Will Power

That night I sat in my room for a while and sulked. Our meeting with the king had turned into another of those “adventurer” games which I always seem to lose, at least partly because I’m the only one who doesn’t know the rules. More to the point, I was no nearer to figuring out the real burning question: What the hell was I doing here? This was followed by a question which didn’t so much burn as rage like some apocalyptic furnace: How could I get back home?

Home. An odd word, that, always brimming over with unsaid promise of comfort and a sense of ease, a removal of fear and pressure, a restoration of the familiar and the reassuring. Yet, for all these associations to kick in effectively, it helped to know where exactly home was. For me, home had been Cresdon, though it had never been especially comforting or reassuring under the guardianship of Mrs. Pugh-particularly when the Empire found my name on their “top ten seditious actors and playwrights” list and, more dramatically, tried to put arrows through my gizzard. So home had become a concealed fortification in Stavis where the company of my new friends had taken the place of the homely hearth and steak and kidney pie with the family that I’d never really had. But now I was hundreds, maybe thousands, of miles away, with the two “friends” most likely to slit my throat for belching at table, and a growing suspicion that all my other friends were dead. To top things off, there was a race of sinister goblins and specters who thought I was darkly important, and a race of handsome, sophisticated hero-types who thought I wasn’t.

This last raised another question. If we were so clearly worthless, if we were the kind of human refuse you could glance over in a second and completely get the measure of, if we were such slime that we could be dismissed without a word in our defense, why the bloody hell had they wanted to see us in the first place? Garnet was probably making a name for himself as Goblin Slayer Extraordinaire, and Renthrette was, shall we say, connected by way of Sorrail, but so what? In a city full of would-be ladies-and gentlemen-in-waiting, why had we been so quickly pushed to the head of the list for an audience with his royal goldness? And impressive as the city was, why were Garnet and Renthrette sitting around instead of moving heaven and earth to rescue their friends? I mean, I was in no hurry to go crawling about goblin-infested caves, but for Orgos and Mithos I would at least consider it. Shouldn’t Renthrette, champion of the oppressed whatever the odds, be promising to charge back for her friends-by herself if no one would come with her-rather than sitting around the court playing fancy dress? The answer to all these questions was the same, and it came in a pint glass with a foaming head. I went out.

We were still residing in the palace, for reasons unknown, and our little suite of rooms had a tall and slender guard not unlike Garnet in physique but blond and quiet in that removed, dignified manner all the people around here seemed to have when they weren’t improvising love poems to their mistress’s eyebrows. I hadn’t seen much in the way of passionate outbursts since I’d been here, now that I thought of it. Yes, the waiting rooms had been awash with wry chuckles and other forms of polite amusement, but there had been no real laughter, per se. I mean no side-splitting, eye-watering, thigh-slapping laughter, the kind people make when they think something is really funny, as opposed to, you know, amusing. Everyone was so controlled, so restrained. It was beginning to get me down.

So I had a word in our guard’s shell and asked for directions to the nearest tavern. Nothing fancy, I assured him, in case he hadn’t got a good look at my britches lately, just somewhere I could get a good beer. He gave me a blank look, one of many I had been getting lately.

“You mean, an inn?” he said uncertainly.

“Spot on, mate. Good shot,” I encouraged him.

“The closest is some distance from this part of the city. Perhaps half an hour on foot.”

No problem. I had begun to feel like a trapped rat in the palace and figured the walk would do me good. I jotted down some directions on a little rectangle of parchment which the guard had for just such an eventuality. No wonder Renthrette and Garnet were so fond of this place. In Cresdon the local militia’s idea of giving directions is to turn you to face the appropriate compass point and then give you a hearty kick in the ass.

So off I went, ambling casually, in no great hurry, and content to soak up the quiet evening. It was always pretty quiet around the palace: hardly what you’d call urban. The streets felt like the neglected cloister of some vast monastery or temple: all pale stone, clean, faintly ascetic angles, and a slightly unearthly silence. I tried whistling to myself but it felt disrespectful so I gave it up. The few people who passed me, mounted or on foot, barely made eye contact with me as they went about their business or pleasure (you couldn’t tell the difference) in a demure, even stately fashion. It didn’t bode well for the tavern, I suppose, but I had to try.

The point turned out to be, as they say, moot. I had just consulted my parchment and taken a left into the closest thing to an alley I had seen thus far, when I heard soft, careful footsteps behind me. I came instinctively to a halt. A second later, so did they. I turned and looked up to the main street I had left, but saw nothing. I started to walk again, a little quicker this time. At first there was only the echo of my own feet in the tunnel-like alley, but then I heard them again, slightly out of sync with mine, following me. I began to run.

The footfalls were joined by voices, urgent, hissing whispers that bounced off the walls. I ran on and the alley descended slightly, snaking through a series of arches to the left. In front of me was a narrow flight of steps, climbing about ten feet back up to a passage that joined a main street. With panic driving me on, I was almost on the staircase before I saw the squat, heavy figure that stood in the shadows at the top. It stepped forward as I scuttered to a halt, and the evening light picked out an evil-looking figure, cowled all in black. Clasped in his hands in front of him was a huge, bladed weapon, heavy and brutal-looking.

It was a goblin, and it wasn’t alone. Another appeared out of the shadows to my left and a third came running up from behind. They were all lithe, dark, and strong.

I backed up without thinking, but they were too close. A swarthy hand took me by the arm and thrust my face against the alley wall. My hands were caught and pinned behind my back. A trickle of cold water ran into my shirt collar and I shuddered.

“I have no faith in prophecy, Mr. Hawthorne,” the big goblin on the stairs hissed into my ear in a strangely accented voice, a voice cold and hard as steel, which filled me with the sense of certain death. “Nor will you, by the time your blood has been poured from your throat.”

“Listen,” I spluttered desperately, “if it’s money you want. .”

One of those holding me laughed softly, a throaty chuckle, rich and chilling. I closed my mouth quickly as if paralyzed. Neither money nor words seemed likely to help me now.

A gloved hand passed over my mouth, pulling my head back so that my throat was exposed to the air. I heard the knife drawn by the third goblin and braced myself for the pain, the momentary warmth of blood running down my chest, the drowning, frothing gateway to darkness that would follow.

Yet, through the terror, a voice in my head, faint and indistinct, was repeating a single word: prophecy? It grew louder and, as I saw the blade raised, a flash of bluish light on its razor edge, I spoke. “You do not need to believe in the prophecy to be part of it.”

The knife hovered in the air. I could smell my assailant’s hesitation, and pressed my advantage, fighting for calm and evenness in my voice. “Remember the words of the prophecy,” I said, improvising desperately. “And remember what happens to those who forget they are subject to destiny. Strike me down and take the inevitable consequences.”

It was a little heavy-handed, but the fact that I was still alive to say the words suggested they were having some effect. Words have a life of their own, as I’m fond of saying, and it’s best to run with that fact rather than insist on them meaning only one thing. This time I was really running with it. Sprinting away at full pelt, no less. My would-be assassin apparently thought my words meant something, though what that something could be, I had no idea. The knife paused in the air, frozen in time. Then it lowered uncertainly.

There was an angry sputtering of sharp, unfamiliar words and a hand spun me round. A dark, leathery face with narrow and malicious goblin eyes was inches from mine. This was the one who had laughed and, absurd though it seemed to be choosing between them, I liked this one least.

“You do not scare me, Outsider,” he said. “What magic will strike me down when I cut out your heart and throw it to the swine?”

“My spirit will pursue you in the form of a great, gray hound with eyes like lanterns and teeth like scimitars,” I managed, coolly.

“Really?” said the goblin. There had been a fractional pause, but the word was touched with bitter sarcasm.