The Cave Part 22

The cavern had gone quite still with seriousness. All eyes were on me, and the obvious thing to do was step forward, but to what purpose I was not sure. I walked around the fire in the center of the floor, and faced the elders with the leader looking down at me from her seat on the dais. Only then did the goblins proceed with their ceremony. The goblin sitting at Mona's right hand rose, and proceeded to welcome me in the name of the tribe. It was pleasant enough, but my thoughts were still half distracted by the business side of all of this.

"It was at the end of mid summer that Cobub found a secret chamber beneath the abandoned tower," said the elder who had been speaking for some time. I realized now I needed to pay attention. "With much effort he had broken away the hard stone that covered it, and now we think we understand why it was blocked."

"You should tell him about the mines!" spoke up one of the elder goblin woman to the left of Mona, surprising me by her interruption.

"I am getting to that," replied the first speaker.

"Well make it clear now," said the second.

"Let us take turns!" interjected Elder Mona, tamping her staff on the floor with a load thump. "Better than that, I will start at the beginning myself."

I was rather pleased by this, since I did not want to admit I had missed part of what the first speaker had been saying. Perhaps Elder Mona knew this and was sparing me the embarrassment. Meeting her eyes, I gave her my fullest attention.

"We have delved for many years into the veins of iron that run through these mountains," said she, while the first speaker sat down again. "We shape and craft some of this, and much is traded for things we need with the people who visit us. Far down we have gone, into dark places. Caverns there are below, and deep waters flow into dark seas. We came into a cavern where old buildings stood for times unfathomed. Some say there were dark elves in these places once, but maybe others left these things."

"What things?" I asked, then realized how disrespectful it was to interrupt the leader of the community, snapped my mouth shut. She did not seem to mind though and continued.

"An old fortress did we find, a great tower surrounded by walls and dark stone buildings. These had not fallen into the darkness like some cities have of old, but were built here for a purpose. Many of our people wanted to explore and see what there was to learn from these ruins, and digging for the iron came to a halt. Nothing special did we find. We almost gave up our curious exploration, but Cobub wanted to keep delving. He suspected a hidden chamber beneath the tower, and finally he alone discovered the room with pillars."

There was the flutter of nervously shuffled feet behind me. I turned and saw that many of the goblins who had gathered were looking very unwell at the recounting of these events, though nothing bad had happened in the narrative that I knew of. I caught the eye of Glip who had remained near the front. He gave me a nervous smile of encouragement. Two other goblins sat with him, and from their similarities, I guessed they must be the father and mother of my guide. Both sported the same red hair, but where the father was more barrel chested and squat, the mother was slender and a little taller than her husband. Her arms where folded into her sleeves, and she watched on impassively while others were clearly disturbed.

"Cobub did not speak of his discovery for some time, but studied the words on the pillars in growing silence and secrecy. When we finally found him at his work, he was not happy with us, and wanted to keep the mystery to himself. The masters of lore among us warned him that the words they could understand from the pillars, spoke of hateful and evil things. Cobub finally promised to give up studying these, and we blocked the chamber. Work continued then with the mining, and no one but Cobub seemed to notice the ruins anymore."

"But he lied to us!" cried one of the elders, his anxiety getting the better of him.

"Yes, he lied to us," replied Elder Mona, raising a hand for silence again. "Cobub had returned to the chamber in the darkness of night when most of our people were at rest from a hard day of work. He learned of a spell from those cursed pillars, and we only discovered his deception when he had cast the dark magic he learned there."

"And then he opened the crack!" shouted several goblins from the crowd in near unison.

"Peace!" demanded Elder Mona, raising her voice in a way I had not heard before. Clearly she was not used to being constantly interrupted or watching her people get overwhelmed by panic. When silence returned to the council chamber, she waited with a glance to the right and left.

"And then Cobub opened the Shadow Crack in the ground between the pillars," she continued with ominous tones. "An earthquake shook the underground, and many of the ruins fell killing some of our people, but the tower stood in the dark, and a crack opened wide. Cobub was swallowed into the ground between the dark tendrils of mist that came up from some hidden place we did not know. I was there when we discovered what he had done, and his screams were terrible. More shaking of the ground continued, and I led our people out of the mines."

A very long pause came at the end of this narrative, as if not speaking of the next events would make them untrue. Yet the elder eventually continued, and now here voice was low with foreboding. A haunted look had come into her eyes, and quickly glancing around, I saw that everyone had this look, even the stoic mother of my friend. Glip's expression had fallen into fear.

"We heard the screams even as we emerged into our safe homes. Something had climbed out of the crack, a thing of shadow and darkness. It began to grab our people and kill them for its wicked delight, eating them and leaving nothing but fallen tools. Our warriors tried to fight the creature, but they were quickly overmastered. It was the worst disaster in my memory, and only flight seemed to be the answer. We gathered as many as we could here in our home, before the elders and I called upon the earth to rise and block off the tunnels leading to the mines."

I was rather astonished at this. There was so much about the goblin people and their culture that was completely foreign to me. Even Tharkin had not mentioned that goblins were among the magic users of the world, but when one thought about in perspective, it was nor really surprising. If I was learning and able to master such arts, surely these folk could too. I would have to ask more questions regarding their lore.

"The creature fought to undo our work, and nearly crawled its way through, but Ipda used her sleep potions to thwart it. Bottle after bottle she tossed at it, until it fell off the pile of stones back into the cave, and we finished our work, binding the stones into a solid wall against our enemy. We could hear the creature pounding on our work, but then silence when the potions of slumber took hold. Many days it was asleep, and then it woke to renew an attack upon our barrier, but so far it has held."

"And you want me to fight this thing that none of you together could stop?" I asked with raised voice, betraying my own disbelief.

"You came into our dreams, warrior," answered Elder Mona, bowing her head to me. "We saw you coming and standing against our foe. The Cobalt Death stood behind you in power, and we knew that you would come from him."

"Oh dear," I muttered, at a complete loss for words.