Feast of Chaos (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 3)

by Christian A. Brown

  In a ripple of repulsive images, dreams within dreams, Morigan sees Brutus stealing the bodies of Pandemonia’s nomads; he initiates them into his army through rituals of fire, agony, and sex. She witnesses chained men drinking a concoction that from its putrid stench she concludes must contain both the essence of Zionae’s madness and a squirt of Brutus’s seed. Morigan realizes that the mad king must have arrived in Pandemonia long ago to spread his taint and raise his reserve army of Red Riders—a legion hidden and waiting.

  “Look, mistress,” say her bees, and she returns to this Dream. “Don’t blink or you’ll miss them: the ghost men.”

  The ghost men? Of course: the figures to which she’s been psychically alerted would never be spotted in the wild. No normal sight would discern the creeping, shrouded hunters in their cloaks of white, cloaks that Morigan knows will adapt to the pattern and hue of any surroundings. The hunters are movements in the snow; they are not men. Despite Morigan’s omniscience, and regardless of the many truths she possesses in the Dreaming, she finds herself unable to focus on the ghost men. She cannot strip away their disguises and find their truths. They are slippery, their souls unreadable, as if their cloaks or some other magik ward them from her second sight. She cannot tell if they are friend or foe—at least not until one of the ghost men sweeps like a leaping spider up and out of a white cranny and wraps a Red Rider so tightly in a weighted net that he becomes a spun cocoon. Metal flickers, and the Red Rider’s entangled horse has its knees cut. Suddenly, the Red Rider is being gored in a dozen places, and warm, winey spirals decorate the soil. And then the ghost men are everywhere, erupting in plumes of snow, slashing, hacking, and decimating the servants and mounts of Zionae’s army.

  As Morigan drifts, staring down at the battle, the elegance of the slaughter—so effortless, neat, and quick—impresses her. As soon as all necessary death has been dealt, the ghost men vanish. Morigan loses track of the killers in an instant; their presences and souls are gone.

  Gone.

  Releasing the dead limb, Morigan explained what she had seen: ten men, maybe less, maybe more, slaughtering two groups of Red Riders before disappearing like ghosts into the storm.

  “It was all so…efficient,” said Morigan. “I’ve never seen such killing.”

  “I have,” said Moreth. “From the natives of Pandemonia, the people who decline to congregate in the safety of her Great Cities. I speak of the tribes who wander and live off this land without a great changeling to hunt for them. They are the sturdiest folk in all of Geadhain, I would say—sturdier, even, than the people of the Iron City, for they encounter death with each passing moment. I do not know much about the many tribes of this land, though I would think that if they are hunting the mad king’s army, we should consider them allies. The enemy of our enemy…”

  Morigan’s bees stung a warning. “We need to be cautious. I don’t know if that is quite true.”

  “Do you think they are still here, these hunters?” asked Talwyn.

  Morigan reached with her extraordinary senses out into the deepest white. The Wolf, too, leaned and sniffed the bitterness of the storm for the pungencies of men. Neither of their attempts to divine nearby hunters proved successful. Morigan shook her head. “I don’t know.” Morigan glanced at her bloodmate, and they had a silent conversation while locking gray and silver stares.

  “Caenith suggests that we rest here for a time,” said Morigan, turning back to the others. “It is a dark night, and the storm goes on and on. This may be the safest haven we shall find. If hunters remain out there, we shall be able to better spot them when visibility returns, perhaps with the morning light.” She paused, receiving another look and instruction from the Wolf. “Caenith would like you to keep watch tonight, Moreth. I assume you are up to the task?”

  “I am at your service,” replied the Menosian.

  Already he’d perched himself on an icy hump opposite the others, looking quite comfortable in his fur-lined overcoat and bowler. As no fire could be started in these conditions, the company sought warmth from their pack-master, who lay down and generously allowed the company to snuggle into his furry nooks and muscular pillows. Tonight, the Wolf would have to sleep: he could protect Morigan from the Dreamstalker only if he, too, dreamed. The reluctant Wolf closed his eyes, folded his ears against his skull to muffle the screaming wind, and attuned himself to the breath and beat of his bloodmate.

  Moreth will keep us safe, mind-whispered Morigan to her Wolf. I trust him, and so do you. Back in the desert, the first time you really watched over me while I slept—my breathing, my heart, my soul—I felt you near, watching me like a shadow through the glass of my dreams. Last night, when you joined me in dreaming, I saw you as an intimation, a phantom in the corner of an eye, in many places that I wandered; we were barely a breadth apart. I believe the Dreamstalker sensed your shadow, too, on each occasion, which is why she stayed away. This time, my Wolf, I want to be with you. Together. Let us dream the same dream. I feel all these doorways opening within me, revealing as many wonders as there are silver roads in the sky over Pandemonia. I feel my power swelling like a tide. I believe I can do almost anything now, my Wolf—including taking you into my Dream. Come, we have a Dreamstalker to hunt.

  The Wolf didn’t quite understand this desire of his Fawn, though he felt the pull of her need. Tumbling—he was tumbling through darkness, surrounded by a halo of silver that flickered and buzzed.

  From his nearby perch, Moreth watched the enormous beast slump, snort, and begin to snore.

  VI

  Of all the tales of magik and mystery the Wolf knew, there were only a few in which two lovers wandered the same dream. For he and Morigan, though, there was no barrier to such a communion. They needed no magik, only a joint desire to stay together in what lay beyond. Together, the two of them awoke within Dream.

  Their subconscious minds had conjured a wood, one not unlike the rich and tangled one where they’d first made love. The faintly shimmering trees and the smoky trails of their bodies told them they were not on Geadhain. Morigan looked radiant in her slightly silver skin. He kissed and ravished her starry body: he wanted to make love. In the Dreaming, Morigan saw the fire of his soul flooding his glass fingers, for he was transparent and shining, too.

  “Wait…” she panted. “Remember why we are here, my Wolf. Remember whom we are to hunt.”

  A hunt, yes. That got the Wolf’s blood boiling as much as had his lust. From within, flames burst and consumed him. Morigan stepped aside as he shuddered, stretched, and groaned into the second shape of his soul. A wolf of searing light stood before Morigan. Mounting him, clutching his curling mane of wispy flame, Morigan reined him into a run. Like a wild shooting star, they tore out of the woods and into the gray ether. Morigan felt confident that her power had blossomed, for with the speed of her mount, and with the expansion of her mind, it seemed there was nothing in creation she couldn’t find, no secret too precious or hidden.

  “We want the Dreamstalker,” she declared to her bees.

  The Wolf roared in agreement, spraying fire and sparks. Nothing could escape the two of them, united in this hunt of hunts. If they chose, they could soar to the center of the universe, move through dreams and realities as did the Dreamers themselves. In a single leap, the fire wolf bounded through an orchestral chamber glittering with stars and echoing with sonorous hymns. Such queer and mystic beauty. Whose Dream was this? For they knew it was not their own.

  Morigan and her living chariot of fire continued their phantasmal gallop through more recognizable fantasies: a rusted playground in Menos, where a young, petulant, dark-haired Mouse played catch with a girl who looked as if she had eyes made of seawater and skin and hair made of sunshine: young Mouse and Adelaide. This must have been one of Mouse’s favorite memories, dreamed of often, for it had the clarity of a phantograph.

  A gallop through a sudden silver rip in the fabric of this dream took Morigan and her fiery mount into a new scene: Talwyn sitti
ng in a glowingly white room, upon a cube. For a moment, all was silent, but then listening with her sixth senses, Morigan heard it: a low thrum. With that, she began to see the faint filaments and flickering mathematical patterns whirling in the air: these ephemeral, inconstruable formula. Even asleep, the man’s mind continued to churn. Talwyn’s intellect was a universe unto itself, and Morigan’s amazement might have held her there, perhaps forever, watching the extraordinary cosmos of thought surrounding the genius. However, the Wolf was an animal who had no interest in higher disciplines, and he dashed off through the whiteness until Dream’s grayness enveloped them.

  Leaping through another suddenly opening seam, the bloodmate’s perspective shifted, and they filled the head of a man. The man’s gaze was turned toward his navel, where a pale woman forged entirely of ice, teeth, and rage licked a trail of blood on his chest. Morigan could see only the hands of their host: bony, elegant fingers she believed belonged to Moreth.

  Freeing themselves from Moreth’s head, the bloodmates traveled to countless other dreams. They were ghosts alongside Thackery, who hummed as he sailed a one-man vessel on a crystal-blue sea. They saw Adam’s secret vision of himself as a gloriously wealthy man of leisure strolling down the streets of a fantastically gleaming city, a dainty-dressed Mouse on his arm (some dreams weren’t dead yet, it seemed). Wistfully, Morigan visited pasts as well as futures, appearing in Mifanwae’s kitchen, which smelled of buttery, breaded delights, before soaring into dreams of knighthood, sainthood, motherhood, and deviancy.

  They were hunting fates madly, frenzied from all the scents suddenly there to chase. Morigan concentrated on getting the beast in her heart and beneath her thighs under control. She repeated the name she knew was right, and conjured the crawling face of her foe.

  “Show me the Dreamstalker.”

  The Wolf’s next leap landed them in a smoking desert, with blowing sand as blinding as the snow they’d seen that day. Confidently, the fire wolf stomped over the dunes; he was invulnerable to these angry elements, which should have sheared off flesh by the handful. Indeed, the Wolf possessed no fear of what lay beyond the sandstorm, festering at its heart. As they prowled forward, the bloodmates listened to the song of this desert, a magnificent keening. Then the sandy curtains ahead were wrenched apart, and a yellow moon shed a ghoulish light on the scene. Somewhere amid the crumbled buildings and the leaning, sky-scraping towers—bent over like shattered masts, howling like flutes of horror through their many perforations—their prey would be found. They had discovered the Dreamstalker’s lair: Aesorath, the City of Screams.

  “Come forth!” demanded Morigan. “You have been hunted and found. Do not cower, servant of Zionae.”

  Everywhere and nowhere, the wolf of fire and light could smell a sickly stink of sweat, rotten fruit, and scorched roses. The Dreamstalker was here, watching. The fire wolf challenged her with a terrible roar. At last, a shape stepped forward in a flourish of gritty winds. It was a small woman, wrapped in a crawling black cloak, a living mantle; her face was hidden behind a silver skull-casing. Much like the bloodmates, the Dreamstalker was incandescent, but her light was gray. Morigan sensed she was not of the Dreaming or the waking world, but from somewhere in between. The Wolf snarled, wanting to attack and find out just how much of this despicable creature was composed of meat that he could tear apart. Morigan restrained him for the moment. The Dreamstalker, sensitive to her own peril, stopped far away from the glowing seer and her fiery mount.

  The cicada music buzzed. “Well done, Daughter of Fate. I did not think you could travel so true, so far in this land warped by magik. Welcome to our kingdom.”

  At this, Morigan’s mind’s eye swelled with images of dry dungeons, walls splattered in blood, and chained folk of all ages and sexes being force-fed a vile pink concoction that would transform them into Zionae’s slaves. Morigan watched as black-eyed, burned souls worked naked in a shredding desert storm under a sizzling desert sun. It was a deplorable existence; they had been scarred and burned as much by the elements as by dark magik. Morigan shut her mind’s eye. She wanted to see no more of this kingdom. Morigan urged the fire wolf forward, and he proceeded across the desert, plodding and snapping his teeth.

  “Your kingdom is wanton and black as your heart,” said Morigan. “You offer us no compelling reason to spare your life.”

  “As much as you fight, as hard as you struggle,” buzzed the Dreamstalker, “you will never win against the Will of my master. She fights for love lost. She fights for a grief that eclipses any and all mortal suffering—including yours.”

  “Zionae is without love. She has lost her mind.”

  “No. She is the sane one, the fairest of her kind. She is the one most like those of us with blood, hearts, feelings, and flesh. You will see, Daughter of Fate. You will see the dark games these Dreamers play. The Pale Lady, the Gray Man, Charazance—they care only for the game. Wait until you see their visions of the future. You think you have found your enemy, when you have actually found your salvation. Zionae offers unity. She offers an escape from the pain.”

  Strange references had been made to the Dreamers, but Morigan dismissed them as more of this creature’s deceptions. “Zionae offers slavery and sin. We reject every ounce of her vision.”

  The Dreamstalker laughed tinnily. “You refuse to see the truth.”

  “You have shown me nothing but nightmares in which I harm those I love.”

  “That is what your future holds. You cannot be warrior-mother to the world and not come to know loss. Send out your Will and discover the truth for yourself. Love dies, leaving only pain. Better to revel in that red, glorious truth than to deny it. Better to end your loved ones with your own merciful blade than to leave their deaths to chance. Death, in Zionae’s kingdom, is only a bit of pain before true immortality. Zionae will show you the way to eternity.”

  She’s raving mad, thought Morigan. And we must put her down, as we would any sick animal.

  The Wolf, feeling none of his bloodmate’s compassion and overwhelmed by a murderous urge, cleared the twenty yards separating them from the Dreamstalker in a single leap. As his flaming jaws clenched shut, he tasted insect mulch, fabric, and a little blood, which was sweet and tainted with agony and misery. But an instant later, the Dreamstalker vanished in a puff of sand and flies. The bloodmates heard her call from somewhere in the desert; she sounded rattled. “I shall not be ended by you! I am the Herald of the Black Queen, her very voice! Do not think you will find me again so easily!”

  Herald? thought the bloodmates. Here, then, was Zionae’s very lieutenant: killing her would be a glorious achievement. She should not have revealed her importance; her execution was now inescapable. The Wolf sniffed, savoring the blood in his mouth. As if it were a delicate wine, he rolled it on his palate, trying to identify the traces and source of its flavor.

  “I have come before you to accept your surrender,” boasted the Herald, “and to end this war. You will not be offered such mercy again!”

  “We shall not barter with you,” warned Morigan. “You sound scared, and you should be.” Because of her intimacy with her bloodmate, Morigan could taste the Herald’s fear and blood upon her tongue as well, and she wanted another drink. She looked over at the cloudy sandscape to their left. That was where their prey hid. Feeling her impulse, the Wolf leaped. A dark form faded into view, and he snapped his teeth down into solid, warm matter before it dissipated and buzzed away. From somewhere, the Herald screamed.

  “Stay quiet or our hunt shall not be as challenging,” taunted Morigan.

  Wisely, the Herald said nothing more. The Herald would have fled from this dream, if she could. However, Morigan, peaking in her power, flushed with the sexual anger and rage of her bloodmate, possessed more control of the unseen than she’d ever believed possible. By her Will alone, she denied all exit from this dream, and turned it into a trap. Now Morigan made the threats as she and her fire wolf casually stalked the sands and tracked their blee
ding victim.

  “You thought you could corrupt me,” said Morigan. “You believed you could horrify me, weaken me, bring me down to your pathetic level of depravity. I am stronger than I once was. I am far stronger than you were when Zionae broke you. I am stronger than the mad king. I am stronger than Zionae. My bloodmate and I are stronger than anything this world has ever seen. Your master once warned me that I must never again enter her Dream. I have met her since; I survived her threat. I bring the threats and thunder now. I look forward to meeting her again. I shall show the Mother of Creation how angry and destructive a child I can be.”

  Power shone from the entwined forms of the maiden and her wolf. The winds stilled, the earthbound clouds of dust fell and settled, and all that moved in the desert was revealed—including the Herald, who cowered and stumbled in the sand, holding her arm, bleeding gobs of flies and tarry blood.

  “Look at you.” Morigan and the Wolf shared a bestial, elemental laugh that sounded like a thunderclap. “Nothing but a weak, pitiful thing. Where is your master now? Where are your grim warnings? Time to end this. I shall let my beloved devour you now. I hope that in his stomach you will at last find peace.”

  The Wolf roared.

  In a last and desperate attempt, the Herald shielded herself, crying out, “Fool! While you judge me and declare my Fate, those you love, those you say you will not lose, are being taken from you! I may be ended, but my truth shall be my vindication!”

  Truth? Those that Morigan loved being taken? Even the Wolf paused in his crouch, not quite ready to leap and eat the wretch.

  “What lie is this?” demanded Morigan.

  “No lie,” said the Herald slyly, realizing she may have bought herself a reprieve. “While you’ve dreamt and hunted, much has happened in the otherworld, deceptions and danger not brought by the hand of my master. I warned you of the Dreamers. I told you that Zionae, brutish and single-minded as she seems, remains the most honest of her kind. Now, you will see and learn that cold lesson for yourselves. Even a speck spent on my murder could cost you a lifetime’s regret. Your friends, your pack as you call them, are not safe.”