Feast of Fates (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 1)
Page 50
He would have held that stare all the way until the Long Nightmare consumed him, but the Wolf would not permit him so stupid a death and was tugging him along like a troublesome brat. As they raced through a small opening and into the golden grace of the sun, Thackery cast his staff along with what power he could muster into the cleft. Fear is what he Willed and charged the wood with, and it was simple for him to produce. With a crack of thunder, a gust of smoke, and a blast of light that bowled them to their arses, Thackery sealed the shame of his people for what he hoped would be forever.
He picked himself up and scoured the craggy foothills for his companions. When he saw the ripped figure of Caenith, prone and slung over a rock, and near his reaching hand—trying to clutch her even in insensateness—the still and skyward-staring Macha, despair squeezed a whine from his throat. No! No! No! He ran for them, dreading what final price the Iron Valley had exacted for their crossing.
XVIII
AN UNIVITED GUEST
I
Morigan was deeply asleep when the cold hand of horror reached into her guts and twisted her awake. The bees were at her at once. Terrible things afoot! they warned, and weren’t any more specific than that. She had wisps of a dream to cling to: of being lost and wandering through a dark subterranean web, while fingerless terrors groped at her. She had no idea what it meant, but it sickened her with anxiety.
Kanatuk’s scarred head appeared.
“You were making strange noises.”
“I was having a difficult sleep,” she rasped.
“Here, some water,” he offered.
With Kanatuk’s assistance, she sat up. She nursed the rusty can of water that he passed to her and tried to flush the fog from her head. The cold helped to wake her, as did the dissonance of the dripping roof, the rattling of wind against boarded-up windows, and the squeaking of rodents—some of which she was certain had crawled over her in the night. Beggars can’t be choosers, I suppose, she scowled. A derelict atelier, fit not even for vagrant habitation, was surely one of the last places their pursuers would look.
Condemned for its mad master’s dabblings in plague craft, Alastair had gaily informed them, as if they were passengers on a gruesome sight-seeing tour. She did not spot his lean shadow amid the covered crates or age-caked workstations, and assumed that he had slipped off in the night. Whether he was to return, anyone could guess. Although he had fulfilled his obligation to Mouse, from the interest he expressed in the Curious Case of Morigan Lostarot, as he termed it, Morigan felt that his involvement was merely beginning. Her other companions were across the long, cluttered room and conferring upon twin boxes. The meager grayness of a Menosian dawn that filtered over Mouse and Vortigern could have been as bright as the brightest sunshine, so convivial was their chatter. Still, a certain shyness persisted to their manner; a nervousness to their laughter, as if they were unsure of the happiness they shared. Quite understandable behavior, she acknowledged, for family members who never knew each other to have met through the means that they did.
“Is it true?” whispered Kanatuk, who was crouched beside her. “My ears have heard the words father and daughter enough times for my head to accept it, but I do not.”
“It is,” declared Morigan.
Kanatuk clapped her on the back. “I would not want to interrupt, but we should speak to them. We have been in the Iron City too long, and if Elissandra could find us once, she can do so again.”
Elissandra. Morigan chilled at the recollection of that woman creeping around in her head. She left her tatty blanket and followed Kanatuk to the others, who pulled out crates to accommodate them. Morigan tried not to think of why her seat was marked with a black X and a skull. The four exchanged pleasantries, which quickly ran their course. In moments, the conversation turned sobering.
“Your friend, he has left us?” asked Kanatuk of Mouse.
“Alastair? I would hesitate in calling him a friend. He’s an acquaintance with vested interests in my existence—I don’t know what those interests are.” Mouse pointed to Morigan. “I believe that he’s added you to his collection now, as well.”
“Collection?” asked Morigan.
“If he’s given you an alliteration, then yes. He has them for all his interests. The Mighty Mouse. That’s mine,” she said. “He drops it from time to time. I don’t think he even realizes it when it comes out of his mouth. At least yours has a certain flair. Could be a thrilling book, even.”
“However did you meet so strange a man?” asked Morigan.
“He was the one who transacted my freedom from indentureship. A neutral party is often delegated for matters between Crown and common folk—rare as those are—to ensure fairness. The Watchers do most of this work. Anyway, he said it had never been done, commended me, and then asked what plans I had as a free woman. None, of course, as a slave dreams of escaping her chains, not of the reality that comes after. I was soon to see that I had exchanged one imprisonment for another.” Mouse frowned as dark memories rattled through her of times and torments she would rather forget.
She is repulsed that it has come to this. Sitting in smoky taverns, powdered, and painted in makeup. Smiling at men who only return the happiness until their seed is emptied. Sometimes they pay her less when they see the scars between her legs. She does not blame them, as she is a broken good. As she sips her wine, she tries to mask her bitterness, for that is not the fragrance that men desire. Yet the internal voices will not be quiet. The shame and self-revulsion grows with every grunting body that she pushes off herself, and no amount of wine can wash down her disgust.
What have you accomplished? What have you become? You are still a whore, she spits at herself. How long until you buy the rope to end your miserable life? She has the money to fetch herself a proper rifle: that would be quicker, if messier. She is contemplating her suicide and wearing her grimace of a smile, when a thin stranger dressed in black sits down at the bar next to her. In what is a twist of convention, he does not slide a drink to her, but takes her glass and dumps its contents on the floor. Furious, she turns to him.
“My Mouse, my Mighty Mouse,” says the red-bearded man. “How meek you have become.”
“I was quite lost and quite poor when he found me again,” she continued. He offered me what I could not find myself: purpose, a true vocation. Such is how I became a Voice. All that thriftiness and cunning amounted to something, after all.”
“It amounted to much more than I see you giving yourself credit for, Fionna,” said the dead man.
Either from the use of the name or her own misgivings, Mouse blushed.
“Can he be trusted? Is this place safe?” pressed Morigan.
Mouse pondered the question. “While it is true that information is brokered to the highest bidder, I do not think there is a price that can be paid to Alastair to betray his own odd principles. None that I have seen.”
“When will he be back?” asked Morigan.
“That I cannot say,” replied Mouse. “He is out on an errand, and his comings and goings are unpredictable.”
“Errand?” said Morigan.
Mouse beckoned them into a huddle. “Since he didn’t immediately disappear after taking us here, I thought I would test his patience and ask him to fetch us some supplies for a trip underground.” She waited to see if any of the blank stares resolved themselves into realization. When they didn’t, she resumed. “We’ve been attacking the problem of the Iron Wall with all the wrong ideas. That’s the challenge of the Wall: it’s insurmountable. You can’t get through it, and even if you bore a hole into it with the rage of Eod’s king himself, you’d have the Ironguards to deal with. We can avoid all that by simply going under it.”
Kanatuk was the first to perceive her plan; he waved his hands in dismissal. “Too dangerous. The Undercomb is the Broker’s realm. He has eyes and ears everywhere. We would never make it to where you intend to take us.”
Mouse corrected him. “Where you intend to take us.”
“He seems to listen to you. You will need to make him see reason,” said Mouse.
“Reason about what?” exclaimed Morigan.
Vexed, Mouse exhaled loudly and leaned back on her box. “I suppose this all came out in a messy way. The plan. I was thinking about it all night. Along with Vortigern. He’s quite good for bouncing ideas off of.”
Proudly, the dead man flashed his yellow teeth while Mouse continued.
“I’ve been in the Undercomb. Deep in its passages, and there are roads that lead out of the city that men do not use. One-way roads, most of them. Pipelines and such. Most lay beyond the Broker’s nest.” She spat the word. “I never wanted to see that place again, but we may have no choice. Dealing with a few of the Broker’s foot soldiers is certainly preferable to battling the armies and Iron Wall of Menos. Wouldn’t you agree?”
Morigan did not agree, not immediately. She sullenly pondered the proposal until sense bled its way into her. What Mouse suggested had merit, though they would need Kanatuk’s assistance if they were to navigate the realms beneath Menos safely.
“I shall speak to him,” huffed Morigan.
Wasting no time, Morigan left the two to explore the atelier, trying to find where Kanatuk had so quickly and stealthily retreated. She whispered into corners, checked behind stacks of boxes, and coughed her way through dusty curtains into a surgical chamber that racked her mind with gory splatters of unwholesome, unconsented operations. She was ill after stumbling from the room and almost done with hide-and-sneak, so she sent out the bees to do what her eyes and ears could not. The buzzing guided her to the back of a storeroom. She bumbled about in the darkness, knocking her shins on things and cursing, and ended up near the one window that shed some of its sulking light into the room. In the murk there, Kanatuk was a ghost, a shade that peered through a boarded window. His eyes and heart sparked with anger. Morigan went to him.
“You are quite good at not being found,” she said.
“You are quite good at finding,” he replied.
“Have you thought about what Mouse asked?”
“Yes.”
“Will you do it?”
He did not answer.
“I used to believe in coincidence, not fate,” said Morigan. “Now I could not tell you the difference between the two. In this world, there are hidden rules that few, if any, understand. Perhaps it is our destiny to storm the Iron Wall and die in a blaze of glory. Perhaps that is written in the ledger of the one who scribes our fates. However, I am starting to think that if we learn these rules ourselves, we can influence them. We are the scribes. We give life meaning; we create our fates. Was it luck that brought us together? Luck that carried you from beyond Kor’Keth and me across the world from Eod? To meet as captive and captor and somehow break the bonds that chained each of us?”
She had Kanatuk’s attention now, and he turned his face toward her.
“A remarkable accident that would be,” continued Morigan, and a bit of the Wolf’s passion for prose flushed her heart. “If we were looking at only ourselves. Yet we must look at how far the entanglements spread. Caenith, my bloodmate. Thackery, a fallen master of Menos. Mouse and Vortigern. Four fates, all entwined, and this can be no accident. But I declare that it is not an invisible caretaker, nor random chaos, that has thrown us into one another’s lives. It is our choices. Powerful choices, which have powerful consequences, a painting in which each of us is a willful stroke. In the end, the choice of whether you will take us into the Undercomb is entirely yours. It belongs to no one else. Weigh the power of that choice as you consider, though. Think on how bound together these other souls are to your choice. And remember that you decide the fates of not only us four, but all the unnamed who have yet to add to our picture.”
Throughout her speech, Kanatuk’s anger ebbed. When she was done talking, he was trembling with pride, humility, and happiness. He bowed upon a knee and hung his head.
“I would have done what you asked, only because you wished it,” said he. “Now I understand that I must, and I am privileged to make that choice. I would like to see what we create together, too. Where my strokes land on the great picture.”
After sands of silent prostration by the silent warrior, Morigan became uncomfortable and asked her friend to rise. He emitted a harmoniously ringing melody that the bees found enticing. Duty, this was, and he was brimming with it.
“I shall tell Mouse what I know,” he promised.
“Thank you.”
Kanatuk began to slink away. He turned when he noticed that Morigan was not following him.
“Are you coming?”
“I think I shall stay for a moment,” she replied.
Although she never heard his footsteps, she sensed his departure. She was relieved to have only her silence and not the worries of another to manage. From the day her gift had awoken, there had been so little time inside her own mind, or to think of things as an individual. Even her joining with Caenith was a small sacrifice of herself; though for him she would make it again and again. She thought of the Wolf, clawing his way toward her, and wondered how near to the Iron City he and Thackery had come. If all went as planned, she might cross the Iron Wall before they did. As wrenching as their separation had been, there were positives to their distance if she chose to see them. As she had explained to Kanatuk, she was beginning to identify the patterns in their destinies and had found—or created—reasons for her existence. She now had some rather extraordinary goals, which she would not have had the inspiration or courage to set for herself before, mostly on account of their seeming impossibility. I want to know my mate, every secret, beauty, and darkness of his soul. I want to see this great world from end to end and make my place in it. I want to meet my father, if he lives, or find the stones that bury him if he does not. I want to be a warrior, a poet, a lover, a mother. I want more experiences than I can fill a lifetime with, and I swear that if I am given more years, or if I steal them from fate, I shall not waste a single day.
She had not the slightest notion if her life would be as spectacular as she portrayed it to the Seal Fang. Yet she was excited to discover where her choices would lead her and eager to make more, no matter how daring. She wondered what had become of her fear, and laughed at its cowardice.
As brave and untamed as the rivers of Alabion, echoed the voice of Elissandra in a conversation that only they could hear. To think that I believed I ever had the right to tame such power. I would ask you not to scream. I am not here to harm or thwart you. Your Sight will tell you that.
Shouting for her companions was indeed Morigan’s first impulse. However, Elissandra was either weaving a spell of deception or telling the truth, for the bees were calm. Cautious still, Morigan peeked past the planks and into the gloomy city. Nowhere amid the ghetto of broken fences and abandoned dwellings did she spot a spectral woman wrapped in gray—she knew that this is how Elissandra looked, even without ever seeing her.
Where are you? I do not speak to spirits, she said.
Then I shall appear, announced Elissandra.
There came the tiniest rip, and then the faintest breeze tickled Morigan: a wind risen from inside, not outside. Morigan spun to see a white and fair woman in a flowing gown and cloak. Surely as alarming as the woman’s inexplicable appearance were her delicately lined eyes that flashed with a hint of silver. Not as sterling as Morigan’s, though with the same twist of light to them. The hostilities flew from Morigan.
How did you do that? Where are your men? What do you want?
Too many questions, and I cannot answer them all, Elissandra said, smiling. The greatest lessons are those we learn on our own.
Tell me or I summon my companions, demanded Morigan.
Elissandra was displeased. Direct your anger elsewhere, child, we are closer than you would care to know. The Ironguards
who were with me were dealt with, personally, so that our privacy could be assured. No one can or will know that we have met or spoken. I am as much in jeopardy in being here as you are. What I did is an Art that you have not yet been trained in, the Art of shifting through the wrinkles in Dream and reality. It is no crude propulsion through time and space, like sorcerers do, but a true mastery of what is real and what is not. Such power is not beyond you. It is, in fact, beneath you. And that is why I have come. Our time is finite, and you must trust me and listen true, for what I have to say will change everything you know.
Trust her? thought Morigan. An Iron sage? A woman who just confessed to killing the men who serve her? Maddeningly enough, the bees were complacent in the company of this cold-blooded murderess.
Do not judge me, stated Elissandra. Death without a purpose is senseless. What I have done was a blood sacrifice for our meeting. Those men would have traced a connection to our fates. You have tasted blood before, and you would taste it again. I’d say that you like it. She waved her hand in the air as if defogging a wintry window and seeing some invisible sign through the pane. Ah yes, the lord of Pining Row. The Blood King himself. You are promised to him. You are so deeply rooted in our traditions and yet so blind to what you are.
Morigan held a final debate with herself about alerting the others, yet her daring was rapidly outgrowing her caution. She sighed and leaned against the wall. While she was willing to hear this woman’s words, she kept a fair distance between them, and felt ready to call upon that strange somnolent power again at the merest hint of aggression.
Good. You are listening, said Elissandra. We would need hourglasses for me to tell you all that you desire, and we have only sands.
Sands?
Sands, said Elissandra with finality.
As Elissandra started speaking, she glided around the small space behind the boxes. She did not cross the unspoken boundaries that Morigan had placed, not for the moment at least. Some of what the Iron sage spoke of Morigan already knew, though there was much to pique her mind with interest and disgust.