Chapter Four

Marak Catspaw came back from his tour of the mines late on the evening of the new moon and met the elves and elf-human crosses who had been summoned to the grove of jeweled trees near the goblins‘ front door. The crowd was larger than he had expected. Sable’s and Irina’s families had been spending the evening together, and they all had come to the meeting.

“An elf lord is bringing elves back to our forests,” he told them. “I’m signing a treaty with him tonight. He wants to see you elves to make sure that you’re well treated, and for reasons that I won’t reveal yet, we need to do as he asks.” A stunned silence followed this announcement.

“I… I don’t want to see an elf,” faltered Irina, holding her daughter-in-law Fay’s hand. “I don’t want to meet elves at all, not without Thaydar.” Her husband had died the year before, and she had taken the loss very hard.

“I don’t need any elf man checking up on me,” declared Sable scornfully. “As if he really cared whether I lived or died.”

“This is important to the kingdom,” replied the goblin King. “I have to bring you tonight. But you’re welcome to take along any of your family, if that would make you feel better.”

“I’ll be there, Irina,” promised Tinsel, putting his arm around the unhappy woman. “I won’t let anyone bother you.” She smiled gratefully at the big silver goblin.

“Why don’t you want to see an elf, Grands?” asked Fay’s little daughter. Trina was only five. She hugged Sable, looking up at her in excitement. “Grand Sable, I want to see an elf,” she announced.

“Do you?” said the woman, giving her granddaughter a reluctant smile. “Elves aren’t everything you think they are. Of course I’ll come, Marak, since you need me, but I won’t smile and dance for him. And, Trina, you can come with me since you want to see an elf.”

“He hasn’t asked to see the elf-human crosses, but he doesn’t know we have any,” continued Catspaw. “Mother? Em? Do you mind coming?”

“Not at all,” answered Kate. “I’d like to see an elf, too.” Emily nodded her agreement.

As they walked through the forest, the goblin King had Seylin explain to the small group about the proposed treaty and the offer of a bride. Kate was staggered and upset at the thought of what this would mean to Miranda and even more distressed at the thought of bringing home some poor elf girl. It would be worse than when Sable and Irina had come, even worse than her own awful wedding. But there was no sense worrying about what hadn’t happened yet. She couldn’t help feeling that what was about to happen was going to be thrilling.

When they came through the double ring of oaks, Kate saw that the elves were already there. The elf lord had brought his entire band with him, even the children. Perhaps, she considered, it was something of an education for them: their first chance to see a real goblin.

The elf lord wore a green tunic and cross-gartered breeches. He lacked any sort of emblem that might symbolize his status, and all the other elf men, were dressed as simply as their chief.

The elf women wore plain, sleeveless dresses that fitted them closely to the waist and then flared into a full skirt that ended a little below the knee. Their soft hide shoes looked like slippers, and they had no stockings. The women wore their hair long, some with it pulled back and partly braided, but there was not so much as a hairpin among them. They wore no jewelry, no ribbons, and no lace. But they were all so lovely. Why should they care about fashion? They looked even more beautiful because of the simplicity of their clothing.

Marak Catspaw and the elf lord met at the center of the circle to read the treaty that Seylin had prepared. Then they walked back toward the small group from the goblin kingdom. Catspaw wore the black shirt and breeches that belonged to the King’s Wife Ceremony, and over it the short black cape painted with golden letters that stood for his kingship. No matter how this meeting ended, he clearly planned to marry tonight.

Richard had assembled the elves and elf crosses in a short line for inspection. Seylin carried the book in which elf brides were registered and introduced them one by one.

“This is Em, my wife of thirty-one years, a weak elf-human cross from one of the high elvish families,” Seylin said. “She volunteered to come to the goblin kingdom in order to accompany her sister.”

“That was brave,” commented the lord quietly.

Emily stepped forward, smiling at the tall elf. “Oh, not really,” she assured him cheerfully. “I’ve enjoyed every minute of it. Well, most of them, anyway. And I’m not really elf at all. Marak — the old Marak,” she added, glancing at Marak Catspaw, “always used to say that I was a model human.”

“But the registry indicates that she is part elf,” corrected Seylin. “When the test was done, it showed up.”

Nir listened courteously but didn’t look at the book. “I have my own test,” he said. “May I?” And he placed his hand on her hair. After a few seconds, the right side of Emily’s face began to shine with a very faint glimmer, but the left side remained unaffected. Seylin watched, fascinated. The elf lord dropped his hand.

“Barely elf,” he told Emily, “but no goblin blood.” This last had the sound of a mild compliment, like a consolation prize.

“Really?” asked Emily. “Mightn’t there be a little goblin in me? How can you be so sure?”

Nir paused and then turned to Seylin. “May I test you just to show her?” he asked politely, and he put his hand on Seylin’s head. Instantly the right half of Seylin’s body glowed brightly, but the left half turned as black as ink. Seylin looked down at his arms with a sigh. The elf lord turned back to the surprised Emily.

“You see,” he said, “your husband is a goblin. Powerfully elvish, but goblin nonetheless. He looks like an elf, and some of my people didn’t recognize him, but he knows what he is.”

“Yes, I do now,” admitted Seylin, “but when I went out to find your people, I honestly thought I was an elf.”

“Your King knew what you were,” remarked the elf lord. “He must have known.” And he glanced at Marak Catspaw with a troubled frown. When he turned back, he was facing Kate, and the frown vanished.

“Here’s an elf,” he said, smiling, and Kate felt rather overwhelmed. Although she had long ago gotten used to being called an elf, the term had never had a real meaning for her. It was just an attribute, like being slender or being blond. Now she finally understood. It wasn’t that she was an elf, it was that she was one of the elves, a whole separate people with their own blood and ways. She was just a part of it, a part that had never known before that it was part of anything.

“This is Kate,” announced Seylin, “the old King’s Wife and the mother of the new goblin King.”

Kate saw the elf wince at these words, and he reached out and took one of her hands in his. He turned it over to reveal the scar from the King’s Wife Ceremony, the long, straight slash glimmering across her small palm. He didn’t study it as a goblin would, he just stood looking down at it, an expression of pained aversion on his face. Kate saw it as he did: a cruel deformity of a beautiful thing, a barbaric savagery. It was the emblem of a slavery to an evil cause. A wasted life, his face said, and another goblin at the end of it.

He laid his hand on her head to test her, looking into her eyes. As he did Kate saw a vision. She was in another world, a forest more beautiful than she had ever seen. The sky glowed with a deep blue twilight, and stars hung overhead, as brilliant as colorful jewels. Sweet, haunting music floated on the air. But even as she saw this world, she knew that it was beyond her reach. It was a place that she could never find again. When he removed his hand, the vision faded, and she was in the truce circle once more.

Everything that Kate had ever lost burst like a bubble in her mind: Til, her mother, her father, her great aunts, Hallow Hill, Charm, her dog. And then there was Marak, eyes closed, face stern, lying in the goblin Kings’ crypt. Maybe he still walked in some world beyond hers, but she didn’t know how to reach him. Lost. Hopelessly lost. He was gone from her, too. She could see his dead face before her eyes as the lovely melody drifted away.

The elf lord turned to Seylin. “An elf cross, but more powerful than most of the members of my camp,” he commented, and then stopped short as she burst into tears.

“Kate!” cried Emily, coming to hug her, and she put her head on Emily’s shoulder and wailed with grief. Seylin stared at her, astonished, and the goblin King looked stunned.

“What did you do?” demanded Catspaw angrily. “What kind of magic was that?”

“I don’t know,” said the elf, at a loss. “I tested her. I don’t know why it would make her cry.”

“A test!” exclaimed the goblin in a fury. “Do you expect me to believe that? I’d like to see what you would do if I did that to one of your people!”

“I’m sure you’ll have your chance,” murmured Nir bitterly.

“It may be an aspect of elf healing,” suggested Seylin, “something only an elf could do for her. She needs to cry. She hasn’t cried over your father at all.”

“Why would she cry over the goblin King?” asked Nir.

“Because he’s dead,” snapped Marak Catspaw in an icy rage.

“Because she loved him,” answered Seylin a little more helpfully.

Nir’s frown deepened. He was genuinely distressed. He hadn’t meant to make the poor woman cry. Stars above, her life must have been abominable enough without that. He wondered what had happened. So often he didn’t understand his own magic. He turned back to Seylin, ignoring the outraged goblin King.

“I won’t touch the others,” he promised, and he and Seylin walked on, leaving Kate sobbing in her sister’s arms.

The two elf women stood together, and Tinsel had his arms around them both. Irina gazed at the ground, plucking nervously at her bracelets. Sable was glaring across the truce circle at the band of elves, and Nir turned to see what had attracted her attention. Willow stood there with his arm around his own wife. The elf lord turned back to look at Sable again, his gaze thoughtful.

“These two are Irina and Sable, both brought to the kingdom thirty-one years ago,” Seylin announced.

“I know their history,” he responded quietly. That they were elves he knew without needing to test them; he could feel it about them. And yet they weren’t his people. They didn’t even look like elves in their shiny, fussy dresses. Nir looked at the big gray goblin who was holding them, at his bright silver hair and blue eyes. Here was elf blood, too, he could tell, warped into grotesque ugliness.

“Sable is from the high families,” said Seylin. Nir stared at her angry, fixed expression and the faint scars on her cheeks. “They both showed up as pure elf when their blood was tested.”

The elf lord turned to Seylin, struggling to control his agitation.

“Their blood?” he echoed, a gleam in his dark eyes. “How could blood go through a test?”

“The goblin King mixed a number of ingredients with the blood,” Seylin answered. “I could show you the spell.”

“You mean he bled them,” said the elf angrily, walking away from the enslaved women. “Tell me, does all goblin magic involve slicing open elves?” And he eyed the King with cold distaste.

“Does all elf magic involve reducing women to wrecks?” countered Marak Catspaw with a steady glare. Nir glanced at the goblin King’s mother. She wasn’t crying anymore, but she still huddled in her sister’s arms. He felt himself growing even more angry at the inexplicable wrongness of it all. Something bumped into his leg, and he looked down into the face of Sable’s little granddaughter. Trina beamed up at him, her arms around his knees.

“The pages laugh at me and say I’m an elf,” she said, “so I’m coming to live with you now because you’re an elf.”

Nir knelt down, eye to eye with the little girl. He didn’t test her because he didn’t need to. She had a lovely elvish face and long blond hair, but when he lifted her hands to look at them, they were a goblin’s hands. The slender elf fingers were unnaturally long and bony, and the fingernails twisted into claws. He stared at the little goblin paws, his anger ebbing away into sadness.

“You’re very pretty,” he told her gently, “but you’re not an elf. If you came to live with me, all my children would start having nightmares. You can tell your pages that you were the most frightening thing the elf lord saw tonight. You’re more terrible than the fiercest monster because you’re a goblin who looks like an elf.” Trina giggled, pleased to be distinctive in some way even if she didn’t understand how, and Nir climbed slowly to his feet again, inexpressibly sad.

“Well, elf lord, are you content?” asked Marak Catspaw, gesturing at the line of captured elves.

“Content? No,” sighed Nir, still looking down at the bright little face. “But I can see that the women are treated humanely,” he added with an effort, glancing up. “At least they seem well fed.”

“You’ll honor the terms of the treaty, then?” Catspaw continued, and the elf lord nodded.

He walked over to his band of elves, the goblin King beside him. Nir brought the five unmarried women forward with a gesture, but they wouldn’t have been hard to pick out anyway. All five were sobbing in terror.

“They speak only elvish,” he noted. “Shall I translate?”

“I speak elvish,” responded the goblin King, annoyed.

Catspaw surveyed their frightened faces. They were pretty enough, he thought moodily; for pity’s sake, all elf women were pretty. There was a sameness about these five that prevented any one from attracting attention. He thought of Miranda’s auburn hair and warm smile. It would take an amazing elf, he decided wrathfully, to make him give her up.

But Marak Catspaw was a King who had trained his whole life for kingship, and he gave no sign of his feelings toward them. With great courtesy, he coaxed a name out of each sobbing girl. They wailed and turned away from the touch of that horrible paw, but he managed to test them for magic without provoking too much of an outburst. Nothing but a few sparks rewarded his patient efforts. They weren’t a very distinguished group. Not one was from the high families, and not one was worth his Miranda, he decided in relief.

But the goblin King couldn’t give up so easily. He owed his people an elf bride if possible. Frowning, he walked down the line of elves, watching as they stepped back, shuddering, or closed their eyes in horror. Nir walked with him, his heart sinking. He knew what would happen next.

The goblin King reached the children. Horrified, they were also fascinated, as curious children of any race are likely to be. Among them were two young girls with black eyes, he noted; perhaps one of them would do. Then he stopped in surprise. Standing with the older children was a young woman with the black eyes he had been seeking. He turned to the elf lord, angry and suspicious.

“Why wasn’t she with the other unmarried women?” he demanded.

“She isn’t old enough to be married,” the elf replied evenly. “She doesn’t reach her marriage moon until almost a year from now.”

“Then she’s seventeen,” concluded the goblin. “That’s old enough to be married.”

“That is not old enough,” answered the elf lord with some heat. “She won’t be a woman until the third spring moon. She’s still a child.”

“That’s just custom,” scoffed Marak Catspaw. “Many goblin women marry at seventeen, and humans, too. My grandmother married at sixteen,” he added coolly.

“Monster!” snarled the elf lord in revulsion, and he turned his back on the goblin, glaring out at the stars. No elf man, no matter how immoral or depraved, could even imagine marrying a girl before the full moon of the month she reached eighteen. To elf men, she didn’t seem like a woman at all before that date. Nir was aware that humans and goblins didn’t honor this law, and he found it almost unbearable to consider.

Marak Catspaw turned back to the elf girl, perfectly serene. Coming from this nauseating elf lord, he felt that monster had the ring of a compliment. He studied the girl admiringly. By the Sword, she was a pretty little thing, he thought, forgetting that he had just concluded in annoyance that all elf women were pretty. Masses of silky black hair fell in soft waves down her back, and her small oval face was almost heartbreakingly lovely. She was standing perfectly still, staring through his chest at some point far away. She wasn’t sniffling like the others, and he warmed to her for that.

“What’s your name, little elf?” he asked her.

“Arianna, she answered in a whisper so faint that the furious Nir couldn’t even hear it. But standing so close, Catspaw could make it out.

“Arianna, is it?” he replied. ‘Arianna, hold out your hand.”

The young woman extended her shaking hand, but when the goblin King reached out to lay his lion’s paw over it, she jerked back with a little cry of disgust. Nir flinched at the sound and set his teeth. He had known what would happen for months now, but that didn’t make it easier to accept.

Marak Catspaw sighed in exasperation. It was just a big paw; it didn’t drip slime or glow green, and now she was going to burst out crying. But Arianna didn’t cry. She stood exactly as before, eyes wide and solemn. Oh, well, considered Catspaw, warming to her again, the poor, deprived girl wasn’t accustomed to meeting goblins. He reached out his normal hand and took her by the wrist. This time he held her hand in place as he laid the heavy paw over it.

The truce circle filled with a soft light as golden sparks formed all over the small hand. They glittered like stars as they grew in size, shaping themselves into delicate golden lilies, and dripped off the hand in a gentle shower, replaced by new sparks. The silent rain of radiant blossoms continued for an entire minute as the elves and goblins murmured in wonder. Only two people in the truce circle didn’t watch the charming spectacle. Arianna still stared straight ahead, petrified by the unwelcome attention, and Nir still stood glaring at the stars. He didn’t need to watch. He had tested her years ago and knew perfectly well how magical she was.

Marak Catspaw looked at her for some time after the sparks faded away. He knew what he had to do now, but he hesitated, studying that solemn face. He frowned as he thought of Miranda’s smile. This girl probably wouldn’t smile at him for months — maybe not ever. He did wish that she would at least look at him, though. Putting his hand under her chin, he tilted her face, and Arianna lifted her large dark eyes to his.

She had been watching the goblin King curiously before he had come close, so she did have some idea what to expect, but she stared in horrified bewilderment at the face looking down into hers. Everything about elf beauty was harmonious, but everything about this creature was discordant. His eyes, blue and green, made no sense to her. They weren’t a pair of eyes; they didn’t belong together. His short hair didn’t belong together, either, the golden and pale locks swirling in violent disarray as if they were fighting a battle. Used to the faces of sensitive elves, she found nothing in his expression for her to read beyond a kind of complacent cruelty. Arianna was rendered incapable of thought by that strange face. She simply stared at him without moving a muscle, her eyes huge.

Elf beauty had its degrees, and black eyes were the limit of that beauty. They appeared only in the nobility and in the elf Kings. Gazing into Arianna’s eyes, Catspaw felt their powerful allure. He still preferred Miranda’s brown eyes, he thought loyally. Then he wondered if this were really true.

“Arianna,” he asked in a low voice, “would you like to be a King’s Wife?”

Even on the brink of disaster, Arianna didn’t cry. She stared up at those eyes that didn’t belong together, and felt in confusion that two people were looking at her instead of one. She looked from one eye to the other, baffled and repelled. Blue to green and back to blue again. “I’m promised to Nir,” she whispered faintly.

“Oh, are you?” remarked Catspaw, and that settled something in his mind with a neat finality. He dropped his hand and stepped back. “Elf lord,” he said in a loud voice, “I’ll sign the treaty for this one.”

Released from the terrifying force of those eyes, Arianna finally understood what was happening. A wave of icy dread poured over her. She turned her head and looked in mute appeal toward her fiance, but he still had his back to her. She tried to call out to him, but no sound came. “Agreed,” she heard Nir say, and Arianna’s world shattered. When she opened her eyes again, that thing had her around the waist.

The elf woman who had been crying before was crying again, coming to take her in her arms. The goblin said, “Mother, stand back. You know how dangerous desperate magic can be.” But Arianna used none of her quiet, prodigious magic. She couldn’t. She didn’t have the right. She wasn’t a stolen bride who could fight her way back to her people. Nir had said she had to go and so she had no choice. On the verge of unconsciousness, Arianna gasped in a breath. She wondered how many more breaths she would have to take before she could finally die. There would be so many, she thought in despair. Millions and millions. She closed her eyes and began drearily to count them.

Seylin spread the treaty out on a stand, and Marak Catspaw came to sign it, his human arm around his drooping bride. He dipped his paw into the bowl of golden ink and put his print on the treaty, holding out the paw for Seylin to wipe clean. The elf lord came up then, eyes averted from the horrible sight as the goblin King guided the faltering Arianna away. Dipping his fingertips quickly in the ink, he signed in a sideways W Then he jerked the towel away from Seylin and rubbed the ink from his fingers, turning to the stars again. He wouldn’t watch the goblins leave the truce circle.

“Elf lord,” asked Seylin with interest, “why did you sign like that?”

Motionless, face still, Nir glared at the stars. “Why?” he murmured absently. “Because it makes it binding.” He thought about what it had bound him to do and felt a rising sickness.

“But why didn’t you sign your name?” persisted Seylin.

Nir continued to gaze at the stars, ignoring the goblin completely. He was bound by the treaty. He wasn’t bound. Arianna was the one bound now, bound, shackled, and enslaved. He had known her fate months ago as soon as he had known what he had to do. He had warned his elves that the goblins might take any unmarried girl, even a small child. He had given them the chance to leave, but he had known that they couldn’t leave him, and he had known, too, that Arianna hadn’t paid any attention. She had been his responsibility since she was thirteen, and she couldn’t imagine that he wouldn’t protect her.

For all those months, he had eaten with her and slept by her side, and he had never once told her of her danger. He might as well have wrapped that horrible snake around her himself. He had betrayed her into hell. His magic had told him to do it, and his magic was always right. It was the best thing for his people, he had always known that. But he had destroyed a sweet elvish life because it was the best thing for his people. He only wished that he could have destroyed himself.

“Seylin,” he heard the little goblin girl say as they walked off, “I don’t want to go back. I want to be an elf.”

“I know just how you feel” was Seylin’s reply. And then they were gone.