As a man who’d once made a living exploring decrepit ruins with the intent of killing whatever lurked inside, Clay knew more than most about the Old Dominion. The ancient empire of druinkind had, once upon a time, encompassed all the known world, from Grandual in the east to Endland in the west, as well as the sprawling expanse of the Heartwyld Forest in between. The druins were brilliant craftsmen and powerful sorcerers, who ruled with the liberty of gods over the then-primitive tribes of men and monsters. But as with anything that grows too big for its own good—ambitious spiderwebs, for instance, or those giant, late-harvest pumpkins—it became something altogether monstrous, and eventually collapsed on itself.
The Exarchs in charge of governing the cities of the Dominion rebelled against the ruling Archon, and a civil war erupted. Though immortal, the druins were relatively few in number (Moog had once told Clay that druin females could give birth to but a single child), so they bolstered their armies with monsters, which the Exarchs had bred for generations to be more fierce and feral than ever before. The creatures proved too wild to control, however, thus giving rise to the first great Hordes: vast hosts that swept unchecked across the Old Dominion and brought it to ruin.
An Exarch named Contha built an army of massive golems hewn from stone and bound to thralldom by runes that … well, in truth Clay had no idea how the runes worked, and most of the golems he’d encountered while touring had been masterless, rampaging juggernauts. At any rate, Contha’s golem armies were smashed to rubble by the ravaging Hordes, and so the Exarch abandoned his fortress and fled underground, never to be seen or heard from again.
Some said the immortal Contha had since returned to wander the crumpled ramparts of his citadel and bemoan the fall of his beloved Dominion, while others suggested he remained belowground, reduced to a gibbering troglodyte that dwelled alone in the smothering dark.
Clay figured he’d just fucking died. The druins were so long-lived as to seem immortal, but they could be killed—Clay had seen one killed—and there were a lot of nasty things living down there in the darkness.
The ruin of Contha’s fortress had served as a rallying point during the War of Reclamation. In the shadow of its walls the Company of Kings had driven the remnants of the last Horde back into the Heartwyld Forest. Eventually a settlement sprang up around it, a place where those brave enough to enter the Wyld could gather and supply, and for those who returned to spend their newfound riches or drink away the memory of the horrors they’d barely escaped.
Before long Contha’s Camp grew into a proper town. Someone built a wall, and when the town swelled into a big, bloated city, someone built a bigger wall. Somewhere along the way the name was shortened to Contha’s, then eventually to Conthas, though it was also called the Free City, for although it was technically within Agria’s borders, the king (in this case, their old bandmate Matrick) laid no claim to lands so near the savage border. There were no taxes there, no tariff on goods that passed through. Conthas was a bastion of enterprise and opportunity: One of the last wild places in an ever more civilized world.
That being said, Conthas was a shithole, and as far as Clay was concerned the sooner they were rid of it the better.
It was half past noon on the third day since he and Gabe had set out from Coverdale. They were road weary, dust cloaked, and so hungry that Clay’s mouth watered when a man outside the gate offered him what appeared to be charred rat-on-a-stick.
The last meal they’d eaten was two days earlier, when a sadistic old farmer had tossed them each an apple for doing push-ups on the road. Clay had found a turtle scrabbling up the muddy slope of a creek bed yesterday, but while he’d busied himself starting a fire Gabe had wandered off with the turtle and set it free. He’d placated Clay with assurances that Kallorek would feed them like kings once they reached the city, and Clay passed those same assurances on to his growling stomach. Sadly, his stomach was less susceptible to bullshit than his head.
Conthas was the same old circus he remembered. No king meant no law; no guards to keep the peace or discourage violence before it got out of hand. No taxes meant no one to clean gutters or lay down stone for roads, and so Clay and Gabriel sloshed through what they hoped was mud as they passed through the wide-open gates into the city whose parents had hired a prostitute as a babysitter and never come home.
The main strip ran along the defile between two hills. The city crawled up either slope like a mould, cloaked in a mantle of cloying grey smoke. Clay could see several fires burning unchecked, but no one seemed overly concerned, and certainly no fire brigade was rushing to put them out. To the north loomed the sealed fortress of Conthas itself, clenched like an iron-shod fist against the glaring sun. Some sort of temple was under construction on the southern hill, unfinished and shrouded in scaffolding.
It was said the Free City drew all sorts, but mostly it drew all sorts of bad. Bright-eyed adventurers from all over Grandual came to Conthas with dreams of joining a band and touring the Wyld, and inevitably those dreams were distorted, like something reflected in a mirror made of shoddy glass. That, or they had the mirror broken over their heads.
You couldn’t throw a rock without hitting an adventurer, or a thief, or a thief catcher, a bounty hunter, a smoke wizard, a wandering bard, a claw-broker, a storm witch, a sell-sword—or else those who came to profit off this bunch: armourers and ironmongers, harlots and haruspices, dice men and card sharks. Scratch peddlers skulked in alley mouths, while the addicts on whom they preyed slouched in the mud with knives in their hands, bloody gouges on their arms, and blissful grins on their haggard faces. On every corner was a merchant selling magic swords and impenetrable armour, or an alchemist pawning potions of enchantment, or water breathing, or invisibility. Clay even spotted one labelled IMMORTALITY.
“How much for that?” he asked the old woman selling it.
“One hundred and one courtmarks,” she announced. “No refunds.”
Clay frowned down at the vial. “Looks like grass and water.”
The woman glared at him until he moved on.
On the Street of Shrines they passed temples dedicated to each of the Holy Tetrea. Clay heard screams drifting from the barred windows of the Winter Queen’s austere refuge, and moans of pleasure behind the silk curtains of the Spring Maiden’s sanctuary. There was a lineup outside the temple of Vail the Heathen. Farmers, he assumed, come to pray for a fair harvest. Many of them carried squirming calves or mewling lambs to be offered up as blood sacrifices to the Autumn Son. One desperate-looking man clutched a mangy cat in his arms. The animal had guessed its fate, apparently, since the farmer’s arms and face bore a network of angry red scratch marks.
Priests clad in the red-and-gold vestments of the Summer Lord were shooing a beggar from the steps of their church. The poor wretch was draped in soiled grey robes, and Clay nearly gasped when he spotted the beggar’s char-black hands, one of which was reduced to little more than a flailing stump.
A rotter. He grimaced, unable to suppress a shiver. Aside from the more tangible horrors lurking among the poisoned eaves of the Heartwyld, anyone entering the black forest risked being afflicted by the Heathen’s Touch, more commonly known as the rot. What began as a dark stain on the skin soon hardened into a black crust that clung to the flesh like barnacles to boat’s hull. Scraping it off was impossible without tearing away swathes of flesh, and it didn’t matter anyway, since the crust would grow back regardless. Inevitably it would spread, or manifest itself on some other part of the body. Affected limbs would rot through until they crumbled away, until at last the disease laid claim to the victim’s throat, or some vital organ. If they were especially lucky, this happened sooner rather than later. Clay had heard of rotters living for years in restless agony before death finally claimed them.