Goblin Quest (3 page)

“Oh, how … quaint!” said Breenge, when they showed her into the big hall at the foot of Blackspike Tower where the goblins held their rowdy council meetings and entertained visitors. Its walls were bedecked with skulls and shields and ancient, rusty weapons, the furniture was a ramshackle mishmash of stuff from every corner of Clovenstone, and the flagstones of the floor were cracked and grimy. Bits of old meals lay mouldering in the gaps between them, and other bits were stuck to the walls. (Goblins are messy eaters, and they hate doing housework. They had met and entertained in the hall at the foot of Redcap Tower before, but it was pretty much full of dirty plates and old fish heads now, so they had switched to this one rather than tidy it.)

But Henwyn and Skarper were determined that Clovenstone should show proper hospitality to these wanderers from afar. They let Rhind's company graze their horses on the sward outside the main gate, and had some of the goblins bring the best chairs and arrange them around a table large enough for all the humans and a lot of the goblins to sit around. Skarper's batch-brother Gutgust and a few of the cleaner goblins went bustling off to the kitchens to see about some food.

“Now,” said Henwyn, looking at Prince Rhind. He did not think he liked the young Sheep Lord any more than Skarper did, but he knew that first impressions could sometimes be wrong – he had not liked Skarper when he first met him, but they had soon become the best of friends. “Why are you here?” he asked. “What do you seek? And how was Princess Ned supposed to help you?”

“Very well.” Rhind looked about him at the ugly faces of the goblins, and then behind him at his sister and Ninnis. He lowered his voice and said dramatically, “We seek the Elvenhorn.”

“The what?” said Henwyn.

“What's that?” asked Skarper.

All the goblins looked at each other and shrugged. What was an Elvenhorn when it was at home?

Prawl broke in. “The Elvenhorn,” he said, “is one of the treasures of Clovenstone. It was stolen by the Lych Lord himself from Elvensea, the ancient kingdom of the elves, which lies drowned now beneath the waters of the Western Ocean.”

“And how do you know it wasn't squashed when the Keep collapsed?” asked Skarper.

“I doubt the Elvenhorn can be destroyed,” said Prawl. “I am sure it must be here. And I knew that when Princess Ned heard of our need for it, she would be keen to help us find it.”

“But there's no such thing as elves!” Skarper pointed out. “Everyone knows they're just made up.”

“There are some who say the same about goblins,” said Breenge.

“But elves?” said Henwyn. “I mean … really?”

Prince Rhind stood up. The sunbeams shafting through the chamber windows lit his golden hair and shone in his blue eyes as he spoke. “You are right, goblin. There are no elves. There have been no elves for a thousand years. Once they walked upon the hills of the Westlands, and wandered singing in the woods. All we know of them is a few fragments of old tales. They were beauteous, immortal, and very wise. When men arrived, the elves departed, and lived upon their island of Elvensea, out in the Western Ocean. But the Lych Lord – the same Lych Lord who raised this foul old castle of yours – hated and feared the elves. He knew that he could not grow strong in any world that held such wisdom and such beauty. So he tricked and defeated them, slew them all, and hid their land of Elvensea beneath the waves. Only the Elvenhorn can raise it again.”

“Clovenstone isn't a foul old castle,” said Zeewa in the silence which followed this speech. “It's a bit smelly, maybe, but…”

“Elvenhorn, Elvenhorn,” Fentongoose was muttering. “No, I can't place it.” He had carefully catalogued all the magical treasures which had been salvaged from the rubble after the Keep fell. “I don't remember any Elvenhorns,” he said.

“Perhaps it's one of the items which our friend Carnglaze has carted back to Coriander to sell in his antiques shop?” asked Prong.

“Statues for rich softlings' gardens is more in Carnglaze's line,” said Skarper. “He doesn't really do enchanted musical instruments. I s'pose it is a musical instrument, this Elvenhorn thing?”

“I have a picture,” said Prawl, rummaging in his bag. “I found it in one of the ancient scrolls in the library at Dyn Gwlan. King Raun has an excellent library, but it is not much used. Apart from a few works on sheep breeding, I don't believe anyone has read any of the books and scrolls for a hundred years.”

“Reading is boring,” said Breenge. “Who but a halfwit would want to sit in a dingy old library, straining their eyes to read words some other halfwit scribbled down? Give me a good horse under me, and the sun on my face, and the wind in my hair, and a bow in my hand!”

“Oh yes!” agreed Prawl. “That is much more healthy! The outdoor life, fresh air and exercise and so forth. I completely agree!”

“You do?” Fentongoose looked startled. “When we lived in Coriander it was all Carnglaze and I could do to get you out of the reading room. You always had your nose in a book! You said you couldn't
stand
fresh air or exercise! You— Ow!” (It was Prawl who had kicked him this time, quite painfully, under the table.)

“Nevertheless,” said Prawl, pulling a scroll from his bag and unrolling it to reveal a lot of writing in some ancient language. “I did nose about the library at Dyn Gwlan a bit, on rainy days, and it was there that I found this. It is a description of the Elvenhorn, written by a sage of old, and it has a picture. Look.”

Everyone looked. A lot of the goblins didn't really understand the idea of pictures, but they looked anyway, not wanting to appear stupid in front of their visitors. There on the scroll was a drawing of the Elvenhorn, just as Prawl had promised. But it wasn't the beautiful object that Henwyn and Skarper had been expecting. Henwyn had been imagining a golden trumpet. Skarper had been picturing an ivory horn, perhaps off a unicorn, bound round with bands of slowsilver. Instead, the picture showed something that looked like the houses which caddis fly larvae build for themselves in the mud at the bottom of ponds. A roughly shaped cone of stones and grit, studded with barnacles and bits of rusty metal.

“Oh,” said Henwyn.

“That's nice,” said Skarper, sounding as unconvinced as Breenge had when she called the dining hall quaint.

Prince Rhind said loudly, “According to legend, the first elves used this magical horn to raise Elvensea from the depths, and then cast it into the depths of the sea to stop anyone using it against them. But the Lych Lord bribed the people of the sea to swim down and find it for him, and once he had defeated the elves he hid it away in Clovenstone. I mean to take it and ride north. A fast ship waits for me at Floonhaven on the Nibbled Coast. I shall sail in it beyond the Autumn Isles to where drowned Elvensea lies. There I shall sound the horn. Elvensea will rise again, and we shall learn the lost secrets of the elves.”

Everyone was still staring at the picture. Fentongoose was shaking his head sadly, because he knew that he would have to disappoint Prawl and his friends: he was quite certain that he had never come across anything like that among Clovenstone's treasures. But before he could speak, a goblin named Grumpling butted in.

“'Ere,” he said, pointing at the picture with a grubby claw. “That's my scratchbackler!”

“Your what?” asked Prince Rhind.

“My scratchbackler!” Grumpling was a large and lumpy goblin, and quite startlingly stupid. His ugly face twisted into a confused but angry frown as he glared at the scroll in Prawl's hands. “I gets an itchy back,” he explained, “so I scratches it wiv that there scratchbackler.”

“He means a ‘back scratcher',” explained a smaller goblin sitting next to him, and then added, “Urf!” as Grumpling sat on him.

“I know what I means,” growled Grumpling, menacingly. “I means my scratchbackler. It's mine. I found it in the ruins so it's mine. How did you gets hold of it, softling? Give it here!”

He made a snatch at the scroll. Prawl flinched backwards and fell off his chair. Skarper and some other goblins grabbed Grumpling by his belt before he could leap across the table. Fentongoose said, “Now, now, Grumpling, do you remember that conversation we had about the difference between pictures of things and the actual things themselves?”

“Give me back my scratchbackler!” roared Grumpling.

“I knew he hadn't really understood,” whispered Fentongoose.

Grumpling was one of Clovenstone's Problem Goblins. There had been loads like him when Skarper was a hatchling. Big, brutish bullies, who got their own way by beating up the others. Most of them had perished in the furious fights that raged after the goblins finally found their way into the Keep, or been squished shortly afterwards, when it collapsed. For a while, the smaller and quieter goblins had been left in peace, and they had had Princess Ned to help them work out new ways of getting along together. Now Ned was gone, and Grumpling, who had been barely more than a hatchling himself when the Keep fell, had grown almost as big and strong as old King Knobbler.

He was a Chilli Hat, part of the tribe who lived in Redcap Tower. The differences between the goblins of the different towers had not mattered much in Ned's time, but Grumpling seemed to want the old days back. The gang of bullies he had gathered round him wore their red caps with pride, and were filling their tower with trinkets pinched from other goblins, who were too scared of Grumpling to complain. Fentongoose and Henwyn were very worried about Grumpling and completely unsure of what to do about him.

“Grumpling!” said Skarper, as the angry Chilli Hat made another lunge for the parchment. “That's not your scratchbackler! It's just a drawing of it! Like the drawings Zeewa did to show us what the animals of her homeland look like? Remember?”

“Animals!” said Grumpling, and a glimmer of understanding flickered in his stupid eyes. Zeewa was good at drawing, and during the winter she had decorated the walls of Fentongoose's study with lions and leopards while telling the goblins tales of the Tall Grass Country. Grumpling had often tried to spear and eat those charcoal creatures. Eventually even he had had to accept that, although they
looked
like animals, they weren't
real
animals.

“Go back to your own tower, Grumpling,” said Skarper. “You'll find your back scratcher lying wherever you left it.”

“And perhaps you'll consider giving it to Prince Rhind?” suggested Henwyn. “That would be a friendly thing to do, wouldn't it?”

Grumpling looked at him and curled his lip, baring a couple of off-white fangs.

“You know?” urged Henwyn. “For this quest of his?”

“Not flibbin' likely!” growled Grumpling. “It's my scratchbackler, softling, and it stays mine, understand?”

And with that he turned and went stomping from the hall, with a bunch of his red-hatted mates close behind him.

“Sorry,” said Henwyn.

“Grumpling is more of your traditional sort of goblin,” said Skarper.

Prince Rhind seemed confused. “And are you just going to leave it at that? Aren't you going to make him hand over the Elvenhorn? The most important magical artefact in all the Westlands, the key that may unlock the secrets of the elves and begin a new golden age – and you're going to let that scaly freak go on scratching his back with it?”

“Well, it is his,” said Henwyn helplessly.

“But you are his king! Or is Fentongoose his king? Who is king here? I'm confused.”

“Nobody is king,” said Skarper. “Not any more. We sort of look after ourselves.”

“How absurd!” snorted Breenge.

“How ridiculous!” snorted Rhind. “I insist that you fetch the Elvenhorn here and hand it into my safekeeping!”

“Sorry,” said Skarper.

“But without it, my glorious quest cannot succeed!”

“Sorry!” said Fentongoose. “Sorry!” chorused the goblins.

Rhind had already turned red in the face. Now he turned very pale instead. His voice, when he spoke, was tight and thin.

“Then we shall go to this Redcap Tower,” he said, “and take the Elvenhorn by force!”

The goblins chortled, and a few threw their hats and helmets high into the air with glee. “Good luck with that!” they shouted. The one whom Grumpling had sat on earlier said, “Grumpling loves that scratchbackler of his. He sleeps with it tucked under his pillow. You softlings won't get it away from him without a fight, and if you fight, he'll win.”

“And if he doesn't,” said Libnog, “we'll have to fight you too. Because Grumpling may be horrible and stupid but he's a goblin, and so is we. So we'd have to avengle him. An there's loads of us an only, er, one, two, three … not very many of you.”

The Sheep Lords stood silent, scowling, while goblin laughter racketed all around them. Prawl looked embarrassed. Breenge's hand strayed to her bow.