Waltz of the Goblins

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

What few memories I had of the past two weeks involved open sky and the smell of damp earth and sunlight on my skin. Driving through the narrow stone lanes of Casavera, lined with iron fences and manicured trees, made me feel caged in. The coach turned into a small plaza surrounded by quaint shops with an enormous fountain bubbling at the center. Josie’s inn, the Fonte, stood out, a blocky stone structure among the delicate elven buildings. I breathed easier when we stopped into the cool dim foyer. At least this felt like home.

I followed Josie into the dining room and found my half-brother pacing around like a caged animal. As soon as he saw me, even though I was still wearing Amalia’s face, he rushed over and grabbed me by the shoulders.

“Where is she?” he pleaded, his gray eyes wide with fear.

“Where is who?” I asked, trying to pull out of his grip. His fingertips were digging into my shoulders. “It’s me, Glade. I just need to change my face—”

“No,” he growled shaking his head and me at the same time. “I know it’s you. Where’s Ura?”

“Oh.” He didn’t care that I was back. I suppressed a sob. “Oh Glenn, I’m so sorry.”

“Where is she? Did she come back? Did you see her at all?”

“I don’t know. I might have seen her, but I wouldn’t remember.”

He pushed me away, disgusted, the same expression on his face as Josie had in the coach. “She hasn’t done this in two years, and then you show up again and now she’s gone.” He started pacing again.

His words stabbed, though there was no way this was my fault. Changelings could be born of all kinds of Wild folk, and Ura was part sylph. Sylphs, even part ones, were notoriously flighty and disappeared on a breeze, sometimes literally. Being half Nepaea, a nymph of the valleys, I was more grounded and likely to return to a place I was attached to. It was a miracle Ura had cared enough about Glenn to stick around for two years. I had never stayed through Midsummer.

“I’m sorry,” I mumbled.

“Sorry won’t bring her back.” His voice was hoarse, and when he swung around to stare at me, I noticed red around his eyes. I had never seen Glenn this unsettled, not even when we’d been battling wizards and Wild creatures both. Now he was unraveling.

“She cares about you, Glenn. She stayed here two years for you. She’ll come back. She probably just needs some time. It wears us out.”

“Where would she go to rest? Can you take me there at least? So I can wait for her?”

“I can try to guess. Really, Glenn, it would be best if you just wait here. I’m sure she’ll be back.”

“But you said she’d be weak. What if she’s hurt, or in trouble? What if . . .”

I finished the thought in my mind. What if they don’t let her come back. Changelings, those that lived in the Wild all year round, were often kept as servants. I had managed to avoid it, I assumed, by not remaining in the forest. Ura was pretty, and sweet, and sylphs are fast messengers. She might have been noticed by something strong, something that would have the energy after the craziness of Midsummer to compel her to stay. I couldn’t tell Glenn that. I didn’t want to give him more to worry about. Sylphs were also quite difficult to catch. If she had even the slightest chance to get away, I was sure she would.

“If she goes anywhere to rest, it will probably be the cove she was born in.” He had stopped pacing, so I moved closer and set my hand on his shoulder. “I really think you should stay here and wait. It won’t be safe for you there.” Glenn and I shared a human father. But his mother was an elf, and he could no more walk safely into the Wild than a nymph could walk out. Changelings could come and go, according to the treaty, for all the good it did us. We were little more than servants in either place.

“Then it won’t be safe for her either. Come with me, help me find her.” His gray eyes pleaded with me, his usually trumpeting voice weak and shaky.

“I can’t Glenn, please.” I wrapped my arms around myself and backed away from him. “I can’t go back there right now.”

“What am I supposed to do? Just sit around here and hope that she’ll remember me?” He threw his hands up. “You never came back. Would you have come back this time if they hadn’t come to get you?”

“I’ve gone back to Cyfar for years now. What difference does it make to you anyway? So what if I had come back to you. You’d just keep me locked up within those walls, just like you did to her.” I stopped myself there, kept from yelling that I was glad she had gotten out and away from that life.

“Glade.” Josie’s voice was not loud, but we had trained under the same bard, and she could speak magic when she chose. That one word felt like a slap. Glenn and I turned to look at her. “Glade, I think you should go rest for now. Glenn, come sit down.” Glenn tried to resist, but between the magic in her voice and the sternness of her eyes, he gave in and took a seat in the chair she offered. She came beside me and took my arm.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“It’s fine. I’ll make sure he eats something and gets some rest, too. But you need to get some more sleep and get back to yourself.” She tugged at my blond hair.

I nodded and slipped away. She headed to the kitchen and Otsoa sat down at the table with Glenn. I didn’t hear what they said, but it sounded like he was agreeing with me that going out after Ura was a bad idea. Glenn was not a Warden, and I could just imagine him getting lost out there looking for something impossible. I spent a few minutes trying to think of some way to help him before sleep came for me.

#

I let myself rest completely in the room Josie gave me. My blond hair and freckled face melted away and I slept heavy and dreamless. When I woke, I took my time crafting my usual disguise, the one everyone in Cyfar thought was my real face, the one they thought of as Glade Balladeer. As I worked the magic, my face became a dark brown, my hair black and straight, the features on my face and the points of my ears softer. I changed back into my familiar, comfortable tunic and slacks. It was like sinking back into an old favorite chair; it just felt right.

When I came downstairs the dining room was quiet, dotted with a few people who were staying at the inn getting their breakfast. I didn’t see Otsoa or Glenn, but I waved to Jose who was just coming out of the kitchen and found an empty linen-covered table away from the other diners. A small vase filled with silk flowers sat in the middle of the table, framed by two honey-colored candles. The only sounds were the whispers of conversation and occasional clinking of silverware or glasses. Taking a deep breath, I smelled warm bread and sharp herbs.

After making a sweep of the room Josie headed for my table. She was short, closer to dwarf height than halfling, and her features were rounder than most dwarves. She had told me when we met that there were halflings on her mother’s side. We had been roommates in the home of our bard-mistress Delvine. A few glasses of her family’s famous Vaster wine later and it felt like we had known each other for ages. So when she took a seat across from me and folded her hands neatly in front of her, I knew I was in trouble.

“Why aren’t you helping your brother?” she asked.

I sighed. “It wouldn’t do any good,” I said. “We’d hunt up and down the coast for her, probably disturbing all kinds of Winter Wild which will start stirring now that Midsummer’s passed, and not find a trace of her. She’s part sylph; it’s not like they leave tracks.”

She didn’t answer. Instead, she tilted her head and stared at me, the way she used to when I tried a new song out in front of her and she knew I hadn’t practiced enough.

“They don’t,” I said. My voice grew higher as I tried to defend my claim. “You can’t track them. Even if we could guess where she would be. I wake up in the most random places afterward.”

Still Josie said nothing.

Finally, I looked down and started fiddling with the silverware. “I can’t go back right now, Josie. I try to stay as far away as I can during this time.”

Josie reached out her hand and set it on mine and squeezed it tight. “You’re afraid you’ll want to stay.”

I nodded. “Yes. Glenn has helped me so much and I want to help him in return, I swear I do. But I can’t risk that, not even for him. Not even for Ura.”

“Do you really think she’ll come back?”

“I don’t know.” I pulled my hand away. “I’ve never stayed, but I have a system. I don’t know if Ura was even expecting to go this year. He managed to protect her for so long.”

“Did he ever try to do that for you?”

My face twisted and I got a sour taste in my mouth. “Yes.” It came out much more bitter than I had wanted. He had been trying to help in his own limited way. He knew I hated being called out there. “It didn’t go well.”

“Is that why you don’t talk to him much?”

“That’s hardly fair. He has his life, I have mine. We get together now and then—”

“When you need help,” she interrupted.

“Look, he’s a priest of Ventor, all right? They were designed to destroy the Wild. It’s painful to visit him. I can only stand it for a few days at a time. And the one time he did try to keep me through Midsummer, he had to chain me in the cellar. I still managed to make the roots of some tree nearby break through the walls and freed myself. Nearly got him thrown out of the order.”

Josie sat back as though I had slapped her. Her mouth gaped open and her eyes went wide. “Oh, Glade, I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s not your fault. It’s not his fault. This is what I am. And it’s best for everyone if I keep to myself as much as possible.”

“You don’t have a choice about it now,” she said. She closed her mouth and set her jaw. “You are connected to Otsoa whether you like it or not. So you can’t just keep to yourself anymore.”

“Right.” I picked at the tablecloth. I owed to her, and I owed it to the Lady to be more careful with this responsibility. The shame of not being there for them landed like a cold stone in my stomach. “Where is he, anyway?”

“He went with Glenn to see if there was anyone who would help them look for Ura.”

“Oh, sure, a Warden would love to get sent on a hunt for a sylph Changeling.”

“He thought maybe Roya would know someone. They went to message him.”

That was a good move. If anyone would know who to hire for this sort of thing, it would be Roya. He had figured out that I was hiding my Wild nature and had hired Otsoa and me for the sort of jobs no other Warden would touch.

“Thanks for letting me stay here last night,” I said after a long pause. “You didn’t have to do that. I can pay for the room.”

“Shut up,” Josie said. “You never have to pay to stay here, or eat here, or any of that. Just do me a favor and figure out this thing with Otsoa, all right? Or we’re going to have to build a pen for him out back.”

“Well, at least then you could sell tickets. I doubt many in Casavera have seen a jaguar before.”

“Sure, and we can end each show with you dropping your illusion and whipping the crowd into a frenzied dance. We’d sell out every night.” It was good to see her smile, even if it was a tired one.

“How’s your mom?”

“Doing well. They decided to go ahead and retire by the sea there. That’s how I got the additional inn.”

“Oh right. What’s it called? Where is it?”

“It’s up in Cyfar. The Branch and Vine. They do a lot of wine tastings and such. Still trying to get the hang of that.” She lit up when she talked about it. I had worried when she left her bardic studies that she’d feel trapped working like this, but she seemed to be finding things to stay interested in.

“I’m sure it’s going to be a huge success, just like this place.”

Otsoa arrived then, without my brother, and joined us at the table. He tapped his fingers a few times, and I could see him calculating something behind his eyes. I’d known a lot of wizards, most of them cautious bookish sorts who did their tours at the towers out of duty and headed home as soon as possible. Otsoa was careful, most of the time. Now and then though, he would get this look in his dark eyes like he was searching through every possibility for the best one. Or the most exciting one.

“We got a message through to Roya. He seemed pleased that we got in touch with him,” Otsoa said.

“Pleased? I should think he wouldn’t want to be bothered. Unless he has a job for us.” I groaned.

“Precisely. In exchange for finding someone to look for Ura, he asked that we take care of something for him. He wants us to meet with him tomorrow.”

“Well, that's convenient. Just in time for me to check in to the Branch and Vine. We have some big tasting this weekend.” Josie smiled at us. “Guess we are heading up to Cyfar.”