Close Kin (28 page)

Sable had been afraid she would never
see the night sky again, but now she would see it in just three weeks. She
began to lose her fright of the wraithlike goblin King, and the relief showed
on her
face. Tinsel was telling the truth,
and so was he. He did want her to
be happy.

"My goblins have relayed to me
your fears about childbirth and the shocking condition of life in your
camp," continued Marak. "I
want to
assure you that what was normal in your camp is not normal
at all, and I
certainly wouldn't authorize your marriage if I thought death would be the
result."

"Why
would you care?" she whispered. "It's just what happens."

"I care because you're my prisoner
and not my subject," he responded. "I could order one of my subjects
to certain death, in battle, for instance, if that death were truly necessary.
But you're a
defenseless prisoner who has
committed no crime, so I can't have you
killed no matter what the profit might be. It would be demeaning to
my
kingship."

There was a small silence, and Sable
decided that he expected her to speak.

"Thank you
for explaining that you don't think I'll die," she
said.

"But you don't believe me,"
commented the goblin King. He paused and thought for a minute.

"Beauty meant everything to the
First Fathers of the elves," he reflected. "It's a goal that causes
problems in elf magic and elf culture, but nowhere is the problem of beauty so
great as when the elf
woman goes into
labor. You elf women are petite and slender, with
lovely, tiny bones,
but an elf baby is longer-limbed and older than babies of other races, not like
an ugly newborn at all. When a fine,
boned,
small elf woman tries to deliver this larger, older baby, death is
the logical result. With magic, birth is
uncomfortable but achievable.
Without magic, another process eventually
sets in which usually
allows the child to
be born but always takes the life of the mother."

Sable found it
hard to believe that magic could make such a dif
ference and that all the elf men in her band would lie.
"We were told
that women have to
die so babies can be born," she said. "Magic might just help
sometimes."

"So you would
say that the occasional woman might be saved by
magic,"
suggested Marak, "but that the race was set up with the mother's death in
mind." Sable nodded. "Not possible, and I can prove it to you."
He hesitated. "At least, I think I can," he added,
looking at her sharply. "Have you learned any
math at all? Anything
about numbers?"

"Do you mean counting?"
asked Sable. "I can count up to eighteen.

"It's like
counting," Marak said, "and you're smart, even if
you're untaught. We'll give it a try. The race of elves
came from fif
teen First Fathers, and at one point
in history there were about four
thousand elves. That's a huge number, Sable --
that's like counting the stars in the sky."

Sable was impressed.
So many elves. So much company. How nice it would have been.

"Now, you
notice that the number gets bigger, much bigger.
Let's
see if we can do that when the mother dies in childbirth."

He pulled open a shallow drawer in
the table and brought out
some shiny gold
objects that looked like sharp pins sticking up from
flat bases. Sable
watched him, secretly a little flattered. Only her
father had ever tried to teach her things. Thorn didn't usually
explain
himself at all. He just insisted that he was right.

"Here is
your elf couple," said the goblin King, setting up two of
the
golden spikes before her. 'A man and his wife. But the woman can have only one
child, and then she dies."

He advanced another pin. "Here's
the child. It took two parents to produce only one child. When the older
generation dies away,"
and he covered
up the two pins with his hand, "there won't be more elves than before. The
mother has left a child to replace herself, but
the father has no child
to replace him."

Sable stared at
the pins. She thought about Alder and Rose hav
ing
just Irina, and Hemlock and May having just Willow. There weren't more elves
than before, there were fewer.

"But the man could marry another
wife," she pointed out. That was what Father had done to replace himself

"Very good," said Marak
approvingly. "Yes, that will help, but will it help enough?"

He brought out
two more pins. "Here's the new wife, and she has a child. Now we have two
children, that's true, but look, it took three
parents to make them. You can see that you won't ever
have more elves
later
if the mother dies. You'll always have fewer and fewer. But we
know
that the elves went the other way, that there were more and more. That happened
because elf women were having two, three,
and
four children apiece, and that means elf women aren't supposed
to die in
childbirth."

Sable stared at the pins in
excitement. It all made perfect sense.
She
knew that there had been more elves in her father's day. Even she
had seen the band shrink in her lifetime. Soon,
none of them would
be left. Surviving childbirth. Who would have
imagined that a goblin would teach her that?

Marak watched her excited face,
pleased with his quick pupil. "Aside from this, did you have any other
concerns?" he asked. "Do you have any objection to marrying Tinsel?"

"I won't marry anyone
else," declared Sable forcefully. "He's kind."

"He is, indeed -- very
kind," agreed the goblin King. "Tinsel's
always been amazingly nice. Since you have no objection, we'll hold the
marriage shortly, and now I'd like to test you for magical ability."

He stood up and walked around the
table toward her. Sable jumped up and drew back in alarm.

"Magical
ability?" she asked. "What do you mean?"

"Your
ability to work magic, of course," he said, amused.
"What
else would I mean?"

"But women can't work
magic," she protested, taking another step back, and the goblin King gave
a chuckle.

"I'm afraid your upbringing has
been absolutely appalling," he
said
cheerfully. "No one has bothered to teach you anything but lies.
Not
only can elf women work magic, but certain kinds of elf magic were always
worked by the women. Hold out your hand, and I'll show you."

Sable held out
her hand, looking away and shuddering with dis
gust as he put that corpse's hand over hers. He pointed
absently at the
lamp above him, and
the room darkened. Her hand began glowing
with
a bright silver light, and a single ray like a moonbeam shot from
the end of each finger. The beams played around
the shadowy room
as she moved her
fingers, and the silver light didn't fade for almost a
minute.

"I knew
it," gloated the goblin King, pointing at the lamp again.
"You're
powerfully magical, probably as magical as Seylin is. I'll
start teaching you magic myself right away. You
and Irina can learn
with my wife;
she's a beginner, too. Most magical people have a spe
cial talent. My wife's is killing people. I
wouldn't be surprised,
Sable, if yours is healing, and that's why you
were so upset by the childbirth deaths. It would be wonderful if you were a
healer; a talented elf healer could do a lot of good in my kingdom."

Sable flexed her hand, staring at it,
and thought of Thorn and Rowan and Willow laughing over her working magic. And
all the
time, she could do it. She just
needed to be taught. The goblin King
opened
the door, and she walked out, but she wasn't the same
woman who had
walked in a short time before. Her head was high, and her eyes were shining.
She wasn't going to be tortured, and she wasn't going to die. She was going to
learn magic.

"Your turn, M," announced
Marak.

The second she
was inside the door, Emily threw herself into his
arms.
"I've missed you so much!" she cried.

"Well!"
exclaimed Marak, hugging her in return. "I'd like you to
remember that this is an official elf bride's interview.
You'll want to
save
these disruptive demonstrations for a more appropriate moment,
such
as the next time I'm trying to hold court."

Emily released
him. "I count as an elf bride?" she demanded.

"Seylin
went out hunting for a bride, and it seems to me that he's
found
one."

"I went out hunting for
Seylin," countered Emily with a grin, "and I'm the one who found what
I was after."

"You were seeking your human
nature," corrected the goblin King, smiling. "Tell me, how did that
go?"

Emily sobered up,
thinking about what she'd found on her
quest, about the elf girl's book and her goblin son's
disastrous war of
revenge.

"I found out that you don't just
grow up into the person you should become," she said. "I always
thought that it happened on its own, but it actually takes a lot of work. And
sometimes" -- she
thought about Whiteye
standing on the battlefield reading his
mother's book -- "sometimes
it doesn't happen at all."

Marak watched her
pensive face, a little surprised.

"That's
certainly true," he remarked. "What else did you find
out?"

"I found out that if you learn
enough about something you can't
hate it even
if you want to. That's why Ruby couldn't hate the
human twins." She
paused to consider that and gave a little sigh.
"And I suppose that's why I couldn't hate Ruby, either. What did
you decide, Marak? You're letting her keep the
children, aren't you?"

"Yes, I am, until they grow
up," replied the goblin King. "Then Jack will have to leave. I'm not
letting him bring a wife down here
and
start populating my kingdom with humans. I'll have him taught
the
merchant's craft, and he can make trading trips with the men.
That's something that should help him in his
world. Ruby is settling
down with them on a farm across the valley. I
should have known that if I sent her out with you she'd never do any more
teaching."

"Ha! I was
good for her," retorted Emily. "I made her think
about
new things."

"That I believe," said
Marak. "You never think the same old things that the rest of us do. I've
missed you, too -- very much. No one else causes me such interesting problems. And
let me add that
seeing you and Seylin
married will fulfill my fondest hopes for you
both."

Emily stared at him
in astonishment.

"Marak!"
she exclaimed. "I never knew that."

"I know," he observed.
"You never asked me. I've lived more than three times as long as you have,
you know. You might ask my advice on occasion."

Marak opened
the door and called in the rest of the group. Then
he sat down on the throne again and lifted a large book
onto the
table. He flipped through the book until he
came to the first blank page, produced a bottle of ink, and selected a quill
pen from the drawer.

"The
registry and marriage of elf brides," he informed the small
crowd
before him, "is a simple ceremony with three distinct parts.
I'm going to perform each part for all three of
you before moving on
to the next one. M, you're first."

He beckoned Emily and Seylin up to
the table. Then he positioned
one of Sable's
golden pins before them and set a small golden
disk beside it.
"Prick her finger," he directed Seylin, "and squeeze two drops
of blood onto this disk."

Emily was preparing to question
whether this was really necess
ary, but
Seylin had her finger pricked before she could protest. The
King covered
the small disk with his six fingered hand. When he removed it, the disk had
changed color. It was now almost entirely bright red, but one small sliver
appeared to have been marked off with a straight line, and beyond that line it
was white.