She was past the guards. Using her helpless companion as bait wasn’t the most heroic tactic, but it had worked.
The tunnel had changed since her last visit. Orange insects filled the air, zipping this way and that, riding the currents of the magic. One tried to bite her arm, and she slapped it. She wiped glowing bug guts off her arm and hurried down the tunnel.
Glittering gray frost coated the rock. The dead ogre from before was gone. She looked back, wondering what the pixies would do to Slash. She hoped they wouldn’t kill him.
The tunnel never became truly dark. The orange bugs continued to circle her. Their light reflected from the frost, illuminating the walls as she ran. As she neared Straum’s lair, the light grew stronger. The warmth of the magic increased as well, making her sweat beneath her cloak. She pressed to one side of the tunnel and peered into the cave the dragon had once called home.
Crystalline ice lined the walls, the facets reflecting colored light in every direction. The ice itself seemed to glow, as if some of that light had been frozen within.
A bone-white mound sat in a depression on the far side of the cave. Golden sunlight spilled from a round, jagged hole in one side of the mound. She could feel the magic from here, enough to make the hair on her arms and neck stand at attention. If that wasn’t the portal, she would eat her spellbook.
As far as she could tell, there were only two pixies in the cave. Two-winged worker pixies, not the warriors from outside. It would have been her luck to show up right as an army of pixie warrior-wizards were coming through, but for once, fate’s dice had fallen in her favor.
A bright yellow pixie hovered on the far side of the cave. Her green companion crouched on the ground, struggling to maneuver a long pole-arm. Swarms of orange gnats circled angrily as he tugged. The point of the weapon slowly scraped along the rock, toward what appeared to be some kind of hive.
“You’re mad,” the yellow pixie said. Veka’s heart pounded as the pixie flitted in Veka’s direction, but then she turned back. “The queen ordered all death-metal buried beneath the ice.”
“She also—” The green pixie grunted and strained as the pole-arm started to slip away. There was something wrong with his wings, but from this angle, Veka couldn’t tell what. “She also ordered us to take care of the sparks. I for one don’t intend to stand around swatting bugs all day.”
The hive was a frosted, warty bulge in the ice about the size of a goblin’s skull. The tip of the pole-arm brushed the hive, sending up a tiny geyser of steam. More gnats exploded from the hive, swarming toward the pixies.
“Don’t drop it!” the yellow pixie shrieked.
The one on the ground grunted as he jabbed the tip deeper into the hive. He stepped back and fished a small bronze fruit from his vest. It looked like the globules she had seen growing beneath the ice. He popped it in his mouth, sucked for a moment, then spat out the wrinkled skin. “There’s not enough metal in this stick to damage the portal.”
“But if the queen comes back—”
“She won’t.” He pointed at the hive, and Veka felt the tremors of magic. It reminded her of the spell she had used on the lizard-fish, back at the lake.
Orange bugs streaked toward the head of the pole-arm. The pixie’s magic drove them into the steel, where they died in tiny flashes of light. Bodies sprinkled down on the green pixie like rain. “Ha! What do you say now, Wholoo?” He laughed and danced a victory jig as the bugs continued to dive to their deaths.
Veka’s jaw clenched as she realized who it was. She had never actually seen Snixle before, but she recognized the inflection of his voice, the way he moved. It was easier to recognize someone when they had inhabited your body for a time.
Why wouldn’t Snixle be here? He was the muckworker of the pixie world, cleaning up their messes and doing the jobs nobody else wanted. While the others went off to defend the queen, he was stuck here fighting bugs.
With the worst of the bugs littering the ground, Snixle bent down to adjust the butt of the weapon. Where his wings should have been, two tattered fragments protruded from his shoulders. He gave off less light than the yellow pixie, Wholoo. A deep green fluid had oozed over the torn ends of his wings. This was a recent injury then.
That meant he wouldn’t have adjusted to his loss yet. Veka had seen it before, watching the younger goblins torture rats. The maimed rats needed to learn how to move all over again. Snixle’s reflexes would be wrong.
Veka grabbed the rest of her goblin prickers and launched them at the yellow pixie. The pixie saw them coming and tried to dodge, but it was too late. Two caught her in the back and leg. Wholoo fell like the bugs she had been working to kill. Snixle let go of the pole-arm, which tipped over backward.
Already Veka was up and running. She saw Snixle leap back, then fall, unable to complete his instinctive retreat to the air.
Veka smacked Wholoo with her staff, then pounced on Snixle, wrapping her fingers around his slender body.
Snixle squirmed briefly, then his head slumped. “Go ahead and eat me,” he mumbled. “That’s what you goblins do, isn’t it?”
Veka hesitated. The maimed pixie was, in a word, pathetic. Skinny, too. There was hardly enough meat on those tiny bones to make him worth the effort. “What happened to you, Snixle?”
His head jerked back up, and his glow brightened slightly. “Veka?” A tentative smile spread across his bruised face. “Is that you? I thought Jig Dragonslayer killed you!”
Veka shook her head. “When he stabbed me, it broke your spell. Then he healed me.”
“The disruptive effect of death-metal, yes,” Snixle said, nodding. “That makes sense. But why did he save you?”
“Because he’s Jig. That’s what he does.” She turned him around to examine his wings.
“The queen,” Snixle whispered. “When she learned how I failed to capture Jig Dragonslayer, and that I had kept you a secret . . .” Tears filled his eyes. “I didn’t mean to disappoint her. She should have killed me. You can’t know the agony of disappointing her, Veka. I wish she had killed me, but she ordered me to remain, to clean the sparks out of our cave.”
Glowing snot dripped from his nose. He was a pitiful sight. The queen’s magic was strong indeed, to command this kind of loyalty. She wondered how Jig would overcome it. “Sparks?”
He tilted his head toward the insect hive. “Nasty things. They feed on the blood and magic of pixies and other magical creatures.” He sniffled and bent his neck, wiping his face on Veka’s thumb. “How did you get in? There were guards—”
“I snuck past,” she said.
“You’re going to try to close the gateway, aren’t you?” He shook his head. “Twenty of the strongest pixies worked together to open that portal. You’ll never be able to destroy it.”
She stepped toward the white hill, feeling the magic wash over her body. Snixle was right. Even this close, the sheer power pouring from the gateway made her want to shield her face. Enough power to transform the entire mountain. She knelt, trying to peer through, to get a glimpse of the pixies’ world, but the sunlight was too bright.
“It’s not too late,” Snixle said. “We could still go to the queen—”
Veka shook her head. “Jig’s leading an attack against the queen.”
“No!” He couldn’t have looked more distraught if she had eaten his legs. He twisted and squirmed, pounding Veka’s fingers with his tiny fists. “I have to help her. I have to fight—”
Veka gave him a shake. “You have to show me how this gateway works.”
“I can’t! I have to save the queen.” He closed his eyes, and Veka felt a swelling of magic within her hand as Snixle fought to take control, to reestablish the spell he had used on her before.
Veka strode to the edge of the cave and rapped him against the ice on the wall. “Stop that.”
Snixle’s spell dissipated at once. He groaned and closed his eyes. Another rush of magic swept past her.
The buzzing of insects warned her what Snixle had done. Veka leaped aside as a swarm of sparks rushed after her. Her staff clattered to the ground. She spun and flung Snixle into the middle of the swarm.
He yelped and curled into a ball. Bugs flew in every direction. Snixle’s torn wings fluttered uselessly, and then he hit the ground and skidded into the wall. Veka hurried to scoop him up, but she needn’t have bothered. Snixle swayed as he tried to stand. Even with one hand on the wall, he could barely keep himself upright.
Veka picked him back up and flicked a spark off of his neck. “Next time, I’ll just squeeze.”
Snixle nodded. “But the queen. I can’t abandon—”
“Hush.” Her ears twitched. She could hear shouting from the tunnel. She bit her lip, recognizing Slash’s voice. At least he was still alive.
Snixle used her distraction to try one more time to enchant her. Her skin tingled, and her muscles grew heavy. Veka couldn’t help but admire the little pixie. Bruised and battered, he still tried to fight.
She bounced him against the wall again, then stuffed his unconscious body into her pocket as she searched for a place to hide. The only shelter was the hill itself, the white mound that housed the pixies’ portal. She crouched behind it, pulling her cloak around her body. The dark material wouldn’t do much to conceal her, not when everything from the ice to the bugs generated its own light, but it was the best she could do.
Flickering flames marked the arrival of the giant serpent. Several pixies flew into the cave ahead of the snake. “Hey, Snixle, Wholoo, we caught a hobgoblin prancing around outside. He says his friend was coming this way.”
Veka’s fangs pressed her cheeks. The stupid hobgoblin had probably started babbling the moment he woke up. Cowards, all of them.
Then again, she had sent him bouncing over the landscape as a distraction. She might not feel terribly loyal either, if he had done something like that to her.
“Down here,” said another pixie. “Wholoo’s dead.”
“Where’s Snixle?”
Their lights danced along the ice as they flew down to investigate the body of the pixie Veka had slain. She didn’t have much time before they found her. She had to figure out how to destroy the gate.
“Stay back. Let Moltiki deal with her.”
Veka peeked around the hill, trying to figure out which one was Moltiki. The other pixies retreated to the entrance. Surrounded by pixies, Slash pressed himself to the wall as the giant snake slid into the cave, sniffing the air. As Snixle had taught her, she tried to reach out, to touch the snake’s body with her magic. She had commanded hundreds of lizard-fish. How hard could a single giant snake be?
She wove magic like a shell, a second skin she could use to surround Moltiki, to control the snake’s movements. Slowly that shell shrank into place.
The instant the magic touched the snake’s skin, her spell shattered. She bit back a scream of pain. Moltiki reared, tongue flickering madly. One of the pixies shouted, “She’s by the hill!”
She wasn’t strong enough to break their control over the snake. All she had done was reveal her position, giving herself a skull-splitting headache in the process.
She edged around the hill, toward the back of the cave. She thought about simply running through the gate, but what would she accomplish? Even if she survived, she would be alone and lost in another world. Better to end things quickly, but how?
She could sense the magic pouring through the portal, but she didn’t have the slightest idea what to do with it. If she tried to block the flow, that magic would rip her apart.
Moltiki crept closer. Veka pressed her hands and face against the hill. The mound’s rough surface scratched her skin. What was this thing made of? Unlike the ice and stone of the cave, this was dry and warm. Too hard and uniform for wood, and too rough for stone. More than anything else, it reminded her of bone.
Veka backed away, staring at the mound and imagining . . . That bulge around the base could be a tail coiled against the body. The other side of the hill narrowed like a neck, with the great skull resting between his feet.
The pixies needed a powerful concentration of magic to serve as an anchor for their portal, and what greater magic than the body of Straum himself? They had fused the bones into a single invulnerable shell. The skull housed the actual gate. To physically destroy the hill, she would need to shatter the skeleton of a dragon. Easier to rip apart the mountain itself. No wonder they hadn’t left more guards. What could a single goblin do against this?
“I see her!” One of the pixies waved his hands, and Moltiki lunged for her. How could something so big be so fast? Veka’s size had only ever slowed her down.
She dove away, stumbling into the icy wall. Strange that she didn’t feel cold. Oh yes, that would be because Moltiki had set her cloak on fire. She stripped the cloak from her body and flung it at Moltiki’s face. Wearing nothing but her old muckworking clothes, she backed away.
The giant snake slid around behind her, positioning his huge body between Veka and the exit.
“What did you think you were doing, goblin?” asked the lead pixie.
Moltiki’s tail smashed her side. It was like being hit with a tree. A burning tree. With rough scales that shredded her apron and the skin beneath. Old muck stains on her clothes smoked in response to the flames. Veka cowered against the hill, her hands up in a futile gesture to ward off the next blow.
“This is what you want,” Slash shouted from the entrance. He held up a small rectangular box that appeared to be made of wood. “This is what she planned to use to close the gate.”
The pixies hesitated. Moltiki’s burning eyes stared into Veka’s. His mouth was open, and he could have swallowed Veka whole before she could draw breath to scream. For now, though, everyone’s attention was on Slash.
Veka rubbed her head. What was that stupid hobgoblin talking about? Where had that box come from?