The Goblin King by Brent Nichols

Author:Brent Nichols
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Action, High Fantasy, fantasy series, Adventure, Sword and Sorcery
Publisher: Brent Nichols
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

Fish guts.

The smell seemed to follow Su through the streets, though she'd worn an apron and washed thoroughly afterward. The strange thing was that she didn't mind the smell. It reminded her of home. She sorely missed the smells of the ocean, brine and fish, even the unmistakable stink of rotting seaweed.

Even fish guts.

She trudged down the boardwalk, feeling weary, as a familiar weight of loneliness settled onto her shoulders. She didn't belong here. Even after all they'd been through together, her companions were strangers. Shore people were strange, and they always would be. She shook her head. Tam and Tira weren't even shore people. They had grown up inland, in a place like the True Kingdom, where the sea was like a legend, something no one had actually seen. That unthinkable concept didn't even seem strange to them!

She was homesick. She felt as if she would do anything to see Samhaven again. And yet she sensed that going home would be a mistake. The islands of her childhood were not the same as they had been. Her sister's ghost would never be fully dispelled. It would continue to haunt her home, making her mother gray and pinched and frail while her father sank deeper into bitterness.

And she was no longer the girl who had once thought that the islands of Samhaven were the entire world. She could go home, she knew. But she had seen too much of the world to ever truly belong in Samhaven again.

It was a sad thought, and she pondered it as she walked. She had no destination. It might have made more sense to stay at the temple and wait for the others, but there had been something in the face of the monk who supervised the kitchen. He had watched her gut the fish with a subtle mix of pity and contempt. She suspected that she was breaking some sort of social rule by cleaning fish, crossing some line that she didn't know existed. It was like when sailors from the shorelands came to Samhaven and ate shellfish, as if they didn't even know it was wrong. They would smile at the islanders, sensing that something was wrong, not knowing enough to be embarrassed.

For the first time, Su had an idea how those men felt. She had broken a taboo of some kind, and the vague shame of it made the temple unbearable.

So she walked, and sulked, and chided herself gently for her own behavior. She could imagine her sister Sirana smirking and mocking her for indulging in self-pity. Sirana would have gone on to mock the monks and the entire town, demanding to know how Su could take seriously a group of people who thought a lake was a significant body of water.

Su smiled in spite of herself. Sirana had never been one to tolerate moping.

She strolled down the boardwalk, and found herself following a pair of local women. They were young, close to her own age, one blonde and the other auburn-haired.

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