Goblins Vs Dwarves (13 page)

Fentongoose, however, looked more troubled than ever. “Look,” he said, pointing at a big rock near the lake's edge. The paddle which he used to scoop up new-made goblin eggs was propped against it.

“What is wrong?” asked Ned.

“The lava used to lap around that rock,” said Fentongoose. “Last month when I came down here gathering eggstones I stood on top of it so I could reach out into the lava with my paddle and catch a floating one. I could not do that now, could I?”

A yard or more of bare stone separated the rock from the edge of the slowsilver. Princess Ned felt a prickling sense of dread.

Dr Prong said, “So the level of the lake is falling?”

“It is going down fast,” agreed Fentongoose. “Look; I set this small stone here this morning as a marker. The lake has fallen by six inches just since then.”

“It must be those dwarves and their beastly tunnelling!” cried Princess Ned.

“It could be,” agreed Dr Prong. “They may have caused some fissure to open deep in the earth, like a hole in a bucket, and the slowsilver is leaking away down it!”

“And no more slowsilver means no more goblins,” said Fentongoose. “Not ever.”

“It's funny,” said Princess Ned. “There was a time, not so very long ago, when I would have thought that ‘no more goblins' was a good thing.”

“It's not, though, is it?” said Fentongoose. He looked gloomily out across the strange lake, and sighed. “No more goblins, no more Clovenstone.”

What it was in the Natterdon Mire that brewed up such mists, Henwyn did not know, but they seemed thicker by far than mists elsewhere. A few moments after he and Zeewa left the Inner Wall, he had looked back to find it already hidden by the vapours. He remembered uneasily the mist-woven traps which Poldew of the Mire, King of the Boglins, had made to snare his enemies. But Poldew was dead, and the mists which closed over Henwyn and Zeewa as they found their way slowly north were only mists; they did not cling and trap in the way the bog king's snares had done.

Behind the mist, old buildings reached up on every side of them: ruinous towers and crumbled walls, so thickly covered with moss that they looked as if they had been made out of moth-eaten green velvet. Between them the pools and puddles of the mire lay like dim mirrors. Reeds, taller than Henwyn, grew in wide, whispering tracts, and the reed beds were full of movements: rustlings and scurryings, croaks and squeaks and splashes. Once, through a thinning of the mist, Henwyn glimpsed one of the giant grey raft spiders which haunted the mire, but it seemed afraid of Zeewa's ghosts, and skated quickly away.

“We are being watched,” said Zeewa uneasily. “I can feel eyes upon us.”

Her ghosts were uneasy, too. They stayed close to Zeewa, and even the lion and the hyenas seemed wary of those walls of reeds and the things that hid in them. Only Kosi dared to go ahead, drifting like mist through the mist and the reeds, spying out paths for the wanderers and reporting back. And with his help, to Henwyn's surprise and relief, they crossed the marshes without making a wrong turning, and came before too long to a place where the land rose up, and the air was clearer. The sun showed itself again, a pale, cool disc behind the thinning mist, and then broke through in places, scattering dapples of golden light on the short green grass of the little hill they stood on. All over the hill, like the houses of an empty town, the silent tombs stood, little low buildings, ivy covered, carved with inscriptions in dead alphabets, decorated with gargoyles, and statues of the shrouded dead.

Henwyn drew his sword and went uphill between the tombs, through the shadow of trees which had been planted beside them. Zeewa followed him, and her ghosts followed her like a streamer of marsh mist, except for Kosi, who ran lightly ahead.

“Are there ghosts here?” Zeewa asked. Her words fell flatly, not echoing as they should among the tall walls of the tombs. Even the air of this place seemed dead.

“I cannot feel them. . .” said Kosi. “But there is something – I do not know what. . .”

At the hill's top stood a ring of stones, older than the ornate tombs which surrounded them, not carved or dressed but set upright rough and shapeless, just as they had been found. Lichen and moss had grown on them; a buzzard had used one for a perch and left white streaks of bird poo down its sides. On all sides of the ring the hill sloped away, covered with tombs, so that it was like looking down over the rooftops of a miniature city whose only inhabitants were statues.

Kosi slipped between two of the standing stones and floated into the centre of the ring. Some of the animals followed him, sniffing at the stones, nibbling hopefully at the thick, short grass which grew around them.

“I can
smell
something. . .” Kosi said, sounding excited.

“What is it?” asked Henwyn, who could smell only wet earth and the scent of the marsh.

“I don't know,” the ghost replied. “That's not the point. The point is that I can smell anything at all! I have not smelled anything, tasted anything, touched anything, not since Zeewa split my heart with her spear.”

“All right, I've said I'm sorry, haven't I?” grumbled Zeewa.

But Kosi hadn't been trying to make her feel guilty. He wasn't even looking at her. He was turning around and around in the heart of the ring of stones, his head up, his nostrils flaring, trying to catch the mysterious scent again. Around him, the ghost animals seemed excited too; the gazelles pranced, and the hyenas stuck their spotted noses in the air, sniffing deeply. Even the ghost flies seemed to buzz more happily.

Henwyn went to follow Kosi, but as he passed between two of the stones a thin, chilly clang resounded, like the tolling of a lonely bell. From the green grass at the centre of the ring a dark vapour arose, and shaped itself into the form of a cloaked and hooded figure. Zeewa cried out in alarm. Henwyn, aghast, stumbled backwards, bumping against one of the standing stones. The wraith swirled towards him, raising its bony hands. One clutched a goblet, the other a half-eaten chicken leg. (This seemed an odd detail to Henwyn, but he was too busy being terrified to pay it much heed.)

“Who dares to trespass among the Houses of the Dead?” the phantom asked, in a cold and dreadful voice. “Only the dead live here, and the living should leave us in peace, or. . . Ow! Stop it! Get off!”

Busy looming over poor Henwyn, the phantom had not noticed all the ghostly animals, twitching their noses at the smell of the phantom food it held. Tau the lion was the first to spring. The phantom gave a yelp as the great jaws closed on his chicken leg, and if he hadn't drawn his hand back quickly he would have lost that too. “That's mine!” he said, but Tau had already gulped the chicken leg down and was looking eagerly for more. The phantom scowled at Henwyn. “You interrupted me in the middle of my dinner,” he complained.

“How can this be?” asked Zeewa, stepping between the stones and confronting the phantom, her hands on her hips. “How can ghosts taste, smell, eat dinner? I thought they could do none of those things.”

“Ah, well, they can't,” agreed the phantom, fishing a couple of ghost flies out of his wine goblet and taking a quick slurp. “It's a nothing-y sort of place, the afterworld; very grey and uninteresting. But here at the Houses of the Dead we have made special arrangements.”

“What do you mean, ‘special arrangements'?” asked Henwyn, who was recovering his courage, and trying to look as if he had never been scared of this ghostly presence in the first place. “How can ghosts make special arrangements?”

“Ah, we who dwell at the Houses of the Dead are not just
any
ghosts,” the phantom said. “It's very exclusive. Those who were buried on this hill were among the greatest sorcerers the world has ever known: seers and necromancers in the service of the Lych Lord. We looked ahead. We made plans to keep ourselves in old age, and beyond. While we still lived, we summoned the spirits of the dead, and learned from them what a cheerless, uninviting time awaited us, as ghosts in the world to come. It sounds bad to you, I expect: being see-through, unable to touch anything, to smell or eat or feel. Think how much worse it seemed to us, who were among the great lords of the world, used to eating the finest foods of every land! So we resolved to do something. With spells and incantations we opened a way into the afterworld, and set about improving it. In olden times great kings and princes were buried with their best belongings, believing that they could take such treasures with them. We found a way to actually do it: our furniture and favourite clothes, our pets and pastimes, came with us as ghosts to decorate our homes in the afterworld. We filled our tombs with food and finery, and as these things rotted here in the living world, their ghosts appeared in ours. And they never run out! That chicken leg your cat just ate will reappear as succulent as ever on the ghost plate in my ghost larder, where it has sat these many centuries. Yes, on the whole it is a nice life, being dead.”

Zeewa looked the phantom up and down. “If you have such fine clothes, why do you dress in these gloomy robes?”

The phantom shrugged. “These old things? To be honest, I put them on to scare you. That is my job, you see; to scare away robbers and intruders who might disturb the peace of this place. They call me the Gatekeeper.”

“We are not robbers!” said Zeewa.

“Though I suppose we are intruders,” admitted Henwyn.

“I came here because I was told that you might rid me of my ghosts,” said Zeewa.

“Yes, you do seem to have rather a lot,” said the Gatekeeper, turning to gaze upon the crowd of animals that filled the ring of stones.

Kosi turned to Zeewa. “Princess, if we are to leave you, then this is the place where we would best like to be left. To smell and taste and touch again! It will be better than the world of shades which G'angooli's spell dragged us from!”

“Ah,” said the Gatekeeper. He put one bony hand into the shadows of his hood to scratch his ghostly nose. “Well, it's not so easy as that; the spells which created this afterworld of ours were most specific. Not just
any
ghost is allowed entry. It is only the dead of Clovenstone who may enter. That's the other part of my job, you see: I have to keep out those ghosts who do not belong. Not that it wouldn't be nice to have a few lions and antelope and things about the place! And you too, young fellow. . .” He nodded at Kosi's ghost. “We've grown rather stuffy and set in our ways over the years; a few new ghosts would brighten up the place no end. But rules are rules, and you can't go meddling around with spells – at least, we can't, not any more, being dead. So I'm afraid you cannot join us. Not unless you are from Clovenstone.”

Zeewa shook her head. “Kosi comes from the Tall Grass Country, West of Leopard Mountain. Half the world away.”

“Hmm,” said the gatekeeper sadly.

“I am from Clovenstone,” said Henwyn. “At least, I live here. Would I do?”

“Admirably,” said the gatekeeper. “But you are not dead. If you were, you would be welcome in a flash, and you could bring this young man and these animals as your retinue. I suppose if the young lady were to kill you. . .”

“No!” cried Zeewa. “That seeress at Coriander said nothing about killing anyone! She told me that I should come to the Houses of the Dead and there I would be freed of my ghosts. She did not say that anyone had to die!”

“Hmm,” said the Gatekeeper again. “Perhaps she was not a very good seeress; even the best of them overlook these minor details sometimes.”

“Minor details?” gasped Henwyn, who was rather afraid that Zeewa might be tempted to do him in, if it would rid her of her ghosts.

“Very well,” said Zeewa. “I have had a wasted journey. I shall return to the Inner Wall, and talk to the wise ones there; to Princess Ned and Fentongoose and Dr Prong. Perhaps they will know some way to alter these spells which bind you, Gatekeeper.”

“I hope so,” agreed the Gatekeeper, and he bowed low, like a column of smoke wavering on the wind.

“Come, my ghosts,” said Zeewa, turning away. Kosi followed her. The animals did not want to leave, but they had no choice; they were dragged after her like iron drawn by a magnet, funnelling away between the standing stones and back down the slope of the hill.

Henwyn lingered there on the hilltop. As the phantom gatekeeper began to fade he called out, “Wait!”

“What?” the phantom replied. “Only, the rest of my dinner's getting cold, you see. . .”

“What about goblins?” Henwyn asked. “Do they come to your afterworld? There is one who was a friend of mine, who was lost in the battle with the dwarves. I wondered if you might have seen him at all?”

“I'm sorry,” said the Gatekeeper. “There are no goblins at the Houses of the Dead. They have their own afterworld, I believe. A noisy, smelly place. What goes on there, who the latest arrivals are. . .” He gave a ghostly shrug. “I'm sorry. But good luck to you, young fellow; to you and your princess from the Tall Grass Country, west of Leopard Mountain. I hope to see her ghosts again. And, of course, I shall see you again, sooner or later, for all the dead of Clovenstone come here. I'll look forward to having a nice long chat, when you join us.”

He sank back down into the earth, and Henwyn, with a shudder, turned away. For a moment, as he looked downhill between the old stones, it seemed to him that lamps were burning in the tombs, and that he could see the dead walking to and fro between them, and riding by on ghostly horses, as if this town of tombs was a real town, and the air was full of faint voices, laughter, and the ghosts of smells. Then it faded, and there was only the hillside, and the silent tombs, and Zeewa going back down towards the marshes with her ghosts behind her.