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“For very different reasons,” he cut her off. “We will need to join Lancelot in his war against Mordred. You and I will join the fray. We will go as near to the keep as we dare and wait for the right time to strike. We will take Caliburn from his corpse.”
At least they had agreed to go in the right direction. She would have to sneak off to see Mordred or to send him a message of some kind.
Doc walked out of his house, smiling broadly. “Are we ready to go? Where is my cart?”
Gwen was happy for the interruption. “Your cart?” She arched an eyebrow. “We have a horse.”
“Oh, no no no. That just won’t do.” He rubbed his nose. “I refuse to walk the whole way and I am deathly allergic to horses.”
“Can’t you, like”—she wiggled her fingers in the air toward him—“summon yourself something?”
“No, that’s not how”—he wiggled his fingers back at her—“it works.”
Grinn muttered something about how much he hated wizards.
Gwen shook her head. “Whatever. Well, can you deal with walking to the nearest town? We can try to get a cart there. If Lancelot is trying to raise an army, he’ll probably need some supplies from the town, or…something. I don’t know. I don’t know what it takes to raise an army.” This felt so strange. Joining forces with Mordred’s enemies when she cared about him and helping them rally an army when she didn’t want a war.
Stick to the shitty plan, Gwen. Just stick to the shitty plan.
The wizard wrinkled his nose in disgust. “I will ask Lancelot for his silver horse.”
In the end, by the time the five of them—and Eod—got onto the road, it worked out that Grinn, Gwen, and Lancelot were walking. Zoe was atop Sunshine and the wizard was riding Lancelot’s silver horse.
Lancelot walked up ahead with Zoe. Eod was off scouting the road, and Gwen was walking beside the wizard. Grinn was fifty or so feet behind them, clearly wanting nothing to do with any of them or their conversations.
She glanced behind them now and then to make sure he was still there. And he was—a scrawny, ancient, battered-up demon that walked like a gorilla but looked like a panther with horns, padding along andsulking.
She frowned.
“You’re right to feel some pity for him,” the wizard said, keeping his voice low.
“I know he misses home, but…” She sighed. “I don’t get why he has to be so terrible to everybody.”
“It’s more than simply missing his home, dear.” Doc was cleaning his fingernails with a toothpick again. “Has he told you the whole story?”
“No. He doesn’t like to talk. Especially not to me.”
He chuckled, and then let out a sad sigh. “Well. It was about a thousand years ago now, or more, after Mordred and his knights came to us, but not by long. Hell suffered some strange manner of cataclysm. You see, it is not meant to touch Avalon. No demons had come here before and none since. I do not know what caused it, but, for a fraction of time, our two worlds collided.”
“That…sounds bad.”
“Avalon, for all its chaos, adapts to new states of being very quickly. When one does not worry about the order of things, new information isn’t troublesome at all.” He shrugged. “Avalon simply changed to have a little bit of hell in it.”
“Weird.”
“That it was. But as quickly as the cataclysm had come, it passed. The alignment fell away, and the part of hell that was here went with it. But it left behind some of its denizens.” He flicked the toothpick away into the shrubbery.
“That’s how Grinn came here?”
“Mm-hm. And about a hundred of his kind. Including his wife and his children.”
Dread gnawed at her. “Oh no.” Gwen remembered Grinn’s words.I had a wife.
“Oh yes, I’m afraid.” Doc’s expression, usually jovial or perhaps borderline insane, fell to one that showed the weight of the centuries. He lookedtired.“The elementals did not take kindly to the demons who were trying to scratch out a corner of the world for themselves. Demons, not knowing how to exist outside their own nature, thought to build their own kingdom here. They were exterminated. All except one.”
“He kept saying he was the only demon who had ever been here.” Her heart sank. Poor Grinn—no wonder he was so angry. He had watched his wife, his children, all his fellow demons…They had all been wiped out except him. The thought of it made her sick. She wanted to turn around and hug the angry cat monster, but she knew Grinn would just smack her aside and yell at her about it.
But she just couldn’t imagine what it was like to go through that. No wonder he hated everybody. No wonder he hated Avalon.
