Feast of Souls

by C. S. Friedman

  The purse was full of silver. She stared at it for a long while, weighing her options. Then she, too, returned to the inn, and used some of it to arrange for a room for the next two nights. The rest she would spend on a proper young man’s clothing.

  If indeed she would have to do battle with an unnamed darkness, she might as well be well dressed for the occasion.

  Chapter 31

  THE FEAST hall in the Witch-Queen’s palace was full, and spirits were high. At the center of the U-shaped arrangement of couches and low tables Siderea reclined, her dark eyes glittering as she directed the gathering with subtle gestures: a finger lifted to order that flagons of mint wine be refilled over here, a delicate twist of the wrist to indicate that a tray of sweets should be delivered over there. When she laughed it was with a sound like wind chimes tinkling in the breeze, and the men surrounding her leaned close as they whispered choice secrets in her ear, hoping to win that laughter as a sign of her favor.

  Into this gathering a servant came, unlike the others who were so festively attired in colorful silks and golden ornaments. This one was in plain woolen attire, and looked as if he had just been toiling in the gardens, or some other dirty place. The guests were inebriated enough that they did not notice his arrival—or did not care to acknowledge it if they did—but Siderea always kept close watch upon the business of her palace, even when her guests were not aware of it. A moment or two after the servant entered she glanced up at him, took his measure quickly, and then whispered apologies in the ears of the two men closest to her, and in a flurry of scarlet veils and tinkling jewelry, withdrew herself from their company.

  “Send in the dancing girls,” she whispered to another servant as she passed, and he scurried off to obey.

  The one who was waiting by the door shifted his weight nervously as she approached. This close to him she could see that his brown woolen doublet was spattered with something dark. “Not here,” she said quickly, and nodded for him to back out the way he had come. She followed him into the outer hallway, and from there indicated a side chamber where they might speak in private.

  “Forgive me for interrupting you—” he said breathlessly, as soon as the door was shut.

  “I assume you would not do so if you did not have good reason.”

  He nodded. “I am sorry to say so, Majesty. I have heard word . . . there is someone here . . .” He seemed uncertain how to begin, and twisted his woolen hat in his hands as he struggled for words.

  “Just say it,” she said quietly. “The manner of delivery does not concern me.”

  “We have a visitor from Corialanus,” he said. “From the Western Reaches. He says . . . he says the whole of some city has been destroyed . . . everyone killed . . . there was some sort of great monster there. . . . You must hear the details from him, Lady, they are too terrible to repeat.”

  An ice-cold serpent stirred in the Witch-Queen’s heart. That will be Danton’s doing.

  “Take me,” she commanded.

  She stopped briefly in the hall outside the feast chamber to give orders for more entertainment, and to make sure the guests’ flagons would be refilled with mint wine each time they emptied them; they would be less likely to notice her absence that way. She also called for a servant to run to her chambers and fetch her a somber kaftan that she might wear over her festive attire. If there had truly been a slaughter in Corialanus, it was not appropriate to hear the news in the silks and jewels of a celebratory costume. She pulled off her earrings as well and shed her necklace, dropping them into the hands of other servants as she walked; by the time they reached the chamber where the messenger was waiting, the only adornment remaining upon her was a slender anklet with tiny coins hanging from it, that jingled softly as she walked, and an opulent comb she could not easily dislodge.

  Servants threw the doors open before her, revealing a room with yet more of her people inside. On the bed lay the man they were attending to, himself a figure covered in dirt and dried blood and even less pleasant substances. The smell coming forth from him was akin to the reek of an outhouse, and she was pleased to see that her people had already drawn a bath for him, though they would not move him into it until she gave the order.

  She came to the side of the bed and looked down upon him; he did not seem to notice her. His skin was scored with many scratchmarks and also with one deep gouge, which her physician was trying to clean and dress, even as the man turned from side to side, moaning in the grip of some nightmare. Every now and then he would try to bat the physician away and another servant would come and pin him down, until he just lay there sobbing, exhausted, trapped in some remembrance that left him only half-aware of where he was, unaware of who was surrounding him.

  She watched him for a moment, wishing she had one of her Magisters present to assist her. If Danton had made some move on Corialanus, that was the kind of news any one of them would wish to hear. But the price of relying upon the power of others was that sometimes they were just not around when you needed them.

  A bowl of water had been set by the bed. With a silent gesture she ordered one of the servants to wet a cloth in it, wring it out, and give it to her. She sat down by the side of the visitor then, shushed the physician for a moment, and applied the cool cloth to the man’s burning head with all the delicacy of a butterfly’s wing.

  The soothing motion seemed to break through some barrier in his mind; he grew still beneath her ministrations, slowly, and then looked up at her with eyes that seemed to contain a spark of awareness. They were encrusted from dried tears and perhaps worse, red-rimmed and bloodshot, and swollen from his repeated attempts to rub them clean.

  “Dead,” he whispered. “They are all dead. Take care, Lady! It will come to this place too.”

  Then a fit of coughing wracked his body, so powerfully that he shook from head to toe for struggling to contain it. When it was over Siderea gently wiped the phlegm from his lips, noting the fine threads of blood that seeped from his cracked, dry lips. The brief moment of lucidity had passed, however, and his eyes slowly ceased to focus on her and focused instead on some distant, unknown vista. She spoke to him softly, trying to rouse his interest, but he only stared into the distance, seemingly unaware that anyone had spoken to him.

  Finally she stood, and gave the compress over to the hands of a servant.

  “How did he come here?” she asked.

  “He was found on the Great Road, just north of the city. The rider who brought him in said he was raving about monsters, or something like that. Evidently he had walked from Corialanus . . . or so he claims.”

  Very likely, she thought. His leather boots were worn through at the sole in several places, scored and pitted from gravel and thorns and stained with mud. Corialanus was not close by, and until one reached the Great Road, the way was not easy. He must have been traveling on foot for at least a week. No wonder his condition was so wretched.

  She thought with a sudden chill: Hadrian is in the Western Reaches.

  She needed counsel, badly. And the kind of counsel she needed was not currently available within her domain. Silently she cursed her reliance upon foreign powers, but that of course had been her choice; the price of independent power was simply not acceptable.

  “Can you bring him around?” she asked the physician. “Will he be able to speak?”

  He hesitated. “In time, Majesty. But he is on the edge of physical collapse, as you see. You may get a clearer report from him if you allow him a few hours of sleep first.”

  “So be it, then.” She nodded to two of the servants who were clustered around the bed. “See him cleaned up, so that any wounds may be found.” To another she directed, “Bring him food and water; the doctor will tell you what is best.” To the physician she said, “Treat the wounds that require immediate treatment, and if you find nothing more urgent on him, let him sleep. I will hear his tale when his mind is restored to him.”

  “As you command, Majesty.”

  It was hard to sound
calm when she was anything but that. But she could not allow her attendants to see just how badly she wanted the news this man carried, for then they would wonder why she, a renowned witch, did not simply use her power to take his knowledge from him. Or else heal him with her power, so that he might speak sooner.

  Oh, there were a thousand things she wanted to know, was desperate to know, but the men who might gather that information for her were not present, and so that meant a holding game, a mask of calm applied over fevered concern, and patience feigned with royal perfection. Certainly it was a game she was accustomed to. The Witch-Queen of Sankara was nothing if not a consummate actress.

  “Call me if there is any change,” she commanded. “In the meantime I must see to my guests. They must catch no hint of this disturbance.”

  They are all dead. Take care, Lady! It will come to this place too.

  She shuddered inwardly as she left the chamber.

  Power. Coiled within her; untapped, unfocused. She could feel it inside like she could feel her own heartbeat, the pounding of blood in her veins, the passage of air in her lungs.

  Not for the first time, she hungered to set the power free. She hungered to know sorcery as the Magisters knew it, that glorious moment when will became magic, when a single thought might set the very heavens to trembling. Sometimes at night, when she lay very still, she thought she could sense the soulfire yearning within her, as if it, too, hungered for freedom.

  But the price of that kind of power was death, and she had decided long ago she was not willing to pay it.

  Her guests were leaving now. She could hear the palace growing quiet, and it was as if the walls themselves were breathing a sigh of relief. The final hour had been interminable. One could not bring guests into the house only to order them suddenly from it, or rumors of all sorts would follow. One must court them into leaving—seduce them into exit—so that each man thought he had chosen the single most perfect moment to take his leave. Anything else was politically unthinkable.

  It was a game she excelled at, but it was a tiring one, and she was glad it was finally over.

  Now, secure in her private chamber, within that secret closet which no servant was ever allowed to enter, she bound enough power to open the lock of the chest that had no key. It only required a whisper of power; hardly a second’s worth of life, surely. It was her one concession to witchhood, to guard her secrets thus . . . or perhaps, her one concession to the Magisters. For if ever their secrets were lost to another merely because she valued her own life more than theirs, they would be quick to let her know the cost of her error. She had no illusion about that. Even as they lay beside her on silken coverlets, even as they breathed their sweet lovers’ lies into her ear, she never forgot the difference between them, and she was sure they did not, either.

  Inside the small chest were her most precious tokens, things entrusted to her by the kind of men who generally trusted no one . . . or else in some cases, things they had left behind unknowing. A fallen eyelash, abandoned on a pillow. The scent of sweat on a linen towel. They were each packaged neatly, wrapped in silk—for it was said that silk could insulate such things against spiritual pollution—and stored without names on them, so that only she would know which token belonged to which Magister.

  In a small silk bag at one side of the chest were the tokens they had given her knowingly. Not permanent items, these things, that could be turned against their makers, but a mere kiss of each Magister’s personal essence upon fine paper, folded like a lover’s note. As with all her other tokens, there were no names upon them. She kept these in the order that she had first met their owners, which no other witch could guess at. Thus did she safeguard an arsenal which was, in raw potential, more dangerous than any mundane armory.

  Slowly, thoughtfully, she rifled through the notes, at last selecting three that were connected to the more sociable of her lovers. It was a compromise between contacting only one, who might not be able to respond in a timely manner, and calling them all, which was guaranteed to make for a uniquely hostile meeting, and would only be an option in the direst of emergencies. She chose three Magisters that were unlikely to take offense if others were also summoned; not an easy task at the best of times. Some of the black-robed sorcerers could not share space with their own kind for more than an hour without getting caught up in a magical pissing match, and while that had only happened a few times in Sankara, the clean-up afterward had been expensive enough that she did not relish the thought of a repeat performance.

  Not to mention they were all her lovers, and a woman should never bring more than two of those into a room without first hiding all the breakables.

  Carefully locking the chest and then securing the room it was hidden in, she ordered a servant to bring her a small brazier and flint. Her staff was accustomed to such requests and she soon had what she needed.

  Then she drew in a deep breath and tried to still her soul so that the athra would flow freely from it, as her witch father had taught her to do so long ago. She rarely used her own power these days—rarely needed to—but sometimes it could not be avoided. The tokens the Magisters had left with her would help provide focus for her efforts, but if she wanted to use that focus to contact them, her own soul must provide the power.

  It will only cost me a minute’s worth of life, she told herself. Surely it is worth the sacrifice, to call someone here who can do greater things.

  When her spirit was still and she felt ready to shape the athra to her will, she struck a flame and set fire to the tokens. The smoke was fragrant and clean, and she shut her eyes as she breathed it in, taking the Magister’s spiritual signatures into herself, weaving a message to bind to them, sending it forth along that channel. The task was strangely difficult, almost as if her life force did not wish to be bound, and when the message finally went out it felt weaker than it should be. Was she too tired—or perhaps too stressed—to cast a simple communication spell properly? If so, it was the first time such a thing had ever happened to her. She was a natural in witching terms, had been so since her childhood, and the single greatest struggle of her life had been how to learn not to use the power. This was an odd sensation, almost as if her soul did not want to release the athra she required. Curious . . . and troubling.

  Come look through my eyes, she whispered into the smoke, to the distant Magisters receiving her message. See what is here.

  What manner of message the Magisters perceived would depend upon their mental state when it arrived, of course. Those who were awake would probably be aware that visions were being sent to them, and from whom they came. Those who were asleep, however, might simply incorporate her offerings into their natural dreamscape, and not realize that this handful of images had any special significance. Yet another reason why calling to the Magisters did not always produce results.

  Shutting her eyes, she envisioned the traveler as she had seen him, bloodstained and filthy. Then she replayed in her mind his chilling explanation she had been given, and his own dismal prophecy. The whole of his land has been destroyed . . . everyone killed . . . there was some sort of great monster there . . . it will come here too . . .

  He is delirious, she thought into the smoke. I cannot tame his mind or know his secrets without assistance.

  At last it was done. She bowed her head before the brazier for a moment, wondering why she felt so weak. On those rare occasions when she used her own witchery it generally invigorated her, causing her body and soul to feel abuzz with vital energies. This sensation was exactly the opposite. It was as if accessing her power had opened some wound that was bleeding out her energy into the night, weakening her more with every moment that passed.

  The message has been sent. That is all that matters. If there is something wrong with me, those who can help with it will be here soon enough.

  She settled down upon her couch and tried to shut her eyes and sleep for a while, aware that once her Magisters arrived there might be little time to rest.

&nb
sp; Three of them came, though not the three she had invited. Colivar was first, stepping through the intervening miles between here and there without warning or fanfare. To her surprise he brought Sulah with him, a pleasant-looking young man with the fair skin and blond hair of the northern races, who had visited her once before. “He has an interest in this matter,” Colivar said mysteriously, and would not explain further. That was fine. This Magister shared things with her in his own time, which was sometimes frustrating, but she was certain he would not leave her ignorant in any matter that impacted the safety of her realm.

  Fadir arrived shortly after, clothed in his usual husky, red-haired body; charms and talismans hung from the coarse braids of his long hair like barbarian trophies. She watched with some interest as he and Colivar took each other’s measure like wary dogs; evidently neither man had assumed other Magisters would be present. It was a small thing but it pleased her, as did any happenstance which managed to surprise her sorcerous lovers. She knew enough of their natures to understand that novelty was the most precious commodity in their universe, and it pleased her to know she had provided it.

  Briefly she outlined the situation for her guests. Colivar’s expression was dark as he listened; Fadir’s was simply wary. Sulah seemed as curious and receptive as a young morati, so much so that she wondered if he had only recently gained his immortality. Then again, that might be an aspect he feigned to set rivals off their guard. If her years with the Magisters had taught her nothing else, it was that there was no perceivable limit to the games these men might play with one another. A young-seeming Magister was as likely to be one thousand years old in truth as he was likely to be twenty.

  Colivar nodded when she was done speaking; his expression was grim. “Take us to him.” Sulah started to whisper something to him but Colivar shushed him; with a pang of jealousy in her heart, Siderea realized they had not truly fallen silent, merely moved the conversation to realms of unvoiced thought that she could not share. She did not protest their privacy, but led the three of them in silence to the chamber where her guest lay. By the time they arrived there, Sulah’s expression was as grim as Colivar’s.