“And you prefer to go to the forest.”
“It would be a good place for goblins,” she answered almost too quickly.
“So this price …” Grallik did not take his eyes from hers. “This price for learning your magic …?”
“Is to make Direfang go to the forest,” Mudwort finished, huffing for emphasis.
Grallik laughed. “I am a slave here, Mudwort. I’ve no power over Foreman Direfang. He’ll not listen to me, and getting Horace to charm him with a spell-if that’s what you are thinking-wouldn’t last very long. I’ve watched Direfang. He listens to you all the time. You’re the only one who could convince him.”
“Not this time,” she shot back.
Kenosh coughed louder and longer, a wracking spasm that caused Mudwort and Grallik to turn and look at him. Kenosh was doubled over, a bloody line of drool trickling from his mouth.
“Kenosh,” Grallik said in a hushed voice. “The last one of my talon.”
“He is sick like goblins are sick. The skull man will mend the Dark Knight after mending goblins. If there is any mending left.”
“I will talk to Foreman Direfang,” Grallik whispered.
“Talk well,” Mudwort said. “Be convincing. That is the price.”
When Grallik turned back to look at the red-skinned goblin, she was gone.
Horace worked late into the night, moving from one goblin to the next, shaking his head ruefully when inspecting each patient but offering sympathetic words in the goblin tongue.
“The skull man learned goblinspeak fast,” Direfang observed, hovering close behind the priest.
“I have a talent for languages,” Horace replied. He was kneeling next to Spikehollow, who was wrapped in the colorful quilt. “I tended you before. I’d thought the sick chased away from you.”
Spikehollow opened his mouth to reply, but nothing came out. His lips quivered in his chill, and pink bubbles formed at the corners of his mouth. His teeth clacked together as he shivered all over.
Pippa stood nearby, darting in concernedly to touch his forehead. “Spikehollow burns,” she said to the priest. “Sweats and shivers. They have come back. It is a bad sick, isn’t it?”
Horace nodded. “Bad. Yes, very.” He pulled back the quilt and lifted up Spikehollow’s tunic, the words to a healing enchantment tumbling out as he worked. His hand glowed orange. “Oh, my.”
He stared at Spikehollow’s waist, and his eyes traveled up and locked onto the young goblin’s neck. Horace could see well that evening. There was a riot of stars overhead, and along the riverbank there was nothing to block the light from twinkling down.
There was a swollen black knob on Spikehollow’s neck, another in the pit of the goblin’s arm, and one protruding from his side.
“This is a very bad sick,” Horace echoed.
THE BLACK SPOTS
Horace’s dark skin gleamed with sweat. It wasn’t from the sickness, but from exertion. He’d been tending ailing goblins for so many hours that he was nearly at the point of collapse. He was numb all over, and his legs felt like lead weights.
At least the Hunter’s Ridge clan had not come down with the illness, nor any goblins from the other two clans that had joined them that morning. That was curious, the priest reflected, and might be important. He was too tired to think about it, though.
He stood propped against an old maple, Direfang in front of him, scowling and muttering in the goblin tongue. After a few moments, he spoke slowly so Horace could more easily understand him.
“Not done yet today, skull man,” the hobgoblin leader grumbled. “Not close to done. There are many more-”
“No, Foreman, I’m not done. I’ll well admit that. But I do need a break, a brief rest. And I need to see to myself or there’ll be no helping any of you. If I catch this malady, there’ll be no more healing to give.”
Despite Direfang’s snarl, the priest raised a glowing hand to his own chest and mumbled a prayer to Zeboim. “Goddess, grant me strength,” he breathed. “Keep me well so that I can serve these creatures’ health.” He placed his fingers over his heart, and the glow melted into his skin, radiating up his neck and down his arms and traveling to the waistband of his tattered leggings.
His chest rose and fell more rapidly as the glow brightened, and he gasped for breath. The hobgoblin stepped forward, ready to catch him. But Horace waved him away. His breathing slowed after a few moments, and he tilted his head up, finding something in the branches to stare at.
“Sea Mother, I am your humble servant and …” Horace continued his prayer, his voice rising and falling as his fingers danced over his skin.
Direfang stepped back and shook his head.
“You disapprove of Horace tending to himself?” That came from Grallik. The wizard had come up behind him, leading the three goats that used to be in Kenosh’s care. He looked with distaste at the animals tethered to his wrist and let out a sigh when they dropped their heads to munch on the grass at his feet.
“This Mother Goddess-”
“Ah, that’s what you disapprove of, Foreman Direfang. You don’t believe in the gods. None of your kind do, it seems.”
Direfang shrugged.
“What matters is that the skull man is mending the goblins for you. And what he’s doing now, Foreman, is bolstering his body against whatever disease ravages them.”
The light was thin, filtering through the maples and oaks, and it made the leaves and branches look brittle. The forest had narrowed and changed considerably along that section of the river; the pines had all but disappeared. There was more space between the trunks, and trillium and ferns covered most of the floor. Along a branch of the river that split and pointed to the west, beavers had built a dam. But the little creatures were long gone, and the mound of twigs and mud was falling apart. The hobgoblin took a deep breath, smelling the moldiness of the rotting dam and finding it far preferable to rotting goblin flesh and the smell of the Dark Knights.
Direfang looked away from the priest and stared at a dying black willow, its bare branches dangling over the river and over the many goblins lying beneath it. Thirty-seven, he counted, all of them in various stages of the bad sickness. Spikehollow was one of the worst of the victims. Direfang watched as the young goblin coughed fiercely and tried to retreat deeper into the once-colorful quilt that had become stained with blood and mud. Swollen black spots were clearly evident on his neck. The hobgoblin could see more black spots on those who did not have the benefit of blankets to cover them. There were spots on legs and under armpits, along their waists-everywhere on their bodies, it seemed.
The hobgoblin shuddered and looked back to the priest. He breathed deep again, but he couldn’t catch the moldy scent of the dam anymore. He could only smell his rotting charges.
“The sick need more help,” Direfang said, interrupting Horace’s prayer. “Need more help right now. Pray to your goddess, tend to yourself, but be fast.” The priest had finished with his own ministrations; the glow was gone and his hands had relaxed at his sides. “Some are dying, skull man. Be fast and be good.”
Horace met Direfang’s gaze. The priest’s red-rimmed eyes looked small on his fleshy face, but there was something hopeless in them that sent a shiver down the hobgoblin’s spine.
“I know some are dying, Foreman. I’m not blind.” Horace crossed his arms in front of his chest. “And you must know I have done-and will continue to do-my very best not because you demand it, but because Zeboim does.”
Direfang opened his mouth to say something, but Horace cut him off.
“This is a profound sickness, Foreman. And not even the healing that comes from the Sea Mother may be enough. Divine magic cannot cure everything.” He paused and looked over toward the black willow. “Do you understand that? Do you?” He didn’t wait for a reply. “There are some illnesses that magic simply cannot defeat. It is as if the gods have decreed that-”