Goblin Quest (14 page)

The ship was as unlike a swan as anything could be. Squat and black she was, with a ramshackle house of tarred timbers built on her deck and a rust-coloured sail furled on her single mast. The only thing Skarper knew about ships was that the pointy end was called the prow and the blunt end was called the stern or the mainbrace or something, but both ends of this ship were blunt, rounded like the toe and heel of a shapeless old shoe. Weeds had grown up waist high between the stones of the quay, and the whole place seemed long deserted, but the ship was still afloat, and from the iron chimney of her deckhouse came a faint dribble of woodsmoke.

“She is called the
Sea Cucumber,
” said King Floon. “A fine vessel, though less modern and more traditional than Prince Rhind's. Old Captain Kestle took long voyages in her once – sometimes went as far as Porthquidden, I believe. He is a proper old sea dog.”

“Go away!” snapped a voice from inside the deckhouse when the servants had cleared a way through the nettles and brambles for the king and called out to tell Captain Kestle that he had visitors.

“He doesn't
sound
like a dog,” said Spurtle.

“Come, Kestle,” said the king. “These good people seek passage on your ship!”

“I'm retired,” said the voice. “I'm old and I'm tired and I'm grumpy, and I've retired from the sea.”

“Oh look here, Kestle,” said the king, “I am your king! This is a matter of importance. I'm ordering you to take these passengers!”

The door of the deckhouse creaked open just a tiny crack. An eye glistened like a pickled egg, peering out at the little crowd upon the quay. “You're king on the land, Floon,” said the voice, coming from somewhere just below the eye. “I live on the water, and no man commands me, only the winds and the tides.”

“Please!” said Skarper, stepping out cautiously on to the rickety gangway which was propped between the shop and the quay. “It's very important! We have to catch up with Prince Rhind!”

“Goblins, are you?” A beardy, scowling face appeared around the eye as the deckhouse door opened a crack wider and let a little sunlight in.

“Some of us. Also Henwyn of Clovenstone and Zeewa of the Tall Grass Country, two human beings.”

There was a snort, and the door shut with a snick. “I don't carry goblins. Goblins is stone-born; creatures of the earth and the land. They don't know anything of the sea and her ways.”

“That's why we need your help, old man!” shouted Zeewa.

“Get you gone,” Kestle called back tetchily. “I haven't the time to sit here talking.”

A little shuttered window in the side of the deckhouse opened, and he flung the remains of last night's supper at his visitors: an old brown apple core and a plateful of tiny fish bones with the heads and tails still attached. Skarper and the others scattered backwards and stood picking the bones out of their hair and clothes.

“Bumcakes,” muttered Skarper.

“Bother,” said Henwyn.

“Anchovies!” said Gutgust.

“Eh?” The window opened again, and Kestle stuck his head out. It was an ugly head and had looked better when they could only see a part of it through the crack in the door. “What's that you said?” he demanded.

They all looked blank.

“Anchovies?” said Gutgust.

“So goblins
do
know something of the sea!” said Captain Kestle. It was pure luck, but those fish he had just thrown at them had been anchovies. And now that he was leaning out of his stuffy little cabin, breathing the clean sea air, the notion of another voyage suddenly seemed more appealing. He had let himself believe that he was too old for sailing any more, but he could hear the waves beating on the sandbar at the river's mouth, and feel his tired old ship stirring under him as the tide began to turn. And if this rag-tag gang of goblins and landlubbers really wanted to go to sea, well, someone had to take them…

“I've got no crew, of course,” he said doubtfully. “You'll have to help me sail her.”

“Of course!” said Henwyn.

“Zeewa once made the crossing from Musk,” said Skarper, “finding her own way by the stars. Gutgust can act as chief anchovy-spotter, and the rest of us will haul on whatever ropes you want us to.”

“And we can cook for you,” said Henwyn. “Etty here has supplied us with a wide range of foodstuffs, ingeniously tinned.”

“And where is it that you hope to sail to?” asked Kestle.

“We want to catch the
Swan of Govannon
,” said Henwyn. “I don't suppose there is much chance of that in this old ship, but we must try.”

“The
Swan
?” Kestle spat contemptuously downwind. “I saw her in Floonhaven yestereve. A frail, pale toy I thought her, more suited to a child's bathtub than the open sea. My
Sea Cucumber
shall overhaul her in no time. But we must leave sharpish, while the tide is with us!”

 

Sea captains are not like kings. When they talk about doing something sharpish, sharpish is what they mean. Henwyn, Zeewa and the goblins had scarcely scrambled aboard with their heavy packs before the
Sea Cucumber
was moving away from the quay, out into the open river, where the ebbing tide caught her and drew her faster and faster towards the harbour and the sea beyond. Kestle's gruff voice could be heard bellowing briny curses at his new shipmates as they struggled with ropes and tackle and unfurled the sail. It hung limply at first, dropping a few startled moths and spiders who had been living happily among its folds. Then, as the ship passed the tiny stone-built lighthouse on the end of the harbour wall, an east wind found her, the sail filled, her head swung towards the Western Ocean, and white water began to show under her forefoot.

Etty, the king, and a host of Floonishfolk lined the harbour wall, waving hats and handkerchiefs and calling out, “Good luck!” and “Come back soon!” But it was doubtful that anyone aboard the
Sea Cucumber
could hear them. The wind was singing in her rigging, the foam went rippling down her sides, and she was bound for the high seas.

The seas that lapped the shores of the Westlands were wide and dangerous, and few ships crossed them. Most captains preferred to stay within sight of shore, edging from one harbour to the next, and anchoring safe when nightfall came or dirty weather threatened. Especially nowadays, with so much old magic stirring, and mermen, sea serpents and sirens added to the ordinary dangers posed by storms and shoals.

Only a few were bold or foolhardy enough to venture out across the wide ocean. Captain Kestle had been one of the brave ones, always eager to see what lay over the curve of the world. When he was a younger man, he had travelled to all sorts of strange lands. He'd sailed so far, in fact, that he believed he had been everywhere, and that was why he had anchored up in the River Floon and tried to put his wandering years behind him. He could not see the point. Why go somewhere twice? He had seen everything, or so he'd thought.

But sea-going goblins – this was something new! And this lost land young Henwyn told him of – Elvensea… He had heard of it, but only as a legend. He'd never be able to set foot on it, of course, not if the goblins' quest succeeded and it stayed drowned beneath the waves. But perhaps he would be able to look down upon its spires and streets through the water.

“I was born in the Autumn Isles,” he said, pointing south-west to where the rocky hills of Hoonish, Wedge and Far Penderglaze showed like dim blue cut-outs in the haze. “The old folk there told tales of Elvensea. Of how the elves retreated there when men and dwarves and goblins came to live in all the other lands. And then, when Elvensea was sunk, they went into their ships and sailed away across the sea to find new lands for themselves, beyond the sunset.”

Far Penderglaze fell behind them, and the
Sea Cucumber
sailed on, while her new crew practised knots and baled out the water which seeped in through the old ship's timbers to slosh about her hold, and her captain fixed his gaze on the far horizon and imagined the proud towers and shady streets of Elvensea.

 

A hundred miles ahead, the
Swan of Govannon's
captain had his eyes on the horizon, too, but he was not thinking about Elvensea. Prince Rhind had been careful not to tell him or any of his crew where they were going. “Sail west,” was his only order, “along the path of the setting sun.”

“But where are we going, Your Highness?”

“Nowhere.”

“So how shall we know when we get there?”

“Because I shall tell you.”

The captain of the
Swan
was called Woon Gumpus, and he was the other sort of sea captain – the foolhardy sort.

He had not been a captain at all until a few months earlier. He had worked at a bank, high on one of the steep hills of Coriander, counting the gold and silver that Coriander's merchants brought back from their journeys to Musk and Barragan and Tyr Davas. The little window of his counting house had looked out over the blue waters of the bay, and he had often sat there watching the ships come and go, their coloured sails as bright as petals. How he had longed to leave his stuffy little hole and sail away with them! The sea, the sea! That was a man's life, all right – far better than counting coins.

So when his auntie died and left him her fortune, he gave up the banking life at once, and spent the whole lot on the
Swan of Govannon
. He had consulted a seeress called Madam Maura, and she had peered into the depths of her oracular bathtub and told him that sea cruises would be all the rage in future. Great white ships would be built, she said, and people would sail off in them, not with any destination in mind, but simply for the joy of sailing. There would be swimming pools on board, and games of deck quoits, and entertainment in the evenings.

Most people scoffed at Madam Maura's visions, but Woon Gumpus saw at once that she was on to something. He had his shipwrights fit a copper tank into the
Swan
's deck, which the grumbling crew filled with water every morning in case the passengers wanted to bathe. He had a court laid out where they could play quoits, and hammered metal hoops into the deck to make a croquet pitch. He had no luck persuading any of Coriander's minstrels to come along as on-board entertainment, but luckily he had a passable singing voice himself, and he could sing “The Ballad of Eluned” and “I Left My Heart in Up-Brundibar”, while accompanying himself upon the hurdy-gurdy.

The only thing he didn't have, in fact, were passengers. He had found it impossible to find anyone willing to sail with him. He had been starting to think that people were right to dismiss Madam Maura as a loopy old hedge witch who had spent too long breathing in the fumes of her own bath salts. But then Prince Rhind's envoys had arrived, clad in the rich felts and ceremonial knitwear of the Woolmark, looking for a ship – and Woon Gumpus had known that this was his chance. It was true that he had never imagined sailing far beyond the Bay of Coriander, but how hard could it be to sail the Western Ocean? You just had to point the ship west and let the wind do the work, didn't you? And when Prince Rhind and his companions had had enough of sailing around out there, and had seen some mermaids and sea cows and whatever other novelties the Western Ocean had to offer, why, he'd just turn round again and wait for a wind to blow them back to shore.

Easy
, thought Woon Gumpus smugly, and began to sing another of his party pieces, “The Cabbage Picker's Love Song”.

“Shoals to starboard, cap'n!” roared a sailor, from the crow's nest high on the mainmast.

“Eh?” said Woon Gumpus, who had just been getting to the good bit. “What?”

“Dirty big rocks, your honour.”

“Oh!” Woon Gumpus squinted into the bright sunshine reflected from the waves. Ah, yes, those were rocks, all right. Black, barnacled boulders, each the size of his old counting house, lying in wait there in a swirl of foam to rip the bottoms out of unwary ships. “Go right! I mean port! I mean starboard!”

He was always getting port and starboard muddled. To be honest, he got left and right muddled, too. But luckily the helmsman had already swung the tiller, and the
Swan of Govannon
went gliding past the reef as gracefully as – well, as a swan.

Oh, yes, thought Woon Gumpus, sailing was easy. This was the life, all right!

 

Prince Rhind was contented, too. So was his sister Breenge. They had come safely through goblin cou
ntry, the Elvenhorn was theirs, and in a few more days they would reach Elvensea and the ending of their quest. Until then, they planned to while away the time lounging in the sunshine on the
Swan's
decks, swimming in the little pool, playing games of quoits and deck-croquet, and wondering what Ninnis would produce for supper. The only thing they had to worry about was the danger that the captain might to try to entertain them with another of his dreadful songs.

“But if he does,” said Breenge, “you can have him clapped in irons and let the first mate steer the ship instead. You are a prince, after all.”

 

Down in the
Swan's
galley, among the pots and pans and the smell of the simmering stew, Mistress Ninnis was not so happy. Peering into the little crystal ball she kept hidden in her second-best saucepan, she had seen Henwyn and the others boarding that old ship at Floonhaven.

Curse them! She had thought her storm and the sea worms would have finished them, or at least finished most of them, and frightened the others into giving up their quest. Her crystal had shown her those plankways on the cliffs and they had been quite bare of goblins. So where had they gone to, if not into the sea and the bellies of her worms?

And then she had seen who stood waving beside the king of Floonhaven as the goblin ship set sail – a small, stocky person, long blonde plaits blown out horizontal by the breeze that filled the ship's sail. A dwarf maiden! And there were dwarf mines in those cliffs. So the dwarves had taken them in! She had not seen it sooner because dwarf mines were full of magic; the old smithy magic of Dwarvendale, which Ninnis's powers were not strong enough to see through.

Not yet, at least. Not until foolish Prince Rhind delivered her to the shores of Elvensea, and the powers of the elves became hers.

She undid the little bag on her belt and felt inside, but there was nothing there that she could use to harm the goblins. That dried sea-worm larva had been her last; the storm pebble too. All she had left were a few seeds, a jewel from a toad's head and a clothes peg. The seeds and the jewel were earth magic, no use at sea, and the clothes peg was not magical at all.

“But never mind, Ninnis,” she muttered to herself. “They'll not catch this fine ship, not in that old black washtub of theirs. By the time they find us we shall be at Elvensea, and I shall have a thousand new spells to fling at them.”

She wrapped the crystal up, put it back in her second-best saucepan, and replaced the lid. She checked the bubbling stew, said under her breath, “A little more sage, I think. Now where did I leave that? In my pack, I suppose, which is in my cabin…” And Prawl, who had been watching all of this through a tiny gap between the planks of the galley door, drew quickly back into the shadows of the passageway outside as she left the galley and went bustling off to her quarters.

He did not like what he had heard. He did not like it one bit. It was starting to seem to Prawl that he was not dealing with a cook at all, but with something far more worrying: a sorceress.

He waited until she was out of sight, then carefully lifted the latch on the galley door and went inside. The floorboards creaked, but who would notice a creaking floorboard with the ship at sea and so many other creakings, squeakings and flappings of canvas going on?

He could tell that Ninnis did not mean to be gone long, because she had left her big book open on a worktop near the galley stove where that huge pot of stew was bubbling. Wiping the steam from his spectacles, he drew the old book closer to the light of the stove and peered at the pages. And what did he see there? Those crabbed lines of ancient letters marching across the parchment like squads of broken spiders… Those mysterious diagrams, spirals overlaid on triangles overlaid on crescents and pentangles and shapes for which he knew no names…

One thing was for sure. It was not a recipe for fish stew.

“This has gone far enough!” said Prawl to himself. He quickly let himself out of the galley. “Prince Rhind must hear of this,” he said.

Behind him, in the empty galley, a bitter new smell began to mingle with the scents of the stew. Prawl had left the old book much too close to the heat of the stove. The edges of its thick pages were starting to crisp and curl, and the ink on the diagrams was bubbling.

Prawl did not realize that he was being watched as he scurried up the
Swan of Govannon's
elegant companionways, out on to the deck. Ninnis, coming back from her cabin with the sage, had heard those creaking footsteps in her galley. Hiding outside, she saw him leave, and she whispered a spell.

Prince Rhind was standing in the little white castle at the ship's prow. He was gazing at the sea ahead, which was turning golden now as the
Swan of Govannon
sailed towards another sunset, and wondering what awaited him in Elvensea. Behind him, Breenge wallowed in the copper swimming pool, wearing a felt bathing dress that made her look like a seal.

Prawl, coming from the back of the ship, had to walk past Breenge to reach the prince, and he was slightly bashful about doing so. He hesitated a moment, wondering what one should say to a princess of Tyr Davas in her bath. Should he pretend he hadn't seen her? But that might seem rude, and also unlikely – it was hard to miss someone as large as Breenge, especially now that she was swimming on her back, kicking up those frothy fountains of white water with her feet and singing shepherds' songs from her homeland.

He decided that he should just nod politely and hurry on up to the forecastle for a word with her brother. But as he strode past the pool he realized that something strange was happening.

It began with an itching in his ears. Then he noticed that the ship was growing larger. The gunwales, which had come up only to his waist before, were suddenly high above him. The masts, no thicker than trees when he came aboard, suddenly had the girth of castle towers. Not only that, his clothes seemed to be growing, too; his robe expanded until it was more like a tent, and a big tent too, engulfing him and hampering his movements. He waded and floundered through its folds of felt.

“Sorcery!” he realized.

He kicked his way out of the robe and hurried on along the wide wooden plain of the deck. Although the sea was calm, the deck seemed to be tilting at a strange angle, as if it were rising towards him. He could only cross it by putting his hands down and going on all fours.

“Prince Rhind!” he shouted. But all that emerged was a plaintive little squeak. The prince, deep in his thoughts, did not hear it. But Breenge did. She stopped splashing and bobbed over to the side of the pool. When she peered over the edge, the first thing that she noticed was Prawl's shabby old robe lying crumpled on the deck. Really, she thought, who would have imagined that sorcerers would be so untidy? But before she could complain, or call for a sailor to pick up the robe and deliver it to Prawl's cabin, she noticed something else.