The Boneface Clan held a feast that night in Saga’s honour, which Clay thought was tremendously gracious considering Ganelon had killed their greatest champion—not to mention a few dozen other hunters—the day before.
The chieftain remained confined to her tent, but Teresa presented Moog’s miraculous hat to the villagers, who had no reservations whatsoever about eating the food it produced. Cannibals were a notoriously adventurous people, culinarily speaking.
Moog had cheered considerably since his breakdown earlier, stowing whatever grief remained to him wherever it was wizards kept such things. In their heads, Clay suspected, and not their hearts. He demonstrated to a crowd of awestruck Ferals the full range of the hat’s capabilities.
Out came slabs of roast venison, salted steaks, chicken spiced with subtle herbs, pork tenderloin wrapped in bacon and stuffed with mushrooms. He dazzled the children with bananas, sweet strawberries, clusters of fat purple grapes, and an enormous watermelon, which they took an unsettling delight in smashing open as if it were an enemy’s head. For dessert there were custards, cakes, and pies. There was even flavoured ice, a treat favoured by the Narmeeri, and also by Ganelon, who ate three bowls by himself.
Bowls, of course, being a loose term for hollowed-out human skulls.
Matrick was in especially high spirits after learning of Moog’s recovery, and Kit had even more good news for Agria’s exiled king. When the Ferals demanded the ghoul leave The Carnal Court, he had smuggled with him two things besides his precious batingting. The first was a bottle of sixty-year-old Tarindian Rum, and the second was Grace, the dagger Matrick had fumbled back on the ship. The king of Agria kissed the ghoul on the mouth for his trouble.
A long line of suitors formed a queue beside Larkspur, bearing gifts they hoped might persuade the daeva to forswear her companions and breed cannibal babies instead. Among the more interesting offerings was a necklace strung with clattering rat skulls and a shawl made of coarse human hair. One fellow handed her a small pouch from which she withdrew a scrap of old leather.
“What is it?” she asked through a polite smile.
Beside her, Moog spoke around a mouthful of cake. “His foreskin.”
Her smile vanished like a snowball lobbed into the mouth of a volcano. Visibly furious, she returned the flesh to the pouch, then tossed the pouch into a nearby fire. The cannibal looked on sullenly as it burned, no doubt wishing he’d bestowed such a princely gift upon someone more appreciative.
Gabriel sat apart from the others, barely eating, distracted by his concern for Rose and gazing west as the sun set beyond the smudge of distant mountains.
The entire village woke to see them off at dawn. The magic hat was still being passed from hand to hand; everywhere Clay looked Ferals were gnawing happily on duck wings, biting into loaves of warm bread, eating salt and sugar by the handful. An old woman was cradling a fish as long as her arm, occasionally hoisting it up so she could lick its scales.
Clay almost said something but decided not to bother. They’ll figure it out, he decided, watching another man consume an entire banana without peeling it first. Eventually. Maybe.
Moog was in a mood again. He was watching the ettin beside which they’d been left to wait the day before. Despite being chained by his throat to a rock, Gregor smiled and waved. After a whispered word in his brother’s ear, so did Dane. The wizard waved back, then levelled a gloomy look at Gabriel.
Gabe stirred and looked over. “What?”
The wizard said nothing.
“What?”
Still nothing. But Moog’s bottom lip edged out just a little.
Gabriel looked over at Clay, who shrugged. “Fine,” he sighed, turning back to Moog. “Go tell Teresa we’re altering the deal. The ettin is coming with us.”
The Boneface Clan had yet another gift in store for the band, and it was a doozy. Having survived (if not thrived) in the Heartwyld for who-knew-how-many generations, they had a comprehensive grasp of local geography. The elder’s son, Jeremy, offered to escort them for several days on their journey west, and the young cannibal—his head still pink from where the spark monkey’s dung had landed—showed them the secret paths known only to his kind. When the way allowed they moved at a brisk jog, and, thanks to Jeremy’s guile, managed to avoid the more treacherous parts of the forest.
Gabriel’s mood, which had been dark upon departing the village, grew steadily more optimistic as the days wore on and the low ridge of the Emperor’s Mantle became a white-capped wall and then resolved into distant, individual peaks. Clay found himself coming to grips with the skyship’s loss as well. Though the first leg of their flight had been relatively benign, the storm had served to show them how quickly things could go south—or straight down, for that matter. On the ground, at least, they weren’t so obvious a target, and if something did want to kill them it would have to do it the old-fashioned way.
At last Jeremy called a stop at the summit of a hill that sloped away westward, disappearing into a sea of murky trees.
“TIKOO PADA PA KA!” said the cannibal, gesturing first at the forest below and then back the way they had come.
“This is as far as he goes?” Clay assumed out loud.
Moog blinked at him. “I see you’ve picked up a little of the language.”
Clay shrugged. “Here and there,” he lied, and saw Matrick cover a smirk with his hand.
After Jeremy departed, Gabriel led them down into woods, though the forest they entered was very different from the one Dane experienced, enthralled as he was by his brother’s wildly inaccurate narrative. While they stepped around puddles of toxic sludge, Gregor described sparkling pools of crystalline water. When they ducked below gnarled branches whose leaves dripped poison, Dane strolled beneath the eaves of majestic oaks. According to Gregor, and therefore Dane, the charcoal sky was blue, the ashen grass was green, and the reek of a mangled carcass they came upon was in fact the scent of vividly detailed flowers.
Even the insects received a kind word. One dusk, as the rest of the party plodded through a swarm of orcflies (so-called because they were hideous if you looked at them up close), Dane marvelled at a cloud of brilliant moonbugs.
“Wow!” he said, beaming. “I wish I could see them!”
“I wish I could see them,” Clay muttered, slapping at something on the back of his neck.
They came to a bog, and Gabe led them straight on through. It was waist deep, and the footing was treacherous. More than once Clay stumbled over what he hoped was a submerged log but was probably a rotting carcass. Sabbatha (as he’d finally begun calling her in his own head) looked positively disgusted as she waded through, careful to keep her wings above the sludge. Kit, as well, kept his sacred batingting clear of the muck.
Poor Matrick tripped and went right under. He came up sputtering and groaned, “Oh dear gods, it’s in my mouth.”
In the heavy mist Clay mistook every jutting branch for the tentacle of some hidden horror, so that when something finally did come boiling up at Ganelon he was almost relieved. The warrior made short work of whatever it was. Once Syrinx had cut a few writhing limbs from its body the thing fled and did not return.
Onward they slogged, and for Clay it started to feel like old times again: Gabriel leading the way; Moog and Matrick laughing, or bickering, often both at once. Ganelon stalked with his axe in hand, spoiling for a fight, while Clay brought up the rear, desperate to avoid conflict of any sort. Following the bout of nostalgia, however, he was overcome by a pang of excruciating homesickness. He missed his wife, and his daughter, and his dog. He missed the way his home smelled, the way his bed felt. He even missed standing on the wall all day, looking north at mountains he never planned on crossing.