“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 thoughtless 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 silvergreen, 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.