Death March (Stonetellers) by Jean Rabe

Author:Jean Rabe [Rabe, Jean]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780786949175
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast Publishing
Published: 2010-01-12T00:00:00+00:00

20

MUDWORT’S PRICE

The sky was as red as Spikehollow’s bottle. The setting sun had colored the low-hanging clouds crimson, and the goblins stared at it, oddly quiet. They’d left the shade of the pine trees days before and were at a point where Mudwort said the river would soon widen and head straight to the sea. More goblins and hobgoblins had joined them, the army’s numbers swelling to close to two thousand.

Where had they all come from? Direfang asked Mudwort days past.

Mudwort shrugged and found something to busy herself with. She did not want to tell Direfang that she’d been calling through the stone to their kinsmen, summoning them to join the horde.

She sat apart from the rest of the goblins, her thoughts churning. Direfang had confessed to her that he’d changed his mind about the Qualinesti Forest. It was too far away; the clans would drift apart long before they reached the place. And she hadn’t been able to find a faster route to travel to the forest.

“There are too many of us now,” he told her. “We will attract attention if we march directly to the Qualinesti Forest. So we will go first to the Plains of Dust … if this army will walk that far.”

Mudwort wanted—needed—to reach the forest. She couldn’t tell Direfang why because she couldn’t provide a solid reason to herself. But her mind had touched something there when she’d been looking for a home for the army, when she’d mingled her magic with Moon-eye’s and Boliver’s. And that something lured her; she couldn’t say why, but she couldn’t resist.

Her fingers drummed across the ground, twirling in the grass as she softly hummed. She’d heard some of the newcomers speculate that something bad was coming because the sky had turned the shade of blood.

They were silly to be superstitious.

There was no nervousness in the ground, so Mudwort was not worried about any “bad somethings.” She was instead worried about Direfang turning his army of goblins away from her goal.

It had become so easy to let her mind drift through the earth and flow like water in any direction she wanted. It was easier still when she held one of the uncut blue stones from her pouch. There was an uneven fracture to that particular stone. It was the color of one of the blue bottles that had been plucked from the glass tree, but it was clear on one end and darker at the bottom. There were others in the pouch that were prettier, but that one had already warmed to her touch; she held the blue stone pressed against her palm.

She thought she might look in on the shaman Saarh, journey through the stone and years and find the cave again. But since she had established that the cave and the shaman were lodged in the past, that wasn’t an immediate concern. There would be time for such matters later. She had a much more important mission at the moment.

Her mind traveled southwest, flowing through

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