The Great Glass Mountain - Session Four

 

The Company woke up atop the sea cliffs to the sound of shouting. It was audible over the sound of waves and it came from the landward side. The Company shouted back, unsure if leaving their camp was wise in the middle of the night, worried it might be another mirage out of time. Kemp shouted that the voice was his grandfather Cruicifer. The Salt Knight ran down the mountain path, Reme and Kemp following him. He rapidly lost his way in the dark, less concerned with following the path than descending quickly, but avoided injury as he hopped down the boulders and rocky slopes. 

At the bottom of the mound was an old guy dressed in nothing but a breechcloth, cloak caught on a gnarled tree root sticking out of the earth. He was trying to climb a boulder and getting nowhere. Kemp rushed past Tiber and went to help him up, but something yanked Crucifer's leg down. The Salt Knight and Reme rushed to help. A gnarled root wrapped around the old man's leg. Tiber leaped down to hack away the root and the old guy was yanked downward into the earth. The Salt Knight grabbed onto him and was pulled with him. The earth closed over them without a sound.

 

Hearing the shouting, Valenta the Chain Knight and Auckland the Horn Knight rushed down the hill to help. They found Reme carrying Kemp back up the hill, and he explained what happened. He had marked with a stone the spot where the Knight and elder disappeared. Valenta secured herself with her chain and pressed her ear to the earth where it closed over the victims. She heard piping, briefly, and then that too was smothered. 

 

The Company searched for a way down into the earth. They peered into crevices and sea caves and sinkholes and Kemp almost got stuck and had to be dug out of a sand filled tunnel. They found no way down to the realm of the Goblin. The loss of their friend and the nighttime search left them demoralized. They returned to their camp to munch the blue flowers given by the mourners from the Funeral Plain. Looking up at the crest of the hill they saw an enormous toad and a dwarf drinking wine together from glasses that shone red and green in the firelight. By the time they reached the summit the apparition was gone, and their camp was as they left it. They decided to take Kemp home to the grove in the west, then plan their next move. If all else failed they could return to the Winged Seer and ask where the Salt Knight had gone.

 

Tiber the Salt Knight lay on his back in a cave. Or a forest. Or a building. It was an enclosed space whose walls, floor and ceiling were made of accumulated junk. Furniture and clothes and containers. Weapons and armor. Paintings and tapestries. The old guy was nowhere to be seen. The Salt Knight followed the sound of pipes through a little opening in the wall, big enough for a child. Sitting on a mound of trash was the Goblin.

Tiber asked what happened to the old man. The Goblin explained that the old guy had been found, and was therefore not a lost thing and outside his jurisdiction. The Salt Knight, on the other hand, was emphatically lost and therefore part of the Goblin's collection. Tiber disputed this logic and the Goblin told him he was welcome to find his own way home. He was welcome to come back when he wanted to make a deal. The Goblin was happy to have a Knight in his collection but he was more interested in Kemp, the child of the orchardists. He needed a successor and no child had been born to Goblinkind for the last three hundred years. Tiber wandered into the maze in disgust.

Upstairs, the Company took Kemp east into the woods. The forest opened up into a grove of pear, cherry and apple trees. The trees were heavy with fruit, which was in danger of becoming overripe and rotting. At the opposite end were two structures: a drystone hut with thin wisps of smoke filtering out the sod roof, and an outbuilding with piled barrels. Valenta recognized this as a jack distillery, where cider could be made into brandy by freezing during the winter. Kemp ran ahead and entered the hut, where his sister was playing with pillbugs on the straw floor. She was delighted to have her brother back, and with the little tadpole bracelet he gave her from his adventure. Grandpa had gone looking for him after he got lost, and then mama went looking for him, but now grandpa was back and so was he.

 

A pregnant woman carrying a basket of fruit and a length of metal cable shouted a warning at Reme and Auckland to step away from her house and kids. They told her that her son was home and she lost interest in shouting at them. She almost slapped the little rascal, but kept her cool and thanked the knights for rescuing her child. Crucifer came out of the outbuilding with a fantastic story to tell. He had been pulled under the earth by a strange creature and spat out in the distillery. Or, the ciderwife suggested to her elderly father, he had got drunk and wandered off again. But if he had merely been drunk, he countered, where would he have found this beautiful bottle? The clear blue glass was unlike anything the distillery could make, and it was embossed with writing even the literate Knights couldn't read. Ciderwife Sparenot threw up her hands and invited the knights inside to eat. They had found her child and she wouldn't let them leave empty handed. Her husband had taken most of their product to trade at the bothy to the south east, but she still had a few bottles of the good stuff to give away.

 

  

In the Goblin labyrinth, the Tiber wandered in circles without realizing it. The tunnels were full of lost pets that periodically ran through the chamber in a panicked wave, prompting him to hop up onto a damaged armoire after being scratched and bitten. He rescued an elderly bloodhound from the pack after it almost got trampled. The poor wheezing beast allowed himself to be scooped up by the Knight.

 

Sparenot served venison with apples, fresh pears, cherrywine, brandy and fruit pies to the Company. Her husband Severin shot it before leaving so his family wouldn't starve if he was delayed. Which he was, by several days. He had gone to the hut where people from the woods visited to trade things, taking with him most of the cider and brandy aged over the last year. Sparenot thought she recognized Valenta from somewhere. The Chain Knight tried to stay incognito but Auckland gave up that she was the Queen of the realm. Sparenot immediately made a groveling apology for her earlier rudeness, afraid for her family's safety. The Knights told her it was fine but she wouldn't be dissuaded. She would give them a gift fit for a queen. She went to the distillery and came back with a clay jug sealed with wax. On the jug was a woad drawing of a man falling off a stool. That was the good one for guests they liked, it was strong enough to keep basically forever. 

 

Fortified with brandy and weighed down with more brandy, the Company told Sparenot they would find her husband. It was possible he was tied up by the same entity that had tried to kidnap the other members of the family. If they set off at a gallop they could reach the site before nightfall. 

 

In the Goblin tunnels, Tiber's hound growled at something embedded in the wall. The trash was packed tight around the silhouette of a man. The Salt Knight cleared away the trash to expose a preserved corpse, clad in ancient iron armor and wielding a sword. He reached for the blade and the dead man woke up. The jelly of the eye stared at Tiber and the mouth made a sound like it was suffocating in a bag. The Salt Knight pulled the wicked barbed sword free and the mummy lurched forward after him. The trash collapsed on top of the corpse, burying it.

 

 
Tiber knelt and began clearing trash away from the body, concerned that it was still "alive" in there. The dead man's helmet had been knocked off, chinstrap snapped off by the impact of a marlinspike which had been driven downward by a millstone, through the back of the legionary's head and out his eye. He still struggled against the heap of trash. The hound snarled and bit off one of his fingers, earning a vicious backhand in response as the dead man's reflexes reacted to the canine's offered violence. Tiber used the barbed sword to sever the head and took it back to the Goblin.

 

The Company arrived at the trade hut before nightfall. The bothy looked a lot like the orchardists' house, drystone insulated with earth and roofed with sod bound by flowers. A set of poles outside announced who was around to trade. They were all empty except for a wooden placard with a drawing of apples, pears and cherries. As the Knights approached their horses crushed scattered junk under their hooves. Valenta dismounted and led her mount forward to ensure he didn't skewer his hoof with a broken bottle. The hills around the hut were mounds of accumulated garbage, held together by roots growing upward out of the earth. The same grew out of the entrance to the hut. Auckland and Valenta left their horses with Reme and entered the building.

Downstairs, the Salt Knight returned to speak with the Goblin. The Goblin sat on his pile, playing with a wave bladed dagger Tiber recognized as his own. The Salt Knight told the Goblin to give him his dagger back. The Goblin said the dagger was part of his collection, as was Tiber. Tiber told the Goblin he was keeping the barbed sword taken from the legionary. Also, he demanded the Goblin release the dead man from his torment. But the Goblin didn't do that. On his honor as the Lord of Lost Things, he found him like that. The Legion just did that to people. But he'd throw in the head if the Salt Knight made a deal with him for his own freedom. To deliver the kid. Tiber refused, again, and the Goblin made him another offer. A horseshoe. Tiber refused again. The Goblin said it would remind him of something he lost. The Salt Knight touched it and his head exploded in momentary pain. He recognized the imprint of the horseshoe. A kick delivered to his skull.

 

The Goblin offered to give him back his lost clarity. Tiber refused again, he wouldn't promise the Goblin a child that wasn't his and he wouldn't offer his own squire Reme a replacement. But he had another lost item the Goblin might like. The half-skeletal frog trapped in amber. The Goblin couldn't stay mad at him after that. He took the trinket and Tiber was immobilized by a rush of thoughts to his head. The Goblin fell backwards into his pile and disappeared. 

 

The inside of the bothy was tiled with random objects, floor walls and ceiling. The Goblin squirmed out between an end table and a thicket of dangling metal pots and fell into the pile. He was ready to make a deal with his visitors. The Company demanded the return of Tiber and Severin, wife of Sparenot and father to Kemp and Kana. The Goblin patiently explained that he didn't have Severin. The distiller ran off with the cheesemaker's daughter, using his cartload of brandy to bribe her alcoholic parents. The Salt Knight, on the other hand, he'd negotiate for.

 

The Goblin wanted one of the kids from the distillery. Kemp or Kana would do. He needed an apprentice because sooner or later he was going to die. his people were basically extinct and someone had to be Their Cleverness, the Goblin, Lord of all Lost Things after he was gone. Auckland asked if the child would ever return to his family. How long the term of indenture would be and if the apprentice Goblin would be allowed to visit the family. The Goblin wasn't worried about that. Once he taught the kid his mysteries he would have no way of stopping the newly minted goblin from going wherever they pleased. And things weren't looking good for Kemp and Kana if they stayed with their mother. She'd almost certainly die delivering her next child, and they'd be the orphaned heirs to the distillery. If they were lucky some abusive foster parent would take it over. If not, disease or starvation were the usual fate for humans and especially for orphans.

 

Auckland pushed for more concessions from the Goblin. If they convinced Sparenot to give up a child, they needed some guarantees that she would survive and the distillery too. The Goblin tossed him a pair of curved tongs. The ciderwife and her unborn child would survive, provided someone was there to wield them through the delivery. As for the ciderworks, he could backfill the lost product that Severin used to buy a new wife. He knocked on an interior wall and the roots sagged to emit a heap of glass bottles, filled with a strange liquid that stank of juniper and aqua vitae. The art of its production had been lost long ago. Nobody else in the realm could get this stuff, it was worth far more than even their finest applejack. But they had to get Kemp or Kana to become the next goblin. Then they'd get the Salt Knight back.

 

 

Reme was where the Company left him. The Goblin had spoken to him too, offering to rescue the Salt Knight from his prison if Reme would offer himself in exchange. But Reme was sworn to the Salt Knight's service and had no authority to switch allegiance, even to save the man's life. The Knights made camp away from the crawling roots and accumulated junk. 

Valenta woke next to the Glass Knight. She thought it was a memory of their time together, but she didn't recall him being so middle aged, or her own hands looking much the same. She rose from the bed fully clothed and walked past a glass window, half the panels replaced with painted wood, to find a mirror. She reached for the polished silver and found Ada looking back at her. Valenta thought to pen a message using her sister's hand, informing her that she was safe and seeking Myths. Ada's hand closed around the inkwell and threw it against the wall. She broke the quill and bit down on a fistful of parchment to avoid screaming.

 

Auckland woke in a hole in the ground. The bristles on his back scraped against the ceiling of the burrow as he rolled over to feel his snout with his enormous claws. A bone went crunch under his foot. A ribcage. He smelled something outside the hole. An enormous amount of information was contained in that scent but most of it was irrelevant. The important thing was: food. He crawled out of the burrow into the sunlight and his secondary eyelids slid smoothly into place to protect his vision.

 

Auckland woke to the sound of breaking glass. A hangover burned behind his right eye, creating a brief afterimage like the sun viewed through a nictating membrane. Valenta had broken one of the bottles in her sleep. He heard the sound of hunting hounds. Then other animals. A swarm of lost pets poured forth from the trade hut, yapping and yowling and running every which way. Reme scrambled to get the horses to high ground while the Knights readied their weapons but the animals parted before they fell on the camp, scampering into holes in the mounds of junk beyond. Valenta retrieved a pregnant cat from the mass of beasts as it slowly waddled away. She scruffed it into quiescence and decided it would make a fine barn animal for the cidery. The kittens would grow up chasing rats and mice and eating the beetles that tried to burrow into the stored fruit.

 

The Company left at dawn, on the way back to the grove to convince Sparenot to give up one of her children to the Goblin. They wound through gentle rolling hills and at the edge of the forest they spied an omen floating overhead. A flying tent, carrying armored warriors dancing around a flame. The Knights took cover, worried about being spotted and drawn into a confrontation before they got the group back together. The tent drifted toward a stand of tall trees and almost hit them, but the warriors tossed something over the side and their descent was arrested.

 

The Knights rode forward to find the dropped object. It was a bag of sand, caught on a treebranch and torn open to spill its contents.