Feast of Chaos (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 3)

by Christian A. Brown

  Where am I now? asks Elissandra. What must I see?

  A star twinkles down in the dark storms roiling over the land.

  Ah-ha, she thinks, and prepares for her descent into the mystery—her final stop, she hopes, as this trip into Dream will leave her empty of energy come morning. But instead, she hovers, unmoving. Time…stretches...on…

  Nothing is happening; there are no further revelations.

  Well, this is new, she thinks.

  As there is nothing else to witness but the land, she studies that: the black crannies and smoldering hillocks, the aeries flocked with winged lizards that caw as if they are crows. Of all the wondrous horrors she has seen in this end-of-days era, this scenery is the most magnificent. She turns and turns, absorbing all that she can see, and smell, of the charcoal valley.

  Her seekers sting her insistently. “Remember,” they urge. “Never forget the creature you faced tonight; you will face her again. Remember that glimmer—the star in the dark—and remember, too, the city in ruins. Know, mistress, that when you see the northernmost star shine bright in Eod, it will be shining also in the heart of Pandemonia. When the world is aflame, the star shines and the Dreamstalker strikes. That will be your call to arms. Be the sword to swing back. Know thy time.”

  The proclamation echoes; she can feel it trembling in the valley.

  My time? wonders Elissandra.

  “You must be here, and there,” say her seekers. “Both places, and one body. You must be the bird of sun and moon, mother and sword to the Daughter of Fate. You must soar and strike.”

  While Elissandra floats over the desolation, she arranges the incoherent clues: dying men, the shrieks of her children (not in pain, she decides, as that is a possibility she cannot accept), abominations sacking a city aglow in destruction, a monster in a mask of pests, a bright star in Eod, and a glimmer in a land of desolation. In the Dreaming, in her state of all-knowingness, patterns interweave into a picture of her destiny.

  Two wars; two places. I must be the bird of sun and moon, mother of my children, and sword for Morigan. It can be done, though it will cost me everything. It is my duty, yes, and will perhaps prove to be a blessing. Men have long pondered on and sought to know their Fates, and this would bring the ultimate knowing.

  She is unafraid. Until this type of vision has been met and faced, a witness to Fate cannot claim bravery. And while she has not seen her precise ending, she knows that this valley, this moment, will be where the road of her life will run out of track. She decides to hold off on telling the children about their father. Before hearing of the war in Eod, the miracle of splitting herself between two places at once, her clashing with this Dreamstalker, dear Tessa and Eli deserve to be showered in joy and peace.

  “Oh, my children…” she sighs.

  Her seekers do not rush her back to waking, instead allowing her to drift and grieve in the wasteland. Better that she bleeds out her sorrows with invisible tears now; the grief will douse the brand of her soul so that she may wake as newly wrought steel tomorrow. She will need all of her strength to face her destiny.

  Her death.

  V

  RED RIDERS

  I

  The trip through the desert was a suffocating crawl, a heave through winds that burned the throat like sandpaper, a hike through sand that scorched through leather soles. This realm of Pandemonia felt hotter than any other, as if it were a nightmare purgatory and not a real place. Often, Morigan thought of the Dry Season once endured by Magnus and Brutus, and wondered if this heat could be worse. She kept this, all her thoughts in fact, to herself. She left conversation to the hissing sandstorms. Even she and her Wolf maintained a tense silence with each other, their bodies and minds focused simply on ploughing onward.

  Night came, and with it the bitterest cold, cold that would have frozen the land if a drop of water had existed. The company huddled around the Wolf, and leeched heat from his inner fire. At some point, a few of them drifted into a delirious sleep. Sonorous horns soon awoke them, the cries of beasts whose movement was signaled by bursts of sand across the yellow plain. As they looked to the collapsing dunes, they saw amid the whirling a herd of lanky, monstrous creatures that looked like hundred-pace-tall storks covered in scales. Many times that day they saw one of these gigantic herds. Once, the great storks grew angry for reasons unfathomable, and the Wolf whipped his weary pack faster, farther away. Last night, and for many nights, in fact, he had not slept. While he did not appear to need rest as a normal person would, sleeplessness gave him an ill temper, and he growled, cursed, and scowled. After a day of following their leader’s brutal pace, the company’s only prize was exhaustion. Sleep came fast and hard for the others, but not for the Wolf, who stood watch with the moon.

  Dawn and bloodcurdling shrieks from soaring horrors served as the morning’s alarm. On through dunes, alongside perilous, dusty chasms, and beside waves of white stone rolling down into a sea of dust, the company trod. Come whatever danger, the Wolf kept them together and moving, herding them like a mean sheepdog. Moreth, too, did his part. He was the first to stir, and now and again he offered to take the Wolf’s guard so that the man could eat, pee, or hunt. In the desert, days ran and melted like frost in the spring, turning into a trickling mire of delusions. Moments came when much of the land blurred; the eyes of the company puckered, their tongues felt like plaster lumps, and they could feel each drop of sweat crawl over them like maggots. Was this life? Was this death, or some kind of interminable undeath? Finally, when the sun and its daze vanished, they were able to savor a speck of modest, cool wind, before the crushing cold of evening arrived. At least then they knew their question had been answered: they lived and would sleep to endure another day. How much longer, though? How much farther till the end?

  When Morigan closed her eyes, she slept the deepest sleep of her life.

  Morigan’s fatigue has affected her soul, and she cares not where she drifts in Dream. Down, up…anywhere Dream chooses to take her. Time passes, and then she awakes to sticky, wet heat. She is not trudging through sand, but moved by desire. Unusual, alluring, and not what she expects: a red, velvety vision of sin, of her and the Wolf rolling on clouds of gray warmth, on—the tides of Dream, over meaningless scenery, in a fantasy crafted from real moments of their time together. Beneath her, gloriously spreading his arms, exposing the bulging majesty of his beauty to her, he lies. When they are together and at the peak of intimacy, she can feel every thought and urge in him, as though she were a man, a wolf, and not herself, and he were woman, a temptress, a fire on his breasts. Absolutely lost between bodies, she leans, or he rises to kiss her—

  BZZZT!

  She manages to catch the fly on her tongue and spit it out. When she looks again, the Wolf’s once-handsome form crawls with black, glittering shapes, which hum as they masticate on the bone. She does not question how much of him has already been consumed, for there are pits in the churning, ebon blob of his skull. Even confronted by this horror, her devotion overrides the madness, and she wipes what she can away from his remains. She cries and begs and kisses the maggots and flies to get to a patch of skin or bone, but her mouth fills only with the mulch of dead bugs. When she is defeated, when she is sobbing and can fall no further into the moral abyss, the Dreamstalker’s voice drones in the air, a spine-seizing sound wave of evil.

  “Will you see now? Do you see the cost of your quest? Answers await, but you must be wary of the price of virtue. Death by the Black Queen is a release from the cruelty of fate. Love does not win; love never wins. It dies. Look.”

  At this command, the horde scuttles, buzzes, and then whirls past Morigan’s face, returning to its source—the Dreamstalker, who stands behind her. Mist marks an empty grave where her Wolf’s body should be. Nothing of her bloodmate remains. In this nightmare, Morigan cannot feel his purring fire-beast; she cannot even recall the wood, fur, and sweat of his scent. She remembers so little of he who claimed her heart.

  “Sorrow
makes a better mate,” suggests the Dreamstalker. “Come, wed yourself to the dark with me.”

  A hand is laid upon Morigan; voices shriek inside her head. Suddenly, Morigan remembers her mate, his touch, his love, and the fire that roars in her chest. In a flash of light, she holds metal in her hand—her promise dagger. Whether it is real or conjured by Dream, she cares not; it will serve her purpose. “Out of my heart, you witch!” shrieks Morigan. She spins, slices—

  And woke hissing and swinging a dagger at her mate. At once, the Wolf caught her wrist and subdued her, though it took more than a moment for the beating of their hearts to synch, and for the horror to fade from their faces. Luckily, they hadn’t woken the others, who slept in a pile nearby. Morigan dropped the dagger and fell, but the Wolf swept to the ground with her, circling his arms about her shaking body. As their rush of adrenaline subsided, and her sobs ebbed, he asked: My Fawn?

  I could’ve…I could’ve…Morigan was at a loss for what she might have done to her mate.

  The Wolf dismissed her worry. My hide is like iron. Now, what did you see?

  A nightmare.

  What have you seen?

  Seen? Too much.

  With that, she finally unlocked the door in her soul that her pride—a bit of his pride, as well—had kept sealed. He shuddered as her memories came over him, as he saw all her terrors: the masked and buzzing face of the Dreamstalker, and not one, but two of his deaths. When the red images had vanished, the Wolf gave a sigh of dread. She wants you to end me?

  Love never wins, she warned me.

  It does, my Fawn. He kissed her head. In those visions, I smell pain on her, deep as the rot set into green flesh. She loathes because she once loved. I do not fear her, though I do not think she is a cat without claws, either.

  I want her out of my head!

  I know. I know. He kissed her crown again. And we shall find a way to cast her out. Until then, tell no one of this incident. I would not want our pack doubting you.

  Don’t you? Doubt me?

  The Wolf glowered at her. Never. Now sleep, if you are able.

  I cannot.

  I am here. I am always here. You are the true compass of our voyage, and will lead us through the darkest seas. I shall need you to save your strength for that. For now, you must sleep. He gave her another kiss, and as if it possessed some faerytale magik, all of Morigan’s weariness and nerves swelled in a wave of fear that then receded in a tide, pulling her to sleep. He carried her back to the nest of the others, and settled himself in amid their bodies. When his bloodmate felt distant enough in his heart, he left her and the others sleeping and sniffed the night. Baring his fangs and rumbling in his throat, he harked for the rattle of cicadas. Into the night, he cast a silent, blood-sworn promise to the Dreamstalker: Come, broken soul, wounded child. Come and be eaten.

  II

  “Beautiful,” observed Moreth.

  The unthinkable march through the endless desert had soiled the Menosian’s waxy perfection; he looked as if he had melted. His hair was soaked to his temples. His vest had been wrung out and placed in his pack. His blouse clung to him with patches of yellow perspiration. At least the heat had infused a pleasant pinkness into Moreth’s cheeks, making him look almost like a normal man.

  The lush vale below them seemed to be a prayer answered. Beneath the sandy ledge from where the Wolf gazed down watchfully—hand on a knee, leaning in to smell the view—the desert suddenly dried up and festered with emerald life in the way common to Pandemonia. Long, curly weeds, as sinewy as seaweed, rose from step to step of an inverse basin, stratified like a great mine. On these stairs, each of which would take hourglasses to climb, the growth evolved from the fields of seaweed into bush and strange scrub, and then finally into tall tangles of green with white spires. “Trees,” announced the Wolf, responding to the sap-scented tease of these odd ivory twists. “Unicorn trees,” exclaimed Talwyn. Warm hands of wind caressed the cheeks of the tired travelers. Winged shapes fluttered and glided over the basin, more and more of them appearing as the land ascended, and a chattering chorus from both sky and wood called the wanderers to enter. Mouse spotted some teal bushes with yellowish spots. “Looks like fruit down there.” She set off walking. “And, King’s mercy, I think that’s a creek. Hopefully, it’s nothing strange. I’m going to find out.”

  Grumbling an uncertain warning, all noise, no words, the Wolf followed her, the others in his wake. Once they had descended a little, they were swallowed by wet fronds that tickled their faces. Down in the basin, they stopped at the stream that Mouse had noticed. There, the Wolf had a sniff and drink of the creek, then nodded his approval and waved to his companions to partake. They refilled their waterskins, splashed their faces, and cleaned off a little of their stink. After plunging again into the veldt, the Wolf led them over and through lands rich with moss and thick undergrowth, his presence deterring whatever hissing things waved faraway trails through the grasses. The Wolf spotted one, and didn’t care for it: a skulking cat-lizard as large and dark as a panther, patched with both fur and scale, and surely as dangerous as each of its parent species. Aside from the calls of those hunters, or the cries of the animals they killed, only toads and strident crickets could be heard.

  The land was densely vegetated, and they were long in coming to the first major elevation: a step of risen soil, dangling roots. After slinging Morigan into his arms, the Wolf leaped like an ape up the cliff. At the top, he waited, sometimes scrabbling halfway down the crumbling dirt wall to carry a slipping pack-mate up. The stubborn members of the company, Mouse and Moreth, accepted none of his assistance. Once everyone was up, they took a moment to rearrange their packs and cloaks, and to gaze around this new woodier terrain.

  Far and wide the woodland stretched. Underbrush loosely framed pools of mirrored water around which clustered purring, quilled creatures that glanced at the company, then away. Unicorn trees punctured the blue-green turf, a grass higher than wheat and tall enough that the Wolf could hide in it without hunkering. Moisture gleamed upon every leafy surface, and the land buzzed with noise. The land’s sheen and sounds enticed the imagination with thoughts of rainforests. The Wolf didn’t care for the thickness of the air or the tang of split and spoilt fruits that suggested the presence of some insidious rot. Still, the animals seemed harmless, and nothing leaped to kill them as they continued onward.

  In some places, the greenery was near impassable, and they formed a chain and held hands while swimming through a bluish haze, numbed by the swish of fronds. In one wider, freer opening, they rested on a cracked and toppled unicorn tree and scared a few of the spiny critters away from a pond, where they then refreshed themselves.

  For this they could be grateful: the water was always pure and, although the Wolf assured them it was free from enchantment, it grew seemingly sweeter with every taste. After their repose, they marched through grass and ferns, wrestling with each step to pull their feet from the increasingly marshy ground. Insects harassed them, the large, buzzy kind with stingers and a thirst for blood. A refreshing evening breeze soon blew through the grasses, though, and they managed one more taxing climb onto the next plateau. The Wolf assisted all of them this time, as the company had grown very tired.

  They made camp for the evening on an island of sorts. It was moated by a fork in a shallow stream, and upon it stood a small unicorn tree surrounded by easily trampled bush. As they gathered around the tree, the Wolf declared the night safe for a fire. He’d sensed danger only on the lowest range of this realm where the cat-lizards had roamed. Up here, no predators seemed to hunt. That there could be two separate ecologies so near to one another yet completely independent of one another perplexed him. Pandemonia made no attempt to conform to the natural order. He rather missed the voracious cat lizards, for those beasts, at least, he understood.

  Why the frown, my Wolf?

  Throughout the day, his bloodmate had said little. Morigan’s sudden mind-whisper made him choke on the quill beast
meat in his mouth. I seem to have surprised you, she continued, then smiled and rubbed his great back. Her mere touch made his heart race, and he realized he had been lonely for her company all day. She’d been so quiet, speaking less and less since her terrible dream.

  I do not like this land, he replied. It does not know what it is, or should be. I feel as if it divides and confuses us.

  Not entirely. Bonds have been made, as well as broken. She nodded at Moreth, Thackery, and Talwyn, so engaged in arguing that they were neglecting to touch their dinners, which lay on a picnic blanket of cloaks. Mouse and Adam, like a pair of city-wise dogs, were leaning in as if to hear the discussion, all the while using the argument as cover for stealing bits of uneaten food out from under the men’s noses. When the pair of thieves noticed the bloodmates staring, they offered no apology and continued their pilfering.

  In times of war, the greatest enemy is the one who commands the most death, said the Wolf. While that is my father and the Dark Dreamer now, it could easily be Menos again. For now, the son of El fights with us. Tomorrow, I may have to rip out his throat. The Wolf threw down the raw shank he’d no interest in, leaned back, and tumbled with Morigan until their noses touched. Her scent intoxicated him, and he tingled in pleasure: love, not desire—though for a beast, the feelings were near the same. Voices on the other side of the fire quieted. People surely watched, yet he cared not for impropriety. But I do not wish to speak of traitors, Iron rulers, or Black Queens. I wish to speak to my bloodmate, the other half of my soul, who was as silent as a brooding owl today. Why do you keep to yourself? Are you worried still over that masked coward? If she comes for you again, I shall hunt her in your dreams. Harmlessly, he snapped his teeth, summoning a smile from Morigan.

  An idea struck the Wolf and he smiled—sharp, dangerous, and full of wicked charm. I shall sleep, he said. How else can I protect you from this creature that stalks you in dreams, but by entering your dreams myself? We are close, close enough that I feel my fingers as part of your hand at times. Close enough that I feel you inside my loins when we are together. If we share feelings and sensations, we can share everything else that is unseen. Tonight, my Fawn, you will sleep soundly, as shall I. If she comes for you, I shall be there, too, a call away or perhaps already in your presence. We shall end her.