Feast of Fates (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 1)

by Christian A. Brown

  The master’s boastfulness was running away with his tongue, and he said no more as they crossed the mud. They entered the longhouse, and the smells and oppression of the stockades were left behind a curtain of heavy pelts. Straightaway, the space stretched into a long wide corridor with many fires along the beaten floor. While much of the smoke escaped through holes in the roof, enough of it remained to haze the area. They walked through the dreamy mist, haunted by crying children and hushing wives, who were sensed but only seen as ghosts around the campfires or hidden in alcoves draped in hides. Whomever they encountered did not shy from greeting their master, but ceased whatever they were doing to honor him. Toward the back of the longhouse, steel screeched as it was sharpened or sparked as it was tested in drills between warriors. These martial activities were as vigorous—if far sloppier—than the graceful exercises of the Silver Watch, and Caenith sensed that there was a motivation to their training beyond the simple upkeep of a warrior’s edge.

  Thackery detected this readiness as well, though not as acutely as Caenith did. He considered that this was tied to what the master had abstained from voicing earlier about a war. An outright alliance between Blackforge and Menos. Is it from this black port that Menos will funnel through into the West? Strategically, he could think of no better place from which to launch a war. And those oxen in the market…where were they taking all that metal? Is there another port I don’t know of, one that builds ships or armaments? Perhaps the smiths have not left this town, after all. I wonder how long you have been planning this, Gloria, and how deeply rooted this plan is?

  “What fine swords your men have,” praised Thackery. “Though I confess to being swayed by rumors that Blackforge was no longer the foundry for which it was famed.”

  “Do not believe henswives’ gossip,” replied Augustus.

  “Where are the forges, then? I saw none—worth note—in the market or within the city.”

  To the far north, thought Caenith, who could hear the dim clangs and huffs of men toiling over great fires and machinery somehow within the earth, now that Thackery had planted the notion.

  Augustus halted before a mighty rafter hung with sails of tanned flesh that swayed in sensuous ways and blocked off what remained of the longhouse.

  “Metalcraft is in the blood of every man, woman, and child in Blackforge,” declared Augustus. “We are nursed on bottles of molten milk. We are bred strong and stubborn with bones of lead, and our spirits are as honed as the strongest blade. Our greatness is not diminished simply because you do not see it. Soon the whole of Geadhain will know the song of our steel and the glory of our work. That is not why you are here, though. Come.”

  Now Augustus swept forward through the grand curtain, and the companions followed, caressed by layers of dead skin. Queer smells lured the Wolf from where they were headed: scents of freshwater lake mud and mint leaves that were incongruous with the hickory reek of Blackforge. He was anxious to see what lay ahead. Augustus’s magnificent hall was an affront to the gloomy destitution of his city; that a master should live in such splendor or lecture about starvation while his people suffered was despicable to the companions. Especially in view of the huge stone table prepared with a cold and wasted feast; or the carpet of shining pelts, thick enough to keep any shivering wretch warm; or the chests spilling with wealth and jewels that were nestled among the furs. Among the treasures, Thackery spotted chronexes, astrology instruments, and a detailed globe affixed to a metal arm that could only be gifts from the artisans of Menos. Past the table was a splendid hearth. Here, the fire burned clean and the smoke was drawn out a wide gable. Beneath the opening was a pair of thrones made from polished pale wood, and a young lady as gray and melancholy as the light that fell upon her sat in one of them.

  A tumble of black hair obscured the face of a girl so slight and small that she could be no older than twelve. Inexcusably, she was dressed in a sheer white gown made for a woman twice her age and with half the virtue. Blackmore’s men escorted the companions all the way around the fire, had them kneel, and then stepped back so that their master could approach. As their shadows neared, the girl seemed to wake from her stupor, and her head snapped toward them. Her eyes were deep and intoxicatingly dark, and she did not look at Thackery or Augustus, but at Caenith. First with fear and then with awe, as if she knew who and what he truly was.

  “Mactyre (Wolf),” she muttered.

  “Inan Dymphana (Child of Dymphana),” said the Wolf.

  Even as the words rolled off his tongue, the Wolf was astonished: she was the source of the teasing aromas of Alabion. He had not met another skin-walker in a thousand years or more. Before Morigan, he did not think he would see another creature of the old magik again. Yet here was a child of Dymphana. In Alabion, there was a natural order of supremacy, and this child would be but a lowly rung upon the ladder of his rule. Either Morigan’s compassion had softened him, or he had discovered pathos of his own, for he pitied the tiny seal. How did you get here, little wanderer from the East? How could you have traveled so far alone?

  Augustus strode between the two, breaking their line of sight.

  “Do you speak her funny tongue?” demanded Augustus.

  Caenith paid him no heed and continued to stare through him.

  “That’s the most I’ve heard out of her,” Augustus said. “She won’t utter a word to me. Her silence will do for a wife, though her infertility will not.”

  Shock at the master’s words jolted Thackery to his feet. “Wife? Infertility?”

  “Yes,” snorted Augustus. He sat upon his seat and claimed his bride’s hand, pulling it forcibly into his lap. “She is bound to me in marriage. We were wed two months ago and have consummated the arrangement many times since. She bleeds, yet she does not bear children. You’re the apothecary. Tell me how to fix this. The physicians have told me that she is not barren, and I would not trade her for another wife, as she will be a fine beauty once she ripens. She is young enough to provide me with many sons, too. As an only heir, the weight of my lineage rests wholly upon my shoulders. So you understand my problem. I shall see that the faults of my father are not repeated with a single child, and that my seed is sown far and wide.”

  “But she is a child!” objected Thackery.

  “And I am a master!” roared Augustus.

  “There is no medicine that can make a child bear a child,” spat Thackery. “I am sorry, Master Blackmore, but I have nothing to offer you.”

  Augustus smiled. “I disagree.”

  With a clap of his hands, men drew steel behind them, and more warriors rustled into the chamber. Caenith could hear the stretching of bow strings and the heartbeats of at least a dozen of Augustus’s guard. He calmly remained as he was, locking eyes with the sad seal girl. Like him, she was not concerned with this grotesque man and his abuses of flesh and power. She was thinking of Alabion or of another dream she had lost: a lullaby, as her kin had such beautiful voices; a mother and father, who had no scents upon her; or even her precious skin, which was also forsaken or lost, for no trace of it was felt by the Wolf. Nonetheless, past the sorrow, he could sense the longing in her eyes and heart, this joy at having found another, even if he was a predator to her. Somewhere beyond the cold Iron Wall of Menos, Morigan must have felt the growl of his empathy, for a rush of her Will was within him, supporting him in his decision over whatever wild act he was to do.

  “Rotbottom,” said Augustus. “A rather famous bloodline, not easily forgotten. It took me only a moment to remember that name, for I had heard it just this morning while receiving orders from the Iron Marshals. You are a wanted man, Rotbottom. The house of El will reward me for your capture. Had you not given your name, you might have slipped from the city unimpeded.”

  You know neither my real name nor what I am capable of, thought Thackery. He would be more worried if this man knew his true identity. Perhaps he would show him; it was time to cast off his failed disguise and shine as Whitehawk.

  “Yo
ur fast hands won’t save you now,” gloated Augustus, stepping back behind his throne, well out of what he believed to be Caenith’s reach. He pointed to the kneeling man—still so unusually placid that Thackery could read a measure of his intent before it occurred. “You will die for daring to lay a hand on me. Know that you failed in protecting your master, dog.”

  “Wolf,” corrected Caenith. He glanced to Thackery, his stare cruel as a murderer’s knife. “Break the elements. Bring this whole chamber down. Burn them all.”

  “What?” exclaimed the master of Blackmore.

  And that was all Augustus had time to say before twin furies, one of light, the other of wind, occurred. Summoning his anger at the venality and despair that they had seen was simple for Thackery. The hate and the tangled feelings surrounding Bethany and Theadora’s ends never left him, never left anyone who had lost so deeply. Like monsters at the gate, they howled to be released, and he cracked open the prison with his Will and let it pierce and sear its way from his flesh. It burned as the magik of hate did. It felt as if he had swallowed the sun, but he bit the tears and tried to rein the white whips of lightning that lashed and charred all corners of the chamber. The great table was smashed by two crisscrossing lines of sorcery and blew into dust. Pieces of the wall blasted out into the day, and the roof lit up with a lattice of fire. Not Caenith or the girl. Not Caenith or the girl, he chanted, and tried to see through his blazing eyes what was happening around himself. Moving about the dazzling flames was an agile blur that he knew was Caenith.

  When Thackery turned into a wrathful star and cascaded the room with magik, the Wolf rushed the thrones and snatched the delicate seal girl before any of that power came crashing upon her. Which it would have, a moment later, for the thrones exploded into sparks and fiery shrapnel, and Caenith danced among the bolts. To his regret, the master of Blackmore was thrown back with the scorching debris and lost somewhere; a shame, as Caenith wanted to rip out the man’s throat. Approaching Thackery as he extravagated with electricity wasn’t a clever idea, so he rolled like a master tumbler among the arcs of magik and waited for Thackery to restrain his power. During the gymnastics, his cloak scattered off him in a wave of ash. Stone dust was clotting the air, the rafters above were portentously groaning, and Thackery had not yet bottled his rage, so Caenith shouted his companion’s name in a thunder that overtook the rattling of the room. At that, the light dimmed, the magik fizzled to sparks, and a space that was so bright was suddenly clouded to blindness from debris.

  Screams cut the darkness, horns of alarm sounded. Thackery’s tired old body tried to pick itself up out of the warm refuse so that he might find his companion. Caenith found him first, and he had never been so delighted to recognize the smell of a man. Up onto a mighty shoulder Thackery was slung, and he felt small hands holding on to his feet, which meant that the young girl was safe and possibly crooked in Caenith’s elbow: it wasn’t inconceivable that he had them flung together on the same limb, large as he was. Whatever the arrangement of parts, Thackery didn’t give it much thought, as he was distracted by the dizzying leap that propelled them from the smoky chamber and into clean gray skies. The crumbling aperture of the gable they had flown through gave him a flaming wink as it collapsed, and he tried not to reflect on whether the heat-wavering longhouse was really as hollowed out as it appeared. But he only got the slightest peek at the destruction, and scenes were rather shaky after that as Caenith bounced along like a skipping stone from building to building. Once they stopped, however long from then, his only memento of the journey would be how bruised and sore his chin was.

  So much for a stealthy entrance to the East, he thought more than once, and each time it brought him laughter.

  II

  The Black Grove was not deserving of the stain that came with the Blackmore’s association, for it was a lovely weald. At night it was thick and flourishing with luminous blossoms that were sweetly fragrant, glowing insects, and many paths in which to lose oneself and streams to break pursuit by hounds. Caenith was an impeccable ranger, too, and he showed Thackery the softest peats and the most flexible twigs upon which to walk. Somehow, the Wolf was lighter than a bag-of-bones old man and left not the faintest imprint, compared with Thackery’s stomping. The girl whom they rescued must have been exhausted in body or spirit. She slept in Caenith’s arms, and only woke when he changed positions or if her head fell from the cradle he had made. In those moments, her eyes would startle and sparkle with what Thackery felt was fear, tremendous fear, at Caenith’s great self. Then, a gentle look or an exchange of their Eastern tongue would settle her into sleep again. What an astounding change it was to watch, this reversion from ruthless wildman to doting father, and Thackery stopped to observe every instant of it. He had thought of Caenith as a purely passionate man, untamed and hot as a forest fire, and seeing him with a more patient affection broadened Thackery’s opinion of him. When they paused at a creek so that Caenith could wet his sleeve and dribble water in the girl’s mouth, Thackery’s admiration compelled him to end the silence.

  “We did the right thing,” he said.

  Caenith finished and blotted the girl’s chin. He stared up into the pines, finding the white sliver of moon beyond and took many meditative breaths. When he was ready to speak, he did so with a bitter smile.

  “I am glad that you feel that way. That man was evil. There was a stain on his soul. I can smell these things now, since the Fuilimean. I can feel with more than my physical senses. I felt how alone this child was, and how dark her future. I know that I have invited danger, yet she could not be left to her fate. We have given ourselves a burden, though I do not think Morigan would have forgiven me if I had left Macha there.”

  “Macha, is that her name?”

  “Yes, that is what she tells me.”

  Considering the girl’s use of ancient Ghaedic, and the unearthliness about her, Thackery asked the obvious question. “She is not a normal child, is she?”

  “Normal like you, or normal like me?” the Wolf asked with a grin. He caressed Macha’s face and stood. “She is no slow-walker, if that is what you mean. Although she is now an outcast from the East, too. A child without kin or identity. She will have greater troubles than what we rescued her from.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Thackery.

  “I shall tell you as we walk,” promised the Wolf, and began to splash through the creek. “I can smell the smothered fire blowing in from the west, and the Crowes over the Black Grove suddenly fly in flocks. If we are not pursued, we could be soon, and distance will be our only advantage now that I have ruined our false identities.”

  Quickly, Thackery snapped off a walking stick for his aching legs and chased after the Wolf. “I don’t think that our aliases were all that sound anyhow, and rescuing that youngling was a choice that we appeared to make together.”

  “That we did,” agreed the Wolf.

  Each man had a private smile and was content with the quiet of the night. Caenith did not explain the girl’s predicament immediately, and Thackery was in no rush for him to do so. The forest was calm and accommodating of the travelers and their solitary moods. Most of the underbrush had surrendered to a spicy bed of pine needles that cushioned the feet, and the trees grew far enough apart that there was no sense of entrapment. Indeed, they could have been wandering a vast temple of nature: each mighty pine an intricate pillar, each bird hoot the song of a worshiper. Stuck on temples, Thackery’s mind rambled further, into thoughts of worship, of old voices and ancient kings. He intuited a meeting point of all these ideas, histories, and fates that he had been exposed to as of late, and tried to bind them into a single significance.

  What could it all mean? The entity that has taken the Sun King? The ancient voice that demands to be honored through rule? What is this thing that is older than our oldest? Are there more like it? If so, then cosmologists, historians, and philosophers are blind to the greatest of truths, or they have chosen to forget so that they might rule
as others should. If we are not the first children of Geadhain, what came before us? And more importantly, what will come after? After these entities have come or have gone again? Morigan’s gifts…Morigan’s fate…she is the center of this storm. What voice does she hear? What is her tie to this ancient past? For there must be one.

  “Hmm?” said Thackery. Caenith had addressed him.

  “Macha,” repeated Caenith. “She is a skin-walker.”

  “I see.”

  From behind, Thackery watched Caenith’s mighty shoulders slump with sympathy. “Only she has no skin to walk in. Hunters caught the girl and her kin out of their skins, lying with the sea lions south on the Feordhan. If I had to guess, I would say that they were taken for savages and were treated with the same kindness slow-walkers show to those who would live with nature instead of against her. Her father was killed, her mother raped and slain shortly after. All their skins—including hers—were taken. Once the beach was red, I doubt that the hunters knew what they had found. A few hides tossed in with the rest. I imagine they have since been sold and snipped up into the latest fashions for wealthy masters.”

  “She is stuck, then? As a mortal?” asked Thackery.

  “Yes. She would need her skin, most of it at least, to ever swim once more.”

  Hearing of the girl’s struggles brought Thackery a displaced anxiety. He rested against a tree for a speck. Politely, Caenith paused for his companion.

  “How did she end up in Blackforge?”

  “Sold,” grunted Caenith. “The men used her for pleasure, found she was good at it—as she never struggled. ‘Mea leatach socair, an said doch ni tabhair tinnaes,’ she told me. ‘I lay there quietly, and they did not hurt me.’ She learned that lesson quickly, and it’s good that she did, for her complacency is what kept her alive. The hunters pillaged the shores all the way to Blackforge, and it was there that they traded her for more competent whores to Augustus, who was conveniently seeking a young, unblemished bride. Her chasteness must have been less important than her youth. Who knows with men so ill.”