Chapter 5

This small hobgoblin fem, Wahira K’matli, led me to a long purple and gold tent that read the ‘Siren’s Maze.’

“Here.”

“I've already been here.”

“Don't you mind.”

We stepped into the striped tunnels together where a couple of families were meandering, a toddler riding their father’s neck and such. 

As we came to a split in the path, we took a left and then on the next split we veered right, walking with fewer and fewer people as we went. We came to another split and we made a right and then right again and then right again, and again.

“Hey, aren't we just going in circles?”

“Sshh! I know the way,” she said in that aggravated old wahira way.

We kept walking that same pattern. As we did a fluorescent fog began filling the corridors and in the distance a child squealed in happy fright and other stranger voices began murmuring closer by: Goblinkin... Come... Come... This way...

We followed the voice through the thick candy fog with the string lanterns’ light diffused by the fog into hazy auras and one of the bulbs on the string lantern was far larger and dangled strangely and then I realized that it wasn't a lightbulb at all but a floating orb of some kind. It pulsed subtly, as if it breathed.

“Will ‘o’ wisps...” I muttered, seeing that there were several bobbing in the corridors,  casting their eerie lights on us, and whispering: Welcome... Who might you be...

“Don't mind them,” K’matli said. “They're just meant to sort the crowd.” She glanced up at a couple of the dancing lights, addressed them. “We’re just going to catch a show. Here’s the tickets. Here’s the toll.” She reached her small hand into her purse, grabbed two tickets and a stack of bills—rather pricey, had to be at least 40 gold—and stepped and handed them to the tent wall, which opened up a large froglike mouth made out of its own striped fabric, a mouth which did not reveal anything within or past the tent but foggy nothingness.

“Come... If you know the way...” The Will ‘o’ wisp whispers faded, and so did they.

“I see...” I lit a cigarette to calm the throbbing pain in my chest. “We've been through this same intersection 5 times now.”

“Youngsters, so impatient these days.” Finally she made a left.

“No I get it. An ensorcelled tent. A magically locked path. I suppose they’re fully committed to the showmalship... and the secrecy.”

The heavy canvas parted of its own will and as we stepped through this makeshift door and the flaps closed behind us I realized that we’d stepped not just into another tent, but another place altogether, might have been a few feet from the maze tent, a few miles, or on another continent. “We might not even be in the same place as the outside now... look, the ground’s different and the air feels a bit more humid...”

 We were in an enormous tent, cavernous as it rose darkly to a central point far above, the outside carnival’s rainbow colors gone, now replaced by stripes, motley, paisley all patterns in spectrums of black and white. The grayscale decor gave this an air of gothic luxury or refinement, or the attempt at it, and made the bright colors of candy, juggled fires, illustrated signs, exotic circus animals all spring enthusiastically to the eye. Several show booths ringed the perimeter of a central stage. A plethora of people were milling about, mostly races of the night like outside, but they seemed of higher coin, with puffed collars, garish suits, polished shoes, powdered faces, a monocle on one mal, platinum nose rings, fur boas and feathered hats, glassy polished claw sleeves. There were more under dwarves and dark elves than outside, even saw a few Ogres plodding along, one holding some small corpse impaled on a skewer, taking a bite of it.

The Wahira pulled me into the shadow of a wooden bleacher where the creek and chatter of a sparse crowd above rained on us, that compost herbal breath and oaky grip of the aged emanating from K’matli as she whispered. “Have you known any goblins in your life?”

“Of course. What kind of question is that?”

“Let me show you some.” She walked to a booth, pointed her gnarled, stubby fingers. It was a dart game hosted by some human so gaunt he could have been a corpse. In his silky pink outfit he almost looked like a long piece of taffy, the booth’s black and white stripes that of a candy box.

“Darts? You’d think that the one outside would be enough...”

I trailed off as we walked closer, realizing that tied to the center of the spinning dart wheel was a goblin. Between two and three feet tall, skinny but with a small pot belly. Ears more round than the usual triangular shape, skin a grayish blue and covered in scars of every kind. He was buck naked save for a tight underwear that was colored in swirls, and jester boots with little bells on the tips. Imbedded in him were several darts.

A young ogre family. A child in a polka dot dress sat on her father's brawny arm that lumped the sheer sleeve of his frilly shirt. They traded turns throwing darts at this spinning gobbo, a sweet father-daughter bonding moment.

“Eeegh!!” The goblin squealed as another dart punctured his belly, making him look like a balding porcupine. Strangely enough, there was only a half-awareness to his squeal, almost as if he were drugged, or perhaps simply self forsaken to a horrifying extreme.

“Grahahagh!” the ogre dad laughed. “Mm you try, little princess.”

He handed the little femnivi a dart. She tossed it with her pudgy arm. 

The gobbo howled as the dart popped right into his eye, waking him to full, thrashing pain.

My breath caught, a cold sweat ran through me, old superstition kicked in. “Mog’s fire save us...”

“It can't unless we try.” K’matli tugged on my arm.

We walked into rising rows of circular benches where a dappled crowd looked down on the central show ring.

Inside the ring was a gaggle of goblins who’d been given flimsy balsa wood weapons, a sword, a spear, toys really. Their ankles were bound to long lengths of chain. A great Orcish war hound had been released from its cage into their midst, its flat face surrounded by so much mud-colored shoulder muscle that it looked like it had no neck. Its short ears flopped around, drool flew from its snapping jaws as it chased after these goblins and the handlers gave just enough slack on the chains to let the goblins scamper about and swing their weapons in feeble defense.

The crowd laughed as the hound’s serrated teeth clamped around a gobbo’s skinny leg. The mastiff shook its conya viciously and the gobbo flailed and squealed in agony.

Handlers in coveralls prodded the Orc hound with extremely long lightning sticks, drove it back into its cage, letting it take the bloody gobbo leg as its prize.

“Explain this, all this,” I said to the Wahira, my hands unclasping. “I don't get the appeal. And more importantly what does Grivonne get from all this? Is there really that much coin in selling tickets to... this? They got those nature shows on TV now for Mog’s sake.”

“You said you were collecting a dining bill... It's not far from the truth.”

“Yeah, you said you'd show me.”

“Patience Hobgabarrin.”

We rose. As we crept into the shadows she took out a small pouch from her purse, tossed some herbal dust on us.

“Cloak powder,” I said as I contained a cough. I recognized this concoction that dampened our presence to potential onlookers—sound, scent, motion, body heat. “We'll have to compare formulas.”

We snuck to the side of the round bleachers where there was a small parting in the tent’s heavy fabric. We slipped through this opening, onto a set of narrow stairs that led to a smaller tent that connected to the main one. We climbed, K’matli’s skirt folding at regular intervals as she crept until we reached a wooden platform that went in a u-shape around a large room. We crouched on the platform’s’ wood planks, knowing that the cloak powder would only conceal us so much, and peaked between posts that made up the balustrade that corralled the platform in sections. On the platform’s opposite side there were huge pots of boiling broth or oil of some kind. These pots rested on cooking panels like that part of the platform was a huge stovetop. This entire room looked like some kind of kitchen or dining room. Brushed earth its floor, stacked tables and chairs along one wall, sets of dishes, huge pots and pans arranged on shelves and closets, cruel razor cutlery on display cupboards. Here and there on the ground level were more stacks of cookware, a cutting table, a cauldron on wheels that could be rolled to receive the hot drum’s contents from above, long metal cooking instruments for stirring, carrying, and so forth. Both ends of the platform had a short set of stairs that led to the room’s ground level.

This dining tent was a solid near black color, and still part of this massive tent complex so on beams above there dangled ropes and sand bags. There was a hallway in one of its corners and a door to some kind of modular building or trailer on the farside, clearly the maze door was not the only entrance to this secret place. It had string lights curled around the beams above but on the room’s supporting columns there were several torches in sconces permeating the room with a certain subtle witching aura.

Taking up a big chunk of the room was a 10 foot tall cage filled with twenty goblins or so. They seemed to have so little will to live that they looked like they were made of spineless green wax, their backs drooping as they sat. They were dressed in a mix of rags and bright clownish gear. In addition to the cage, they were chained. Most of these chains were shackled to the gobbos’ ankles or wrists but a few were clamped to clownish masks they were wearing.

Dozing on the ground next to this cage were two guard dogs strangely wearing dirty clothes. On closer inspection they weren’t dogs but dog malnos, but not like the skinny jackal security guard outside. These had full snouts, spotted fur, thickly muscled necks and shoulders, like hyenas. Hyena mals. Gnolls.

Even with our dampened sound I whispered as I gazed at the gobbos in the cages.

“They're going to... eat them?”

The wahira’s age-sunken eyes lingered on me.

A sudden rearing of a gnoll’s conya, ears pattering, wet nostrils pulsing.

Our hearts thudded. Our limbs in molasses as we shrank back. My jacket’s dangling flaps, her braids all caressing the wooden platform as we crept back into safer shadows, lingered between two heavy curtains of the black tent fabric. The sudden flush of nearly being caught, the though of this Wahira’s fixation with these goblins, it all needled my nerves.

We snuck back the way we came, then back down the stairs to the edge of the bleachers surrounding the stage.

K’matli leaned close, her large eyes shifting in the dark looking like boiled eggs floating in a stew.

“You see, yes? These goblins are a twisted entertainment a thrill for dark instincts but they are also a feast. There are many fell beings who relish goblin flesh.”

“All this for a flogging sandwich?”

“Mm. It's not just taste, young mal. There are unique humours that pain and terror release into their blood.”

“Mmh... that's right... I read something about this. A certain kind of Mana in the hormones... hormones released by torture.”

“Yes. A secret woven into this cuisine. You saw the masks? They’re sewn and glued to their faces... The darts, the hound show, all torture play. For ages these fiends have developed methods to train their... food. They make them feel as much fear and pain as possible for months, even years. Some even become desensitized to certain tortures, others the opposite and become extremely sensitive to the slightest pain. Either way, they store those hormones you speak of in their flesh. When their flesh is fully eh full  full soaked, then they are finally slain. It is said that these humours in the blood are freshest when the Goblins are boiled alive and the soup is consumed immediately. It's an unimaginable pleasurable for the feeders. And it gives them a vitality that nothing else can. Their Mana darkens, feeds on this kind of practice.”

“They don’t realize it, but they are practicing a form of thaumaturgy.”

“Some do.”

“But why goblins? Get them going and they barely feel fear. At least they fear much less than say humies or something.”

“Humans are not immune to this fate, nor other races. But with the Arcanum passing new laws... it is easier to hide the disappearance of a goblin than other peoples, and so this... cuisine lives on in secret. And as for them being brave, goblins are only brave when they have a goblin leader, a goblin hive mother, a goblin chief, something.”

“So what's your angle in all this? Is this some kind of political thing? I hate politics... A bad experience with it.”

“No. This is my own quest. My own pain... Freeing these Goblins is all I want.”

“Your own pain.”

“These goblins... are like kin.”

Whisper-hissing: “Look... Wahira... I don't know the story here. Flogged up as it is, this is for badges to take care of. Universal Born Rights and all that bull cagg. The Arcanum wanted their Lunar treaty, they should enforce it.”

“The Masons?” A wet laugh turned into a sneer. “They're so overworked they can’t even close the Frontier. Necrotrafficking, god loyalists, the pestilence: they won't spare any Archons just for a few goblins.”

“Well that's not my problem.” Mention of the mess the world was in only made me more hesitant to get involved. “I'm here to collect a debt. Gold. That's it.”

“You... are you not loyal to your people? Do you not worship Mog?”

“I’m loyal to number one.” My finger shook as it pointed toward me. “As for Mog, I read the Red Prince. I practice its precept.”

“But there are 144.”

“The high precept. The others I pick and choose. That’s all he gets from me. What other use is there for a dead god?”

“The delusion has caught you too... You do not walk the six paths...”

“Lady, the only path I'm walking is the one that ends in that flogging gold he owes.” 

“I... I do not blame you.” Her brow looked like rings on a tree stump as it sank. “You're a red blooded Hobgabarrin in your prime... a lust for gold is just as natural as a lust for flesh.”

“It's not gold lust it's just...” How could I explain to this old Wahira that I was on the verge of a feat that would eclipse some brief, nameless goblin lives, that what I valued wasn’t just gold, not for its own sake. It was to sail on that dream chamber... until I became... someone else entirely, myself, one and the same. How could I explain that I could let nothing nothing come between me and that destiny.

Still, the promise of gold and all that it could unlock must have shone on my face.

“You don't need to justify yourself to me. But if it's gold you’re after... I can give you that. I can give you... my family's entire inheritance.”

“What?” She didn't strike me as wealthy. Other than her earrings she was dressed rather plainly, even drab. Still, old hobs could be strange that way, the weird hob uncle who dies without having ever touched his basement filled to the brim with solid gold bars was hyperbole, sure, but it was also a stereotype for a reason. “Why would you do that?”

“You see I am the last of my line. No childer left... the war took most, pestilence the rest. All that remains of my clan is me and a single goblin. His line has been serving my clan for generations and he is now the last of them as I am of mine. He is in that cage. Do you know what that feels like? To be the last?”

“I see.” My boot stomped a passing roach, making grinding noises on the dirt floor. I raised an eyebrow. “Your inheritance huh?”

“Don't worry. If you can free him you'll deserve it. I won't go back on my word.”

“All right. It's a deal.” I straightened my jacket collar, gazed at the secret staircase in the tent folds. “Listen carefully and follow my lead.”