There might be a nest nearby filled with sweet eggs. But she’d already spent too much time away from her quest and would not look. Saarh left the half-eaten carcass and hurried farther west, always following the intermittent pulse of the interesting thing.
After another few hours, she realized she had strayed too far and that she would not make it back to her clan by evening. It was nearing sunset, and she had let herself be tugged for miles. Hungry again, she wished she would have brought the rest of the bird-creature with her. Too, she regretted not taking more of the feathers.
What if she didn’t reach the something that day? Or the next? She couldn’t keep returning to the clan and retracing her steps west if it was so far away. No, she shook her head. She would not return to the clan until she found the something. The pull on her had become too strong.
Saarh slept little that night, by a bush with bright purple berries that tasted delicious. If she came back that way, she would take some of the berries and leaves with her to show the clan so they could look for similar bushes. There were owls in the trees above her, and they had hooted loudly and often, waking her several times. Deer had passed nearby, nibbling on leaves and rustling ferns. She knew that deer were good-tasting too, and easier to kill than bears, but the berries were enough for the moment.
It was midmorning when she stopped again for a brief rest and to eat different berries that she’d found growing beneath a young willow. They were clusters of tiny red globes that tasted very sweet. She ate too many of them, cleaning almost all of them off the bush, and paid for it with a sour stomach that forced her to curl into a ball and moan for a while. If it hadn’t been for her sickening, the crooked-faced goblin would not have caught up.
Brab was tired, having walked relentlessly through the night, and just as hungry because he’d not stopped to eat. He slumped beside her and ran his fingers along her side, offering comfort for her ailing stomach. While she slept briefly, he finished the berries on the bush and nestled himself next to her, draping an arm across her side so she would wake him if she moved.
By sunset that day, Saarh found the source of the arcane power. She’d walked slower that time, grateful for Brab’s company and the opportunity to tell someone about the tasty bird-creature with the odd beak. She showed him the feathers as they neared the clearing; then when they fluttered from her fingers, she gasped and dropped to her knees and closed her eyes, stretching out her hands toward an old oak-the largest tree she’d come across in that young forest. The tree was older than anything that surrounded it, older than Saarh, perhaps as old as the damp ground beneath her knees.
“This is it? The tree?” The crooked-faced goblin stared at the oak with a mix of wonder and disgust. It was the ugliest tree he’d seen in the woods. The trunk was not straight, it leaned to the north, and its lowest branches were dead. The bark was thick and corky, and its leaves were oval shaped with bristly edges. The acorns were big, and the cups that held them looked spiky and itchy.
“All this walking and walking and not eating enough was to find this ugly tree?” Brab sat next to her, cross-legged and holding his chin in his palms. Disappointment was writ plain on his crooked face. “Too much walking for such a big, ugly tree, if you ask me. The clan will not come here, not after digging so many burrows and establishing a home in the clearing back there. The clan would find this an ugly, dying thing too. The clan would be angry.”
He didn’t say anything for a time and rested his legs and feet while she remained kneeling and facing the tree. Finally she raised her hands toward the tree, and after she held that pose for several minutes, she made a slashing gesture with her fingers.
The crooked-faced goblin realized Saarh had been casting a spell.
Her magical gesture split the oak’s trunk as easily as a sharp knife could split the belly of a piglet. The cracking sound startled both of them. But the greater surprise came when the tree shriveled to a woody pulp, the leaves vanished, and standing there where the trunk had been just a moment before, was a spear.
“Someone hid this,” Saarh said. “Made the tree grow around it. But it was not so well hidden that it could not be found.”
The crooked-faced goblin said nothing, his throat tight and dry.
Saarh stood and slowly approached the spear, a reverence in her bearing. She bowed to the spear then stretched a hand out, fingers tingling from the energy the thing exuded.
The wooden spear hovered a hand-breadth above the ground. It was green, as if it had been fashioned from a too-young tree whose bark had been stripped. Slivers of gold, silver, and platinum were inlaid along the shaft, forming designs that matched some of those the goblins had carved in the dome ceiling under the mountain. Tiny gems that sparkled in the last rays of the sun were sprinkled among the precious metal runes. They were diamonds mostly; Saarh was familiar with those gemstones that could be found in the warrens in the Kharolis. But there were also emeralds as bright and dark green as sugar maple leaves coated by rainwater. And there were a few yellow-hued stones that looked like shards of sunlight caught on the surface of a stream.
The tip was metal, not one of the precious kinds that formed the runes on the shaft, but something stronger and sharper than anything Saarh had ever known. It gleamed dully, and when she bent close to the ground to look at the tip, she observed her own reflection. Above the spear tip was a silver band that held small rings. Feathers dangled from the rings, dark yellow ones shot through with rich browns and vibrant greens.
“Chislev’s symbol, these feathers,” Saarh said in awe. “Chislev’s spear, this.”
Behind her, the crooked-faced goblin gasped. “The weapon of a god?”
“The only weapon this god wielded,” she softly returned. She stood upright again and pushed her hand forward, through an unseen force that held the spear poised above the earth. The shaman slowly wrapped the fingers of her right hand around the shaft. The power in the weapon flowed into her.
Mudwort had not been able to sleep, so she’d looked in on the shaman of long-ago. She’d used one of the uncut blue stones to help in the seeing spell as there were no rocks or earth beneath her to channel the magic through. Mudwort needed to send her magic through stone if she wanted to sustain a spell for more than a few minutes.
So that journey into the past had taken more than a few minutes. Indeed, Mudwort had been caught up in the enchantment for the better part of two days. Her throat and mouth were dry from lack of water, and her stomach ached because she had not eaten in a while. That no one had disturbed her during those two days surprised her. But then, she’d been sprawled against the crate, where the rocking sea was felt stronger than elsewhere. And she was still a loner and a member of none of the other clans.
She needed food, so she slipped off the crate, standing still for a few moments as her legs protested moving after being locked for so many hours in a rigid position. She nearly toppled into another crate, as she was dizzy from the ship and her hunger, and the stink in the air was palpable. Disgusting.
She climbed the stairs and headed to the galley. Something was cooking, meat and vegetables; the smell of potatoes set her mouth to watering. She didn’t care what the cook had thrown in the pot-she would eat her fill, and she would sleep and dream about Chislev’s spear.
What had once tugged the goblin who lived in the long-ago time tugged Mudwort.
POLITICAL ILLS
Direfang must come now. Be fast.” Thus spoke a yellow-skinned goblin from Saro-Saro’s clan. Direfang could not recall her name, but he’d seen her hovering around the old goblin often enough.