The Kingdom - Clare B Dunkle - Hollow Kingdom 01 - The Hollow Kingdom

Marak paused, cradling the foot in one gray hand, and looked up sharply. “So Kate doesn’t want to be my wife,” he said, and grinned, showing his sharp, dark teeth. Emily flinched and decided that he was rather ghastly after all. “Well, young M, just what do you suggest I do? The goblin King can’t marry his own kind. Should I go about holding hands and making sheep’s eyes at farmers’ daughters till some girl decides to give goblin life a try? And what if she balks at the first sight of her subjects or panics halfway through the ceremony? Do I peck her a fond kiss farewell and start all over again?” He gave a short laugh at the thought. “A long life my race would have if we Kings behaved like that. No, the King’s Wife is always a capture. It’s the only prudent way.” He went back to his ministrations on the torn-up foot.

Emily considered that this was the most splendidly evil speech she had heard in her whole short life. She was lost in admiration of its appalling wickedness. Then she frowned again, stabbed with a sudden concern.

“But Kate loves being outside under the moon and the stars,” she said. “If you marry her, couldn’t she at least come out sometimes?”

“No,” said Marak flatly. “But she’ll settle in. They always do.”

“Did your first wife settle in?” asked Emily. Marak fixed her with a glare.

“My first wife went mad,” he said abruptly. “She didn’t believe in goblins.” He went back to his work. “I found her by the lakeshore one evening, picking flowers, and I took her home there and then. But it seems the fool’s mother had gone mad, and she was always waiting her turn. She fainted during the wedding ceremony, and we never had another lucid word out of her. She believed we were just some sort of dream she was having, a delusion in her mind. I studied magic tirelessly after that, trying to find a cure, but I found nothing, absolutely nothing, that would touch pure human madness.” He shook his head, sharp teeth bared and a look of disgust stamped on his pallid face.

Emily watched the strange creature silently for a moment, thinking about that poor stolen woman. “Kate says she’ll never survive it,” she insisted anxiously. “She says she knows it’ll kill her.”

“Is that so?” remarked the goblin, failing to sound impressed. He had concluded the search for injuries. He pressed his long, bony fingers on Kate’s forehead again. “And what is she going to die of, exactly?”

Emily told him Mrs. Bigelow’s story about the cold, dank caves under the Hill. She told him about the hideous things that lived there and about the poor goblin brides, their hair turning white and their skin growing gray, nursing their squalling goblin brats in the dripping caverns far from the sun.

Marak threw back his head and laughed. Reaching up, he extinguished the little orb. Then he turned to Emily. “And you believed her, did you?” he hooted. “Really, M, what a tale!”

“But you live underground, don’t you?” she persisted.

“We live under the Hill, yes,” he affirmed.

“And is it—really awful—in those caves underground?”

“It is more beautiful than you could possibly imagine,” he said impatiently.

Emily pondered this statement. More beautiful than she could imagine. She considered the dank backdrop of her gaunt, white-haired goblin bride and added some sparkle to the cave walls. More beautiful still. She put in a subterranean stream and shiny rock formations. More beautiful than that. She sighed and gave it up.

“If you steal Kate, would you steal me, too?” Her voice trembled.

Marak was studying the sleeping Kate. He glanced up and grinned at her. “A little young, aren’t you, to be a goblin bride?” he teased. “All ready to have your hair turn white in those dripping caves underground?”

“But you said—” Emily began as Marak chuckled. “Anyway,” she concluded unhappily, “she’s all the family I have. I just don’t want to be left behind.”

The goblin stopped laughing. “Agatha’s right,” he remarked. “You have a lot of pluck.” A small silence reigned. He was watching the unconscious Kate narrowly, the way the cook watched rising bread or baking pies. Emily wondered what he was looking for. She thought about the dwarf woman and what she had told them.

“Agatha says there aren’t any more elves,” she told him sadly. “Did the goblins kill them all?”

Marak didn’t look up from the sleeping Kate. “They destroyed themselves,” he answered absently. “They didn’t want to survive. We goblins stole elf brides, of course, but that was a good thing for the pretty elves. It gave them unity, something to strive against. Otherwise, they were likely to just wander off in all directions. They always were a little too good for this world.” Somehow this didn’t sound like a compliment.

“Their last King didn’t bother to find a new wife when his first wife died childless. Then he died unexpectedly, and that was the beginning of the end. My great-great-grandfather met with the elves on this very spot and offered to take them in with us. There’s a colony of dwarves like that who live under my command. But they said no.” Marak snorted. “Catch an elf living underground,” he said scornfully.

“We hunted the elf women tirelessly after that, to get the good of the blood before it was all gone. Oh, an elf would tell you quite a tale of woe, with sadness written all across his pretty face. But it wasn’t our fault they died out. They did it to themselves. Batty stargazers,” he added with relish.

Emily stared around in amazement. Elves and goblins had met right here. She tried to imagine them, beautiful and ugly, tall and short, noble and frightful. No wonder she loved this magical place. The goblin King watched Kate closely, laying his big hands on either side of her face again. He turned in abrupt decision.

“What I want to know is—” Emily began, but Marak leaned forward swiftly and put his six fingers on her brow. Then he caught her as she toppled and laid her down gently in the grass.

“What you want to know is almost everything,” he remarked to her sleeping form. Then he turned back to her sister.

Long, dreary hours passed while Kate tossed in unhappy dreams. Finally she sat up in bed with a jerk, jarred out of sleep. She stared around futilely at the thick blackness of the room. Not one ray of light crept in past the curtain. Kate stumbled through the gloom, clutching the furniture, because the room was so dark that she couldn’t see where to step. She tried to light her candle, but not even a spark broke the inky darkness around her. Moving by feel, she quitted her room and edged down the hall. She crept into Emily’s room and shook her sleeping form.

“Em, wake up!” she begged, shaking and shaking, but Emily just flopped limply in her arms like a giant doll. Another fruitless attempt to light Emily’s candle and another hideous trip through the dark. She thought she heard a chuckle as she stumbled across the hall. She wrenched open Prim’s door and slammed it shut behind her, but Aunt Prim lay like the dead in the darkness, not even breathing. Kate stood in indecision, afraid to touch her. Was that tapping at the window? A twig, or fingers? Kate fled the dark room, leaving her aunt’s body behind in the night.

Out in the hall again, she was sure she heard a whisper. It came closer and closer, but no footsteps came with it. Kate began to sob in panic and strike out against the blackness. Clinging to the banister, she sank down on the stairs. The whisper was coming close again, and she couldn’t get away. She hid her blind face against her arms and huddled on the stairs, a hunted, trapped animal, all alone in the dark.

“Kate, look at me,” Marak said in a commanding voice. He took her hand in his, kneeling beside her. Kate closed her eyes tightly in dread, throwing out a hand to catch at the banister and drag herself away from him. Instead, she felt soft grass, a tree trunk. She opened her eyes. White moonlight flooded in, and the blackness was gone, but the nightmare was still very real. He was bending over her. He had caught her at last.