Close Kin (10 page)

"With living things,"
suggested Emily, and that turned out to be the case. A thick mat of vines hung
down over one low cliff. Ruby
brushed them
aside and discovered that a narrow gap lay beyond. In
another minute, they were inside a cave that
could have held a crowd
of hundreds.

"This is the largest cave I've
ever seen," breathed Emily. Ruby
gave a
scornful laugh. "I know," amended the young woman hastily,
"that
the goblin kingdom is much bigger. But the kingdom doesn't look like a real
cave."

"This,"
remarked Ruby, "doesn't look like a real cave, either."

She was right. It looked instead like
the center of an enormous
geode, with great
crystal faces and formations studding the walls and
ceiling. The sparkling
dome caught the orange goblin light thou,
sands
of times, like the quick, winking dance of fireflies. Underfoot
lay a
coarse silvery sand, firm yet inviting to the foot. The grains of sand spread
the light as well, glimmering like tiny diamonds.

"They danced here while the
storms howled outside," said the goblin woman sadly.

Emily looked around the splendid room
that seemed so natural, yet so magical. She tried to imagine beautiful elves
dancing and laughing and leading their carefree lives. The wind rippled sand
showed no tracks of animals or insects, not even
the tiniest mouse or
spider. Spells still kept this great cave pristine.
They walked by a
harp lying near the wall,
its strings broken and tangled. The curving
wooden frame reminded Emily of the bones they had seen. This
harp
was just as graceful, and just as dead.

"That way lies an underground
spring." Ruby gestured toward another narrow opening. "Beyond it are
the storerooms and the elf King's library."

"The library? Let's go see what
they left behind!" said Emily eagerly, but the goblin woman stiffened.

"Nothing was left behind,"
she said in her most disapproving classroom voice. "The goblin King
himself supervised the removal of the books."

Emily wouldn't be
dampened in her treasure-hunting zeal.
"They're bound to have forgotten something,"
she declared. "Remem
ber, they didn't
find that child's body. Come on!"

Ruby
stopped where she was.

"They weren't hunting for
bodies," she said coldly. "The goblin King said that they had found
everything they came for, and that is
quite
enough for me. It ought to be enough for you, but humans
don't know the
meaning of 'enough.' The impertinence! Thinking that you know better than a
King!"

"Do you mean," demanded
Emily in complete astonishment, "that you've come to a place like this,
and you aren't even going to poke around at
all?
What on earth is the
matter with you?"

"That is
just what I mean." Ruby glared at her. "And what on
earth
is the matter with
you?"

"You
goblins are so sanctimonious!"

"You
humans are absurd."

"Well, I'm
going into those rooms!"

"Then
you can go alone."

Emily hesitated.
"I need a light," she stated with as much dignity
as
she could. "I'll go without one if I have to, and I'll fall into that
underground spring and drown. But don't worry; I'm sure Marak won't mind."

Ruby grumbled
for a few seconds. "Oh, if you must!" she
snapped.

A flickering flame
appeared right in front of Emily's eyes and defied her efforts to move it. The
goblin woman turned on her heel and walked away.

∗ ∗ ∗

The
narrow corridor beyond the cave was quite steep, and a sizable
stream rushed down
the middle of it, cascading melodiously from
waterfall to waterfall. It was a lovely place, or
would have been if it
weren't quite
so dangerous. The watercourse took up almost the whole width of the passage,
with the smallest rocky trails on either
side.
Emily was obliged at times to crawl along the slim ledges on her
hands and knees while the spray of the pounding
water flew around
her and the goblin light made spots before her eyes.
This was one place, she thought, where the legendary grace of the elves really
would have come in handy.

She came to a
big round room. In the center stood a large hexago
nal piece of furniture carved from the native rock. A
six sided pyra
mid formed its
core, raised on a slender column about three feet from
the
floor of the cave and surrounded by a hexagonal ring of stone benches. Emily
walked around it, wondering what it was for. Only
when she sat down on one of the benches and turned to face the center
did she understand. Each face of the pyramid formed a triangular
writing desk, angled to bring the pages of a book
comfortably close to
the reader. A
lip at the bottom kept the book from sliding to the floor.
Six scholars
could sit around the pyramid and study their books at the same time. This must
have been the library!

Emily jumped up and examined the
room, her goblin light lead
ing the way. Above
the center of the pyramid gleamed a silver globe,
but whether it was
suspended from the ceiling or simply hung in
space,
she couldn't determine. A faint light came from it, joining her
flame to
illuminate six long, narrow fissures that rose in a shallow spiral pattern,
circling the walls. Emily puzzled over them, running
her finger down the slanting cavity of the nearest one. It could almost
be a bookshelf, she decided, carved
into the rock, if one didn't mind
that
the books would not be level. The upper ones would lean
against the lower ones, rising in their shallow
curve. A scholar
would need lots of strength to pull out the books
closest to the floor -- or the proper magic. But the angled curves of books
would appear to float up the walls in a charming dance.

Not so much as a scrap of parchment
remained in any of the curving shelves. Emily was disappointed. She supposed
that Ruby was right, and why shouldn't she be? The goblin King himself had
supervised their removal. Returning to the door, she stumbled over something. A
cloth covered bundle lay under one of the benches. Emily pulled away the bulky
cloth and examined her find. It was a leather-bound book.

Wrapping up her
discovery, Emily hurried from the room. Once
again, she had to creep down the dangerous passage by
the cascading waterfall. She tried not to imagine herself swept away by the
rushing
water and drowned in some subterranean
tunnel. Any other race
would have cut steps
into the rock, but, oh, no, not the elves. Every,
thing had to be
perfectly, unnaturally natural.

Ruby had lit their supper fire near
the semicircle of holly trees, facing the open vista beyond their narrow
valley. Stars were just
coming out in the
evening sky. Emily walked up slowly, studying her
treasure and trailing
the heavy cloth. She couldn't speak elvish, but
goblins and elves shared a script of magical characters. Most nouns
and
verbs were represented by a symbol that looked and meant al,
most the same thing to an elf or a goblin, even
though it didn't sound
the same in the two different languages.

"What does the character 'ugly'
mean to the elves?" she wanted to know. "I'm finding it
everywhere."

"That's the
elvish word
niddug.
It means 'goblins.' Humph!"
snorted
Ruby, stirring up the fire. "We have words for them, too." Then she
turned around in surprise. "What do you have there?"

"Something the ugly goblins
forgot," announced Emily in triumph. "I found an elvish book. Look,
it has the symbol for goblins on almost every page," she said, sitting
down next to the teacher.
"And here,
on the first page, is the number four, so it must be a vol
ume of a
set."

Ruby examined the
pages, dumbfounded.

"Em!" Her
voice was a whisper. "You've found Mouse's book! That's her elvish name,
Lim, on the first page."

"Mouse?
Who's Mouse? Someone named Four? I'd hate to have a
name
like that."

"She was the fourth baby. It's
so rare for an elf woman to have
that many
children that those babies are always named Four. But the
goblins never
called her that. Marak Blackwing nicknamed her Mouse, and that's what she was
for the rest of her life."

"I remember something about
her," lied Emily cautiously, but for once Ruby didn't bother to scold her.

"Mouse
came to the kingdom to try to free her father, who was in
prison for killing goblins. The goblin King offered her
the choice of
marrying him and
saving her father's life, or of going free and caus
ing
her father's execution. Mouse lived in the kingdom for three
months before she had to make her decision, and
she spent the whole
time studying
goblins. Her elf fiance was a scholar, and she wanted
to be one, too.
That's when she wrote this book.

"Marak Blackwing recorded in the
chronicles that Mouse never
intended to
marry him. She always told him that she would go back
to her people when
the three months were up. The goblin King fell in love with her, and he
released her father rather than force her to
choose
his death. But when he told Mouse that, she decided to marry
him after
all. He sent her book to the elves with the announcement that she had become
the King's Wife."

"Why would she do that?" asked
Emily, flipping through the volume. There was a crude sketch of the throne room
on one page,
and a diagram of a typical
palace apartment on another. "Had
Mouse fallen in love with Marak
Blackwing, too?"

"Goodness,
no," answered the goblin woman sincerely. "Not for
a long time. Mouse was a strong, brave woman, and she
realized her
elf King was a fool. Mouse knew that
her people couldn't protect themselves, so she stayed to be a friend of the
elves in the goblin
King's court. Her plan
worked. Marak Blackwing adored her, and
he would have given her
anything. He never harmed another elf as long as he lived. Their son, Marak
Whiteye, actually protected the elves until the death of their last King. Then,
of course, there was nothing he could do for them."

"Wait a minute!"
interrupted Emily. "Do you mean that the son of this amazing elf was the
goblin King who ordered the elf harp rowing? The goblin King who destroyed this
very camp? Some friend of the elves he was!"

"I there was
nothing he could do," snapped Ruby. "The
elves couldn't survive without their King. They must have
hidden
his mother's book
because they knew he wanted it so much. That's a
nice
dose of elvish spite for you."

"They didn't
hide it at all," argued Emily. "I practically fell
over it."

"Don't be ridiculous! It must
have been hidden by a spell, and the spell wore off over the years."

"It was wrapped in this,"
explained Emily, standing up and
dragging
the heavy folds forward. Ruby stood up to take them from
her. Then she
sat down with a jolt.

"No," she
gasped. "No! It can't be!"

"What is it?" demanded
Emily, pulling back the folds to shake them out. They formed a perfectly
ordinary cloak, undamaged by time. A black cloak, of the sort that the King's
Guard always wore."A
goblin hid
it?" she asked slowly, turning it in her hands. "The
book that
the goblin King wanted? I don't see how that's possible!"

Ruby didn't
explain. She sat without speaking, rocking back
and
forth, obviously quite distraught.

Their supper was
ready, but Ruby didn't eat. Emily ate heartily, meanwhile making plans. The old
goblin woman didn't want to tell her what was wrong, but getting things out of
people who didn't want to give them was one of Emily's specialties.

"Mouse
must have been an outstanding King's Wife," she
remarked in a casual
tone. "Her son must have been a great goblin
King."