In The Coils Of The Snake (29 page)

She scrambled out of
the tent. Elves were screaming, running, frozen in confusion, stunned, and
terrified. But the shouting was in English. She ran toward the sound.

Just beyond the
boundary stood sixty goblin soldiers, the finest and most hideous of the King’s
Guard. In front of them stood the goblin King, shouting for Nir.

“Come
out of there, elf lord!” he called. “Don’t make me wait
all night. We’re not here to hurt your elves, I promise.
We’re just here
to kill you.”

“Catspaw!”
shouted Miranda, running up to face him across the boundary line. He could have
reached out and touched her if it
weren’t
for the magic that kept them apart. “Catspaw, get out of here
with
your Guard! You’re frightening the children.”

The
goblin King smiled down at her, but his eyes were very
cold.
“I’m not just frightening the children,” he growled. “I’m
frightening them all. Every last one of them — except my sensible
Miranda. Where is he?” he continued, gazing
at the cowering elves
with cruel satisfaction. “I don’t see the
prettiest elf anywhere.”

“He isn’t here,”
she said. “He left last night.”

“Of course he
did,” said Catspaw, nodding grimly. “But don’t worry, we’ll find him.”
He turned to his Guard. “He’s not here,” he called in goblin. “Mongrel,
hunt his trail.”

“How
dare you break the treaty like this!” she cried as the gangly,
droopy-eared
goblin came forward and began sniffing along the boundary line. “Nir gave
you his own bride, and you’ve gone back on your word!”

“I’m not
breaking the treaty,” said Catspaw. “He broke it first. Last night
your elf lord attacked Sable as she came to see you. He
sent her back with a warning to me that my spies weren’t safe, and
then she died right in front of me, her heart
stopped by magic.
Treaty or no treaty, do you think I’d let him live
after that?”

Miranda stared at
him, speechless with shock. Nir, arms around
her, telling her he loved her, and Sable,
collapsing in death as a bru
tal
warning against spies. “That can’t be possible!” she exclaimed. “It
can’t be! Sable’s dead?”

“She’s as good
as dead,” answered the goblin. “Someone has to stay with her and work
the magic to make her heart beat while the
Scholars
search for a counterspell. I’m almost positive it won’t help,
but I had
to try something.”

“He wouldn’t
have done that!” insisted Miranda. “Nir wouldn’t have killed Sable!”

“Oh,
yes, he would,” replied Marak Catspaw. “Your pretty
elf
enjoys attacking women. You should know; he dragged you away and worked magic
on you by force. Mother was the first, in the truce circle, no less. He got a
hand on her by fraud and left her devastated.”

“He attacked
Kate?” gasped Miranda. How could anyone hurt Kate?

“Sable
is the third goblin subject that he’s treated this way,” said the King. “Who
knows how many of his own people have suffered?
Sable was afraid of him from the start, and so was
Irina. Sable only
came here at all
because she was worried about you.”

Miranda’s
world was crumbling into ruins again, something
that she was growing used to. “There has to be
another answer,” she
declared. “You
can’t kill him, Catspaw. The elves need him to do what’s best for them.”

“They don’t
need him at all,” said Marak Catspaw. “They need
me.” He looked around serenely at the terrified,
fascinated elves. “I’ll
make sure they’re safe, well, and properly
taught. We should have ruled the elves after the death of their King, just as
Marak Whiteye proposed. If they’d agreed to that, there would still be
thousands of elves instead of this tiny band.”

“King Fox and
the chickens!” scoffed Miranda.

“You sound just
like they do,” Catspaw retorted. “It’s a good
thing Father can’t hear you. How many elves have I harmed, Miranda?
How
many did Father harm? All the elves hate us, except for the ones who actually
know us. And poor Arianna! They told her I would cut her and bend her and scar
her up until she looked worse
than the
ugliest goblin. You can’t imagine how terrified she was. It’s
the
saddest thing I’ve ever seen.”

“But
Catspaw, you can’t kill Nir,” she insisted helplessly. “I
love
him.”

The
goblin King flexed his lion’s paw and studied the big claws.
“So
I’ve heard,” he remarked dryly. “That’s not why I’m killing the elf
lord, but that’s the reason I’ll enjoy it.”

“But
you said you wanted me to be happy!” exclaimed Miranda.
“Nir’s
going to marry me.”

“No, he isn’t!”
laughed Catspaw. Then he paused to study her face. “There are only two
explanations for this,” he continued mat
ter-of-factly.
“Either he’s lying to you as an exceptionally cruel form
of
revenge, or he’s insane, which I’m inclined to believe anyway.”

Mongrel came
trotting up, ears flapping. “I’ve found the trail,” he wheezed in his
high, whining voice.

“Good,”
said the goblin King. “We’ll finish this in no time.
And
I do want you to be happy,” he added, turning away. “The minute he’s
dead, those stars will fall off, and you can come back home where you belong.”

Miranda hurried
along the boundary line, keeping up with his long strides. “Catspaw,
Catspaw, please!” she begged. “You said you’d do anything for me!”

“I did it
already,” he answered. “Father didn’t raise you to be imprisoned by a
mad elf.”

Think, think,
Miranda told herself You have to do something.
“Catspaw, your father raised us both,” she said breathlessly. “You’re
like a brother to me.”

“Why,
so I am,” said the goblin King, stopping to smile at her.

“Do
this one thing for me,” she said. “Don’t kill Nir. Please!”
The goblin King
stared at her as he thought things over. “And
will you do something for me, little sister? Say yes, and I might con
sider
it.”

“Yes!”
cried Miranda. The King began absently shredding the bark off a tree with his
claws.

“All
right,” he said slowly. “I promise not to go after the elf lord
and
not to authorize any other goblin to attack him. No goblin will harm any of the
other elves, either. I’ll follow the treaty.”

Miranda scowled at
him. “That’s just what your father did,” she retorted. “He said
he wouldn’t authorize anyone to follow Seylin, and instead he allowed Seylin to
be followed without his express permission. You know anyone in Sable’s family
will try to kill Nir, starting with Tinsel and Tattoo.”

“Clever
girl,” said Catspaw approvingly. “But I’ll command that there be no
attacks on the elf lord. No goblin violates a direct order.
The only way your precious elf will be killed is if he
attacks one of us
goblins. I can’t
promise away our ability to defend ourselves.”

Miranda
turned over the promises in her mind. Surely Nir would
know not to attack the goblins. There were thousands of
them, after
all, and the goblin King was so
powerful.

“What
do I have to do?” she asked suspiciously. “It will be hor
rible,
won’t it?”

“Miranda,
these elves have corrupted you,” said Marak Catspaw benignly. “You
just have to come back home where you belong and live under my command. You’re
my subject, you shouldn’t be out in
these drippy woods.
It’s a wonder you’re not sick or dead.”

“But I won’t
see Nir again!” whispered Miranda.

“That’s
the idea,” he replied. “Don’t just glare at me. Tell me yes
or
no. I can’t wait long, I have an elf to kill.”

“Yes!”
hissed Miranda. “You know I don’t have a choice.”

“Fine,”
said the goblin King. “I’ll give you a few minutes to arrange your
affairs.”

He walked off to
speak with his Guard, and Miranda turned to find Hunter standing behind her. “You
know I have to leave,” she
told him,
struggling against tears. “You heard what they were going
to do.”

“Yes,”
said the blond elf, his handsome face grim. “I’ll gather some things we’ll
want to take.”

“But
you can’t go,” protested Miranda. “The elf lord needs you.”

Hunter
gave her a tight smile. “Sika, Nir left you in my charge,”
he pointed out. “If he comes home and learns that I
let a goblin have
you, the first thing
he’s going to do is kill me. I’ve been Nir’s friend for years, and I couldn’t
do that to him. Killing me would hurt his feelings something awful.”

He
returned with a pack and erased the camp character. Then he
took
Miranda’s hand and crossed the boundary.

The
goblin King turned as they approached. “Who are you?” he
asked,
eyeing the elf curiously.

Hunter
was pale, and he flinched as those ghastly eyes raked over
him,
but he held his head up and looked straight at the King.

“I’m Hunter,
and Sika was left in my care,” he said loudly. “I’m not going to hand
her over to you. Either I come with her, or she doesn’t go at all. You’ll have
to kill me to get rid of me.”

“I won’t kill
you,” said Marak Catspaw, quite unruffled. “An honor guard. That’s
showing Miranda proper respect. Come along then. You can be her elf guard. And,
Tattoo,” he called, beckoning the young goblin from the line, “you
can be her goblin guard.”

Miranda
frowned when she heard the familiar name. So they still
want
me to marry him, she thought. Another member of the Guard led up a horse.
Hunter stared at it, appalled.

“Hey!
Get that thing out of here!” he exclaimed, jerking Miranda
away from it.

“The horse is
for Miranda,” observed the goblin King. “I have one for you, too. We’ll
have to ride because it’s too far to walk.”

“We will not
have to ride,” declared the blond elf emphatically.
“I wouldn’t let Sika near that frightful
beast. Too far to walk! Do
you have any idea how far I’ve walked in my
life?”

Catspaw
frowned. “I thought you were concerned about Miranda’s
welfare,”
he said. “It’s a two-hour walk at least.”

“Oh,”
scoffed Hunter. “I thought you said it was too far.”

The goblin King,
rather short on sleep, eyed the elf balefully. “All right,” he
decided after a minute. “we’ll do it your way.”

Whispering
softly, he took off his long black cloak and held it so
that
it Just brushed the ground. It dangled in the air alone when he released it.
Then he spread out the sides and the hood, pulling the garment taut. When he
stepped back, a half-circle of black cloth
hung
flat in the air before them, the hood forming a shallow cave at
the top.
It looked like a giant black bat.

“There you are,”
said the King to Hunter. “Just step through.”

“That’s not my
way!” insisted Hunter.

“It
isn’t a horse,” explained the goblin King. “Tattoo, you go first.
Walk
through the middle, and don’t forget to duck.”

Tattoo
stepped forward without hesitation and vanished into the
cloak.
Hunter walked around it cautiously and studied it, but Tattoo was nowhere to be
seen.

“I’m
not risking Sika’s life on a goblin trick,” he said huskily.
“Elves are such
cowards,” remarked Marak Catspaw with satisfaction. “They’re afraid
of everything but trees.”

Hunter’s
jaw tightened at that, and he strode into the cloth,
pulling
Miranda with him. A second of blackness, and a cliff face loomed before them,
glimmering in the dusk. They stood on thin, scrubby grass about thirty feet
from the forest’s edge, and a line of
broken
cliffs barred their way. Tattoo stood to one side, casually sur
veying
the area.