Feast of Chaos (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 3)

by Christian A. Brown

  Aadore and Sean contemplated the mystery; he rubbed the purple bruises on his neck, and she scratched the bumpy scab on her shoulder. These wounds were inextricably and unfathomably linked to what they had faced in Menos. I am a man who can feel neither blessing nor harm from any magik of this world, thought Sean. I am a woman untainted by the poison that killed my countrymen, she thought. I am a woman who walked into an inferno and emerged untouched and naked as a babe. Each thought of the being that had obliterated Menos, and of what it had said of their lineage. Menos’s destroyer had been a man, though not exactly a man, who was made of shadows and ravens and brought ruin through the thunder and lightning of his voice. And yet he had somehow also been female; the birth and horror of Menos had both been marked by a sinister femininity. He spoke of our cursed blood. What does that mean? We are simply children of the Brennochs, a family from the East. But where, exactly, in the East? Who are we, and how is it that we still live, given all that we have confronted?

  Brother and sister stared at each other, speaking many truths with their eyes.

  “A nekromancer?” Aadore suggested at last. “I say that, and yet I think he must have been something worse, for his power was greater than that of the most wicked sorcerers from both our history and faerytales. I’ve heard of no other who possesses the power to ruin a city, other than perhaps the Everfair King and Brutus. Perhaps Magnus will have insights into this creature, this Unmaker. That is why we must find Magnus and our great Iron Queen. If they can find new purpose after centuries of war, then we, too, can take on new duties—to our countrymen, to each other, to Ian. We shall have no future until the atrocities that walk our city have been stamped into dust. That is my purpose. I would sacrifice whatever grace has saved me, if that would bring us peace.”

  “Be careful, Sister,” said Sean, once again feeling the ghostly scrape of scalpels against his skin. “You do not know how far men will go in pursuit of science. They become mad, drunk with discovery, believing their genius rivals that of the Immortal Kings. Do not be so quick to offer us up on their table.”

  Aadore took her brother’s hand. “Us, of course. You are right. I shall not.”

  “It will be our secret,” declared Curtis.

  “I’ve held my tongue for some dog-born masters,” said Skar. “I’ll gladly keep your secrets, milady.”

  “You need to stop calling me that; it’s embarrassing.”

  “I shall do no such thing,” replied Skar, grinning.

  After that, the four no longer tried to deny the unthinkable. They talked about their fears, and began discussing the main challenge now confronting them: somehow, this undignified company of mercenaries, soldiers, and services people—none dressed much better than a beggar—would have to arrange a meeting with the most esteemed leaders of their world. If an audience were not immediately granted, they would just have to arrange one themselves.

  VII

  Neither of the two remaining sisters noticed Ealasyd and the tall shadow leave. Elemech and Eean, pale twin ladies in kirtles of mourning black, sat together at the edge of the glowing witch-water pool. They dipped their feet in it and wept as they watched the world’s sorrows.

  Scenes rippled across the skin of the pool, shimmering for only a moment before being replaced by another. They saw a maiden riding a wolf of flame and light: Morigan and her beloved, transformed and glorious. Then a sultry woman, hissing poison into the ear of a roaring, bloody giant: the fallen Keeper and the mad king. And most interestingly, a vision of a naked woman and a maimed, scrawny man walking out of a blooming rose of black fire. The sisters did not recognize these two; for some reason, they were unable to read these mortals’ secrets and could only study their faces in the watery glass. It was odd, although not the oddest thing they’d seen in these end days. They would like to have known more about these two—their tale, they felt, must be both grand and sad—but the Fates then overwhelmed the sisters with terrors. They endured explosions, shrieking men on fire, promises made from dying lips, and the thunderous commands of the Dreamers. So many Dreamers. The sisters whirled down and through the many currents of destiny, all of which wended their way toward the great confluence of this age: the War of Wars.

  The sisters cringed as a silver searing light burst from the pool. They lost their earthly sight and tumbled end over end in a void that buffeted their ears with sandpapery winds and assaulted their senses with mouthfuls of scorched dirt, sweat, metal, and shite. Their bodies crumpled, burned, and fluttered off into ash. Fire and wrath had come to Geadhain. Then came a shattering, as if a glass kingdom were being hammered down to its foundations, and a blast of violent winter air. Of course, they realized. Fire to Ice. Brother to Brother. When the sisters were cast out of the vision, they clung to each another and panted for some time.

  “Did you see that, Sister?”

  “I did. An end.”

  Their mimicking of each other was impeccable, and even they lost track of who spoke as Eean and who spoke as Elemech. But Ealasyd, returning now to her sisters, had no difficulty telling them apart. Because of what she had to witness, Elemech’s face always held more shadow, more darkness around the eyes. Eean’s gaze, though, maintained its gleam of wisdom. Slowly becoming herself once more, Eean became aware of Ealasyd’s approach and of certain elements in the room around her: an empty pallet, a missing patient, a space on a shelf of curious wares where three very small and powerful stones in a leather purse had once sat.

  “What have you done?” asked Eean.

  Ealasyd puffed and crossed her arms. “What have I done? You choose this of all times to ask me? I’ve sent our little bird out of the nest! His wing’s all better now. He’s ready to fly. Furthermore, I didn’t like his being here. He’s not nice, you know. His soul is rotten. He stinks our home right up, and there’s something terrible whispering in his head. He’s as mad as they come.”

  Eean resisted the urge to stare once more into the glowing witch-water, which had again enthralled Elemech. The Fates were too powerful these days; the future screamed with calamities and omens, demanding to be heard. Of all the times for Eean to be trapped in the likeness of her deeply brooding sister, this was the least opportune. Eean rose, walked away from the pool, and then sat on a bench at the stone table with her back facing the prophetic waters. She needed to create distance between herself and them before she could give Ealasyd her full attention. Ealasyd joined her and sat on her lap. Speaking kindly and earnestly now, Eean continued. “I apologize, my little hummingbird. You know what she is like, and what I am like when we are she.”

  “I do, and it’s terrible! I haven’t had a good stew in weeks! Maybe longer, I don’t count sands all that well.”

  Eean caressed her sister’s shining locks, which felt as warm and tickling as sunshine against her hand. “You’re right to accuse us of neglect. I shall hunt tonight and make you a fatty feast. Perhaps boar or bear.”

  “Delicious!” beamed Ealasyd.

  “First, however, you must tell me what you have done with both the son of the Iron Queen and my three wonderstones.”

  Ealasyd squeezed her eyes shut and puckered her mouth, trying to remember. Memories didn’t stay in her head for long; they flew in and out like flocks of chattering birds. Ealasyd had already forgotten that she and Eean had been bickering a moment ago, but she did manage to remember their guest and the fact that she had sent the unpleasant man away. Why? Why had she done this? “I…” she mumbled. “Something about threes…Everything comes in threes, even us. I wanted him gone—yes, that’s it. I’ve been trying to find a use for him: after all, he should have one. A creature that lacks a purpose does not deserve the breath of life. He should have died, blown off and away, like a fall leaf on the wind…”

  Eean snapped. “Focus,” she commanded.

  “Right. Rotsoul, or whatever his name is—can’t remember—told me what he wanted, what he needed to find most in the world: his mother, his brother, and the monster that wronged him. I
thought to give him those old stones we have as a parting gift. I can’t say why. At times, dear sister, I hear this beautiful whisper, like a butterfly made of music that flutters in my ear, and I chase it…I’m not sure what happens when I do, though I often wake up in strange places. What were we talking about? Monsters, I think. Imagine that, monsters hunting monsters! Seems like a good fit to me…”

  While her sister rambled, Eean thought back to Sorren’s indignant gasp against the darkness, where he’d beseeched her and the Green Mother for a chance at redemption. I want to ask my brother to forgive me. I want to see my mother smile and feel something more than the cold burn of iron in her breast. I want justice and honor and glory, not for myself, but for those whose souls can still be saved. In the sand of my doom, I see every folly, every deplorable act and greedy sin with which I have fed the beast of my damnation. I cannot be saved. I do not ask to be saved. I ask to save those who possess hearts and souls, who possess the buried light and hope that I shall never find in myself. I thought to curse my brother with living death, and yet it is I who rot and crawl with worms inside. Please, great witch, granter of miracles and curses, curse me with another breath of miserable life so that I may be a miracle for my family.

  Much like Morigan’s mate, Eean could smell the stink of a lie. But Rotsoul’s words and his withered, ruined self smelled of nothing but honesty. Indeed, she sensed that this moment had contained Sorren’s truest confession, expressed his most sincere self. And so the Green Mother had honored the fallen creature by granting him the chance he sought. Redemption…not for himself, but for those whose souls were lost in the dark. Could he do it? What would he do now that he was loose and in possession of three of the oldest wonderstones ever picked out of the vegetation, mossy crannies, and aeons of Alabion? The questions sparkled with the promise of both doom and greatness, humming with a resonance of Fate that lured Eean over to the glowing water-mirror, which revealed at least some of all truths. Poor Ealasyd would have no bear or boar for supper tonight.

  Elemech welcomed Eean to her side, and they stared and fell as deep as the witch-water would take them.

  XI

  TRUE SELVES

  I

  News of the hunt for the fallen queen of Eod had reached the ears of the populace: such a scandal could not be contained, and murmurs ran like rats through this city plagued with fear. Opinions on the matter were divided. Most people were already finding the stress of the war with Brutus to be intolerable and could not envision waging a civil war, too. It was easier, then, to paint Lila the same villainous color as Brutus. She’s probably in league with him, they whispered. At least the Iron Queen came to us when the hourglass was darkest for Eod and extended the olive branch.

  There were also a few more seditious voices, those most loyal to the crown, who attempted to rationalize the queen’s act of genocide. What she’d done was horrific; no one contested that. However, war itself was wicked, and in wartime, good women—even queens—were sometimes called upon to do terrible things. Any fool could walk to the Gate of Eod, look east, and see the three iron colossi sleeping in the desert and glowing with strange fires and lights: technomagikal monstrosities that had been created to destroy Eod. These loyalists suspected that once the war with Brutus had ended, a new one with Menos would begin. And Magnus would be at a disadvantage, too, as he had invited the enemy into his sanctum.

  Those who held such unpopular opinions learned to whisper them only in trusted circles. For the eyes and ears of Menos walked the streets, and one never knew what a black-suited master or wandering group of Ironguards would repeat to their Iron Queen. Other more unsavory characters had passed through the ivory gates of Eod and taken up residence in the city in recent days. Rough men, angry men; women dressed in padded leather and crisscrossed in belts glinting with throwing knives. Yet there was no circus in town, and these women and men weren’t performers. From far and wide, cutthroats and assassins had come to Eod, lured by thoughts of winning the Iron Queen’s murder pool and becoming heir apparent to Menos.

  The prospect of hunting a queen and acquiring the Iron Crown had drawn even the reclusive, legendary assassins from the sandy islands northwest of Central Geadhain: the Isles of Terotak, a chain of islands that cartographers drew like a string of black pearls. Indeed, the women of that land were as rich and mysterious as that rare adornment. Strutting through the white streets in loose black robes and capes of ebon silk, they seemed more specter than mortal. Only the beautiful coal-rimmed eyes of these women could be seen: the rest of their features were hidden by veiled hoods. One wouldn’t have wanted to peer beneath the wrappings in any case, for these women were Marith, an old Ghaedic word meaning “Death-eaters.” Their veils concealed their teeth, filed to points and capped in bronze. Their hoods hid the whirling, thorny tattoos on their bald, scarified scalps. And though the Marith passed by in clouds of petals and spice, the saccharine odor was not a pleasant one: it was reminiscent of a mortuary, the kind of pulverizing fragrance necessary for masking the stench of rotting flesh. For beneath their concealments, their silks and spices, these women stank of the death they ate and of the blood in which they washed their sunless skins. Like the other mercenaries, the Marith had come to Eod to hunt the queen; they had, however, no interest in the Iron Crown. They sought only to determine whether Lila should be consumed or sainted for the death that she’d brought to the world.

  The moment of decision could soon be upon them, for the queen and her fugitive lover—how the scandalmongers reveled in the heady mixture of sex and sin!—had been spotted by two men on the roads winding through Meadowvale. Both men had initially suffered from delirium, and one of them continued to crawl on the ground of his sanatorium cell, believing himself to be an earthworm. The other fellow, however, had recovered a few shreds of intellect and provided what information he could to his caregivers. Something—greedy pockets, likely—had led to the breaking of a hospice worker’s vows of confidentiality, and his news had soon reached mercenary ears. Brigands had then descended upon the site of the encounter. There, they ferreted out a trail that led to the rocky beach alongside the Straits of Wrath, where they discovered a docked and ancient Menosian vessel powered by a kind of technomagik that none present could understand or operate. Only a great sorcerer or sorceress could have piloted it, they concluded—a queen of the City of Wonders, perhaps. After these discoveries, the puzzle pieces were easy to assemble. If the queen and her consort had come through the Straits of Wrath—a clever way to elude detection—then charted a path up through Meadowvale and away from Brutus’s tainted realm, they could have only one destination: Kor’Khul. Perhaps the queen believed she’d be able to outwit an army of mercenaries in the land of sun and sand where she’d once lived as a mortal.

  Naturally, the troupe of ruffians who’d first unearthed this series of clues was unable to keep its findings from the shadowbrokers for long; within days, the game changed from a hunt across all of Geadhain to a hunt focused on Kor’Khul. Southreach, the outskirts of the Salt Forests, and Taroch’s Arm were also being closely watched: there would be no returning to Carthac for this queen. She and her lover were now fenced in on all sides by brutes and murderers.

  As madmen, killers, and ritualistic cannibals flooded the port of the once safe and sacred Eod, loyalists unbeguiled by Gloriatrix’s crocodile charms met with greater frequency, finding ways to communicate secretly in this world gone insane. They wore a random array of ornaments, such as white hairbands or woven-cloth bracelets, that they threaded with gold, for white and gold were Queen Lila’s colors. Sometimes, even a mismatched pair of earrings—one pearl, the other gold—would be the only clue to one’s alliance. They hailed one another using coded greetings and farewells that spoke of golden days, amber skies, and hope. A fine amber dawn, perhaps, or, May your sleep be golden and full of hope.

  Late at night, the loyalists would meet in the basements of homes and taverns. Mostly, they simply talked and prayed for better days. However
, from discussion, a dash of oppression, and a flicker of rage a rebellion can grow. And those loyal to Lila certainly felt angry when they thought of their silent king in his glittering palace. Even now, Magnus was entertaining the Iron monsters who would like nothing better than to see them all in chains. The loyalists’ anger had not yet swelled into open dissent; they had no armaments and no real organization, although many were members of the Silver Watch dissatisfied with the toxic Iron men polluting their palace and city. And still Magnus spoke not; he remained hidden away in his fortress, mired in sorrows and in political fencing with the Iron Queen. He was neglecting the garden of his city—which had now been planted with the seeds of revolution.

  II

  Magnus stared down upon his city and felt lost. The maze of sun-dazzled silver rings and white circles bewildered him as if it were an optical illusion, and he couldn’t seem to settle his gaze on any one place. He couldn’t remember why it had been so important for him to build something so grand. Mercy for the uncivilized? Philanthropy? In hindsight, it all felt like a vainglorious, empty experiment. Eod’s grandeur now seemed nothing but a testament to his pointless ambition. The city had blinded him to life’s most valuable resources: love and family.

  “Magnus,” said Beauregard, from behind him.

  His voice sounded as if it came from far away; much in Magnus’s life seemed marked by a sense of distance these days. Magnus turned to the handsome, frowning lad. “Ah, I see that I have been in one of my states,” replied Magnus. “Your expression rebukes me for my withdrawal, my isolation. If I could, I would freeze myself in eternal winter and numb the pain of thousands of years of memories. I could then forget who I am, who I was, who I foolishly wanted to be…And when I awoke, the world would be different. I would be different. All would be new…”

  These rhapsodies about disappearing, about ending this eternal life and beginning one anew, sent the king into a smiling, morbid state. Since Lila’s betrayal, Magnus’s heartache and his removal from the world had worsened. At times like this, he would sit or stand while sands ran to hourglasses, chasing memories and regrets on the horizon of his dreams.