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

The man struggled for a second, his hands over his mouth. Then he dropped them, breathing heavily. “Miss Winslow had lied so well that the doctor wouldn’t take her away. I was determined to make her tell the truth about her goblin obsession. If Miss Winslow thought her precious Em was stolen, I knew she’d admit everything, and her sister, doped and tied up, wouldn’t be able to find her and tell her otherwise.”

“It’s so refreshing,” Marak remarked to Kate. “It really brings a goblin quality to human speech, don’t you agree?” A strangled sound caused him to turn. Hugh Roberts glared up at him, pale eyes frantic, a dribble of blood running from the corner of his mouth. “You’re a smart man, cousin,” Marak cautioned, “so I’ll explain something to you. The Stamp of Truth is only ceremonially applied to the tongue. It works on the whole person. You can bite your tongue out and cut your hands off, and you’ll still scribble out the truth with a quill pen clutched between your toes. I’m afraid that you’ll have to adjust to life as an honest man. So tell me, honest man, why did you want the doctor to take Kate away?”

“She doesn’t have any business here,” hissed Kate’s guardian. “She or her sister. This has been Roberts land for eight hundred years. I can show you the records.”

“I know whose land it was before that,” declared the goblin, “and I can show you records, too. So you wanted them gone because they were taking your land. Then why did you offer to be their guardian?”

“I had to,” growled Hugh Roberts, shifting from side to side as he tried to fight the spell. “Otherwise, whoever did would have thrown me out and moved into Hallow Hill with them. Besides, being their guardian would give me certain opportunities.” He glared at Kate rather desperately.

“You had plans, then?” asked Marak, frowning.

“Of course I did,” snapped the gray-faced man. “Ideas, mainly. I thought about poison, but I couldn’t make up my mind.”

“And why’s that?” asked the goblin.

“I have a horror of hanging,” said Hugh Roberts with a shudder.

“What compassion!” hooted Marak. “You’re always thinking of others. Did you have any more ideas?”

“I just decided to see what opportunities arose,” said Hugh reluctantly. “I had three years before she would come of age, and lots of things could happen in that time. Sure enough, she started showing real nervous strain, and I did all I could to encourage it. I even persuaded some village boys to play a trick, pretending to be goblins. She tried to run off the very next day. I knew she wouldn’t take her sister’s disappearance without a fight. I had the doctor right here to listen to her arguments when the search party brought her back from the woods.”

“I see,” mused Marak, watching Kate become more and more indignant. “You were well on your way to getting rid of the older sister, but what were you going to do about M?”

Hugh rocked back and forth furiously and ground his teeth. It was no use. “I would have had ten years with that one,” he spat out finally. “Almost anything can happen in ten years. I was sure, if the older one was gone, that I could handle the younger one.”

Kate let out a shriek of rage.

“Yes,” agreed Marak heartily, “I think we’ve had all the truth out of you that we can stand. You’ve made it quite clear what kind of guardian you are. The only thing now is to decide what to do about it. Kate has already made her decision. She came down to my kingdom tonight and agreed to marry me in exchange for her sister’s safety.”

“Oh, Kate, really?” asked Emily excitedly, sitting up. “What was it like? Was it horrible and dark? Was it very beautiful?”

“I don’t know, Em,” Kate replied, trying to harness her scattered thoughts. “It was—very beautiful, yes. I think,” she added slowly, “that some parts were horrible, too.”

“You won’t leave me behind, will you?” begged Emily. “Please take me with you. I don’t want to stay here with him,” she insisted, pointing at her guardian.

Marak gave Kate a shrewd, assessing glance. “I’d be happy to steal you, M,” he said sorrowfully, “but I’m afraid your sister wants you to stay behind. She thinks humans make much better companions for a young child than we monsters do. After all, M, your own race is bound to love you best.” He met Kate’s astonished stare with a rather wicked smirk.

“How could you!” cried Emily as Kate opened her mouth to protest. “I don’t think humans are nice at all, and goblins are a lot more fun.”

“But, Em,” said Kate sadly, “what about your great-aunts?” She tried to think of other things that tied her lonely little sister to the world she herself would have to leave. “And what about Hallow Hill?”

“I don’t want Hallow Hill without you,” said Emily appealingly. “Who would go on rambles with me? And I don’t want to live with the aunts. They snapped at me, and they won’t let me have a pet. You let Seylin have a pet,” she told Marak. “Would you let me have one, too?”

The goblin King chuckled and gave Kate a triumphant look. “Have a pet?” he said winningly. “Why, M, you’d be a pet! You’d go about the kingdom playing with the goblin children, and the old ones would weave ribbons into your hair, which is especially soft and beautiful by our standards.” Emily stroked her straight brown hair wonderingly. “And the dwarves would make jewelry just for you, rings and bracelets and pretty necklaces. They’re always disappointed, the dwarves, that the King’s Wife can’t wear necklaces.”

“Do come, Em,” piped Seylin, putting his paws up on the couch. “I’ll show you all the magic I know.”

“That’s fine as far as it goes,” interrupted Kate sternly, “but you’ll have to marry one of those goblins someday, Em. You’re just saving them the trouble of stealing you.” And she glared indignantly at the arrogant goblin King.

“Your sister is right,” Marak said to Emily. “I’ll bring you into my kingdom under two conditions. First, you do have to marry a goblin when you’re old enough. But you can marry any goblin you like; I’ll leave you the choice. And second, if you come, no changing your mind later. You won’t be allowed to leave.”

“I don’t mind marrying a goblin,” promised Emily with all the blithe disregard of a child for the future.

“You know perfectly well Em’s not old enough to understand what she’s losing,” Kate cried angrily. “How dare you try to lure her underground after I made my promise to you! You know I intended her to stay up here and—and be a human!”

Emily started to argue, but Marak stopped her with a gesture. He came to Kate’s side and took her hands soothingly. “By all means,” he agreed, “we can leave little M behind. And in whose care are you willing to leave her?”

Kate ran quickly through the available choices. Her great-aunts? No, they had already failed her. Besides, after this horrible experience, Kate wondered whether they would even take Emily back in. Father’s nephew had already declined. If pressured, Kate suspected that he would do it, but he certainly wouldn’t love her.

“Surely you don’t think,” said Marak, “that your guardian is particularly unusual? A young human girl alone, with land, is going to be quite a target. Or are you proposing that I sally forth every few years to rescue her from whatever new menace she encounters?”

Kate looked up. The goblin’s pallid face was calm and cruel. He knew she had no choice. He must have realized right away that he could rescue Emily and still get to keep her. Kate jerked her hands free. As he let her go, she saw the brown wound on his thumb. That had probably been the only moment of her entire life when she would get the better of him.

“Don’t you realize what you mean to M?” added Marak more kindly. “If you love her enough to give up your world for her, don’t you think she would want to do the same for you? She wants to be with you, and it won’t be as hard for her, I think. She’ll have a happy life with us. We’ll appreciate her.”

Kate nodded reluctantly and looked away. Her eyes met her guardian’s, and she felt a rush of anger. She forgot her promise not to speak to him. “This is your fault!” she cried, helpless and furious. Her guardian glared back at her. He didn’t look particularly contrite.

“Indeed it is, Kate,” Marak agreed. “It’s time to plan your revenge. Goblins just adore revenge.” He grinned. “Do you have anything in mind?”

Kate was taken aback. “Revenge is wrong,” she told him solemnly. “Vengeance belongs to God.”

The goblin put his head to one side and watched her through narrowed eyes. “You won’t even give God a little help?” he asked softly.

Kate thought about what her guardian had done. He had made her promise to lose her freedom and marry a monster. Hallow Hill belonged to her, but she would never live here now. She’d never even see it again. But it was hers, and no one else’s, so it wasn’t wrong to demand this one thing.

“I don’t want him living here,” she said firmly. “I want him off my land.”

“Oh, good,” Marak said with relish. “I thought of that one, too.” He walked over to her guardian. “It seems Kate doesn’t want you on her land,” he announced cheerfully. “And I’m bound to say, cousin, that I don’t want you here, either.”

The big man stared up at him in alarm. “I didn’t do anything!” he insisted. “I never even touched her, and her sister’s fine.”

“It’s true that you didn’t kill or imprison her,” agreed Marak, “although I don’t think you deserve much credit for that since you were certainly trying to. But no, we’ll set that aside. Kate’s revenge is for what you actually did do.

“Kate isn’t at all like her sister. She has no desire to be a goblin’s pet. She tried everything she could think of to stay out of my reach, and she did quite a remarkable job. She went to you for protection, for the help that you had promised to provide, but not only did you not help her, you actually drove her to me. Kate is the first King’s Bride I know of who had to promise away her own freedom in exchange for the goblins’ help. Thanks to you, she’ll be lost to her own race and locked away from this land that she loves. She’ll never see the sun or stars. She’ll never be outside again. She’ll raise just one child now, and he’ll be a goblin; she’ll cry for days after her first sight of him. And she’ll be married to a creature she finds so frightful that I have to leash her to me with magic to keep her from running away even now.”

A profound silence fell over the study. Kate stared down at the carpet, so overcome with homesickness and grief that she didn’t understand how it could fail to show. There should be a physical injury to cause such pain, some wound over her heart, gushing blood. The goblin King studied her grimly. Then he turned toward Hugh with a philosophical shrug.

“It’s not my problem,” he said. “I have to protect my people. Kate’s suffering is the price paid for the goblin race to continue. But,” he added sternly, “you were supposed to protect her. You chose to become her guardian, and that makes her suffering your problem.

“I don’t think you’ll spend much time on Kate’s land, anyway. The Stamp of Truth is a permanent charm. The doctor, here, will wake up never even knowing he was asleep. He’ll ask you why you look so upset, and you’ll tell him all about it. It’s going to be very amusing, your descriptions of us all.”