Ed Greenwood: Realms of infamy

"I am older than old for our people," he said softly. "If I see another midwinter's day, I will be forty-six. I ache ceaselessly. I pray for death before I sleep, yet the gods want me to live a little longer." His cold eyes looked across the table at me. "Can you guess why, Captain?"

"Why what, Your Darkness?" I asked after hesitating. I had lost the way of the conversation entirely, and I now considered every word I spoke so I might live the longer.

"Why the gods have kept me alive when I have strived so hard to die," he said patiently. "I rot from within, yet awaken every evening and draw breath into my bleeding lungs. Can you guess why the gods still want me to live a little longer?"

"No, Your Darkness." A lesser person would have offered an opinion-a worthless way to risk one's soul.

The shaman's lips pulled back as if he would laugh. "This last day, the gods spoke to me again," he said, as if the other topic were now forgotten. 'They came to me in a dream. It was time, they said, to free my grandson and send him out from the caverns with a force of true goblins at his command." The old shaman drew in a deep breath through his nose, staring at me. "I've seen fit to end your disenchantment, Captain Kergis. I've already given orders for three sergeants to assemble their squads for a foray this evening. You will go with them, led by my grandson. Draw rations and equipment for a mission far from our Nightbelow, among the lands of humans."

I believed for a moment that I had gone deaf, so incredible was the news. Goblin warriors led by a half-human bastard?

"What is our mission, Your Darkness?" I managed.

"Zeth will let you know," said Skralang. "Obey his every word as you would mine. It is as the gods command."

The wrinkled face suddenly leaned close to me, and I caught a whiff of the drink he had prepared for himself. It was ale mixed with a pain-deadener made from the blossoms of the corpse lily. I knew its scent from the battlefields, where warriors chewed such blossoms to subdue their pain. Sometimes, if badly wounded, the warriors chewed too much and fell into a sleep from which they never awoke. We left them for the dogs to eat.

"The gods have ordained that Zeth must go out," said the shaman steadily. I shuddered at the smell of his breath. "They ordered nothing more. For my part, when he is gone, I am finally free to clear the taint from my family. I will cleanse my line with my daughter's blood, but there is the fear in me that even this will not bring me a long-deserved death. The gods want one thing more of me, and I cannot see into their plans."

Skralang sat back. "My other dreams have all been troubling of late. The gods are unhappy, I fear, with the way the lives of our people have fallen into quarrels and tedium. You are bored, Captain Kergis, because you sense it, too. We have not gone out as we did in the old days to remind the surface world that we exist. We've gotten old in our heads, old and petty, and we hide in our caverns and complain about the dark. We are not the children of our fathers, not fit to be their lowest slaves."

The old shaman's gaze fell, and his face grew slack. "I believe the gods are especially unhappy with me, their servant, for allowing such deterioration to come about. I have favored rest and ease over struggle, against their teachings, and the rot of my words has spread and ruined us." He looked back at me, and his eyes gleamed. "Did you ever wonder in your private moments, Captain Kergis, if the taint among us reflects a greater taint? If Zeth's coming, and the manner of it, was purposeful?"

The old goblin had long ago strayed into territory that not even the greatest fool among us would have tread. I wished now I were back in that stale cavern room, listening to my clan head shriek about his worthless honor.

"Never," I said truthfully.

The shaman's smile deepened. "You will." He dismissed me with a wave and drank again of his cup of poison, swallowing it without so much as a tremor at its bitterness.

There was much that Skralang had not told me. He hadn't said that Zeth's skin was the color of a dead toad's belly, white and dry like the face of the moon. Or that Zeth wore no armor and carried no weapon, and knew nothing of how to use either.

Or that Zeth was blind.

I shivered when I saw the shaman's grandson led out of the mouth of our Nightbelow into the evening air. He was big and long-limbed, no doubt from the human blood in him, but his muscles were slack. I could have thrown him down with only mild effort, had I dared.

And he had no eyes. His eye sockets were dark holes in his face, half-covered by sagging skin that made him appear sad faced. He wore only a short, pale robe, belted with a thin rope. It was the sort of thing only a prisoner or slave would wear, and entirely the wrong color for a warrior at night.

Skralang brought Zeth to me as my warriors looked on with surprise and curiosity. In the failing sunlight, the withered shaman seemed to have deteriorated even more since I had seen him, only hours before. Splotches of blackness dotted his face and arms, marks of a curse on him. I was terrified he would touch me.

"Zeth," said the old shaman with a prompt at his grandson's elbow. "Here are your warriors. Go forth, as the gods have commanded, and carry out their will."

The big half-human stared over me, his unseeing gaze level with the top of my head, then nodded dumbly. I saw that Zeth had no weaponry, and I started to pull an extra dagger from my waist scabbard. Skralang stopped me with an upraised hand. "Not necessary," the old shaman said. "Zeth has no need of blades or armor. He has all he will need."

With a last look at me, the shaman summoned his retinue of guards and servants, then retired inside the cavern. The great doors were pulled shut behind him and barred. Not even the usual guards were posted tonight.

I swallowed as I stared up at the eyeless sockets of the white half-human. He merely looked off to the west, where the sun had vanished a while ago.

"What is your wish?" I finally asked. If I were lucky, Zeth would prove to be mad as well as blind. I wondered if the prohibition against arms and armor was meant to speed his death in battle. It made sense to me. His quick death would release us from this mission, perhaps allowing brief foraging in the countryside to gain a few pigs or cattle before returning to the Nightbelow.

The big half-human slowly turned his head to the south, as if he'd heard something in the gentle wind. Southward lay the kingdom of Durpar, which we had once raided regularly. He nodded slightly, then set off toward that distant land. After two steps, he almost fell over a log that had been pulled up to the cave entrance as a bench. He stumbled, caught himself, and walked on. No one laughed or moved to help him. We merely watched.

I nodded to myself. With luck, the mission would be a short one.

"Single file, scout fore and back, standard march," I called. The warriors glanced at me, then fell into place. We set off into the coming night.

We marched south for about ten hours by the stars. That Zeth had some ability to sense his path became more evident as the night deepened. He would pause at times, then slowly make his way across a creek or through a rock field. At other times, he acted as blind as he appeared, running into low tree branches or dancing out of thistle. Perhaps his hearing gave him a little help, but I began to think perhaps his eyes were present but merely small and deeply set.

Dawn was coming on when I finally moved up alongside the stumbling half-human. I hesitated over proper forms of address, then ignored them all. I couldn't see that it mattered. "Dawn is near," I said under my breath. "We must pitch camp soon."

Zeth marched on in silence, his blind gaze fixed somewhere over the horizon. Abruptly he slowed and stopped. For a moment he stood, his chest heaving from exertion, then nodded quickly. "We will stop here," he gasped. It was more an animal moan than speech, the words wheezed out and half-mumbled. Was Zeth feebleminded as well? What was Skralang up to?