Goblins Page 10

  “But it must exist, all the same,” said Fentongoose. “Stenoryon spoke of it.”

  “Stenoryon?” Skarper’s ears pricked up.

  “Who was this Stenoryon?” asked Henwyn, always eager for a story.

  “Stenoryon,” said Fentongoose, “was a loyal servant of the Lych Lord, who fled to live in secret among the lands of men after his master’s fall. It was he who founded the Sable Conclave, so that there would be sorcerers ready to take up the Lych Lord’s mantle once the magic woke again. It was he who made that prophecy I told you last night.”

  “He is also said to have made a map,” added Carnglaze. “Stenoryon’s Mappe of All Clovenstone, on which the secret way into the Keep was shown, for any who knew how to see.”

  “Ah,” said Fentongoose sadly. “That map! It would have been the greatest treasure of our order. But it was lost. Stenoryon’s grandson took it with him when he returned here, hoping to enter the Great Keep himself. That was many years ago.”

  “A foolish thing to do,” said Carnglaze. “He should have waited till the star rose.”

  “The goblins killed him, no doubt,” said Prawl. “The stupid creatures plainly have no loyalty left to the Lych Lord or his memory.”

  “No use for maps either,” said Princess Ned. “I expect this wonderful map of yours was flung into some stinking pit to rot.”

  It was! It was! thought Skarper. He was quivering with dark excitement at the thought he had actually touched and studied this fabled map. No doubt Stenoryon’s grandson was one of the treasure hunters the Blackspike Boys had caught trying to sneak through the Inner Wall; his skull was probably one of those that decorated Knobbler’s kinging chair. The map he carried had meant nothing to goblins, who had flung it into the bumwipe heaps, where Breslaw found it. But Skarper could not recall seeing any secret passages marked on it.

  “What do you mean, ‘those who know how to see it’?” he asked Fentongoose.

  “That must remain a secret of the Sable Conclave,” replied the sorcerer shiftily.

  “Only those of us who have studied long in secret and forbidden books could hope to understand how to see the secret pathway hidden in the map,” agreed Prawl.

  “It’s probably just slowsilver ink,” said Princess Ned. “Slowsilver used to be mined here in olden times. Ink made from it is invisible, unless you burn some more slowsilver in a magical fire and look at the writing by the light of it. Nobody uses it any more, but in Stenoryon’s day. . .”

  The three sorcerers tutted and humphed and looked crossly at her. What was the use of guarding mystical secrets down the generations if it turned out that perfectly ordinary people like princesses had known them all along?

  “All very interesting,” said Carnglaze. “But not much use without the map. It seems to me that this quest of ours is finished, Fentongoose. I say we start packing our stuff and making ready to return home to Coriander.”

  “Not today, you won’t,” said Ned. “You will rest, Master Carnglaze. You are quite safe here. Fraddon is certain that the goblins will not trouble us. If they were going to come, they would have come last night, he said. He has gone up into the Bonehills to speak to others of his kind about this comet, and what it means. He would not have gone if he thought that we were in the least danger.”

  Skarper had stopped listening. He took an apple and went out on to the balcony to eat it, and watched cloud shadows sliding up the face of the Keep. Treasure! he kept thinking. The Lych Lord’s dearest treasure, just waiting to be looted! If only I could get my paws on that map. . . He scowled at his old home tower. He could visualize where the bumwipe chamber lay inside it, and where in the bumwipe heaps the old map was hidden; he’d rolled it tight and buried it good and deep, where no passing goblin would grab it to wipe his bottom on. I know just where to put my paws on it, he thought bitterly, if only Blackspike wasn’t stuffed full of goblins who want to kill me.

  And then, like a revelation, it came to him. Blackspike wouldn’t be stuffed full of goblins who wanted to kill him! Not tonight it wouldn’t! He remembered the announcement that King Knobbler had made the night before, just before Skarper interrupted him. Tonight was the night of his big raid on the eastside towers! Apart from old Breslaw and a few dozy guards, the Blackspike Boys would all be off killing different goblins in Sternbrow, Grimspike and Growler.

  Skarper clamped a paw over his mouth to stop a yelp of excitement slipping out. Did he really dare to slink back into Blackspike and steal that map? Of course he did! He was a goblin! Slinking and stealing was what goblins were best at!

  But how could he get there? There were miles of woods and rivers and ruins between him and the tower. There might be more trolls, or cloud maidens. There’d certainly be those woody twigling things; they’d seemed safe enough when the giant was around, but there was no knowing what they’d do to a goblin they caught alone amongst their precious trees.

  So don’t go alone, he told himself slyly. Get one of these softlings to come with you, just as far as the wall. . .

  Not the sorcerers; they’d want the treasure for themselves. Not Princess Ned; she had no love for goblins. That just left. . .

  “Henwyn!” he said, ten minutes later.

  The breakfast party had split up. Fentongoose was talking with the princess, while the other members of the Sable Conclave had volunteered to do some digging in the vegetable patch. Henwyn was being helpful too, wheeling a barrow of dung and straw from the cowshed to shovel on to Ned’s rose bushes. He looked happy enough to set the heavy barrow down and talk. Skarper jumped up on the heap of dung, which kept his toes nice and warm while also bringing his face more or less level with Henwyn’s. “I hope you’re not angry with me for not telling you I was a goblin yesterday,” he began.

  “Well. . .” admitted Henwyn doubtfully. “I do think you might have mentioned it. I didn’t realize you goblins come in all shapes and sizes. That’s a detail the songs never bothered mentioning. It was very embarrassing when those sorcerers saw that I don’t even know what a goblin looks like.” He sighed. “I wish I was a real hero.”

  “You are a real hero,” said Skarper encouragingly. “You rescued us all from Knobbler’s lot.”

  Henwyn just shook his head. “That was Fraddon’s doing,” he said.

  “You walloped Knobbler with your sword,” Skarper pointed out.

  “I stunned him, but I didn’t slay him,” Henwyn said. “So it doesn’t count. And apart from that I’ve done no heroic acts at all. I was beaten by a troll. I was beaten by the twiglings. I was even beaten by cheese.”

  He looked so dejected that Skarper felt quite sorry for him. He glanced round quickly to check that no one else was nearby and said, “What would you say if I told you that I know how to find Stenoryon’s map?”

  Henwyn didn’t say anything, but the sun seemed to be coming up behind his eyes. “The Mappe of All Clovenstone?” he gasped. “The map that shows the secret way into the Keep?”

  Skarper nodded, and tapped his nose with one claw. “I’ve seen it,” he said.

  “We must tell the others!” said Henwyn eagerly, and would have turned and run to tell them there and then if Skarper hadn’t grabbed him by his tunic sleeve and held him back. “Hsssst!” he said angrily. “What did you think I was tapping my nose with one claw for? That means ‘Shhh!’ It means ‘secret’! It means, ‘Let’s keep this ’tween ourselves.’”

  “Oh, sorry. I thought you had an itch.”

  “You don’t want to tell the sorcerers,” Skarper reasoned, “because they’re rubbish, and what’s more, they’re evil.”

  “Well, they keep saying they serve the powers of darkness,” said Henwyn, “but they all seem quite nice really. I don’t think Princess Ned would have invited them to stay the night and let them weed the vegetable patch and everything if she thought that they were really evil sorcerers.”

  �
�Well, this is your chance to show them all you’re a real hero. Come with me, and we can find that map and get inside that old Keep and get our paws on all the Lych Lord’s stuff.”

  “His greatest treasure. . .” whispered Henwyn, and in his imagination he was suddenly far from this garden, being welcomed back into Adherak at the head of a column of hay-wains laden with gold and jewels. “I could build a new cheesery for Father,” he murmured, “and stone houses for Herda and Gerda and Lynt. And I’ll hire the best harpist in the Westlands to write ‘The Lay of Henwyn’, and make sure he gets all the details right. . .”

  Then his face fell. “No. I would feel wrong, sneaking off without telling Princess Ned. She’s been so kind.”

  “You can share some of the stuff with her when you get back, if it makes you feel better,” Skarper promised. “There’s bound to be books and maps and spells and things in there that a lady of her learnedness would want. Give something to Fentongoose’s bunch too, if you must; something harmless. But if you tell them before you go, they’ll want to come too, and then they’ll be the ones the harpists end up writing songs about, not you.”

  With so many unexpected visitors, Princess Ned was kept busy that day airing cabins, baking bread, making cakes, fetching preserves from the storerooms she’d established inside the old gatehouse. All the travellers felt a little embarrassed at imposing on the kind princess in this way, and they did their best to help. The Sable Conclave meekly presented her with a bottle of Mendervan wine they’d brought with them to celebrate the reconquest of Clovenstone. Even Skarper peeled some carrots. Twiglings, who seemed fond of Ned, came creaking and whispering out of the woods with woven baskets full of mushrooms. There was so much activity in the old ship that it was quite easy, towards the end of the afternoon, for Skarper and Henwyn to quietly slip away.

  They felt the eyes of twiglings on them as they crossed the clapper bridge and went into the woods, but, as Skarper had hoped, they were known as friends of Fraddon and the princess now, and the people of the trees stayed high in the branches and let them pass. They climbed broad, grassy streets between the empty mansions, scrambled through thick stands of trees which had once been parks or kitchen gardens or parade grounds, and Skarper took the chance to roll in piles of leaf mould and the pungent places where passing badgers had peed, until he no longer smelled of softlings, giants, or Princess Ned’s ship.

  As the sun dipped beneath the grey clouds and spread a bloody evening light over Clovenstone, they came again to the Inner Wall.

  Skarper sighed with relief. No trolls; no goblins; no unknown monsters of the woods had tried to stop them. He hadn’t needed Henwyn to protect him after all. For a moment he felt that he’d been foolish to tell the cheesewright his plans and offer to share the treasure with him. But it had been good to have company on the journey through the woods, and besides, Henwyn’s sword might still come in handy later, if any of Blackspike’s sentries caught him on his way out with the map.

  They slunk like shadows through the ruins below the wall, and soon came to the place where the goblins had attacked the day before. “Shhhhht!” warned Skarper, nose twitching as he sniffed for goblin scent. “We’re going to keep creepy-quiet this time. No shouting about like that stupid Fentongoose.”

  Henwyn did as he was told. He hid himself in a bush and peered up nervously at Blackspike Tower. Lights burned in the mean little windows high above; distant snarls and drumbeats drifted down.

  “What’s happening up there?” he asked.

  “They’re gettin’ ready to make this big raid,” said Skarper. “We just need to watch, an’ wait. . .”

  They watched. They waited. Some of the lights went out. There were faint sounds of movement on the battlements. Skarper had never been out on a raid, but he’d seen some, and he knew that by now all the goblins of Slatetop and Redcap would have gathered in the Blackspike and they and the Blackspike Boys would be hurrying along the wall towards the eastside towers as quietly and quickly as ever goblins could. That wasn’t very quietly, but it was pretty quick: he had not watched for long before he saw a tall gush of fire roar up from the roof of Sternbrow Tower, and the faint squeals and clangs of far-off battle came drifting over the ruins.

  “Right,” he said, turning to the bush that Henwyn was hiding in. “You wait here.”

  The bush gulped. “I should come with you.”

  “Not likely. The guards’ll smell your man-stink as soon as you get near the entrance, but they won’t notice my nice goblin scent.”

  The moon was rising, fat and full above the Bonehills. Skarper scampered to the secret entrance which the goblins had spilled out from the day before. He slipped his paws under the edge of the loose stone and heaved, but although it shifted just enough to prove it was the right one, he could not lift it. He hissed at Henwyn. “Don’t just stand there! Come and help!”

  “But you said. . .”

  “Come on!”

  Henwyn loped over to join him, and together they lifted the stone aside and laid it down. From the black hole beneath it came a stink of goblins. Phew, thought Skarper, flapping a paw in front of his nose. He’d only been out of the ’Spike for a day and a night, but he’d forgotten quite how badly it stank. He crouched down and swivelled an ear to pick up the sounds from inside the hole. As he’d hoped: faint snoring. King Knobbler always served out wine before a raid, and even the goblins who were being left behind made sure they got some. The sentries would have snuggled down to sleep as soon as Knobbler left.

  Leaving Henwyn to sneak back to his bush, he dropped into the hole. It was about six feet deep, and from its bottom a long stone tunnel stretched under the wall. Skarper trotted along it, and soon saw the sentry, curled up at the bottom of a flight of stairs which led up into the tower. As he crept past, he saw that it was his batch-brother Yabber, and he was tempted to kick him or set his tail on fire to pay him back for all the blows and kicks he’d landed on Skarper in the past . . . but the thought of Stenoryon’s map kept him going, tiptoeing past the snoring goblin, up the stairs, and through the doorway at the top.

  It felt strange to be back within the familiar walls of Blackspike. Strange and almost nice. He wanted to go back to his old hole and snuggle down and sleep. Maybe when he woke, his adventure would turn out to have been only a dream. But he made his way to the bumwipe chamber instead, along the weirdly empty passageways. The wind moaned in the tower’s complicated guts. Somewhere high above a drunken goblin laughed, and Skarper froze until he was quite sure the sound was not getting closer, then went on.

  The bumwipe heaps were just as he had left them. He groped inside and found the tight tube of the rolled-up map. In the dim glow from the bat droppings he drew it out and unfurled it, peering at it, searching for Stenoryon’s secret markings as intently as he’d once sought for the meaning of all those scrawly letters. “Well, I can’t see any invisible writing,” he grumbled to himself.

  That was when he realized the flaw in his plan. He’d been so excited by the thought that he knew where Stenoryon’s map was that he’d forgotten its secret could only be revealed by the light of burning slowsilver. He smacked a paw against his face. “Where am I goin’ to get slowsilver at this time of night?”

  Then he remembered the ball that old Breslaw had squeezed together out of the scrapings and shavings of slowsilver from all the eggstones he’d helped to hatch. It lived in a secret hole in the wall of Breslaw’s chamber, and although Breslaw didn’t go out on raids, he liked a drop of wine as much as any other goblin.

  And it wouldn’t really even be stealin’, Skarper thought, cos some of that slowsilver’s off my eggstone, so he stole it from me in the first place!

  He rolled the map again, stuffed it down his trousers for safekeeping, and hurried upstairs towards the hatchery.

  Outside, Henwyn was relieved to hear the sounds of the goblin battle growing fainter. The raiders had gone right thr
ough Sternbrow and were moving away along the wall towards Grimspike and the tall two-headed tower called Growler. As he watched, a flag of fire unfurled from Grimspike’s roof, smudging black smoke across the moon. He heard a far-off scream as some unlucky goblin was pushed off the battlements, but the clash of weapons and the war cries were mostly too distant now to reach him.

  He began to relax a little, listening to the soft whispers of the woods and the voices of the little streams which flowed among the ruins. He glanced behind him, checking the shadows for danger. A face stared at him through a gap in the weeds, white in a fall of moonbeams, making him start – but it was only a fallen statue. The Lych Lord himself, done in white marble. He had been handsome and noble-looking, as far as Henwyn could tell beneath the ivy and the owl-droppings. He wondered why such a man had turned to evil, and the little whispery voice of his conscience said, “Perhaps he started out just the way you are: going behind his friends’ backs; keeping secrets to serve himself. . .”

  “You’re right, conscience,” Henwyn said aloud. All the way through the woods he had been uneasy; excited, but uneasy. He still knew that deceiving Princess Ned like this was wrong, whatever Skarper said. Skarper was a goblin; what could he be expected to know about right and wrong? Henwyn was a cheesewright of Adherak, and cheesewrights knew better.

  Just then the pale moonlight that reflected from the statue showed him something else; something pale that lay among the brambles and dead leaves at the Lych Lord’s feet. Henwyn stooped and picked it up. An ivory carving in the shape of a winged head, with the same face as the statue. It was the amulet that Fentongoose had dropped the day before, but of course Henwyn didn’t know that; he had never seen it before. He almost threw it down again, but it looked so beautiful in the moonlight, and the shape of it felt so satisfying as it nestled in his palm, that he decided to keep it. He knotted the frayed ends of the cord where it had snapped and looped it over his head, tucking the amulet down inside his shirt.