When the kettle began whistling Moog crossed to retrieve it, then poured its scalding contents into each mug and began stirring. “You never answered the question, by the by. What brings you two to my humble tower?”
Clay looked over at Gabriel, who was busy gazing up at the stars beyond the second floor. Guess this is up to me, then, he thought with a sigh. “We’re headed to Castia.”
Tink-tink-tink …The stirring spoon fell silent.
“What? Castia? Frigid Hells, why? It’s about to be wiped off the map by the biggest Horde on record since the Reclamation!”
“Yeah, we know. Gabe’s daughter is inside.”
The wizard’s face dropped. “Ah …”
“So we’re …” Clay swallowed. Just say it, Cooper. “We’re getting the band back together. Or hoping to, anyway.” He lapsed into silence and waited for Moog to fill it with excuses. He had his phylactery business to think of, an elusive cure to find. Who would look after his animals? He was too tired, too old. He would rather die slowly over several years than trek across the black forest and get torn apart by monsters. Of all the reasons Moog might offer in his refusal, this last reason seemed the most likely. Clay certainly wouldn’t blame him for using it.
“Fantastic! Well, not the bit about Rose,” said the wizard. “That’s awful, Gabe. Just awful. But yes! Yes! Saga reunited? The old boys together again? Are you kidding me?”
“So … you’ll come with us?” Clay asked.
“Of course I’ll come! What kind of friend would I be otherwise?”
Clay found himself baffled, recalling the emphatic no he’d given Gabriel when he’d first come calling. “What about your research?”
“It’ll be here when I get back. This is Rosie we’re talking about! And besides, it’s not like I need to worry about catching the rot while we’re in the forest, right?” He glanced between Clay and Gabe, both of whom wore the same stricken expression. “Too soon?” he asked. “Too soon. Never mind. Anyway, I’m in!”
He strode over to Gabriel and offered up one of the mugs. Clay could smell the hot chocolate as it wafted past, and was beginning to regret not having raised his hand earlier.
“To Saga,” he said, clinking his cup against Gabriel’s. He was about to take his first sip when a heavy knock rattled the door and they heard Steve ask in his ring-hampered lisp, “Thtate your bithineth with my mathter.”
The rumble of low voices, and then a recognizable one spoke up. “Arcandius! Moog, you in there, pal? It’s Kal.”
Clay and Gabriel shared a look of panicked terror.
Moog wheeled toward the door. “Kallorek? Hi! I’ll be right—”
Too late, Clay clapped a hand over the wizard’s mouth.
“We went to Kal to try and get Gabe’s sword back,” Clay said as quickly and quietly as he could. “He threatened to kill us instead.”
“You mean Vellichor? Why does Kallorek have Vellichor?” Moog asked.
“We’ll explain later,” said Clay, when it looked like Gabriel was preparing to do so.
“You got company in there, Moog?” Kallorek’s voice was chummy as could be. “Our old friends Slowhand and Gabe, perhaps? How about you open up and we can all three of us talk things over, eh?”
Steve chimed in again. “Thir, would you pleath thtate your bithineth with my—” The door thundered as someone hit it with something heavy. The knocker’s customary politeness evaporated. “You punthed me!? You thon of a—”
Another thud shuddered the door, louder this time, and Steve went quiet.
“Moog?” Kallorek’s voice was losing affability like a wineskin with a hole punched in the bottom. “Open the door.”
The wizard squirmed out of Clay’s grip and rushed to a nearby counter, where a crystal ball rested on a swathe of dark velvet. The orb contained nothing but grey-white fuzz, but when Moog set his mug aside and touched his fingers to the surface an image began to materialize within a swirl of purple smoke. An instant later the image faded, replaced by static fuzz.
“I bought this off the witch that lived here before me,” the wizard explained hurriedly, hitting the orb a few more times without success. “Damn thing doesn’t work half the time. I swear it’s enough to drive a man to read.” He put his nose to the glass, muttering an incantation too quiet to hear. When that failed he swore and slapped the glass with his open palm. “Fucking piece of junk …”
The picture came suddenly clear, and Clay felt his gut curl up like a man pounced on by a bear. He saw Kallorek, dressed in scale armour beneath a cloak trimmed with black fur. He was surrounded by no less than sixteen armed guards. One of these, an especially big, brutish-looking bastard, was lurking just outside the door with a torch in one hand and a heavy maul in the other. Of the brass knocker there remained only a mangled ruin.
“Oh, poor Steve,” Moog whimpered. “When did Kal get so mean?”
Clay suspected the booker had bullied the midwife that pulled him from the womb, but there wasn’t time to speculate now. “We need to get out of here,” he said. “Is there a back door? An escape tunnel?” He looked around, seeing evidence of neither. “Any way of getting out of here?”
The wizard thought for a moment, and then slowly began to nod. “There is a way. It’s risky, though.”
It’s risky. Clay could remember Moog saying those words half a hundred times. More often than not they’d preceded some sort of wild debacle, but occasionally the wizard came up with something truly miraculous.
Clay blew out a sigh. “Let’s hear it,” he said.
“Go upstairs!” Moog pointed to what remained of the second storey. “I just need to grab some stuff first.” The first thing he went for was the crystal ball, hastily wrapping it in velvet cloth before dropping it into a bag. Next he collected a number of vials, tossing them into the sack without regard for whether or not they might break. “Go!” he urged them. “I’ll be right behind you.”
Clay started for the stairs, Gabriel hot on his heels. When they gained the second floor he looked around frantically for a means of escape. The tower’s roof had crumbled away, and a carpet of bright stars glittered above them. By their light he saw a single bed against one wall, another bookshelf, a nightstand, and no way out at all. Even the windows were too high to reach.
Gabriel, meanwhile, was gazing up at the night sky in openmouthed shock.
“What?” Clay asked. He glanced up, saw nothing out of the ordinary, and then asked Gabriel, “What is it? The sky? The stars?”
“Not stars,” Gabe whispered.
“What do you mean—?”
Not stars, Clay grasped. Spiders. Thousands upon thousands of faintly glowing spiders, a scuttling constellation spread across the firmament of an undetectable web. For a moment neither he nor Gabriel moved, each of them rooted where they stood by primal, paralyzing fear.
Would you look at us, Clay thought scathingly. We, who might once have faced down a dragon and only stopped to ask how it preferred to get its ass kicked, baulking at glow-in-the-dark spiders!
A few of the critters came sliding down for a closer look. Clay did his best to ignore them, calling down the stairs behind him. “Moog!?”
“Coming!”
Peering onto the lower floor, he saw the wizard cramming a few last-minute items into his quite-obviously-enchanted bag: a staff, a wand, a rod, a dagger studded with gemstones, an onyx cat statue, half a dozen hats, a few books, a pipe, two bottles of brandy, a pair of ragged slippers—
There was a loud crunch, like the sound of a tree’s back snapping, and the door buckled inward.