The Maelstrom Page 14

  “Well, why wouldn’t I?” retorted Max, glaring at David whose face appeared inside the wagon.

  “Because you’re young, handsome, and inexperienced,” remarked the smee. “Most girls take one look at you and swoon. You’ve never had to really work for someone’s affection or put effort into maintaining it. In many ways, your natural gifts have done you a disservice—they’ve stunted your sensitivity and charm! You’ve never had to develop insight into what will make a girl laugh and come to love you for reasons that aren’t handsome or heroic. That’s why smees are experts on the subtle arts of courtship and seduction; nothing comes easy to us, but we do understand and live by the Lover’s Maxim.”

  “And what on earth is the Lover’s Maxim?” asked Max, feeling very uninformed.

  The smee cleared his throat. “If you can’t be handsome, be rich. If you can’t be rich, be strong. If you can’t be strong, be witty.”

  “But what if you can’t be witty?” Max wondered.

  “Learn the guitar.”

  David snorted with laughter, but Max did not. He considered these words and the unexpectedly sage marmot sitting beside him, casually grooming his coat.

  “I suppose you’ve had a slew of relationships,” Max ventured.

  “Indeed,” purred Toby with dreamy nostalgia. “Some lasted years; others were no more than a delightful afternoon. But all were torrid, mind you. The blood of a smee runs hot!”

  “Okaaay,” said Max weakly, regretting this last inquiry. He returned to his own wagon before the creature delved into details; the very idea of a lothario smee was quite enough after such a harrowing night. Skeedle had finished tending after the mules and was squinting up at the pale blue sky.

  “Fair weather,” he remarked. “Or fair enough. How’d the wagon handle?”

  “Super,” Max deadpanned, squeezing back in next to Kolbyt who was now draped across the seat and snoring to wake the dead. “How much longer do you think he’ll sleep?”

  “Hopefully till we’re on the Ravenswood Spur,” said Skeedle. “By then, he’ll have to give in and go all the way to Piter’s Folly. If he starts belly growling and gnawing on his lip, it means he’s getting hungry. If that happens, just stuff some of this faun tripe into his mouth so he doesn’t wake up.”

  “It just gets better,” sighed Max, frowning at the dented tins Skeedle dropped onto the seat.

  They drove on for the better part of two days, crossing a broad expanse of foothills and valleys. Whenever Skeedle grew too tired, they pulled the wagons over and secured the mules while David or Toby kept watch from inside via an ingenious device the Broadbrims installed in their best wagons. From the outside, what appeared to be nothing more than a small skylight was actually a sort of periscope whose system of mirrors granted those within an excellent view of their surroundings. With its surveillance, armored plating, and a plethora of hidden murder holes, the wagons were like miniature fortresses rolling their way over hills and hollows.

  Thus far, however, they’d had little need of defenses. But for the occasional sight of a distant castle or lonely farmstead, the land was largely uninhabited. The endless road and Kolbyt’s continued slumber provided Max with plenty of time to think. Whenever his seatmate stirred, Max merely opened one of the tins and held his nose while dangling the bulbous strip of pungent tripe above the goblin’s sharp, serrated maw. Like a shark preparing to take bait, the goblin’s jaws distended. With a sudden snap, the creature would snatch the flesh away and mince it about from cheek to cheek. Within seconds of gulping it down, the snoring resumed.

  As the mules swallowed up the miles, Max found time to reflect upon Toby’s jibes. Perhaps he had treated Julie poorly. He’d always thought of themselves as victims of circumstance, star-crossed lovers. After all, Mr. Sikes had meddled with their relationship, and his Red Branch duties often required Max to travel far away on long and dangerous missions. He had given up trying to live the life of a typical Rowan student, but perhaps he bore more responsibility for the relationship’s failure. Perhaps he could have been more considerate of Julie’s feelings. Max suspected this was true. But he also had to be honest with himself. When death was near in Prusias’s Arena, his heart had made things abundantly clear. The person he’d longed for, the face that flashed before his dimming eyes had not been Julie’s.…

  The wagon gave a sudden jolt and nearly tipped forward as one of the mules stumbled into a ditch. Max pitched off the seat and clung to the rail as empty tins rattled about his head or clattered overboard to go bouncing down the road. Braying irritably, the mule regained its footing and the wagon righted itself. Cursing, Max climbed back into his seat and looked about for the reins.

  He found them clutched in the hands of a confused and very angry goblin.

  Cursing, the goblin set to kicking at Max with an iron-soled shoe.

  “Skeedle!” Max yelled, absorbing a heavy blow as he scrambled over the driver’s railing. The other wagon continued on, oblivious, as Kolbyt lashed out with a whip that nicked Max’s ear.

  “Skeedle!” he cried again, crabbing sideways on the wagon, clinging to walls, until he could swing himself up onto its roof. Startled by the commotion, the mules snorted and trotted faster. Wheels skipped and bounced over the rough road as the wagon closed the distance on the one ahead. When they clattered past Skeedle, the little goblin offered a cheerful wave.

  Upon seeing his cousin, Kolbyt tugged furiously on the reins. The wagon lurched wildly, nearly flinging Max from the roof, as the mules stumbled and slowed and finally came to a panting halt. Leaping down, Kolbyt lumbered toward the other wagon.

  Skeedle met him in the middle, the two goblins smacking into one another’s stomachs. The impact was such that each staggered back. Resuming the struggle, they bellowed furiously at one another in a flurry of harsh, unintelligible words while each clutched his absurd hat and sought to force the other backward with his belly.

  The showdown lasted nearly fifteen minutes. By then, Max had climbed down off the wagon’s roof and joined David and Toby to await the outcome. Max was amazed that Skeedle could hold his own. The little goblin was half his cousin’s size, a mere peanut colliding with a pear. But he was a stubborn peanut and not in the least cowed by his more massive relation.

  Occasionally, one of the goblins would jab a stubby finger at their passengers and renew their bellowing, but soon they grew too exhausted for even these demonstrations. The only word Max understood was Yuga, for the older goblin uttered it several times. At times, it appeared that Kolbyt’s saggy bulk would win the day, but Skeedle held firm until the larger goblin tired. The final minutes were little more than the two combatants propping each other up, clutching their brims, and growling.

  At last Kolbyt broke away, glowering and wiping his nostrils with a brawny forearm. Muttering something to his cousin, he shook his head disapprovingly and turned to gaze down the road.

  “Well,” said Skeedle, coming over and catching his breath, “everything’s all worked out. He’s really a softy at heart and I’ve always been his favorite relative.”

  “So he’ll take us to Piter’s Folly?” said David.

  “Oh no,” Skeedle chuckled. “He says it’s much too dangerous—not worth anywhere near what I’ll be paying him. But he’ll tell you what he knows about the Great Piter Lady and we’ll drive you close and leave you with one of the wagons. From there you’re on your own.”

  “That’s fine,” said Max. “Can I ask you what it’s going to cost you, though? I hope it’s not too much.”

  “My trade wagon for one year,” replied Skeedle, readjusting his hat. “A deep bite given wartime profits, but I’ll manage.”

  “We’ll see what we can do to compensate you,” Max promised. He knew the journey was already dangerous and didn’t want to bankrupt the little goblin in the bargain.

  But Skeedle waved him off. Grinning, the goblin lowered his voice. “Plümpka’s already promised me three more wagons and choicer routes because of the t
roll. What Kolbyt doesn’t know won’t hurt him. He can have my old wagon; the latest models are equipped with fire spouts!”

  Skeedle tittered at the mere thought of his potential wealth. Having checked on the mules, Kolbyt lumbered over. Pointing at the smee, the goblin hooked a thumb and indicated that Toby was to ride with him.

  “But why me?” protested the smee. “I’m perfectly comfortable in the other wagon.”

  “Because Kolbyt can tell you all about the Great Piter Lady,” explained Skeedle. “At Piter’s Folly, you’ll have to take his shape and pretend to be him. There’s just one thing.…”

  “What?” inquired the marmot suspiciously.

  “Well,” said Skeedle, glancing at his cousin, “Kolbyt wants you to change shape now.”

  “Into what, pray tell?”

  “A hag,” blurted Skeedle, flushing green. “A big one.”

  The smee looked from one goblin to the other, utterly appalled and speechless.

  “I am a spy, sir!” he finally declared. “An espionage agent par excellence, a master of ruse de guerre. My duties most certainly do not include taking the guise of some gargantuan hag so that your depraved relations can paw at me.”

  “He promises not to touch,” said Skeedle. “But it’s a long trip to Piter’s Folly; Kolbyt just wants something pretty to look at along the way. He gets lonely.”

  Outraged, the smee turned to Max and David for support. The boys merely shrugged.

  “First a steed, now an escort,” grumbled Toby. “This trip will never make my memoirs.…”

  Before their eyes, the smee swelled into a squat hag with greasy gray skin, a tuft of auburn frizz, and a fleecy orange robe. After appraising her, Kolbyt grunted to his cousin.

  “He says you look very nice,” translated Skeedle. “But perhaps a little larger. He says—”

  Toby exploded. “I know perfectly well what he said!”

  Panting, the smee ballooned so that his flesh expanded like rising dough. When a fourth chin appeared, Kolbyt grunted his approval. Beaming, the goblin proudly ushered the enormous, petrified hag to his wagon and helped her up into the driver’s seat.

  They resumed their journey to Piter’s Folly, Max now luxuriating in the compartment of Skeedle’s wagon. As expected, the smee had devoured almost all of the chocolate, but Max found that several treats remained and kicked off his boots to savor a cherry tart and survey the scenery through the small windows. Finishing his snack, he smacked away the remaining crumbs and burrowed beneath a blanket for a well-deserved nap.

  The next morning, they veered the wagons onto the smaller road known as the Ravenswood Spur. While the main highway curved away south, the new road wound north and east toward the Carpathians. Day after day, the wagons clattered toward the looming gray mountains, stopping only to rest the mules or for the goblins to snatch a few hours’ sleep.

  There were no human travelers on the road, but they did encounter several goblins—a small caravan of surly Blackhorns and a solitary Highboot whom Kolbyt would most certainly have robbed had they not forbidden it. The skies were growing ever heavier, ever darker as they headed northeast and began to climb again into hilly terrain.

  Past a windswept hillock, Max saw the first evidence of Prusias’s war. It came in the form of a caravan that had been driven off the road and into a pond of brackish water. At first Max thought it was the water’s steam rising into the chill morning, but it was smoke still trickling from the charred crumble of wagons that had been incinerated down to the shallow water-line. Among the grisly spectacle, Max saw the twisted forms of burned horses and several others that were vaguely man-shaped. As Skeedle halted the mules, Max got out to scan the road as it climbed up into the mountains, winding amid the jutting clefts until it disappeared in the mist. Glancing about, he saw no evidence of the attackers; no hoof marks or even boot prints were pressed into the frosted soil. Several ravens hopped about the wreckage, eyeing Max suspiciously as he walked about the water’s edge. When he stepped into the icy shallows, they cawed and flapped heavily away.

  Kolbyt bellowed something in his guttural speech. Max turned to see the goblin swaddled in wolf pelts next to Toby, whose plump, haggish face looked cold and miserable.

  “He says we should move on,” reported Toby. “We’re too exposed out here—better that we get up into the mountains.”

  Max nodded and took one last look at a scorched carcass before heading back inside the wagon.

  David glanced up from his solitaire game. “What was it?” he asked.

  “Four, maybe five wagons. All burned to a crisp and piled atop one another in a bog. No sign of survivors. No sign of the attackers, either.”

  “I imagine we’ll see many such things before we get to Piter’s Folly,” remarked David, ducking to avoid hitting his head on the roof as the wagon bounced over a rut.

  “I wish we were already there,” Max muttered. “I’ve been thinking about Walpurgisnacht. Your grandfather magicked us back to Rowan in an instant—without any tunnels or the observatory’s help. How did he do that?”

  David smiled and lay down a final card.

  “Because he’s Elias Bram. My grandfather’s capable of many things that are beyond my power. People like to make comparisons between us, but in truth there is no comparison.”

  “Well, why couldn’t he have brought us to Piter’s Folly?” Max wondered, calculating that they had at least another week of hard travel through dangerous country. “It would have been so much faster.”

  “You sound like Ms. Richter.” David smiled. “She’d like nothing better than to hand the Archmage a list of miracles to perform. But Prusias and the Workshop aren’t his priorities, much less some smuggler in a backwater like Piter’s Folly. Imperfect as it is, my tunnel has still gotten us where we are almost a month faster than Ormenheid could and two months faster than an ordinary ship. Let’s be satisfied with that and do our jobs so the Archmage can do his.”

  “And what is that?” asked Max.

  “Hunting Astaroth,” replied David, pushing aside the cards and pouring Max some coffee. “Not such an easy task—the Demon might not even be in this dimension, much less this world.”

  “You still call him ‘the Demon,’ ” Max noted. “Even after what your grandfather said.”

  “If that’s what Astaroth’s pretending to be, then that’s what I’ll call him,” replied David. “Knowing what something wants to be is very telling. Astaroth aspires to be the ‘Great God’ and he’s masqueraded as a demon to achieve this goal. Whatever his true origins, it’s clear that he really has become a demon in some respects. After all, he can be summoned against his will, and he must obey Solomon’s circles if they’re properly inscribed. Until I know what he truly is, he’ll always be ‘the Demon.’ ”

  Sipping his coffee, Max considered this and gazed out one of the portholes. The marshy land was gone, the hardscrabble terrain growing hillier as the wagons climbed higher into the mountains. He spied a withered hawthorn clinging to life among the rocky soil. There was something vaguely unsettling about the tree, the way its limbs twitched and waved while its neighbors were still. Max shifted to keep it within view, half expecting to glimpse Astaroth peering back at him from behind its black trunk. As the wagon rumbled onward, the tree was lost from view, but Max’s worries remained. He brooded upon the Demon’s white, masklike face, a face that rarely blinked and always smiled.

  As they crossed the Carpathians, Max asked several times if Skeedle would like a rest, but the goblin declined. He sat low in the driver’s seat, his hat scrunched down upon his knobby head while he clutched the reins in his calloused hands. Max was puzzled by the goblin’s taciturn mood. Given the road’s sinister reputation, Max thought they’d enjoyed tremendous luck. They’d encountered hardly any travelers, much less the bandits or armies that Alistair had warned of. They’d passed several burned out farmhouses and homesteads but seen no trace of anything on a larger scale. If war had begun in earnest, it had not tro
dden heavily on the region.

  Descending the mountain passes, they followed the Ravenswood Spur through dark forests and shaded hills until they were a stone’s throw from a snowy riverbank. Shortly after noon, Max was sitting next to Skeedle in the driver’s seat when the goblin called out for his cousin to halt.

  “It’s too quiet,” Skeedle whispered. “No birds, no foxes … not even a wolf has come sniffing after us and you know how they crave goblin! We’re but two wagons and there have been no bandits or highwaymen. It’s not natural. Th-there’s something out here and it’s watching us. I think it’s been with us since the mountains. My mind’s playing tricks—I’m seeing things in the trees and rocks. Faces.” The little goblin was absolutely trembling. Mopping his forehead, he peered up at Max with an expression of shameful desperation. Tears formed in his shiny black eyes. “I—I don’t know if I can go any farther,” he stammered. “I thought I’d be brave enough, but the Spur’s not like what I expected. The sooner I go home, the happier I’ll be. Would you think I’m a coward if I turn back?”

  “No,” said Max gently. “I think you’ve already taken on more than I had a right to ask. Let’s give the mules a rest while I talk to David and Toby.”

  While Skeedle and Kolbyt fed the mules and tinkered with the wagon, Max explained the situation to the others. Consulting his map, David glanced at the river and traced his finger on the parchment.

  “I think that river’s the former Vistula,” he said. “We have maybe another seventy or eighty miles to Piter’s Folly. We can go on alone if Toby thinks he’s gotten enough information from Kolbyt.”

  “I know everything he knows—or at least everything he can recall,” Toby sniffed. “Broadbrim clan lore ad nauseam, their history with Madam Petra, how to enter Piter’s Folly, et cetera, et cetera. I’m a certified expert on everything that rattles around that goblin’s head, and I’ll confess there’s a great deal I’d rather not know. He’s indecent.”

  “So Toby can bluff his way in,” Max concluded. “But how are we going to get in to see her?”