Wintersong(107)

He was Der Erlk?nig, and he was my Goblin King, but I wanted to know who he was to himself. His name was the last bit of him I could not have.

“No,” I said. “I know who you are.”

Teeth slipped from his grin. “Who am I?”

“You are a man with music in his soul. You are capricious, contrary, contradictory. You delight in childish games, and delight even more in winning. For a man of such intense piety, you are surprisingly petty. You are a gentleman, a virtuoso, a scholar, and a martyr, and of those masks, I like the martyr least of all. You are austere, you are pompous, you are pretentious, you are foolish.”

The Goblin King did not reply.

“Well?” I asked. “Do I have the right of it?”

“Yes,” he said thickly. “Yes, you have the very soul of me, Elisabeth.”

“Then your name, mein Herr.”

He laughed softly, but it was a gasp of pain, not of joy. “No.”

“Why?”

“So you will forget me,” he said simply. “You cannot love a man with no name.”

I shook my head. “That’s not true.”

“A name is something that belongs to a mortal man.” There was an expression I couldn’t quite decipher in his mismatched eyes. “And the man I was is back there—back in the world above.”

He pulled me close to him. I was nestled in his embrace, against the scar that crossed his heart.

“Find me,” he said, his voice low. “Find me there, Elisabeth. It’s only there, in the world above, that you will find the last bit of me.”

He let me go. But he was not just releasing me from his embrace; he was releasing me. He was releasing the girl who once played her music for him in the wood, the girl he had broken open to set her soul free, the girl to whom he had given himself, entire.

With a hitching breath, I reached into my pocket and withdrew his wolf’s-head ring, the ring he had set upon my finger the night we wed.

The Goblin King shook his head, closing my fingers around the ring. “Keep it.”

“But … is it not a symbol of your power?”

“It is.” He smiled sadly. “But it is only a symbol, Elisabeth. Of my power, yes, but also of my promise to you. Whatever else, I gave that ring to you in earnest, as a husband to a wife.”

I wrapped my hand around his ring and pressed it against my heart. “How … how is it to be done? How are we to be”—I swallowed—“parted?”

“We made our vows in this room,” the Goblin King said. “And so we can unmake them too.”

A chalice of wine appeared on the altar. He reached for the goblet, then hesitated.

“I cannot … I cannot help you. Once we break our troth, your power as the Goblin Queen, Der Erlk?nig’s protection … it will all be gone. Have you the courage to make the way on your own?”

I did not. But I nodded just the same.

“The … the others will not make it easy. But I have faith, Elisabeth. Faith in you.”

I had no faith of my own, but the Goblin King had his, and it was his faith in me that would be my courage. The Lord works in mysterious ways.

He took my hands in his. “Rejoice, for you shall live,” he said softly, “and I shall rejoice with you.”

I kissed his hands. His eyes were worried, but his mien was calm. He was being strong for me.

“I do solemnly swear,” he said, “that I return the gift of your life, selflessly and selfishly given.”

It was hard to speak through my tears. “And I do solemnly swear,” I said, “that I accept my life, taken from your hands of my own free will.”

The Goblin King retrieved the chalice from the altar and offered the goblet to me.

“Let us drink,” he said. “And break our troth.”





THE RETURN

My reign as Goblin Queen was ended.

I knew the moment my power had broken, for the passages around me had rearranged themselves. The chapel and the Goblin King had vanished, and I was on my own. No more would my path through the Underground be straight and clear. I had no map, no compass to guide me, but I knew where I had to go. To the shores of the Underground lake, to find the skiff the changeling had moored in its secret dock, and row and ride my way to the world above.

The Underground was far less civilized without the grace and protection of my power as Queen. Goblins scuttled underfoot, their long, multi-jointed fingers click-clacking over stone, beetles skittering in the dark. Their beady eyes shone down on me, the watchful touch of a thousand inhuman eyes at my back. The eerie, watchful, waiting silence had a shape and texture to it. It brushed over me like dark, musty cobwebs, which clung to me no matter how much I tried to shake them off. The silence raised all the hairs along my arms, sending prickles of ice and needles up my spine, and with each step I took, fear and dread increased a hundredfold.

They will not make it easy. But I have faith, Elisabeth, faith in you.

I was careful of my step, but the malice of the Underground was deviously clever. A crevice suddenly opened up beneath my feet, and I tripped and wrenched my ankle. Wincing with pain, I trod on the hem of my skirt, tumbling head over heels. I wiped at my stinging chin.

Blood.

The instant a drop of my blood hit the earth, a storm of hissing arose. This was the opportunity the goblins had been waiting for.