I shall study this new hunting ground, and I shall master it, he declared.
I know, she replied.
“Follow me,” said Moreth, with perfect timing. He slung his knapsack over his shoulder and strode past the pair, before moving up the rise in a puff of black dust. “And try and remember every warning about this land’s danger you’ve been given. On the subject of which, is anyone cut or bleeding?”
The company checked themselves and their garments for tears; none were found.
“Good,” Moreth said. During his briefings, he’d forewarned them that blood of any kind—from a wound, from a menstrual cycle even—would hold extraordinary allure for the creatures of this realm. The company presumed his caution arose from this.
“What about the boat?” asked Talwyn.
“No point in worrying about it,” Moreth called back. “The shore—and boat—won’t be here in a week or two.”
“A week or two?” complained Talwyn.
Moreth hissed at the scholar. “We’re not on a damned retreat, you fool. I’d have thought that you, with all your inquisitiveness, would’ve paid the best attention. Let me clarify: we have come to the very heart of chaos in our world, a land that never stays the same, save for a few points of order. All else is uncharted; unpredictability and death await us at every step. Whatever journey we have committed ourselves to shall take longer than a few days inland and back. I guarantee you that much. We shall be lucky if we see our homes again in a year.”
“We don’t have that long,” said Morigan, thinking of Black Stars and doom.
“Then we had better quicken our steps,” replied Moreth. Regaining the ghoulishly perfect carriage that he’d lost for a speck to spitting anger, Moreth threw back his shoulders and continued hiking. Climbing after the man as he moved with great athleticism up the rubbly path was laborious work for a few of them. When they’d all caught up with Moreth atop the rise, they quietly studied the land. What am I seeing? each asked their inner child. For their odyssey would take them through a realm of dreamscapes and wonder that only the youngest element within each could comprehend. Their vision scattered over the humps, spires, and valleys of Pandemonia, into the rainbow storms and queer will-o’-the-wisps on the horizon, not knowing where to focus in the phantasmagoria. Eventually, they restrained their wandering inspection and looked to their feet, where, separated by a line of black and a line of green, the ashen rise ended. The slope angled down into a field of tall grass, fat-budded flowers, and small swarms of insects that flickered like embers.
“Beautiful…” whispered Talwyn.
Farther on, the hillside meadow met a bank of rocks beyond which flowed a twisting rapid. Talwyn’s gaze followed the rapid and its mysterious windings to break down the larger mystery into smaller chunks that his mind could digest. In the left of his vision, the water flowed into a creek, gentle and babbling. The creek then dried out, suddenly, as it entered a yellowish grassland with far-off steppes. Over that region of Pandemonia reigned the blackest of thunderheads, with lightning so bright it spotted Talwyn’s sight as he stared. He wondered whether the tremor in the soles of his boots was caused by the thunder or his own quailing. He wondered what kind of rain would fall there, in that yellow desert. Perhaps a rain of fire, to have forged the enormous broken crystals that glimmered like the rib cages of giants ossified in crystal between the steppes. Dead crystal giants. Talwyn laughed, unable to disprove the lunacy of his imaginings. Faintly seen herds of animals raced across the shimmering, storming land.
Finally, he tore his attention away from the desert. To his right, the meadow broadened and surged wildly into thickets and trees wholly unfamiliar to him, despite that he had just come from Alabion and its strangling verdure. These shuddering trees—their branches like loose hoses draped and tangled in each other, the knots in their trunks spilling forth profusions of canary-yellow moss—seemed more suited to an expressionist’s unfinished painting than to woodland. Birds circled above the rubber forest, warbling warnings against approach. The birds, too, seemed unfinished—ugly clay things that Talwyn could not fully distinguish, even when he squinted. These strange terrors were not hidden from the Wolf’s sight, however, and he glanced at the sky-flecks and frowned.
Beyond the river lay the least objectionable terrain: more grass, scabs of stone, a smattering of dead-looking trees, a speckled trail of sunlight in which to walk. Not entirely normal, thought Talwyn, though close enough. He had a hunch they would head in that direction. Moreth proved him right.
“Deserts and dense woodlands we stay away from,” said the Menosian. He stripped off his coat, revealing his male-blouse and buttoned vest; sterling matchlock pistol grips gleamed from the shoulder holsters under his sweaty pits. Very quickly, the weather had changed from ocean-cool humidity to sweltering heat. Moreth folded his coat and put it away, placed his pack back on, and then twisted the metal gargoyle head off his cane—a metal scrape and quick flash of light confirmed the presence of a hidden blade—before moving toward the river. The company followed him closely.
“Once more I shall tell you the rules,” said Moreth. “They’ll make more sense now that you’re here and you’ve seen the lay of the land. First, we sleep only in the open. I know that sounds contrary to huntsman’s wisdom, but here we do not sleep in hollows lest the earth seal them into tombs while we rest. Second, no fires, obviously, since we aim not to draw attention to ourselves. In Pandemonia, you’ll find a million ways to die. Many of them are almost pleasant: death on a bed of poison flowers, or at the paws of a charming, furry animal with a musk or spray that melts your flesh like acid. Alabion is dangerous, as you all well know, although the realm of the Sisters Three plays by nature’s rules. Nature can be cruel by mortal judgments, but we understand her and her laws. Do not attempt to understand Pandemonia—death will come more quickly if you try. You might not even know it’s happening until the Pale Lady shows up to take your hand. So the third and most important rule is, do not touch, eat, or otherwise engage with anything unless I have confirmed it is safe.”
Moreth spun around and poked his cane into Talwyn. The scholar had been bumbling along behind him, eyes wide, fingers trembling and ready to grab things to feed his scientific curiosity.
“I wasn’t—I wouldn’t just touch things!”
“You would; you will. I’ll be shocked if you aren’t dead in a day,” replied Moreth. “Blood King, if you care for him, watch him, please.”
The Wolf flicked Moreth’s cane off his pack-mate. “I am the Blood King no more.”
“Well, find out where he is, and get rid of the other fellow you’re pretending to be. We need monsters in Pandemonia, not a lion who has gone and slept with the lambs.”
After having offended the whole company, Moreth—unfazed—resumed his walk. Breezes and heat swayed his dandified attire; he somehow blended in with the fantastic vista ahead, seemingly as comfortable as the natives of this land. What people could live in this kaleidoscopic delirium? wondered Thackery, as he glanced from ember-bug, to rubber tree, to the terrifying desert over yonder. Noises, visual stimuli, and smells abounded. Thackery sensed that the Wolf struggled with this sensory deluge. When Thackery looked to the man, he saw his chest-fur matted, his hanging mouth huffing, and his eyes wild—the appearance of a frantic animal. They would have to help him find a way to filter out all the environmental static, or this place might drive him mad. All-seeing Morigan flashed a silver stare at her concerned friend as he pondered her Wolf. It will be all right, she seemed to whisper. And Thackery would have believed her—if he hadn’t known her well enough to read the lie in her expression.
I shall look out for her again, too, until Caenith finds his bearings, he decided, and considered what in his arsenal he could use to uphold this promise. What of his magik? Aboard the Skylark, Moreth had suggested that magik wouldn’t work properly in Pandemonia, that the etheric currents made sorcery too unstable. Surely, though, there was a way for him to invoke. First, he h
ad to discover what was mechanically wrong with the process in this environment, before exploring how to fix it. So as not to embarrass himself through failure, Thackery waited until the others were ahead of him before summoning his Will. He conjured a memory of Theadora running in a green summery field not unlike this one (although without the freakish elements). It was a memory of love. She’d always loved stars, his Theadora. She’d called them wishing-spots. A little wishing-spot, then, he would make in her honor.
WHOOSH!
A pillar of white fire twisted in the air behind the company, and they scattered for cover. No warning, no tingle of danger from the Wolf, seer, or Menosian hunter had presaged the event. There was simply a violent, fiery assault. Mouse was wrenched away by Adam; the Wolf barreled into Morigan and Talwyn, taking them to the earth, and then leaped to his feet. Thackery! Where was the sorcerer? Neither he nor Adam had shielded the man. Angrily, he scanned the haze and screamed into the cindery clouds for his friend. Just as the Wolf was about to charge ahead into the black mist, Thackery appeared: soot smudged, coughing, and stumbling. The Wolf carried him to safety.
“You idiot!” exclaimed Moreth, appearing beside the huddling company. He brandished his cane like a mean schoolmaster ready to rap bones. “You used magik, didn’t you?”
Thackery coughed. “P-perhaps.”
“Per-fuking-haps! Obviously, you did.” Spittle flew from Moreth’s mouth. “I would not have thought that a sorcerer, a sage, would fling magik about—here of all places—without reason. I warned you.”
Sooty, though indignant, Thackery scowled at the Menosian. “I had a reason. Furthermore, your warning was quite vague. A sage and scholar puts himself at the forefront of experimentation to determine causation and result.”
“The result is that you nearly blew yourself up.”
Caenith growled. He was done taking abuse from a Menosian master, ally or not. Besides, the Iron City had died: so, too, should its ideals and rulers. Once the others were on their feet, he told Moreth to get moving. Smartly, the Menosian made no rejoinder; he knew when not to provoke a violent animal.
When they were nearly to the river, Moreth resumed chatting. “Magik,” he said. “Once more I find myself repeating lectures…Perhaps this time you’ll listen. Putting things simply, you’ve gone from one polarity of magikal influence to the other: Alabion to here. In the Sisters’ domain, magik is repressed, but in Pandemonia, there is no limit to the diffusion of magikal energy in the air. It surrounds us like a fine mist upon the sea. We breathe and drink in magik without our knowing. Scholars and wise men have said that the world is wrapped in threads of power—ethereal currents—and here, these threads converge in a knot. Whatever you conjure, Thackery, however small the release of magik, will be amplified one hundredfold. You will open a dam, and wash us all away.”
“Threads, yes…” mumbled Morigan, and gazed again into a sky crossed with silver lines that the others could not see.
“I am sorry.” Thackery glanced to the ground, ashamed. “I should have known better. I didn’t believe most of what you’d said. I needed to see it for myself. We should have better prepared ourselves. We should have listened to you.”
“Confession is the last act of the damned,” agreed Moreth, mockingly. “You scholars and sages are such slaves to curiosity. Although, why prepare for the most dangerous mission in the history of man, when we could spend days waxing our pricks?” Moreth glanced to Caenith and Morigan. “Playing fetch with our dog?” Then, to Mouse and Adam. “Or wasting hourglasses on sophistry?” He finished his berating with a glance at the two scholars, who stood side by side. “When I wasn’t being interrupted with nonsense, I devoted my hourglasses to preparing: strengthening my mind, recounting my inventory, remembering the bestiary of this realm, and testing the limits of my body’s deprivation. For in the land of chaos, all faculties and strengths you have ever owned will be called upon and exhausted. You think you know death? Hunger? Fear? You think you know doom? Pandemonia will redefine the meaning of despair.”
“Oh, stop,” scoffed Mouse, tired of the man’s self-flattery and insults. “I attended every one of your briefings, and I found them light on substance and heavy on scorn. I think you’re withholding certain facts, because you know that without that reservation you’d have nothing to offer us. I’m still not certain that you do. We’ve faced worse than whatever picture you’re trying to paint. I see loveliness amid the strange.”
Life had enveloped them from the moment of their landing. Although the crabs, cinder-bugs, desert herds, and clay birds were the most notable fauna, countless other creatures also claimed the lands through which the company walked. At this very moment, a family of blue-furred rodents, long and sleek as marmots, flowing over one another in a stream of bodies, chattered nearby. They’d been following the company, slyly, though none slyer than the Wolf and the glances he’d kept to them out of the corner of an eye; he didn’t consider them harmless, and they had regrouped and begun to follow the party again after scattering from Thackery’s explosion. Persistent, possibly hungry, felt the Wolf. Realizing they’d been noticed, the creatures paused, rose onto their hind legs, and squealed. For a speck, Moreth and the company all stared at the creatures.
“There is nothing lovely here, remember that,” Moreth said, and whipped a pistol from its holster.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Each burst of blue fire sent a shell into the swarm. Apparently a flawless marksman, Moreth shattered three tiny skulls. The squealing of the pack became higher pitched—eardrum-piercing to the changelings—but the creatures did not flee. Instead, they opened mouths much larger than their tiny heads should allow, bared shining rows of serpent teeth, and began tearing their departed number into jellied shreds. Astonishingly speedy, they ate the dead in specks, and then returned to their squealing and watching of the company. They looked red and repellently adorable, like a band of cannibal squirrels. Mouse started counting them now; there seemed to be dozens. Dozens more could be watching from places unseen. To keep the creatures busy, Moreth emptied a few more bullets into the swarm; his shots caused an orgy of rending and devouring. He slid his pistol back into its holster. “Corpse-weasels,” he said. “I don’t know their official name, but that is what I call them. They’re harmless until provoked or aroused by the scent of blood. They are like the monster peasantry of these lands—vermin no better than the rats that crawl through Menos’s sewers. Crawled through, I suppose…”
Morigan shivered from the psychic ache of Moreth’s regret; Caenith sniffed a rosy fragrance, too. Absurd to think an Iron Sage might feel any kind of remorse or empathy, yet the evidence of their senses could not be denied.
“They will eat you while you sleep,” continued Moreth, walking on. “The slightest bit of fresh blood drives them berserk. If anyone starts bleeding profusely, or if one of our ladies, whose womanly cycles I’ve been tracking as best as I can”—Morigan and Mouse gasped, but Moreth paid them no heed—“happens to have a particularly heavy day, we may encounter a problem. Blood is law in the Old World, for its witches, rituals, and monsters.”—Suddenly Morigan spins through a curtain of silver, buzzing light and sees a gorgeous icy woman, white from head to toe, brushing her frost-spun, glittering hair before a mirror. Morigan trips, twirls with her bees again, and returns—“I believe Pandemonia is the oldest of all the lands in our world, and here that law reigns the strongest.”
By now, the companions knew that Moreth’s reticence was a calculated manoeuvre, adopted to secure his position. They had themselves to blame, too, for any dismissal of his warnings. Many felt that Moreth was vile, arrogant, and only tenuously attached to the company’s welfare. However, until the rest of the company had learned the rules and dangers of this land, he was all they could rely on for survival. The six followed the agile master to the bank of the river, where they undressed to check themselves for bleeding scrapes. On his calf, Adam discovered a red gouge, likely sustained during the rocky climb—it must
have been the scent of his blood that the beasties had followed. “They should have attacked you,” said Moreth coolly, and was otherwise uninterested in the miracle. Wading through the cold, salty water sealed Adam’s wound and broke the trail between the company and the corpse-weasels. Once, Adam looked back to the meadow to see where the corpse-weasels were. Numerous black-eyed things watched him from behind a veil of green.
II
On the other side of the river, the land boasted rock and copses of emaciated trees in which no scurrying hordes could lurk. There, Adam’s tension blew away like the brisk wind that stirred the new plain. The six were soon challenged by another elevation, a steady rise to the land, and they conquered it with spirit. Soon they stood on a new summit and took in a broad view of Pandemonia. The quilt of the land rolled wide, stitched with patches of the fantastic.
One region fumed with black smog, as if the whole of it had been razed. Another wavered with misty billows and sparkled with lush dells and lakes. A third was pale as if with snow and wreathed in golden clouds. Indeed, the sky and earth before them appeared stitched out of a riot of colors, textures, and elevations. Far off seemed the glass desert and rubber forest at the fringes of the vista now—wonders to be crushed beneath these new ones. Pandemonia’s wind was as unsettled as its other elements. As they surveyed the vista, it raged and calmed, turned hot and then bitterly cold. Again, the profusion of flavors nearly overwhelmed the Wolf. He’d never encountered such a fecund and fetid musk in any city of man or realm of nature he’d wandered, but at least it smelled of life—of beast, water, sweat, and fur. No steel or grease soured his tongue, and no echoes of industry did he hear. Or is that a distant din and shuffle of commerce and people? he wondered, straining. The fickle wind seemed to raise a prickle of magik upon his hide.
Feast of Chaos (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 3) Page 6
