the last of his band. He fell in love with a human girl, and he
lured her away from home. She longed for her own world, but her husband loved
her ardently, and
so, two hundred and fifty
years after the death of the last true King,
another elf King was born.”

Nir
looked at Miranda. “My mother was from a large family,” he
said softly. “She loved my father, but she was so
unhappy. She tried
to smile for him,
but when he was out hunting, she would cry and
cry. My father always thought that if she could just have a daughter,
she wouldn’t miss her sisters anymore. But she
never had a daughter.
Only me.

“When my father
died, I released my mother from the spells so
that
she could return to her people. She tried to convince me to come
with her because she said I was half human, but she
and I both
knew that wasn’t true. My
people were the elves even though I didn’t
have any people. I watched my
mother walk away into the dawn, and the next evening I started searching for
elves.”

“Which I did,
too,” remarked Seylin. “But I didn’t have your knack for it. just
imagine, goblin King,” he continued enthusiasti
cally, lapsing into his old tutor’s role, “we always tell the
Kings that
they embody the magic of
their race, and then we teach them so care
fully that they never have to
rely on it. But here was a young King, completely untaught and completely
alone. He had nothing of his
heritage but
his language and his name. And within twenty years, he
had found every
scattered survivor of his race and restored their
ancient way of life. It’s all completely intuitive. He even keeps mov
ing
to the sites of the King’s Camps, although I’m sure he doesn’t know it.”

He proffered the
other of the two books to Nir. “This, Aganir Ash,” he said, “is
the next spell book we should loan you.”

Nir took the slim
volume and studied its title.
“The Spells of the Elf King”
he
read.

“It
has only scholarly interest for us,” said Marak Catspaw. “No
one
but the elf King can work them.”

Nir paged through
the book for a minute. Then he looked up at
them
with a smile. “It doesn’t have much interest for me, either,” he
said.
“I already know most of these spells. Here’s the Border Spell. That’s what
I’ve been working since the new moon.”

“So I guessed,”
replied Seylin. “Miranda described it to me
because you tested it on her, the spell that kept getting her lost. The
Border Spell used to protect the elf
King’s forest, and every new King
had to walk the border and renew it.
It was the decay of the Border
Spell that
made the elf harrowing possible. Once it was gone, the gob
lins could sweep through and attack the elf camps
as they pleased.”

“You
can’t do that now,” said Nir, his dark eyes shining. “I
passed the north side of the truce circle and left you
the strip of forest
between the lake and
the human mansions. I don’t think you’ll be sending your spies to watch my camp
anymore.”

“Spies!”
sighed Seylin. “That was our huge mistake. The elf
King should never come face-to-face with the goblins’
captive elves,
but none of us knew
you were the elf King.”

“Now I know
what you did to Mother!” exclaimed Marak
Catspaw.
“When you tested her, you put the Call of the King on
her, but
Mother can’t leave us to follow you.”

“And
we’ve wondered what would happen if a goblin disobeyed
his King,” Seylin remarked. “Since goblins — elves,
too — are brought
to
the King and Called right after birth, they’re incapable of disobe
dience.
Your mother isn’t the only one to find the Call profoundly unsettling. Marak
said that Richard here cried like a baby when he was Called. Sable must have
had an instinctive fear of it: she had never touched or even looked at the elf
King. He caught her work
ing against him, and
then he put the Call on her. The only reason
she didn’t fall dead at his feet was that he gave her an errand to do.”

“Dead?”
echoed Nir, considerably startled.

“Dead,”
confirmed the goblin King. “She delivered your mes
sage to me, and she fell dead at my feet instead. We’ve kept her body
working
by magic, but nothing I’ve tried has restarted her heart.”

“I
thought that was just a lie you told to trick Sika into leaving,” Nir
admitted, deeply troubled. “I never meant to harm that elf, only
to
banish her. If I see her, maybe I can bring her back.”

“Then come with
me,” suggested the goblin King. “Not inside.
I’ll bring her out.” And turning to Richard, he ordered the Guard
to
return to the kingdom.

“It only
remains to confirm the treaty,” declared Seylin as the
goblins trooped past. “Do both of you agree
to honor the old covenant
between the Kings?”

“Yes,”
answered Nir, “provided that the goblins will respect my
marriage.”

“Oh, by all
means,” replied Catspaw. “I can’t fight a prophecy, especially one my
own father made. I hope you’re happy with your
King, little sister. If you ever find yourself in trouble that he can’t
help
you out of, just send a message
along to me. And don’t believe every
thing the elves tell you about us.
They have some shocking ideas.”

“Thank you,”
said Miranda. She said it a little stiffly. But then
she remembered Marak and all his love and pride in her. “Catspaw,”
she said hurriedly, and then stopped, a lump in her throat. “Catspaw,
I’m still glad that I was raised by a goblin King.”

“Well, of
course you are,” he said with a smile.

“Miranda,
you may go,” said Seylin. “And thank you for
your help.”

Nir
walked her to the edge of the circle. “Sika, go back to camp
with
Hunter now,” he said. “I’ll be there soon.”

“Can’t I stay
with you?” she asked in a low voice. “I don’t want to leave. What if
this is another of Catspaw’s tricks?”

Nir’s dark eyes
danced. “Then he can try to kill me again.”

• • •

Half an hour later,
Marak Catspaw walked out of the cliff face that
was the entrance to the goblin caves, carrying a bundle in his arms.
He
knelt on the grass and laid it down, propping it across his knee.
As he unwrapped the blanket, Nir’s heart sank.
There lay the elf
who wasn’t an elf,
pitifully emaciated and shrunken. Her long black
hair, coarse now,
straggled across her hollow cheeks.

He
knelt down beside her and took her hand in his. “Come
back,”
he commanded softly.

The elf woman
stirred and opened her eyes. There was fear in them, all the fear of a bullied
slave whose bare survival had been
bought
with tremendous pain. Nir looked into those eyes and read her
past, a
past as dark as any he could imagine. Her past, and the past
borne by thousands of elf women like her. Terrible
suffering, count
less deaths, which
had brought his people down to a handful. It could
all be laid at the
door of his own family — vain, foolish Kings who
had cared nothing for others and everything for their own petty pride.

“What do you
want of me?” whispered Sable in terror. The elf King bowed his head.

“Get well,”
he answered gently. “Be happy with your goblins.
You don’t owe me your allegiance. I wasn’t there to save you when
you faced certain death. You had to face it alone.
I wasn’t there to free
you when you
lived in a slavery so profound that the goblins’ captivity
seemed like a
blessing. The goblins were there, and I’m glad they
were there, and I
understand that you love them. But, Sable, don’t hate your own people.”

Tears
stood in those sunken eyes, and Sable wrung her thin
hands.
“When has an elf ever been kind to me?” she asked bitterly.

“Never,”
sighed Nir. “Kindness died in your elf band when the
mothers died. But it isn’t the fault of the dead
mothers that they failed
to teach
their children love, and it isn’t the fault of the orphaned child
ren
that they failed to learn it.”

“You could have
taught me,” muttered the gaunt woman. “You showed me no kindness.”

“I should have,”
admitted Nir. “And I never meant to harm you.
But you caused suffering, too. You told lies that damaged my wife’s
trust
in me and undid all the kindness I had shown her.”

“Miranda,
your wife?” wondered Sable. She stirred uneasily against
Catspaw’s
knee. “Oh, I understand now,” she whispered. “I know
who you are. Your wife. Miranda wanted that. I
was furious because
you broke her heart.” And her dry lips twisted
into a little smile.

“I’ll try not
to,” promised Nir, smiling back at her. “Don’t give up on your people
yet. Go to sleep now, and wake up when you’re rested.” He watched her face
grow peaceful. Then he looked up at the goblin King. “Thank you for
keeping her alive for me,” he said.

“I
certainly didn’t keep her alive for you,” retorted Catspaw with
a
frown.

“She’s had her
children,” the elf pointed out. “She won’t do anything more for your
bloodlines and pedigrees.”

“For
pity’s sake!” snapped the goblin. “She’s my faithful subject
and
my mother’s closest friend! I don’t know what you think we
goblins are a race of heartless cretins,
obviously. You wouldn’t
even have
that forest you’ve just walked if my father and my great
-grandfather
hadn’t walked it first. They placed the Ax Spell on the border trees to keep
them safe from logging.”

“Why would
goblins do such a thing?” asked the puzzled Nir.

“They
did it out of respect,” growled Catspaw, “and that’s a
word
you could stand to learn. My father respected the memory of his brother Kings
and the elvish race.”

Nir
pondered this as he watched Marak Catspaw tuck the blan
ket around the sleeping Sable. He was surprised at the
gentleness of
the action.

“How is
Arianna?” he asked cautiously.

“Oh,
she’s fine,” answered the goblin King proudly. “She’s terribly brave.
just last week she gave me a smile because I brought her some branches of
holly. What she likes best is to sit on our balcony
with Mother, Irina, and Sable, and they work on one of
Irina’s
projects together, and
they sing. They can sing for hours sometimes,
and
it cheers her up tremendously. It hurts my ears,” admitted Catspaw with a
grin.