Close Kin (3 page)

"Ow!" she
said. "Ow! Marak, you're hurting me!"

The goblin ignored
her as he finished the magic. Then he looked
down
at her distressed face with a smile.

"That was your fault," he
said. "You didn't want to give that power up, you elf assassin. You fought
me to keep it. What killers your people must have been," he added,
surveying her with fond pride. "It's lovely goblin revenge against your
ancestors that I have you down here with me."

Kate poked at her
hand, scowling. "My whole arm's gone
numb,"
she complained.

"And a very
good thing, too," remarked the King, rubbing it
for
her. "I can't have you attacking our son the next time he comes
running up to you. He's a little young to
understand why his mother
would try
to kill him, and I think his defense magic would catch you
by
surprise."

"Marak!"
exclaimed Kate. "I'd better not learn magic at all,
then. I don't want
to hurt anybody."

"Other than me,
you mean?" laughed her husband. "Don't fret.
We'll just have to find something else you're good at besides killing
people.
Seylin, did you need to see me?"

Kate kissed her husband good-bye and
walked off down the hallway, still rubbing her arm. The dog stood up,
stretching luxuriously from her front feet to her back feet, and trotted off
after her mistress.

Marak sat down
at his desk and waved the young man to a stool.
Seylin had always been Marak's special protege, sharing
the King's
fascination with unusual magic, but
he required a particular sort of
handling.
He wasn't like a goblin in his nature. He was sensitive and
easily upset by things, the effect of his strongly
dominant elf blood.
Marak could see that he was upset now.

"Goblin
King, I'm here to ask permission to leave the king
dom,"
divulged the miserable Seylin.

Marak's astonishment didn't show on
his face. "When will you be coming back?" he asked.

"I don't know." Seylin
sighed. "I don't think I will be coming
back.
I don't think there's much of a place for me here. I'm so differ
ent. I
want to go live with my own people."

"Your own
people," mused Marak, his unmatched eyes shrewd,
and
the ghost of a smirk on his face. "Which people are those?"

The unhappy young
man dropped his gaze and studied his
hands in awkward
silence.

"Seylin," said Marak,
"tell me what's wrong because it's something serious. At least, it had
better be."

"I proposed to Em, and she
rejected me," muttered Seylin. "She said she wants to marry
Thaydar."

Marak stared at and
through him, concentrating on the news. Emily and his wife were sisters, but
Emily had almost no elvish blood at all. The goblins called her a human. She
had come to the
kingdom voluntarily in order to be
with her sister, and Marak had
promised her
that she would be allowed to choose her own husband
one day. Emily and Seylin got along so well
together that Marak had
been sure of
her choice, but here she was, picking a real goblin's gob
lin over twice her age. With that kind of taste,
Marak thought, she'd
have been a good King's Wife.

"So now you want to find an elf
bride," he concluded. Seylin colored up in embarrassment.

"I don't
know about that," he answered. "I just want to find
some
elves."

"What makes
you think there are elves to find?" demanded Marak. "The last elf
King has been dead for over two hundred
years,
and when he died, the elvish race died, too."

"The goblins
never did track down every last elf," observed
Seylin.
"Some of the elf lords moved away during the elf harrowing, along with
groups of refugees."

"Marak Whiteye knew that they
were finished," countered the
King.
"Most of the elf men died in battle. Their widows poured into
the
camps that remained, and there weren't enough hunters to feed
them. They were starving to death. Whiteye didn't
need to hunt them
down."

"Kate's ancestor survived
it," noted Seylin. "And if she did, so could others."

"Kate's ancestor had to marry a
human man because her own
people were dead,
and she herself died almost a hundred years ago.
These arguments don't convince me, Seylin. Why are they convincing
you?"

The young man
frowned at his hands again. He didn't look up
as
he spoke.

"I
have a feeling about it. A feeling. That's all. We were coming
back from the
trading journey when I first noticed it. One night, I
sensed that elves were near me in the forest. I almost felt pulled out
of
my skin. I've been restless ever since. It was like a call."

"A
call." The King's eyes blazed with excitement. "I always
knew
you were born elvish for a reason. It's your magic -- or it's wishful thinking.
I don't know which. So now you want to go find your elves. And if you find
them, are you going to tell your King about them?"

"Well . . . " Seylin
blushed again. "I don't think they'd want me
to. And I wouldn't want them to ... to come to harm ... because
of
me."

"Come to harm?" echoed
Marak contemptuously. "Seylin, stop
thinking
like an elf! You are who you are, and I am who I am
because elf brides 'came to harm.' You just saw
an elf bride not five
minutes ago. Would you say that Kate came to
harm?"

"It can't matter,"
protested Seylin. "There must be so few elves left, if any. They need
their own brides, or there won't be any more elves at all."

"An excellent point,"
agreed Marak. "But you're not willing to leave the decision up to my good
judgment?"

The young man didn't
answer.

"Oh, Seylin, you're
confused," said Marak, chuckling. "Living
with your people! You've spent too many years looking at your pretty
face
in the mirror."

In the silence
that followed, the goblin King considered the pro
posed
quest. It had possibilities, but that elf nature had to be free to do the
hunting. Treat Seylin like a goblin, and the chance would be gone. Quite a
chance for Seylin, quite a chance for the goblins. Maybe even a chance for the
elves.

"Very well, I give you
permission to hunt for elves," he said finally. "And here's what I
can do for you and
your
people. I won't
order anyone to follow you, and I won't authorize any goblin to contact
the elves you may find. I will authorize no raids for brides, and I
won't ask that you
report to me. I will contact you, but I'll do it in
such a way that your elf friends won't know, and you will be free to
answer me or not. I won't ask that you return to the kingdom, either,
although
I do hope that someday you will."

Seylin felt a profound relief He had
been worried about leading goblins to an elf colony, but now he could live
among his people with a dear conscience.

"There are only two
conditions," added Marak dispassionately. "First, you are and always
will be my subject, and I will not allow
one
of my subjects to suffer attack. If anyone attacks you, even an elf,
I
have the right to protect you and take revenge. The day -- no, the
second -- that you suffer violent harm at the
hands of an elf, I cancel
all my promises. That's my obligation to you
as your King because you are one of my people."

"That seems fair," remarked
the young man. "I can't imagine
anyone
attacking me." The goblin King just smiled at him. He
knew Seylin
couldn't imagine it.

"And the
second condition," he said, getting up and crossing to a
drawer, "is that I need a lock of your hair and
three drops of blood."
He returned with a
pair of scissors, a small plate, and an object that looked like a golden tack.

"Why?"
demanded Seylin, immediately attracted by the thought
of
the magic.

"If I told you it's a keepsake,
would you believe me?" chuckled Marak. He cut off one of Seylin's black
locks and arranged it care, fully into a ring on the plate. Then, frowning
absently, he stuck the young man's finger and squeezed three drops onto the
hair.

"It's a tracking spell,"
guessed Seylin, "so you'll know where I am. That's good. I'm glad you'll
be looking after me."

"Seylin, Seylin," Marak
chided. "You can't wait to leave here and find
your
people, but
you're glad
your
King is looking after you. I don't know what will come
from such a puzzle, but I'm anxious to
find out. Here," he added,
reaching for paper and writing a short
note,
"give this to the storeroom clerks, and they'll provide you with
anything
you need. Happy hunting for your people, but don't stay away too long. Your
King hopes that you'll be back home with us soon.

After his
unhappy subject left, Marak sat at his desk for an hour, working intently over
the lock of hair, weaving three different colors
of
waxed thread around it to seal it inside a braided ring.

"Guard,
come!" he called, putting the finished ring into a
drawer,
and Tinsel appeared in the doorway. Tinsel wasn't exces
sively tall, but he seemed like a giant because of his broad build, and
his skin was a dull silver-gray. His silver hair was the most startling
thing about him. It looked like something the dwarves had made, and the light
glittering on it almost hurt the eyes.

The goblin King surveyed his guard
thoughtfully. Here was another strongly dominant elf cross, he thought to
himself, rather
good-looking as goblins
went, with no distinctive deformities. Blue
or silver skin often showed up when strong elf blood hit goblin
blood,
and often the strong elf crosses had those blue eyes. Tinsel
would have been a good match for Emily's age and
elf ancestry, too,
almost as good a
match as Seylin. Marak studied the young guard a
bit moodily. He'd have
been a better match than Thaydar.

"Now, why haven't you been
trying for young M yourself?" growled the King. "A handsome brute
like you."

"Who,
me?" asked Tinsel. "Thaydar and Seylin are both after
her.
Seylin and I were pages together, and Thaydar's my boss." He
smiled his good natured, slightly goofy smile.
"That kind of trouble
I don't need."

No, he wouldn't, considered Marak
with a sigh. He'd find no
fiercely competitive
spirit here. Goblins generally got along, but Tin
sel was beyond the pale. Remarkable for the calmness of his temper,
he was just
tremendously nice. This had led to a certain amount of
teasing when he was a page, but Tinsel had developed a unique solution
.
He had picked up the tormentor and carried him around until the child promised
to leave him alone.

"Go find M for me, Tinsel,"
said Marak resignedly. "I need to talk to her. I'll be in my rooms."
He walked downstairs, thinking it
over.
Thaydar, of all goblins, and his Seylin gone from the kingdom
entirely.
He couldn't wait to hear Emily's side of this one.

He sat down in his favorite reading
chair and pulled
A History of the Kings of England
out of the bookcase.
Over the years, the goblins who went out on trading journeys had brought Kate a
number of
books. She used them to teach the
pages their English, and she read them for pleasure. Marak read them as much as
she did. He thought
that a careful
king should study those peoples whose lands bordered
his own. He always picked this particular book when
he was
depressed about kingdom concerns; it cheered him up to see how
horribly the human kings managed.

Kate lay on a couch nearby, her arm
wrapped in a blanket and
her lips moving as
she read the book of elvish spells they were work
ing through. She
couldn't do the magic this week, but she could at least study. A companionable
silence settled over the room.