The Goblin's Heir

Chapter Four: Brutal Honesty

The table suddenly seemed to stretch on for miles. My sons drifted ever further away, their voices becoming distant echoes, barely heard over the pounding of my own heart. Knut wouldn't lie to me...He might keep things from me, yes, and perhaps skirt around the truth, but lie? About being able to have another son? Never. I couldn't believe he would do so vile a thing as to give me that much hope, knowing it was pointless.

"No. You're the ones that are lying," I muttered, shaking my head. "He wouldn't...I don't believe you. Your father was a teenager when Kai was born and Frode was already ancient by that point." I defended lamely. "We still have time."

"Father was an only child and still years yet from being old enough to take on Frode. It's a shade different with us." Odd said, chewing on a fatty piece of meat loudly. "He had no one to test himself against. I already have more than I care for."

"Shut up, Odd. You're not helping." Floki huffed in annoyance. He gave me a pitying look. "We're not telling you this to be cruel. We wouldn't do that to you. At least Frit and I wouldn't." 

Odd chuckled around another mouthful of meat.

"Why he wouldn't tell me if he couldn't have any more children?" I asked, my hands clenching my dress beneath the table. "If this is some ploy to force me into allowing the coronation-"

"You know we're telling you the truth, you just don't want to believe it." Frit said. "Father taught us how the cycle works himself. He had to have mentioned it at least once in your thirty years of marriage. Maybe you just don't remember everything." He started to explain it in a mocking impersonation of his father, pitching his voice too high and giving it a foppish accent. "Once a prince swallows the seed and becomes king, he spends the early years of his reign making heirs. His sons are born in broods in quick succession, one after the other, usually no more than five years between them. Once all those princes enter their second decade of life, the king starts to decline in health and loses his ability to father more offspring. This is to prevent the king from prolonging his life unnaturally. The princes grow up, challenge one another, kill each other and the winner attempts to take the crown. If he fails, then the old king's connection to the seed of creation will be renewed and he may father new heirs and try again. If he succeeds then voila the goblins have a new king and the whole process begins anew. Thus, the cycle repeats over and over again until the end of time."

"Amen." Odd snickered, making the sign of the cross over his chest in the entirely wrong order. 

Floki had been staring at me the whole time. He noticed how I tensed and clenched my teeth as if preparing for a blow. He saw the tears building in my eyes. "You really didn't know..." He said, speaking no more loudly than a breath, yet those words brought a hush over his brothers. They clamped their mouths shut and deflated into their chairs. The realization that they were being honest came down on me then, stealing my breath and rending my heart into ragged pieces. 

I lowered my head when I felt the first drop of moisture on my cheek, hurriedly wiping it away. "I don't believe it. I just don't believe it." I muttered softly beneath my breath. It was a putrid, rotting lie.

I knew better than anyone how the coronation worked. It was a simple rotation of death and rebirth, death and death again, a very easy thing to understand as most brutal truths are, but never had I given so much dreadful thought to the why. Suddenly all of the rituals and rules that I had thought merely cultural made much more frightening sense. There was more of an order to the coronation process than there seemed at first glance. A king usually only had about twenty to forty years, depending on how many children he had, to rule before he was challenged. All that time was spent preparing what would hopefully be his replacement. Everything, every moment of a goblin's life was orchestrated by their god until the very second of their deaths to push them towards their end. Their promised god-hood. There was a set time limit to everything. The rise and fall of kings was a wheel constantly turning, made to grow as many sapling world trees as possible as quickly as possible. And now, Knut's time was running out. He was fading...withering? For how long had it been happening? The obsession with creating goblins, the fatigue, the memory loss. It all made sense now as well. There had been signs. Symptoms. I'd just...been too consumed in my grief of past and future to notice.