Eventually, Beauregard marched up the steps to the balcony, seized his king, and led him back to the shady recesses of his quarters. Magnus still needed to be dressed: he wore only a throw over his lower half, which was certainly not appropriate attire for a king. Wistful and melancholic, the king continued to ramble as his naked body was exposed, his arms were tugged and forced into sleeves, and he was made to step like an indignant toddler into pants, then boots.
“Rowena told me everything, you know,” he said, “about those entities from which Brutus and I were born…Beings of starry matter, hands like smoke…When last in the Hall of Memories, she saw them, with the seer, the sage, and my queen—my former queen. Those four know more of me than I know of myself. I have lived through millennia. I am as old as the mountains that surround us, and still, I am a stranger to myself. What I wanted was to be a man. A man in all the ways that mattered…You would think that being above men, being greater than they are, would fill me with a sense of disdain for the faults and weaknesses of those who must age and die. Yet all it has done is make me yearn for them even more, Beauregard—because they are what define life. I stand here, undefined by the countless days through which I have marched. I stand here far more of a child than you with your twenty-some summers.”
Beauregard wanted to slap his king, but instead roughly fluffed Magnus’s collar. “Twenty-three summers,” replied the spellsong. “You missed my name day last week on account of your gloom-mongering. Whether what you have, Magnus—these endless years—is a gift or a curse depends only on how you choose to view the matter. You have the opportunity to unmake any mistakes you’ve made. You can live through a war of one hundred years and see the peace that the soldiers of that era will never know. You can watch over the children’s children of your closest friends. Normal men are not given such graces. Mistakes aside, you’ve done more good for Geadhain than any of the lords, sorcerer kings, and tyrants who’ve walked this world. Furthermore, you promised in no uncertain terms to be the father I have lost. If you want to live like a mortal, then act like one. Learn to conquer your failures and to wear your bruises like badges of pride. Mortal men, good men, see failure as a chance to do better. Be a role model; show me someone worthy of my pledge to protect him. I once knew that man. My father died to save him. Who are you now? The grieving, sad, haunted creature before me is an insult to your greatness. He’s not a man I wish to serve.”
A winter wind blew through the chamber, thrashing the curtains and speckling Beauregard with frost and his next breath was white. The cold eased as Magnus took the young man’s shivering hand from his collar and said, “I am sorry.”
He was sorry for this spell of sorrow that had enchanted him for weeks. Sorry for forcing this boy to do everything but wipe his arse. Sorrier still for having missed the lad’s name day, and for not following through on his promise of stewardship. Magnus was supposed to be the father, the teacher, the leader to this boy, but he’d allowed their roles to become reversed. Magnus’s gaze became pure and unclouded, and in its well of emerald green, Beauregard saw storms, wisdom, and power: the true attributes of his king.
“G-good, you’re back,” said Beauregard, his teeth chattering. “I’ve missed weeks of swordplay and magikal theory exercises—all the lessons of knighthood I was to learn from you.”
A gray blush mantled the king’s face. “War comes, and I have left my knight unprepared. I shall try to make amends for my neglect once our meeting in the Hall of Memories has ended.”
“Glory!” cried Beauregard, keeper of appointments and maker of excuses for his master. “You have remembered where you are scheduled to be today! I shall take that as the first true sign of my king’s return.”
“I have returned,” promised Magnus. “I have wallowed in regret for far too long. I worry my kingdom will have rusted in my absence. I am haunted by vague visions of murderers wandering our streets—”
“Death-eaters,” said Beauregard. “It’s all true, my liege.”
Magnus sneered. “Have we fallen to that depth of vulgarity? The Marith? Cannibals and worshippers of darkness now terrorize my people? Come, my spellsong, we have much work to do every sand of this day, and a tireless night of sparring and teaching to look forward to.”
Sounds exhausting, thought Beauregard, and grinned as they left the king’s chamber.
III
Her hair coiffed high and her body attired in a tight suit and buttoned overcoat, Gloriatrix appeared ready for a cabaret performance. She even carried a sleek black cane. Beauregard doubted she could sing, at least not anything prettier than the shrill, ear-bleeding songs of a harpy. The king and the spellsong met the Iron Queen in the limestone cavern deep within the Court of Ideas, past all of the nose-to-book scholars and dusty walls lined with tomes. She stood just outside a stone arch that produced auric light and tintinnabulations. Wonders lay inside, felt the spellsong, and the music tinkling from the arch stirred his nerves and his hair and sparked awe in his soul. Only Gustavius, Gloriatrix’s tall iron-clad ghoul, attended the queen today. The strange white witch had not reappeared since her doomsaying many meetings past, though he believed he’d occasionally glimpsed her flitting around the palace out of the corner of his eye, like a ghost that didn’t want to be seen.
“Hmm, not late. How unusual,” said Gloriatrix. Apparently, she considered this greeting enough. She poked her cane against the metal stomach of one of the two Silver watchmen who guarded the Hall and suggested that he move.
“Hold, Gloriatrix. A word before we proceed,” commanded Magnus.
In a voice of thunder, no less. Disconcerted, the Iron Queen glanced at the offensively handsome man, dressed so simply in workmen’s wear, which emphasized every curve of his perfection. Magnus met her glare of iron with one of lightning; his air of command made her lip curl. It would seem the king had at last remembered that he was a king and not a moping child. This was an unfortunate development, as he would now be able to pay closer attention to what was happening around him.
“What is it, Magnus?” she asked. “I thought there was something you wanted me to see in this strange place up ahead. Let’s get on with it.”
“Rules. There are rules we must go over before we proceed.”
“Of course there are,” she scoffed.
Magnus stormed over to her. “We are entering a sacred store of learning and history. There is no other place like this anywhere else in Geadhain, and although our nations are now at peace thanks to our mutual enemy, there are secrets therein that could destroy lives and nations. They must not be tampered with or abused. If I discover that your agents have come to this place without my consent, I shall end our alliance, and you will face my darkest wrath.”
Static pricked at Gloriatrix’s face and eyebrows. Lights in the star trellis above flickered erratically, and the air’s sudden sulfurousness made her sneeze. When she’d recovered herself, the electrical irregularities and odd smell had vanished. Gustavius handed her a black tissue, and she dabbed at her nose.
Secrets that could damn nations, you say? “I shall welcome your wrath, should I break your rules,” replied the Iron Queen.
While this was by no means an ideal answer, Magnus accepted it. Silently, he led the two Menosians into the tunnel of light. As a woman of the Iron City, which never saw sunlight, Gloriatrix loathed the excessive brightness of this realm and preferred to spend her time under as many layers of stone as she could find. She wished she’d worn a hat to protect herself from the glare; both she and Gustavius had to shield their eyes while following the outline of the Everfair King. Finally, their hands fell, and they allowed themselves to be dazzled by the wonder into which they’d walked.
A chamber—domed, echoing, grand, and constructed of crystal tubes and technomagikal struts—gleamed through the glitter-dappled golden fog breathed from the mouth of the giant divinity above. She could immediately feel some kind of presence: there was a rhythm to its puffing tubes, a pulse in the glassy floor that
encased the starry void at her feet and a full-bodied hum that gave her the kind of tremors she had not known since she’d last tumbled in bed with her now-deceased husband. It all had to be illusion, unless Magnus had somehow trapped the universe below. Yet, the Iron Queen was certain that the Hall of Memories was somehow alive. Gustavius escorted the still gawking queen over to where Magnus sat on a glass bench worthy of royalty. There, she rested and whipped her astonishment back into poise.
“Quite splendid. But what’s the point?” she asked.
Magnus looked up at the storm softly rolling overhead. “I have thought deep and long on this war: on how it began and how I was defeated in Zioch. My brother has attained power he should not possess. He has mastered magik that bends the elements, fuses together flesh and metal and souls. He is not a sorcerer as I am. Therefore, this magik must stem from another source. I believe I know from where he has claimed this power. I almost remember a cry…”
It is the moment of his capture and doom at Zioch. Fiery cyclones whirl around him, the earth splits, flames and lava burble forth from below. Through the cascading, roaring decimation walks the shivering shadow of his giant brother. What is the maddened chant that Brutus shouts? An incantation? A summoning? What is this word that brings an earthquake with every syllable? Ig-ni-fax!
“When he and I battled, I heard a word,” said Magnus, his mind returning once more to the hall. “A name. The name of a creature, a force. I believe Brutus has harnessed its power, and we must discover how he has done this. I am hopeful that in one of the many learned minds that have shared their knowledge with the Hall of Memories, we shall find the answer to this mystery. In our past, we may find the key to our future, or so I hope.”
The Iron Queen watched as Magnus’s alabaster complexion became even paler. What could an Immortal possibly fear? She needed to know. “What kind of creature?” she asked. “What is this force?”
“An elemental. A wyrm,” he replied.
Gloriatrix had heard of the great wyrms that burrowed in the far-off reaches of Geadhain, although she’d never seen one. They were so foreign to her culture as to be almost mythic, and as they could not be easily chased or exploited, they were of no use to Menos. She knew that earthspeakers and sages traced the causes of natural phenomena such as tidal waves and seismic disturbances to the movements of wyrms in the earth: when larger wyrms rose too high in the strata, they displaced the magma and waters of the world. A few of the smallest wyrms had reportedly been seen swimming in the shallows of Kor’Khul’s sandy ocean. These creatures were considered a vital part of Geadhain’s ecology; functioning much like antibodies, wyrms defended the Green Mother from infection. The accidents brought about by the movements of wyrms could often be traced back to some manmade catalyst, some disruption in the environment that demanded a response. The legendary city of Veritax, which was an abomination against Nature as the tales said, had been destroyed by the wrath of these elementals.
“You’re thinking about Veritax, are you not?” asked the king, staring at her.
“Perhaps,” replied the Iron Queen. “Although that is just cautionary balderdash that was no doubt invented by dramatic historians.”
The king touched her leg as if reassuring an innocent child, and for a brief, deplorable instant, Gloriatrix felt as if she were twelve again and full of curiosity and life. “When I was building my kingdom,” he began, “when it was barely a plot of sand and populated only by whatever tribes had wandered into my company, Veritax was at the zenith of its achievements. Its people had mastered magik and technologies that appear new to us even today, but they had less care and compassion than the most notorious of Iron masters—no offence.”
“None taken,” replied Gloriatrix, hoping, in fact, that he had indeed been referring to her.
Taking a moment, she recalled old history books in her father’s library that told of the City—the Empire—of Truth. Ritual blood sacrifices. Coats of mortal skin worn as the latest fashion. And the image, drawn in black ink, of an atelier hundreds of stories tall and made entirely of bones. She was almost certain she was not imagining the picture, that she’d actually seen it. The empire sounded glorious, if horrific. “As I said,” she said. “Cautionary tales. Fluff.”
Magnus brushed off her disbelief and stood, before captivating the three once again with his words. “The empire lay in far Western Geadhain, past the Isles of Terotak. Yet, if its despicable rulers had desired anything beyond hoarding of otherworldly power—arcane atrocities that man should never seek to master—they could have conquered all of Geadhain in a single sand. But they did not. Instead, they built their sky-scraping towers of bone. They sacrificed tens of thousands of men, fueling themselves with the exquisite power produced only at the moment of death, until the streets, stones, and rain turned red. They tainted the land through their pursuit of greatness, their desire to pass through doorways beyond time and space. I know not all of what they found, but I am glad they did not discover my brother and me as we wandered with the tribes an ocean away. I do know that they twisted the art of windspeaking into storm-calling, perverted firecalling into an incinerating summons so terrible it could rip through the matter of our world and open portals behind which waited ancient forces. The beings that whispered there gave the sorcerers of Veritax more secrets, more power. Their greed makes a Menosian’s venality seem about as corrupt as a child’s desire for his rattler.”
Either the intrigue or the splendor of the king’s tale made Gloriatrix tingle. She leaned forward. She needed to hear more. “How do you know all of this?”
“I did not gather this knowledge through direct experience,” replied the king.
He walked, spreading his arms open to the Hall of Memories, which swirled and pulsed in a dance of mist and lights as if directed by a great conductor. “I have, though, seen glimpses of one man’s life—a shattered, decrepit man, preserved only through some foul sorcery. Centuries after the fall of Veritax, when that city was myth and Eod stood as the world’s pinnacle, he came to me. He confessed himself to be a Mortalitisi of the empire, a sorcerer supreme. His pacts and kingdom having been destroyed long before, he was doomed to meet a much delayed death, and he confessed to me—and to this great mind and machine in which we stand—all the horrors and glories of his kingdom. The Mortalitisi wanted his knowledge to be preserved; I wanted to seal it away so that no others would ever be tempted by it. I would like to have kept his story locked away forever. But now, we must peer inside that box of horrors.”
“Incredible,” muttered Gloriatrix.
“I was able to see only fragments of the transmission when it occurred,” whispered the king, bowing down close to the three as if sharing a secret. “In my long life, I have seen crimes, tragedies, wars too numerous to count…but this Mortalitisi’s memories are unequaled in their filth and darkness. Madness, doom, howling storms with tentacles and eyes. It is a history into which I have chosen not to delve.”
“Then why must we do so now?” asked Beauregard, shivering.
“My knight,” said the king, rising and cupping the boy’s cheek with a hand, “Veritax fell because it lost control of its source of power: the elementals. The great beasts whose blood and magik the Mortalitisi had tapped into broke free of the chains of their masters.”
Gloriatrix snapped her fingers as the deduction came to her. “I see: you’re proposing that in this past we shall find a means to eliminate your brother’s control over his elemental pet, which represents his greatest advantage in this war.”
“Indeed.” Suddenly, Magnus crackled with green static and his luminous stare flashed to the Iron Queen. “Do not think that I shall allow you to exploit the twisted wisdom of these madmen. You are here only because you have an eye for darkness, as you are mostly wicked yourself. It is possible that you will see the smaller strokes that I may overlook in these maestros’ works. We shall witness the past together. We shall discover how it was the Mortalitisi enslaved the elementals, and, I hope, how
they managed to break free. We can employ the same tactic on my brother’s pet, thus robbing him of his power. We shall make this journey together into the past, as allies. Are you prepared?”
“Yes,” hissed the Iron Queen.
The other men stayed silent.
Opening his arms wide and calling upon his Will, Magnus woke the great presence of the chamber. Ancient mind, wondrous mind, bring forth the chained and wicked box. Show me the memories we have sealed. At last, I must look into the heart of the Mortalitisi. We must see the final days of Geadhain’s darkest empire. We must learn how this seemingly unstoppable power met its end.
As the Hall of Memories searched for the entombed box—buried deeper even than the record of the king’s own birth, down so deep that even the Daughter of Fate could not have retrieved it without a map—the chamber grew still, its pipe sounds subsiding into hisses. The Hall of Memories searched its own infinite pathways, traveling through deaths, births, wars, and acts of heart-breaking compassion. Finally, the Great Will found the black tumor nestled in layers upon layers of its oldest, most decayed tissue. These were memories from the demented, senile, and wicked—and among them was the cancer they sought. Although the Great Will was not capable of feeling mortal emotions, it paused, considering and calculating the risks of opening this pocket of disease, this pulsing knot of evil. After determining various probabilities, it sliced open the tumor with a scalpel of Will, and the bile and blackness leaked out, screeching.
Thousands of holed tubes whistled steam, and mist whirled in the chamber’s heights. Booming golden thunderheads descended from above, raining electric warmth that prickled like dew on the onlookers’ flesh. This was Magnus’s beloved instrument; it was beholden to its master and did not simply present images of the past. Magnus preferred to live in the past, not merely to look at it. Lower and lower the storm came. Its magik mist burned Gloriatrix’s eyes like Menosian rain. Its swells swallowed her in a golden typhoon. Scared, she reached for Gustavius’s cold iron mitt. He gripped his queen’s hand tightly as they were buffeted by the worst of the winds and electricity. She leaped up into his arms as the winds blew away their seat; she clung to him as the gusts blew away the Hall of Memories itself and sent the howling golden storm and the passengers whirling off into space.
Feast of Chaos (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 3) Page 43
