No wonder Alastor’s great ancestors had thought to bring their worthless spirits Downstairs and put them to work doing tasks appropriate for the size of their miniature brains. The boy’s head was so empty Alastor was convinced he could hear his own voice echoing inside his skull.
He sat the boy’s body up, folded the blanket back, and escaped to the hallway. There was much to do tonight, and so few hours to accomplish it.
Nightlock awaited him on the other side of the window. He panted with excitement, fogging up the glass with his breath and saliva. The hob’s face split into an enormous, crooked grin at the sight of Alastor. He wasted no time in scratching at the window, as if the malefactor could have possibly missed him.
“My lord and master!” Nightlock was balanced on the top rung of a ladder, but risked releasing one hand to scratch a pointy ear. Alastor merely took this as an opportunity to flick him between the eyes.
He heard the hob’s startled shriek of surprise as he tumbled onto the grass, but was not concerned. If Alastor actually had a heart, it might have broken at Nightlock’s huge, glowing eyes. The hob’s rotting pumpkin cap lay a few feet away, smashed beyond recognition.
“What have you to say for yourself?” Alastor asked.
Nightlock’s forehead wrinkled. “Banana?”
“Pardon me?”
Nightlock’s face screwed up, as if the hob was capable of deep thought. “Pigeon?”
“What are you on about?”
“Wind?”
The boy’s hand shot out, easily closing around the small fiend’s neck. Its already bulging eyes seemed in true danger of popping out.
“Master did not specify what he would like me to say,” the hob choked out. “What word would please you? What has Nightlock done to displease you?”
“The house!” Alastor wanted the words to roar out of him, but had to settle on a whisper. “You cleaned the house and nearly exposed us!”
At that, the little hob gathered himself up, the snot and tears literally sucked back up his bulbous nose. He looked indignant. “That house was not fit for my lord and master! No, this hob would not stand for it, not Upstairs, not Downstairs, not anywhere in between! My prince must be cared for, and not live with the filth of sickening humans—pwah!” The hob launched a blue-tinged wad of snot at the ground to emphasize his disgust.
Alastor sat back, releasing him slowly. Thinking. “You did this for me?”
“Only ever for you, My Eternal Prince of Nightmares that Lurk in Every Dark Sleep.”
The boy’s wounded arm flopped around useless and unfeeling as Alastor forced his body to rise.
“You must take my other horn.” Nightlock was rambling. “You must, you must, you must—otherwise there will be no forgiveness, you will look at me in despair, Master, you must! I am a stupid, stupid creature. I do not deserve to bear horns!”
In truth…Alastor had always been silently disgusted by the practice of taking a hob’s horns. Perhaps it had to do with the way they screamed and thrashed around as it was done. But then, it was almost worse to watch them suck up all of their tears at the task’s completion and pretend nothing had happened. To see them immediately go back to work, fighting through the terrible pain. He had seen his own father maim countless hobs—and all for trivial things, like a spilled glass of troll milk. Sometimes, it was done out of anger when tasks did not turn out the way the emperor had hoped.
The worst had been when their father had forced Alastor and Pyra to watch as their nannyhob’s right horn was sliced off, all because of something Alastor had done. An order he had disobeyed. As the eldest of five brothers and a single sister, Alastor should have known better than to sneak off to the human world.
He had only wanted to prove himself to his father; his brothers were constantly trying to get him to stumble on his path to greatness. He only meant to bring a human spirit down for eternal servitude—but he had left the gate between the worlds open by mistake. A witch had come through and nearly murdered his father. A single, filthy human had nearly destroyed their empire, and yet, to Alastor, his nannyhob losing her horn had been the hardest fact to bear.
Alastor glared down the boy’s nose at the groveling servant’s small body and sighed. “Do not touch the humans’ possessions again unless I ask it of you. Do you understand?”
Nightlock nodded, clutching his clawed hands together under his chin. Alastor thought he was about to start crying again, this time with tears of joy, and so pressed onward.
“You found the fiend you spoke of this past night?” Alastor had made a hollow bargain with the boy, giving him the illusion it was a fair trade rather than a trap for his heart. He was curious to find out if the witchling had heard anything about what might be happening Downstairs, but he would not hold the boy’s breath waiting to find out. No, Alastor always had a second plan.
Nightlock nodded. “Yes, yes, I found him. He will speak the truth of our world to you. He is not under the curse; no, he is not. He is beyond the black throne’s reach.”
“How is this possible?” Alastor asked. No fiend was beyond the black throne’s influence. His family was the most powerful in the realm.
The hob trembled slightly, the knob in his throat bobbing as he swallowed.
“Because, my lord and master,” Nightlock said, “he is not a fiend at all, but an elf.”
Alastor could not decide whether or not he was annoyed or disgusted at the thought of dealing with an elf. In truth, he had only ever met one of their kind, and that had been when he was very young—only 103 years of age. The elf, with its humanlike form, hunched at the shoulders, had come to the Dark Court to speak with his father on behalf of the fiends that had been banished from Downstairs.
Elves were neither human nor fiend, but something far more gentle and quiet and tender—in other words, utterly repulsive. They were smaller in stature than men, their skin green and mottled with sprouts and leaves. If superstition was to be believed, the elves began their existence in the innermost of the four realms—the realm of Ancients.
The mysterious elves did work with great creativity and craftsmanship, but they refused to use their natural gifts to do something useful. Something such as creating a deadly blade with which to stab one’s enemies.
This was likely also the reason the elves had been foolish enough to choose to live in the realm of humans over that of the fiends. Their own innate magical gifts allowed them to use a glamour when they wished to pass as men or women, but they more often seemed to live just at the edge of mankind’s awareness and sight.
The elf that arrived at court that day was advanced in age, well into his tenth century, by the look of his skin. As elves aged, it became rough, thick. Their hair darkened to a forest green. And when it was their time to pass on to the next life, they found a parcel of open land and became what humans called trees.