Cyrion Read online

  Well-dressed G’hurii females met and chittered in the pocket gardens that littered the Quarter. The Ha’rani, with their tattered attire and relatively smaller size, stood out even more to Jon, however hard they tried to be invisible. They swept the spotless streets and weeded the pocket gardens. They carried G’hurii females in lavish, veiled palanquins that thronged the streets. They stood on the banks and threw flower blossoms into the canal that ran through the Quarter. Jon supposed the Ha’rani couldn’t legally use the carved marble bridge, dotted with lavish statuary, which spanned the canal in this Quarter.

  Their conversation completed, G’hanjl and J’hatk led them to the P’rabh Quarter, official residence of the goblin gods.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  THROUGH THE APPLE WOOD GATE

  Night had fallen by the time they reached the gateway to the P’rabh Quarter. The wooden door was carved with indecipherable glyphs and shone with an iridescent glow.

  “Apple wood,” Anya said. “The symbol of magic, youth, beauty, and happiness. Also, these glyphs.”

  She frowned and Jon felt Anya focusing his attention on them. “They look familiar.”

  “What do you mean?” Jon asked.

  “I’m not sure, exactly. They look like elven script, but I don’t recognize the dialect. Mother was supposed to teach me all of them, but she passed before she had the chance.”

  “Bet you Grampa Naeem would know,” Saul said, lips pursed. “He knows everything.”

  “Can you memorize the glyphs,” Jon said to Anya, “so you can reproduce them and we can show him later?”

  She nodded without hesitation.

  “We needings to hurrying. Come. Before we is caught.” G’hanjl motioned to the gate.

  Jon ignored him for the moment, and kept his eyes trained on the elegant, flowing script. Anya’s torso stiffened as she focused on memorizing the glyphs, and then relaxed after the mysterious inscription was safe in her memory.

  “Is the door magic?” Saul trailed his hands over the smooth, fine-grained wood.

  Anya nodded. “Reeks of magic. The whole area behind the door, too.”

  Jon studied the area around the gateway. All the roads in the G’hur Quarter seemed to lead to this gateway. He spotted not a single goblin. Not even a token Ha’rani sweeping or cleaning.

  “G’hanjl,” Jon said, “do the G’hurii sleep early or something? This area is completely deserted.”

  “No one wants to come here. Here is Apple Wood Gate to P’rabh Quarter. Is home of goblin gods.” G’hanjl fidgeted with the sleeves of his tunic and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He looked distinctly uncomfortable. “Come, MataPerak to put your hand on door. To opening it.”

  Anya touched her fingertips to the door. It swung open, and they stepped into the P’rabh Quarter.

  Jon had gotten used to the bone-numbing cold that characterized the goblin settlement thus far. His head spun from the unexpected warmth of the P’rabh Quarter. It was as if they had walked into a temperate, balmy spring night at the Outpost.

  “This is not natural. None of this is,” Anya muttered. She was taking in their first glimpse of the Quarter through his eyes.

  The P’rabh Quarter did not resemble a city in the least. It was a tamed woodland. In place of neat cottages or imposing stone buildings were majestic trees that towered to the sky. There were no roads. Only winding trails, covered with fallen leaves of gold, and lined with blooming primroses. In place of a canal, a narrow, quick-flowing brook gurgled and chattered over water-polished pebbles that gleamed in the moonlight. Mingled scents of primroses and wild jasmine graced the very air itself. Eclipses of bioluminescent moths flitted between fragrant, long-stemmed clusters of mysterious glowing night-blooming flowers.

  “This is wrong. It’s all wrong,” Anya said.

  “Who cares?” Saul threw off his pack, cloak and peeled off the layers of fur underneath. “I can feel my toes again. I am warmer now than I can remember.”

  “We’ve only been here about a day or so, Saul,” Jon said.

  “Who. Cares?” Saul repeated, an exuberant smile on his face.

  Jon understood exactly what Saul meant. He was nearly overwhelmed by an almost irresistible sense of well-being ever since he stepped through the gateway. More than he had ever known his entire life, it seemed. And for no specific reason he could discern.

  Shaking his head and smiling at Saul, Jon bent and dug his fingers through the spring grass, to get to the soil underneath. He peered at the clumps of dirt in his hand, and then crumbled them with his fingers. Rich, coffee-ground dark, moist, and warm. His smile faded. Why’d they bother trying to cultivate in the T’hany Quarter, when cultivating here would likely yield twice as much with half the effort? He turned to Anya in puzzlement, and sensed only outrage mingled with foreboding. Anya directed his eyes up at the star-strewn sky. Jon’s breath caught in his throat when he realized that he could not identify a single constellation—not one—despite his best efforts and the months he spent under Geoff’s tutelage, solely to memorize constellations.

  “Even the stars are wrong,” Anya said.

  Meanwhile, Saul was laughing and doing cartwheels on the grass, his cloak and furs lay in an abandoned heap. Jon’s sense of unease melted away as he broke out in a smile. He almost tore off his own cloak and furs to join his childhood friend, when he sensed a flash of warning from Anya. G’hanjl and J’hatk were standing to the side, with smiles on their faces. They were calmly chatting and watching Saul’s antics. Jon was struck by how, up to this point, they had been almost paranoid about staying quiet. Staying unseen.

  “Something in the air.” Anya scowled. “Even the air is enchanted.”

  “Well, what can we do?” Jon said. “We can’t stop breathing.”

  “No,” Anya said. “But we can be wary of its effects.”

  Her head snapped up, eyes wide with alarm. “Grab Saul. Someone’s coming. A lot of someones.”

  Jon dashed toward Saul. He bent to scoop up Saul’s discarded pack, cloak, and furs and tackled his friend in mid-cartwheel. He clapped his hand over Saul’s protests, shushing him into silence. He pulled Saul behind a clump of bushes. Anya grabbed G’hanjl and J’hatk by their elbows, steered them towards the same clump of bushes, then pushed them down. She glared them all into silence.

  In the quiet that ensued, Jon detected what Anya’s more sensitive ears picked up earlier. The muffled drumming of booted feet and faint jingling of scaled armor. Jon peeked through the bushes and watched four D’hadhii, in full military dress, escort a scraggly line of Ha’rani children. He heard a sharp intake of breath from G’hanjl and, from the corner of his eye, glimpsed G’hanjl clap his hand over his own mouth.

  These were unlike the band of Ha’rani Jon observed by the banks of the canal earlier. They giggled and kicked at the drifts of fallen leaves. The leaves scattered and fell all over in a glorious shower of gold. The children picked fragrant primroses, sniffed them, and tucked the blossoms into the holes in each other’s tattered clothes. The Ha’rani children seemed happy. They laughed, skipped and sang their merry way, paying little to no mind to their D’hadhii escorts. Each of them had a jaunty silk ribbon tied around their necks.

  Ribbons of bright fuchsia.

  They waited a few moments after the band of goblins faded from view before rising from behind the bushes.

  “What was that?” Saul asked.

  “They’re leading those children somewhere,” Jon said. “Where?”

  “And you recognize at least one of them,” Anya said.

  G’hanjl nodded. “Is my youngest sister.” He reached into his pockets then produced a small, stoppered clay vial and several squares of tattered fabric. He opened the vial and shook a drop of evil-smelling muck onto each square of fabric.

  “G’hanjl is not to be knowing where they go. D’hadhii say they offering to goblin gods.” He gave one handkerchief to each of them. “All G’hanjl know is they leave as children. The
y come back as bones. No one knows more than that.”

  Jon felt a wave of sympathy, followed by cold fury, rush through him. Anya.

  “We’ll stop this,” Anya said. “We’ll get you away and stop this.”

  Jon studied Anya’s stony face. “You suspect something, don’t you?”

  Anya waved her hands at their surroundings. “All this? All the magic required to create and sustain this…this…frivolous nonsense? Well, it requires energy. A lot of energy. Life force energy. Notice how they were all children?” Her face twisted with a combination of disgust and rage. She turned to G’hanjl. “You were right. They are going to eat your sister. To eat all of them. They will suck all the life force out of them. The way they sucked the life out of that puppy. And they will use their life force to feed this…stupid vanity!”

  Jon caught the panic on Saul’s face. They both remembered the time when she nearly lost her temper.

  “Anya,” Jon said, struggling to keep his voice calm. “I understand your reaction, and I agree. But this is, perhaps, not the best time for a showdown?”

  “Yeah,” Saul said. “Let’s just get to where we are supposed to go and get the Ha’rani out. Then they’ll have to stop, right?”

  “Fat Watchers to be right, MataPerak,” G’hanjl said. “We needs to be going now.” He motioned to the square of handkerchief he gave her. “Use good medicine G’hanjl gave you. After that, we go.”

  “What are we supposed to do with this?” Saul held up one corner of his handkerchief with a thumb and forefinger.

  “You breathe in.” G’hanjl then demonstrated its use. “Good medicine.”

  Saul started to mimic G’hanjl, and then reared away from the foul-smelling rag.

  “This smells awful,” Saul said, between bouts of gagging and dry-heaves. “What is it?”

  “Dog liver,” G’hanjl said, his voice muffled under his handkerchief. “Five months dead. At least.”

  Anya tied the fabric around her head, covering her nose and mouth. “It counteracts the spell of euphoria in the air. Stop complaining and just do it.”

  With reluctance, Jon tied the fabric around his head, as Anya did, and motioned at Saul to do the same. After the few moments it took for his sense of smell to shut down, he noted a change in himself. A marked decrease in the giddy euphoria that earlier tempted him to cartwheel alongside Saul. He glanced at Saul and saw a new sobriety in his friend’s blue-grey eyes.

  “Better?” G’hanjl said.

  The boys nodded.

  “See? Good medicine.” G’hanjl returned the vial to his pockets. “Come. We go.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  GENERAL D’HOREK

  General D’horek stood up from his chair and looked out of his second floor study window to the street in front of his palatial home. His large, callused hands rested on his desk, currently littered with official correspondence and confidential reports. He sighed, unable to stop his attention drift from the street outside back to the useless stack of notarized pedigree papers.

  Yes. That.

  He sighed again, and forced himself to study the scene outside his window. A Ha’rani, polishing the brass gate of the cemetery across the way, had his cleaning supplies strewn too close to the middle of the sidewalk. D’horek gave a small tch of annoyance. There’s an accident waiting to happen. He briefly considered sending a servant out to warn the Ha’rani, and then dismissed the notion as sentimental nonsense.

  They need to learn. No sense coddling them.

  He returned to frowning at the piles of pedigree papers of eligible females. Giving in to the inevitable, he sat down and pulled papers toward him yet again. So close. He was so close to earning the right to breed another child. A child of the D’hadhu caste. A son. It would have been a son. He knew, in his soul, it would have been a son. A son to inherit everything. A son to carry on the name and proud traditions of his family.

  His hand clenched into a massive fist and slammed into the cherry wood desk. The fool D’hibuk. To be outwitted by a human. And an immature human, at that.

  D’horek rose from his chair and paced the study. Not only did the MataPerak slip his grasp, she fell into the hands of the Watchers. Blast D’hibuk to all the hounds of Hell. The Watchers, of all people. Our most ancient and hated enemy. They would never let her go. He would never have this chance again.

  And he would never have a son.

  Sounds came. A disturbance outside his manse. D’horek glanced out the window. Tch. A pair of D’hadhii stepped over a dying Ha’rani. See what happens when you coddle them? They forget their place, get themselves killed, and leave a mess while the work remains undone.

  Annoyed, D’horek stalked to the mantle above the fireplace next to his desk and reached for an ornate silver bell. He shook it gently, twice. Hurried footsteps from behind the closed study door, muffled by the costly carpet on the stone floor. A discreet knock, followed by the entrance of a subservient Ha’rani, ready to take orders. Orders given to clean up the mess across the street and the gate. No reason D’horek had to stare at a dirty gate because some fool Ha’rani was too stupid to stay alive and do his job.

  He turned away, ready to dismiss the Ha’rani, when more urgent murmurs reached his ears. A visitor, a special visitor, awaited his pleasure. D’horek ordered the caller to be shown in after ten minutes. Murmurs of assent, then the gentle snick of the study door closing.

  Which one is he?

  D’horek sat in his chair and took the time to compose himself.

  Another discreet knock, a supplicant appeared. A familiar supplicant. With a pinched face, rags for clothes, and the unmistakable stench of the Ha’ran Quarter. Subdued murmurs revealed interesting new developments. A coin tossed on the rug. Grubby hands scrabbled for the metallic glint. A corner of D’horek’s mouth lifted in a contemptuous sneer. Filth for the filthy. A curt dismissal. Obsequious apologies and farewells. The study door, gently closing.

  Snick.

  D’horek got up and resumed pacing. The MataPerak. Here. In the city. Within my grasp.

  A smile emerged on D’horek’s bestial face. That fool D’hibuk was good for something after all. He pulled some books from the shelves that lined the study wall across from the fireplace, and threw them on his desk. He opened and pored over them, his mind, racing.

  Restart the Southern Campaign.

  The avenues for clandestine infiltration into the Continent were already in place. There were many ill-guarded passes through the mountains, not to mention the warrens of secret tunnels painstakingly built over the centuries. D’hibuk and his squad had used these to enter Watcher territories, undetected, and hunt for the MataPerak.

  D’horek’s breath grew ragged in anticipation. Then there are the sea routes at our disposal. According to his sources, the Watcher fleets were downright puny in comparison to the goblin fleets. While Watcher forces had grown soft and lax in the centuries of peace, goblin military forces had grown stronger. Much stronger. They were poised and ready to resume war on the Watcher-controlled Continent.

  We’d already have the Watchers crushed under our feet and the entire world in our grasp, if not for the fool G’hurii and their bleating insistence of a guaranteed victory.

  However, if he captured the MataPerak, no one could stop him from restarting, and winning, the infamous Southern Campaign.

  D’horek flipped through the pages of the tome on heraldry at a frantic pace. He found the place in the book where a page had been torn out. His heart raced with excitement and eager speculation. Every existing copy of this book had this exact page torn out and burned. The Southern Campaign, which took place over a thousand years ago at the behest of the gods themselves and led by one of his ancestors, ended in ignominious defeat.

  This torn page depicted his ancestral coat of arms.

  They had the MataPerak on their side then, and they were winning. The goblin vanguard reached all the way to the Achillean Peninsula, the living, beating heart of the hated Watchers.
The proud emblem on this page would have been borne on numerous fluttering pennants that fateful day, emblazoned on the chest plates of thousands of D’hadhii troopers.

  They stood on the cusp of ultimate victory over their ancient enemy, when they were stabbed in the back. The G’hurii, claiming the gods had announced their decree, called for the immediate mass retreat of all goblin forces.

  With disastrous results.

  His ancestor never abandoned the MataPerak’s side. The MataPerak, grieving at the massive loss of life rendered useless by the G’hurii’s order, lost control.

  The Achillean Archipelago, consisting of tens of thousands of islands, now stood where the Peninsula once was. There were no known survivors and D’horek’s now infamous ancestor was never heard from again. His many times great-grandfather, still a babe in arms, was left an orphan. His family’s reputation, in ruins. The proud emblem, which for centuries stood for honor, valor, and glory, struck from all records. An emblem that was his, by right of birth and rank.

  It took this long for his family to reclaim some of their lost honor. All this time to offset the stain of descending from the Battle Commander in charge of the worst military defeat in the annals of goblin history.

  Now, he had the power to turn everything back to the way things should have been. This time, when the MataPerak fell into his grasp, he’d ensure she would imprint on the D’hadhu caste. She would never come into contact with the traitorous G’hur caste. Rules be hanged. Let the G’hurii sheep bleat their protests and lodge their complaints. With the MataPerak in his hands, he could attempt anything he wanted, and still do no wrong.

  She might have already imprinted on others, but all his reports stated she was still young. No more than one hundred and fifty, maybe two hundred years old, at most. There are ways to bypass previous imprints. And D’horek would ensure the re-imprinting process would get all the resources and time it needed.