Moog glanced his way, and Clay saw, for perhaps the first time in all the years they had known each other, a naked, bottomless fear in the wizard’s face.
“You’re not alone,” he repeated, and then watched, without knowing what more he could say, as pure terror writhed behind the wizard’s eyes. Until finally Moog closed them, biting his bottom lip as a pair of perfidious tears streamed over his cheeks.
The silence around the ship changed perceptibly. Tiamax froze in the midst of shaking Matrick’s next drink. Barret sat up on his sofa, sharing a concerned glance with Ashe. Even Ganelon craned his neck to look over, dark eyes gleaming in the swaying lamplight.
“I don’t …” Matrick glanced around, visibly perplexed. “What? What does that mean, ‘You’re not alone’? Who’s not alone?”
Slowly, Piglet reached out and placed a pudgy hand on the wizard’s knee. “Where is it?” he asked, almost a whisper.
And because Clay was looking for it, he saw Matty’s face go granite hard. The king and Moog were close—as close as he and Gabe, perhaps, though they hadn’t known each other for quite so long. The two of them shared a deep kinship, a bond of unflagging (and sometimes ill-advised) cheer under even the most dire circumstance. As distraught as Clay and Gabriel had been to hear of Moog’s infection, Matty would be utterly devastated, which was probably why the wizard had put off telling him.
“Where is what?” asked Matrick in a voice gone cold and sluggish as a river in winter.
He knows, thought Clay. Of course he knows. He just doesn’t want to believe it.
Moog blew out a long breath before opening his eyes. He tried on a smile that vanished the moment he opened his mouth to explain. “My foot,” he said quietly. “It’s on my foot.”
Another silence followed, but this time it was loaded, the ominous hush of an axed tree falling earthward.
Matrick exploded from his chair, charged the wizard, grasped the collar of his robe in one hand and pinned him, squirming, against the side of the ship. “It’s on your fucking foot? The rot, you mean? The Heathen’s fucking Touch, right? It’s on your godsdamned foot!?”
“Urk,” said Moog.
“When were you planning on telling me, huh? When?”
“Grgh,” the wizard replied.
“Why are you even here right now?” The king’s voice skirled higher with every word, strained near to breaking by rage and grief and disbelief. “You should be locked in that shitty little tower of yours day and night—day and fucking night—until you find a cure.”
“There is …” Moog managed to gurgle “ … no cure.”
“THERE’S A FUCKING CURE!” Matty screamed. “Do you hear me, you shit-brained sorcerer? There is. A fucking. Cure.”
All at once the fight went out of him, and Matrick sagged to his knees, dragging Moog down with him as he went. The wizard hesitated just a moment before gently wreathing his arms around Matrick’s head and holding the crumpled king while wave after wave of soul-racking sorrow rose and broke, rose and broke, rose and broke within him.
They landed shortly after outside a dimly lit hamlet that Barret claimed was Downeston but Matrick, who’d doubled his efforts to get shit-faced drunk since Moog broke the news, insisted was Tagglemoor.
“I was the fucking king here,” he slurred from his seat at the bar. “I know this land like the hand of my back. Er, the hand of … hey, Doc, my glass is empty.”
“Help yourself,” said Tiamax, who had since retired to a couch of his own.
Matrick reached over the bar, and Clay shook his head at the arachnian. “You’ve doomed us all,” he said.
Piglet snorted at that. He’d found an apple somewhere and was crunching happily away. “Let’s play a game,” he suggested. “We each take a turn and say the first thing we ever killed. I’ll go first, okay? Mine was a trash imp who attacked me in Fivecourt.”
Clay slunk into his seat and sipped his beer. He wasn’t a fan of this game.
“A trash imp?” Ashe scoffed. “They usually run from anything bigger than a rat. Never heard of one attacking a human.”
Piglet looked abashed. “Yeah, well, someone threw out a whole box of oranges …”
Ashe was still cackling at that when Moog chimed in. “I was eleven when my dog died. I tried to resurrect him—”
“Oh, wow,” said Barret.
“I know—it was stupid. Anyhow, I lit the candles, scribbled the runes … I did everything by the book, or so I thought. But whatever came back … well, it wasn’t Sir Fluffy, I’ll tell you that.”
“I don’t know what disturbs me more,” said Edwick, who was curled up in the pilot’s chair. “That you dabbled in necromancy or that you named your dog Sir Fluffy.”
Tiamax chittered gleefully. “Mine was … I don’t even know what it’s called. It was sort of this giant lizard-frog thing covered in spikes, and its tongue was made of fire.”
“That sounds horrible,” said Matrick. “My first was a gnoll shaman.”
“Are gnolls the one with horse heads?” asked Piglet.
“Those are ixil,” said Ashe. “Gnolls are like jackals that stand on two legs.”
“So this fucker blinded me,” Matrick went on. “Thought I was done for, but then he started laughing when I tripped and fell. Hard to hide with a laugh like that, even from a blind man.”
“Mine was a harpy,” said Barret. “She actually managed to pick up my little sister and carry her halfway up a mountainside. I climbed up after her, broke her neck, and made harpy egg omelettes for breakfast the whole week after. How about you, Ganelon? Yours was something vicious, I’ll wager.”
The southerner only shook his head. “Slavers,” he said, but offered nothing further.
“Mine was a spider,” Ashe said. “A big one.” She smirked across the cabin at Tiamax. “Nasty things, spiders.”
The arachnian’s mandibles clacked in amusement. “So that’s why my daddy went out for milk and never came home. And here I thought I was just a terrible son.”
Ashe cackled and turned to Clay. “What about you, Slowhand? Wait, let me guess: Some poor sap spilled beer on your boot and you slaughtered his entire family while he watched.”
Clay took a breath, and was about to confess that the first life he’d taken had belonged to his father, except Gabriel (the only one among them who already knew) finally spoke up and saved him the trouble of explaining why.
“How far will you take us?” he asked, directing the question toward Barret.
The frontman cleared his throat and shared brief, meaningful glances with Ashe and Tiamax. “Turnstone Keep,” he said finally. “It’s farther than I’d like, but what are friends for if not risking death by sparkwyrm, or wyvern, or whatever the hell else might kill us out there.”
More than fair, thought Clay. Hell, we owe them plenty already for getting us out of the city in one piece. From Fivecourt to the forest’s edge alone was a week’s hard ride, and the Old Glory would have them there sometime tomorrow. It wasn’t as far as they could have hoped for, but it was more than they could have expected.
Gabriel swiped hair from his eyes. “What about Conthas? Could you drop us there instead?”
Barret furrowed his brow. “Of course we can. I suppose you’ll be needing to gear up for the journey, eh?
“That, yeah,” said Gabriel. “But first I need to see a man about a sword.”
Chapter Twenty-five
Treasures of Varying Usefulness
They walk five abreast up the eastern slope of the hill upon which Kallorek has constructed his lavish citadel. The morning sun hurls their shadows out before them, hulking spectres of the men to whom they belong, or rather—as the guards who watch them approach will later reflect—harbingers of their dark intent, reaching like fingers that would soon become a fist.
Among them is a renegade king, he who sired five royal heirs without ever unzipping his pants. A man to whom time has imparted great wisdom and an even greater waistline, whose thoughtle
ss courage is rivalled only by his unquenchable thirst.
At his shoulder walks a sorcerer, a cosmic conversationalist. Enemy of the incurable rot, absent chairman of combustive sciences at the university in Oddsford, and the only living soul above the age of eight to believe in owlbears.
Look here at a warrior born, a scion of power and poverty whose purpose is manifold: to shatter shackles, to murder monarchs, and to demonstrate that even the forces of good must sometimes enlist the service of big, bad motherfuckers. His is an ancient soul destined to die young.
And now comes the quiet one, the gentle giant, he who fights his battles with a shield. Stout as the tree that counts its age in aeons, constant as the star that marks true north and shines most brightly on the darkest nights.
A step ahead of these four: our hero. He is the candle burnt down to the stump, the cutting blade grown dull with overuse. But see now the spark in his stride. Behold the glint of steel in his gaze. Who dares to stand between a man such as this and that which he holds dear? He will kill, if he must, to protect it. He will die, if that is what it takes.
“Go get the boss,” says one guardsman to another. “This bunch looks like trouble.”
And they do. They do look like trouble, at least until the wizard trips on the hem of his robe. He stumbles, cursing, and fouls the steps of the others as he falls face-first onto the mud-slick hillside.
They broke a great deal of furniture and several arms as they fought their way through Kallorek’s compound. Moog lobbed what looked like avocados stuffed with wicker fuses into adjacent rooms. The volatile fruit burst into clouds of yellow smoke that stung the eyes and burnt the throat, flushing out cowering servants and guards they might have missed along the way. Clay weathered a few blows with his shield, and Ganelon hit a man so hard with the flat of his axe the poor fellow sailed ten yards before crashing through a glass window. Gabe prowled ahead with an anxious single-mindedness, like a man wandering a brothel in search of his missing daughter.
They came across Kallorek lounging in the shallow end of his pond. Two naked girls scampered out the opposite door. The booker had barely pulled a robe over his bulk before Gabriel’s mailed fist hit him squarely in the nose and sent him sprawling on the water-slick tiles.
“Bring him,” Gabe said without slowing. Ganelon snatched the dazed booker by the collar and dragged him along.
In the chapel hall where Kallorek hoarded his assortment of illustrious artifacts, Gabriel made straight for the sword-bearing statue of the Autumn Son. He stopped short of it by fifteen yards and held his waiting palm toward Moog. The wizard rummaged briefly in his bottomless bag before drawing out what looked like a short length of rope dipped in tar.
“Is that—” Clay began.
“Firewire, yes,” confirmed Moog. He offered it to Gabriel as though he were handling a live viper. “Be very careful,” he warned.
Moog advising someone else on the cautious use of alchemy, thought Clay. Gods of Grandual, we have gotten old.
Gabe approached the statue. Lamplight gleamed on the plates of his armour, so that he seemed to radiate softly as he climbed the steps of the dais. He knelt at its feet, and with slow care he looped the corrosive strand around one of the statue’s legs.
“Stand back,” he said over his shoulder, and then touched the frayed ends of the firewire together. They fused with a hiss and the cord turned molten red, constricting as the fibres hardened into something like steel. The statue’s leg buckled, and an instant later the whole thing toppled forward, smashing itself to pieces. The statue’s head, which had been altered to resemble Kallorek’s orcish features, rolled to a stop at Ganelon’s feet.
Gabriel stepped lightly down the dais steps, picking his way through the rubble until he found what he was looking for. He pried Vellichor from the shattered stone grip, and when he stood he was grinning like a boy.
The sword was double-edged, near as long as Gabe was tall. It had belonged to Vespian, the druin Archon, and was widely considered the most sacred (and second most dangerous) relic of the Old Dominion. The blade was silver-green, and in its surface one could sometimes glimpse a swathe of twilit sky, or the colossal trees of some primordial forest, as though the sword itself were a window to another, older age.
Perhaps the most unusual aspect of Vellichor, however, was its smell. Most swords smelled like iron, or oil, or else they didn’t smell at all, but Vellichor wafted like a spring breeze, rife with the scent of flowering lilacs and fresh green grass.
Gabriel stood with his eyes closed amidst a veil of rising dust. He whispered something too quiet to hear, and then opened his eyes and looked to Kallorek. “The scabbard. Where is it?”
The booker coughed and spat at his feet in answer.
Gabe spared a glance for Ganelon, and the warrior introduced the booker’s face to his steel-shod boot.
“Over there!” Kallorek blurted, pointing toward one corner of the chapel hall. “There’s a chest over there somewhere. Take the scabbard and get the fuck out of my house.”
Gabriel still wore his wide smile. “Oh, I’ll take the scabbard. And we’ll be out of your—” his eyes flitted to Kallorek’s greasy comb-over “—hair soon enough. Thing is, though, Kal—the Wyld’s a dangerous place. I think it’s probably best we grab a few more things while we’re here, don’t you?”
The booker looked as if he would spit again, or scream, or lunge at Gabriel and wring his throat, but then he flinched as his limited imagination reminded him what Ganelon’s boot tasted like. He nodded grudgingly and growled, “Sure. Of course. Take whatever you’d like.”
Gabe gave Kallorek’s jowls a friendly slap. He straightened, took a breath, and looked around at his bandmates like a man awakened from a restful sleep. “Gear up, boys. If we’re gonna play heroes we might as well dress the part.”
Moog went to pick through the wreckage of the broken bookcase, while Matrick snatched a pair of luxurious leather boots off a nearby table. Ganelon crossed to where a set of wrought-iron bracers glimmered beneath a glass casement. He used his bare hand to smash the glass and lift them clear.
Clay wandered idly, perusing a wicked-looking scimitar that he could have sworn whispered his name as he drew close, and a hammer whose ivory-bound haft was startlingly cold to the touch. He saw the imposing helm of Liac the Arachnian that Kallorek had shown them during their previous visit, and beneath it the suit of crimson mail called the Warskin, through which, the booker had alleged, no sword or spear could pass.
A fine quality in any piece of armour, Clay reckoned, and so he took it.
It fit as though it were made for him. There was a silk undercoat so the links wouldn’t chafe, and segmented steel bands above and below each elbow to allow ease of movement. There were pauldrons on either shoulder that flared into a high-collared guard to protect his throat. The coat itself draped almost to his knees, and it was belted at the waist by a metal band whose opposing ends seemed drawn together by some intangible magic.
“Oooh, magnets,” said Moog, who noticed Clay clasping and unclasping the belt in obvious wonder.
“Magnets?”
The wizard got that look in his eye, a teacher relishing in the ignorance of a student. “It’s actually quite fascinating …” he began.
“I’m sure it is,” murmured Clay, already walking away. He picked up the frigid hammer as he went, deciding on a whim to call it Wraith.
On his way back toward Gabriel he saw the sarcophagus over which Gabe and Kallorek had tripped during their previous visit. It was empty, its heavy lid ajar, and Clay wondered briefly what manner of ghastly horror they’d unleashed upon the world.
The rest of the band were busy equipping themselves as well. Ganelon found a suit of black dragonscale to match his shiny new gauntlets, while Matrick bore a gnarled horn at his hip. When he saw Clay looking he said, “Watch this,” and blew briefly in the mouthpiece. There was no discernible sound, but as he did so a small flurry of winged insects swarmed out the othe
r end.
Clay brushed a wasp away from his eyes. “So … it’s a horn that vomits bees?”
“Isn’t it great?” asked Matrick.
Clay frowned, thoroughly disgusted. “Not really, no.”
“I win! I win!” Moog hurried between two armour-draped mannequins. He knocked one over in his haste and had actually turned to apologize before thinking better of it and moving on. He was wearing the sort of wide-brimmed, pointy hat that wizards wore all the time in storybooks and practically never in real life, probably because it looked ridiculous.
“Yep, you win,” Matrick agreed. “You look the stupidest.”
“That’s not a word,” Moog informed him. “But watch!” He pulled off the hat and plunged his arm in to the elbow. “It’s like my bag, but different. There’s an enchantment inside! You can’t put things in it, only take them out. But not just anything—oh, yes, here we are.”
Clay looked on in disbelief as the wizard withdrew a chicken from the confines of the hat—not alive, but plucked and roasted, glazed until the skin was brown and crisp. The smell alone set his mouth watering. “How …?”
Moog tossed the chicken aside and Matrick lunged for it, using his uninjured arm to brace it against his chest. “What the …” he started, but then Moog reached into his hat again and pulled out another, which he tossed to Clay, and then another. He threw this one to Ganelon, but the warrior sidestepped it, eyeing it warily where it lay on the ground.
“Chicken from a hat,” he muttered in distaste.
“It’s perfectly fine,” Moog assured him. “But anyway, there’s more.” He continued plucking foodstuffs out of thin air: loaves of bread, ears of corn, ripened tomatoes, pastries stuffed with fruit and topped with sweet-smelling icing.
By now Matrick’s arms were overflowing. “Now this,” he told Clay, “is better than a horn that vomits bees.”
Clay shrugged. On that, at least, they could agree.
Chapter Twenty-six
The Revenant in the Room
Kings of the Wyld Page 23