In The Coils Of The Snake (2 page)

The quiet group
assembled by Marak’s tomb, a shallow coffin chipped into the rock. Its lid
rested on the cave floor beyond them, waiting to be fitted on. Once Miranda had
seen it, she could make
out the other lids
nestled into the rocks, their outlines betrayed by the
narrowest of
cracks. Goblin Kings lay entombed all around her.

Marak
went from person to person, saying a few words to each.
Miranda
couldn’t hear what he said to the others, his voice was so low. Now he was in
front of her, saying good-bye to her, a parting that would never end. She hugged
him tightly and wouldn’t let go, keeping him alive as long as she could.

“I want to come
with you,” she told him, just as she had at the end of every visit.

“Be brave for
your King,” he whispered. Then he pulled away.

When Marak came to his wife, he didn’t
say a word. Instead, he gazed at Kate with that look he had just for her, as if
it were a com
fort and a joy to see her.
Kate’s blue eyes were bright, and her expres
sion was untroubled. She
refused to ruin his last moments by crying. The petite woman was descended from
the greatest of elvish war
riors, and she
called upon their courage to sustain her. It worked.
She saw his relief
that she was taking it so well. He had no idea what the effort cost her.

“Marak,” she said in a low
voice, “no wife ever had such a King.” And the smile that he gave her
in return was worth all her pain.

He kissed her and looked at her for a
few seconds, stroking that
beautiful hair. Then
he turned away. As he did he worked the Protection Spell on her, the most
cherished of all things he had to leave.
Kate didn’t even know what he had done. She had no idea that
she was the reason he stumbled and almost fell into the tomb. Marak had planned
and weighed his strength down to the last. He had used it all.

Once a goblin King lay in his tomb,
he lost the power of breath.
His son was
there to help his death be peaceful. Catspaw laid his
paw on the King’s striped hair. Marak’s unmatched
eyes closed in
sleep. The golden
snake around Kate’s neck awoke and flowed
smoothly down to the floor at her
feet. Then it stretched out and shuddered and became a sword once more.

There was no
ceremony. Catspaw knelt for a few minutes, watch
ing over his dead father, thinking about the reign that
was ending, the
reign that was
beginning. When he stood up, the dwarves were ready with the coffin lid. They
lowered it with a click, and Marak was gone.

Miranda stared at
the plain rock surface that hid her guardian from view, conscious of nothing
but a feeling of numb stupidity.
Beside her, Emily
burst into tears, and she fought down an answering whimper. Violent emotion
alarmed Miranda. She had spent too many years hiding her feelings.

The new goblin King
came to put his arms around his mother,
and
Kate looked up at him with a reassuring smile. That was how a
King’s
Wife acted, thought Miranda, watching her. They shouldn’t
indulge in tears. Catspaw glanced toward her,
perhaps to put an arm
around her, too,
but Miranda quickly turned away. She didn’t know
him. He was a stranger
to her — now, more than ever before.

Instead, she edged
closer to Seylin. He and Emily had looked
after
her for the last few weeks, so she could have accepted sympathy
from
him. But Seylin had his arms around the sobbing Emily, his face buried in her
hair. Miranda realized with a shock that the man
was crying. She stared at the ground as they started up the path
again.
The world had become a place in which she was alone.

Inside
the safety of her own rooms, she could cry at last. She sat
in the small apartment, desolate, filled with sadness
and dread. The
stylish
furnishings fit strangely in the stone rooms, and the place was
dim
and gloomy. The whole underground world was full of shadows, she thought, a
twilight on the verge of eternal night.

She hadn’t minded as
long as Marak was there.

• • •

A member of the
Guard summoned Miranda to the new King. She followed the grotesque creature
into a formal reception room. Around the low dais hung green brocade curtains,
looped back in elaborate scallops. The goblin King sat upon it in an elegant armchair
of gilded wood.

Marak Catspaw’s two
lieutenants stood beside him. He had appointed Seylin, his former tutor, to be
his chief adviser, and the
streetwise Richard
to be his military commander. They made an
eerie trio. The elvish Seylin’s black hair and eyes and stately bearing
made
him look nothing like a goblin. He was dressed in English fashion, and his
trousers, waistcoat, and frockcoat of gray matched
his
dignity and reserve. Richard was wearing the King’s Guard uniform of black
shirt, breeches, and boots. As goblins went, he wasn’t
hideous.
His long hair was white, and his eyes were an arresting pale
green, but his face
and build were reasonably normal. One of his
fangs
had been knocked out during a boyhood fight, so the dwarves
had made him
a false fang of gold.

Catspaw was a big
man, larger-boned than his father. He
reminded
Miranda of a Viking. His face was striking, not hand
some: the jawbone
was too pronounced, giving him a stubborn appearance. But he wasn’t
particularly ugly, either. His short hair, marbled with streaks and blotches of
dark blond and pale tan, was
not entirely
unattractive, and his eyes, one blue and the other green,
were rather
interesting. He could almost have passed as a very
unusual human with grayish skin if it were not for the big lion’s fore
arm
and paw that served as his right hand. Having grown up with Kate’s expectation
that he be a gentleman as well as a goblin, he
favored impeccable jackets and trousers of dark green or blue cloth,
white
linen shirts, and a well-knotted cravat. He stood politely for Miranda’s
entrance, and she appreciated the gesture. A King, she knew, had no need to
stand up.

Catspaw had already
found his fiancee to be a self-possessed young woman. Although her eyes were
red, she wasn’t crying, he
noticed with
relief; he had grown up with Miranda’s mother, Til,
and his foster sister’s constant dramatics had
given him a distaste for
emotional
displays. Miranda was wearing a midnight-blue gown
that formed a
pleasant contrast with her auburn hair and rosy complexion, and the new King
thought her quite lovely.

“I
concurred with my father’s plans to bring you into the
kingdom
as my bride,” he began. “I have known of your work together, and I
could not imagine finding a better King’s Wife.”

Miranda blushed a
little and inclined her head courteously to acknowledge the compliment. At
least this stranger shared Marak’s
high opinion of her.
After enduring years of ridicule from her family,
she didn’t take such
things for granted.

“The
King’s Wife will be the most important person in my
realm, just as she was in my father’s day,” he said.
“I would like you to begin accompanying me to the banquet hall and taking
your place
by my side in
the King’s Gallery. Starting today, I will have a mem
ber
of the Guard posted outside your apartment. You may use this
guard to send me messages, and you may ask to see
me at any time,
for any reason.”

Again, Miranda gave
a gracious nod at this recognition of her
value.
She felt steadied by it. Life was falling into its proper pattern.

“Allow me to
make you a small gift,” Catspaw continued, “on
this official inauguration of our engagement.”
Seylin opened a small
box for him, and the King withdrew a golden
bracelet. Then he stepped forward and placed it around her wrist. Miranda
watched
curiously, wondering how he would
manage to clasp it since the
big tawny paw was so clumsy, but he did it
with his normal hand and magic.

Miranda
studied the bracelet, and Catspaw stood by to watch
her. In honor of the King, it was a chain of lion heads,
their
unmatched eyes tiny
emeralds and sapphires. “Thank you,” she told
him. “I like it very much.” But actually she
felt dismayed. She was in
mourning for Marak,
and women in mourning shouldn’t wear ostentatious jewelry.

“Is there
anything you would like to ask of me?” he inquired. “Nothing is
unimportant.”

Miranda hesitated. “I
don’t have any black dresses,” she began.

“Ah! The
English custom of remembering one’s dead,” said Catspaw, returning to his
place on the dais. “I’ve already had this
discussion with my mother. You may certainly instruct the tailors to
make
you a black dress. Because of its resemblance to the King’s
Guard uniform, it will be seen as a patriotic
gesture. But if you
decide to wear black every day, you will cause
confusion and concern. My father’s reign was happy, and his death was peaceful.
A public display of somber feeling would be out of place.”

“I see,”
said Miranda slowly. “But the three months’ delay of marriages — isn’t
that a period of mourning?”

“The delay of
our own marriage, you mean,” clarified the goblin. “Other marriages
are still taking place. The delay is purely
practical.
It goes back to former times. Before the elves disappeared,
new Kings
were often injured in the quest to capture a bride. The
three month delay allows the new King time to appoint his court
and bring the kingdom into good order before
embarking on such a
risky ordeal. I
grant that this ceremony is unlikely to pose a threat to
my health, but
a law is a law, even for kings,”

While
Miranda considered this surprising information, Catspaw
gave
her appeal further thought. “I understand your desire to
demonstrate your love for my father,” he
concluded. “Why don’t you choose something that he gave you and keep it
with you as a remembrance? Then you can do your mourning in a way that won’t
seem so
extreme.”

Later,
in her dressing room, Miranda considered this suggestion.
It
was true that Marak had given her many things when she was a
child, but she hadn’t brought much with her when
she had left
home. As she rummaged
through her jewelry box, looking for items
that linked her to him, she drew out a small bracelet decorated with a
blue-enameled
butterfly.

The
little girl awoke and sat up in excitement. He was here! She pelted
down
the dark hallway, calling out his name.

“Marak, Marak!”
she yelled, dashing through the parlor door. Her father looked up with a smile
from the chair where he was reading a newspaper. Her mother stood with her back
to them, looking out the window into the darkness.

The black cloaked
man caught her and swung her up onto his lap. “How’s my Miranda? ” he
asked.

“What
did you bring me? ” she demanded breathlessly as she hugged him.

“You’ll have to find it, ” he
replied. She drew from one of the pockets of his cloak a gold bracelet with a
butterfly on it, and Marak helped her put it around her wrist.

“What does it
do?” she asked, her brown eyes owlish with anticipation. Marak threw back
his head and laughed. “Must my gifts always do something?” he asked.

“They
always do,” she said.

“Maybe
this one is just supposed to look pretty,” he suggested.

Miranda studied the bracelet for a second, a
little disappointed. Then she
smiled at him. “It’s
pretty,” she said, and he bent down so that she could give
him a
thank-you kiss.

“That’s
my Miranda,” he said, pleased. “Now, how have you been?”

The
little girl promptly tugged up the hem of her nightgown to reveal a scab.

“I
fell out of the wagon and skinned my knee,” she announced. “I didn’t
cry.”

“Good girl, ”
he said approvingly. “I’m not raising a crybaby.” He smeared
salve
on the knee, and the scab bubbled back into skin. Miranda sighed with
satisfaction.