Goblin Quest (16 page)

“
Oh good grief
,” said the rabbit, but of course nobody understood it.

“He squeaks a lot, don't he?” said Flegg.

“There's good eating on a rabbit,” said Spurtle, and licked his lips.

“Oh, there is no need to eat Fuzzy-Nose,” said Henwyn, before they did something unfortunate. “There are much better things to eat in Etty's tin cans. Probably. I'll open a few, and cook up some breakfast.”

“And I'll help you, my dearie,” said Ninnis, who was still all smiles and rosy cheeks despite her sufferings, and seemed to have overcome her sadness at the loss of Prawl.

“And we'll turn back to the Westlands,” said Skarper, “and leave Elvensea where it lies.” But when he looked up at the sail he saw that it was hanging limply, and that the long red pennant that had fluttered out so proudly all the way from Floonhaven now dangled lifelessly. “The wind has deserted us,” he said.

“Then how come we're still moving?” asked Zeewa.

It was true.
The Sea Cucumber
was still moving westward just as fast as she had when the wind was blowing her, and the white water still rippled and chuckled under her forefoot. In the west, directly above the Cucumber's brow, a strange disc of clouds hung in the sky. They were the sort of clouds that might hang above a lonely island, but there was no island to be seen.

“This is not natural,” said Kestle. “We must be caught in some current, but one I've never heard of. I shall consult my charts.”

“I shall assist you!” said Woon Gumpus, who had been feeling embarrassed about the loss of his ship and hoping that none of his passengers were going to ask him for a refund.

Kestle looked him up and down. “Very well. Glad to have another seafaring man aboard. These goblins are good lads, as goblins go, but t'aint the same as a crew of real sailors.”

“Oh no, indeed!” said Woon Gumpus, hurrying after him into the deckhouse where Kestle kept his charts. “And if it would help you to think, I could play you something soothing on my hurdy-gurdy…”

There was nothing much that mere landlubbers could do while those two men of the sea held their conference around the chart table. So Henwyn and Ninnis set about cooking a breakfast, and then everyone set about eating it, and all the while the
Sea Cucumber
kept ploughing westward, although there was still no breath of wind. And by the time breakfast was finished and the clatter of cutlery had died away, a new noise could be heard. It was a rushing, roaring sound, like a far-off wind, or the world grinding round upon its axis.

The sound stirred strange memories for Henwyn. That dream which had come to him while he was drowsing in the mantrap tree had faded as soon as he awoke, but now it came back to him.

“There is a hole in the sea!” he shouted, just as Kestle and Woon Gumpus emerged from the deckhouse to see what was causing the noise.

“Stuff and nonsense,” said Woon Gumpus. “There are no holes in the sea, my dear boy. It is not a piece of cheese. I expect you are thinking of the land – there are holes in that, in places.”

“He means a whirlpool,” said Kestle, tugging worriedly at his whiskers. “Look yonder!”

They looked. Ahead of them, beneath that strange swirl of cloud, a dark patch had appeared upon the ocean. As the
Sea
Cucumber
surged towards it, the watchers on her deck could see that it was a deep hollow in the surface of the sea.

“There
is
a hole!” said Skarper.

The wreckage of the
Swan of Govannon
, which was far lighter than the
Cucumber
, was drawn ahead of her, and vanished over the edge.

“A whirlypool!” wailed Spurtle.

“All the waters of the world are draining away down it!” gasped Henwyn.

“And we shall be taken with it,” said Breenge, “like bathwater twirling down a plughole.”

The goblins knew little of baths or plugholes, but they could all see the danger. When Kestle bellowed, “To the boat! Start rowing!” they jumped to obey him, and for once not even Grumpling grumbled. They threw the
Sea Cucumber's
boat overboard, Skarper attached the rope which Kestle threw them to her stern, and they started rowing with all their goblinny strength, trying desperately to drag the ship away from the brink of that terrible hole.

But it was useless. They pulled on the oars with all their might, but the whirlpool pulled harder. Soon the passengers on the
Sea Cucumber's
prow could look down into its depths. There, far below, ringed by the whirling walls of water, weed-draped turrets jutted from a pother of foam.

“Drowned Elvensea!” cried Prince Rhind, over the water's roar. “It is there! It is real!”

“And drowned is what we'll be too, if this whirlypool drags us down there,” said Henwyn.

Just then, he felt someone tug at his belt. He looked round. Prince Rhind's cook, Ninnis, was staring up at him, and her usually jolly face was hard and grim. “If you would live, Henwyn of Clovenstone,” she said, “if you would save your friends, you must sound the Elvenhorn.”

“Eh?” said Henwyn, who had forgotten about the Elvenhorn in all the excitement. The last time he saw it, Grumpling had been scratching his back with it.

“
One blast to part the waters, one to raise the drownéd land,”
said Ninnis, in a chanting way. “
And one to wake the sleeper there
,” she added in an undertone.

“Eh?” Henwyn wasn't really listening. “Fentongoose said that to sound the horn may bring dire peril,” he said doubtfully.

“What peril could be more dire than this?” urged Ninnis. “Did your goblins and that pretty Muskish girl follow you all these long leagues just to be smashed and smothered in the sea?”

She had a point, thought Henwyn. The
Sea Cucumber
was teetering on the very rim of the whirlpool now. The boat full of goblins which was supposed to be towing her had been dragged over already, and swung there on the taut towrope while the goblins clung to it and the fierce waters spilled over them.

Henwyn leaned over the
Sea Cucumber's
side, shouting down, “Goblins! Are you all right?”

“No!” said Grumpling.

“Bumcakes!” said Skarper.

“I'm being sick EVERYWHERE!” said Spurtle.

“Skarper!” Henwyn hollered. “Sound the Elvenhorn! It's our only hope!”

Skarper heard him. He let go of his oar and let the whirlpool take it. He scrambled through the foam-filled boat to the thwart where Grumpling sat, and snatched the Elvenhorn from around Grumpling's neck. Before Grumpling had a chance to say, “Oi!”, he put the horn to his lips, and blew.

The sound was louder than it had been when Prince Rhind blew it, back on the hills in front of Clovenstone. It was a full, rich, throaty sound, not at all kazoo-like any more, as if being brought so close to Elvensea had given it more strength somehow – or maybe it was just that the sea had washed some of the dust and earwigs and Grumpling's skin-scrapings out of it. At any rate, its note rang high and clear above the thunder of the circling waters…

And the waters heard. The mad, rushing movement of the doomed ship slowed. The steep sides of the whirlpool shallowed. The goblins in the boat and the humans on the ship peered down and saw that Elvensea was drowned again, and that the hole in the ocean was healing. Within a few moments the ship was on an even keel again, and the goblins were sloshing water out of their swamped but floating boat. The waves were still confused and choppy, but the whirlpool was gone.

“The Elvenhorn does not work!” said Rhind. “The second blast is supposed to raise Elvensea, not sink it again!”

“It must be broken,” agreed Zeewa.

“Maybe Skarper didn't blow it properly,” said Breenge.

“I blew it brilliantly!” said Skarper, scrambling back aboard with the other soggy goblins as their boat came bumping against the
Cucumber's
side. “I got rid of that whirlypond thing, didn't I?” He was rather pleased with the way things had gone, and thought the humans ought to show a bit more gratitude.

“Gimme my scratchbackler back,” snarled Grumpling, grabbing at the Elvenhorn.

“Wait!” said Ninnis.

Since when had a simple cook had such a commanding voice? They all fell silent. Even Grumpling stopped, one paw outstretched to take the Elvenhorn.

Into the silence that the healing of the whirlpool had left there crept a new sound. A rumbling of a different sort. A sound that you felt in the soles of your feet as it came trembling through the old ship's timbers. It was the sound of the earth flexing its muscles, of vast masses of rock shifting like sleepy animals, deep beneath the sea. It was the sound of magic.

Around the
Sea Cucumber
the water was growing paler. From deep blue-grey to light it turned, filling with foam as swarms of bubbles came wobbling up from below. The clouds above thickened and spun, sparking with lightning.

“Land ho!” shouted Woon Gumpus suddenly, pointing off to starboard.

“Land!” cried Breenge, pointing in another direction.

“Land! Land!” the goblins yelled.

All around the ship, like breaching whales, the tops of towers were rising from the waves. The white sea gushed from their gutterings and windows as they rose; gargoyles spewed long arcs of foam. Up, up went the towers, with the rumble of their rising so loud now that everyone aboard the
Cucumber
clapped their hands over their ears to block it out.

The ship lurched.

“The ship's run aground!” shouted Rhind.

“The ground's run a-ship!” shouted Skarper.

The deck tilted steeply as the ship lay down on her side and the water drained away around her, leaving her marooned in a cleft between two towers.

And still the land kept rising, and Skarper, clinging to the
Sea Cucumber's
rigging, started to see how the towers and rooftops which he had seen peeking up at him from the depths of the whirlpool formed only the topmost tip of Elvensea. It was a tall, thin island, shaped like a witch's hat, and on every inch of it the elves of old had built their towers and streets and palaces, their delicate arbours and walled gardens and pillared halls.

Taller and taller it grew, until, at last, quays and harbours emerged from the surf which frothed around its sides. Only then did the upheaval end. The mountain of ruins stood steaming in the sunlight that shafted down through the thinning clouds. Torrents of water fled foaming down its streets and stairways, back into the sea. Stranded silver fish flip-flopped on pavements which had not seen daylight for a thousand years. And the
Sea Cucumber
lay wedged five hundred feet above the waves, her empty boat swinging on its towline like a clinker-built pendulum, while her passengers gazed about in disbelief.

“It is as high as Clovenstone Keep!” said Skarper.

“Clovenstone was just a copy of Elvensea,” said Breenge. “Ninnis told me once. She said the Lych Lord and his fellow sorcerers envied the elves, and set out to create something that would rival Elvensea. And when they failed, in angry jealousy, they sank Elvensea so that no one could see how poorly Clovenstone compared.”

“That's not what Fentongoose said,” said Skarper.

“If we want to know the truth about this place,” said Henwyn, “I think Mistress Ninnis is the person to ask.”

“Ninnis?” scoffed Rhind. “My cook? What would a cook know about anything? Well, except cookery, of course. She does a lovely rhubarb crumble.”

“Where is Ninnis?” asked Breenge.

“And where is the Elvenhorn?” asked Zeewa.

“It's here,” said Skarper, holding up the soggy baldric – and realized that it wasn't. The baldric hung empty; de-horned. He looked at Grumpling, but Grumpling looked just as mystified as he did. Well, mystified at first, then very angry.

“Is you tellin me you lost my scratchbackler AGAIN?”

“There she is!” shouted Spurtle.

He was pointing upwards. There, on one of the stairways which spiralled around the flanks of Elvensea like the tendrils of some lovely climbing plant, a tiny shape was toiling upwards. It was Ninnis, her travelling cloak fluttering about her like black wings. When they called her name she looked down at them, but she did not stop climbing.

“Where is she going?” asked Prince Rhind. “It's nearly lunchtime, too!”

“She has more important things on her mind than your lunch, Prince Rhind,” said Henwyn. “I believe you have nurtured a viper in your bosom.”

“I haven't got a bosom,” said Rhind, who was sensitive about his figure.

“It's just an expression,” Skarper explained. “It's the sort of thing you say to people who bring a sorceress along on quests with them instead of a cook.”

“Ninnis isn't a sorceress!” said Breenge. “Is she?”

“Think about it,” said Henwyn. “That storm and those serpents. The way Rhind knew that we were following you. Ever since we left Clovenstone I've had the feeling that some fell magic was being used against us. Only I told myself it couldn't be, because the nearest thing Prince Rhind had to a sorcerer was that numbskull Prawl.”

“There there, Fuzzy-Nose,” said Breenge to her rabbit, which was wriggling furiously in her arms.

“But why would a sorceress pretend to be a cook?” asked Rhind.

“Maybe because she wanted to go where you were going,” said Skarper. “Maybe because she knew something about Elvensea and wanted to get its secrets for herself.”

“Oh, this is flapdoodle!” blustered Rhind. “Ninnis makes sauces, not sorceries! Stews, not spells! Meringues, not magic!”

“Then why is she climbing off up there alone with the Elvenhorn?” asked Zeewa. “She must be looking for… Oh, I don't know. The citadel or the keep or the great hall or the throne room, or wherever the heart of this place used to be. And when she finds it she will sound the horn a third time…”

“And wake the sleeper,” said Henwyn.

“Who's the sleeper?” asked Skarper.

“I don't know. Something Ninnis said. ‘One blast to part the water, one to raise the drownéd land, one to wake the sleeper there.'”

“Some blimmin' old elf, I expect,” said Spurtle. “Probably be even more trouble than blimmin' dwarves.”

“But that is wonderful!” said Breenge. “I mean – isn't it? The elves were kindly folk, and, if one still sleeps here, he will be grateful to us for rousing him.”

“It's not us he'll be grateful to,” said Henwyn. “It's Ninnis.”

They thought about that while, from the turrets and buttresses which overhung the stranded ship, statues of the elves gazed down on them. They did not look kindly. There was a coldness in those stern and handsome faces of stone, as if the sculptor who carved them had captured something of his sitters' hearts along with their features, and their hearts had not been kindly hearts at all.