The Goblin Gate

The lessening of darkness through the trees to the east surely signaled the beginning of the end of the worst night of Jeriah’s life—and not only because of the difficulty of keeping his mare from stumbling in the wavering light of moon and torches.

“We’ll catch up with them soon enough,” Master Lazur replied. “They only had a forty-minute start, and they’ve delayed several times, waiting for others to join them.”

One of the people they were chasing was Jeriah’s brother.

“The goblins must have bespelled him.” Jeriah had been pursuing this argument all night, whenever he managed to maneuver Glory up beside the priest’s horse. “Just as I was bespelled when I led them to your tent.”

“Then why didn’t his mind and will return to him when he crossed the charmed iron that protected my tent?” Master
Lazur demanded. “As yours did.”

“Maybe the spell on him was different. Deeper, or on him longer. Or maybe he was drugged! Tobin led you to the goblin village just a few days ago. Why would he help us find the goblins and capture the sorceress, and then help them escape?”

“I’ll ask Tobin that,” said the priest. “And if he was acting under compulsion, no harm will come to him. But first we have to catch them.”

The priest urged his horse forward to speak to the chief tracker, though the man hadn’t signaled that he’d seen anything new. If Tobin hadn’t been bespelled or drugged, he would probably hang. Or was it a hanging offense to help a murderess escape the church’s custody if you hadn’t killed anyone yourself?

Jeriah feared he was going to find out, because no matter what he’d told the priest, he didn’t believe Tobin had been bespelled. Not bespelled, or drugged, or even smitten silly by the sorceress’ remarkable beauty.

He’d acted too swiftly, too intelligently on that lightning raid to steal Master Lazur’s books…and what in two worlds had he wanted the priest’s spell books for?

He hadn’t said. With Jeriah bound and gagged at his feet, Tobin hadn’t said anything that mattered except that he’d explain someday. A lot of good that did! His brother would be explaining to a judge if they were caught.

And they probably would be caught. Jeriah had tried to
delay them, but Master Lazur had been watching. If he’d done anything too conspicuous, the priest would have left him behind. One of the knights of legend might have managed it, but Jeriah had found that stopping a troop of armed soldiers, when you yourself had only a horse and a sword, wasn’t possible in the real world.

His subtle attempts to delay the troop’s departure, and the tracks he’d managed to scuff over “by accident,” hadn’t done anything but draw so much of the priest’s attention he hadn’t dared do anything more. He had to be present when they caught up with Tobin—that would be his best chance.

The trees were thinning, and glow from the brightening horizon began to dim the moonlight. The troop picked up its pace, trotting now, despite the horses’ weariness. If Tobin could stay ahead of them for just a little longer, they’d have to stop to rest their horses. But the sky was growing lighter…in the south? What—

Master Lazur shouted, urging his horse to a canter, and the rest of the troop followed.

Glory began to canter too, without even a touch of Jeriah’s heels, and he kept his eyes on the growing light ahead of them. Blue-white, not at all like the thinning gray to the east where the sun would soon rise.

Magic. The sorceress must be casting some spell, and the back of Jeriah’s neck prickled with primitive fear.

He urged Glory to a gallop, cutting through the rest of the troop. Master Lazur cast him a wary glance as Jeriah
pushed past him, but Jeriah hardly noticed. The trees were thinning….

Then he saw her. The great wall that divided the Goblin Wood from the rest of the Realm stretched out over the low hills, glimmering silver in the moonlight. The ragged gap where the road broke through was filled with a glowing sheet of light, which rippled and shifted as if tossed by a wind he couldn’t feel.

The sorceress stood in the center of the gap, and those same currents set her dark hair swirling about her. Her back was to Jeriah, and beyond her…

Goblins streamed toward the gap, dozens, hundreds of small bodies, so many they might even have been able to overcome the priest’s troop. But when they reached the light, they vanished.

Jeriah didn’t care if all the goblins in the Realm escaped—he’d just seen Tobin, standing on the far side of that shimmering curtain. He tapped Glory’s ribs with his heels and she thundered down the road. The sorceress would be gone by the time he got there, but that didn’t matter either.

If he could just reach Tobin before the rest of the troop, tell him to say he’d been drugged and bespelled! Tell him to lie…. Tobin was a terrible liar. Tell him to act drugged, confused, and let Jeriah do the talking. Jeriah would knock Tobin out if he had to, in order to handle those first critical minutes of questioning.

The flood of goblins into the light had slowed; the last of
them would soon be gone.

The sorceress bent to pick up a pack—the pack that held Master Lazur’s spell books. Soon she too would step through the gap, taking that alarming spell with her, and all he had to do was reach Tobin before—

The sorceress turned toward the light and disappeared. Jeriah was close enough now to see the expression on his brother’s face shift from grief to decision. And when Tobin decided, action followed. Jeriah cried out then, a wordless shout of protest, warning, but it did no good.

Tobin took three running strides, plunged into the fading light, and vanished.

The glowing field wavered and blinked out, just seconds before Glory plunged through the place where it had been. Jeriah dragged her around to look back. Arcane symbols covered the shattered gap in the wall, but not even a flicker of light remained. No sign of his brother. Nothing but the dawn breeze rushing through the ragged stones, and the thud of slowing hoofbeats as the troop drew near.

“Tobin!” Even as the scream burst from his throat, Jeriah knew it was useless.

He glared at Master Lazur when the priest rode forward. The rest of the troop stopped before they reached the gap, but the priest rode right through to examine the scrawled signs. Fury warred with respect in his expression. “How did she do it?”

Jeriah didn’t care. “Where are they? Where’s my brother!”

“In the Otherworld. You remember the dimension from which I got the stone we used to locate the goblin camp?”

“But you said it took half a dozen priests to open a gate to the Otherworld—she was only a hedgewitch! How could
she
do it?”

“A very good question.” Respect was winning. The priest climbed out of the saddle and laid his hands flat against the stones. “Ah, yes.”

“Ah, yes what?” Jeriah demanded impatiently.

“The wall is a power sink. I knew that—or I would have, if I’d been thinking in terms of history. There must have been two hundred years of accumulated power in those stones. No wonder she could do it. How very bold.”

“Then you can do it too. Open a gate so we can go after them.”

“Jeriah.” The grave sympathy in the priest’s face turned Jeriah’s blood to ice. “In the first place, I can’t. The girl drained its power when she made the gate. And so large! I didn’t know that was possible. In the second place…they’re gone now. The sorceress and her goblins. Your brother rid us of them, as completely as if he’d killed them. And he gave his life to do it. He’s a hero, and I shall see he gets full credit. But I’m not about to give them a chance to come back.”

“What do you mean, gave his life?” Jeriah heard the hysterical edge in his voice, but he couldn’t control it. “He’s still alive in there. He’s still—”

“He’s gone. And we might as well go too. We can water the
horses, and rest them at that stream we pass—”

“You’re
leaving
?” Jeriah’s voice cracked on the word. “You can’t leave! Tobin’s…You have to bring him back!”

“I can’t.” Master Lazur laid a hand on Jeriah’s elbow. “I’m sorry. We’ll go back to the settlement, and—”

Jeriah used the hand on his elbow to get his own grip on Master Lazur’s arm, then catapulted out of the saddle and knocked the priest flat on his back in the dusty road.

“We’re not going anywhere.” He straddled Master Lazur’s body, one hand twisting the priest’s collar tight. His other hand fumbled for his knife hilt. Master Lazur moved beneath him, starting to struggle for air. “Not till you cast that gate, so we can get Tob—”

Half a dozen hands seized him—Jeriah yanked out his knife and pressed it against the priest’s throat.

“Back off,” he snarled. “Back off or…” Or what? If he killed Master Lazur, he couldn’t bring Tobin back. But the guards didn’t seem to know that. Their grip on his arms, his collar, slackened and fell away.

“You’re going to cast that gate,” Jeriah told the priest. “You’re going to cast it now.”

“Or what? Cutting my throat won’t get your gate cast.”

Master Lazur’s voice was calm, but Jeriah could feel the tension in his body. And he was right—if Jeriah killed him, the gate would never be cast.

“But why not open a gate?” Jeriah tried to speak calmly too, but his heart hammered against his ribs. Awareness of
the hovering guards prickled along his nerves. “I’ll go in, tell Tobin he’s in danger, and we’ll come right out.”

“If it were that simple, I might consider it.” The priest’s voice was almost gentle, but his eyes flicked aside, searching for his guards. “But one of the many problems with the Otherworld is that when you open a gate, even if you’re in exactly the same place in this world, it appears in a different place there. If I opened a gate right now, on this road, it might appear in the Otherworld hundreds of miles from where your brother is.”

A chill brushed Jeriah’s heart. “That’s a lie. That has to be—”

“I’m sorry. It’s not.” Master Lazur’s gaze caught his, holding it.

“Then I’ll just have to go into the Otherworld and find him. Let the sorceress open a gate to send us back! You could do that, couldn’t you?”

Lazur said nothing.

“You can do that. You will.” Jeriah bore down on the knife.

“Wait! Listen to me,” Master Lazur said hastily. “I might be able to cast the gate, but if I did, I’d be signing your death warrant! Because she
won’t
be able to open a gate to let you out.”

“She found a power sink, she managed it once before,” Jeriah said. “She can do it again. All you have to do is—”

“Watch the knife,” Master Lazur said sharply.

Jeriah took a shuddering breath and tried to still the trembling in his hands. “If she opened a gate here, she could—”

“You’re wrong,” the priest said. “The Otherworld drains magic even faster than it drains life. Within a few days, she’ll be unable to cast any spells at all. That’s why I can be so certain that she and her goblins aren’t coming back. Unfortunately, that applies to your brother too.”

“You’re lying!” Jeriah shouted. “You—”

He’d forgotten about the guards. A hard hand closed around his knife wrist, and more hands yanked him away from the priest. A hard cuff made his ears ring, and his thoughts hazed over. Every thought but one—Master Lazur had to cast the spell or Tobin would die. He couldn’t die, he couldn’t, he couldn’t…

“You’re lying!” Jeriah’s throat was tight with strangled sobs. Tears and snot ran down his face, but the hard grip on his arms didn’t slacken. “That girl, the sorceress, why would she have gone there if it would kill them all? She wouldn’t have. You can—”

“She didn’t know,” said Master Lazur. “Only a handful of priests were involved in the experiments from which we learned…well, we learned a lot about the nature of the Otherworld that isn’t really relevant now—except that your brother isn’t coming back.”

“But if they started to die the moment they stepped through that light curtain thing, why didn’t they just turn around and step out?”

“Because the Otherworld doesn’t kill immediately,” Master Lazur told him. “It won’t kill those who have innate magic, and even your brother will survive for a bit over two months.”

“Two months? That’s plenty of time. Tobin was working for you. He got rid of that accursed sorceress for you. You can’t just let him die!”

He was shouting by the time he finished, beginning to struggle again. The guards’ grip tightened. They were about to drag him away!

“No,” said Master Lazur abruptly. “He’s right. I owe him the truth, at least.” His gaze turned to Jeriah. “But you have to behave yourself. Can you?”

Fighting the guards wouldn’t get him anywhere. Fighting Master Lazur wouldn’t either. Calm, calm. He needed the priest’s cooperation.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered. “That was stupid of me. But a few people recover from any illness. Even plagues. You can’t
know
that he’s going to die.”

His voice cracked on the word, but Master Lazur looked up at the guards, and the grip on Jeriah’s arms loosened.

“This isn’t a normal illness,” the priest told him. “It’s a magical effect, caused by the very nature of the Otherworld. I admit I worked on some spells that might protect against it, but they were all theoretical. And since they couldn’t be cast without magic…” Master Lazur shrugged.

“Wait! You were working on spells that could protect him,
and she has your spell books. If the spells can keep his life from being drained, maybe they could protect her magic as well. She could still send him home! Anytime!”

The priest shook his head. “She doesn’t have those spells. I don’t keep experimental notes in my books, only completed work. And thank the Bright Gods I have copies of my completed books back in the city! It will be good to be home again.”

“Where are the spells that could keep Tobin alive?”

If he could get those notes into the Otherworld in time, find his brother and the sorceress…

“I’m not going to answer that,” said Master Lazur. “The knowledge would only torment you. In fact, I’m going to send you home. Your parents should be told as soon as possible, and as kindly as possible. You are now your father’s heir. You’ll need to talk to him about whether you should continue as my assistant or stay at Rovanscourt.”

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