Reckless

Clara walked off before Jacob could answer. He wished her far away. And he was glad she wasn't. And he saw his face in the dark glass of the night. Undistorted. Just as she had drawn it.



32



The River



It took them another four days to reach the mountains the Goyl called home.



Frosty days, cold nights. Rain and damp clothes. One of the horses lost a shoe, and the blacksmith they took it to told Clara about a Bluebeard who had brought three girls, barely older than her, from their fathers in a nearby village and had taken them to his castle and murdered them. Clara listened impassively, but Jacob could tell from her expression that by now she considered her own story to be almost as horrific.



"What's she still doing here?" Valiant asked in a whisper one morning while the bone-weary Clara struggled to mount her horse. "The things you humans do to your females. She belongs in a house. Nice dresses, servants, cakes, a soft bed — that's what she needs."



"And a Dwarf for a husband, and a golden lock on her door to which only you have the key," Jacob retorted.



"And why not?" Valiant replied, giving Clara his most ravishing smile.



The nights were so cold that they stayed in inns. Clara shared her bed with Fox, and Jacob slept next to the snoring Dwarf. But that was not the only reason he slept badly. In his dreams he was smothered by red moths, and he would wake up drenched in sweat, tasting his own blood in his mouth.



* * * * *



On the evening of the fourth day, they saw the first of the towers the Goyl had built along their borders. Slender stalagmites with fibrous walls and windows of onyx, but Valiant knew a path through the mountains to avoid them.



For centuries the Goyl had been just one of the terrors of these lands, mentioned in the same breath as Ogres and Brown Wolves. All along, their worst crime had been to look too human. They were the despised twins, stone cousins who dwelled in the dark. Nowhere had they been hunted as mercilessly as in the mountains they came from, and now the Goyl were paying back in kind; it was in their old homeland that their rule was most merciless.



Valiant avoided the highways used by their troops, but they still kept meeting Goyl patrols. The Dwarf introduced Jacob and Clara as rich clients who were planning to build a glass factory near the royal fortress. Jacob had bought Clara one of the gold-embroidered skirts worn by the rich women of the area, and he had swapped his own clothes for those of a wealthy merchant. He barely recognized himself in the fur-collared coat and the soft gray trousers. Riding had become even more cumbersome for Clara in the wide skirt, but at least the Goyl always waved them past after Valiant had told them his story.



On an evening that already carried the scent of snow, they finally reached the river beyond which the royal fortress lay. The ferry crossing was in Blenheim, an town the Goyl had taken many years before. Nearly half the houses had bricked-up windows. The conquerors had even canopied many of the roads to protect themselves from the sun. And behind the harbor wall there was a heavily guarded manhole, indicating that this town now also had an underground district.



Fox disappeared between the houses to catch herself one of the scrawny chickens that were pecking at the cobblestones. Jacob walked with Valiant and Clara across the square toward the ferry landing. The evening sky was glistening on the murky waters, and on the opposite shore he could see a rectangular gate gaping in the mountainside.



"Is that the entrance to the fortress?" Jacob asked the Dwarf.



But Valiant shook his head. "No. No. That's just one of the cave cities they built aboveground after the fortress that got too crowded. What you want is farther inland, and it lies so deep underground that you'll wish you could unlearn to breathe."



Jacob tethered the horses and walked with Clara toward the jetty. The ferryman was already padlocking his boat. He looked nearly as hideous as the Trolls in the north, who were constantly being frightened by their own reflections. His boat had also seen better days. The shallow hull was clad in iron, and when Jacob asked the ferryman whether he could take them across before nightfall, his face warped into a scornful grin.



"This river ain't a very hospi’able place after dark." He spoke so loudly, as if he wanted to be heard clear across the river. "And as of tomorrow, all crossings are to be suspended because the crowned Goyl will emerge from his den to go to his wedding."



"Wedding?" Valiant shrugged in response to Jacob's puzzled look.



"Where have you been?" the ferryman sneered. "Your Empress is giving him her daughter to buy peace from the stone faces. Tomorrow they'll swarm out of their holes like termites, and the Goyl will ride to Vena on his Devil-train and take the ‘Loveliest Princess in the Land’ with him to his burrow."



"Will the Fairy go with him?"



Valiant cast Jacob a curious glance.



The ferryman, however, just shrugged. "Sure. The Goyl goes nowhere without her. Not even when he marries another woman."



Once again, time is running out on you, Jacob.



Jacob put his hand in his pocket. "Did you take a Goyl officer across today?"



"What?" The ferryman held a hand behind his ear.



"A Goyl officer. Jasper skin? Nearly blind in one eye. He had a prisoner with him."



The ferryman shot a sideways glance at the Goyl sentry by the wall, but the soldier was out of earshot and had his back to them. "Why? You one of them headhunters?" The ferryman had lowered his voice, but he was still speaking so loudly that now it was Jacob's turn to cast a worried glance at the sentry. "His prisoner would fetch you a fine price. He had a color I ain't seen on any of them yet."



Jacob would have loved to punch his ugly face. Instead, he pulled a gold sovereign from his handkerchief. "You'll get another one on the other side — if you take us across tonight."



The ferryman eyed the coin greedily, but Valiant grabbed Jacob's arm and pulled him aside. "Let's wait until tomorrow," he hissed at him. "It's getting dark, and this river is swarming with Lorelei."



Lorelei. Jacob looked at the languid water. His grandfather had sometimes sung him a song about Lorelei. The words had made him shudder as a child, but the stories told about the Lorelei in this world were even more sinister.



Still.



He didn't have much choice.



"No worries!" The ferryman put out his calloused hand. "We won't wake them."



But once Jacob had dropped the gold sovereign into his palm, the ferryman reached into his baggy pockets, handing him and Valiant each a pair of wax earplugs, which looked distinctly as if they had been used before.



"Just to be on the safe side," he said. "You never know."



He flashed Clara a sly grin.



"You won't need them. The Lorelei are only after us men."



Fox came running down the jetty as they led the horses onto the ferry. She licked a few feathers from her fur before jumping aboard the shallow boat. The horses were restless, but the ferryman pushed the gold coins into his pocket and untied the ropes.



The ferry drifted out onto the river. Behind them the houses of Blenheim dissolved into the twilight, and the only sound was the lapping of the water against the metal-clad hull. The opposite shore was slowly coming closer, and the ferryman gave Jacob a wink. But the horses were still restless, and Fox was standing with pricked ears.