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

Kate pried the baby’s hands loose. “I’ve decided to name her after you,” she announced, “because you saved her life.”

“You wish to call her Charm?” whispered the snake. “I will never know which of us you are talking to.”

“Oh,” said Kate, taken aback. “I didn’t think of that.” The snake examined the child curiously as she bounced up and down on Kate’s lap.

“I am sensible to the honor you do me,” hissed Charm. “Perhaps you would let me name her. I would like to call her Matilda, after one of my favorite King’s Wives.”

“Matilda,” said Kate experimentally. “That’s nice, Charm. We’ll call her Matilda. But,” she added wickedly, “I didn’t know you had any favorite Wives.”

“I have guarded one hundred and sixty-eight King’s Wives, and fourteen were favorites,” hissed the snake. “Their names are Ada, Merneith, Dara, Hesione, Olwen, Clodia, Unna, Kala, Matilda, Eleanor, Kiba, Madge, Adele, and Kate.” Kate smiled at the last two names. Matilda worked her hands free and grabbed for the snake again.

The next evening, Kate stood before the iron door that led into the goblin kingdom. This trip underground was quite different from the one she had made before. Then, Marak had brought the unwilling Kate inside by force as she gazed longingly back at the stars. This time, Kate barely noticed the night sky as she hurried inside to see her husband. All that the guards could tell her about the King was that he was gravely ill. She shifted the baby nervously from one arm to the other as she looked up at the massive iron door.

“Hello, door!” she called out. “Let me back into the kingdom!” It rattled in consternation.

“King’s Wife!” it boomed. “What are you doing outside? I didn’t let you out.”

“No, you didn’t,” said Kate. “Quick, let me back in. I need to see the King.”

There was a pause. Perhaps it wasn’t a long one, but to the anxious Kate, it certainly seemed to be.

“I can’t open for the King’s Wife,” explained the door.

Kate started to reply, but a metallic zing made her pause. “Listen to me, little door!” buzzed Charm ominously. “You are endangering my King’s Wife with your stupidity. If you do not open immediately and without further discussion, I will twine myself through your lock and your hinges and throw you down twisted and broken, and the goblins will put in a new door that understands its obligations.”

The door creaked open, rattling sulkily as Kate swept in with the baby, the golden snake twining majestically about her shoulders and the wolf with its pup and riders marching behind.

“I never knew that snake could talk,” muttered the door.

Kate hurried to the banquet hall. She peeked in anxiously, and her heart stopped. Of all the pallets she had left here a few days ago, only one remained, and she knew whose silent figure lay upon it. She ran pell-mell across the hall, the wolf galloping behind her.

“Marak, Marak!” she cried, dropping down onto the pallet and staring, heartsick, at his still face. “Please wake up! You have to wake up now!”

“All right,” he agreed in an amiable whisper, and he opened his unmatched eyes to smile up at her. Looking into those eyes, Kate realized that she had lied to that loud woman after all. Of course she had lost her heart to him right away. For two days she had been thinking of things to tell him, but now she couldn’t think of one. She just stared at him, her heart full.

Marak freed one arm from the blankets and reached up to touch the cut on her cheek.

“I remember that,” he said softly. A metallic zing sounded, and the golden snake was with them once more.

“Oh, King,” hissed the snake ceremonially, “I have bitten a man. He lies in the city of Liverpool, awaiting the King’s Judgment. I bit another man, too,” Charm continued with an unhappy buzz, “but he no longer requires your attention.”

Chapter 14

Marak was ill for months, exhausted from fighting the sorcerer. Unable to go to court, he took care of important matters from his bed, and he continued to rely on Seylin’s help for some time to carry out the Kingdom Spells. He sent Thaydar out to deliver the King’s Judgment on Bingham, but Thaydar returned with the news that the paralyzed coachman had already been killed. Marak was disappointed. The goblin revenge that he had chosen for the young man would have been considerably worse than death.

It was in part Marak’s desire to work the Kingdom Spells that kept him bedridden for so long. Given only so much strength, he preferred to spend it on useful magic rather than on walking. Always practical, he embarked on a review of the King’s Wife Chronicles as a way to use his convalescence. Kate spent hours every day reading to him in her stumbling goblin while the wolf and pup slept by the bed and little Matilda played on the floor beside them. The dwarves were already making her elaborate baby toys, but Til enjoyed playing with the wolves more than anything else. She pulled their fur and disturbed the King’s rest with her laughter until the servants came and took her away.

As soon as he had the strength, Marak erased the Door Spell, judging that he had no right to withhold freedom from someone who had braved such dangers to free him. He asked only that Kate wait until their son’s birth before using her newfound liberty and that she confine her outside visits to the goblin lands. Before, Kate would have been wild at the long wait, but now she was resigned. She had seen enough horror outside to feel content in the goblin kingdom for some time. But she did go often to visit the front door. “I am the King’s Wife,” she would call. “Open up.” And the poor door would have to open. It didn’t try to argue with her anymore.

“Thank you,” Kate would say, “but maybe another time.” And she would walk back to the palace again, leaving the door rattling back and forth in frustration.

Emily was disappointed that Kate had forgotten her almond brittle, but the gift of the little monkey made up for everything. “I never had a pet who had a pet before,” she said wonderingly, watching her monkey cuddle the one-armed mouse. Emily had rather ordinary human looks, but when she went about in bright silks and satins, with her hair done up in ribbons, her hands, arms, and neck covered in jewelry and the monkey and mouse riding on her shoulders, she went as far as an average human could toward attaining a bizarre goblin presence. Certainly, Kate had misgivings when she saw her little sister thus and wondered what their father would say if he could see her.

The wolf mother refused to be given away to anyone. She never left Kate’s side if she could help it, trotting behind as Kate went from place to place and lying down on her feet the minute she stopped. This achieved two important canine goals. First, Kate always knew that someone loved her devotedly, and second, every bright gown received a generous sprinkling of coarse gray hairs. The thin pup grew into a handsome beast in time. Having spent his early months at the side of the convalescing Marak’s bed, he formed a strong attachment to the goblin King and followed him everywhere. Kate, dipping into her educated past, tried to name the pair Helena and Constantine, but Marak persisted in calling his companion Dog, or, when they were both in the room together, Your Dog and My Dog. Kate decided rather disgustedly that this was to be expected from a husband who shared his own name with one hundred and sixty seven of his predecessors.

The goblin King was well by the time the Heir was born. As he had long ago predicted, the birth was a very hard one, and it took all his attentive magic to get Kate through it. “And very lucky you are, little elf, to be married to a goblin,” he told her firmly, “or you’d have gone the way of your mother, her grandmother, and the grandmother’s own mother, I expect.” Kate, pale and sweaty, didn’t open her eyes to acknowledge this smug remark. After the last twenty-four hours, she didn’t feel lucky to be married at all.