Feast of Souls

by C. S. Friedman

  Trust was more powerful than any sorcery.

  Slowly, thoughtfully, she leafed through the collection of tokens. If she only used one or two of them then she would only be able to read their owners, and she needed more than that. She needed to establish a connection to the entire community of Magisters, so that the secrets they shared with one another would take on a magical substance of their own. Only then would she be able to know what information the Magisters were refusing to share with her.

  Because she had their tokens, willingly offered, that would take very little effort. Though the gods themselves could not save her if they ever found out what she had done.

  She remembered the sense of urgency about Colivar when he had reported to her, the edgy distraction of Fadir and Sulah, and thought: I have to know.

  It was impossible to determine which Magisters would know more of these matters than any other, save for the three who had investigated the matter in Corialanus, and two of those tokens had already been burned. Riffling through the ones which remained, she chose a dozen papers at random. It was half of her collection—a priceless store of power—but the kind of knowledge she was after required that level of sacrifice.

  And of course, a more visceral sacrifice was required as well . . . but that was what being a witch was all about.

  When the half-emptied chest was hidden away once more, she settled herself before her brazier and prepared herself for the task ahead. She found it strangely hard to focus. Frowning, she stroked the tokens her lovers had given her, closed her eyes, and tried to settle her soul to the task. But it was as if her spirit did not wish to settle down to witchery, and her attention kept flitting away to other things.

  Strange, very strange.

  Her father had taught her many tricks for taming one’s soulfire, and after an hour of focused exercises she felt she was finally ready to begin. The dry papers caught fire quickly, and aromatic smoke rose from the brazier. Wafting it toward herself, she breathed the essence of the Magisters into herself and—

  —black whirlpool empty screaming darkness—

  Choking, she opened her eyes. The room was spinning. The smoke in her lungs was making it hard to breathe. The power that should have been surging through her veins was—

  Absent.

  Coughing, she put the cover on the brazier to smother the flames. It was a terrible waste of magical material, but that couldn’t be helped. Whatever was wrong with her, it was clear she was not going to be weaving any spells today.

  She suddenly remembered the difficulty she’d had the last time she had tried to raise the power, when the Magisters were visiting, and a cold shiver ran up her spine.

  Something is wrong.

  She knew what it might be. But she refused to name it. Surely, surely, it had to be something else. Anything else!

  Trembling, she gathered herself for introspection, and used her supernatural senses to look within her own soul. Deep, deep within, to where the fires that fueled her life should have burned brightly. She had gazed at her own soulfire dozens of times in her youth; it was an exercise her father had taught her, when he was showing her how to focus her power. If there was something so wrong with her that her own athra would no longer respond to her, it would show there first.

  Only this time there was no blazing fire within her. This time the sheer heat of her vital essence did not sear her senses. Instead there was only a dim glow of soulfire, that flickered weakly like a dying candle. The essence surrounding it was cold and dark.

  NO!!!!!!!!!!

  She screamed. That set off another fit of coughing, and for a short while it was all she could do to keep breathing. A servant heard the commotion and came running into the room; seeing her choking for air, she tried to help Siderea the only way she knew how, by pounding her on the back.

  “Get out of here!” she screamed. Gasping for breath between the words. “Leave me alone!”

  Terrified, the girl backed out of the room. Siderea could hear other servants by the door, drawn by her screaming, but apparently they were now having second thoughts about entering the room. Then she heard the door close again, leaving her alone with the smoke and the fear—

  And the truth.

  Stunned, she struggled to her feet. The room swirled dizzily around her as she tried to regain her focus. But she managed it, at last. A small victory. Her life was not over yet.

  She shouldn’t have been surprised by this, she told herself numbly. She had known all along her life would end like this. The Magisters were able to keep her young and beautiful, but that was only a stopgap measure to make her mortal days more comfortable. They could not extend the span of her life by so much as a day, unless she became one of them.

  There would be no more witchery for her now, unless she wished to extinguish her life in the act. There would be very few days left at all. The soulfire she had seen had been almost completely exhausted. Soon there would no heat left to sustain her life, and not even sorcery could save her then.

  They knew, she realized suddenly.

  It was the final blow, realizing that that the Magisters must surely know of her condition and had not told her. Why else would they be keeping their distance now? Her face flushed hot with shame . . . and then the shame became anger. After a lifetime of using her, of taking for granted her efforts to support their paranoid society, this was how they meant to let her end her days? Leaving her to discover the truth herself, to face it alone, to begin her descent into darkness without a single helping hand to steady her way?

  With a cry of rage she took up a vase from a nearby table and hurled it with all her might; it hit the far wall and shattered into a thousand fragments. The brazier followed, scattering smoking ashes across the stone floor as it flew. She could hear the servants whispering outside the door, too afraid to come inside as they heard object after object fly across the room. Fools! What did they know of rage? What did they know of shame? They had never had men of power eating out of their hand one day, and abandoning them the next day like some nameless orphan to face their death alone.

  Shaking, she lowered herself slowly to the floor. The smoke in the room had dissipated somewhat, but breathing was no easier. The scraps of paper strewn across the floor were charred black, unmarked and meaningless. Only in the hands of a witch would they have any power, and she was no longer that. She was only a morati woman well past her prime who had gazed upon the face of Death.

  Overcome by rage and sorrow, the Witch-Queen wept.

  Chapter 41

  THANK THE gods for paint and powder,Gwynofar thought.

  It had taken her an hour, but finally the reflection gazing back at her from the polished silver mirror looked something like her accustomed self. The circles under her eyes had been powdered into oblivion. The pallor of her skin had been warmed with a hint of crushed coral. Her hair had been brushed to a radiant golden sheen, and Merian had seen to it that not even a speck of pine debris or soil adhered to it.

  What had made the greatest difference of all was that she had put aside her mourning dress for a gown of garnet silk; the color lent warmth to her flesh and made her look alive again. Now, she raised up her long hair while Merian clasped about her neck a double strand of cream-colored pearls from which depended a delicate rendition of the Aurelius double-headed hawk. Rings that she had not worn for weeks glittered on her fingers. Pearl earrings peeked out from the golden cloud of her hair.

  She looked like a queen.

  A heavy knock came upon the door. Merian ran over to open it.

  Rurick looked about the room as he walked in, then at Gwynofar. His tight-lipped nod assured her that her efforts had been effective . . . even if he had his doubts about how much good they were going to do.

  “Kostas is indeed gone,” he told her. “Sent out on some sorcerous errand earlier this morning. No idea how long it will take. No one knows his business well, and I cannot press for information without having people guess at why I want it.”

&nbs
p; “Then it will have to be enough,” Gwynofar said. The knowledge that Kostas was not with her husband right now quieted her pounding heart a bit. That much we have managed, she thought. Perhaps it will prove an omen for the rest.

  “Are you ready?” the royal heir asked her.

  She let Merian flit about her like an anxious moth one last time, arranging a bit of hair here, a sleeve end there, then waved her away. For a moment she just stood there, breathing deeply, trying to feel as much like a queen as she looked. Danton could smell weakness in others. If she meant to counsel him, she needed to appear confident; he would respect nothing less.

  Finally, all was as right as it could be. She nodded to her son. The gesture felt suitably regal.

  “Take me to Danton,” she told him.

  The halls of the palace seemed dark and depressing to Kamala; it was not at all what she would have expected of one of the richest and most powerful men in the world. Or perhaps she was just comparing him to Ravi and the other Gansang nobles in her mind, with their gaily decorated towers and their peacock retinues. Perhaps wasting energy on such displays was not an option when the fates of numerous kingdoms were in one’s hands.

  “Company,” Andovan whispered suddenly.

  They both fell back into a shadowed alcove as a pair of footsteps approached from around a far corner. Kamala braced herself to use sorcery if she must, to keep their presence a secret, but she hoped it would not be necessary. Not merely because it would weaken Andovan, but because it would almost certainly set off whatever sorts of wards this Kostas had erected to guard the palace, and let him know that a Magister had invaded his turf.

  At least that was the situation according to the information Colivar had given her, and she did not feel that right now was a good time to test his assumptions.

  They had come in through a long, dark tunnel, its mouth hidden in a deep crevasse in the nearby mountains. There was only the light of a small hooded lantern to guide them underground, but Andovan seemed to know the way so well that it was hardly necessary. He whispered to her about how he had found the tunnel when he was just a boy, despite the fact that it was disguised at both ends not only by the normal tricks of siege design, but by sorcery as well. He was of Danton’s blood, however, and Ramirus’ spells recognized him as such, so they had done very little to keep him out. The tunnel had been his lifeline thereafter, he said, allowing him to escape the stifling atmosphere of royal life now and then, and thus to keep his sanity.

  Once they had arrived underneath the palace itself he led her upward through a veritable maze of passageways. These had been provided when the palace was first built in order that servants might go about their duties without ever being seen, and so not distract their royal masters. Here he could not use his lantern in case it would be seen by servants passing by, so he led her forward by touch, and she marveled at how keen his memory was of all these secret spaces. In another time and place she might have offered up a spark of power to light their way, but even that much sorcery would have given them away to Kostas, according to Colivar.

  Had he meant his warning to include all types of power when he said that, she wondered, or was only true sorcery a risk? If the latter, then that meant he knew her for exactly what she was. Kamala felt an icy thrill run up her spine at the thought. The scarf Colivar had offered her showed that he had been following her trail in Gansang; if so, he knew that she had broken the Magisters’ Law there. Why had he not acted against her yet, if that was the case? Why did he tempt her with hints and innuendos, like one might tempt a mastiff with fresh meat to see if he would bite?

  At last they had come as far as the servants’ passageways could take them, and Andovan had brought them out from behind an arras into a large public chamber. It was larger than the passageway they had just come out of, but not much cheerier. They had gone just far enough that they could no longer get back to the passageway for cover when Andovan whispered his warning. And now, pressed back against the wall of a shallow alcove, wishing its shadows were deeper and darker than they were, the two of them could do nothing more than hold their breath and hope that fate favored their subterfuge.

  Slowly, two people were coming down the hall toward their hiding place. Kamala could not see them from where she was, but she could hear cultured male voices discussing political matters in the manner of men who might dictate the course of such things. Not guards, then. She held her breath as they passed, but the two well-dressed noblemen who strolled by did not even glance to the side as they walked. Finally they turned a far corner and their voices passed out of hearing. She released her breath in a sigh of relief and heard Andovan do the same.

  They had disguised Andovan’s features, of course, but given who and what he was it was unlikely that would do any good if people looked at him closely. Kamala had cropped his hair short in the manner of the palace guards and used a whisper of stolen power to change its color to a dark brown—his eyebrows and lashes as well—but without the kind of major spell that might alter the bone structure of his face, it was at best a superficial effort. He was wearing a guard’s uniform, which would help him get by the servants if they only glanced at him in passing, but it was a good bet that the members of the guard knew one another, so that subterfuge would only take him so far. And she could not wrap protective magics around him—or herself—without taking the chance that Kostas would sense it. The only way to have a chance at secrecy was to walk unprotected.

  He seemed to thrive on the danger of it, though. When he walked now, his footfall was utterly silent. When he dropped back into the shadows to avoid being seen, he was so still she was not even sure he was still breathing. He had the body language of an assassin, she mused. The ultimate hunter.

  You are sure you want to go? she had asked him. You cannot attend her meeting with Danton, or help her in any way once it has begun.

  I will be near enough to help if trouble comes, he had told her proudly. And I will serve as distraction, if there is need, that others may do their duty. For a moment the pride in his eyes showed clear and strong, and he was no longer an invalid counting the hours to his death, but a prince defending those who were in his charge. What a fine creature he must have been in the days before the gods decreed he was to end his days as food for a Magister! For a moment she regretted that she would never have the chance to see him in his natural state, but even those few seconds of regret made the air become cold around her, and her lungs suddenly felt bound as if by bands of iron. A warning. She set the speculation aside with effort, and focused upon the present moment. After a few seconds she could breathe again.

  Do not care for him. Do not regret. That way lies death.

  Finally they reached a small chamber set off the main hallway. There was no door here, but the archway that gave entrance to the space was narrow, and by keeping to the far corner they would be out of sight of any passersby. It was as close as they could come to Gwynofar’s meeting, Andovan told her, without being visible to the guards that commonly attended Danton.

  He walked over to where a trio of narrow windows offered a fragmented view of the surrounding countryside. Black, it was, all black. The breeze shifted slightly and the smell of stale ash drifted into the room. Andovan’s eyes narrowed in anger. To one side it was just possible to see the foothills they had come from, sharp granite bluffs jutting up from the ground as if seeking to escape the devastation. This might have been a beautiful land once when it was lush and green, Kamala thought, but right now it looked like a place the god of the dead might have called home.

  To her surprise, Andovan came to her and took her hands in his. He waited until she met his eyes, then said, very quietly, “If I must take action in the next hour, it is because there is no other choice. Which means that Kostas will know we are here, and what we intend . . . there will be nothing left to hide.”

  She heard the question behind his words . . . a question he would never ask her directly. “I will help you in that case,” she promised.
>
  Yes, though you do not know the price.

  He nodded, seemingly satisfied, took a seat that was out of the line of sight of the archway, and readied himself to wait.

  Rurick led Gwynofar to the chamber where Danton was located. While there were guards positioned down the corridor, there were none directly outside the door. That was a good sign, Gwynofar told herself. When Danton was in his paranoid moods he kept his guards close at hand.

  Inside, the High King and one of his scribes were deep in discussion over a ledger book. There were several large chests in the room, half a dozen rugs rolled up and bound in one corner, and a small open box on the desk that had strings of pearls hanging over the edge.

  Danton looked up as the door opened; it was clear from his expression that he was less than pleased about having his business interrupted. Then that emotion gave way to surprise as he saw who was standing there. For a moment the very air in the room seemed frozen, as no one dared move. Then, with a noisy exhalation, he nodded a dismissal to the scribe. “Leave me.”

  The small man scurried out of the room as quickly as dignity allowed. Danton’s narrowed eyes met Rurick’s as he nodded to him as well; his son and heir bowed and backed out of the room, closing the great doors behind him.

  Kostas was not there, Gwynofar noted gratefully. She hadn’t actually believed that would be the case until she saw it for herself, but now that she did, one of the many knots in her stomach untied itself.

  “Well,” Danton said gruffly. “The hermit queen graces me with her presence.”

  She recognized the bait for what it was and simply curtseyed, her eyes lowered respectfully. “If it does not displease you, Sire.”

  “If it did I’d have thrown you out, and not my scribe. Don’t think I wouldn’t.”

  “Of course not, Sire.”