In The Coils Of The Snake (7 page)

“We can work
elf magic, too,” said Marak Catspaw, “and the spells are essential to
the care of the elves who live with us.”

At this mention of
captives, the distaste in the stranger’s eyes
became
definite. He glanced away from them, looking over their heads
at the
stars.

The goblin King gave
the matter further thought. “I well under
stand
your need for the spells,” he concluded. “I would be willing to
give
you copies.

The
elf lord looked at him again. “An elf should copy what elves
have
written,” he replied. “I would rather copy the books myself.
They will be safe in my care and promptly
returned. But I must have
writing materials and the materials for books.
My people don’t yet have these things.”

Marak
Catspaw was well aware of the importance of the elves to
the goblins. The discovery of sixty-seven elves still
alive was an event
of
tremendous significance. Catspaw didn’t mind meeting the lord’s
demands,
either, and even augmenting them with his own con
cerned vigilance. But the new King was growing tired of this pretty
stranger’s
arrogant attitude.

“The elves are
asking a great deal of the goblins,” he remarked
blandly. “What do they intend to do in return?” Nothing, he was
sure, and he wanted to make this elf admit that and swallow a nice dose
of humility.

But the elf lord
didn’t look in the least humiliated. He glared at
Marak Catspaw. “We will give this unmarried goblin King a
bride,”
he retorted.

“A what?”
gasped Seylin. Catspaw just stared. The elves never
sanctioned the marriages of their women with goblins. Goblins stole
elves.
They didn’t accept them.

“I will give
you a bride,” repeated the elf lord emphatically, his
handsome face set in a look of bitterness and
contempt. “My people
are too
poor and too few to wage battle. We won’t survive without our
own land and magic, but we aren’t strong enough
to take them. I will
give you one
bride in exchange for these things. I have no other choice.”

He
dropped his gaze and stared at the ground, plainly overcome
with
despair at the thought. Good, thought Marak Catspaw. He’s taking that dose of
humility after all.

“Sixty-seven
elves,” mused the King. “But how many of those could be brides?”

“I’ve been
forbidding the marriages,” replied the elf lord. “Four
women are unmarried, and one is old enough for
marriage at the
full moon.”

“Five women,”
considered Catspaw. “Is any from the high families?”

The elf studied him
with loathing. “I don’t know their ancestry,” he replied.

“What
color are their eyes?” put in Seylin. Now those black eyes
glared
at him.

“Blue. Gray.
Green. Blue. Green,” he enunciated carefully.

“It
doesn’t sound as if they are from the nobility,” said the goblin
King.
“I reserve the right to take any female child, even a baby.”

“To keep like a
penned sheep,” retorted the elf lord angrily. “Then I demand a right
as well. I want to see the elves you already have penned up. I need to see for
myself that these women are not
mistreated
before I let another one fall into your hands.” He glanced down at the
goblin King’s hands as he spoke, saw the great paw, and
looked away with
a grimace.

“Very well,”
replied Marak Catspaw. “When will we meet?”

“I can return
with my band in six nights,” replied the elf. “We will be here on the
night of the new moon.”

“Then I wish
you a safe journey,” concluded the goblin King.
He turned and left the truce circle. As he and his lieutenants reached
the outer ring of
trees, he glanced down at his chief adviser.
Follow him,
he told Seylin
in his thoughts.

Seylin
gave the barest of nods and dropped behind as they
walked
into the forest, assuming his cat shape and cloaking himself in shadow. He
waited a prudent amount of time and then crept
through the forest to the other side of the circle. The elf was already
gone.
Seylin hissed the Tracking Spell. Now he could see the elf lord’s footprints,
bright against the dark grass, only a few minutes old. Seylin didn’t follow
them directly; this elf might be watching for him. Instead, he slunk on his
belly within sight of those prints, keeping to the thickest shade under the trees.

In
the morning, he woke up and stretched luxuriously from head
to
toe. He was very stiff. Stiff and cold. He had fallen asleep out in the woods.
Seylin glanced down, a little confused. He had fallen asleep as a cat!

He jumped and
sputtered as memory broke in on him. The elf lord! The tracks! What had gone
wrong? Fluffy tail drooping, he looked around. The great trees of the truce
circle towered behind him. The elf had stopped him before he had gone thirty
feet.

• • •

As Miranda came into
the royal rooms to accompany Catspaw to breakfast, she could hear Seylin
speaking loudly and a little frantic
ally. Not
just any lord, either,” he was protesting. “I’m telling
you, goblin King, he’s one of the great elf
lords, a descendent of the
elf King’s own lieutenants!”

“Maybe;”
Catspaw answered, unruffled and a little amused. “But
you should tear yourself away from your books, adviser,
and practice
your spells a little more. Great elf lord or not, you
gave yourself away.”

Miranda
put her head in at the door, and the two men looked up,
startled.
The Guard, knowing that she would be the King’s Wife in a week, didn’t bother
to announce her anymore.

“Who is a great elf lord?” she asked. There
was a slight pause.

“An
elf has turned up,” replied the goblin King. “But don’t mention it to
anyone, Miranda. It shouldn’t be known.”

“Of
course not,” she said with a smile. “Are you ready for breakfast?”
There was another slight pause.

“No.
I don’t have time,” answered Catspaw. “Go without me.”
So Miranda went on her way. She was feeling
cheerful this morn
ing. A great elf
lord, she thought idly. She liked the sound of that.
The men watched the
door shut. Then they stared at it for a few seconds.

“For pity’s
sake, Seylin!” exclaimed the goblin King. “What do I do about
Miranda? I don’t want to marry some wailing elf girl. I want to marry her!”

“I’m fond of
her, too,” agreed Seylin bleakly. “But the King has
to think of his people, and you know what an elf
bride means for the
magic of the Heir.”

“I’ll tell you
this, I refuse to give her up for some commonplace
elf,” threatened Catspaw. “Not for anything less than a lord’s
daugh
ter.” He sighed. “But
I suppose we have to plan for that possibility.”

“She
will still be a strong human bride,” noted Seylin. “Miranda’s
settling in well, and she’ll get over her disappointment.
She’d make an
excellent bride
for one of the strong elf crosses, to extend the elvish
bloodlines. Tattoo would be a good choice. He has his
father’s pleasant
nature,
and she knows him well. She and Sable are always together.”

“Tattoo
and my Miranda,” growled the goblin King. “I don’t
like
it at all! That infuriating elf! Why couldn’t he have shown up next week? Why
did he feel he had to offer a bride? I would have signed his treaty.”

“In
the meantime,” said Seylin, “may I suggest that you embark on that
triumphal tour of the dwarf mines that new goblin Kings
always take? There’s no sense making Miranda suspicious if this all
comes
to nothing. You can be gone the whole six days.”

“Ah, yes,”
sighed Catspaw. “Days of being dragged through
endless miles of four-foot-high corridors on a little stone sledge. But
it’s best to get it out of the way before these elves come back. I don’t
want you and Richard to speak of this business with
anyone but
each other, and have the
elves and elf-human crosses assembled near
the main door on the evening
of the new moon.”

Meanwhile, Miranda
sat with Kate at the table overlooking the banquet hall. She was becoming more
used to seeing monsters at
mealtime, but it
still affected her appetite. Instead, she studied Kate’s
golden hair and
perfect porcelain skin. Marak’s beautiful widow showed not the least tendency
to age. Perhaps that was a benefit of being elvish.

“Tell me something
about the elves tonight,” said the sleepy girl as she
snuggled
down under the warmth of the covers. It was cold in her room, and she could see
her breath when she talked.

Her ugly guardian
smiled at her from his chair and shook his striped hair out
of
his face. “What do you want to know about the silly elves? All right. Here’s
your story. Once a very ugly human man met a
very pretty elf man. The
human was
poor and miserable, gathering firewood in the winter twilight. His
face had been disfigured by a ghastly burn. The elf
was magnificent, tall and
noble, and
he was disgusted at the sight of the poor man. He reached out his hand
to
work magic, and the human knew that his last hour had come.

” ‘Spare me!’ he cried, dropping his
sticks and falling at the feet of the elf. “I know I look awful, but I am a
very intelligent man.’

” ‘You, intelligent?’ scoffed the elf. “Then
I’ll let you go if you can answer a question. How many stars are in the sky
above us?’

“‘A hundred
thousands,’ replied the human without a second’s hesitation.

“‘That’s not
right,’ declared the elf triumphantly. ‘It’s not even close.’

“‘Of course it’s not right,’ agreed the
human. ‘How would I know something like that? But you just said I had to give
an answer. You never said it had to be right.’

“Then the elf
laughed heartily because elves love jokes and pranks. ‘You
may go,’ he told the human. ‘But not looking like that.’
And he healed the
human’s face.”

“What happened when the human got home?”
she asked. “Did his family know who he was? Were they glad?”

“I can’t tell you
that,” Marak admitted. “The human didn’t write that story,
the
elf did. That was Aganir Dalhamun, the elf King named Dust Cloud.”

• • •

Miranda
smiled at the memory. It didn’t hurt so much to think about
him
now. She looked at the hideous shapes filling the huge room and
felt a surge of affection.
They were Marak’s goblins, after all. She loved them for that. And he had been
right, just as he always was. She belonged here, even without him.

Marak Catspaw came
back from his tour of the mines late on the evening of the new moon and met the
elves and elf-human crosses
who had been
summoned to the grove of jeweled trees near the goblins
‘ front door. The crowd was larger than he had
expected. Sable’s
and Irina’s families had been spending the evening
together, and they all had come to the meeting.

“An
elf lord is bringing elves back to our forests,” he told them. “I’m
signing a treaty with him tonight. He wants to see you elves to
make sure that you’re well treated, and for reasons that
I won’t reveal
yet, we need to do
as he asks.” A stunned silence followed this announcement.

“I… I don’t
want to see an elf,” faltered Irina, holding her
daughter-in-law Fay’s hand. “I don’t want to meet elves at all, not
without Thaydar.” Her husband had died the year before, and she had
taken the loss very hard.

“I don’t need
any elf man checking up on me,” declared Sable scornfully. “As if he
really cared whether I lived or died.”

“This is
important to the kingdom,” replied the goblin King. “I
have to bring you tonight. But you’re welcome to
take along any of
your family, if that would make you feel better.”