Death of the Dragon - Ed Greenwood [26]
He plucked one of his eyelashes and encased it in a small wad of gum arabic from his pocket, then whispered the incantation of his invisibility spell. His hand vanished from sight, leaving only a halo of light emanating from his unseen commander's ring. He slipped the ring off, then on again, suspending its magic radiance, and crept down the grand corridor. Though the hallway was the largest he had seen inside any goblin building, he still had to crouch to almost half his height. Grand goblin architecture expressed its majesty in the horizontal and more or less ignored the vertical.
As Vangerdahast neared the yellow light, it resolved itself into a lopsided doorway, with one side taller than the other and neither perpendicular to the floor. He began to pick out distinct speakers among the chittering voices, and the aroma grew deliciously, irresistibly overpowering. He had not been conscious of his hunger as such a palpable force for some time, but the smell of food-or the illusion of the smell-filled his mouth with saliva and made his stomach rumble. Knowing the despair that would come over him when he rounded the corner and found an empty room, he almost turned back. His belt was wrapped around him almost double now, and he suffered regular blackouts and periods of weakness so severe he could not stand. Discovering this wonderful aroma to be mere illusion might be enough to kill him.
But of course Vangerdahast did not turn back. The smell drew him on, and the sound, also, of voices other than his own-no matter how strange and alien. Soon he stood hunched over the little door, craning his neck around to peer under the sill at a candlelit table laden with the steaming carcasses of ten plump skunks and several dozen crows.
They certainly looked real enough. The skunks had been fully dressed and spit-roasted, then served on their own fur. The birds had been prepared just as elegantly, having been baked enfeather with shelled walnuts in their beaks and silver root grubs in their eye sockets. Vangerdahast wondered what kind of sick trick his mind was playing. At any other time, the mere sight of such a banquet would have disgusted him to the point of illness. Now, it made his hands tremble and his mouth water.
Squatting on their haunches around the table were more than thirty goblins, well dressed in brightly colored loincloths and pale tunics girded with leather sword belts. Rather husky and short for their race, they stood at most three feet tall. They were also the wrong color. The eyes and hides of most goblins ranged in hue from yellow to red, but these had pallid green skin and pale blue eyes the color of Queen Filfaeril's.
To Vangerdahast's amazement, the goblins' manners were as eloquent as the creatures themselves were strange. A dozen white-cloaked waiters stood stationed around the table at equal intervals, using bronze carving utensils to cut the meat into bite-sized chunks. Whenever a diner chittered at one of the servers, the server would flip a tasty morsel in its direction, which the creature then endeavored to catch by moving its open mouth beneath the food. There seemed to be something of an art to process, with diners being careful to remain on their haunches and keep their hands tucked securely behind their knees until the food arrived. Whenever a guest caught a morsel that had been flipped a particularly long distance, behind the back, or through a flickering candle flame, the others would break into a burst of appreciative hissing. Only once did Vangerdahast see a diner miss, and the others quietly averted their eyes while the embarrassed goblin pressed its face down to snap the morsel off the dirty floor.
So polite were the goblins that Vangerdahast suspected he might win a dinner invitation simply by casting a comprehend languages spell and introducing himself. With a somewhat smaller mouth than the hosts, however, he suspected his manners would not measure up to their standards, and he really did not fancy eating his crow off the floor. In fact,