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Listen. A long time ago — and yet perhaps it wasn't such a very long time ago — in the reign of Tsar Mirnatius and his tsarina Irina, it came to pass that the Staryk king married a mortal maid who could change silver into gold. Word of this unlikely union traveled far and wide, carried on the wind and by the whispers of trees; it was a source of great humor to many spirits — even when stories about the banishment of the demon Chernobog spread, no one yet believed the truth of the rumor that the Staryk king had only married his bride the first time for gold. Within the year, news of the Staryk king's mortal even reached the caves and deeps of the Underhill, borne back by dwarven merchants who gossiped and snickered in the tunnels of their glittering, labyrinth city. From there, it spread to the darkness that borders the edges of the Staryk Kingdom where the goblins dwell.
Goblins are born from jealous anger, starless nights, and bitter, cloying fog. They steal fresh bread from bakers, pull the wings off of flies, and throw manure at beggars; they smother infants in the cradle. Goblins hate light, and they hate laughter, and they absolutely loathe the idea of anyone else being happy because they think other people's joy detracts from their own. They hate you, and they hate me, and they hate everyone who has ever breathed. Really, goblins hate just about everything. But what they hate most of all, what every goblin really, truly despises is the Staryk Kingdom.
Long, long ago, the Staryk people wrested their home from the darkness. The Staryk raised up the walls of their icy glass mountain with the power of their magic, the sanctity of their oaths, and through the sheer force of their wills. Each new generation of Staryk continues to build on the previous one; their white kingdom becomes colder, and stronger, and lovelier every year. When the moon waxes in the Staryk Kingdom, the glass mountain glows in the moonbeams and the winter woods road seems to stretch out to infinity. When the moon wanes, the stars flood across the sky in a river of light and the air is so crisp and cold it's like breathing diamonds.
In contrast, goblins could never work together long enough to build a pig sty out of the darkness, much less a kingdom, and if a goblin ever did manage to make something another goblin would steal it or break it before the day was out. Really, the goblins are never going to forgive the Staryk for crafting such a magnificent home from the dark when the goblins just can't escape from it.
This meant that the goblins were extra delighted to hear that the Staryk king had lowered himself far enough to marry a mortal peasant. The news pleased them so much that three goblins gathered to gloat about it, which is unusual because goblins hate each other only slightly less than they hate the Staryk.
"A human," crowed the first goblin, a stupid one. "A worthless human was made queen of the Staryk! Pathetic."
"Oh, I bet the king's got her under tight control," the second goblin, a strong one, replied. "No real king would let her actually reign, no matter how much gold she gives him." The goblin sniggered.
A crafty look crossed the third goblin's face. "You know," said the last goblin, a sly one, "whether she's fit for it or not, this human peasant is the Staryk queen, which means she's technically in charge. I heard the king has an upcoming diplomatic mission to the dwarrowrealms. And he's taking most of his knights, and he's leaving his dear wifey-kins at home. All alone. Maybe we should pay her a little visit, to keep her company while her lord is gone. We should make a bet to see who can steal the most gold from her."
The goblins laughed and smirked and so it was agreed.
And so it was that one week after her husband left to negotiate a new treaty with the dwarves — a treaty which they desperately needed to assist with the ongoing rebuilding efforts, since they were short on several vital building materials but now had almost unlimited access to gold — Miryem Open-Handed, Queen of the Staryk, was called away from her duties in the kitchen gardens by a servant wearing an alarmed expression.
The servant brought her to the gate at the foot of the mountain, where Staryk nobles had assembled. There Miryem looked upon a goblin for the first time. Miryem's bondswoman Tsop had given her background information on most of the supernatural and political forces which Miryem might have to deal with as the Staryk queen, but since the goblins keep a wide distance from the king and rarely venture into the Staryk kingdom, Tsop had only given Miryem a cursory overview of the species. That, however, was enough for Miryem to know that this being likely meant her ill, and even if it hadn't been, the wariness on the faces of Miryem's court would have warned her.
This goblin, the stupid one, was perhaps three feet tall, with a spotty face like a crusty pudding studded with old raisins, and a body the color of crusty pudding, too. She had seven fingers on each hand with knuckles that dragged on the ground as she walked, and a malicious glint in her narrow, dark eyes.
"Hello, idiot human queen," the stupid goblin shouted. "I have come to blight your tender snow-trees and curse your children! And you have no warriors left here to stop me!" The goblin laughed nasally, ha ha ha, making a sound like a rusty hinge, and Miryem's court leaned back in offended distaste.
Miryem Open-Handed only raised her eyebrow and did not tremble. "Wait," Miryem said, with the calm of the snow after a blizzard has ended. "I offer you gold. In exchange, you will not blight our trees and curse our children." The court stirred in dismay, but none gainsaid her.
The stupid goblin's eyes widened in greed. "Yes, yes," she agreed. "Yes, you will give me gold and I will not give you harm!" But it was obvious that the goblin was lying.
"Fetch me the swan-necked vase full of gold coins from the second treasury chamber," Queen Miryem ordered, and although her Staryk subjects didn't like it, they had no warriors to defend themselves from the stupid goblin and so they brought Miryem Open-Handed the vase.
"Look," Miryem told the goblin, "here is the gold which I promised you." She reached down into the vase and pulled up a gold coin in demonstration, and the goblin's mouth flashed into a hungry smile.
"Gimmie!" the stupid goblin demanded, and Miryem dropped the coin back inside the vase and passed it over into the goblin's broad, eager hands.
"Fool!" the stupid goblin shouted. "Now I have your gold, and I will still blight your tender snow-trees and curse your children." Then goblin thrust her hand down into the swan-necked vase and grabbed as many coins as she could fit into her fist.
But when she tried to pull the gold back out of the vase, her hand wouldn't come. It was stuck, and no matter how hard the goblin struggled and tugged her hand stayed in the vase.
"You're trapped now," Queen Miryem said. Her gaze was cool and even.
"What witchcraft is this?" the stupid goblin cried, frantically waving her arm in an attempt to shake off the vase. "You've bespelled me!"
"Did you think that I wouldn't?" asked Queen Miryem, as lethally and quietly as new fallen snow.
The stupid goblin cursed and wailed, but no matter how she wrenched and yanked and twisted her arm, it did not come out of the swan-necked vase. "Release me! Please!" she finally begged.
"I will not let you out until you agree to give back the gold, and you swear on your true name that you will never bring harm to me nor mine."
Sobbing, the stupid goblin swore.
"Let go of the coins," said Miryem Open-Handed, "and unclench your fist." The goblin did so, and the vase slipped off immediately. "Your greed is what trapped you," Miryem said. "If you had taken out a few coins at a time instead of all you could grab at once, your fist would have been smaller and it would not have been caught in the neck of the vase."
The goblin whimpered.
"Leave my kingdom and do not return," Miryem ordered, and the stupid goblin fled howling back to the darkness beyond the edge of the Staryk kingdom, never to be heard from again.
And so it was that the second week the Staryk king was gone, Queen Miryem labored in the kitchens with her bondswomen Flek and Tsop, jarring preserves and listening to her handmaid Flek discuss her courtship with a brave knight and that knight's worthy wife. As they worked and chattered, a servant ran in with news of a second goblin demanding to see the Staryk queen.
At the foot of the mountain waited the queen's court with the strong goblin, who was perhaps some five and a half feet tall, roughly the same size as the queen, although that's still shorter than the average Staryk is. This goblin had green skin the color of moldy cheese, three fingers on each hand, and a nose long and sharp enough to cut with.
"I'm stronger than anyone here," bragged the goblin. "I'm even stronger than all of you here! Gimme gold, or I'll blight your tender snow-trees and curse your children, because your warriors are away and you aren't strong enough to stop me!" The goblin laughed deeply, huh huh huh, a sound like two stones grinding together, and the Staryk court frowned in revulsion.
"It is true you are stronger than me," Miryem Open-Handed agreed. "If you can defeat a person of my choosing, I will grant you all the gold you can carry." The strong goblin preened, and Miryem sent her servants into the mountain to fetch her every large, silver backed mirror the Staryk possessed.
The mirrors the Staryk servants carried out were big enough to catch the entirety of the strong goblin's reflection. Queen Miryem touched them all in succession, and they turned to gold. Their reflected images distorted, revealing misshapen, golden copies of whatever was placed in front of them.
The queen pointed into the surface of the first golden mirror. "Defeat that goblin," Miryem Open-Handed told the strong goblin, and the goblin laughed again, swinging a fist at the reflection. The goblin was angered when the misshapen image in the mirror swung back, and so the strong goblin smashed the twisted image it saw. The first golden mirror tinkled to the ground in slivers.
"See!" the strong goblin crowed. "I have beaten your champion, so now you must give me gold!"
"But look there," the Staryk queen said. She pointed into the next mirror, where the strong goblin's distorted image looked back. "There is the goblin I told you to beat, still unharmed."
"The coward fled from my fist," the strong goblin hissed, so the goblin broke the second mirror, too, but again that reflected goblin appeared in another mirror. The strong goblin destroyed mirror after mirror, but the goblin simply couldn't catch the golden goblin reflection. Eventually, the strong goblin lay panting and furious, too tired to stand up again and hit the Staryk queen's goblin champion again.
"You cannot win," said Miryem Open-Handed, "you are exhausted and spent. But my court and I are still hale and hearty, so now we can defeat you and unless you swear on your true name never to harm me and mine, we will prove it. So swear, then go back to the darkness beyond our borders and never return."
And the goblin knew it was true, so the strong goblin swore and left and was never seen again.
And so it was that on the dawn of the third week after the Staryk king's departure, as the Open-Handed Queen worked on the Staryk account books, a servant came to inform her of the arrival of a third goblin.
The third goblin, the sly one, was nearly ten feet tall, crooked over and hunched like an old man carrying a weight too heavy for him. This goblin was the mottled pink color of newly disturbed earthworms; his arms were jointed like a praying mantis and he had four fingers on one hand and six on the other. His teeth were jagged and sharp, and they stuck out of his mouth at weird angles.
"Greetings, human queen of the Staryk," the sly goblin said. "I have come to collect the debt the Staryk court owes me! You will pay me in gold, or I will blight your tender snow-trees and curse your children since you have no warriors to stop me." He laughed thickly, heh heh heh, a low, phlegmy bellow like a sick reindeer, and the watching Staryk cringed back in disgust at the sound.
"And what debt do we owe you?" Miryem Open-Handed inquired in a tone that was neither believing or disbelieving, but was reminiscent of a cold front swiftly freezing over a rushing river.
"Your entire kingdom," the sly goblin said, grinning. "Your people—" and this was a jibe at the entire Staryk court, for no goblin could think it anything but an insult to count a human amongst their number, but the insult fell short because none of the ice-faced courtiers took offense and so the sly goblin's smile changed to a frown, "—your people constructed this kingdom from the endless darkness where I dwell. It was my darkness, or at least the darkness that should have been mine, and your ancestors changed it. So you will give me as much gold as your kingdom is worth, or I will destroy it."
"You claim that you own the darkness," the Open-Handed said. "But darkness falls equally on everyone; it can't be heard or smelled, nor can it be contained or touched or hoarded. Darkness can only be seen. How can you own the dark?"
"It is true that darkness falls equally on everyone," the sly goblin replied. "But who better to own the dark than me?" And he flexed his bent old man arms and bared his teeth, and he stomped his feet so hard the winter trees shook with a sound like shivering chimes.
Queen Miryem frowned. "You claim that we owe you for this kingdom which the Staryk cleaved out of the dark, for this kingdom which they built with generations of their own efforts. But the darkness is still there, at the borders of our kingdom, and it has not diminished since our departure."
"Yes," the sly goblin said. "But the Staryk kingdom was in the darkness before and now it isn't, and that means that it was taken from me."
"What the Staryk built may have sprung from the dark," the Staryk queen said, "but that is only where it originated, not what it's made from. Our kingdom is not of the dark now, and it never was."
"Still," the sly goblin said, smiling so his jagged teeth were visible all the way down to the roots. "Still, you will pay me or I will do such harm to your weakened, warrior-less kingdom as it will never recover from, and I will begin with the children."
"Very well," said Miryem Open-Handed. "I will pay you in such gold as is appropriate." She turned to her servants and told them to fetch out the entire contents of the treasury and bring it to the goblin. "But be careful," she warned. "Go slowly and carry only one bag at a time, lest you spill even a single coin."
Her Staryk servants brought out giant sacks of gold, carried slowly one at a time all the way from the treasury to the foot of the Staryk's glass mountain, where they dropped each bag at the feet of their queen and the sly goblin. With every sack, the goblin's eyes grew wider and wider and he grew more and more delighted, until he could hardly contain his glee. And still, the servants carried down more and more bags, one at a time.
The moon began to rise, and the Staryk servants continued to carry down sacks of gold, one at a time, stacking the treasure higher and higher until it was difficult to walk amongst the piles.
Eventually, the sly goblin grew impatient. "How much longer?" he demanded.
"This is only from the first chamber of our treasury," Miryem Open-Handed replied. "Only wait a bit, and you will have more." The sly goblin liked the idea of that, and so he settled back to watch the gold pile up. And still the Staryk servants continued to carry down sacks of gold, one after the other.
When the moon sat high in the sky, the bags of gold were stacked high enough that it reached the waists of the watching Staryk courtiers — and still they carried down bags, one after the other. The sly goblin grew impatient again.
"When will all my gold be here?" he demanded.
"This gold is only from the second chamber of our treasury," replied Miryem Open-Handed. "Only wait a bit more, and you will have even greater wealth than this." The sly goblin thought that sounded just fine, so again he sat back to wait. And still the Staryk servants brought down gold sacks, one after the other.
When the moon set, the gold bags were piled taller than Queen Miryem so that she had to stand on a box to see over them, although the sly goblin was barely able to keep his head above the gold piles by craning his neck up.
Finally, the goblin grew too impatient and angry to wait anymore. He stamped his feet so that the gold bags shook and threatened to topple. He shouted, "Hey! Are you trying to cheat me? Give me my gold now!"
The Open-Handed Queen smiled at him. "We have brought you all the gold out of the third chamber of our treasury," she told him, "and now we will pay you what we owe you for your darkness."
The sly goblin chortled in glee, and little flecks of spit flew from his mouth. He reached for the gold, intending to grab it up into his arms, but Queen Miryem signaled one of her servants, and that gentleman snatched the bag away just before the goblin could touch it.
"What is this?" demanded the sly goblin in outrage. "Hand it over!" And he tried again to seize a gold bag, but again a servant pulled it away before he could.
"Our debts are settled now," said Miryem Open-Handed. "Just as you have charged us for your darkness which can only be viewed, not touched or heard or smelled, we have paid you for our kingdom. We have paid for the sight of your darkness with the sight of our gold."
Laughter rippled through the Staryk court. Goblins hate being laughed at, and the sly goblin had just been told he wouldn't get to keep the gold he had seen, so he flew into a rage.
"Very well!" the sly goblin screamed. "If you don't owe me, clever queen, then I will take your gold, and then I will smash your glass mountain and kill every person here, starting with you, weak little human, because it doesn't matter how wise you are if you're dead!" Then the sly goblin roared so loudly that the snow fell from the winter trees and the noise echoed back from the woods. Then the goblin reached out with his stick insect arms to smash Queen Miryem and strike her dead on the spot.
But before he could touch so much as a single hair on Miryem Open-Handed's head, the sly goblin was stabbed through from behind with a spear. The Staryk king and his retinue had finished negotiations and returned home from the dwarrowrealms, summoned by Queen Miryem and a magic mirror her husband had given her. The sly goblin hadn't seen them arrive over the enormous stacks of gold.
"Greetings, my love," the Staryk king said. "I see that you were able to stall until I returned." He did not say so, but the king's tone was unsurprised; he had learned to expect no less of his wife.
"Welcome home, my lord," the Staryk queen said. "I am glad to see you back." Her voice was unsurprised, too; although Miryem hadn't seen her husband approach, she knew that once he had promised her to return by the time the moon set, nothing but death could have kept him from her. Perhaps not even death could have stopped him, that's how much the Staryk value their oaths — and how much their king values his wife.
"I am glad to be back," the king said. "How fared you and the kingdom in my absence?"
"A few problems cropped up," admitted Queen Miryem, "but nothing I couldn't handle."
"Of course," the Staryk king agreed, and Miryem Open-Handed smiled anew at the wonder of having a husband who held such faith in her and in her abilities.
And so the entire Staryk kingdom feasted in honor of Queen Miryem's three victories over the goblins, and in celebration of the king's successful negotiations with the dwarves. But that is another story.