Will Power

SCENE XVII The Dead Forest

You may have noticed that running away is not a frequent feature in the lives led by the heroes of literature. You may also have noted that running is something I do rather a lot of. The fact of the matter is that dying, which is rather more popular in heroic tales, has never especially appealed to me, particularly when it involves pain and humiliation. I wasn’t sure which method of slow torture the so-called “fair folk” preferred, but I was pretty sure that I would rather be otherwise engaged. I’m not particularly stoic when it comes to pain and, since I’m far from sure what may or may not lurk in the hereafter, I have learned to spot danger before it spots me and move away from it very, very quickly. Not particularly honorable or even dignified, I admit, but I can live with that. At least I’ll live with something.

So I ran from Phasdreille, from its handsome book-burning soldiers, from that poisonous Aliana bitch and the valiantly murderous Sorrail, like a rabbit from a greyhound. The bridge sentries were still searching the palace, so I clambered into the back of a wagon of empty soap boxes packed in straw, and tried to still the hammering of my heart as we moved out over the bridge, through the barbican and out of the city at last. Garnet’s warning had, it occurred to me, saved my life. I suddenly wished I had told him that his beloved Lisha was alive and only a few miles away.

Well, too late for that now.

I waited a few minutes and then slipped down from the wagon, rolling into the ditch by the road and lying still till I could hear no sign of life. I moved quickly into the woods to rest. I was not in the best shape, and my exertions, augmented by a stifling panic, had left me breathless and just about incapable of action. I was lying on my stomach and staring back toward the city while I tried to figure out what to do next when a company of horsemen came charging over the bridge and out of the barbican. There they clattered to a halt, divided into two, and set off in opposite directions on the road. This was not encouraging. I didn’t actually hear them distributing my portrait, but their mission seemed clear: Find Hawthorne and put one of those carefully polished lances through his gizzard.

I wasn’t sure what my gizzard was, but I was fairly confident that I had other plans for it, so I lay in the bracken and did my best to stop breathing for about ten minutes. Then another group of soldiers, this time on foot, came out of the city and my blood ran colder than Renthrette’s eyes on a frosty day. At the head of the company, yelping and lunging forward with disturbing eagerness, was a pack of hounds.

It seemed about that time again. So I ran, straight into where the forest seemed deepest, diving through bracken and bounding over fallen trees like. . well, like someone with a company of soldiers and a pack of dogs at his heels. I figured it would take the dogs a moment to pick up my scent, but once they had it, my days, and-for that matter-my seconds, were numbered. I knew that I should be thinking up some brilliant ruse, but my legs had taken over and my brain was trying to keep up. I knew that even if I climbed a tree (presuming I could do that without killing myself) or hid in some conveniently positioned hollow, the hounds would track me down and I would gain nothing more than another minute or two to reflect upon those teeth and lance tips. So I kept moving with nothing more in my mind than getting as much distance between me and my pursuers as possible. Far behind me, the barking swelled and became unified: They were coming. And suddenly, as I blundered through a screen of hemlock, the stench hit me.

It had probably been growing with each footstep, but I had been too preoccupied with my footing to reflect upon the sweet and fragrant aromas of the forest. These aromas had now become a good deal less sweet and fragrant as a sour note overpowered the resin scent of the pines and brought me to a nose-wrinkling halt. The dogs answered, right on cue, with a bloodthirsty baying, so I silenced my offended nostrils (if you know what I mean), and pressed on. A huge spruce barred my path and I had to press blindly through its pale extremities. I shielded my eyes from the needles as I did so, and then, as I broke free, found myself gaping at my feet. One of my boots had sunk into the earth up to the cuff at the knee. I plucked it out with a long, sucking draw and the smell broke upon me like a cloud. Looking up, I found that the trees here had fallen away. Across a few yards of dark and stinking mud was the river, black, oily, and still as death.

I remembered the winding river instantly, of course, how it divided the fair woods and Phasdreille from the foul realm of darkness on the south bank, and as I stared across, it was all perfectly self-evident. The trees which sprouted from the stagnant water or stuck up at wild angles from its surface were blackened poles stripped of leaves, with branches like ragged claws, and on the far side of the river the woods were reduced to a thicket of the same dead pikes stabbing at the sky from dank and swampy beds. The air was chill and heavily silent for a second, and I could smell the evil through the decay. But then the silence was broken by the voices of the hounds and their handlers, and my dilemma hit me between the eyes like a pickaxe. Should I stay on the bank and wait for the soldiers to drag my bleeding remains from their dogs for formal torture and execution in Phasdreille, or should I brave the horrors of the water and whatever lay beyond it? Put like that, I seemed to have only one option. The stinking waters might even throw the dogs off my scent.

I took three more gurgling strides through the struggling reeds and mud and then felt the chill of icy water rushing over the tops of my boots. It was an inconceivably unpleasant sensation. Another step, and the bottom, which was treacherously slick with what I took to be rotting leaves and branches, shelved sharply. The water rose up to my chest, driving the breath from my body as the surprising cold overcame me. I stood there gasping the noxious air and gazing, stricken, at the far bank, which looked about a mile away. I had just remembered that I couldn’t swim.

There was a rustle in the vegetation behind me. It could have been a deer or a rabbit, but I assumed the worst and took another hurried couple of steps. The water rose and its frigid and viscous surface closed about my neck, so thick and dark that I could barely see my own body beneath it. I tipped my head back and closed my mouth, almost retching at the thought of this stinking fluid getting on my face, in my nose, in my mouth. The surface was curdled with a foul-smelling scum, unnaturally white and clotted with bubbles like oversized frog spawn. My every movement roused a thick cloud under the water, black and heavy as blood.

Luckily, it got no deeper. I could hear the soldiers and their pack through the birdless trees, but their calls were of confusion. I might make it yet. Indeed, perhaps I didn’t need to venture into the haunted forest, or whatever it was, on the other side at all. Perhaps I could just stay where I was, freezing quietly, until they left. But how long would that be, and how could I hope to reemerge from the woods onto the road without being seen and apprehended? So I continued to wade across, slowly, being careful not to slosh the heavy water which congealed about me, my joints beginning to seize as the cold shrank my sinews and froze my muscles. But then, quite unexpectedly, the river bottom seemed to swell and the water receded from my throat. The shelving was almost as steep here as it had been on the other bank, and it took both hands digging into the mud and clasping hold of stray logs before I could clamber, filthy and stinking, out of the water.

I say I got out, but in fact the water never really went away. It just turned into shallow stagnant pools and broad, still basins from which the dead trees emerged like some ruined palisade. I knelt shivering on the edge of one such pool and gazed back the way I had come, but I could see nothing. A heavy silence had fallen like a blanket of snow over the entire forest. For the moment, I was safe, but this was hardly prime picnicking territory. A brooding gloom suffused the place, filling me with slow dread. Out of the frying pan, as they say, and into the demon-infested swamp. .

For what seemed like a long time I did nothing but wonder what to do. If I was trying to get to Lisha, I should follow the riverbank west; but if I was headed for the mountains where we had entered this hellhole, I should go east. Both routes would take me on a several-mile stroll through the sinister expanse of death that lay stinking all around me, and I did not doubt that there were goblins and things still fouler lurking throughout the forest on this side of the river. But if I crossed the river, the “fair folk” would take one of their fair axes and remove useful parts of me. The world, apparently, wasn’t my oyster.

I had almost decided to head west for the village tavern where Lisha was staying when I caught sight of smoke from the direction of the mountains, which would have been upstream if there had been any movement in the water whatsoever. It seemed close by, though I couldn’t tell which side of the river it came from. Without thinking further, I began walking toward it, following a winding track around water-filled pits and shifting earth.

I came upon the source quite unexpectedly. Rounding a bend in the river I found myself no more than fifty yards from where it spanned the river: a great building, half-dam, half-mill, and constructed of what looked like new but stained and blackened brick. Chimneys spouted along the length of its roof and each belched thick and sulfurous smoke into the sky. As I stood there, the wind caught the smoke and it drifted, sagging toward me like some overweight and drunken cow. The smell was appalling. It was like both the air of the dead forest and the stagnant water of the river and pools; but it was, if anything, stronger, and touched with a rancid edge like butter left in the sun for days. I clutched my stinking hand over my nose and mouth to shut it out and fought to keep my gorge down. Then, driven by the curiosity which kills more than cats, I approached, skulking through the gray reeds.

It was a graceless structure, windowless and devoid of ornament. Along its side, about two yards above the level of the stopped-up river, was a series of five pipes, each a foot or more in diameter, and each trickling some yellowish filth into the water below. It congealed, this effluent, into greasy pools, sometimes collecting on the surface, sometimes sinking and drifting for a while until it settled elsewhere. One look at or sniff of that putrid glaze as it slopped out of the pipes and I no longer wondered why the river and forest were dead and stinking.

Right beside the bank where I crouched, a chute crudely constructed of heavy lumber emerged from the building and emptied into the marshy shoreline. As I edged closer to peer into this, a hatchway somewhere inside opened and I heard for a moment the sounds of boiling, churning fluid and clanking pans. Then there was a clatter and a heap of objects came tumbling down the chute and into the river. Some sank without a trace; others missed their mark and fell around me like the rain that falls in nightmares. There were bits of armor, pieces of fabric, the broken hafts of weapons and fragments of metal, but mostly, there were bones: ribs, thighs, fingers, skulls, some almost human, but most ridged and heavy set. These were, there could be no doubt, goblin remains.

What the hell?. .

I looked toward the mountains. Since the river ran fairly straight for about a mile, I could make out two similar structures straddling the river. There were sounds from inside the brick building, but it never occurred to me to see if the people within might protect me. Whoever-or whatever-they were, I did not want them to see me. I glanced across the river as I moved away, and there I glimpsed the wagon in which I had sneaked a ride from the city, incongruously bright and clean, painted elegantly in cream and trimmed with purple and gold. A man, tall and dressed in a buff leather jerkin, was loading crates onto the straw-packed back of the wagon. I knew what went into those boxes and recalled Garnet’s words on how proud of their cleanliness were the citizens of Phasdreille. Through the stink of the smoke and the stuff which was pumping out into the river, I thought I caught a distant whiff of rose petals.

So, this is how they make their soap.

I wasn’t sure if it was this realization or the sickly sweet aroma which finally pushed me over the edge, but I vomited quietly into the reeds where a cluster of pale bubbles puffed fat like fungus.

Being sick got rid of whatever lingered from the previous night’s drinking binge, and though I was now thirsty and hungry, I felt better, clearheaded and ready to think. Of course, it didn’t take much detailed analysis of my predicament to see that I was like a man who, coming home after a night on the town, finds that what he took to be his bedroom has become a cage full of tigers. The only thing more bewildering than how I had got into this insane situation was how I was going to get out of it.

Staying where I was would clearly be as dangerous as it was offensive to my nostrils, so I moved inland, if that is a fair term for the quagmire which stretched back into the blasted forest. I was still wet, and a cold wind had picked up and was coursing through the dead trees like a thousand sighing phantoms. I kept moving, for warmth more than to get anywhere specific, though after a close encounter with some quicksand-or its black and slimy equivalent-I picked up a stick and probed the earth before each step. Thus, with slow and uneven strides, I inched my way back from the river and into the dead forest.

I had been walking no more than ten minutes when my finely tuned adventurer’s ears picked up movement behind me. In fact, my three-quarters-deaf aunt could have heard the clomping around in the reeds behind me, and she’s been dead several years. I stopped and considered my options. Either whoever or whatever was behind me wanted me to hear them, which was not necessarily a good thing, or whatever it was was so immense and hulking that this pounding through the underbrush was what passed for stealth among its kind. Since neither option was particularly optimal, I decided to get my weapon ready and turn slowly. I hadn’t had time to arrange my pack as I would have liked, but my sword, now muddy and probably rusting, hung by my hand. I dragged it quietly from its sheath and wheeled rapidly as if I was ready for anything.

I wasn’t, of course, but things could have been worse: a good deal worse, in fact. Behind me was a small woman, olive-skinned and with narrow black eyes and small features. Her long, raven-black hair was held back by a silver pin. She leaned on a silver-shod staff of ebony.

“Lisha?” I gasped.

“You’re deaf as a post, Will,” she remarked. “I’ve been following you for ten minutes, trying to make sure it was you and that no one else was tracking you on this side of the river. I thought I was making enough noise to wake the dead.”

“I heard you,” I replied, guardedly. This was not the first friend I had met wandering in these woods and the last one had turned out to have been dead some time. “How did you find me?”

“I heard from Rose that the city was up in arms looking for you.”

“There’s no way she could have gotten word to you that quickly,” I replied, keeping my sword raised and level. “I’ve only been running from them for an hour or so. It would take her three times that just to get back to the inn and give you the news.”

“She didn’t have to,” said Lisha, unoffended by my skepticism. “I came with her in the carriage, hidden, of course. I was concerned that we hadn’t heard from you, and then one of Rose’s other clients mentioned your behavior at the banquet. . ”

“I was set up!” I exclaimed. “I could drink all those tarted-up clowns into the middle of next week, especially with that gutless rubbish they call beer around here. . ”

“I know, Will,” said Lisha, smiling her small and cryptic smile. “That’s one of the reasons I thought you might be in trouble. Someone was obviously trying to discredit you, or worse.”

“Exactly,” I agreed, huffily.

“So I hid in the trunk under the carriage seats and came down with Rose to the city gates. We arrived just after the soldiers had come this way looking for you. Everyone was talking about it. I guessed that your only possible escape would be on this side of the river, though I’m still not clear why they wouldn’t cross over and continue to search on this side.”

“Why aren’t you wet? How did you cross the river?”

“I used the dam where that building is-”

“Yes, all right,” I interrupted, reluctant to talk about that ominous and disquieting structure for fear of articulating what went on inside it. She fell silent and watched me and as I looked at her closely, I realized that I no more expected her to start falling into dead bones and powdered flesh than I expected her to sprout another head and sing a duet. Relief and pleasure crept over me. “God, it’s good to see you,” I exclaimed.

“You, too,” she answered, smiling. “Now we must move. You can tell me your news while we walk.”

“Which way?”

“It doesn’t matter, so long as we get away from the riverbank and those search parties. They may yet cross the water. The way you were heading seems as good an idea as any.”

“But this takes us deeper into the haunted forest,” I said, trying not to whine.

“Haunted?” she said. “Will, are you all right?”

“I know, I know. But I’ve seen things here that, well, don’t make sense. I don’t know what’s real. My gut says that you are Lisha, and I’m trusting to that because I want you to be Lisha. I’m making some kind of leap of faith. Or maybe it’s a leap of desperation. Can you make a leap of desperation? I believe you are you because if I allow myself to think that you are really some tentacled demon in a cunning disguise, I’ll probably go mad, and I’d prefer not to do that just yet, thank you.”

She extended her hand. “Here, Will,” she said. “Take my tentacle.”

I started and gave her a look of alarm.

“A joke,” she said with only the smallest crinkling of her lips. “Come on.”

I took her hand and it felt real enough, small and warm. She led me through the paths of the swamp like a child leading an indulgent adult. Still, it occurred to me again, I had rarely been gladder to see anyone in my life.

“And this hooded figure in the library was not the assassin who chased you in the alley,” asked Lisha.

“No,” I said. We had paused to eat some bread which she had brought with her, seated on the trunk of a tree that had torn up its entire root system as it fell. I continued, thoughtfully. “This was someone I had never come across before. Something, perhaps. I don’t know. He was more than just some old coot in a cloak. He was more than old, for a start. He was phenomenally old. And he knew things, and not just about the prophecy. I don’t think he even wanted me to hear that-I’d swear it wasn’t his voice. It was almost like I was hearing his memory, a memory he wanted to keep hidden. That’s the impression I had more than anything else: he remembers. It’s like he’s an embodiment of the people or the city. . Something. And he knew about me. About us. About the city. I’m not sure how I know, but he could see. . maybe not everywhere at once, but he could see a lot more than was in that room. It was weird.”

Lisha munched silently while I finished this lame and embarrassed account. I tried to grin, expecting her to dismiss the whole thing as the product of an overactive imagination, but even though I’d spent a lot of time with the likes of Renthrette, I should have known better. Lisha nodded thoughtfully, uncritically, and shaped a smile that was compassionate, as if offering sympathy for what she could tell had been a harrowing experience.

I pressed on. “Aliana knew, too. The girl who ran the library, I mean. There was more to her than met the eye. She knew there was no fire behind those doors, but she pretended there was to get rid of me. Somehow, finding my way in there and seeing him-it; whatever-was what shot me to the top of the most-wanted list. I don’t know why, partly because if I’m supposed to have learned something crucial from what I saw, I didn’t, and partly because I just walked in. It wasn’t guarded. It wasn’t even locked.”

“They must think you are dangerous,” said Lisha. “It must be the prophecy, though I am at a loss as to what it means or where it came from. Garnet is a greater warrior than you and they have accepted him, so it must be something you know or something you might guess.”

“I’ve eaten rabbits that knew more than me,” I mused. “No, if that old bloke in the library is some state secret worth killing for, I have no idea why. Yes, he was creepy and scared me to death, but that seems the rule rather than the exception round here. The line between the exotic and the downright terrifying has gotten very thin of late.”

I took a woolen blanket from my pack and wrapped it around myself. I was still damp, and the air was, if anything, getting colder.

“What about these recurring accounts of old battles and buildings?” she asked. “Could this mysterious old man have any connection to those?”

“I hadn’t thought about it, but now that you bring it up, I’m tempted to say yes. Each time I heard one of those strange, formulaic accounts, I felt like the words were coming from somewhere else.”

“From him?”

“It’s possible. I know it sounds absurd, but I think it could be true.”

“Why, though? What do the stories have in common?”

“I only heard a couple of variations and they were quite different,” I said. “One was about a particular family heirloom, a weapon. The other was about the building of the city, as I said.”

“And both were about continued family involvement,” she answered, reflectively. “Heritage. History. I don’t know, maybe-”

I cut her off, blinded by a realization. “History,” I thought aloud. “That’s got to be it. There were no history books in the library, and all the other books were being changed. Many were destroyed altogether. Some were in an unreadable language, but some were in Thrusian almost the same as ours or the ‘fair folk’s.’ I have some here.”

I fished in my pockets and pulled out a handful of burned scraps which I had taken from the furnaces. Lisha peered at them and I looked over her shoulder.

“A lot of it’s just old love poetry,” I remarked. “That was the batch they were burning, I guess. It doesn’t make sense. None of what I read was offensive in any way. Look,” I said, choosing the largest fragment of verse and beginning to read.

“My soul and I have traveled through the world

And yet in forest dark or ebon sky

I never have beheld a hue more black

Than that which pools and gleams in your fair eye.”

“Pretty predictable stuff,” I added. “ ‘Pools’ is nice, I suppose. Hardly worth burning though, don’t you think?”

“Hardly,” said Lisha, reading the other pieces silently to herself.

I watched her for a moment, and she noticed, glancing up at me suddenly. “What?” she said.

“Nothing,” I shrugged, flushing slightly. “I was just thinking about that line, you know, about blackness pooling in your eyes. Your eyes have that kind of look.” She looked confused, and I stammered hurriedly, “I don’t mean anything by that. I mean, I’m not, you know, trying to. .”

“It’s all right, Will,” she said, smiling suddenly. “I’ll take it as a compliment. Thank you.”

“It was a compliment,” I admitted stuffily. “But the words struck me because you don’t often see poetry that addresses people who, you know, look like you. Usually it’s all written for golden-haired ice queens with sky blue eyes and ruby lips. .”

It finally hit me.

I froze, then leaped to my feet. “That’s it!” I yelled. “That’s it! There is no history because the history is all wrong. The ‘fair folk’ didn’t write the books in that library. How many women with black eyes have you seen around Phasdreille? If there were any, they wouldn’t be the subject of poetry, I’ll tell you that, not unless things used to be very different.”

My mind was racing. Things were slotting into place, and I talked quickly to let them all out. “The brass panels on the doors that feel warm? They show the library being built. But the builders are squat and heavy-looking, not like the ‘fair folk’ at all. God, Lisha! Goblins built that city! Is that possible? It would explain why the new stonework looks so inferior. The masons had nothing to learn from. There were no hammers passed on from father to son, no heirloom weapons notched on goblin collars. It’s all been a lie. The history is being rewritten. Every part of that culture is being remade as the work of the ‘fair folk.’ ”

“But that would mean. .”

“That Sorrail’s ancestors are the newcomers,” I said. “They took the city from the goblins and the goblins want it back. No wonder the goblins don’t know their way around the Falcon’s Nest. They may have carved it out of the rock generations ago, but they haven’t used it in just as long. The so-called fair folk know about its secret entrances because they moved into it. It was their fortress, their base when they first invaded. That’s what they do. They commandeer and appropriate, and when it’s theirs, they ornament. But they don’t build, not really. They don’t construct. They don’t have the skills. They capture or they con their way in and then they make everything theirs. You see? It makes sense. That’s why the statues have been defaced. That’s why the library has been closed down while the books are edited for any reference to the goblin past.”

“But why?” demanded Lisha. “Why spend so much time and effort trying to convince the people of something they must know isn’t true?”

“They might not know,” I said. “I think the library, and that one room and whoever lives in it, is somehow affecting or altering the people’s memories of the past.”

“But you said these stories started cropping up long before you got near the city,” said Lisha. “Can his power have that kind of range?”

“What if the hammers and swords somehow do it, or focus his sorcery?” I said, thinking aloud. “They are all set with diamonds. We’ve seen stones that had power before. Maybe they serve as a kind of matrix for storing those bogus personal histories. But how he’s doing it is less important than what it all means. There were no great goblin invasions and no ‘fair folk’ builders, but the war and the city have to be explained, so history is being rewritten, even in the minds of those who live there. It’s the ultimate way to prop up their own sense of righteousness: Rather than feeling like the aggressor, the people of Phasdreille get to think of themselves as the victims, the righteous ones on the receiving end of evil and malice. I can’t think of a better way to make people fight than in defense of something they believe to be their ancestral home. Maybe this is what they expected me to realize earlier, though who the ‘they’ is, I couldn’t say. The king? Sorrail? Aliana? The hooded figure in the library? Him, at least.”

There was a long silence between us.

“And this would be enough to want you dead, I think,” said Lisha.

“Yes,” I agreed. “I see now. I seem to have become dangerous. Though what I could do with this knowledge, I really don’t know. Still, we can’t go back there now. I suspect that being caught by Sorrail and his fair-haired and perfectly attired men-at-arms would not be much better than being taken by goblins in these swamps.”

And before Lisha had time to agree, perfectly on cue, as if I had set the whole speech up just for dramatic effect, the swamp was swarming with them: goblins, gray and olive and yellowish and black, all snarling, all staring at us, all approaching cautiously with weapons at the ready.

Lisha leaped to her feet and swung her metal-shod staff up before her. I drew my sword hurriedly and stood at her back. Together we rotated slowly in some absurd dance as goblins crept closer, sputtering their foul words at each other. I don’t think that holding a sword had ever felt so pointless. There were dozens of them emerging, as if from the vile pools themselves, and through a thicket of tangled vines a goblin the color of sandstone riding a great bear led a dozen wolves, heads low and menacing, toward us.

The goblins came on, creeping watchfully, as if making sure we had no escort, until they formed a rough circle around us and stood no more than twenty feet away. There was a good deal of shouting from outside the circle and some rapid movement, but I was watching those goblins that were closest to me, those near enough for me to see their ragged armor and gnarled hands; their twisted, skinny frames; their eyes. They were glancing from us back to each other, and they were talking. Something strange was happening, and my sense that they were about to rush us en masse and tear us to pieces faded. The confusion which replaced it was shattered when the circle broke and a great black goblin came bounding toward us, brandishing a long and lethal-looking sword.

“Lisha!” I cried and stepped around to block the brute’s assault. It came toward me, taking huge strides and shouting. Then my sword arm was seized and held, my weapon twisted from my grasp. I wrenched my head around and saw Lisha taking my weapon and tossing it on the floor as a scrawny goblin came from behind me and pulled my arms behind my back.

“You are one of them!” I screamed at her. “You are. I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you all!”

Lisha, or whatever it was that seemed to have taken her shape, stepped up to me so that her face was only inches from mine. She caught my face in her hands. I spat at her. “I’ll kill you, you foul bitch. What have you done with Lisha?”

“Will,” she said, and her voice was soft. “Will, look.”

She pointed me toward the huge black goblin who had almost reached us before stopping dead in his tracks. I looked.

It was Orgos. His armor was grimy and his tunic torn, but it was Orgos. I don’t know how I could have failed to recognize him.

“It’s all right, Will,” said Lisha. “You see? It’s all right.”

She broke from me and wiped her face.

My eyes fell on Orgos. He had dropped his sword, the one with the yellow stone in the pommel. I think he had been running to embrace us, but now his eyes were full of doubt.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I thought. . I saw the other goblins and I thought. . Sorry.”

The goblin who had pinned my arms released me and Orgos stepped up to me.

“Hello, Will,” he said. And it was him: No goblin. No undead apparition. It was Orgos, my friend. Slowly, a smile as broad as only he could manage spread across his face.

“I missed you,” I said as he flung his great arms about me. Over his shoulder I saw Lisha embrace another large man: Mithos, still bandaged, but walking and well.

“And now you have to tell us how you come to be here,” Orgos said, still grinning, “and we’ll introduce you to our new friends.”

“Friends?” I spluttered.

“Friends,” said Mithos firmly.

The impact of the word put the finishing touch on all my former thoughts about Phasdreille, the rewritten history of the “fair folk,” and all the other suspicions which had been mounting in my head. I watched Orgos casually say something to one of the “goblins” in their own tongue and watched the listener smile with understanding. The goblin features shifted as easily as any human face and I found myself looking not at the spawn of hell, but at a person. The unavoidable conclusion came charging through with the rest of the wild horses that were my thoughts, and I grew instantly cold and struck with horror.

“My God,” I breathed aloud. “What have I done? Lisha. .”

She turned to me and her eyes were full of a sad understanding. She wanted to make me feel better and knew it was futile.

As the full weight of my realization hit me, I felt my eyes well with tears, and, staring at her, I managed to say it.

“Lisha, I’ve been fighting on the wrong side.”