“Yes, well, I stopped counting at six hundred and sixteen.”
“Really?” she asked.
“Really.”
They trudged a little farther on before Sabbatha’s curiosity caught spark again. “So how did you become a zom—” She closed her mouth before the word zombie could trickle out, but Kit huffed as though she’d said it anyway.
“Dead, she means,” said Matrick.
“Un-dead,” clarified Moog.
“Revenant,” said Ganelon, and when everyone looked his way the warrior shrugged. “It’s really not that hard to remember.”
“Exactly,” said Kit, fussing with the scarf around his neck. “Thank you. Anyway, it’s a long story.”
“So what?” asked the daeva. “It’s a long road.”
“Very well.” Kit coughed once to clear his throat, and then began. “I was born in Teragoth, which was ruled by a druin Exarch named—”
“What’s an Exarch?” asked Sabbatha.
“Uh … like a duke, or a governor … except, well, druin.”
“Got it.”
The ghoul scratched at the wound in the back of his skull. “Where was I? Oh, yes: Firaga, our Mighty Exarch, Scion of Tamarat—”
“Who?”
“Tamarat,” Kit repeated, and when Sabbatha shrugged he heaved a ragged sigh. “The druin goddess? Did they teach you nothing in whatever backwater village you hail from?”
The feathers across her shoulders shivered in irritation. “They taught me enough,” she grated, and Clay, who had never heard of Tamarat, either, offered a desperate prayer to whichever of Grandual’s gods was charged with protecting foppish ghouls from the wrath of angry daevas.
Thankfully, Kit pressed on without further comment. “Anyhow, my parents were slaves—”
“Slaves!?”
Now it was the ghoul’s turn to bristle with anger. “Do you want to hear the story or not?”
“I do,” said Sabbatha. “Sorry. No more interruptions, I promise.”
Kit’s eyelids fluttered in what Clay took for skepticism. “We shall see,” he said warily. “I should clarify, evidently, that in those days both humans and monsters were slaves to the druins. Humans, my parents included, were generally servants, while our beastly brethren undertook more laborious tasks like quarrying and construction. Despite our bondage, however, we were granted exceptional freedoms—at least until the war broke out and the Exarchs began hurling armies of angry monsters at one another. And don’t you dare ask, ‘What war?’” he said, preempting the daeva. “I can see it right there on the tip of your tongue! I’ll tell you what war in a moment.”
“Or you could just skip to the part where you became immortal,” she suggested.
“But you’ll miss out on the context,” Kit whinged.
“I don’t think it’s that long of a road,” Clay pointed out.
“Very well,” sighed the ghoul. “In the interest of brevity I shall abridge the scintillating tale of my wayward youth, omit my discovery and subsequent mastery of the batingting, ignore my musical heroics during the war against Contha and his implacable golem legions—”
“Musical heroics?” Clay heard Ganelon grumble under his breath.
“—and resume the story after my assignment as Court Musician to none other than Firaga himself. Now, before you go imagining some wild scenario in which I attain immortality by selling my soul to a necromancer, or eating the snow off a mountain peak, I should warn you that the cause itself is actually quite mundane. Embarrassing, even. I was bitten by a peacock.”
At this point even Gabriel cocked his head in interest. Dane giggled and whispered something into his brother’s ear that sounded a lot like “What an idiot.”
“You see? I told you it was dumb. Of course it wasn’t really a peacock, but the keeper of the Exarch’s personal menagerie mistook it for one, and so did I. You see, I used to sneak into the palace at night and … entertain Firaga’s lovely wife. I would sing to her, or play sweet music on my batingting, and quite often amuse her with a more … personal instrument, if you catch my meaning.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” piped Matrick, which Clay found odd coming from a man who’d been cuckolded on at least five occasions that they knew of, and probably countless more.
Kit went on. “When her husband came calling she would hurry me out a secret door that led to a private garden, and on one such occasion, while skulking through the artificial trees of the Exarch’s fraudulent forest, I crossed paths with the ‘peacock’ in question. Now I should confess that I’d consumed a vast quantity of wine earlier that evening and was, by this point in time, shit-faced drunk. And in what turned out to be the first of two very bad ideas, I attempted to pet it, and it bit me.”
“What was the second bad idea?” asked Sabbatha.
“Killing it,” stated Kit. “I bashed that fucking bird to death with my favorite batingting, which just so happened to have been a gift from the Exarch himself. My satisfaction at doing so was short-lived, however, since the bird was not, after all, a peacock. It was a phoenix.”
Matrick snorted. “What?”
“A very, very old phoenix. I swear upon every eye of Tamarat it looked nothing like you’d expect.”
“Unbelievable,” said Moog.
“Is a phoenix the one that rises out of ashes?” asked Sabbatha.
“Technically, yes,” said the ghoul. “Although explode out of the ashes would be a more accurate description of this one’s method of rebirth. She set the entire garden on fire and then soared off like a comet. I was forced to flee back through the secret door and into Firaga’s bedroom.”
“Wow,” said Matrick.
“Now that’s a story,” Moog chirped.
“And what did Firaga say when you told him?” asked Sabbatha.
“The Exarch?” Kit lifted grey-green fingers to the gash at his throat, concealed by his red silk scarf. “He killed me, naturally.”
Chapter Thirty-seven
The Claw-broker
The old druin road led, unsurprisingly, to an old druin fort. The place was in shambles, though you wouldn’t know it to hear Gregor describe the setting to Dane.
“Soaring battlements!” he said of walls that were little more than knee-high rubble. “A pristine tower so tall its heights are lost in cloud” was how he rendered a two-storey ruin cloaked in a mantle of hoary brown lichen. The remains of a statue stood at the centre of a dry fountain. Its head was missing, both arms were broken off, and no detail remained but pitted stone. “You should see it, Dane! The fountain is teeming with schools of little goldfish. They look like coins until they start zipping all over the place. And the statue is magnificent! Smooth white moonstone, with a face so stern and noble I think it must have been an Exarch of the Dominion.”
“Or a great warrior!” Dane suggested.
Gregor laughed. “Oh, you’re exactly right! There’s a sword there on his hip.”
“Can I touch it, Gregor?”
“And soil the clean water with our dusty feet? Come, brother, let’s explore a bit, shall we?” Dane agreed heartily, and the ettin stalked off beneath a shattered arch.
Moog was shaking his head as he watched them go. “Those two …” he muttered.
The band spread out around the decrepit courtyard. Matrick settled himself on the ground and pulled off his boots, each of which spewed a torrent of bog water and muddy stones when upended. Ganelon leaned against a wall and closed his eyes. Moog and Kit began an animated discussion on druin architecture, while Sabbatha excused herself, stepped through a gap in the wall, and disappeared into the forest. Gabriel watched her go, distrust plain on his face.
Clay shrugged Blackheart off his back, kneading the bunched muscles in his shoulder. His back hurt terribly, and there was a knifing pain in his left hip that was worming its way down his leg with every step. His boots were soaked through, and he’d been unconsciously curling his toes as he walked, so they pained him as well.
&
nbsp; You’re getting old, Cooper, he thought to himself. And if you think wet boots and a cracked old road are the worst of your problems, just wait till you reach those mountains …
Gabriel was looking at him with concern. “Your back hurt?” he asked.
Clay realized he’d been grimacing and did his best to convert it into a smile. “My everything hurts,” he said.
Gabe chuckled. “I sure do miss beds,” he mused.
Clay made the awful mistake of imagining himself in bed, the warm press of Ginny snug against him. He could almost feel the curve of her hip beneath his hand, the tickle of her hair as it grazed his nose. He remembered how that used to bother him, but he’d give anything now to feel that tickling hair, to breathe her in and breathe out pure contentment. He remembered the shape of her back, a harp upon which his fingers had traced a music meant for her alone.
“I miss my tower,” said Moog, glancing upward. “And my spiders. And having a roof.”
Matrick sighed. “I miss my kids,” he said, sounding mildly surprised. “I didn’t think I would. I mean, I love them and everything, and I certainly had my hand in raising them, but they weren’t really …”
“Yours?” Moog said.
“Yes, exactly.” Matrick laid his boots aside to dry and yanked off his socks, wringing brown water out of each. “But it’s not like they know their mother was, well …”
“A whore?” said the wizard.
Matrick actually looked affronted. “Trying to kill me. And she’s still my wife, remember. Besides, Lilith isn’t a …” He swallowed and smoothed back his thinning hair. “She was just … unsatisfied. She thought I was this big-time hero, right? Daring and dashing and all that. But instead I just got …”
“Fat?” Moog supplied.
“Drunk?” said Ganelon.
Matrick glared at them both until the wizard guessed again.
“Old! It’s old, isn’t it?”
“May the Heathen rot your balls,” Matrick said politely. “And yes, I got old. And fat. And I was drunk almost every day of our marriage. Is it any wonder she resents me?”
Gabriel snorted at that. “She tried to kill you, Matty. She’s still trying, remember?” He glanced in the direction Sabbatha had gone.
“Yes, well, it’s all a bit extreme, sure,” Matrick admitted. “But still. I should have done better. I should have drunk less, eaten less, screwed around less. I was a half-assed king, a shit husband, and now …” His eyes flitted around his circle of friends and then back to his bare feet, as though he were surrounded by mirrors of self-recrimination. “What will my children think of me?” he asked quietly.
Before anyone could offer consolation they heard a scream, then another. The first was Sabbatha, crying out in surprise. The second belonged to a man who stumbled into the courtyard, desperate to escape the daeva’s evidently violent response to being caught off guard.
He was wearing a hooded robe that seemed to shift from green to grey as he entered the fort. His torso was criss-crossed with packs and sacks and satchels, and there was a whitewood staff slung across his shoulders and tied with brass pots and glazed decanters that clanged and clattered as he fled from Sabbatha, who came soaring through the gap in the outer wall. Her broken wing wasn’t fully extended, but worked well enough to achieve a menacing glide. Her face was livid. She was holding a scrap of her leg armour in one hand, and Clay wondered what she’d been doing when the poor man had interrupted her.
The newcomer retreated from her as fast as he could. He tripped over Matrick’s boots but recovered in time to slip deftly between Moog and Kit. He might have dodged Ganelon, too, except the warrior threw out an arm and the man ran directly into it. He landed on his back in a disastrous heap, cracking his head against the moss-carpeted stone.
“Solusutholon! Usutholosulo!” cried the man on the ground.
Clay froze with his hand on the haft of his weapon. That language …
Gabriel stepped between the hooded man and Sabbatha. The daeva reigned herself in with a snarl. Her taloned gauntlets curled as she glared at Gabriel, and for a moment Clay wondered if surprise and sudden anger had somehow brought back the memories she’d lost to the storm, but then a black feather floated between them, drawing her gaze, and the fury in her eyes went out.
“He startled me,” she said sheepishly. “I thought he was …” She paused, taking a closer look. “Wait, what is he?”
Gabriel turned his back to her. “He’s a druin.”
“Not that druin?” asked Ganelon, glancing down.
“No,” Gabe said.
The druin looked between them curiously.
Clay stepped forward to offer him a hand. The druin shrugged the whitewood staff from his shoulders before reaching to take it. His grip was strong, but the bones of his hand seemed delicate, like the skeleton of an animal Clay feared he might crush.
“Dosulon, friend.”
Clay nodded. “Noluso,” he answered, which he was pretty sure translated to “You’re welcome” but might also have meant “cheesy bread.” Druic was a tricky language, and it had been decades since he’d had occasion to use it.
The druin favoured Clay with a sharp-toothed smile as he drew back his hood. His hair was long and fine, draped like silver cloth over slim shoulders. A pair of tufted, blue-grey ears sprouted from the top of his head. They were nicked and weathered, but still firm. Some of the older druins Clay had met—Vespian included—had sported ears that drooped like a hound’s. This one’s eyes were almond shaped, with crescent-moon pupils against orange irises. They were the eyes of a predator, though this fellow didn’t come off as particularly threatening.
“You startled me as well,” the druin told Sabbatha in common courtspeak. His eyes lingered a moment on the feathers cresting her shoulders before he addressed the others. “I don’t see many humans around these parts, as you might imagine.”
“What should we call you?” Clay asked him. Since the Dominion’s fall, the druins had become a largely nomadic people. They wore names like cloaks, oft-times casting them off in favour of something new.
The druin brightened. “I call myself Shadow.”
“What are you doing here?” Gabriel probed.
“I am a scavenger,” he answered. “Or a claw-broker, as I believe you call us. I collect whatever I find out here—old weapons, scraps of armour, skins, horn, bone—and I sell it in Conthas or Castia, whichever is like to offer the greater profit.”
Moog ran a hand over the bald spot on his head. “Well, I wouldn’t visit the Republic anytime soon. There’s a Horde besieging Castia.” He shot Gabriel a pitying look before adding, “It doesn’t look good.”
The claw-broker’s ears wilted like a flower dead of thirst. “Ah. He’s done it, then.”
“He?” Gabriel looked suspicious. “You know Lastleaf?”
Shadow nodded. “Of course. He and I were as brothers once, before …” he shook his head as if to dispel some troubling thought. “But he has changed, and is no longer a friend to our kind. He has spent years inciting rebellion in Endland, forging alliances and treating with dark powers, goading the Heartwyld’s inhabitants into a frenzy.”
“He certainly hates the Republic,” said Matrick.
“Not just the Republic,” said the druin. “Lastleaf despises any who mistreat the fey, and these days Grandual is as guilty of that as Castia ever was. I fear what is happening in Endland is only the beginning. I suspect he plans on opening the Threshold.”
Moog shook his head. “Impossible.”
“What’s a Threshold?” asked Sabbatha.
“The Thresholds were portals that allowed the Dominion to cross vast distances with a single step,” Moog explained. “Druin magic, extremely cunning. There were three of them, or so I’ve read. Great big arches wide enough to drive an argosy through. One was out west near Teragoth, another in Grandual—Kaladar, to be exact—and the last was somewhere to the east, though I’m not exactly sure where.”
“
Antica,” said Kit.
Matrick scoffed. “Antica?” He looked to Moog. “As in the island old Doshi was always going on about? Is Antica real?”
“Antica was real,” Kit assured them. “In fact, its Threshold is still intact. Both are at the bottom of the ocean, however, and the city is infested with mermen.”
“Mer …men?” Matrick asked.
“What, you didn’t think they were all women?”
“Of course I thought that. Everybody thinks that.”
“Excuse me,” Shadow cut in. He gestured toward the sword strapped to Gabriel’s back. “Is that …Vellichor?”
“It is,” Gabe confirmed.
The druin’s reverence for the weapon was evident. “The blade used by Vespian himself to carve a path between worlds …”
“So they say,” murmured Gabriel.
“I’ll confess I was … disappointed upon hearing the Archon had given it to a human, but you seem a worthy sort. It would have been a shame for such a treasure to have been lost, or to have fallen into the hands of someone undeserving of its legacy.”
Kit’s throat made a gurgling sound when he cleared it. “A scavenger, for instance.”
Shadow paid the ghoul no mind at all. “May I see it?” he asked.
Gabriel smiled warily. “Maybe later,” he said.
His answer seemed to satisfy the claw-broker. “Will you be spending the night, then? I visit this fort whenever I pass through the Bone Marsh. It is as safe a haven as one is likely to find in the Wyld.”
Gabriel looked up, peering beyond the crumbling battlements at the darkening sky above. “Looks like,” he said.
Chapter Thirty-eight
Tamarat
“So these Thresholds,” wondered Sabbatha, “they’re broken, right? Or else why not use the one in Kaladar to reach Castia instead of walking all the way there?”
They had built a fire in the courtyard and shared out the meagre supply of rations Gabriel had wisely procured in Conthas before they left. As he had during every meal since departing the Boneface village, Moog grew sulky, lamenting the loss of his enchanted hat. The daeva’s question lifted the spell of melancholy in an instant.
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