On the Verge (14 page)

The queen’s voice vibrated with animal barbarity. She issued a few commands in her goblin tongue and the goblin horde fell silent as the condemned creature bent at the waist and placed the crown of its head against the floor. The awkward position meant the cobalt horns rested parallel to the floor and it would be relatively easy for Freya to bring the heavy pickaxe down on the base of either one, severing it from the goblin’s head and consigning the doomed kobold to the Verge.

“Take the horn.” The queen’s command was nearly a whisper spoken from high on her pulpit, but so quiet was the great cavern now that the directive seemed to ring in Freya’s ears as though shouted from only a few paces away.

Freya hesitated. She had always considered herself a tough girl, a person who wasn’t afraid of a challenge, especially a challenge that stood in the way of her goals. One quick strike from the weighty pickaxe and the relatively fragile horn would be hers. She could be on her way and forget about this mad place, the goblin queen and her deformed human caretaker. But then where would she be? She’d be an executioner, not just a lackey in a pointless game of power.

It didn’t have to be this way, did it? All her life Freya felt she had acted as though someone else was the author of her own personal tale. This is where it had gotten her, carrying out some ridiculous ritual that would end brutally for all those involved. She was furious with herself for getting into this position, yet there was still a part of her that demanded her compliance, that reminded her that if she just followed the rules everything would turn out fine.

She stood there above the goblin, axe heavy in her hand, while an internal war raged inside her skull. Obey or refuse. She was ready to be the author of her own story.

“No.” Freya’s voice was even quieter than the queen’s but its impact was unmistakable.

“What did you say?” the queen asked, her tone incredulous.

“I said, no.” Freya surprised herself. She abhorred being the center of attention. Even under the best of circumstances, when called upon to perform in any capacity under scrutiny her face would immediately flush and her vocal chords constrict while her stomach twisted itself in knots. But here, in the midst of a mass of goblins and assured of an unpredictable queen’s wrath, she felt calm. For the first time in a very long while, Freya had taken control of her fate and it felt good. She smiled.

Later, when Freya replayed what happened next in her mind, she always lingered over the reaction her incongruous grin had engendered in the goblin
königin
. She liked to think that it was this tiny show of mirthful defiance in the face of cruel despotism that precipitated the queen’s downfall. It might have been, for when the
königin
saw that cheeky smirk from atop her pulpit she flew into such a rage that she threw her head back and howled. It was a ghastly outcry. Part wolfish wail and part demonic shriek, it echoed off the cavern walls, shocking everyone in attendance into stunned petrifaction.

All except one, that is. The goblin prostrated below her, the one the queen had called the
blamieren
, suddenly leapt to its feet and wrenched the pickaxe from Freya’s clenched fists. He hurled the tool, as though throwing a discus, straight at the queen atop her spiky pulpit.

It spun gracefully in the air, the sharp silver head chasing the ebony handle around and around as it sliced through the space separating the
blamieren
from his
königin
. The queen’s howl finally came to an end and she dropped her head back down ready to address the insolence of the girl before her, the human who had forgotten her place. Her flinty eyes were full of rage as they focused once more on the floor below her, but within a split second the rage shifted to surprise as she locked onto the fearsome axe cleaving the air mere inches from her.

There was no time for the
königin
to react and the goblin’s throw had been perfectly aimed. The jet-black handle spun around one last time, its momentum startling. The sharp silver spike of the axe’s handle whirled into view and time seemed to slow. Freya didn’t have perfect eyesight but she saw the point of the axe pierce the surface of the queen’s formidable blue horn, creating first a crack and then a jagged fissure. As the silver point began to turn away again the horn became completed severed from the queen’s skull. It twisted away into the air, carried by the momentum of the spinning axe.

The goblin that had thrown the axe suddenly sprinted ahead, nearly crashing into the base of the pinnacle. Freya wasn’t sure what he was doing until she saw the brilliant blue horn drop into his outstretched hand. The moment his stony fingers closed around it he began to laugh. The goblin’s outburst was humorless. It was full of wrath, resentment, and the empty joy of having exacted revenge. The sound was haunting as it filled the cavern, but it was nothing compared to the unholy roar that erupted from the bowels of the dehorned queen.

She was writhing on top of the pulpit, grasping frantically at the empty air where her horn had been. All pretense of humanity had disappeared and her true nature, that of the basest beast, filled her thrashing form. Whether she was filled with agony or anger, Freya couldn’t be sure, but when the queen threw her head back and screamed again, she could have sworn she felt that howl with her heart and not her ears, such was its primordial power. It was a sound that she would never forget, a sound that she knew would haunt the edges of her consciousness until the day she died.

The queen’s abject shriek was still issuing from her tortured throat when the flames on the ceiling began to flicker, their bright blue-white light sputtering. Directly above the
königin
the fire had gone out. Freya recognized the blackness there with a surprising horror in the pit of her stomach. No longer held in check by the mysterious cobalt flames it seemed to exult in its newfound freedom, churning and convulsing in an eerie danse macabre.

The fearsome liquid ballet culminated in a final molten jeté that sent a swirling column of blackness down from the ceiling. The column elongated, forming a stalagmite to mirror the pointy projection of the queen’s pulpit. The smooth velvet darkness formed a striking counterpart to the jagged pinnacle, a contrast made even more apparent by the tortured movements of the queen of the goblins.

For a moment Freya was unsure what was going to happen, but as the blackness continued its relentless descent from the ceiling, it became apparent that stalactite and stalagmite would inevitably join. Despite herself Freya screamed as the shadowy murk swallowed the
königin
’s head, so ghastly was the sludge that consumed the queen. It instantly suffocated her frenzied cries, and the immediate silence in the vast cavern was terrifying. Like the eye of a storm, it portended disaster.

Freya was still looking at the place where the queen of the goblins had once stood when she felt cold fingers grab her hand. It was the goblin that had only moments before been kneeling at her feet, waiting for Freya to bring down Rusty’s pickaxe. Thick blue blood seeped down its brow and into its eye, and it was no longer laughing manically. Instead what Freya could only describe as a content smile suffused its rocky features. The goblin grasped her hand and turned it over so that her palm was facing up. Into it he slipped the queen’s long, beautiful cobalt horn. Freya stood dumbstruck as the creature’s obsidian eyes twinkled in the fading firelight from the ceiling.

Then, before Freya could even coerce a word from her lips in gratitude, a column of blackness smashed down on the goblin with startling force, absorbing him completely and then retreated back into the ceiling. Panic grasped Freya’s heart as scores of similar pylons of darkness escaped the ceiling and crashed down onto the assembled goblins who began to scatter in a frantic attempt at escape.

Another hand closed around her arm, but this time it belonged to Rusty.

“We have to go,” he said, his voice full of urgency.

Freya did not put up any protest as he pulled her forward and broke into a sprint. She held onto his hand hard as they ran for all they were worth back toward the dwindling flames of the hearth at the entrance to the cavern. Tar-like pillars crashed around them with greater frequency as the flames of the cavern ceiling sputtered and died. Freya could see the blue-white flames of the hearth flickering too. The once formidable blaze was little more than a few tongues of fire amid azure embers now. Rusty increased his already fierce pace and Freya had to sprint with everything she had left to keep up.

When they finally reached the fireplace there was only the meanest semblance of a fire amid the grey ashes in the hearth. The blackness swallowed up the remaining goblins with the sickening sound of viscous death. Of the brilliant fire-lit ceiling, nothing was left, only crushing darkness.

“Go. Now.”

Rusty’s command left no room for negotiation. Freya stepped into the dying fire and immediately felt as though she were slogging through the gelatinous mire of a swamp. The sensation was completely different from the effervescence that had ushered her into the cavern. She could see the great room of Rusty’s lodge beyond the final few feet of bluish soot, but it felt as though she were drowning as it became harder and harder to move toward the safety of the lodge.

Freya summoned up every last ounce of strength she had and dragged her protesting legs through the nearly impenetrable space of the hearth, the air around her growing more opaque by the second. Finally, as she pushed forward one last time she felt the open air hit her outstretched fingers. It was the little jolt of hope she needed. Her foot found a toehold and with a strength she was certain she would never be able to summon again she launched herself forward.

Freya greedily gulped the air in Rusty’s great room as she lay prostrate on the floor, relief flooding her body. But the respite was short lived as the sounds of frenzied escape rocketed Freya’s consciousness back to the nearly extinguished fire and the giant of a man attempting to push through the now virtually solid wall of darkness it was leaving in its wake.

Freya stood quickly. The hearth was almost entirely black, but she could still make out Rusty’s tortured face in the petrifying gloom. Up until this point his eyes had held only resignation in grim recognition of his fate, a man at the mercy of family tradition and runaway power. And as much as Freya connected with him in that feeling of dutiful obligation, a small part of her had hated him for living his life that way, for mirroring her own acquiescence to fate and circumstance. Now though, at the most improbable time, she saw in his look not compliance with the inevitability of his imminent death but defiance. As the blue-white flames of the goblin fire died, an equally powerful fire had caught hold in Rusty’s soul.

Freya could see his hand nearly at the margin between his lodge and the hearth. She knew if he could just feel the lightness of the air there, he, just as she had done moments before, could muster the strength to escape. Not knowing what else to do, Freya made a tight fist and drew back her elbow. Then, she launched her knuckles forward and into the dense blackness of the hearth. Her hand almost immediately came to a stop but she pushed it forward, tensing all the muscles in her shoulder and core until the tips of her fingers found Rusty’s outstretched hand. She grabbed ahold and pulled.

For a few agonizing moments nothing happened; then, with a disturbing sucking noise, the darkness let go of Rusty, discharging him inelegantly onto the floor. He nearly toppled onto Freya who had been thrown backward with the abrupt retrograde momentum his sudden expulsion had created.

They both lay there for a few moments, side by side, their chests heaving. It took Freya awhile to realize that still clutched in her left hand was the queen’s horn, a brilliant blue souvenir of the last mad hour of her life. Happy tears sprung to her eyes and she smiled. She wasn’t sure what had just happened, but she had a feeling that wasn’t how the story had been meant to play out. A plot twist. It was exactly what she needed.

E
noch folded his arms tightly over his chest as he cowered in a grimy alcove near the entrance to the Vestiges Club. It was a bleak October night and unseasonably cool. He sighed and his breath turned into clouds of vapor that mingled with the smoke from his cigarette. He took another drag, inhaling deeply, holding it down in his chest for several long moments. He tapped the ashes away and checked the time on his cell phone. It was eight o’clock. Another minute and Travis would be late.

As Ophidia’s chief steward it was his job to procure her meals when she was at the club, and she had made a special request for Travis. It had been surprisingly easy to convince the Parnassus barista to meet him. Enoch had tracked him down at the café, and it was clear the guy remembered Ophidia. Vividly. At the mere mention of her name Travis had started untying his barista’s apron, ready to abandon his shift to meet her. He had seemed disappointed when Enoch told him they wouldn’t be departing then and there. Just in case, Enoch had thrown something in about her being a gallery owner interested in new talent. He had noticed all the art on the café walls had Travis’s name on it. It’d be nice for the kid to think his art was getting noticed before Ophidia made him her dinner. Happy souls are sweet souls, after all, and he thought Ophidia had been feasting on one too many dark and brooding types lately.