I was bought forth from my laboratory scant days ago by a commotion in the Covenant. A large group of armed men had approached and demanded that Jock be turned over to them for trial and summary execution. Aethylred had taken charge, barred the gates and called out the Turb, and ws presently negotiating to ascertain what these mundanes wanted.

The men were the folk of Miningsby - such as could be spared and had arms - under the command of their Reeve, Peter the Norman. Jock had visited during the Autumn, fossicking as was his want for Terram vis among the tailings pile. I recall that he had mentioned discovering some caves with iron and gold as well, and that he hold told some of the miners about them. According to Peter, those men had disappeared one by one, and they believed Jock to be guilty of their murders.

Rather than turn Jock over, or allow matters to progress to a seige, I offered to stand surety for Jock and accompany the men back to Miningsby to see what could be learned of these disappearances. Accompanying me were my Custos, Geoffrey, my servant Alfred, Bruce the Scot and Bruce the Gay. Expecting to venture underground in search of a cave-in, I also took Cob the Giant and Bert the Dull, and a village boy named Adam who volunteered to crawl through any tight spaces. The men of Miningsby stayed in the Covenant overnight, under sureptitious guard, and we set out on the morn.

At Miningsby it was clear that opinion was very much against Jock. They called him a mad sorceror, and openly accused him of doing away with the missing. We were offered a barn to stay in overnight, but shortly after dusk Adam wandered away and could not be found. Several hours were spent in a fruitless search, before it was decided that he was either thoroughly lost or else had taken the opportunity to slip away in search of adventure.

In the morning Adam reappeared, claiming that he had become lost while exploring the village. There was much grumbling about feckless youths, and it was clear that Bert and Cob wanted to give him a good beating.

With the aid of Peter, we set out in search of Jock's cave, it being my supposition that the missing men had either become lost while searching for gold there, or else quarreled over the spoils. Either way, their bodies, or at least the trail, would be found there. No doubt having overheard my speculations, Adam began telling tales of a fearsome goblin king who lived underground, and who had trapped the miners in his kingdom. Initially I dismissed this as mere childhood storytelling - the children of the village see faeries everywhere due to the influence of William's brood - but in retrospect I see that this was a sign that Adam was not all he appeared. I must learn a copy of Sight of the True Form sometime.

After much searching, we found the cave - a sinkhole leading down about fifteen feet. Leaving Cob aboveground with Peter and his men, him being too large to fit down the hole, we lowered ourselves down, lit torches, and began to explore. There was a large open cavern below the sinkhole, with three passages leading off it. The passages were narrow, so that we often had to walk bent-over double, and formed an interlinked maze which always led back to the same two places: the sinkhole cavern, and a marvelous cavern whose walls were drystal veined with gold and iron. We took some and explored some more, but could find no way to advance further.

In the meantime, Adam's talk of the goblin king had continued, and he now suggested that there was a hidden path from the crystal cavern to the goblin king's realm. having found no bodies, nor any sign of them, I was beginning to speculate along such lines myself, and so readily believed him. However he had grown unaccountably afraid of the caverns, and would only share his thoughts on how to enter the realm if allowed to return to the surface. Reluctantly, I agreed, and Adam revealed the secret: taking iron puts you on the path, taking gold puts you off the path. We took Adam back to the sinkhole, then returned to the crystal cavern, and each took some iron. Nothing happened until we had left the cavern and passed through the maze again, but when we returned, the narrow end of the cavern had expanded into a wide tunnel, lit by light filtered down from above and reflected through the crystal in the walls. Gathering our courage, we advanced into the goblin king's realm.

Long we wandered the caverns of the goblin king, gazing upon its wonders but seeing no-one. The walls grew ever more thickly lined with gold, the light from the crystal grew brighter - and all the while there was a strange sound, a low groaning as if the earth itself were talking to us. We were about to turn back after several hours of fruitless searching when we stumbled across a cave more brightly lit than any before - vast, with a large stone chair at its center, and unlike those before, occupied.

The creatures we saw in the underground throne room were as short, ugly, wiry men, or perhaps children with missahpen, outsized heads. They were clothed, and carried implements such as were used for mining, and "goblin" would seem an apt description for them. Their leader, he who sat on the chair, was only slightly larger, but much of his height came from his legs, which were extremely long in proportion to his stunted torso. He spoke the English tongue (as did many of his subjects), but with a rude accent and crass manners. Sykes was his name, and he explained that the underground realm was not for mortals. The missing men had indeed trespassed here, and would not be returned. But as he spoke, the groaning noise grew louder, and the goblins became unsettled. Sykes told us that we should leave, and commanded two of his subjects to lead us back to the surface, then hurried to a side cavern from whence the groaning came.

As the goblins led us back the way we had came, I passed by a vent, and heard human voices crying out in pain. "The bleeding, not the bleeding". From the look on his face, Bruce the Scot had also heard, but I hurried him along. It was clear that we could not fight so many in their own realm. When we reached the crystal cavern, the goblins commanded us to empty our pockets and discard the iron we had taken. It was then that we saw that their nails and teeth were dark, made of that same substance.

When we returned to the surface, scarcely twenty minutes had passed, and Adam was in the midst of telling Peter and his men about the goblin king and the ogre which crunched the bones of those that trespassed in his realm. When we told Peter of our discovery, he called it a "most fanciful tale", despite our obvious signs of exhaustion - and fear. However, several of the villagers seemed to believe us, muttering of "the old tales".

As we returned to the village, I tripped while climbing down the scree slope beneath the cavern. Those around me looked in horror, for I had tripped on a blackened and twisted hand, protruding from the slope. Excavation revealed the body of one of the missing villagers, his face contorted in fear and terror, his throat slit. Things did not look good for Jock.

Upon our return to the village, we were confined to the barn while the miners gathered to discuss what to do. I sent Adam out to evesdrop, and he soon returned with word that the villagers were all for hanging Jock - and all of us too! However, there was also some fear at mention of faeries, and they had decided to wait for "Old Maude" to tell them what to do. Seeing that the situation was desperate, I planned to put the guards to sleep, escape, and mout a nocturnal raid on the crystal caverns - but before we could act, Peter returned and summoned me to the church.

At the church the priest's helper had laid out and washed the body, and it was clear that he had been bound for some time before his death, and from the partially-healed scars on his arms, he had been bled slowly over a period of days or weeks before finally being killed. There also seemed to be something in the mouth, and we left the priest's helper to extract it while Peter introduced me to Old Maude.

Maude was terribly old for a mundane, toothless and mostly deaf. She was being helped around by Stephen, one of her great grandchildren, who ocassionally prompted her when she wandered off. Her tale was dark. She knew of faeries, because a large group of them had taken all the men of the village when she had been young (some sixty or seventy years ago, by my guess). The miners had not dug open pits like they do today, but tunnels under the earth. But they had dug too deep, and one night a horde of ugly creatures - small and large, manlike and not - had errupted from the mines, descended on Miningsby and taken them all. In their place, they left iron coins, as payment.

Peter was inclined to dismiss this tale, and would have, had it not been for the cry of the priest's helper behind us. He had finally freed whatever it was from the dead miner's mouth, and held it aloft - a small, iron coin, with the outline of an armed, crowned man on one side, and spiraling script on the other.

Maude nearly fainted from terror, and we were able to learn no more from her. However, it did lead credence to my tale of the afternoon, and Peter was eaily convinced to allow a second expedition to the caves. It also lent a certain amount of urgency - would the goblins attack again?

In the morning we armed ourselves and headed back to the cave, accompanied by one of Peter's men - though he seemed to be there more to bring warning if we roused any creatures than to watch us. Leaving Cob and Alfred aboveground again, we ventured down - taking Adam with us despite his protestations. As we were gathering below, Adam ran off, presumably hiding himself in one of the narrower tunnels. Rather than waste too much time in fruitless searching for the feckless boy, and thinking that a few hours spent at the bottom of the sinkhole would be suitable punishment, I instructed Cob to haul the rope up and not to lower it unless I called, then set off. We once again took iron from the crystal cave, wandered the passageways, and returned to the halls of the goblin king.

Again, we wandered for hours, listening for human cries and searching for the area we believed the captives were held. The groaning was much louder now, and grew louder still as we progressed. Eventually we came across the prison - a cave with smaller side caverns, each holding a captive and sealed with bars of rock, too thick to be broken even by Bert's strength. As we worked in vain to free them, one of the prisoners told us of his captivity. They were kept chained in these cells, and the goblins regularly bled them into iron bowls, though they did not know for what purpose. The cells could only be opened by a stone key, carried by the one with the long legs - Sykes.

It was then that we heard voices from the entraceway - Sykes himself was coming. The grogs prepared for an ambush, but as Sykes appeared I motioned them to hold and stepped forward. The goblin king was clearly surprised to see me - and even more surprised when I told him I could provide the blood he sought and demonstrated the fact with a simple application of Creo Corpus. He readily agreed to let the captives go, to be guided above by Bruce the Gay and a goblin - but demanded that I and the rest of my men stay. Had we simply traded places with the captives?

While one of the goblins led the captives to the surface, Sykes took us through several caverns, with darker walls of more ordinary stone. The groaning noise grew ever louder, until at last we entered a vast cavern containing its source - a sleeping giant, wearing an iron crown chained to his waste. The points of the crown turned inwards and were wickedly sharp, and whenever he twitched in his restless sleep they dug further into his skull and peeled more flesh from his face. Sykes explained that his name was Bloodycrown the "Rawhead Rex", a faery king, and that he slept here during the winter. The presence of men in the caves disturbed him, and he could only be put back to sleep with heart's blood. If he awoke fully, he would be angry and terrible and command the goblins to attack the surface, as he had many years before. Sykes had tried slowly bleeding the intruders, but keeping them alive paradoxically meant maintaining the king's disturbance. But now that I could create blood for them, perhaps the king would return to sleep - and if not, one of us would be sacrificed for the purpose.

Four times I stepped forward, creating blood to drip onto the sleeping king's skull. And each time his wounds closed slightly and his restlessness eased. Finally, it was done and the king slept in peace. It was clear that Sykes was considering treachery - keeping me there to provide him with an endless supply of blood - but he relented and had one of his goblins lead us to the surface. The others - for a large crowd had gathered to watch my workings - appeared grateful and talked of being able to get on with their work, which I gathered to be mostly mining and the construction of clever artifices. I see some possibilities there...

Upon our return to the surface I learned that there had been some trickery. Adam had come to the sinkhole and begged to be allowed up, but had been refused and eventually fallen silent. Sometime later, according to Alfred, I had called to him from below, and had come up alone, and left them there to wait for the others. There was no sign of this doppelganger or of Adam, though it was clear that the two were one and Adam had somehow assumed my form. This is deeply worrying.

Sykes had kept to his word and the captives had arrived before us, and so we returned to Miningsby, where they related their tale. Jock being obviously innocent of any crime, we were free to go - however, he was forbidden to return here. I would hope that he is wise wnough to respect their judgement.

Epilogue

On our return to Claxby I sought out Adam's parents - only to discover that he had been here the whole time. We clearly have a shapeshifter in the Covenant, who will need to be hunted down with some urgency.

I am also worried about Miningsby and the Rawhead Rex. The blood I created was not infused with vis, and so would only last until sunset. Time moves differently in the faery realm - much faster, from the short period of time those aboveground said we had been away for - but still, the spell should be long expired by now. Will Bloodycrown awaken, or his sleep once again become restless? Will Sykes realise that I have tricked him? Or is it merely the sensation or tate of blood his king needs? We will need to keep a close eye on Miningsby, to see what occurs.

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Last updated: 22/06/2004.