Jean Rabe - Death March

When he returned to Mudwort, carrying the basket protectively close, he saw that the other earth-skinned goblin was sitting across from her, their fingers sunk into the dirt and their eyes closed. They were casting magic together, he was excited to see.

Direfang loomed over Mudwort, however, and several other goblins hovered nearby, all of them clearly curious. With a scowl, Direfang waved the wizard away.

Grallik sighed with disappointment, knowing he’d missed an opportunity to talk to Mudwort and an even greater opportunity to observe her working her strange magic. He turned to seek Horace’s and Kenosh’s company.

“Sit,” Mudwort said, surprising him and the others.

Grallik wasn’t aware she’d seen him and wasn’t sure she was even talking to him. But then she repeated her command, her head turned ever-so-slightly toward him. Perhaps her eyes were not completely closed after all. Or perhaps she had heard him return. He drew his eyebrows together thoughtfully.

Or perhaps she’d sensed him walking on the path as her fingers were buried in it.

His hesitation was brief. He sat cross-legged next to her and the brown-skinned goblin. He sat closer to her than before; he could reach over and touch her if he tried. Direfang and the others stepped back, giving them space.

“Boliver,” Mudwort said, introducing her companion goblin to Grallik. “A clan shaman in the Before Time. Boliver is a stoneteller.”

Grallik didn’t know what the Before Time was, nor a stoneteller, and neither goblin explained further.

Boliver nodded without opening his eyes. His lips were working, like a babe suckling, and the muscles in his arms jumping.

“Boliver, this is the hated Dark Knight that watches,” Mudwort continued. “The one who wielded the hated fire magic in Steel Town. The one that burns the bodies. The one that wants to mingle magic.” She spat at the ground near Grallik’s knee. “The dirty, smelly Dark Knight with all the fire-scars.”

Grallik felt unnerved by Mudwort’s description of him.

She cocked her head toward the wizard, as if she were waiting for something. Grallik didn’t know what to do or what she expected.

Was he allowed to speak?

He set his basket in his lap and put his hands on his knees, finding a hole in his clothing and once more worrying at the threads. He coughed once and a deeper, brief hacking followed. He’d not been able to entirely shake the cough he’d developed in Steel Town, but he noticed it had been getting better the farther away from the mine they traveled.

“The hated Dark Knight hesitates. Frightened maybe?” That was Boliver’s statement. The goblin chuckled mirthlessly.

“I … I don’t understand,” Grallik said. “What should I do?”

Neither goblin responded, their fingers sinking deeper into the hard-packed ground. A moment more, and their hands disappeared below the surface. Mudwort leaned forward until her head touched Boliver’s.

Gravel crunched and Grallik looked up to see Direfang edging closer again. The hobgoblin’s gaze was fixed on Mudwort.

“Mudwort,” Direfang began. “As I said, the maps the dwarf drew are not enough to go on, and the mountains stretch too far. This army stops in the Plains of Dust-”

“Unless there is a shorter way,” she finished. “Yes, I know. You seek a better way to the forest.”

“Mudwort’s forest,” Boliver said.

Grallik glanced at Direfang, then returned his attention to the two goblins. He stretched a hand forward, tentatively, and touched the ground in front of him. It felt as hard as stone.

“What magic do you possess?” he whispered, half to himself, half to Mudwort. “How can you possibly-” He gasped as his fingers suddenly slipped down into the earth, the ground becoming soft and malleable as wet clay. It was nothing he did himself, he knew, as he’d cast no spell, nor even searched his memory for one.

It was all her doing, he decided, gasping again when her fingers grabbed his beneath the surface and tugged his arms deeper still. Grallik set his other hand upon the ground, feeling it solid at first, then yielding. More fingers grabbed that hand, and he couldn’t tell if those belonged to Mudwort or Boliver.

Grallik struggled for air, feeling a painful tightness in his chest, as if the goblins meant to suffocate him in the dirt. He felt dizzy as his mind spiraled down into the ground. A heartbeat later, and he felt as if he were rising. Though his eyes were wide open and staring at Mudwort, an image superimposed itself on his vision; he realized he was staring down at the two goblins and himself from a point high above them on the trail.

He opened his mouth to ask “How?” but he couldn’t speak. It was their spell, he realized, Mudwort and Boliver’s; and they’d pulled him into it somehow, maybe using his arcane energies to help power it. That would explain the dizziness, the feeling of being siphoned. He closed his eyes as the view became clearer. As if he were a bird soaring on some thermal updraft, looking down on the world. He rose, and the image of himself and the two goblins, of Direfang hovering and goblins upon goblins stretched out along the trail, became smaller and smaller until all were specks.

In his precious spell tomes in Steel Town, there was an incantation like the spell he was experiencing. It was not joined magic, of course; before watching the goblins, he’d not thought it possible to join magic. But the “distant view,” a spell like that stirred a memory. Arcane eye, arcane vision, magic sight … something like that was the name of the enchantment. He’d cast it once or twice, a long time past. He’d collected the necessary words for it during his study with the black-robed wizards before the Chaos War. He had written them down in a precious spell tome, lost when the earthquakes hit.

He’d never had a reason to use such a spell since his early years, so preoccupied had he become with his destructive fire enchantments. Amazing spellcraft! he thought as his mind floated higher, and vaguely he registered that he was growing weaker still. Mudwort is definitely feeding off me. The spell was parasitic, evidently. But Grallik didn’t care. She and Boliver were tugging him along, and he savored the experience.

He spied a river running parallel to the mountains, on the other side of the western ridge. Grallik knew Mudwort would tell Direfang about the water and that they would look for a shortcut to reach it. They were all so thirsty, despite drinking out of the stream near Reorx’s Cradle. The river he saw was wide and dark with night, with the moon reflected in it, the shimmering ripples stark against the black water, adding to the wizard’s dizziness.

There seemed no more mountains west of the river. Grallik released a sigh of relief. He was so tired of all the damnable rocks that rose all around him and the sharp little ones along the trail that bit into his painfully-aching feet. There were low hills farther west, but they evinced gentle slopes. The land beyond them smoothed to a plain divided by a winding road.

He wanted to linger over the inviting countryside, but Mudwort didn’t seem too interested in the area.

The image of the river returned, and the goblins’ magic followed it south. The river narrowed, with pines growing along its banks. The roots of the pines looked like black snakes slithering into the equally black river, the tall trees cutting some of the moonlight and making the scene look eerie.

Startled, Grallik heard the splash of some fish and the rustling of branches as a great horned owl took flight. There was a smattering of the sound of smaller wings-blackbirds that had been disturbed by something. He could smell the river; then the goblins’ magic took him low across the clear water. Grallik tried to hold the refreshing scent in deep and memorize it. That helped to banish the vestiges of char that had clung to his nostrils since he had burned the last batch of goblin bodies.