At exactly the same time hundreds more spiders began descending to see what all the fuss was about. The effect was unnerving, since a part of Clay’s mind still thought the spiders were stars, and it was shrieking at him that the sky was falling. He supressed the urge to vomit for any number of reasons and yelled at the top of his lungs, “Moog!”
“On my way!” the wizard shouted. He’d been setting his menagerie of rot-infected animals free. As the dog-sized elephant went scampering toward the door, Moog, with a word and a gesture, set a fire beneath the largest glass crucible. He tossed a vial of red liquid inside before taking the stairs two at a time. When he gained the second floor and saw the horrified expression on Gabriel’s face the wizard looked up.
“Ah, you’ve spotted my pets!”
“Pets?” Gabe sounded incredulous. “Moog, they’re spiders.”
The wizard waved off his concern. “They’re harmless! Well, mostly harmless. One took a nip of me once and I turned invisible for a week. Remarkable, yes, but it was bloody hard to buy groceries! Anyway, they eat the bats.” He thrust his bag into Clay’s hands. “Hold this.”
Kneeling beside the bed, he reached beneath it and hauled out a mirror near as long as Clay was tall.
Gabriel pointed at the thing. “Is that—”
“Yes, it is,” Moog confirmed without waiting for Gabe to finish. “I just hope it still works!” He dipped a finger into it, as if testing the temperature of stew. Ripples spread from his touch, distorting the reflection of Clay and Gabriel peering down in concern.
The mirror had a twin, and both were enchanted, so that you could step into one and out of the other, no matter the distance between. The band had used them once before as a means to rescue Matrick’s wife, Lilith, who was then the princess of Agria. She’d been abducted on her eighteenth birthday by a suitor turned kidnapper—a minor lord hell-bent on becoming king. They’d accessed the mirror through the maid’s quarters and appeared in the royal bedchamber barely in time to stop the lord from robbing the young princess of her precious maidenhead.
A lucky thing, too, or she’d have been unable to offer it up to Matrick later that night.
The door to the tower gave in, smashed to splinters as Kallorek’s gang ploughed through, led by the brute with the maul.
Moog shook his head. “Shit, I thought—” There was a flash of light, and the crucible downstairs exploded in a cloud of bright orange smoke. The wizard waved frantically toward the mirror. “In! Get in!” he screamed.
“What was that?” Gabe asked, covering his mouth as the smoke roiled up to envelop them. It stung his eyes and filled their nostrils with a sickening sweetness, like fruit on the cusp of going bad.
“My phylactery! Go!” Moog shouted over a chorus of hacking coughs and glass-shattering chaos below.
Since no one else made a move, Clay did. He shook his head, cursed himself for a fool, and jumped into the mirror as though leaping to his death from a high cliff.
Chapter Eleven
The Cuckold King
He came out sideways, unsure of when he’d begun screaming at the top of his lungs.
A man spun at the sound, and Clay caught a glimpse of widening eyes above a drawn veil before he inadvertently performed what could aptly be described as a flying drop-kick to the poor man’s face.
He and his unintended victim hit the ground together. Clay had barely begun his litany of apology before the man turned on him with hot eyes and a bloody snarl, at which point Clay noticed the wickedly curved knife in his hand.
He tried to scramble backward, but his legs were trapped beneath his assailant. He could hope the first strike didn’t kill him, or that the man concluded in the next half second that Clay meant him no harm, which didn’t seem likely at all.
Gabriel came through the mirror in a head-first roll, as though he’d been pushed. He landed directly on top of Clay, which didn’t improve their chances of not getting stabbed, but then Moog hurtled overhead, hooting like a child on a playground slide. The knife-bearing man took another accidental kick—to the jaw this time—and went out like a candle in a hurricane.
“Oh, my!” The wizard scrambled to his knees. “Sir, I am so—”
“Leave it, Moog. He’s out.” Clay jutted his chin toward the knife still clasped in the man’s limp hand. “Also, he tried to kill me.”
“Oh. How rude.”
“I’d say so,” Clay agreed. Though I did technically kick him first.
Gabriel rolled onto his back, swiping hair from his eyes. “Where are we?”
For a moment they took stock of their surroundings: an expansive room, expensively furnished. The walls were hung with paintings and rich tapestries, the ceiling painted with a mural depicting a scene from the War of Reclamation, when mankind had scattered the Heartwyld Hordes feasting on the carcass of the Old Dominion. Against one wall was a huge bed shrouded by diaphanous white curtains.
“We’re in Brycliffe Castle,” said Moog. “This is the same room as the last time: the king’s bedchamber.”
“Which means …” Clay began.
“Matrick is here,” said Gabriel.
Clay frowned. “What? Why do you say that?”
A shrug. “Because he’s the king of Agria. And because that’s him there.” Gabriel pointed toward the bed. Sure enough, there was Matrick. The king, who had put on considerable weight since Clay had seen him last, was sprawled amidst a tangle of silk sheets, fast asleep and snoring.
Moog whirled. “Matty?” He dashed to the bed and leapt through the gap in the curtains, pouncing on their old bandmate like a boy determined to wake his parents on the morning of his birthday. “Matty, wake up!”
The foul-mouthed, booze-guzzling, whore-mongering, and wholly unscrupulous thief who was now the ruler of one of Grandual’s five great kingdoms awoke with a start.
“What? Who?” He rolled away from the wizard, flailing as he ran out of bed and fell into a heap on the floor. Then he screamed, “Assassins!”
The double doors to the chamber burst open and a pair of guardsmen rushed in, swords drawn. At the same time someone tumbled through the mirror, wreathed in trails of orange smoke. It was one of Kallorek’s thugs—the big brute with the hammer who had smashed Steve’s face to smithereens.
Clay looked despairingly between the guards and the hulking newcomer. His first instinct was to size the man up, but when his gaze flitted downward he froze. “Um, do you … need a sec?”
The big brute scowled, and then followed Clay’s stare to the very obvious bulge in his breeches. He half-turned, suddenly embarrassed, though the side profile did little to help matters.
Clay got as far as opening his mouth before Moog cut him off.
“It’s the phylactery,” he explained. “I threw it, remember? The explosion, the smoke …” he chuckled, wearing a grin that was equal parts sheepish and smug. “Zero to hero. As advertised.”
“That would explain this then.” Gabe motioned toward the rise in his own trousers.
“Ah, me too, now,” said Moog. “Look here!”
Clay didn’t look. Didn’t need to. He had a fair idea as to what the wizard was referring.
Another silence followed, infinitely more awkward than the last. Finally, one of the guards spoke up. “Sire, what should we … Sire?”
The king was doubled over, clutching his gut as if he’d taken a wound. Clay heard a wheeze, then a snort, and then Matrick threw his head back, howling in laughter. Kallorek’s brute began growling like a threatened dog. His big fists tightened on the haft of his maul.
That was all the warning Clay needed. In one motion he shrugged Blackheart free and caught the grip as it fell. He was already moving as the brute hefted the heavy iron hammer and lurched toward Gabriel, who was preoccupied with trying to adjust himself. The blow pounded the shield with a deep thunk, glancing off. The force of it sent a jolt down Clay’s arms, and pain arced like lightning across his shoulders. It had been months since he’d got into a scrap of any sort, years since he’d fought anything with a legitimate chance of killing him.