Kings of the Wyld (The Band #1)

Matrick looked puzzled. “They can see through walls?”

“What? No!” The wizard shared a my friends are imbeciles look with the revenant before deigning to explain. “Moonies are people, just like you or me, except they turn into animals during a full moon. It’s a disease, actually.”

“Like drinking,” Gabe clarified, throwing a smirk in Matrick’s direction. “Mostly you’re a man, but sometimes you’re a monster.”

Matty said nothing, but looked thoughtfully at the flask in his hand.

“Well, yes, I suppose it is like that,” said Moog. “Now rakshas, on the other hand, are monsters, though they can make themselves look like people, as Catrina did. They’re not evil, necessarily, but the vast majority of them are assholes.”

Clay could attest to that. Though she’d posed as a bard, Catrina had in fact been an assassin hired to kill Gabriel. She’d seduced him first (not an especially difficult task) and then attacked him in his quarters while the band was at sea. Gabe had narrowly escaped and fled, stark naked, onto the ship’s deck with the raging tigress hot on his heels. Clay had managed to fight her off until Ganelon arrived, and the southerner had tossed her, scratching and screaming, over the rail and into the sea.

Rakshas, it also bore mentioning, were not especially strong swimmers.

“Ah, here it is!” Moog, who’d been rummaging through his bag for several long minutes, now withdrew what looked like a seashell made of brass and wood.

Clay was trying to decide whether it was some sort of bomb when the wizard brought the shell to his lips and blew a few tentative notes through a grille on one end. An instrument, he realized—which didn’t necessarily mean it wasn’t also a bomb. Moog was Moog, after all.

“I traded a pair of old boots to a trash imp for this, straight up,” said the wizard.

Matty looked dubious. “What does a trash imp need boots for?”

“He ate them,” said Moog. When Matrick’s expression slipped further toward incredulity the wizard added, “It’s true. He filled them both up with mustard and ate them right there in front of me. I swear, a trash imp would eat its own offspring if there was mustard on ’em.”

He blew another series of exploratory notes into the shell before slipping into what was surprisingly recognizable as a song. Matrick sipped at his flask and smiled appreciatively. Gabriel closed his eyes. Kit hummed as though he knew the tune, and Clay, who didn’t, lost himself in the fire’s fitful light. He heard the quiet clack of a moonstone piece.

“I take your queen,” Ganelon announced, and Sabbatha swore under her breath.

“Again?” he asked.

“Again,” she answered.

Clay went on staring, Matrick went on drinking, Kit kept on humming, and Moog played on and on. The air in the cave began to smell just a little bit like salt. The brisk mountain wind rolled in from outside, whispering in the corners like a wave spilling secrets to the shore. The shell’s song was a mournful sound, and so it came as no surprise when Matrick, having sucked the last dregs from his flask, spoke as though their tiny fire was the pyre of a departed friend.

“What’s the best part about being immortal?” he asked Kit.

The ghoul spent a long moment considering. “Fearlessness,” he said at last.

One of the little owlbears stirred awake. Moog laid the shell aside and hauled the cub into his lap, stroking the silky feathers between its saucer-shaped eyes. “How do you mean?” he asked.

“You’d be surprised how many choices one makes due to the intrinsic nature of self-preservation,” Kit said. “When survival is no longer an issue, well, all bets are off, as they say. My first few years as an immortal were especially reckless. I took risks no mortal ever could. I leapt from the dizzying heights of waterfalls and strolled like a sightseer through the carnage of battlefields. I spat in the face of death, and death could do nothing but rage in impotence as I worked up another mouthful of phlegm.

“And then of course there’s the travel element,” he remarked cheerily. “I’ve wandered the deep places of the world without fear of starving or falling prey to some awful monstrosity crawling around in the dark. And believe me, there are some awful monstrosities crawling around in the dark. I’ve explored the ocean depths without needing to come up for air. I’ve roamed coral labyrinths and walked the submerged streets of ancient Antica.

“I once explored the shores of a land to which no ship had ever sailed and met a tribe of blue-skinned barbarians who had never even heard of the Dominion—or of Grandual, even. They killed me, obviously, as barbarians tend to do with strangers in their midst, and offered my body as a sacrifice to their savage god. But when I refused to stay dead they decided to worship me instead.”

“Sounds better than being a king,” said Matrick.

Kit nodded. “It was—until a plague tore through the village and killed every man, woman, and child in the tribe. I was left alone to do whatever gods do once all who believe in them are dust.”

“Such as?” Moog prompted.

“I did a lot of hiking, actually. And swimming. And I whittled things out of wood, though I never really got good at it.”

“And what about the worst thing?” Matrick asked. “What’s the downside to being an immortal?”

The ghoul chuckled. “Well for a start it’s been hell on my complexion. I was a handsome devil once, though you’d hardly know it now.” He fell silent for a moment, gazing thoughtfully into the fire while his eyelids fluttered.

“I suppose it gets a bit lonely sometimes,” he said after a while. “There are occasions on which I’ll laugh at some amusing memory only to remember that the person it concerns is a century dead. And companionship—let alone intimacy—can be a scarce commodity when you look as I do. Children scream at my approach. Men reach for swords to slay me, or torches to burn me, or holy symbols with which to smite me—it’s all very tiring, if I’m being honest. And it goes without saying that with the exception of a few blessedly twisted individuals, not many women look longingly at a bloodless ghoul. There’s only so far a rapier wit and extensive wine knowledge will get you when your … uh …apparatus is about as useful as a chocolate teapot.” He winked at Moog. “Though that problem has since been remedied by a certain wizard and his magnificent phallic phylactery.”

“You’re welcome,” said Moog, though his smile was sad.

“You should write a book,” Matrick suggested.

Kit snorted. “Who wants to read the self-pitying lamentations of an old revenant?”

“There’s your title right there,” said Ganelon. He used one of his Tetrea pieces to knock down one of Sabbatha’s, and the daeva hissed through her teeth.

“Again?” he asked.

“Again,” she answered.

“Have you ever met a ghoul like yourself?” Moog asked.

Kit shook his head, tugging absently at the scarf that hid the wound on his throat. “Not like me, no. I knew an alchemist once who made himself a golem bride out of flesh and bone, but her brain was a cantaloupe wrapped in bronze wire, so she wasn’t much of a conversationalist.” The revenant sighed. “Alas, it would appear I am the one and only person fool enough to try and pet a phoenix.”

“Well, I’m glad we found you, Kit.” Matty clapped their bard on his bony shoulder. “Kit the Unkillable—isn’t that what they call you? It’s good to know you’ll survive this. Us, I mean. I mean, even if we don’t. Survive, that is.”

The ghoul cracked a smile like a coffin’s lid sliding ajar. “I’m glad you found me, too,” he said. “It will be my honour to tell your story. It has been vastly entertaining thus far. I do hope it has a happy ending, though.”

“It won’t,” Matrick murmured.

“It will,” Gabe assured them.

“It might,” Clay said.

Something woke him. The sound of a scuffle, the scrape of metal on stone. Someone growled, someone gasped, and Clay was fumbling for his weapon before he realized what it was he was hearing.

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