Chapter Nine
Caught between dismay and relief, Darcy considered whether the spell was at fault or if he simply did not possess the necessary skill. He could sense the portal draining his energy; that part of the spell functioned as it should.
He shouted again, “I summon you by name! Yucanthas the kobold: appear!”
After a moment, the fire’s smoke took on a greenish hue, slowly coalescing into a humanoid shape. First a face, then a neck and shoulders, and finally a torso with arms and legs. A kobold goblin emerged from the flames, seemingly unscathed, and walked unerringly toward Darcy.
***
The kobold was small, about the size of a seven-year-old human. Its skin was brown and rough with a pebbly texture; a whitish tunic covered its torso. Elizabeth blinked. It was the first time she had ever observed a goblin wearing clothing. Was that a sign that it was more civilized than others?
Nearly glowing with rage, the goblin stalked toward Mr. Darcy with murderous intent. The mage stood his ground as the kobold thudded into the barrier of Elizabeth’s containment spell—where it hissed in frustration as it glared at them.
She could only pray that her spell would hold. The kobold was small in stature, but it possessed a mouthful of wickedly sharp teeth, and its eyes glowed an eerie greenish yellow. The naked hatred in its countenance suggested it would kill them if it could.
“Are you Yucanthas? Do you understand my words?” Mr.Darcy asked. If the goblin could not speak English, then this would all be for naught.
The creature let loose an unearthly screech, startling Elizabeth into stumbling back several steps. Mr. Darcy flinched but did not move. The creature growled and shouted in a guttural tongue, waving its arms so that claws sliced through the air and scraped along the edge of the bespelled barrier.
Mr. Darcy sought Elizabeth’s eyes. “Did I summon the wrong goblin?”
She considered the creature. Of course it was enraged at being peremptorily summoned; surely it only wanted to go back home. “We will not return you through the portal until you have spoken with us,” she told the creature firmly.
The kobold froze, and Elizabeth smiled. It did understand her.
“What does the human want?” it spat. “Will not be your slave.”
Elizabeth recoiled at the suggestion. “We have no intention of enslaving you! We merely desire you to answer a few questions. Then we will return you to your world.”
The kobold snarled. “Humans lie!”
“We are not lying,” Mr. Darcy said, sounding very calm and authoritative. “In any case, you have nothing to lose by answering our questions.”
“Send me home!” the goblin demanded, saying the word “home” with such longing that Elizabeth experienced a flicker of sympathy. The goblin world was described as a place of rock and flame, but perhaps it could be a home for the right creature.
Mr. Darcy shook his head. “Not until you answer our questions.”
The kobold banged against the sides of the containment spell, uttering sounds that she guessed were curses as it explored every inch of the dome for a weakness to provide an escape.
Elizabeth held her breath, fearing it would find some flaw she had overlooked.
Finally, its shoulders slumped. “What would humans learn?” it hissed.
“Goblins have been coming to our world and attacking humans. Yet no mage is summoning them,” Mr. Darcy said slowly, as if speaking to a native French or German speaker. “Why?”
The goblin bared its teeth and growled. “Humans kill us!”
Elizabeth’s eyes flickered toward the ashes in the summoning circle. “We only recently discovered these ashes. We want to stop the mage responsible. Who has been killing goblins?”
Yucanthas lowered its head, eyeing the ash-covered grass sorrowfully. “Young ones. Young goblins.”
Elizabeth inhaled sharply. “Children?” Those are the ashes of children? Goblins have children? “A mage has been summoning and killing goblin children?” she asked him slowly.
“Yesss…” The goblin drew the word out mournfully. “The human knows.” Elizabeth wondered if it had been personally acquainted with any of the dead goblin children.
Mr. Darcy’s countenance had paled considerably. “This human has committed a crime,” he said very deliberately. “We would catch and punish this human. Do you understand?”
Yucanthas stared, either uncomprehending or disbelieving.
“Why kill goblin children?” Elizabeth pressed. Summoning even one goblin required great effort and power. Mr. Darcy was already tiring, and the goblin had only appeared a few minutes ago. Why go to the trouble of summoning them only to kill them?
“Young goblins possess greater….essence,” the kobold said. Elizabeth exchanged a look with Mr. Darcy, but he appeared mystified as well. “Essence!” the goblin insisted. “Essence is everything.” Noting their blank stares, the goblin waved its hand in the air. “Essence!”
Oh! “Ether?” Elizabeth asked.
“Yesss.”
“Goblins are made of ether,” Mr. Darcy said in a choked voice. “When one is killed, the ether dissipates into the air. But if a mage could somehow harness it….”
Elizabeth suddenly understood—and wished she did not.
“Yessss…” hissed the kobold. “Goblin children possess greater essence.”
“All these deaths are just so some mage can gain power,” Mr. Darcy said bitterly.
Yucanthas twitched, a whole body shudder. “Release! Release Yucanthas! This world hurts!”
“Which mage has been doing this terrible thing?” Mr. Darcy demanded.
“Yucanthas return home!” it wailed as its arms and legs spasmed.
“Who is responsible?”
“A human!” the kobold cried.
“How do you know who it is?” Elizabeth pressed, without much hope of success. Names would mean little to the goblins. No doubt they tracked the miscreant with some goblinish magic of their own.
“A human!” Yucanthas repeated, writhing in pain. “And the father before him. And his father before him. Father’s brother. Father’s son.”
Its words were nonsensical. Elizabeth whirled toward Mr. Darcy. “Send it back!”
“But we have no names—”
“It has told us all it can. Send it back.”
The goblin was growing increasingly incoherent, screaming in pain.
Mr. Darcy winced, not unaffected by the creature’s suffering.
He uttered a quick incantation, activating the portal again and once more prayed that Wyndham’s spell would work.
The portal flared to life and immediately seemed to exert a pull on the goblin—not unlike a magnet and iron filings.
One minute the kobold was writhing in pain, the next it was sucked into the portal’s maw and disappeared.
A moment later the portal itself vanished with a loud pop; the flames died down to embers.
Elizabeth went weak-kneed with relief. They had managed to avoid releasing a goblin into the world.
With a flick of her wrist and a few muttered words, she made the containment spell disappear.
The bespelled dome seemed to take all of her energy with it.
As her limbs grew heavy, she staggered to sit on the nearest boulder.
A few feet away, Mr. Darcy was leaning against a different boulder, his face gray with exhaustion.
After a long moment, Elizabeth said, “The goblins want to stop a mage who is summoning and killing goblin children….all for the sake of a little more power.” Disgust laced through her tone.
Incapable of remaining upright, Mr. Darcy lowered himself to the grass beside the boulder. “Small wonder the goblins are so desperate to find him.”
“Can we trust that Yucanthas told us the truth?” she asked.
Darcy rubbed the back of his neck wearily. “I wondered that as well. But his words explain everything we have observed, including those ashes.” He gestured toward the summoning circle. “I would be hard-pressed to find another explanation. Nor can I conceive of a reason the goblin might lie.”
Elizabeth’s queasiness had nothing to do with her exhaustion. “I never thought I would feel sorry for goblins, but…children!”
“I cannot summon the words to express how despicable that is.” Mr. Darcy’s shiver had nothing to do with the cold.
“Why would someone require such a large quantity of ether?” Elizabeth asked. “How would they use all that power?”
He shook his head slowly. “I cannot imagine….It must power a major spell. Only a few spells would require so much energy….and many of those are illegal.”
“So we may add that to our list of worries,” Elizabeth said tartly.
Mr. Darcy chuckled weakly. “We can accomplish nothing more tonight. We should return to Longbourn before we are missed.” The glow of the witch light showed his face etched with lines of exhaustion.
“I believe I am recovered enough to walk.” She stood, swaying only slightly on her feet. These were definitely the symptoms of magical depletion but fortunately not a severe case.
Mr. Darcy slowly clambered to his feet and walked rather stiffly into the circle, ensuring that the fire was truly extinguished. If anything, his magical depletion seemed worse than hers. That did not stop him from keeping a hand hovering near her elbow as they descended toward the road.
Elizabeth rolled her eyes but did not object. “What did Yucanthas mean about his father and his father before him?”
Mr. Darcy was silent for a minute. “I think he was suggesting that this mage’s father and grandfather were also known to the goblins.
He mentioned the father’s brother. Perhaps there was an uncle as well?
” Elizabeth gaped at him while the implications sank in.
“I suspect we are searching for a family of mages who can open portals with unusual ease and who have developed a spell that allows them to drain ether from goblins.”
“Without the mage’s name, how can we hope to identify the miscreant?” Had they come all this way only to reach a dead end? “I fear that we have only exchanged one mystery for another.”