The gnome was still not convinced. “What by Earth and Stone makes you two think you are capable of something like that?”

“Well,” Muckle said haughtily, “we did it once, didn’t we?”

Rosheen frowned up at the goblin. Bag of lard and lies.

“My friend, astonishingly, speaks the truth,” Curdle spoke directly to her. “It was we who first crafted the spell that freed the Forge Born.”

“Toad shit!” Deglan barked. “The elves wove that spell!”

Curdle nodded. “We needed their considerable power to magnify it, push it past the defenses of the warlocks, but Muckle and I created the spell. Only we had the knowledge of the Forge Born required to change them.”

Rosheen did not like the sound of that. “Knowledge?”

A deep sorrow filled the white goblin’s face, and Rosheen saw Muckle set his jaw, his normally dancing eyes growing hard.

“Yes,” Curdle said. “Knowledge we gained while in service to the Goblin Kings.”

There was a long silence. All eyes locked on the two goblins standing by the fire, their shadows cast on the ruined stones behind them; black, distorted, flickering imitations. It was Deglan who finally spoke.

“You are Red Caps,” he said, his voice hushed.

“Not my color,” Muckle said, trying and failing to put levity in his voice. “Besides, I look awful in hats.”

“The Red Caps were…are just soldiers,” Curdle told them gravely. “We were more than that. We were councilors…spies, each of us wielders of unique Magic. Muckle began his service with Vellaunus the Cackler, and I with Jerrod the First.”

“Evil bastards,” Muckle said without humor.

“But not so evil as Jerrod the Second,” Curdle’s shoulders slumped with shame. “We knew the isle, maybe the world, would be destroyed the day he took command of the Forge Born.”

“So you betrayed him,” Deglan said.

“No,” Curdle replied. “We stopped betraying the Fae. We went to Irial and placed ourselves in his custody, begging him to listen. It took years before he trusted us for more than spies, but finally, with no other course, he heard our council and agreed to help us cast our spell.”

“And gave the Forge Born a conscience,” Rosheen said.

“It was the only way to defeat them,” Curdle said. “I knew the secrets of the mind. Muckle, for all his buffoonery, is a master of emotion. What is a conscience but the meeting of mind and heart?”

“And now you want to cast your spell again,” Deglan said.

Curdle looked hopeful. “With the elves all but vanished from the world, we lack the power to enchant the Forge Born ourselves unless we use the spell still residing in Coltrane and infuse it directly into the others as they regain their lives.”

“How can we trust you?” Rosheen asked, watching her words sting the mystic.

The goblin only looked at her, knowing nothing he could say would help.