Abruptly, they passed out of the dry gloom and into a dank chamber. Here, moisture had blended the omnipresent filth into a limy paste, and Erik spotted infestations of pale white worms and spiders dropping on silk cords around them. Condensation dripped from a high, grated ceiling, and the place echoed like a prison tower when Abagail said, “Down there.” With a sweep of her torch, she gestured toward a square opening in the floor, which revealed a flight of steps descending down into the earth. Abagail led them across stretches of mossy decay that moistened their boots and then down into the dark. It wasn’t unrelievedly black, Erik found, as he had both Abagail’s torch and his feral eyesight to guide him. Regardless, he kept hold of his queen’s hand: the stairs were slippery and in some places more powder than stone. They descended lower and lower, moving carefully toward a fleck of light in the darkness beneath them. Soon, the distant will-o’-the-wisp expanded into the pulsing light of many flickering torches. Salty winds quenched the must, and the air became cleaner and fresher, the breath of open spaces. The stairway ended, and the travelers shuffled out onto a landing before a great square arch. Certain parts of the arch gleamed as black as the stone of Erik’s soul—not onyx, though, but feliron, which not even aeons and salt water could corrode. Beyond the arch, they saw displayed one of the wonders of Old Menos.
It was an awesome sight, even for a woman a thousand years old. Lila slowed as they walked out onto the pier, arm in arm, like a lord and lady of the Old World. Marveling at its stability, Lila tapped her heels on the “T” slab of feliron-buttressed granite that spread for hundreds of strides into a cavern—a swollen womb of darkness with a fanged roof. Truly, the dock was steady as a mountain. It did not sway even as the roughest of waves dashed themselves to foaming pieces a hundred paces below. Only a faint spray from the waves’ misty deaths reached the queen and her knight. Eternal, it is, and always will be, till Carthac itself falls into the sea, the queen mused.
You have an aptitude for pentameter, or whatever the scribes call it, said Erik, and the queen smiled. Perhaps you should try your hand at it one day. I feel that we shall have plenty of time in which to explore your talents, ones you have not dared to use or even dream of in your long life. Look, my queen. What would your poetry make of that?
A hulking shape loomed out of the mist at the end of the pier. It was largely obscured by darkness; the embattled torches locked in iron clasps along the pier cast only a dim and wavering light. However, Lila thought, as with nightmares, many details were not necessary for the conjuring of fear. But inspiration came to her quickly and apt words spilled forth. Eater of waves, eater of light. Oh nightmare ship of blackest scorn. Do cleave and brashly beat with thy might, through wildest sea and deepest storm. That would do, she felt. Her verse seemed florid enough to do justice to the lordvessel; struck by its grim stature and incredible size, this was the name she gave to this ship. What a grisly majesty it has, she reflected, walking closer to the metal titan. Its bow faced them, barnacled with bulls’ horns, thorns, and spikes. The horrific encrustation was concentrated most heavily on the front of the vessel and along the trim of its lofty deck. What foolhardy master would ever saunter above and risk impaling himself on the railing? she wondered. The lordvessel possessed no mast and surely operated under power of some technomagikal engine.
In the lordvessel’s shadow stood six women in black, awaiting their arrival. Wind screamed in from a cavern mouth elsewhere in the blackness, though it died as they entered the lordvessel’s numb, cold presence. The ship hummed, Erik noticed, creating a tingle that prickled the hair on his arms. The static of sorcery.
“Sisters Seraphine, Georgina, Teravella, Lucinda, Gabby, and Frossetta,” said Abagail, “these are the pilgrims.” Abagail turned, and she and her sisters bowed their heads to Erik and Lila. “If you allow us, we shall give you our blessing, and set the wind of the Blue Mother herself at your backs.”
“We shall need every blessing on this journey,” replied Lila. “Thank you.”
She and Erik were not sure what to expect, and at first the blessing seemed nothing more than a long silence. As they listened, though, they could almost make out the echo of faraway calls. They closed their eyes, and it was as if they’d been transported elsewhere for a moment, to a place where gulls cawed in their ears, winds stirred their clothes, crisp salt filled their noses, and glee infused their hearts—the kind of glee sparked by the thrill of adventure, the sight of a blot of uncharted land on the horizon, a vision of the dance of clouds in an endless blue sky. After experiencing these powerful sensations and daydreams, they stepped once again into their own flesh. The blessing completed, Lila and Erik stared at the sisters in wonder. The sisters maintained a watchful quiet for a time, perhaps wanting to dwell a while longer in the dream they’d conjured, but then they finally stood aside. Abagail walked on, and Lila and Erik knew to follow her.
“The ship is propelled by magik,” said Abagail. “The engine should work, although we have no means to test it. You, Lilehum, will have to be the ship’s navigator and possibly also its engineer. I believe you already know, or at least will quickly learn, whatever is required to command the ship. What she wills, she wills.”
Lila recalled something Thackery had once told her: all technomagikal engines were powered by sorcery, their metal merely a chamber for the fuel of magik, so to speak. She had plenty of magik, and, therefore, plenty of fuel.
Abagail continued. “We’ve packed some food for you, which we’ve left just on the other side of the landing plank.” Barely visible along the hull was a tongue of darkness, a ramp leading up into the ship. “My sisters wouldn’t board the vessel. They didn’t like the sounds it makes. We haven’t been able to give you much, but you won’t need more than a week’s worth of supplies, assuming your journey goes well.”
The three stood at the gangway. Closer now, they saw it was another of ancient Menos’s queer structures: metal had been stretched like spittle or the excretions of an insect, then hardened into a thin bridge.
“We found it that way; the door has been open for years.” Abagail tipped her head toward the portal into the ship. “I have no idea how to raise the gangway, and no knowledge of what could be waiting for you deeper inside. Nothing very terrible, I should hope. Good luck on your journey, pilgrims. May the Blue Mother guide you with her wind, and keep your souls warm with her sun. I know you will brave the Straits of Wrath and emerge unscathed from the trial.”
“What?” exclaimed Lila.
“Come again?” said Erik.
Abagail waved and continued talking as she walked away, her figure and light fading into a ghostly silhouette. “Where else did you think you could go? Up through the northern Feordhan? Out through the gates of Carthac? Privateers, mounted hunters, and skycarriages will be watching every northwestern channel, road, and sky on the continent. You’re worth a queen’s ransom, and the bounty on your heads will be paid from the Iron Queen’s purse. Lilehum is to be captured alive; in the case of the hammer, the rules are not so demanding.
“You two, then, must go where no one will follow, where even skycarriages buckle from the wind—through the deadly Straits of Wrath. After that, you can head down into the summery beaches of Meadowvale, then up through the desert. You can lead there, Lilehum, in the land of your people. I know you’ll make it, both of you. I have faith.”
Abagail vanished then; even Erik’s keen eyes could no longer find her. Troubling, deeply troubling, was this news of the Iron Queen’s ransom and what it suggested about Eod’s political situation. Deeply troubling, too, was the knowledge that those who hunted them would not hesitate to kill Erik. The burning brandy of the queen’s anxiety stuck in Erik’s throat, and Lila clutched his arm with sharp talons, scowling. Most of the northeastern continent, then, was closed or being closely watched. As Abagail had said, if they were to reach Eod with the greatest possible haste, they would have to cross the desert of Kor’Khul, the lands of her people. Once more, she must become an Arha
dian. Of all the perils and threats confronting her, she dreaded most what awaited her in Kor’Khul.
A homecoming.
IV
JUDGMENT
I
“We must make up our minds. We are nearly out of time,” said Leonitis. The soldier’s voice cracked, wavering between that of the husky fellow he was and the even gruffer voice of the hammer he was supposed to be.
For the queen’s magik was fading; the effects of her spell were unraveling. The deterioration had begun earlier that morning: while shaving, Leonitis had sleepily spotted himself—his real self—in the glass of his hand mirror. Over the hourglasses that followed, the phantasm had disintegrated so dramatically that he could no longer show himself in public. He’d hurried to the king’s chamber as soon as it was dark. He sat on the edge of Magnus’s bed next to a crestfallen Beauregard, who had no comfort to give. Lowelia Larson was huddled in Lila’s old chair, which had been pulled close to the two men. She herself had spent the day hiding and covered in layers, like an Arhadian bride. Fatigued and shrunken, she stared at her hands, waiting for them to flicker again from soft brown-sugar skin to the pale things with which she’d been born. What a fine trio of frowning wretches we make, Leonitis thought. Magnus, who stood apart from them at the fireplace, bore twice their darkness and gloom on his ivory face.
“Why is this happening?” Lowe asked sadly. Had something happened to Lila? She didn’t have the courage to ask that particular question of Magnus; his silence felt dangerous. Rather, she asked: “Can you fix it?”
Magnus began pacing by the fire, stopping occasionally to take draughts from a decanter of wine on the mantel, but he didn’t offer his troubled guests anything for their nerves. Certainly, he could restore their magikal disguises: as a master of the arcane, he was probably more knowledgeable about magikal theory than was any other creature in existence. Because of this, he knew the failure of Lila’s illusions could have been caused by only one of two things: either the sorceress had died or she had ended her own enchantment. If she still lived, she could have broken the enchantment either intentionally—or, as magik was born out of and ruled by emotion, unintentionally—through the severing of ties, the breaking of the bonds of love and fealty. The former was less likely: the circlets worn by the matron and legion master still retained some of their power, and objects were generally stripped of all enchantment when their enchanter died. The more probable and damning explanation was that Lila herself had terminated this magik. Magnus stared into the flames, his mind drifting down a distant river. Through the open window, a night wind crept into his chamber and chilled his skin. After a moment, he took another swig of wine, hissed, and then spoke. “Do you know the tale of Esmerelda? Witch of the black highlands?”
No one drew attention to the fact that Lowe’s question had gone unanswered—this was their king, and he was clearly preoccupied. Instead, they attempted to respond to the king’s apparent non sequitur.
“I may faintly recall a song or two…” Beauregard mused, “about an ancient witch of the highlands whose moods could weave, or break, great enchantments.”
“Esmerelda…” said the king. “It’s a tale taught to initiates in Eod’s Royal Academy of Magik; I’m surprised that you know of it, Beauregard. Clever lad. All magik is born of the heart, and as the heart changes, so, too, does sorcery, often on its own accord. Like most tales, though, Esmerelda’s legend is based on a very real, if faded, history.”
Magnus quickly drank more wine, and the temperature in the room abruptly plummeted to a prickling chill. Knees knocking, each of the three listeners rubbed their hands together to stay warm. Magnus resumed. “Back in the early days of Central Geadhain, before the introduction of our philanthropic system of law, when Menos starved and idolatrous, warring chieftains ruled, there lived a woman: Esmerelda of Clan Swannish. She made her home in the green hills of Swannish, over the River Feordhan and just outside the edge of Alabion. A true white witch, she practiced ancient medicine and magik for her clan. Esmerelda served her people and her warchief faithfully, until Caer Swannish was overrun by their rivals, Clan Derrdoch. At the time, I knew nothing of this war and I was too far away to stop it, in any case. Let that be said.”
Magnus drank more; the decanter was nearly empty. “In the battles that followed, the Swannish lost their lands. Their warchief was killed—beheaded and piked. Esmerelda, though renowned for her talents, even by her enemies, was raped, beaten, locked in felirons, and left in a dungeon. But because the age was so primitive, its perils so grave, and medicines so scarce, the conquering warchief of the Derrdoch eventually let Esmerelda out, under tight guard, to work her craft. Alas, her time in the dark and her savage treatment had changed her. She’d been twisted and her magik was no longer white, but rather the coldest black. She loathed what man had done to her and to the land. She became fury itself. The speck Esmerelda’s felirons were removed, she cast a spell, a summoning of hate and rage. An illness flowed from her and spread through the land, a black storm that rolled over the hills, withered life, bred violent animals, and sickened any man not of Swannish blood—of which precious little remained. What had once been one of the most fertile realms in Geadhain became a doomed waste circled by crows and winds of ash.
“It is said the land stayed that way for a hundred years. One day, a child, then a young man, who was born of a Swannish woman and a warrior of the humbled but surviving Derrdoch—each line much diminished—traveled into the witch’s highlands in search of a way to end the curse. Possessing as he did some Swannish blood, Esmerelda’s hatred could not poison him. Also a child of Derrdoch, he was a brutal fighter who could face the worst of the land’s terrors: the hideous beasts and flights of pecking crows; the dreadful sandstorms of cinders; the swamps of fetid, leech-filled water. At last, the lad came to the crumbled ancient bastion of the Swannish. There, he confronted Esmerelda, who was still very much alive, having sustained herself all those years with her radiant hate.”
Magnus finished what remained of his drink. His audience was a captive one, in thrall to both the cold and to his fervor. “The lad could not win with might, for, aged as she was, Esmerelda could still easily have smitten him with a word.” Magnus snickered. “The brave boy would not be cowed by the hideous hag’s promise of thunder and threats, though. He strode toward her ruined throne. During his journey to Esmerelda’s lands, the boy had collected certain trophies: the head of a once-beautiful elk, decayed into a fanged, mutated skull crowned with horns; a handful of the ash that had once been loam and fern; and a vial of the sour poison that had replaced the sweet waters of the Swannish lands. At Esmerelda’s gnarled feet, he bowed, dropped his blade, and spread out these items.”
Magnus’s strong voice suddenly became that of a young man: “Great Cailleach, do you see what your anger has wrought in the land? Look once more upon the reason for your hatred. You have destroyed all that your arts were meant to preserve. Before you, I stand: a child half Derrdoch, half Swannish. Half my blood is that of your people, whom you drove from their land. Great Cailleach, the war is over. Both clans have been defeated, and your cold lesson has taught us how to live as strong hunters, yet without violence between us. Allow us to show you that we have changed, that we have earned the right to live on this land with you again. Look into my heart and see I am a man made not of my forefathers’ sins, but of the promise of tomorrow.”
Magnus snorted and said nothing more; the fire seemed to hold all of his attention. The listeners shivered and waited for their storyteller to finish. Soon Lowelia found she could no longer stand the silence. “Did she k-kill him?” she asked, knowing that most faery stories ended in blood.
“Kill him?” Magnus whispered. “No. The lad’s appeal touched Esmerelda’s dark heart. His entreaty and honesty shattered her magik. Once she had shed her grudge like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon, both she and the Swannish highlands changed before the lad’s very eyes. Years and wickedness fell off the witch and the land like
the sheddings of a snake. Esmerelda stood before him looking as she had hundreds of years past, once again a comely maiden. In that instant, she and the young warrior fell in love—true love. They soon wed. The remaining clans celebrated the end of the long curse with a festival we honor still, though its origins are now a mystery to many who celebrate it. Even today, the animals, rivers, and hills of the ancient highlands are among the most bountiful in Geadhain. The lands you would call Fairfarm were once the highlands of the Swannish.”
As Magnus turned, the fire at his back leaped and streaked with green magik, and the three listeners saw that a misty emerald light had claimed the sockets of his eyes. Beauregard gasped. Leonitis and Lowe were so alarmed they barely noticed a sudden pressure on their wrists. When they glanced down at the metal circlets given to them by the queen, they found that the jewelry had shattered into diamonds of ice that now lay scattered on their laps. Magnus had annulled the magik and they were again themselves. Although the legion master and mater were relieved that the long lie had now officially come to an end, they both watched their king warily, not yet able to read his intentions.
Magnus noted that pretending to be queen appeared to have been good for Lowelia’s health: she looked as if she’d lost quite a bit of weight, although she’d gained a few years, since he’d last seen the real her. The pretty, silver-and-black haired woman, round only in her cheeks now, dusted the frost from her lap; she’d be back to dusting as a matter of course in the days ahead. Truly, he’d been sick of looking at the face of his treasonous wife whenever he beheld the matron in her disguise. Behind Lowe pouted Leonitis, once more a grand hunk of frowning, snowy rock. He had the pallor of the North, and frazzled, untended braids ran down his scalp. Leonitis’s pale face was a sight far more welcome to the king than the dark countenance of his adopted son. Can I still call Erik that? wondered Magnus.
Feast of Chaos (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 3) Page 15
