Free The Goblin War by Hilari Bell Page A

heal like that . . .” He’d seen it himself, and he still had trouble believing it.
    “The first thing is to get the Hierarch and the council to listen to what we tell them,” said Commander Malveese. “That the barbarians cannot be stopped. Myself, I think they’ll take the whole of the Southlands in the next year, and the rest of the Realm within five. And the only reason it will take them that long is that there aren’t more of them. Will you go to the Hierarch for us, Jeriah Rovan? And convince him and the council that no matter what else Master Lazur did, he was right about one thing: The relocation must go forward. Every month, every day it is delayed will cost more lives.”
    Jeriah thought about his father, rebuilding the dike because “now some other solution may be found.” About the countryside he’d ridden through, where as far as he could tell all plans for relocating had simply been abandoned. As if all over the Realm, people had made up their minds that now Master Lazur was dead, it didn’t have to happen.
    “I’ll try,” he said. “No, I’ll do it.”
    Because Koryn had been right. In exposing Master Lazur, in bringing him down, Jeriah himself had single-handedly stopped the relocation in its tracks. If he couldn’t get it back in motion, the barbarian conquest of the Realm would be entirely his fault.
    “I’ll do it,” Jeriah repeated. “I have to.”

Chapter 4
Makenna

    T WO WEEKS AFTER THEY SENT Tobin back to the real world, Makenna cut off her hair.
    She woke from a nightmare, sitting up with a jolt, gasping for breath. But the familiar ceiling of the tent looked just as it always did in the dim moonlight. It wasn’t buried in drifting sand, summoned by the howling wind to smother her, as she had dreamed.
    The wind was real. It had been blowing since the night after they’d trapped the water spirit, leaving everyone edgy and tense. The spirit had kept her promise not to harm the humans herself. She’d made no promise about her friends.
    Makenna reached up to run her fingers through her sweaty hair, and they stuck in snarls right next to her scalp. She swore. The last time—in fact, the last four times this had happened—it had taken her and her goblin helpers hours to comb out the long, dark red-mass. And Makenna wasn’t the only one. Several of the goblin women who slept alone had received visits from the same taunting spirit, and one little girl, Onny, had been particularly troubled. If they didn’t tangle your dreams at the same time, it wouldn’t be so bad.
    Makenna was tired of being the spirits’ victim. Tired of food that now rotted only hours after it was picked, and tents sinking in mud puddles that hadn’t been there when they were set up that evening.
    Enough! Kneeling on her bedroll, Makenna drew her knife, its copper blade honed almost as sharp as steel by the goblin smiths. She cut the hair a scant inch from her scalp, so the tangles fell in long, matted hanks onto her blankets. She had to feel her way carefully at the back of her head, to keep from cutting herself, but soon she could run her fingers through the short pelt without catching a single knot. Her head felt as if it was floating on her shoulders. Her heart, also, was oddly light. Unencumbered, ready for the next phase of the fight. Dark One take the spirits! It was time to go on the offense, and let them defend for a while.
    Cogswhallop found her over an hour later, sitting in the remains of her shorn hair, with a spell book in her hands.
    There hadn’t been much in the priest’s books about spirits, particularly about catching them or getting them to leave you alone.
    The few references Makenna did find made tantalizing comments about something called the Great Outcasting. Had the priests once driven all the spirits out of the Realm, as they’d later tried to drive the goblins out? If so, it must have been a long time ago. None of Makenna’s mother’s teaching had even mentioned them.
    In