Read In The Coils Of The Snake for Free Online Page B

ground.
    “One week left
until your wedding,” noted the elf woman. “It’s a shame that it won’t
be held at the full moon. Weddings and full moons belong together.”
    Miranda
gave a grimace and rubbed her palms where the knives would
cut them. “I’ll be glad when it’s over. Catspaw says he will be, too.”
    “He’s
Marak now,” Sable observed. “You should call him that.” Miranda just frowned by way of an answer. She hadn’t yet
promoted him into that exalted position, as the elf woman knew perfectly well.
    A small silence fell
over the room as Miranda pulled food from the basket and Sable began working on
one of her math problems. She sketched it out rapidly in three dimensions a few
inches above the table, silvery lines and
circles appearing as she drew. Then she set it all into motion.
    Miranda
watched the silver figure spin in the air, wobbling slightly as it turned. “Sable,
did you always like it here?” she asked.
    “I
was frantic when I first came,” the woman answered absently, jotting down
numbers. She paused and gazed off into space. “I remember how hard it was
to get used to the bright light. My eyes would start stinging after a few
hours.”
    “Bright!”
murmured Miranda. She could barely distinguish colors in the gloom. “Did
you ever try to escape?”
    “No,”
answered Sable. “I couldn’t go back. My people would have hunted me down.
You don’t know what elf men are like, Miranda. They’re horrible brutes. I don’t
think they’re born with a heart in their bodies.”
    Miranda
pondered this interesting disclosure. “Isn’t Seylin an elf man?”
she asked. “He’s not a brute. Marak never said that elf men were horrible,
just that they were pretty and silly.”
    “Of course
Seylin isn’t an elf,” replied Sable. “He’s a goblin; he just looks like an elf. And Marak never had to live
with them like I did.”
    All
in all, it was a strange coincidence that Miranda learned what elf men were like that day. That very night, an elf man
returned to his ancestral home, and
Miranda’s tidy future began to crumble.

Chapter Three
    Marak
Catspaw and his two lieutenants stood outside the cliff face that concealed the entrance
to the goblins’ underground kingdom, studying
the early night sky. The northern constellation that the elves called the King’s Throne was glowing very
brightly. The W of stars appeared to flicker and flash.
    Seylin was beside
himself with excitement. “It’s the traditional summons to a truce meeting!”
he exclaimed. “A meeting between goblins and elves. But how?”
    “And not just
any summons, but the highest level,” reflected Marak Catspaw. “Adviser,
what do you advise me to do?”
    “Go, of course,”
replied Seylin. “The goblin King always went personally to a King’s Throne summons. And I certainly advise you to
bring us along. I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”
    The
three of them walked through the whispering forest not far from the Hallow Hill mansion, where Til was holding a
supper party, and up the hill
toward the old truce circle, wondering what it might contain. Its double ring of ancient oak trees
guarded that secret well, the massive trunks
blocking completely any view of what lay within. Marak Catspaw was pleased and
intrigued. Some elves still existed, then, and they still remembered their
manners, unlike Sable and Irina’s savage
band. Perhaps his reign would prove important. Richard was remembering
the last time he had faced elves, and they had tried to turn him into a rabbit.
They wouldn’t find that so easy to do this
time. Seylin was attempting to recall useful lore from his studies, but the thought of elves blotted out all else.
His powerful elf blood gave him a powerful interest in the subject. The goblin Scholars believed that he himself had
found the very last elves thirty years before. It had been the
disappointment of his life that they were so primitive.
    The men passed
through the rings of gnarled, hoary