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

On the far side of the valley, the street became the entrance steps to a palace so wide and so massive that it completely blocked their view of whatever lay beyond. Story upon story of colossal square windows shone out onto the park. The architecture reminded Kate of ancient Greece or Egypt—that is, if a titanic ancient temple could rise so high into the sky. No, not the sky. No friendly stars winked down at her. Kate squeezed Seylin’s paw in a flurry of panic and pictured the stars that were just coming out in the sky beyond this cave. They settled into their proper places in her mind, their silvery light mingling with the rising full moon, giving her the courage to face whatever lay ahead.

“Do you want to go back out?”

“Oh, no, I’m sorry, door,” answered Seylin. “We were just looking around.”

“Because I don’t know if I’m allowed to let you back out,” said the door gravely.

“No, no, thanks,” replied the cat, and started down the street toward the palace.

“I’ll have to wait for orders,” the door said stubbornly as they walked away.

“It’s really so stupid!” fumed the cat in a shrill hiss. “They’re all like that. The King says they’re just supposed to delay an enemy long enough for the rest of us to find it and kill it.”

They were passing the rows of glimmering trees. These looked like graceful saplings perhaps three times Kate’s height, but she could see that they were entirely artificial. The slim trunks and branches gleamed like solid gold, and throughout their crowns, huge, jeweled flowers bloomed. From the boughs hung colored lanterns, casting a faint light that illuminated dark green stone, not grass. The garden paths between the rows were mosaics of pale, polished rock.

As they walked, the delicate flowering trees gave way to thick summer growth, the rich green stone leaves almost paper-thin. Soon they passed dark bronze trees loaded with stone foliage in polished reds, oranges, and yellows and came to Kate’s very favorites, the trees by the river. These had trunks and branches of silver, the slender boughs loaded with delicate, tinkling clear crystals. Beneath them shone snow white paving stones. The crystals caught the pale light of the lanterns and refracted it in delicate rainbows onto the stone below.

“We need to hurry,” Seylin urged as Kate lingered to look at the beautiful trees. Tugging her along, he crossed the river. The shallow water foamed over rapids carefully composed of small cubes of rock sticking up from the shallow riverbed. Water in Kate’s world would catch the moonlight, but this river needed none. The many bubbles of foam appeared to shine with their own soft light.

Now the pair was climbing toward the steps of the palace. Beds of fanciful jeweled flowers alternated with musical fountains, and lamps of all colors lined the paths. Kate felt again that the light was rather faint. How beautiful these gardens would be in the daylight, she thought. Then, with bitter disappointment, she realized that it would never be day here. She was seeing the gardens not at night, but as they would always be.

The palace had no doors. Kate and Seylin stepped into an entrance hall several stories high, its outer wall pierced by huge windows. The enormous chandelier needed no candles because the crystals themselves shone. In their dim light, a huge double staircase curved up before the pair. On the wall between the wide flights of stairs, a mosaic of glass tiles sparkled with all the colors of a sunset.

Seylin pulled her down a corridor to the right. Kate felt rather giddy. She could absorb her surroundings only in snatches—here a hall with walls and floor of polished jade, there a hall of burnished lapis lazuli. While there was artwork everywhere, none of it represented anything she could understand. The smooth floor sparkled with scatterings of brilliant mosaic tiles in complicated, almost random patterns, and the walls were inlaid with horizontal bands of contrasting stones. They turned a corner and whisked by a tiny feathered creature rather like a yellow mop head.

The big black cat led Kate through a deep arch, and she gasped. She stood on a broad landing between two wide, curving staircases under an enormous dome. Below her lay the circular floor of this vast round chamber. The room was dimmer than Kate found comfortable, but she could see at a glance that it was bustling with monsters, all of them stylishly—not to say foppishly—dressed. Seylin towed her down the staircase, bumping through the crowd, and Kate felt that she would never draw breath again.

The first sight of Marak had been enough to send Kate into a tearful panic, and Marak himself had mentioned the possibility that a girl would want to run back home after a glimpse of his goblin subjects. Kate stared at the jumbled assortment of huge ears, strange limbs, fur, feathers, and hair, unable at first to sort out anything of what she saw. Then she began to form scattered impressions. The girl in the yellow satin evening gown with her hair in a tall coiffure would have been pretty except for her extreme resemblance to a cat. Her small round face, huge eyes, and tiny nose were startling enough, but the little split cat mouth and the foot-long whiskers made Kate feel queasy. Then there was the burly man in the elegant red coat. His left arm was normal, but his right was huge, brown, and furry, and it ended in four-inch-long claws. And there were all the little creatures in the crowd, many no taller than Kate’s knees. Some of them stood on rolling metal platforms and were wheeled about by liveried servants.

Monster piled on monster in her field of view: the eight-foot-tall, unbelievably thin man with a long, long gray face; the woman with the dog’s paws and large, floppy spaniel ears who looked quite elegant in a rose-colored dress of shirred silk; the figure with high stiltlike legs who wore the most remarkable deep blue trousers. Goblins obviously favored wigs, lace, ribbons, bright colors, and extravagance. Even those creatures who had fur or feathers wore something rich and vibrant, if only a jeweled turban or a hat with a long plume.

Everywhere, turning toward Kate from the crowd, were pale goggle eyes, huge cat eyes, glowing red eyes, bright bird eyes, as the creatures caught sight of the one thing that did not usually appear in goblin court: a pale-faced human girl. A whispering, growling, hissing sprang up as she walked by. Kate became painfully aware of her smudged, tearstained cheeks, her tumbled hair, her cracked shoes, and her crumpled blue dress with the ripped sash. She and the goblins stared at each other in mutual horror. Kate had never in her life seen such frightful deformities, and the goblins had never seen such a hideous dress.

Seylin stubbornly towed the near-fainting girl across the huge expanse of floor to the throne, an elaborate affair that resided under an embroidered canopy on a broad circular platform of stone. And on that raised circle, his back to her, stood the King, talking to two other goblins as they looked together at some manuscript spread out on a golden stand. He was elegant in a suit of dark green cloth, his striped shock of hair neatly tied back with a black velvet ribbon. Over the suit’s tailored coat, he wore a short black cape painted with strange golden symbols. He wore no boots; his dark green breeches buckled at the knees, ending in fine black stockings and low shoes. Her own father, greeting important visitors, had never been more formally or fashionably dressed.

As they approached and the King turned, Kate realized in a flash what it meant to be elf-pretty in a goblin world. Once she had burst into tears at his inhuman appearance. Now she almost did so again at the strangely welcome sight of his familiar, somewhat human face amid the monstrosities and deformities of his goblin subjects.

Seylin stopped before him and swept into a deep bow. Kate looked at the big cat and didn’t know what to do. Should she curtsy? If she tried, would her knees collapse and simply dump her onto the floor? Before she could decide, Marak stepped forward and captured her hands in his.

“Kate!” he shouted. “What in the name of all you call holy are you doing here? You are the last person—the very last person—that I expected to see!”

All day Kate had imagined her defiant glare as she spat out her little speech, but now that the moment came, she could barely pronounce the memorized line. It was a good thing Marak had excellent hearing because most of it came out in a whisper.

“I have come here of my own free will to say that I agree to marry you if you will release my sister unharmed.”

There! She’d said it. Kate braced herself for his triumphant laughter. Instead, she saw the King stare and then glance sharply at Seylin. Her heart stopped. Had she come too late?

Marak noticed her shattered expression. “Of course, Kate, of course,” he hastened to assure her. “I’ll do it gladly.”

Kate let out the breath she had been holding. A wave of relief swept over her and left her shaky. Em would be all right. That was the important thing. It didn’t matter what happened to her.

“Now,” said Marak briskly, “tell me all about it. How did it happen? Do you know where she is? Who’s holding her?”

Chapter 8

Kate found her voice. “What do you mean, who’s holding her?” she demanded. “You are, of course!”

“Me? Certainly not.” The King frowned. “Seylin?” he inquired.

“I don’t have any idea,” squeaked the cat in surprise. “She never told me why she wanted to see you.”

“But … but,” babbled Kate, “you know you took her.” Marak gave her hands an impatient shake.

“Kate,” he said reasonably, “why would I want to steal your sister? I’m having enough trouble with you. Not that she hasn’t offered,” he added with a chuckle.

“But you took her to get back at me,” insisted Kate mulishly. He looked at her sullen face and chuckled again.

“Revenge is an honored goblin pursuit,” he said cheerfully, “but we do tend to save it for our enemies. So! We’ve established that I’m to release your sister and that you have no idea where she is. Locating her is the first thing. We can save your theories of goblin strategy for another time.”

Marak released her hands and unfastened his short cape. An improbable-looking black hairy creature with short legs shuffled up behind him, its head barely higher than the King’s knees. It reached up incredibly long, skinny, apelike arms and plucked the cape from his shoulders. At the same moment, a goblin in livery boomed out something in a loud voice. Kate heard a rustling and turned to see the entire crowd sink into a low bow. Marak didn’t appear to notice. He was already talking rapidly in his own language to Seylin and the two goblins who stood with him. The cat darted off, racing on all fours through the crowd. Marak caught Kate’s hand again and walked through a small door behind the throne. She found herself back in the great entrance hall.

“What I want to know,” he said seriously, “is why you even think M is missing. You’ve been locked in for two days except for that one badly timed interview last night. Where are you getting your news?”

“Mr. Roberts came this morning and told me Em had vanished,” she said. “He wanted me to tell him all about you so he could start a search for her. But I wouldn’t talk to him,” she added gloomily. “I knew it wasn’t any use.” Marak shot her a penetrating look, but she was staring at her feet and missed it.

“Kate,” he said, “tell me everything that happened from the time I left last night until the time you came away with Seylin. I’ve not been paying enough attention to your human friends.” He paused. “No, on second thought, tell me everything that happened from the time you woke up. That’ll give you a chance to talk about chewing on my thumb.” He laughed. “I expect you’ll enjoy that.”