It was a bat. Taino curled its talons around one of his long fingers and set off again, holding the sleeping creature aloft like a lamp.
“Fascinating!” said Moog, and Clay recalled with a shiver the luminescent spiders scattered like stars across the roof of the wizard’s tower.
The tree itself was decked with vibrant fungal shelves, beneath which were beds of what appeared to be perfectly harmless moss. The troll bade them sit while he shuffled about, pulling dry mushrooms from the pointed barbs of low-hanging vines and replacing them with fresh ones from an old leather bag slung over his shoulder. Once pierced, the mushrooms gave off a soft light, so that within minutes the lower reaches of the tree were festooned in colourful strands of phosphorescent fungi.
When he finished Taino trotted over, grinning. “Sorry to wait. Is plenty more easy wid two arms.”
Ganelon looked away and mumbled something that might have been sorry.
“No worries,” their host assured him. “Everyting cool. Be gud as new soon, see?” He proffered the stump where his new left arm was already half-formed, growing like a dry sponge soaked in water. He then ambled over to where a big iron cauldron burbled above a bed of smouldering embers and withdrew a brace of fleshy lizards from his satchel. “You lot ungry?” he asked.
Moog leapt to the rescue, removing his hat and taking orders: mildly spiced lamb for Clay, pie for Matrick, a fillet of pink trout for Gabriel, and steak for Ganelon, who had apparently decided that eating from a hat was preferable to whatever inhabited the witchdoctor’s master stock. Larkspur asked for a pickled banana sandwich and clapped delightedly when Moog produced it with a flourish. Lastly, the wizard presented Taino with a heaping plate of butter-string pasta, which the troll ate with his hand, slurping down noodles and very obviously enjoying himself.
Clay was immensely grateful they’d found somewhere safe to spend the night. As safe as anyplace in this gods-forsaken forest, anyway. He’d seen enough horrors in a single day to last him another nineteen years. He couldn’t wait to get back to The Carnal Court, but for now he contented himself with the fact that they’d found Matrick alive and relatively unscathed.
When they’d finished dinner Taino shuffled over to a hollowed trunk and scooped them each a bowl of what turned out to be beer. Matrick was the first to taste it. “Delicious!” he declared, and when he didn’t keel over and die shortly afterward, the rest of them drank up as well. As they did so, Taino entertained them by showing off the many treasures he’d managed to accrue over the years.
First was an ancient druin helmet complete with chain-mail sleeves to protect a pair of tall, pointed ears. Next was the skull of a cyclopean bull, which Clay wouldn’t have believed existed were it not for the single empty cavity at the top of its snout. There was a Tetrea board made of onyx and pearl (though Taino confessed to having eaten all of the pieces years ago), and a moonstone bust of some long-forgotten Dominion Exarch that actually blinked if you stared at it long enough. There was plenty of jewellery as well: rings and trinkets, including a medallion that looked similar to the one Kallorek had used to control his golems.
The troll possessed two leather-bound canvas picture books, both of which he insisted on reading aloud in his near-indecipherable accent. The first was Trent the Treant, a popular children’s story that had been one of Tally’s favourites four or five years ago. The second was an illustrated guide to lovemaking among trolls, and the half hour it took for Taino to guide them through his favourite pages was among the most awkward experiences of Clay’s life.
At last the witchdoctor produced an elaborate wooden pipe carved into the shape of a brumal mammoth with its trunk in the air. He foraged briefly among the plants in his yard, then returned and packed the hollow in the mammoth’s back with a sticky brown flower. He used a glowing brand to set the flower ablaze before inhaling the vapour it gave off through the end of the trunk. After a long moment he exhaled a puff of smoke and his wizened face split into a great wide grin.
“Magic mudweed,” he cooed. “Dis ere is de cure for many tings: busted heads, broken wings, de sick what eats the eaters. It’ll mend ya inside and out, tru and tru.” He gave the pipe to Larkspur, who took two long pulls from the trunk. When she finished she offered it to Moog.
“Yes, please!” said the wizard. He gulped a lungful of smoke and then coughed noisily as he passed the pipe around the circle. “Mudweed?” he asked when his fit subsided. “I’ve never heard of it. It is psychotropic? Hallucinogenic? It smells a bit like Shepherd’s Secret, doesn’t it? A bit earthier, though, like Dreamer’s Leaf. How long does it usually take to oooooh shit there it is.” He slumped back into his bed of moss and fell silent.
Matrick took a hit, but Ganelon passed, as did Gabriel. When his friend handed it to Clay he waved it off. “I’m good, thanks.”
Gabe was insistent. “Go for it. Your face looks like someone hit it with a hammer.”
Clay smiled crookedly, though doing so made his nose ache. “Someone did.”
“Go on, then.”
The match had burned out by then, so Clay knelt to light it. Putting his mouth to the trunk he found Taino smiling at him with big yellow teeth and gleaming brown gums. “Smoke up, smoke up,” urged the troll, so he did.
It kicked in almost immediately. The ache in his nose vanished; the pain around his eye disappeared. The throbbing in his back ebbed away. Even his knees and feet stopped hurting as the mudweed took hold. Clay settled into the moss behind him and tried to put the sensation into words, but the words slipped beyond reach, darting like fish in a shallow pond.
Taino had reserved his favourite treasure for last: a trio of hide drums leashed together by leather bindings. He sat cross-legged with the drums in his lap, and only then did Clay realize the troll’s missing arm had regenerated completely. Taino admired his new hand with evident delight. He tested it a few times on the lip of the drum, adjusted the floppy hat on his head, and began to play.
What followed was, for Clay, a journey.
It began with slow, tentative steps. His mind wandered back through the events of the past several weeks. First was the clash with Larkspur and her thralls aboard The Carnal Court, and then the surprised terror in Kallorek’s eyes as he hurled the booker overboard. He watched Gabriel draw Vellichor from a sheath of stone rubble. He remembered Tiamax the Arachnian chittering as he poured Matrick a drink.
Clay found himself alone on the Maxithon floor, turning in place, witnessed by the empty sockets of innumerable skeletal spectators. A turn too far, and the three heads of the chimera roared in his face.
He was dimly aware that Taino had hastened the rhythm of his music, and his mind quickened to keep up. The Riot House went up in flames. A kobold kid with lamp-bright eyes growled in a nest of blades. Raff Lackey promised vengeance above a swollen, snakebit throat. Clay loosed a flaming arrow over grey waters, watched Lastleaf slip from the wyvern’s back, saw Jain saunter onto the road, stood with Ginny on a hill at dawn. Her eyes that were sometimes green and sometimes gold looked into his.
Come home to me, Clay Cooper.
His daughter laughed from her perch on his shoulders, then cried in his arms as a babe. He felt his callused fingers caress the taught skin of his wife’s swollen belly, felt her lips against his on the bright day they were wed. And now her voice again, hot as the fire in her eyes when she’d asked him on a night long ago: Which are you, the monster or the man?