Hidden Things (19 page)

She emerged from the station with a flimsy bag in one hand and a cardboard tray holding two massive plastic soda cups in the other. Vikous didn't acknowledge her return; when she went around to his side of the Jeep, his attention was focused beyond the silent pump to the highway exit visible down the street. “What's going on?” she asked.

For several moments, Vikous didn't reply. Calliope pulled her coat more tightly around her against the cold. “Something's here,” he finally said.

The statement chilled Calliope more than the mountain air. “Do you . . . who? Was it waiting for us?”

Vikous's hood moved back and forth. “I don't think so. I think they've been following us.”

Calliope frowned. “For how long? I thought you could tell when—”

“Maybe since we got back on the interstate, which I'm suddenly thinking might have been a mistake. I can't tell, though. Someone's been shielding them.” His eyes narrowed. “They aren't now.”

Calliope didn't ask why; that was one of the million-dollar questions to which they never seemed to have the answer. She could come up with a number of reasons herself, all equally likely and none of them comforting. “Can we keep going? Lose them going through Denver or taking back roads?”

Another head shake. “Not being found is one thing; losing them is something else entirely. Besides”—he glanced up at the mountains that crowded in at the town from the west—“I don't think they're going to wait around after it gets dark.”

“So tell me you have a plan.”

Vikous turned toward her. She could see him wink within the depths of his hood. “Let's eat, and you can tell me what kind of problems you had when you tried to do that hike with White.”

Dusk comes early to a town that lies directly against the eastern face of a mountain range. By four thirty in the afternoon, the streetlights were already brightening. Atop the rocky slab that gave the town its name, the lights of several radio towers winked in the gathering dark like sentries.

Calliope and Vikous climbed the steep incline of the hill from which the massive stone formation rose up, pulling themselves along in places with handfuls of chaparral that dotted the rugged slope.

“Tell me again,” Calliope said as she pushed herself along, “why we're doing this?” The cold night air burrowed into her lungs. The region was only a few spring thunderstorms away from officially being a desert—throw in the fact that they were right alongside a mountain range, at night, in the first part of November, and Calliope was certain that she was, at that moment, as cold as she had been in the last ten years. She hadn't missed the sensation.

“We need to . . . lose . . . whoever's following us,” Vikous said between breaths. Calliope was perversely glad that, uncomfortable as she was, she wasn't the one suffering the most from the climb. “That means . . . need to . . . jump.”

“Jump?” Calliope's gaze traveled up the nearly vertical cracked stone face that rose above them. “I don't think I want to lose them that bad.”

Vikous could barely get enough air to chuckle. “Not that kind of jump. We need to find a way . . .” He shook his head. “Ask me once we get to the top and I've had a chance to puke.”

Calliope nodded and kept going.

 

The ground was loose and almost sandy near the base of the rock itself. Vikous sat on a flat stone, his hood up and his head lowered between his knees, his breath hard but steady. His hands were tucked into his midsection, and in the dark of the new moon his silhouette looked like nothing so much as a nesting bird.

With skis tied to its feet,
Calliope thought. Aloud, she said, “You ready to go, iron man?”

Vikous made a deep grating noise in his throat that made Calliope cringe, then spat noisily. “Oh yeah.” He spoke directly to the ground. “I'm fantastic. Top of the world. Kill me when all this is done.” He leaned back and tilted his parti-colored face toward the clouded sky, inhaling shallowly through his nose. “I'm really too old for this crap.”

“Move now, bitch later,” Calliope said. “I'm freezing.”

Vikous threw her a glare that almost seemed to warm the air around her, but he got up. “You sure you're ready for the next bit?”

“I don't know. Where are we going?” Calliope's tone was clipped, reflecting the tension she felt whenever their trip took a stranger turn. So far, those twists had not been in their favor.

Vikous's expression was unreadable. “Someplace else,” he replied, picking up a small, sharp stone and walking up to a deeply shadowed crevice in the stone. He glanced back and Calliope moved to join him as he bent and drew a line in the sandy dirt that stretched from one side of the crevice to the other then, standing, simply stepped over the line and into the shadows beyond. He vanished utterly into the darkness.

Calliope watched the crevice for movement but saw nothing. “What the hell,” she muttered, then stepped over the line.

“Borders are important,” Vikous said in the close darkness. “If you can't find one, make one.”

In the face of the stone wall in front of them stood a small iron door, limned all around its edge by a flickering light whose source had to lie somewhere behind it.

Calliope looked back to where she'd just been standing and gasped aloud. Down the slope of the hill they had just climbed, the lights of the city had vanished.

Not really,
said a small voice in the back of Calliope's head.
There's just a lot less of them.

“What . . . ?” Calliope's voice trailed off, robbed of all forward momentum. It felt to her as if every time she got used to the way things worked, someone dropped the ground out from under her.

“Welcome to the Hidden Lands.” Vikous banged on the door.

The portal swung open almost immediately, spilling torchlight into the crevice. A squat, bowlegged figure peered up at Vikous's face without surprise, although his bloodshot eyes widened almost comically when he turned to Calliope. “Oy now, what's this?” the thing nearly shouted, turning back to Vikous. “We don' like yur kind aroun' anysight, an' these”—he jerked his bare, misshapen head toward Calliope—“r' fur other things.” A dim spark of intelligence flared in the depths of his muddy eyes. “Or didjya bring us a pressent, paint face?”

Calliope knew exactly what a goblin looked like now. She also knew why they had been forced to hide; she wanted to beat this one bloody already. It was instinctual—a long-forgotten imprint flaring back into life. “Okay, Vikous,” she said, “every time you take me to meet someone new I want to kick their ass into their throat. It's getting old.” The goblin snarled.

Vikous glanced over his shoulder at Calliope and stepped directly in front of the twisted guard. “I am Vikous,” Calliope heard him say in what she had dubbed his on-the-job voice. “I seek audience.”

The goblin frowned, obviously puzzled by the shift in mood. “Err . . . what's she got to do widdit?”

“I am her guide,” Vikous replied in the same tone. The guard's eyes twitched in surprise to Calliope, then back to Vikous. He pulled himself more erect, which almost seemed painful.

“Err . . . awright.” He frowned in thought again. Finally: “Err . . . what's yer purpose of . . .” He squinted. “Whattayer here for?”

“Trade,” Vikous said without hesitation.

The goblin snorted. “Aww, yer shoulda said 'at from the firs' bit.” He glanced at Calliope and cleared his throat. “I mean, err . . . come on in and be welcome in the Keep a' the King.”

It's not Weathertop,
Calliope thought.
It's Goblintown.

They followed the bobbing gait of the goblin as it descended into the hill. Its skin was a mottled gray-green that hung in wrinkled folds from its twisted, rawboned frame.

“Nice friends you've got here,” Calliope murmured. “What are we trading for?”

“Travel,” Vikous said. “Their king can arrange to get us farther into the Hidden Lands. If we can arrange to do it quietly, we'll lose the guys following us.”

“And we're going to offer what for this?”

Vikous glanced at their guide. “These guys like to have bits of human culture. It doesn't even really matter if what you have is valuable, they're like pack rats.”

In the shadowy light of the torch, Calliope's eyes widened as one tiny piece of the puzzle her life had become dropped into place. “
Oh.
”

Vikous glanced at her. “What?”

“That's why you've been grabbing all those jelly packs at the restaurants. You must have been planning for this for a while.”

“Umm . . .” Vikous frowned, shaking his head. “No, I just really like jelly.”

Calliope blinked. “Oh, sure. That makes . . . sense.” She scanned the walls as she tried to recover her train of thought.
You can deal with magic and monsters,
she thought,
but petty shoplifting leaves you speechless? Come on.
She cleared her throat. “What . . . what were you going to use for—” She paused, looking at Vikous, whose face had twisted into an expression she could not interpret in the near-dark. “What's wrong?”

Vikous shook his head, obviously struggling with some internal conflict. Suddenly, with a shock of expelled air, he burst into a low chuckle. Calliope stared at him. “You were joking?” she said.

He nodded, still laughing. The goblin glanced over his shoulder. “Oy, shut yer soup-hole.”

Calliope ignored him. “The jelly
is
for the trade?”

Again, Vikous nodded.

Calliope turned away from him. “Asshole,” she said, the sting of the words stolen away by Vikous's redoubled laughter.

“I . . . I just . . .” Vikous gasped out. “I just . . . really like jelly.” His words dissolved into another laughing fit. Calliope elbowed him in the ribs to no effect; he was still chuckling quietly to himself when they arrived in the main cavern of the goblin king.

 

So,
Calliope thought as she blinked back tears,
this is what being buried in a giant cat box is like.

“Reminds me of your pepper spray,” Vikous murmured, his laughter all but faded away. Calliope could only nod; she didn't want to risk taking the deeper breath that speech would require. There were few torches burning in the room; the light, such that it was, seemed to come from clumps of glowing matter that had been smeared in strange patterns on the walls and floor.

The goblin they had followed was taking a great deal of pleasure in his suddenly increased importance. Leading them across the center of the nestlike cavern, he announced their arrival by banging on whatever bit of metal or hard plastic could be made to clash or thump and calling out “
vis'tors, vis'tors, vis'tors
” at the top of his cracked voice. By the time they had crossed a quarter of the cavern, others had begun to stir, which only seemed to make the stench worse.

Their escort led Vikous and Calliope up to a recessed alcove in the far wall of the cavern into which a threadbare recliner had been jammed. An almost childlike goblin perched in the large chair, its sticklike legs jutting straight out from the front edge of the seat cushion. A tin crown smeared with filth tipped precariously on its head. It . . . he, rather, Calliope amended, was quite clearly naked except for the crown, and licked his lips lasciviously as they approached.

“Shek,” the crowned goblin said in a high and surprisingly clear voice.

“Vis't— ehh, yes, m'lord?” Shek managed a clumsy bow.

“Shut it,” the king said.

Shek opened his mouth to speak but, at a glance from his liege, clearly thought better of it. The king turned back to Vikous and Calliope. “You have come to trade, flatfeet?” the king asked Vikous.

Vikous executed a stage bow, flamboyant and graceful while simultaneously foolish. “Indeed, king of the earth kin. We seek to travel farther into the Hidden Lands to which your home is a noble gateway.” He raised his face to meet the shrunken monarch's gaze. “We also desire secrecy, which all know only the earth lords truly master.” He bowed to the throne again.