“Head hurts,” Spikehollow began in Common. “Hurt for a few days now.” He coughed and a line of blood thickened over his lips. “Back hurts, arms and legs hurt … ache so bad. The light, it is much too bright. Hot, feel hot too. Very, very hot.”
Swallowing his fear and disgust, Horace examined the lumps on Spikehollow’s neck. They were hard, same as the ones under his arms. Black as coal, one had split open and was oozing blood and a greenish pus. He pulled back the quilt and saw that one lump on the goblin’s leg had grown to the size of an orange.
“By the Sea Mother,” he whispered. The mask of stoicism melted into a look of horror. In all his years working with the Dark Knights, and before that with the sailors on the coast of Southern Ergoth, Horace had seen nothing as terrifying as what lay before him. He fought to keep from retching, so horrid was Spikehollow’s appearance.
There was blood in the goblin’s urine and feces, blood pooling under his skin; black spots and painful-looking boils dotted his chest and upper arms. That close his stench was unbearable, and Horace finally lost his battle to ignore the stench, turning and emptying the contents of his stomach on the ground. Then he pulled the quilt back up so he would no longer have to look at the worst of Spikehollow’s lesions.
The priest wiped at his own lips. The goblin was feebly reaching under the quilt for something at his side and, after a moment’s work, pulled out a knife. Horace leaned back, thinking the goblin meant to kill him, angry that the curing spell had not worked. Instead, the goblin pressed the knife to his own chest.
“Don’t …” Horace began. The priest didn’t have to finish the warning. Spikehollow didn’t have the strength to end his own life.
“Hurts too bad,” Spikehollow gasped. Then the goblin’s fingers slipped from the pommel, and the knife fell aside. The goblin gave a great rasping breath, clutched at his throat, and died.
The priest stared glumly. Then he noticed the knife, snatched it up, found a scabbard under the quilt, and sheathed the small blade, putting it in the pocket of his leggings. The handle stuck out, but he hoped no one would notice that he’d acquired a weapon.
Horace worked well into the evening, spending his spells on those who were not yet so badly afflicted; they seemed to respond best to his divine magic. There had been nearly forty when he’d started that afternoon; he looked around and saw there were at least double that number of goblins who were hobbled by the sickness. By nightfall he’d given so much of himself that he could barely raise a hand, and he could no longer coax a healing glow. He stumbled away from the black willow and dropped to his knees on the riverbank.
The moon was high and bright and set the water to sparkling, but the priest couldn’t appreciate the beauty of the scene. Fire crackled behind him; the bodies of the dead were being burned in a clearing. He’d insisted that they be burned immediately-their clothes, their possessions, everything should join them in the fire. What couldn’t be burned had to be buried beneath the earth. He considered all the goblins scavengers, and he prayed to Zeboim that they had enough sense not to loot the diseased corpses for clothes and blankets.
Remembering, he reached in his pocket and pulled out the knife; the scabbard and the leather-wrapped pommel would also be thick with disease. He nearly tossed it into the river. Horace would be taking a chance if he kept something like Spikehollow’s knife, probably as disease-ridden as the dead goblin. He should throw it away, he knew.
Instead, he replaced it in his pocket; it was too precious a thing to give up. One knife would do nothing against that many goblins. But he wanted the knife so he could end his own life if the first symptoms of the disease appeared. Horace would not allow himself to suffer the way the sick goblins were suffering.
Horace listened to the river shush by as he slipped his hands into the cool waters to wash them off. A chorus of whistles and what sounded like birdsong rose. Frogs or toads or both, the happy noise was a relief compared to the moans of the sick and the wails of the mourners. He splashed water on his face and edged out into the shallows, nearly slipping on an algae-covered stretch of slate. He scrubbed his arms and chest and waded out until the river reached his waist. He felt the insistent tug of its current, and for a moment he considered wading out farther still until the current pulled him under and ended his despair.
He was a devoted man and believed that Zeboim would send his soul to the place where spirits drift for a pleasant eternity. Death could well be preferable to his existence. Damn Grallik for talking him into their escapade! Better that the earthquakes had sucked him down or the volcanoes had buried him in ash. Better such a fate than watching the goblins suffer so and finding his divine magic impotent.
Yet the soothing waters revived him a little.
He stood in the shallow part of the river for quite some time, his back to the goblins and eyes cast down at the moon’s reflection. After a while his head bobbed forward, and he felt impossibly weary. He could fall asleep right there and drift away down the river. Again, he thought, drowning might not be so bad.
But for some reason Zeboim had tasked him with his terrible situation, had indeed nudged him to follow Grallik in his mad plan to join the goblins. If the Sea Mother had put him on his course, he had little choice but to see things through.
He returned to the bank. His wet leather leggings clung like a second skin and made his legs feel heavier still. Even in the moonlight, he could tell the river had not washed all the blood out of the leather. He should burn the leggings; they were no doubt thick with the disease. But he had nothing else to wear. As tattered and germ ridden as they were, they were all he had. And his pride would not allow him to go naked among the savages, those goblins.
Horace let the water run off him and focused once more on the trills and melodic croaks of the frogs. The breeze cooled and energized him.
“Zebir Jotun, Zura the Maelstrom,” he began. His fingers glowed orange as he returned to the black willow and the goblins beneath it. He eyed the closest ones, evaluating which to try to work on next. “By the silvery hair of the precious Sea Mother … no!”
Horace had healed him just the day before, thought for certain he’d erased the last vestige of disease. Yet there he was again; it was Kenosh, stretched out between a goblin and a hobgoblin.
The Dark Knight coughed deeply and shivered. And even in the shadows of the dead tree, the priest saw the black spots on the man’s face.
SAARH
She wore eight necklaces that morning, all that she owned, along with her earrings and an armband that had been a recent gift from a consort. Around her waist was the skin of a cave snake that she’d caught and gutted in a ceremony some time ago. It was a special day, so it was important to look her best and wear everything she owned.
The longest necklace hung just below her waist. It consisted of carved wooden beads, most of them round, but a few were cut and shaped to look like bats. The beads of another necklace had been painted with dyes made from lichen; Saarh seemed to favor that one, and she worried at the beads with her slender fingers.
The most beautiful necklace was the shortest one, barely fitting around her head. Irregular-shaped beads the color of a full moon shimmered in the torchlight. The beads were smooth, and along their surfaces streaks of blue, pink, and green glistened. That necklace, and the others, marked her prestige in the clan.
Saarh was the clan leader. It had taken her well into middle age to earn the position, but her kinsmen followed her without question. She stood in front of them-several hundred goblins squeezed into the domed cavern and spread into the tunnels that led away from it. Most of them were red-skinned, like herself, but there were some brown-skinned goblins too, and a few tinged orange.