Goblin Quest (14 page)

The quiet outrage in Barius’s voice was so perfect that, for a heartbeat, Jig felt guilty. Only for a heartbeat, though. Then he remembered
why
he had done it.

“Me?” he said again, dumbfounded. “I heard you talking to Darnak. Better to cut off her finger than—”

The prince stepped forward and punched Jig in the jaw, knocking him to the floor. As he lay there staring at the beauty of the ceiling, he wondered if there was any reason to stand again. Not if people were going to keep hitting him, he decided. No, he would stay right here. If the gods were just, Barius would at least chip his sword on the floor when he finished Jig off.

His eyes traced one of the blue whirls toward the center of the ceiling, where it vanished into the water.
Yes, this is much better. As long as I don’t move, nothing hurts. I should have thought of this from the beginning. They could have killed me and been done with it. At least I would have died comfortable.

He wondered what was taking Barius so long.
Maybe he doesn’t want to chip his sword.
Jig grinned. The prince would be so offended if he damaged his weapon on a mere goblin. Smiling turned out to be a mistake. The prince’s blow had split his upper lip, and his amusement vanished with a hiss of pain.

He closed his eyes and tried to relax as he waited.
This is why goblins make such poor adventurers
, he concluded. A few blows to the head, and Jig was out of commission. Well, to be fair, he had also been flung out of a whirlpool into a stone room. That cut on his arm hadn’t helped, either. And he’d be in better shape if he had eaten a real meal in the past day and a half. Still real heroes were the men who shrugged off a half-dozen arrows and continued to fight. Goblins tended to run and scream if they stubbed their toe on a rock.

A strong hand grabbed his injured arm. Until that moment, Jig had thought he was ready to die. He had been expecting it all along, ever since Porak sent him off alone. Death should have been a relief. But as powerful fingers pulled him into a sitting position, Jig realized the waiting wasn’t so bad after all. Perhaps he could stand to put things off for a mite longer. He raised his other arm to protect his head and kicked blindly.

“Here now, none of that,” Darnak grumbled.

The alcohol on Darnak’s breath was enough to knock Jig backward, even with his nostrils half-clogged by blood. His eyes snapped open. “What?” Where was Barius? Why wasn’t Jig dead yet?

“I know what you did,” Darnak said in a low voice. “True, she hates you now. And that wouldn’t have helped her against normal poison, but you may have saved her life.”

“I did?”

“Not a word about it, I warn ye.” The dwarf wouldn’t meet his gaze. “He’s got a temper, Barius does, and he’s throwing a right fit about you. I persuaded him to let you keep breathing for a while yet, but you’re to lose the sword. And it’s back to the rope.”

“Riana?” Jig asked.

“I stopped the bleeding. Earthmaker should kick me for not thinking of that myself. A bit of magic, and the skin healed over as smooth as an egg. She’s a little put out, mind you, but she should live.” He grabbed his hammer on its thong and closed his eyes. “Now let me see what I can do about that arm.”

This time, Jig watched closely as Darnak called upon his god to work his healing magic. With the hammer hidden in his thick fist, he began to mumble. Jig listened closely, but the words were foreign. Dwarvish, he guessed. The language sounded like a mixture of coughing, spitting, and gnashing of teeth. A bit like Goblin, really, but not close enough for him to understand.

So intent was Jig on watching the dwarf, he didn’t notice when the pain in his arm began to recede. What had been a sharp tearing pain became a dull burn, unpleasant but less intense. He could feel his blood pound with each beat of his heart. The rhythm grew louder, booming in his ears until he expected to see his very skin throb. The heat in his arm grew.

Like a blacksmith,
Jig thought suddenly. Each pulse was a hammer blow that forged the flesh whole again. Fitting, coming from a dwarven god.

When Darnak pulled his hand away, a dark blue scar ran the length of Jig’s forearm. Blood still smeared the skin, but it was dark and crusted. He brushed his arm, marveling at the new scar. His battle scar. Not, he admitted, that he had come by it in the normal way. But he doubted any goblin would ever learn he had inflicted the wound with his own hand.

“Best I can do, lad. Dwarven magic doesn’t work so well on goblins, it seems.”

Jig ignored him. He flexed his arm, watching the way his new scar moved with the muscles beneath. Bits of blood flaked away as he moved. He wondered if the scar would fade with time. If only he had been allowed to keep the short sword as well. But Barius had already taken the weapon and tucked it into his own belt. The exuberance of his scar faded as he realized what it had cost him.

He had lost the first good weapon he had ever owned, and for what? To protect an elf girl’s life? These were the people he was supposed to kill. Porak would have taken the sword from Riana and buried it in her back as soon as she turned. Not Jig. No, he had tried to
help
. See where that misguided effort had landed him. Unarmed, and soon to be tied up again like a slave.

Jig tried to tell himself it would have made no difference, that had he used his sword against the adventurers, he would have died instantly. He had seen them fight, and he knew he had no chance. But still the guilt and confusion warred. What was wrong with him?

His only consolation was that the Necromancer would soon make it right. Already one of the party had almost died, and they hadn’t even left the first room. What would they face beyond that door, and how many of them would wish they had drowned in the lake above?

CHAPTER 7

The Heat of Battle

Barius was not happy. “We have still accomplished nothing! The door remains sealed both to my brother’s art and the elf’s tools.”

And the party is short by one finger,
Jig added silently. He watched as Riana examined the lock. She struggled to grasp her tools with her crippled hand, a task made harder by fear. Her hands trembled as they approached the door, and she had yet to actually touch the lock.

Not that Jig blamed her. If he had been in her place, the last thing he’d want to do is poke around the trap a second time. But the ache in his jaw and the rope around his wrists made it hard to feel any sympathy. As Riana tried again to examine the lock, he commented, “I wonder if the Necromancer was clever enough to put a second trap on the lock.”

She leaped away from the door so fast that she tripped and fell. Her tools jingled as they hit the floor. Jig grinned at his mischief. The enemy might be stronger and better armed, but he could still cause trouble.

“Enough,” Barius shouted. He stomped toward Jig. “
You
will probe the lock for further traps.”

Wordlessly, Jig held up his bound wrists. Barius turned a deeper shade of red, and Jig wondered if he had pushed too far.

The prince grabbed the end of Jig’s rope and yanked him upright. He untied the knot and jerked the rope away so quickly Jig lost a layer of skin. Jig started for the door, but Barius caught his ear and held him in place.

Jig stopped, indignant. Didn’t he know you only grabbed
children
that way? No adult goblin would allow himself to be dragged about by the ear. He should bite off Barius’s hand for this. He should plant a lizard-fish in Barius’s bedroll!

Glimpsing the prince’s face, he decided that he should do nothing at all. Barius tied a quick loop in the rope and tightened it about Jig’s neck. Still, the freedom to use his hands was a victory, if a small one. Jig was a small goblin. Perhaps his triumphs were better taken in small bites.

With an impudent grin, Jig headed for the door. Darnak knelt with Riana to one side, trying to boost her spirits. He had given her a bit of his ale, a kind gesture which may have been a mistake. To judge from the way her head wobbled, elves didn’t handle dwarven ale very well.

“Don’t worry about a lost finger,” Darnak said gently. “Many an adventurer has lost a finger, or worse, and still gone on to accomplish great things. Have you heard the song of . . . I forget his name. The little guy with nine fingers, from the middle continent. The one involved with that ring business a while back.”

Jig hovered over them both, clicking his toenails against the floor until Darnak acknowledged him.

“I need a bit of twine.” He held his hands a foot apart to indicate how long.

Darnak said nothing. He still seemed a bit uncomfortable with Jig. Did he feel guilty for almost letting Riana die? Jig didn’t care. In fact, the more uncomfortable they felt, the happier he would be.

Riana wouldn’t look at him at all, but it was harder for Jig to feel pleasure at that. Still, what did Jig care for an elf’s goodwill? If they hated him, he would hate them right back. That was his job. He was a monster and they were adventurers.

As he had hoped, among the endless junk the dwarf carried upon his back, Darnak managed to find a ball of twine, tangled up like an abandoned nest. He ripped a piece free and handed it to Jig.

He seized his trophy and moved to the front of the door, humming quietly under his breath. For once he knew exactly what to do. Better still, none of the others had thought of it. He scooped up one of Riana’s discarded tools, a thin steel rod as long as his hand with several diamond-shaped ridges near one end. He also grabbed her severed finger.

As he lashed the rod to the end of the finger, he began to sing. In Goblin, of course. The song sounded ridiculous in Human.

As he sang, he jabbed the metal rod into the keyhole and wiggled it around. The finger itself felt strangely stiff, more like leather-wrapped wood than flesh. No trace of blood showed at the severed end, and a bit of bone protruded a half inch past the shrunken skin, giving Jig a convenient handle. The poisoned needle jabbed the fingertip repeatedly as he worked, but nothing else happened. He tried for several more minutes, not knowing what exactly might trigger the traps. He could feel the rod scrape the inner workings of the lock, and he poked those as well. Still nothing.

“I guess there are no more traps,” Jig said. He dropped the finger, still tied to the lockpick, and walked back to sit against the wall. If he had built this room, he definitely would have put a second trap there.

Riana stood. Her face was stone as she walked determinedly, if a little unsteadily, to the door. Pale as she was, she didn’t flinch when she picked up the finger and tugged her lockpick free. She used her knife to bend the needle aside, then began to work on the lock itself.

While she worked, Jig went over to claim the discarded twine. He returned to his spot by the wall, where he took his belt pouch and chewed at the leather cord, trying to remove it without damaging the pouch itself. After a few minutes, the old cord lost its fight against goblin teeth, and he slipped it free.

He used the cord to tie the pouch over his right shoulder. Bringing the end of the pouch to his mouth, he used his fangs to bore two holes in the bottom. The twine secured that end to his upper arm. Smudge still refused to crawl into the pouch, and Jig couldn’t blame him. But this would provide a perch where the fire-spider could sit without burning Jig whenever they walked into danger. Which seemed to happen every time Jig took a breath.

“Prepare yourselves,” Barius said. “We’ve dallied here long enough, and the gods only know what waits behind that door.” He grabbed the end of Jig’s rope, looped it once around his wrist, and tugged.

Jig gagged and scrambled to his feet. Riana still hadn’t picked the lock, but Barius’s patience had run out.

Darnak drew his club and moved to stand behind Riana. Ryslind remained where he was, resting against the far wall. His eyes were alert though, Jig noticed. He watched, not the door, but the other adventurers. Jig looked away.