The Master (32 page)

“Frankenstein,” Nick muttered.

“Exactly. He was a goblin Dr. Frankenstein. The first one—there have been others since. Anyhow, it is said that though he created them, Gofimbel feared the hobgoblins from the very beginning, and especially Qasim, because it turned out that they were actually more endowed with the capacity for magic than the goblins themselves. And all three monarchs—Gofimbel, Mabigon and Finvarra— played a role in what happened next.”

“Why? How?” Nick asked.

“We can't know for certain, unless Abrial knows, but it is believed that the goblin king arranged to steal a lock of hair from the Seelie king, Finvarra. It was in retaliation for Finvarra's efforts to stop the creation of the new, goblin slave race—Gofimbel knew it would enrage the Seelie king to see his family's blindingly golden hair on the heads of the goblin slaves. Then there was Mabigon's contribution to this disaster. It is said that she gave Gofimbel a bogey's fingerbone to include in their first hobgoblin monster: Qasim. She thought that she could secretly influence him this way. But it was that bogey bone that made him more deadly than the others, and Mabigon could not control him either.”

Nick turned to stare at Jack. “Wait. Sorry, the penny just dropped. You said
Finvarra?
He was the Seelie king?”

“Yes, quite a coincidence, isn't it, your Zee having that name and also fey blood and gold hair?”

“Damn. I hate coincidence.”

“And I don't believe in it,” Thomas said.

“Anyhow, as I was saying,” Jack went on. “Gofimbel enlisted the aid of the dark queen, Mabigon, and having her own reasons for playing a trick on Finvarra, Mabigon agreed to assist. She sent a succubus to visit the Seelie king, and to cut off a lock of his hair while he slept.

“But this small act of mischief backfired horribly, because it somehow endowed the already physically stronger hobgoblins with special magical powers. The beasts became goblin, Seelie
and
Unseelie—something Gofimbel never anticipated. Like Samson in the human Bible, they somehow drew power from this stolen hair. And Qasim did from the bogey bone. Though Gofimbel later chopped off Qasim's finger and had the hair burned off of all the hobgoblins who shared it— burned the flesh down to the bone and then cut away the scalp to boot—the damage was already done.

“So, Nick . . . you ask what hobglobins are. They are super-goblins who eventually learned to use many powerful forms of magic against their enemies, forms of magic that would naturally be denied to them. They are Seelie and Unseelie and goblin. And it took the combined will of these three powers—the only time the three races all cooperated, I might add—to lock them up.”

“But we now have Qasim's heart—the source of his greatest power,” Abrial spoke up. “And we are only facing him, not an entire army of these creatures. There is no need to panic,” he said, looking at Nick's white face.

“Precisely,” Jack agreed. “And if we can take care of Qasim, the rest of the problem goes away. Or at least remains static. Their prisons will hold the hobgoblins for eternity—the three great monarchs saw to that.”

Nick nodded. The idea that something could be locked up for eternity seemed at once both cruel and yet not nearly safe enough, not when one considered how many successful jailbreaks there were in the mortal world. But the only way to be sure the hobgoblins wouldn't be a problem would be to kill them, and like Jack, Nick couldn't quite embrace the notion of genocide. This was a tough one, and it was more of the perpetual balance of power: the duty of the remaining fey that Jack had spoken of. It gave Nick a headache.

Jack stopped suddenly, his head cocked as he listened. Nick knew that the cavern was speaking to him.

“They've found us. The goblins!”

“Well, damn,” Roman muttered. “And we were having such a nice, non-violent hike, too.”

“Okay, it's time for Plan B. Make haste, my friends. We are now on a short clock. We need to check out our escape routes.”

They split up, so that each team could take one of the three branching tunnels that led off the main path from the bone repository. They would meet up again at the chamber where the kids were being held. Thomas and Nick were one team, Jack and Roman made up another. Abrial, Farrar and Zayn were the third.

“Keep your minds open so Abrial can talk to you if Qasim moves, or if the goblins get tricky and try to surround us. We are enough ahead of them that we should be fine, but better safe than sorry. Good luck,” Jack called, as he headed off.

“Good hunting,” was Abrial's reply.

Nick was feeling slightly more comfortable with the night demon, but he still found him disconcerting. The fey looked hard enough to eat bullets for breakfast. Actually, Nick had yet to see him eat anything at all for breakfast. Maybe bullets weren't a bad guess.

“Your shirt's hideous,” Roman said to Thomas by way of farewell. Nick wasn't surprised when he added, “It looks like a Smurf vomited on it.”

“But blue's my lucky color,” Thomas responded, smiling a little.

Roman saluted. “Well . . . I hope the luck rubs off on our new recruit. Keep an eye on him. We don't want to lose the pixie the first time out.”

Thomas embraced him, and then the pooka punched Abrial, Zayn, Nick and Jack in their arms, and bounded away.

“Merry we meet again,” Zayn said softly, and Nick was sure it was some sort of blessing.

“Take care.”

It was all that Nick could think to add, though he suddenly felt very close to his new brothers in arms. They were good men to be in a fight with—though perhaps not exactly
men.
At least, not human men. And not perhaps
good
as he had previously defined it. Most of the
good
people he knew didn't carry guns or deal death so efficiently. Still, they were effective and shared his moral outrage at what was being done to innocent children. And they were willing to accept Zee and her siblings in spite of their goblin blood. That was all that Nick asked, and he knew it was probably more than he would get from his own family.

“Well, once more into the breach,” Thomas muttered, when he and Nick were alone. He sighed. “You know, Roman's right: I'm really getting tired of dealing with these Assholes of Evil.”

Their travels went without incident. The three teams regrouped outside the chamber where the children slept, slumped bonelessly on the floor. Nick was relieved that the air was relatively clear and the chamber fairly warm. It had grown steadily colder the deeper they went, and he had feared that the children might be suffering from hypothermia, since he could not imagine Qasim stocking his prison with two hundred little coats or sleeping bags or kettles of hot chocolate.

There was also something else in the chamber with the sleeping children, a goblin with a broken neck—a very broken neck. The head had been twisted around until it stared over the dead creature's back. Again, Nick was grateful for his nose filter.

“Where's Qasim?” Jack asked, doing a quick 360°.

“Not here—and I can't feel him,” Abrial answered with a frown.

At the same moment, Roman said, “Up to no damn good.”

“Damn it!” Abrial reached down for the goblin corpse. “Let's see what he knows.”

“What are you doing?” Nick asked. “You want my expert opinion? He's dead—real dead.”

“Even the dead can sometimes tell us things,” the nightdemon answered. “I'm going to see if he has anything useful to say.”

Nick nodded but turned; not even his curiosity was enough to make him watch whatever it was Abrial was going to do to the body.

“The air smells cleaner, and it's warmer,” Nick said in relief as he knelt beside the nearest child and felt for a pulse. He'd been worried about the children breathing bad air for prolonged periods of time. Though they looked like broken dolls, they didn't seem dehydrated or starved. Still, he had a great deal of respect for fey magic and how it could mask appearances. Who knew what these children were thinking or feeling as they dreamed in unnatural slumber?

It was a relief to feel a light but steady heartbeat in the boy's neck. His skin was also cool but not dangerously chilled.

“It's convective currents,” Abrial answered, sounding remarkably like a modern man of science. Nick still didn't turn to look at him. Instead, he checked the child's red and green backpack. It said jeffrey in gold letters. Feeling its heaviness, Nick opened the canvas sack. Inside were a pair of expensive binoculars.

“Cold outside air is heavier and cleaner, so it displaces the goblins' foul stench,” Thomas explained. He also knelt. He and Zayn were both swiftly checking the children. “Air is also heated by the underground thermal pools, which then rises. And you should be thanking your lucky stars for that. The smell of an ancient goblin midden can be . . . debilitating.”

“I don't wish to sound alarmist,” Farrar interrupted gently, “but I really do feel that we should get this moveable feast underway. The goblins are getting closer. I can smell them—and they us. Especially the children. Their scent will remain after having been kept here for so many days.”

“Do it,” Jack ordered. “Abrial? Anything useful?”

The nightdemon made a sound of disgust and tossed the goblin aside; the body hit the wall and then slid to the floor. “There's nothing here. Qasim drained his brain. I think he may have been drugged as well.”

Farrar began to play his pipe. Nick could discern no melody to the strange song that floated on the air, but it had an immediate effect on the children. It was too much to say that they awoke, but their eyes did open and they climbed to their feet. Their slack expressions bothered Nick, but he was relieved that they were at least mobile and not panicked. This part of the plan had sounded farfetched to him.

“Move them out as quickly as you can. I can hear our unfriendly hosts coming from the west.”

Nick couldn't hear anything except the Piper's song, but he didn't doubt Jack's word.

He and the others managed to get the children out of the chamber and into the passage that led back to the bone repository just as goblins began coming—a dozen at first, then a score, a hundred, two hundred . . . too many. They had a plethora of extra appendages, all carrying weapons. The goblins apparently hadn't seen them yet, but they would soon. Nick had been told that the enemies' eyes were nearly as keen as the feys' and their noses were often better—especially those of the trolls, if the goblins had any with them.

“Farrar?” Jack asked. “Can you do anything to slow them?”

“I can't do the goblins and hold the children enthralled. It would wreck their brains,” he answered, looking in the direction of the approaching swarm. “I don't know if I could do these all anyway. They're acting crazed. What the hell is wrong with them?”

“They've frenzied,” Thomas said. Nick didn't know what he meant, but judging from his expression, it wasn't good. As if to confirm, Thomas added, “They've overdosed on goblin fruit and corpse powder—likely a booby trap that they stumbled into, probably courtesy of Qasim. He always was one who liked to play with poisons.”

“Swell,” Roman answered.

“The good news is that they'll die eventually,” Thomas said. “Corpse powder overdose is nearly always fatal.”

“And the bad news?” Nick asked—reluctantly, but he asked.

“They won't croak before they try to tear these children—and us—to shreds. It will also be harder to kill them, because they won't feel pain or shock from any wounds. Corpse powder is like goblin PCP.”

“And if that weren't enough, I see trolls,” Roman mentioned. Nick squinted down the narrow corridor and could see what looked like giant goblins bloated with muscles in the midst of the pack. They had enormous noses and more teeth than he had ever imagined any mammal could have. They were drooling what looked like blood.

“I see them,” Thomas said. “They've frenzied, too—chewed off their own tongues. I guess we know what was done with all those bones from New Orleans. Qasim must have made bushels of corpse powder and put it around this chamber as a trap. Or maybe he planned all along for the goblins to attack the children and do the killing for him.”

“This isn't good news. We had better split up,” Jack ordered. “Nick, head left—and watch for the dragon. He'll be coming this way, and he tends to flame first and ask question later. Abrial?”

“Zayn, take the kids—you're better with them,” the nightdemon said. “I'll hold the goblins here for as long as I can, then try to lead them away from you.”

Jack clapped the nightdemon on the shoulder. “Our cause needs many things, but not a martyr. Buy us what time you can, then get the hell out. No heroics, Abrial, and I mean it. We don't want to lose this battle, but it would be worse to win the battle and lose the war.” When Abrial opened his mouth to object, Jack said: “Executioner, have you forgotten Qasim? He still has to be found and dealt with. You may be the only one strong enough to track and take him.”

“I haven't forgotten. Get going,” Abrial agreed. Turning swiftly and dropping to one knee, he sighted down his rifle barrel. “Thomas?” he called.

“I've already summoned the dragon. He's on his way. It may take him a while, because some of the tunnels are too narrow.” Thomas had to raise his voice to be heard above the screams now echoing up the passageway. He turned to Nick. “Can you manage the children?”

“Yes,” Nick answered immediately. He would have to. He was okay with a gun, but Thomas was the better fighter, and they couldn't leave Abrial here alone; he'd be overwhelmed in minutes— maybe even seconds, if any goblins sneaked up behind him.

“Take off, Jack,” Roman said, unslinging his weapon, which looked like some distant cousin of an Uzi. It carried a lot of rounds, but Nick wondered if it would be enough. For the first time in his life, Nick found himself wishing for hand grenades and anti-tank missiles—and perhaps even nuclear weapons.