I would not know. Your city amazes me, and these eyes have had their fill of wonderment. It all still sounded like magik to Morigan, but she had other matters to bring to the Keeper’s attention, assuming the woman was not already aware of them. Do you know why I am here, then? Have your winds told you of the omens I’ve seen?
It is not just the winds: all of Geadhain speaks. The Keeper smiled in what Morigan felt was a somewhat patronizing manner. Here in my perfect tower of solitude, I hear nearly all of Geadhain’s secrets. Nearly all. Some of her whispers, though, are hidden by dark forces.
Yes. I have met the ones with whom Brutus conspires.
The Keeper took her hands as if they were sisters. To which of his allies are you referring?
The Black Queen: we have come to Pandemonia to unravel her mystery. But there’s also Brutus’s consort, who walks in Dreams. I have seen them both, and they hunger for your city’s ruin.
The Keeper’s composure cracked, leaking cold anger. One who walks in Dreams?
Yes. She attacked us when we came to your continent. She tried to tempt me into committing horrible acts, but I did not submit to her Will. She is a witch, a temptress who wears a mask of flies and corruption. She is truly horrid, but she is weak without her disguises.
What is her name? The Keeper’s hands were hot now, and clenched hers tightly.
I don’t know, Morigan replied and the Keeper loosened her grip. Although I should like to find out. This Dreamstalker influences the mad king; she is part of this war. A general for the dark. I sense that their shared history goes back many chapters...Morigan paused. What was it that the Keeper held so tightly behind her wall of Will? A flickering image of many trees—perhaps a garden, glowing and bright—the scent of sweet blossoms or a fruit like an apple, and the laugh of a child…Quite violently, the vision was torn from Morigan’s head, crumpled, and then thrown away. Nevertheless, the thrust of pain she’d felt in that memory was as real as a sword strike. It was a dark event, the cause of great regret.
The Keeper stiffened, became more guarded. We can aid you by giving you whatever information you need to continue your quest for the truth, she said. Our stores, our hospitality, and the wisdom of a culture that has existed since before the Kings laid their first stone in the West are yours to use. If nothing else, I shall have this ward escort you to a place of rest. You must be tired after braving our lands.
Now Morigan clutched at her host. Keeper? Are you not listening? I have come with a warning. The mad king will come to your city. I have seen a possible future, a probable future, in which all of these grand achievements burn and melt to nothingness.
The Keeper smiled, again regarding her as if she were a child. Daughter of Fate, Eatoth has stood for thousands of years in the wildest realm of this world; not so much as a rebellion has threatened its peace and prosperity. We are not without defenses, defenses that cannot be breached by the mad king or any of his consorts in darkness. We have a wall of water, and every entrance to our nation is under gate and guard. If necessary, we can bend the elements of our city to our Will: We can call forth storms and thunder. We can flood the tunnels in an instant. Our wards—men of magik and wisdom such as the one who stands next to me—could bring tidal wave after tidal wave down upon our enemies. We could bury them in mountains of hail. Do not underestimate the wrath of water. Like the sea, Eatoth can be tempestuous and horrific. I shall not hesitate to order the execution of any enemy of our city.
I admire your peoples’ accomplishments, and I hear what you say, replied Morigan. However, you do not know the mad king as we do. You have not watched him and his allies dismantle the ancient civilizations of the West, often by exploiting their leaders’ weaknesses and pride. Give men and women the tools of their own destruction, and more often than not, they will do the work themselves.
We are safe here.
What nonsense! The Keeper was acting decidedly uptight and ignorant in the face of the most terrible threat the world had ever known, and Morigan had reached her limit. As Moreth had told them, one of Pandemonia’s great cities had already fallen, probably to Brutus or one of his allies. She countered the Keeper’s haughtiness by throwing this information in her face. What of Aesorath? Once the City of Wind, it is now the City of Screams. I have seen this place. My bloodmate and I traveled there in Dream. At one time, it was a city as great, advanced, and protected as Eatoth. Now it is a city of dead flutes that play dirges for their arrogant masters. It is a graveyard. Do you want Eatoth to suffer the same fate? I am Fate’s daughter. I have seen more than one woman should ever see, though I accept the burden of my power. I would not cast prophecies of doom around carelessly. I have never yet been wrong. We must think of how Brutus will strike and of how we can prepare for him.
Anger wrinkled the Keeper. As reality began to distort, the lines on her face widened, becoming cracks and then fissures. Morigan, suddenly airborne and spinning, fell into these fissures of the past.
She floats in the highest chamber in a stone steeple. Morigan hears winds carrying the distant tolling of bells and other queer percussion music in through the grand windows. There are four windows: the place is almost like a belfry, though there is no bell. Outside shines a golden glory, though the sunlight shrinks from the wicked acts happening here and none reaches beyond the window’s ostentatious moldings. Light grazes the little men and gargoyles carved into the stone windowsills and flickers off the polished eyes of the thousand watchers—witnesses to punishment, like Morigan.
A girl screams in the darkest part of the room. Morigan looks to where the shadows fall down in sheets of black from the whirling dusty heights of the chamber. Something wicked is unfolding under that dark curtain, but she cannot see it clearly; this memory resists her Will. Is that a gleam of metal? Is that the sound of meat being wetly cut that she hears between the screams?
The vision recoils from her. Morigan casts her silver servants from their hive. They sting her with whatever scattered memories they can harvest. From afar, she sees two silhouettes sitting on a raised bench in a garden. Although all is foggy, she knows this is a garden by the green hue of the haze and the smell of grass and life. I am glad you came, she thinks, yet cannot say who is glad or why, as the scene is then torn up and thrown to pieces. The keeper of these memories locks them away. Morigan fumbles in the sudden darkness. She hears the scream again. In a spotlight of vision, something pink, rubbery, and small lies in a pool of blood. It has the gleam of an organ pulled from the body, but she cannot say what it is. A wetter, rougher scream—male, this time—joins the first. Then with a whirl and a violent shake, she is returned.
Only an instant had passed while the two women battled in each other’s minds. As the Keeper regained her senses, she struggled and wrenched herself away from the seer. Undeterred, and with her bloodmate’s reflexes, Morigan wrestled with the Keeper and caught her by the ankle as she crawled down the settee to escape. Immediately sensing the threat of the moment, the Wolf whisked forward just in time to stop the blue robe’s staff from striking his beloved. He caught the head of the staff in his hand and grunted as he felt its sizzling cold. Flesh peeled from his palms. Still, he held fast and then rattled the weapon, sending its wielder into a flying tumble. The blue robe landed with a cry some strides distant. The Wolf dropped the staff and stood on it with one of his witchstitch sandals—the material did much to dispel the burn. While the blue robe scrambled up again, the Wolf kept his foot on the weapon. He crossed his arms and shook his head, silently communicating that he although he meant no further harm, he would brook no further interruption. After shaking off their surprise, Thackery and Adam rushed to his side and joined him in making intimidating poses.
Release me! You have no right! accused the Keeper.
Morigan noticed a sweep of blue out of the corner of her eye and felt frost prickle her cheek. Then a whoosh and a man-scented wind saved her from a blow, as she knew it would. Her time with the Keeper would not last much longer, and wha
t diplomacy there had been had clearly reached its end. What is this tower I have seen in which a man and a woman scream? What is this memory that you keep from me? It burns to be seen. Tell me. I shall find the truth, one way or another.
Release me, or I shall summon every ward and legionnaire of Eatoth to my defense. You may be the Daughter of Fate, but I am the ruler of Eatoth.
Such hubris—it was a mask for weakness, surely. Nonetheless, Morigan knew that the Keeper wasn’t bluffing. Furthermore, she realized she’d overstepped her bounds, and possibly endangered her companions. The beast cooled to a simmer in her veins. She released the Keeper, raised her hands, and backed away. Not quite ready to, or capable of, surrender, the Wolf held his stance and traded glowers with the blue robe and the woman with whom his bloodmate had tangled. It took a whisper from Morigan to calm him. More secrets and lies, my Wolf. But I have gone too far in hunting them. Let us hope she will not punish us. We still need to meet our companions here.
Nothing she’d said shocked him; he smelled a sweet fart of deceit wafting up from the Keeper. Puffing, the Wolf kicked the staff over to the blue robe and stepped back, following his bloodmate’s example. He did not, however, raise his hands, making them into fists instead. As the blue robe retrieved his staff and righted himself, inaudible instructions were given to him by his mistress. Nothing spoke of the Keeper’s mood beyond her stench and the darkness of her eyes, which were blacker now from rage or sorrow. Thackery wondered if they would be thrown in a dungeon for this assault on her Holiness. However, he felt that the Keeper would stand in the way of their mission only if she were truly debased and deluded.
Uneasily, the blue robe came forward. He didn’t raise his staff, but walked around the four travelers, waited for the lift to be summoned, then opened the cage’s lattice once the platform appeared. A polite escort out was not quite what the company had expected. Whether the chamber to which they would descend would be filled with armed wards and legionaries ready to prod them into whatever passed for prisons in this utopia was a question as yet unanswered. As the lift doors closed, Morigan looked back at the Keeper: her head was bowed, her face stretched in silent sobs. If she could experience regret, then surely she could feel forgiveness and mercy, too. Morigan wished, however, that she knew the secret of the tower, of the blood and the scent of apples. For she felt as if not knowing could damn them all.
IV
After plunging into the deepest silence, the Keeper stirred many hourglasses later. She slipped off her chair, knelt, and slid her hands under the cushions still warm from her body. She reached deep and far, then upward through a tear in the cotton. Her fingertips touched the smoothness of old stone and the furriness of rawhide. A touch was enough. She did not want to retrieve the talisman. She needed to know only that it was still there, beneath her, a reminder of her sins.
The Daughter of Fate had seen too deeply into her soul. She felt naked and ravaged. She wanted to hate the woman, and yet the loathing she conjured was mostly for herself. It was night, and black pearls of water beaded upon the window at which she stared. In the dark mirror, she thought she saw a face for an instant. She leaped up and raced over, but the brown, handsome face with strong lines around the mouth disappeared as her hand touched cold glass.
Spirits were haunting her tonight. She wondered what others would come. Heading over to her armoire, she searched its lower drawers for the potent tincture that brought on dreamless, black sleeps. She squeezed a dozen drops onto her tongue, twice the necessary dosage. She changed into an evening shift—unassuming, white, and chaste. She took a pee and splashed her face in the lavatory hidden behind a cleverly mirrored and enchanted screen that maintained the apparent emptiness of the room. By then, her feet were heavy, and her young flesh ached as if it had not been sustained by elemental magik for a hundred years. She hit the cushions of the settee and continued to descend, falling deeper into a groping dark.
For a while, her dreams were a void. Yet, in the darkness, there came a dissonance. At first it was a chattering and buzzing, almost a whisper. Then words wriggled their way out like maggots. Suddenly, her black dreamscape twisted vividly red and rippled like glistening offal. A force thrashed her awake, and she screamed the words that she’d heard in the buzzing darkness.
“Hear me!” she cried.
The Keeper’s echo startled her as much as her nightmare had. She was no longer in her chamber of quietude. During her sleep, she’d somehow traveled through lifts, floors, passageways, and guard points and arrived at the heart of her nation. The Purgatorium. Eatoth had produced no greater achievement than the chamber in which she now stood. She never came here. No one aside from technomancers and watercallers would or should. The wonder of the immense spinning stone held aloft by a column of watery blue light awed and confused her. Although the arkstone was small in size—about as large as skull—the tube in which it floated magnified its appearance so that those who saw to its care could microscopically examine it without touching it. The mere sight of the arkstone inspired wonder. Glittering with starry sapphire blood, it looked like a grayish-blue moon that had been split with an axe.
The arkstone was clearly an object from the great black beyond. It had not come from Geadhain, but had crashed into her green body when one of the Dreamers fell. It was the source of Eatoth’s might, the well from which the city drew its secrets. Through the slow bleeding of the stone, her ancestors had conquered the skies and elements. They’d battled age and illness. All that had been accomplished with a mere trickle of the arkstone’s power. She wondered what it would take to exhaust it, for the production of sky vessels, endless waterfalls, and wealth seemed only to skim off its power.
She came as close as she could to the diaphanous pillar that housed this giant force, but she could not really reach the floating object without the ladders and cranes the technomancers used. So, she came nearer and stared up into the trembling column of light within the glass—focusing on the blue sun hovering above. She held out her hands. Divine power, beating like a Dreamer’s heart, came over her in invisible waves.
The resonance resounded in the cavernous glass bubble in which she stood, and returned her senses to her. She stepped away from the arkstone’s case and no longer wandered aimlessly, but moved toward a black dot in the wall of the grand place. An exit. Why had she come here? There was nothing to see here, no reason to visit Purgatorium unless one was coming for the arkstone.
All the machinery, pipes, and wiring were hidden beneath the hazily translucent floor and walls. She peered through and around the seemingly feeble glass that kept this place from collapsing, and wondered what the rings and shades of earth would feel like if their tonnage fell on her for her sacrilege. With no other soul to echo in this greatness, she felt chillingly alone and her sleeping garment was about as useful as a paper dress in a snowstorm. Again, what had driven her from a comatose slumber down into the bowels of her realm?
She had no answer, but dread was brewing in her stomach. She sat above, and the arkstone sat below. Together Paradisum and Purgatorium ensured balance in Eatoth, much the same way man’s baseness and vices were balanced by the morality and wisdom of the Keepers. She must ever remain in her place. She must ever be the watchful and pure mind of their nation. She recalled the former Keeper Superior’s harsh mind-whispering doctrines, and the lashes she received for not repeating them properly, smarting from her remembered scorn.
“I, Ankha, the virtuous, the pure, the wise, am Keeper Superior now,” she threatened the old ghost. “I hold the lash now. I absolve the sinners of their sins.”
But memories of the sins she had committed to don that mantle were neither virtuous nor pure nor wise: the tower, the vilest betrayal, the stink of piss, blood, and fear, and the feel of a wriggling organ in her hand. Memories ruined her moment of triumph.
Frowning, Ankha reached the exit, which was small and clean and had a crystal-hewn door that raised itself as she approached. Two wards stood on the other side,
guarding a sparkling antechamber that buzzed with technomagikal tunes. Veins of pulsing sapphire blood rose to the ceiling, and the Keeper Superior questioned for a moment the vainglory of her people, supposedly so beholden to nature. There was nothing natural about any of the great cities’ opulence. They’d put the old ways behind them long ago, as she must put behind her any guilt she suffered on behalf of her nation. She threw a thought into one of the ward’s heads as quickly and forcefully as the old Keeper Superior would have done; she was the one true and holy queen of Pandemonia now.
Purgatorium is secure. Although Ankha wasn’t clear on what she had said to gain access in the first place, she was not concerned they’d question her presence. Still, her strange actions told her she needed to put safeguards in place. Perhaps the seer’s warning had been worth worrying over after all. Triple the wards, and fill the bailey with legionnaires. Post guards around my sanctum. The Kings’ War has at last come to Pandemonia.
XV
THE HUNT
I
“At least we weren’t exiled from the city,” said Thackery, pouting.
It was hard to feel entirely miserable considering the charming quarters to which he and the others had been promptly escorted after their meeting with the Keeper—a meeting in which their attempt to warn the city of its doom had turned into an altercation between the stoic Keeper and her henchman. Here, wide-open doors—polished wood with little squares of glass—led out onto a terrace overlooking a grand piazza of shining brass and stone. When he’d wandered out upon it, seeking to free himself from the despair of his companions, he’d spied a grand crowd milling around on a rambling road. Artisans, street bands, and actors had been performing in the street below. Even now, back inside, he could hear their harmonies.
Feast of Chaos (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 3) Page 59
