There was an Old Dominion road leading up out of the bog. It was straight and wide, and despite the filth that covered it the fitted stones were still intact. After wading through waist-deep water for several hours it was a welcome blessing.
“Gotta hand it to the rabbits,” said Ganelon, “they sure knew how to make a road.”
Sabbatha, walking behind him, tested the span of her wounded wing and winced in pain. “Ouch. Wait, rabbits?” she asked.
“A slang term for the druin,” Kit informed her. “And not an especially clever one if you ask me. Ah, but you should hear what the druins used to call southerners!” He looked about to expound on this before catching a sidelong glare from Ganelon. “Alas, I … seem to have forgotten what it was.”
The daeva folded her crooked wing back over her shoulder. “Cool story,” she said. “So this road is, what, hundreds of years old?”
“Try a thousand!” crowed Moog. “It’s likely this road was in disrepair long before the Dominion fell, and when the Emperor-in-exile came this way four hundred years ago he and his followers found the ruins of a once-mighty city on the other side.”
“You mean Castia?” she asked.
The wizard chuckled. “I mean Teragoth—a druin city, much older than Castia, my dear. In fact, it was the son of Grandual’s first Emperor who founded the Republic. He and his ancestors built Castia from the ground up, and I’ve heard you can see the ruins of ancient Teragoth from the city walls.”
“You can,” said Kit.
“You’ve never been there?” the daeva asked Moog, who shook his head.
“The mountains were as far west as we ever went. We were hunting monsters, after all, and in Endland, well … the Republic took care of its monster problems long ago.”
“How so?”
Moog shrugged. “Genocide. Slavery. Second-class citizenship. The usual suspects.”
“Nevertheless,” said Kit, “the city is quite unlike any you’ll see back east. Few of Grandual’s strongholds could withstand a siege like the one Castia now endures. Its walls are a miracle of engineering, as are its bridges. And its arena, the Crucible, while not so ostentatious as the Maxithon or the Giant’s Cradle, is an undeniably beautiful building, despite its vulgar purpose. But believe me when I say that however beautiful Castia is—or was, rather—Teragoth was more splendid still.”
“Or so you’ve read,” said Sabbatha.
The ghoul’s laugh was a sound like parchment tearing. “So I’ve seen,” he told her. “It’s where I was born.”
“What? How old are you?”
Kit looked mildly offended. “Excuse me? How old are you?”
Sabbatha shrugged. “I stopped counting at sixteen.”
“Yes, well, I stopped counting at six hundred and sixteen.”
“Really?” she asked.
“Really.”
They trudged a little farther on before Sabbatha’s curiosity caught spark again. “So how did you become a zom—” She closed her mouth before the word zombie could trickle out, but Kit huffed as though she’d said it anyway.
“Dead, she means,” said Matrick.
“Un-dead,” clarified Moog.
“Revenant,” said Ganelon, and when everyone looked his way the warrior shrugged. “It’s really not that hard to remember.”
“Exactly,” said Kit, fussing with the scarf around his neck. “Thank you. Anyway, it’s a long story.”
“So what?” asked the daeva. “It’s a long road.”
“Very well.” Kit coughed once to clear his throat, and then began. “I was born in Teragoth, which was ruled by a druin Exarch named—”
“What’s an Exarch?” asked Sabbatha.
“Uh … like a duke, or a governor … except, well, druin.”
“Got it.”
The ghoul scratched at the wound in the back of his skull. “Where was I? Oh, yes: Firaga, our Mighty Exarch, Scion of Tamarat—”
“Who?”
“Tamarat,” Kit repeated, and when Sabbatha shrugged he heaved a ragged sigh. “The druin goddess? Did they teach you nothing in whatever backwater village you hail from?”
The feathers across her shoulders shivered in irritation. “They taught me enough,” she grated, and Clay, who had never heard of Tamarat, either, offered a desperate prayer to whichever of Grandual’s gods was charged with protecting foppish ghouls from the wrath of angry daevas.
Thankfully, Kit pressed on without further comment. “Anyhow, my parents were slaves—”
“Slaves!?”
Now it was the ghoul’s turn to bristle with anger. “Do you want to hear the story or not?”
“I do,” said Sabbatha. “Sorry. No more interruptions, I promise.”
Kit’s eyelids fluttered in what Clay took for skepticism. “We shall see,” he said warily. “I should clarify, evidently, that in those days both humans and monsters were slaves to the druins. Humans, my parents included, were generally servants, while our beastly brethren undertook more laborious tasks like quarrying and construction. Despite our bondage, however, we were granted exceptional freedoms—at least until the war broke out and the Exarchs began hurling armies of angry monsters at one another. And don’t you dare ask, ‘What war?’” he said, preempting the daeva. “I can see it right there on the tip of your tongue! I’ll tell you what war in a moment.”
“Or you could just skip to the part where you became immortal,” she suggested.
“But you’ll miss out on the context,” Kit whinged.
“I don’t think it’s that long of a road,” Clay pointed out.
“Very well,” sighed the ghoul. “In the interest of brevity I shall abridge the scintillating tale of my wayward youth, omit my discovery and subsequent mastery of the batingting, ignore my musical heroics during the war against Contha and his implacable golem legions—”
“Musical heroics?” Clay heard Ganelon grumble under his breath.
“—and resume the story after my assignment as Court Musician to none other than Firaga himself. Now, before you go imagining some wild scenario in which I attain immortality by selling my soul to a necromancer, or eating the snow off a mountain peak, I should warn you that the cause itself is actually quite mundane. Embarrassing, even. I was bitten by a peacock.”
At this point even Gabriel cocked his head in interest. Dane giggled and whispered something into his brother’s ear that sounded a lot like “What an idiot.”
“You see? I told you it was dumb. Of course it wasn’t really a peacock, but the keeper of the Exarch’s personal menagerie mistook it for one, and so did I. You see, I used to sneak into the palace at night and … entertain Firaga’s lovely wife. I would sing to her, or play sweet music on my batingting, and quite often amuse her with a more … personal instrument, if you catch my meaning.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” piped Matrick, which Clay found odd coming from a man who’d been cuckolded on at least five occasions that they knew of, and probably countless more.
Kit went on. “When her husband came calling she would hurry me out a secret door that led to a private garden, and on one such occasion, while skulking through the artificial trees of the Exarch’s fraudulent forest, I crossed paths with the ‘peacock’ in question. Now I should confess that I’d consumed a vast quantity of wine earlier that evening and was, by this point in time, shit-faced drunk. And in what turned out to be the first of two very bad ideas, I attempted to pet it, and it bit me.”
“What was the second bad idea?” asked Sabbatha.
“Killing it,” stated Kit. “I bashed that fucking bird to death with my favorite batingting, which just so happened to have been a gift from the Exarch himself. My satisfaction at doing so was short-lived, however, since the bird was not, after all, a peacock. It was a phoenix.”
Matrick snorted. “What?”
“A very, very old phoenix. I swear upon every eye of Tamarat it looked nothing like you’d expect.”
“Unbelievable,” said Moog.
“Is a phoenix the one that rises out of ashes?” asked Sabbatha.
“Technically, yes,” said the ghoul. “Although explode out of the ashes would be a more accurate description of this one’s method of rebirth. She set the entire garden on fire and then soared off like a comet. I was forced to flee back through the secret door and into Firaga’s bedroom.”
“Wow,” said Matrick.
“Now that’s a story,” Moog chirped.