Goblin Quest (36 page)

Jig started to inch closer to Darnak. Maybe he would know what to do. Before he got close enough to speak, Ryslind walked up to the dragon’s side.

“We have it, master,” he said. “It was a close thing.” His thin finger pointed at Jig. “The goblin attempted to betray us and take the rod for himself.”

Jig froze. Maybe his ears were still recovering from Straum’s roar and he had misheard. “I gave the rod to you,” he said meekly.

Ryslind smiled, a cold expression of triumph. The slitted glow of his eyes seemed to burn into Jig’s chest. As he had done once before, Ryslind spoke directly into Jig’s mind.

I warned you that you would pay for humiliating me, goblin.
Jig suddenly understood. Whatever Straum had done to the wizard’s mind, enough of Ryslind remained to want revenge. He hadn’t forgotten his promise to punish Jig. He had simply waited for the best time to exact that punishment.

“It wasn’t like that, exactly,” Darnak protested.

“Silence,” Barius hissed.

Jig glanced over. Barius had begun to edge away from his guard. He glanced at Darnak, who tilted his head slightly. They planned to use Jig’s execution as a distraction. A good plan, Jig admitted. The only flaw involved the minor detail of Jig’s painful death.

“Did he?” Straum asked. His neck twisted around until he stared down at Jig. “I’ve always thought goblins to be cowardly, stupid creatures. Betraying me took more boldness than I’d have expected from you. For a goblin, you’re quite the brave fellow.”

Jig didn’t breathe. He couldn’t look away from those huge, gold eyes. He could see himself reflected in the slitted pupils, his body distorted on the curved surface. He watched the mirror-Jig raise his hands, as if to explain. He saw the wide-eyed expression of fear, the frantic trembling in his jaw.

He never saw Straum’s tail rush through the air to smash into Jig from the side.

The last thing Jig heard as his body crashed into a wall was Straum’s amused voice saying, “Pity, really. Had you been as cowardly as the rest of your race, you might have survived.”

CHAPTER 17

In the Blink of an Eye

“You lasted longer than I thought you would, I’ll grant you that much.”

Jig opened an eye, closed it again. He peeked out through the other one, just to be certain. Nothing had changed in the interim.

“This isn’t Straum’s cave.”

“You can do better than that, Jig. If you were really this thick, I can think of seven times in the past week alone when you would have died. Use your brain. Figure out where you are.”

Jig scowled. He knew who he was talking to, if nothing else. Somehow, Tymalous Shadowstar sounded less impressive when his words weren’t reverberating inside Jig’s skull. As for
where
he was . . . he sat up and took a good look around.

He noticed the sky first. Straum’s illusionary sky was nothing compared to this. There must have been hundreds of stars here. Thousands, even. He didn’t try to count, since his vision would make the task impossible.

Except that it didn’t. Instead of round blurs of light, each star was a clear pinpoint. He could even make out individual colors. Some sparkled with a blue tinge, others appeared yellow, and several flashed red as he watched.
He could see!

He stared at his hands. For the first time, he could hold them at arm’s length and still see the layer of grime beneath his nails. Everything had come into focus. This was wonderful! He looked back into the sky, noticing one star that stood out from the others. It was a large red star, which appeared to be a half-inch wide and shone brighter than the rest. In fact, that star provided the only illumination. The red light gave everything an angry, flamelike tinge. His own skin had turned purplish.

What had Darnak told him? Shadowstar was the God of the Autumn Star, so the Autumn Star was probably that big red one. He lowered his gaze to survey the more immediate surroundings. Whatever this place was, it needed to be torn apart and rebuilt from scratch. Crumbled walls traced a roughly rectangular outline. Scorch marks blackened parts of the walls and the floor. The floor itself was mostly dirt and clumps of yellowed grass, and only the occasional ceramic fragment gave any hint of what must have once been an impressive temple.

There was no smell. Even the stink of sweat and blood that had followed him for days was missing. Jig glanced down at himself.

His boots and loincloth were the same as before, only brighter, lacking any trace of grime. He didn’t even try to remember when he had last washed the loincloth.

His body appeared whole. He couldn’t remember what had happened right before he came here, but he had expected to find himself torn in two, or at least bent at a sharp angle. Instead, he was healthy as ever.

He tested his fingers, flexing each one individually to make sure the bones still worked. He checked the wrists and elbows next.
So far, so good
. As he pulled off his boots to check his toes, it occurred to him that he was stalling. Jig didn’t really want to admit he was sitting here with a god. He might have grown used to the day-to-day oddities of traveling with adventurers, but this went beyond strange.

He cast a furtive glance at Shadowstar.

“You’re not dead, so don’t bore me by asking. Everyone always asks me that. Right after the ‘Where am I?’ bit. You’d think they could at least come up with something more original.”

Jig straightened, confused, and so got his first clear view of Tymalous Shadowstar. His first impression was not a flattering one.
I thought gods were supposed to be . . . taller.

“Not this god,” Shadowstar said. “Big gods make better targets.”

Jig absolutely refused to think about what it would take to threaten a god. Another god, presumably, but he didn’t want to imagine fighting of that magnitude. Quarreling among the adventurers was more than enough for Jig. Instead, he took a closer look at Shadowstar.

He stood only a few inches taller than Jig. He could have passed for a short, skinny human, about thirty years of age. Assuming nobody looked him in the eyes, that was. The skin around the sockets appeared normal, but they contained a blackness as deep as the night sky. Red starbursts shone from the center, reminding Jig a little of Ryslind. But unlike the wizard, Shadowstar’s eyes held no malice. As Jig stared, he felt as though he were falling into the sky itself, and his stomach gurgled in protest.

Jig forced himself to look away before he lost himself completely. As he took in the rest of the god’s appearance, he deliberately avoided that face.

Shadowstar wore loose-fitting clothes of black silk. Strips of tiny silver bells ran down the outside of his pants and sleeves. The shirt was open at the chest, revealing a smooth, lean body. His skin wasn’t quite white, but it was pastier than that of any other being Jig had seen. His silver hair flowed to waist-level, but the hairline appeared to have receded a bit over the years. A balding god? Even gods grew old, he supposed. At least Shadowstar hadn’t acquired the swollen gut carried by most older goblins.

“Why am I here?”

Shadowstar grunted. “Another obvious question, but not quite as trite as it could have been.” He chuckled. “Worship is a two-way deal. I’ll help you out a bit, but it means I get first dibs on your soul when you and your body part ways. After the pounding you took from Straum, you came here.”

“But you said I wasn’t dead yet.”

He ignored Jig’s question. “Rule number one when dealing with dragons,” he said, extending one gloved finger. “Never look them in the eye. It’s distracting, to say the least. But seeing as how goblins don’t usually go in for dragonslaying, I understand why you hadn’t learned the rules.

“Unfortunately for you, ignorance makes a poor shield. At this moment, your body is upside down against the wall of Straum’s lair. Your back snapped in two places when you hit, your ribs are gravel, and you’re paralyzed from about here down.” Shadowstar tapped his hand at the middle of his chest. “You also bruised your brain, which wouldn’t make a difference to the average goblin, but you’ve shown yourself to be far from average, my friend.

“When faced with a choice between living in excruciating pain, albeit only from the nipples up, or getting a head start on death and avoiding that last bit of nastiness, you opted for the latter. This left your body in a coma and your mind and soul here with me.”

“Oh.” Jig’s shoulders slumped. “What if Darnak heals me?” The dwarf had done it before. Maybe there was a chance Jig could still survive.

Not that this place was so terrible. At least he was safe. He had never thought much about an afterlife. Goblins believed that once you died, your body went to the carrion-worms, and that was the end of it. He didn’t care what happened to him after he died, because he had never expected to see any of it. Goblins died, and then other goblins came along to steal their belongings and toss the body into the tunnels. He never imagined spending time with a forgotten god in the midst of a rundown temple.

Still, while Shadowstar might be good company, Jig wasn’t ready to make this place a permanent home. Nor did he like the fact that Ryslind had beaten him. In a strange way, he had been having fun. Not that he enjoyed always hearing Death’s footsteps follow him around, and he would have chosen different company if he could, and those dead warriors had been a bit much. But skipping between Death’s fingers time after time gave him a strange, bubbling thrill in the middle of his chest. He had learned things, too. Things that could help the goblins hold their own against the other races. Or they would have, had he lived long enough to pass them on.

When Jig spoke, it was in a soft voice, full of wonder. “I want to go back.”

He looked hopefully at Shadowstar, but the god was shaking his head. “You can’t. Rather, you’re already there. You’ve just taken a step sideways from reality, that’s all. But I’m afraid Darnak can’t help you. Things are about to get messy, and nobody is going to worry about a goblin they believe to be a corpse.”

His starburst pupils bored into Jig’s eyes. He was waiting for something. Jig didn’t understand what Shadowstar expected him to do. That Darnak couldn’t help him was hard to accept. Goblins, by nature, did not ask for help. To ask for help was to make yourself vulnerable. The closest word for “trust” in the goblin tongue was a word that meant either “gullible” or “dumb as dung,” depending on context. So for Jig to admit he needed help was hard enough, even if Darnak would never know. To learn that Darnak couldn’t help was worse, because Jig
knew
he would have tried to heal Jig’s wounds if he could.

That was simply who Darnak was. He might not like Jig, but he would obey the rules of Silas Earthmaker. He would obey because he wanted to, not because he had to. If nothing else, Darnak was loyal. Loyal to the princes and their father the king, loyal to his god, and loyal to his fellow adventurers.

Jig grinned at that. He had thought of himself as an adventurer. At least he hadn’t gotten tangled up with traditional hero traits like loyalty or nobility. Too much of that and he’d turn into another Barius.

His smile faded. He was still thinking like he was going to survive, and Shadowstar had made it pretty clear that wasn’t the case. Though if he was slated to die, why did Shadowstar watch him with that patient expression? Why all of the games, if he was truly stuck here?

“You want me to live, don’t you?” Jig asked. Shadowstar shrugged noncommittally, jingling the bells along his sleeves. But his eyes literally twinkled, and Jig knew he was right. Darnak couldn’t help him, because he didn’t know Jig needed help. But Jig was a goblin, and if a goblin wanted help, he had better help himself, ’cause nobody else was likely to do it.

“Silas Earthmaker gives Darnak magic to heal people. Can you do that for me?”

“Maybe,” Shadowstar said, drawing the word into a long drawl. “I’ve helped my followers before, back in the days when I had any. As I mentioned, worship is a two-way thing. You haven’t yet committed to me.”

Before Jig could argue, he held up a hand and said, “You picked out a god who would help you because he had nothing better to do. Darnak wouldn’t even have remembered my name if I hadn’t jogged his mind a bit. You wanted someone you could use, correct?”

Jig nodded. No use lying to a god, he figured. Still, it hadn’t sounded quite so calculated when he first decided to follow Shadowstar.

“If I help you this time, there are things you’ll need to do for me. Rules to follow, like Darnak does for Silas Earthmaker. Can you do this?”

“Sure.”

Apparently Jig answered too quickly. Shadowstar smiled. “Remember, you come to me when you die. Betray me, and we’ll have a very long chat once you get here.”

Jig had heard many threats over the past few days, but Shadowstar’s cheerful warning made them sound like the work of clumsy amateurs. In a small voice, Jig said, “I can still lie to other people though, right? Telling the truth is a good way to get killed.”