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Goblins live for a long time, at least compared with the mayfly human existence. My grandfather lived to the ripe old age of three hundred and ninety three: a respectable age, but not in the least unusual. On the other hand, my own parents both died relatively young - but that is another story, and one we may get to later. As a consequence of this longevity, Goblin children are few and far between, and each infant is usually well on the way to adulthood - into their thirties, at least - before a younger sibling appears. Nether is my elder brother, the oldest of the family, the one who, according to long-established Goblin convention, would inherit the lion's share of the familial inheritance. Some of my earliest and most poignant memories are of my big brother playing with me when I was but a tiny child. On his return from school or, later on, from college, Nether would challenge me to games with balls or pucks or shuttlecocks, and bouts of tag and hide-and-seek. Later he could sometimes be persuaded to entertain me with tricks of sleight of hand and illusory magic, tricks which gently introduced me to the properties of everyday glamours and charms, not to mention the things that could be achieved without magical assistance. I grew quickly - I have always been big for a Goblin - but Nether was for many years nearly as tall as me. He was himself a strapping lad, quite capable to taking me on in a friendly wrestling match with a decent chance of a throw or a hold. He would take me on long walks, exploring many of the vast caverns which form the Goblin world, and the sights and wonders which abound in the Lower Realms. I remember later encounters, when I was at school or when I returned home from the long-established University I had been so lucky to win a scholarship to attend, studying policing and law-enforcement. Nether was already pursuing a career in the civil administration, the lower echelons of government. When we met at our parents’ house, Nether would regale me with tales of derring-do, of assignments to exotic locations, and complex stories of politics and the secrets behind the headlines in the newspapers. He was my idol, the one I looked up to, the one I aspired to emulate in every way, right up to the day he disappeared. When the police eventually investigated his lodgings, they found everything in its place, just as if he had left for work in the morning and simply never returned. There was no break-in, no evidence of foul play, nothing to suggest he had packed clothes and toiletries and left for an extended trip. He was just nowhere to be found. He was still alive, though. The police told us that money was being taken out of his bank accounts, in small amounts and in a dizzying array of places. In the Goblin world, such a consistent fraud would not be possible: it was quite definitely Nether's signature or thumb-print, with his credit card Verified by Hexes, that was being used to withdrawn ten bucks here and five dollars there. The amounts were puzzling - not enough to live on, I had thought - and for a long time, we assumed he had simply moved in with a lover, one he was too embarrassed about to introduce to his friends, his work colleagues or to his family. Or perhaps he was on some secret assignment, an extended mission from which one day he would suddenly return and fascinate us all with astonishing tales of his adventures. We put him out of our minds, at least mostly, choosing to believe he was living happily elsewhere. Much later, long after the death of my father, Mother was already on her deathbed; she was never really well again after the tragedy that killed her husband. She begged me to try and find Nether, knowing that I had been, for a short time, a copper - my career in the police force had been short and ignominious - and that I was now setting myself up as a licensed Private Investigator. I agreed at once, of course, although I had no idea of how to go about the task. All the obvious leads had been exhausted long ago and my training in police work tells me that it is nearby impossible to find someone who has made a determined attempt to remain un-found. The money in Nether's accounts had dried up decades before. If he was still alive, he must have found some alternative means of support. The most likely possibility was that he was engaged in some sort of criminal activity. The trouble was that the police training, and the experiences I had had whilst a trainee cop, let me to believe that he was likely to have come to the attention of the law enforcement agencies before now. Contrary to popular opinion, perhaps, coppers really do have a good idea about what's going on in the Underworld, most of the time. It's being able to prove it in a court of law - in front of those professional cynics known as Judges - that seems beyond the wit of far too many policemen. The only alternative was he was removed from the Goblin demesne altogether, which meant he was somewhere on the surface. The more I thought about it, the more I became convinced he was hiding somewhere in the human world. I needed to find some way of tracking him down up there.
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Part 5