The Elfin Ship (39 page)

Along the path beneath the trees it was monstrously dark and overcast with shadow. On occasion they could see patches of vaguely moonlit clouds through the gaps in the foliage overhead. The trees were scattered and clumped and rimmed with dark morass and marsh grass and pools of dim water, but their limbs bent out so alarmingly that there seemed to be an almost unbroken canopy of leaves overhead. More than once Jonathan fancied having seen a snake – once several snakes – winding away into the swamp beside the path. They were long and very thin and seemed to be in no apparent hurry to be off. Ahab caught sight of the first one but paid it little mind, for there in the shadows of the swamp the snakes were forbidding in an undefinable but deeply felt way.

Long clumps of moss hung from the branches, and occasional droplets of water plunked onto Jonathan’s head or down the back of his coat. They had to trust Escargot when they came to forks in the path, for with the exception of a few scattered orange lights away out among the trees, there was no sign that they were within a hundred miles of habitation. The tower on the ridge had disappeared entirely from view.

As they crept along, wary of meeting a party of goblins or of coming upon a gray-skinned troll looming up out of the shadows, the fog kept rising to envelop them, then sinking away again to hover in the forest. Most of the time the mists rose about their knees, and it seemed as if they were gliding along like spirits through some shadowy night-lit underworld. It was impossible for Jonathan to know how far they’d gone. They climbed across fallen trees, mossy and wet, that lay broken on the path. Jonathan could have sworn that it was the same tree each time – that they were circling around, stumbling randomly along through the murk. He determined to watch for the tree again, but for a long silent time they didn’t clamber over any more fallen trees, so he began to think that his imagination was acting up.

Muted noises reached their ears finally after what seemed hours of creeping through the gloomy forest. There could be little doubt they were goblin noises – the hollow gonging of a mallet on an iron kettle and the weird toneless howl of willow flutes and the chaotic cackling laughter and gobbling of the little men, capering away somewhere close by.

The rafters went along carefully, staying out of the occasional patches of moonlight and crouching for long moments in shadow to peer into the dark recesses of the swamp around them. Through the trees, finally, glowing orange and yellow through the misty night, lantern-light could be seen through a window. It shone from within a stilted swamp hut with slat sides and a shingle roof, falling to bits from age and disrepair.

The lamplight reminded Jonathan a bit too much of the cabin in the forest near Stooton Slough, and he had a strong urge to ignore the whole business and be on his way. But the deviltry here was obvious. This was no odd goblin trap. A dozen or so of the things were cavorting within this ruined shanty. It occurred to Jonathan that they were ‘goblinizing’ it – a word the Professor would surely approve. All of the rafters watched silently from the shadow of an alder as goblins lurched out onto the porch of the cabin, hooted and gobbled and whacked at the railing and lurched back inside. They seemed to be holding some sort of a meeting, for twice in the space of five minutes small parties of goblins tramped in out of the shadows of the woods in a businesslike way. Once, with much hooting and blathering, a half dozen or so reeled out and down the wooden stairs and away through the swamp, one massive gnarled goblin hurling a tin of some nature after them.

A figure appeared shortly thereafter, outlined in the lamplit window. Jonathan could see that it sported one of Lonny Gosset’s caps, sidewise on its head. The thing cackled with laughter and dumped what must have been the contents of a silverware drawer out onto the roadway, for there was the clatter and clang of cutlery as the contents of the drawer fell together below. The sound, apparently, pleased the marauding goblins somehow, for something like a cheer rose from a number of goblins within the cabin. One of them stumbled out and down and retrieved the spilled silverware, then clambered back into the cabin and dumped the boxful out the window again.

There was the sound of breaking glass and a wild screech shortly after the cutlery had been dumped and hooted over for the third time, and then the sound of scuffling and wild gobbling. The lamplight wavered and swung for a moment, then crashed out as the lantern very obviously fell from wherever it stood, and broke. The darkness lasted a moment before a new orange and red light flickered up and began to climb up the walls inside. A rush of goblins stormed out onto the porch, down the stairs, and away into the swamp. Two goblins hurtled out in their wake, scratching and biting and both afire from head to foot. They rolled sizzling into a pool across the path, leaped up, and followed along behind their friends. The flames spread through the abandoned shanty as the rafters advanced along the path.

All in all it would have been an odd display had it not been goblins who were involved. Jonathan thought of stopping to attempt to put out the fire, but on close inspection the ramshackle structure was such a ruin that it would be no worse off burned to a heap of cinder than it was whole. So they let it smolder and burn and passed along out of the firelight back into the darkness of the swamp.

Soon after they had resumed their trek they began again to hear the baying of wolves, now before them, now behind, now up and away ahead of them as if from the rocky slopes of Hightower Ridge. Once or twice Jonathan caught a glimpse of red eyes off in the swamp and heard the stealthy pad of feet somewhere near. And once, not long before the end of the path through the swamp, the whole lot of them stopped in a bunch to stare at what seemed to be about a thousand tiny yellow eyes peering weirdly at them through the misty moonlight that covered a dark pool. It turned out they
were eyes
– the eyes of innumerable frogs, all heaped about in the crowded pool and silently watching in the darkness.

They only paused for a moment, then hurried along for another two or three minutes before the overhanging branches of the trees fell away behind and they found themselves beneath the cloud-dimmed sky looking up toward the rocky fastness of Hightower Ridge, the tower itself a monolithic pile of shadows beyond the crags above. They began to pick their way along the path that rose upward out of the misty air of the swamp, clinging to the shadows of the rocks and listening in slowly growing dread to the grim howling of wolves above and around them.

The moon seemed to Jonathan to be their one ally. He attempted to lighten his spirits by thinking that above them in the starry sky, elf galleons, if rumors were true, might well be casting wonderful nets into the seas of clouds and fishing for who-knew-what sorts of celestial jewels. He had an inkling, although it may have been nothing more than a rather deep hope, that from somewhere far above their movements were observed, that they weren’t as alone in the dark night as it seemed they were. He had an urge to shake the magical fish coins out of his bag and lay them out in the proper pattern just to be able to nod once or twice to the Moon Man. But the tower loomed above, and there was no time for magical coins or for wishing he were someplace else. Escargot grunted out the suggestion that they stop and reconnoiter, so they did. They slumped finally in the shadows of a little grove of trees where they had a reasonably clear view of the back and side of the castle.

It was built of great blocks of gray-black stone that had worn smooth over the centuries. Blue lichen and green and brown mosses splotched the walls, making for darker, shadowed patches against the dim surface. The tower itself pushed up out of the rocks of the ridge and thrust some four or five stories into the sky; light glowed through scattered windows. Somehow the dark height of the thing was chilling. It had such a somber, dismal look about it that even on the warmest spring days it would still be sunless and bleak. Chunks of stone appeared to have been broken away here and there as if the tower had been struck by lightning or shaken by an earthquake. Heavy vines twisted up the sides, but most of the vines were bare of leaves.

While they crouched in the trees, they listened to rustlings roundabout in the woods and to the baying of the wolves away up the ridge. Twice in the few long minutes they were there, gray wolves padded out of the forest and skulked along the edge of the castle, disappearing once again into the trees.

To the rear of the castle was a great window of dusty, leaded glass. Flickering light shone through onto the trees behind, and the light jumped and waved and glowed and dimmed – clearly firelight. From within came the sounds of gobbling and cackling and hooting and gonging, as if there were some sort of goblin revel in progress.

The rafters crept off through the shadows, pushing along toward the firelit window to have a look within. Pouring from a stone chimney along one rear wall was a mass of thick smoke accompanied by huge sparks and dark, shadowy forms and unsettling shapes. The smoke dissipated into the night air like steam, but the dim shadows that accompanied it fluttered and tumbled and seemed, finally, to fly off into the distances, some on what appeared to be great, slowly flapping wings, silhouetted against the night sky. The rafters found themselves, finally, behind the castle and on the steep edge of the rocky slope of the ridge. Below, the tops of the swamp trees thrust up through a blanket of fog that seemed to be rolling languorously up toward them from the morass below.

After lying still for a few moments and listening to the wolves, and then the silence, the company crept along toward the lighted window, flattening themselves against the stones of the tower. Through the dirty window they could see an immense hall with a high, trestle ceiling and with great carved pillars holding the whole thing up. Away to the right was a wide stairway, spiraling off toward the upper levels. Before them was a fireplace built of the same gigantic blocks of stone as the tower itself. The fire within glowed as if it had been burning for years on end.

There before the fire, stoking it with a long, dark poker, stood Selznak the Dwarf, his pipe in his mouth and his stick in his hand. His broad cap hung on a peg near a massive, barred door.

Jonathan was vaguely surprised to see that the Dwarf was bald on top, that he had sort of a ring of hair. It seemed to buck Jonathan up a bit actually, because he immediately wondered whether Selznak was self-conscious about his bald spot and whether, like Mayor Bastable, Selznak drank vinegar and rubbed snake oil into his scalp in an effort to restore his hair. It was probably unlikely that he did, and it was astonishing that even magic and enchantment couldn’t restore hair.

Shouting and gibbering around him were a dozen goblins of varying shapes and sizes who waved vessels of drink – intoxicating drink from the look of it. Selznak put his poker down and fanned the flames by squeezing away at a great, suspended bellows until the fire leaped and roared. He bent down and grasped an armful of fuel from a pile of pale wood against the wall. He seemed to inspect each log before tossing it into the fire, and, as he did, Jonathan was horrified to see that what the Dwarf held was not wood at all, but long, bleached dry bones. Selznak stepped back and fanned the flames once again. Then he reached inside his cloak and produced a stoppered vial which he uncorked, sprinkling lime-colored powder into the fire. A greenish
whoosh
of flame arose like a cloud, disappearing up the chimney, and the fire abruptly died down to a mass of glowing embers. There, clacking and chattering in the midst of the fire was a hellish and jerking skeleton, dangling above the flames like a marionette. The thing danced and waved, and the goblins in the room became quiet and stood in wide wonder, seeming frightened of the thing themselves. Selznak pounded his stick three times on the stone floor, and the bobbing skeleton clattered out onto the hearth and jerked around in a little circle, its bottom jaw working spasmodically. It stopped, finally, when Selznak pounded once again on the stones, and it put its hands to its face and began to weep. It turned to face the window then peered out from between bony fingers and grinned.

Skeletons, to Jonathan, pretty much all looked alike, but he didn’t have to think long before he knew that he’d seen this one before, or at least that he’d seen one with similar emotions. He and the others watched in frozen horror as, step by slow step, the thing clattered toward them across the wide hall, now weeping, now chattering, now bursting into wild laughter as the goblins fell away before it.

A wild, piercing scream tore through the night not two feet from Jonathan’s ear. He leaped back, heart soaring, and fell over a long wooden bench, punching out once or twice at the empty air around him, hoping vainly to strike whatever demon it was that had shrieked into his ear at such a ghastly moment. But it had been no demon; it had been Dooly. And it was Dooly, who could be seen disappearing at a dead run back down the road toward the swamp.

The Professor pulled Jonathan upright, and they heard Escargot shout as his feet scrunched away down the road after Dooly, ‘It’s up to you, mates! I have to stop the lad!’

There wasn’t time to be mad or frightened or anything else, for the grisly skeleton clacked away at them through the window; and behind, stepping from the fire, was another. Selznak laughed like a demon and pounded his staff against the flags as he dusted the fire again with the contents of the vial. Jonathan, fighting an impulse to follow Escargot and leave the Professor to work things out for himself, grabbed hold of the bench he’d fallen over instead. The Professor, as if reading his mind, hoisted the other end, and they swung it once, twice, three times together and sent it smashing through the window, shattering the bony horror capering there.