What a petty, irritating man, thought Erik. The knight ignored the command and the escalating voices of the other Twelveswatch until his queen bade him dismiss the interlopers: Be kind, though, she warned. Do not harm the weak things. For Lila was of his noble code now, and would not condone senseless killing. Weak things, considered Erik. Yes, men were weak things—but he was one of their kind no more. He had never studied magik, as he lacked both an aptitude for and an interest in it. However, the catalysts for magik did not always need to be taught. In Erik’s chest and blood flowed the brandy and golden light of his queen, and he could succumb to its intoxication at any time, as easily as he had once surrendered to lesser liquors. Which is what he did now—surrender. He allowed her essence, her golden venom, to consume him. He shivered and moaned in the throes of lust. Much of the world shimmered away until all that remained was a thin metallic line of sight, reminiscent of the field of vision provided by the visors he had worn while jousting.
When Erik glanced at his enemies now, everything looked crisp and clear and was haloed in a golden sparkle. The shouts of the Twelveswatch turned to screams that sounded as if they were echoing through metal.
Lila watched as a miracle unfolded. First, he stood apart like a man embracing the sun. Then, pearl light like that of the rising dawn crept over his body from within, twining him in an ivy of magik. The magik incinerated his clothes and cocooned him in light. Finally, there came a flash, a pulse of earthbound thunder, and a rippling wind that blew her back, and he stood as a man remade. It was still Erik, yes, but an Erik transfigured and transformed by the bond of blood. He seemed sculpted of the oldest rock, like an unfurling, smoking, living meteor, as he stretched out new arms and took a flagstone-cracking step with his new legs. It was impossible to say whether he was man or golem, this giant donned in pauldrons of shale, wearing greaves of pronged black and gold crystal, and bearing gauntlets of molten metal and onyx.
After he had taken his first strides, the obsidian knight dropped his stalagmite-horned head and gave the kind of snort that foretold a bull’s charge. The Twelveswatch screamed and bumbled backwards. The obsidian knight held his position, for he awaited the command of his queen. Although now buried beneath tons of rock and metal and illuminated by a glaring aura of light, he remained her warrior, her kind and considerate knight. At last, Erik’s shape reflected what in his heart he’d always been for her: a weapon, a shield, a mountain that would not fall.
They are soft, so soft, next to your great self: remember that, Lila mind-whispered.
Her bloodmate charged.
VI
Considering she had just opened the vestibule door on this night of ominously tolling bells to a wild, dark-skinned, naked man wrapped only in a cloak many sizes too small and a woman who’d fled the Order soaking wet after possibly killing a man, Abagail seemed remarkably unconcerned. “Hmm, you,” she said to Lila, adjusting her glasses, which had dropped during her assessment of the tall fellow. “I thought you would be back. Come inside, both of you.”
Having grown used to surprises, Lila and Erik entered the sanctuary. While the sister hurried off to fetch an unspecified something, the new bloodmates shuffled their feet on the weathered tiles; Erik’s felt cold on the stone, as he wore no boots. As the bloodmates waited for Abagail’s return, they quietly reflected on their night.
During Erik’s transformation into the obsidian knight, events had been veiled by a fog like that of inebriation—one possessing only the buoyancy of drunkenness, though, and none of the fumbling. After he’d rampaged through the streets, then a market, an ale garden, a coach house, and several other places he couldn’t wholly remember, Lila’s voice had brought him back into the shape he commonly wore. At that point, he had emerged from his stupor, seen first the golden dazzle of his queen and then the arch of an overpass trickling water, and finally become aware of the tickle of wind on his naked skin. They’d caused so much damage and confusion that the Twelveswatch would be too busy putting out fires and settling the crowds he’d terrified to find them. It seemed as if they’d managed to steal many hourglasses’ worth of reprieve.
Reckless and laughing like two rogues after a heist, they’d made love in a filthy subterranean chamber. Neither of the bloodmates could render the passion and liberty they felt in words; instead, they rasped, gasped, and drank in wet kisses from each other’s mouths. Steadily, the rhythm of their bodies faded to a dull, slippery thrum, as they went beyond their pounding flesh and wandered the vast spaces of each other’s hearts. Lila hadn’t found a corner of his vast sea out of reach to her, not a wind upon which she could not fly. Nor had he discovered a single rise on her sunny meadow over which he could not run. This grand intimacy had seemed extraordinary, even to a woman who had already shared another’s heart. My queen. My knight, they’d mind-whispered as they’d risen to a climax that spun their brains with stars and filled their noses with scents of sweat, honey, semen, brandy, and the charcoal ripeness of shale—Erik’s scent, Lila’d realized, the fragrance of the bedrock of his heart. Their release had left them delirious and shaking, and they’d remained joined by the lock and key of their hips for many sands.
Eventually, the obstreperous bells had played on their raw nerves, reminding them of mortal terrors, even if mortals they no longer were. Thus, Lila had put on her clothes, dressed her bloodmate in her cloak—which covered enough of his modesty but none of his greatness—and the two had resumed their escapade. They’d taken the shadiest paths in the city. Fearless with her magik, Lila had woven deeper shadows upon them, so that darkness veiled them in sheer black; not even the alley cats had paid them any heed. The two had run for the Order’s basilica holding hands, aglow with irreverent, youthful love.
Having left off remembering, they were kissing when Abagail returned—kissing as if eating a thick delicacy from the other’s mouth. Seeing their lust, the sister stumbled. “Excuse me,” she said.
The bloodmates turned, sleepily.
“Queen Lilehum, and Erithitek, hammer of the king,” said Abagail, whipping an immediate propriety into the pair. Erik pulled his queen close. “I must have your attention.”
“You have it,” declared Erik.
“How did you know?” whispered Lila, somehow not wholly shocked.
“I knew before the bounty went out,” she replied, and came forward to deliver a bundle of boots and men’s clothing to Erik, who took the offering and began to dress. Covering her eyes, the sister continued. “We of the Order, and those of the body from which we’ve splintered, are historians, listeners, and keepers of the truth. Folk see us and think we are sexless women, with nothing better to do than knit and tend to the disadvantaged who weep for our ministrations; they think we couldn’t find husbands to put rings on our fingers and babies in our bellies. It’s insulting.
“We choose to be here, Lilehum. We forgo children, drink, pleasure—” cannily she peeked, then pursed her lips at Erik as he stuffed himself into his new pants—“even conversation, so that we can hear what our world needs and set our hands to nurturing the vast garden of life. I do not claim to know everything; there are mysteries not even the Blue Mother herself can fathom. I can, however, spot a queen, a woman who shines as bright as dawn over Carthac’s waves.
“Likewise, I can recognize the weary honor of a man who has bathed in and anointed himself with ritual and virtue. And we have pictures of you, Lilehum, artistic renderings drawn by hand before the age of phantographs; they were left among some of our older documents from the second era of the city. I’d tell you that you haven’t aged a day, but you know that.” Abagail again peered through her fingers, determined Erik was clothed, and then removed her hand. “You’ve held up quite well for a mortal, too, Erik. A phantograph of a far younger you in company with the king still hangs in the offices of the aldermen, memorializing the time the king ended a bloody civil quarrel here. I believe that was after you and he first met in the Salt Forests. It’s remarkable that you’ve managed to maint
ain your great vitality; warriors tend to be so quickly hobbled by arthritis and gout. If I had to say…if I stop and listen, I think I can hear that you’ve changed the rules of your nature, hammer of the king.”
“I am the knight of my queen, and you listen well,” said Erik.
“I do,” agreed Abagail. “A knight; very well. I’ve dressed you as a thief, though, or at least that was the vocation of the last fellow who wore your clothes. Sister Seraphine stitched up the knife marks in that tunic, and it’s good as new. I suggest you play a thief for now; it’s much safer to be a petty criminal than a wanted felon.”
Quickly sliding her hands into the sleeves of her habit, Abagail strode ahead. Before following the sister into the cavernous antechamber, Erik draped the queen’s cloak upon her again and fastened it around her cast-gold neck. His handsomeness made her blush—it was if she saw him with new eyes. Black was Erik’s color. It drew on the ebon of his gaze, now wholly and undeniably obsidian, and emphasized the sheen of his shaved head and brown skin. In truth, his darted silk shirt, black pants, and tall boots made him look more like a brigand king than a robber.
You have more charm than you know, she said.
You are beauty itself, my queen.
In they leaned, for a kiss—
“Hurry-ho, you two!” called Abagail. “I would never judge, as it’s not my place to say what the heart should feel, but you are each still bound to Magnus by certain oaths. You should sever those oaths before swearing them anew.”
Abagail’s prudent counsel raised burning doubts in the queen. How long could they play lovers on the run before this fantasy collided painfully with the hard wall of reality? Lila felt they must face Magnus. That would be the honorable thing to do, although it could mean their end, if the King’s fury were stoked: one storm for Menos, a second for the betrayal of his marriage of a thousand years. But what of Magnus’s betrayal of her? What of the attack she had suffered? How would he answer for his deception, which had led to her marrying not one brother, but both? She would welcome a confrontation with her former bloodmate.
We shall face my father, your husband, our king, said Erik. I can see no other way for us to live with ourselves. I am with you now; we are not alone. We are shamed and punished, proud and weak together.
Erik’s strength, his calm and gray sea, settled her anxiety. Most certainly, she, Erik, and Magnus were fated for a devastating confrontation. Whatever danger awaited them, though, Erik did not fear it, and so neither did she.
They had not yet reached the familiar section of the basilica with its tarps and columns, and Lila was beginning to wonder where they were headed; just then, Abagail took a torch from the wall and turned down a mysterious hall. The passage was thickly pasted in dust and lined with shattered doors that Lila could imagine having been smashed by angry kicks and small battering rams, before the screaming men inside were dragged out. A trail of small footprints led forward through the decay, but the flickering glow of Abagail’s torch revealed no other indications of life. This path was used then, but not often. The wide hallway, the placement of the doors, and the stacked beds that could be spied in rooms utterly curtained in spiderwebs, left Erik thinking this had once been a barracks.
“Men loyal to the Lordkings of Carthac slept here,” said Abagail, suggesting she might again have been listening with more than her ears. “Great warriors, all of them. Valiant to the end, each bred with the slave-mind of a Menosian vassal. They died with their masters, and none has ever touched the bones that lie beyond. I suppose this is a mausoleum.”
Erik’s senses were much sharper and more sensitive now, as if they had been enhanced by magik. Although it was dark, he could, without straining, spy bits of whiteness amid the threads of dust and spider silk in the burial chambers of the fallen Lordkings’ servants. Bones. When he clamped his jaw and flexed the muscles behind his ears—had those always been there?—he could hear the clatter of mice claws and the scuttle of things smaller even than rodents.
It felt as if his body had grown stronger as well. Musing on this strangeness, and taken aback by none of it, he thought of the legends of Brutus, including those that told of the man’s mutagenic flesh: limbs that could transform into golden blades, armor that sprang from beneath the skin. That blood was within him now, too. They were all cousins now, he supposed: he, the mad king, Magnus, and Lila. All part of the same strange family tree.
Are you well? You feel distracted, whispered Lila.
Not distracted. I am…Mice scurried to his right, at least six of them. In the air, he could taste the sulfur of ash mixed in with the motes of dust and understood there had been a fire here, many ages ago. From farther on, a whiff of briny algae wormed into his nose, and he sensed a dampness, so light it was only a shiver upon his skin. “Water. There’s water up ahead,” said Erik.
“There’s water most everywhere in Carthac,” Abagail muttered.
“Indeed there is,” replied Erik, surprising her. He stopped walking and crossed his arms, frowning. “I have no urge to bite the hand that feeds; however, I must ask where you are taking us.”
Sister Abagail turned, and while Lila saw a frail, spectacled woman holding a torch, Erik could pick out lines around her eyes and mouth that suggested the deepest ruminations. Abagail was a woman burdened by knowledge, responsibility, and the weight of each. He knew he could trust her—the easy pitter-patter of her heart suggested as much. It was not the pulse of a liar or someone ready to deceive. Erik lowered his arms, his expression softening.
Abagail sighed. “We shall arrive faster without the banter. I’m sure it won’t take long for even the dullest fork in the kitchen to poke the morsel that tells of your trips here. Lilehum—”
“Why do you call me that?” asked Lila. “No one calls me by that name anymore.” Erik could feel his bloodmate’s annoyance; her golden light burned his esophagus like strong bitters.
“It is your name,” replied Abagail crossly.
“My old name.”
“Your name,” stressed Abagail. “A woman can change her nature, her looks, her status, her future. A name once given, though, can never be rescinded. We wear its mark on our souls. Lilehum is who you have always been. I would urge you to rediscover her again, because she was as bold, brave, and daring as any heroine of whom I have read.”
A silence fell, and Erik broke it. “A beautiful and strong name, yes. Now, where, Sister, have you brought us, and how much farther will you be taking us?”
“Beneath this building lies a port,” replied Abagail. “An ancient route of escape planned by the Lordkings, although those doomed souls never used it. Some of the wicked masters died in this wing of Bastille Dermoch—that’s the old name for this building. The masters and guardsmen who died here endured a kinder torment than those who were caught in the city. Lordkings were crucified and burned in the great square where Carthac’s quaint market stands today; where you and I first met, Lilehum. Funny how history makes playgrounds of cemeteries, how life is grown from death, and we never see…Sorry, I ramble and am often easily distracted. I also wander physically, not just to the market, but anywhere a cat’s curiosity would lead her, and many times to places where no animal would tread. I found the secret port. It’s quite a wonder if you’ve never seen Menosian architecture of ages past, still marvelously intact because of the feliron used in its construction. You can almost feel the magik humming beneath us. Hurry along, and you won’t have to wait to see of what I speak.”
Again, they swept into the darkness, Abagail banishing the gloom with her light-bearing brand. The passages changed: widening, growing taller and framed in ornate gold-inlaid arches. They saw banners, muffled poles that could be spears, and other humps made brown and shapeless by an accumulation of velvet dust. Distracted by the game of deciphering the weaponry, it took a while for Erik to realize that their guide had not quite answered his question. “Why the port?” he asked.
“So you might sail to freedom, face the Blue Mother�
��s trials thereafter, and complete your pilgrimage.”
“Pilgrimage?” he exclaimed.
Abagail did not turn, though she slowed her pace. “My sisters and I listen, as I have said. Some sisters listen better than I do, as my proclivity for gabbing drowns out most of the Blue Mother’s words. We know you have been charged with something, Lilehum. A pilgrimage, a holy quest—if you credit the oldest legends of our realm. As Keepers, it is not our place to serve the secret, only to observe and protect the seed of it, so it might grow into the promise the Blue Mother sees. After you left in a hurry, I could almost hear a whisper from the dead Menosian: Queen of Eod, Queen of Sand. Whatever he said had such power, such meaning, that even after you’d fled and I tended to his body, I could not stop myself from shaking. The chills he gave me were like splashes of cold water. Now, Sister Seraphine is stone deaf and can’t hear it if you clap your hands next to her ears. It’s possible her disability aids her, though, for she, too, heard the Menosian’s secret. Seraphine knows of the seed of hope you carry, Lilehum. A message from a dying man that should never have been delivered has found a messenger in you. I think you also know that you and the hammer must return to Eod to face the pains that have been wrought by all.”
Lila knew she could perhaps have arranged for a surreptitious courier to deliver the cryptic prophecies of a dead witch to his wife. She knew she must attempt the journey herself, though, and not simply because Sangloris had charged her with this task. As Abagail had said, the pain she, Erik, and Magnus shared needed to be cleansed. She straightened her shoulders. The importance of her mission only strengthened her resolve. Our mission, noted Erik, who had been creeping alongside and inside of his queen, his onyx now threaded into her heart.
“My sisters are waiting for us at the port,” said Abagail.
Lila and her knight would no longer keep the sisters in suspense and strode ahead quickly. Dust and time rose and fell to the thud of racing feet. Abagail’s torchlight whipped across the relics of the old regime. Glimmers from tarnished helms shone like sunlight into Erik’s newly sensitive eyes. As they hurried, even their racing pulses became audible to him. I wonder whether this sensitivity will grow more bearable—or become increasingly intolerable. Lila squeezed his hand in reassurance.
Feast of Chaos (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 3) Page 14
