Feast of Souls

by C. S. Friedman

  The man was asleep, but he did not look peaceful. He stirred fitfully as if in the grip of some nightmare, and moaned softly as they approached, as a wounded animal might.

  “I have given him something for the fever,” the physician said. “His outer wounds are cleansed and dressed but I can only guess at the wounds inside him. He needs your skill, Majesty.”

  A Magister’s voice inside Siderea’s head told her, The sickness is in his mind, not his flesh.

  She spoke the same words aloud, as though she had determined the fact herself. The physician nodded, trusting to her power, and backed away to give the new-comers room to come close. They did so, Fadir coming to the foot of the bed, Colivar and Sulah to one side of it, and Siderea sitting down on the edge of the mattress on the other side. The servants had peeled the man’s foul clothing off him and managed to get him clean enough that the bruises and cuts which covered his upper body were plainly revealed. Blankets covered the rest of him, but she was willing to bet that the view down there was much the same.

  She waited a moment for the Magisters to study him with their invisible sorceries, then gently put a hand upon the man’s cheek. He jerked upright in his sleep and began to pull away from her hand—and then something seemed to take hold of him, freezing him in place. His brow furrowed as if in pain, and then, after a moment, slowly relaxed . . . and his body relaxed as well, falling back onto the bed with a creak of weary bones as his eyes slowly opened.

  There was no pain in his gaze now, nor fear, nor was there anything that might rightly be called human consciousness. Whoever had taken control of him had clearly brought him to a state where he might answer their questions without being driven to madness by the memories those questions might arouse.

  “Who are you?” she asked it softly, in the tone one might use to calm a wounded animal. It was probably unnecessary, given what the Magisters had done to him, but it would encourage those of her people who were present to believe that she was the one who had brought him to this calm, if not by witchery then by the simple power of her presence.

  “Halman Antuas.” His voice was equally quiet, but without human inflection of any sort.

  “Where do you come from?”

  His brow furrowed; he seemed to struggle with the question.

  “Permit me, Majesty.” It was Fadir.

  “Of course.” She nodded graciously for him to proceed.

  “Where did you travel from last, to come here?” Fadir asked.

  This time there was no hesitation. “The western reaches. Corialanus.”

  She had to ask it. “Lord Hadrian’s land?”

  “Aye.”

  She shut her eyes for a moment and shuddered inwardly, wondering if the slaughter he had hinted at had included one of her favorites.

  “Why were you there?” Colivar asked.

  “We were bringing supplies to the men stationed at King’s Pass.” As he spoke the name of the place he flinched; Siderea could almost see the Magister’s sorcery struggling to maintain control of the man as memories began to return to him. “I had two dozen with me, strong guards, good fighters. All gone now . . .”

  She said quietly to the Magisters, “King’s Pass is a lesser road leading from Danton’s territory southward. It is narrow and treacherous, not an ideal route for armies, but still a potential road for conquerors, if they wished to avoid the more heavily fortified regions. The Lords of the Western Reaches take turns outfitting a guard post at the neck of the pass to have warning if such a move were launched.”

  “So,” the man whispered feverishly. “Just so. All gone now. The Dark Ones have returned—we are all doomed—”

  “Tell us what you saw,” Fadir commanded. “Start to finish, as it was that day.”

  Sweat was breaking out on the man’s brow, but as Siderea reached forth to pat it dry with a cloth she found it was a cold sweat. If the fear was a fever inside him, Fadir’s power was not allowing it to surface.

  “I came with a team on horseback, carrying supplies into the mountains.” His voice was hoarse, strained and halting, as if each word had to be forced out individually. “The guard who was supposed to meet us on the way, to guide us the last mile, did not. It made our captain wary. He sent out a scout into the woods ahead, to see if there was trouble.”

  His voice dropped to a whisper. “The scout returned . . . in body . . . but his spirit was gone. His eyes were filled with a terrible madness. Even I could not break through it.”

  “You are a witch?” Siderea asked.

  He nodded. His skin had drained to a ghastly color, like that of dead flesh, and his head began to jerk from side to side as unwelcome memories came pouring back into him. “Couldn’t help—didn’t have enough power—it would have eaten me alive—” He shut his eyes; a violent shudder ran through his body. “Where were the gods?” he choked out. “Why did they let this happen?”

  She had no answer for him, but bit her lip as Fadir’s sorcery took hold of the man once more. This time, however, even sorcery was not enough to quiet him; in the end the Magister reached out, touched a finger to his forehead, and commanded, “Sleep.” The man’s body sagged immediately, as it did earlier, all the strength seemingly drained out of it; his head rolled limply to one side, the lids half open but the eyes unseeing.

  “Clearly he has told us all that he can,” Colivar said quietly. “So we shall view the past as he saw it.”

  He walked to the head of the bed and passed his hand over the man’s face. A tremor ran through the witch’s body, but he did not awaken. Then, slowly, mist began to coalesce over the man’s face, colors drew together, and a vision began to take shape over him.

  Dark it was, very dark. The sun was shining but the man’s fear obscured it like black stormclouds; only in the center of the vision did light shine clearly. The substance of the conjuring was a fine-colored mist that shivered in eddies and currents as it responded to the man’s memories, and details were unclear about the edges, but in the center of the field the mist soon resolved into a company of men on horseback leading several narrow wagons, with a pair of men arguing at the head of it. Near them on the ground sat another figure, uniformed, with the aspect of an idiot; a thin line of drool trickled down his chin as he stared off, trembling, into vistas no one else could share.

  And then one of the men left the company—Antuas himself—and began to hike into the woods. He made an odd gesture about himself as he did so, such as witches sometimes used to bind power, and Siderea guessed that he was making sure that any sentries would be looking in another direction when he passed by.

  What was it like to use the power so freely, she wondered. To feel the power surging through one’s soul from within in such deliberate quantity, instead of being portioned out in dribs and drabs for fear of an untimely death?

  As the witch Antuas walked through the woods and then passed through them and beyond, they faded, became shadow. A settlement took shape before him. Empty. It likewise was left behind as he continued to walk. Houses came into view. Empty. Weapons were missing from their racks. Doors were left open. Dark stains were splashed upon a threshold, across the earth, trampled into the mud. The images passed in and out of focus like a dream, each fading into mist in turn as the viewer turned his attention to the next detail. That the witch in the vision was terrified was painfully clear. He was clearly no soldier himself, Siderea thought, merely a villager who had been paid to join the company of soldiers “in case of emergency.” Now the emergency had come, and it was clearly more than he could handle.

  Then the trees gave way to open ground, and he saw what was waiting there for him.

  He fell to his knees.

  Siderea gasped.

  All about him, as far as the eye could see, were bodies. Each was hoisted up upon the point of a towering stake, which had been set vertically into the ground. The bodies had clearly been there a while, and scavengers had plucked much of the flesh from the bones, but from their position it was clear that t
hey had been impaled while alive, and thus condemned to a slow and terrible death.

  There were dozens of them. Maybe even hundreds. Seen through the lens of the visitor’s memory the number was uncertain, as if the sheer horror of the scene made clear focus impossible. Already details of the scene were bleeding out around the edges of the vision; even Colivar’s sorcery could not keep such terrible images from being swallowed up by the man’s madness.

  The witch in the vision fell to his knees and vomited.

  “Is this Danton’s doing?” Siderea whispered. It was all she could think of. No other ruler seemed capable of such atrocities.

  And then, as they watched, a dark shape began to arise from behind the forest of spears. Something with wings that had been hidden behind a rocky outcrop, that was now taking to the air.

  The vision wavered. The witch moaned. His lips were a cold blue now, and where his eyes showed there were only whites.

  It was a great beast, winged but not like a bird in its form, nor like a bat, nor any other flying creature she might name. Its vast wingspan stretched across the field of spears and cast the rows of rotting bodies into shadow as it rose. Fear-shrouded sunlight played through its wings as if through painted glass, glittering along veins and tendons as it might through the wings of a locust.

  It was terrible. It was fearsome beyond words. And yet . . . it was beautiful. Siderea could sense its beauty even through the mists of Colivar’s vision, could feel the power of that beauty wrapping itself around her soul as she stared at the creature, transfixing her as a hare must be transfixed in that terrible moment just before a hawk strikes. An ecstasy of helplessness. How much more powerful must it have seemed in that place and time, in the creature’s actual presence? It was clear now why this man could not endure the memory of it, nor even narrate details of his story without being overwhelmed by what he had seen.

  “Make it clearer,” Colivar commanded. His tone was strange, unlike anything she had ever heard from him before. “Look upon it more closely, we need the details. . . .”

  Higher and higher the great beast rose, its wings beating the air with a force that made the bodies tremble upon their stakes. Though there was no smell coming forth from the vision, Siderea sensed the moment at which the witch’s bladder gave way in sheer terror. The creature turned its great head in his direction then, as if that had drawn its notice. She saw the man bind his power again, as much of it as he dared, and he used it to disguise his aspect, so that when the creature looked his way he would appear to be no more than another body upon a stake. The subterfuge was visible in the vision as a misty overlay, beneath which his true shape was apparent, but apparently the real spell had been effective. The creature looked over the field of bodies once, twice, three times . . . and then vaulted higher into the heavens, moving quickly toward the south.

  The vision began to fragment, then, and all of Colivar’s power could not make it do otherwise. Images flashed through the sorcerous mists like scenes glimpsed during a lightning storm at night: suddenly illuminated, quickly gone. The witch running through the woods. A camp littered with dead bodies. The witch tripping over the nearest one and landing facedown in the dirt. Screaming. Shadows of wings overhead. Crouching down among the corpses, binding power to appear as one of them. The rising of a reddened, swollen sun. Staggering through the woods toward the only hope of safety. . . .

  Faster and faster new images came, the visitor’s body beneath them now shuddering as if each one was a blow to his flesh. They were losing all coherency now, scenes from memory fading into nightmare, and from nightmare into simple madness, in less than a heartbeat. From the man’s ghostly pale lips came a strangled cry, as the air above the bed suddenly became filled with winged creatures, eyes burning like crimson stars. “They’re coming!” he gasped. “They will come here!” Then his body convulsed, chest thrust outward, blank eyes bulging—and with a terrible final cry it collapsed suddenly, arms and legs askew like the limbs of a broken doll.

  The vision faded. The sorcerous mists dispersed. From someplace near the door, the physician whispered a prayer to his gods.

  Then there was only silence.

  Finally the young one, Sulah, dared, “Was that . . . ?”

  Colivar nodded grimly. All the color was gone from his face, and in his eyes a terrible black fire burned. It made Siderea tremble just to look at him.

  “Souleaters,” he whispered.

  “I thought they were all killed,” Siderea offered. “Long ago.”

  “Driven away. Not killed.” He looked up at her. She could not bear what was in his eyes, and quickly looked away. “An important distinction, my queen.”

  Then he looked to the other two Magisters. “We must go to this place. There are questions that need answers, and we will only find them there.”

  “Do you know where it is?” Fadir indicated the body on the bed, now patently lifeless. “He can hardly lead us now. Or even anchor enough sorcery to show us the way.”

  Colivar considered for a moment, then asked Siderea, “Do you have the clothes he wore when he arrived?”

  She nodded.

  “Have them brought.”

  She gestured for a serving girl to do so. The three of them waited in silence as the frightened girl scurried off to obey. After a moment she returned with a pile of clothing wrapped in linen that reeked even through its bindings. Atop it sat the few simple items the man had possessed: a knife, a small purse, a worn belt, a leather cap. Colivar picked up the last. There was a band around the edge adorned with small brass studs; he ran his fingernail under the frontmost part of the design, where it would have sat upon the man’s forehead. Then he held his finger up to the light, showing them the grains of dirt he had dislodged.

  “The earth he picked up when he fell will guide us to the place,” he said.

  “What will you do there?” Siderea asked.

  The black eyes fixed on her. It was a terrible, hollow gaze. She shivered inwardly but did not look away.

  “You have called other Magisters?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “If they come, tell them to follow us.” He lowered his hand down over the sheets and rubbed off a bit of the dirt, so that it fell upon the coverlet. “I leave them this to facilitate the journey.”

  “Colivar—”

  He reached over the bed, across the twisted body, and caught up her hand. “Do not ask to accompany us. Please, my queen. I would be loathe to deny you anything, but even more loathe to bring you into the middle of what we may find there.”

  She shut her eyes for a moment. Sighed. Then, slowly, nodded. “You will tell me what you learn?” she breathed. “Everything?”

  He kissed her hand. “Of course, my queen.”

  Then he released her and stepped back from the bed. Sulah and Fadir came to his side.

  Colivar looked over at the servants. The physician was huddled white-faced against the door frame. The girl who had brought the clothing cowered in a far corner. “You will forget what you have seen here,” the Magister said quietly. Siderea saw them stiffen slightly as the power in his words took hold of them. “No news of this man’s journey nor his message shall pass your lips until your mistress commands it be so. His death was a natural thing, the consequence of simple exhaustion. Any stories he told before dying must have been from the madness of that state. You understand?”

  The girl whispered, “Yes, my lord.” The physician simply nodded.

  Colivar shut his eyes for a moment, gathering his power. Then he whispered words of binding . . . and slowly the air surrounding the three Magisters began to shimmer, like waves of summer heat over desert sands. Their features grew hazy to Siderea’s vision, then insubstantial, then faded out into the air like the substance of ghosts. Until nothing was left in the room but the Witch-Queen and her servants, the slowly cooling body upon the bed, and the lingering scent of fear. And silence.

  Chapter 32

  IT WAS strange, Andovan thought,
that his moments of greatest strength were fueled by his moments of direst frustration. But so it was.

  Gods knew, there was enough frustration to last him a while. His dreams no longer guided him clearly, which meant that every step he took might be taking him farther from his quarry, rather than toward her. He had no way to know. Some nights he had no dreams at all, and it was as if Colivar’s spells had lost all their power, leaving him stranded in the middle of nowhere without guidance, without focus, without oversight. If that was the case, then he was exactly what strangers on the road perceived him to be, a wanderer without destination or purpose. A pitiful thing for a royal prince to become, for sure.

  The only thing he knew for certain now was that if his quarry had left Gansang just ahead of him the night the dream-towers fell, then every day in which he failed to find her increased the likelihood she would pass beyond his reach forever, and that made him rage inside against the gods, the stars, or whatever forces of Fate seemed nearest. There were rare moments when something suffused his veins that was almost his accustomed strength, and the weakness that was the Wasting seemed to loosen its stranglehold upon his spirit. But only for a brief while. Sooner or later it returned again, a suffocating shroud of enfeeblement that sapped his hope even as it sapped his physical strength. It was all he could do to keep moving each night, and to pray that Colivar’s spells were still active, even though he no longer sensed them. If his dreams would no longer guide his steps, perhaps instinct would.

  The dreams themselves had become chaotic, with strange images that seemed to have no rhyme or reason. Burning gems. Bales of wool. A beheaded infant. The images were like pieces of a puzzle—or ten different puzzles—and he could not manage to assemble them into a meaningful whole. Did that mean Colivar’s power was failing him, or was he simply going mad? Or maybe the machinations of the foreign Magister had intended that all along, to separate him from his father’s house and then play with his mind—