Feast of Chaos (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 3)

by Christian A. Brown

  Are you ready, Navigator Lila? asked the Mind.

  The white hump of Eod with its strange pearl lens pierced the whitish-brown haze that had fallen over the desert. She believed she’d conjured the sandstorm, too; Magnus was no longer the only Immortal who could influence the weather through his mood. Bold from her power, and from the steadiness of her obsidian bloodmate, she replied, I am ready, yes. Thank you, my child.

  Now and then, when sentiment struck her, she referred to the Mind as her child. Old habits were hard to break, and she’d been stepmother to hundreds, if not thousands, of orphans in her lifetime. The Mind reminded her of these outcasts, although his innocence and urge to constantly impress her with facts and wisdom made him even more lovable. She wondered how her other orphans fared with the task of preparing for her arrival. They had only to open the Southern Gate and then restrain or incapacitate a few dozen soldiers. Once she drew closer, her poison would subdue any further resistance.

  Her saboteurs must have succeeded, for as the army descended into a valley of lazy dunes scattered with red puddles of dusk and the city came into view, she saw the gate was open. The formidable doors that protected Eod from incursion lay wide enough apart to accommodate a flood of her warriors. Magnus would have no choice but to parley once they occupied the whole of the Faire of Fates. The altercation need not escalate into outright war. She’d come with an army, though, and she wouldn’t hesitate to stain Eod red if the Iron Queen or her miscreant advisors tried to stand in the way of a discussion between former husband and wife.

  VIII

  The skycarriage carrying the monarchs touched down outside the tempestuous Faire of Fates. The watchmen had thrown up a slipshod barrier of carts, stalls, and coaches, but it appeared to have been abandoned along with the watchmen’s weapons, which shone like half-buried treasures on a beach in the sandy heaps brought by the storm. The monarchs and their meek party of defenders stepped off the glass steps of the skycarriage and were immediately struck by a sense of dread.

  “Where are the watchmen?” shouted the king; it was hard to hear him over the wind. A speck later, he sneezed. “And what is that smell?”

  “Or that song?” asked the Iron Queen. A chant could now be heard: Arhadic voices, melodious, and in unison. Gloriatrix’s single Ironguard, who’d been waiting for her on the skycarriage, felt like inadequate protection. Empty crowes stood parked, distantly, around the perimeter that had been laid, though the Ironguards to whom these ships belonged, and the additional men she had commanded, through farspeaking stone, to meet her here from Camp Fury were nowhere in sight. She took her lone Ironguard’s arm once they entered the desolation, and pursued the king, his guard, and the gray mousey fellow, all of whom had already taken off into the whirl. “Wait! Is this safe? You fools! Where are your soldiers, Magnus? Or mine?”

  “We should wait for reinforcements!” warned Rasputhane as he tugged at the king’s arm. “Sorcery is at work here. Gorijen and his legion are on their way. We must not proceed so recklessly into danger.”

  The king made no answer. Instead, he opened his mouth and inhaled, producing an uncharacteristic guttural, animalistic snort that was reminiscent of his brother. He tasted the layers of spice, the hints of vanilla, and sweeter herbs. He flushed with the warmth of alcohol and the pleasure of a fair-sung tune, one much less ominous than the echoing Arhadian war chant. Magnus didn’t recognize the song: it had been modified and was now unfamiliar even to its own culture. But it spoke of honor and women and warriors.

  A wall of bodies soon hindered any attempts to hunt the source of this enchantment. Hundreds of folk blocked the marketplace, staring dumbly, mouths agape. Clearly bespelled, they didn’t respond to Magnus’s appeals, and he had to push his way through them. Among those enthralled stood a few of his own gawking, unarmed soldiers; he assumed the rest of the watch was likely in a similar dazed state. He didn’t bother attempting to break the enchantment. He had lost Rasputhane and possibly also the Iron Queen and her escort. He cared not. He needed to reach the scent and song.

  Finally, Magnus finished his charge through the mortal wall and came to a wind-swept court that lay before an arch that yawned to take in all of the desert. Open: the gates of Eod were wide open. So many women in tattered rag-scale armor stood along Eod’s great wall that he paused as if he’d been impaled on their primitive polearms. How many were there? A thousand? Two thousand singing women? There were boys and a peppering of men in the ranks, too. He felt thousands glaring at him, as if he’d wronged each and every member of the army. Their judgment and spite seared him like the dying sun.

  Spinrexes cawed, though their calls drowned under the weight of the war song. Under dusk’s brush, it seemed as if the whole of the Faire of Fates were ringed and painted with ghostly crimson warriors. The majesty of the force humbled the king. In that moment, he felt he’d already lost, although no confrontation had yet taken place. He couldn’t swallow his astonishment. Indeed, the spectacle and the shock had the dizzy king gazing at everything but the golden shimmer before him. The shimmer, and a ripple of black, rode forth.

  “Magnus!”

  It was Erik who hailed him; the timber of his voice, so close to Brutus’s, was unmatched and unmistakable. He and another rider trotted across a great stretch of cobbles before anything more was said. The singing army ceased its music, and a dreadful silence fell upon the scene. About halfway between the wall of Arhadians and the gathering of Eod’s people, the riders stopped and dismounted. Scowling, Magnus recognized the two warmasters: Lila and his foster son—yet, each was radically changed from the person he knew.

  Erik possessed a spine of pure flint, and he strutted with the assured pride of a black panther in his den: exotic, unique, and deadly. Lila appeared as shining as ever, but her shine was too strong. A scintillation of light off some manner of skin disfigurement dazzled the king. The air around her sparkled, too. Dressed in the resplendent gold tatters of her army, she was no longer the woman he’d known: she’d been mutated by eldritch energies. He would not call her ugly, but she was no longer his. A painful dagger of reason stabbed him with the fact that she’d shed those aspects of herself that he’d known and loved. The blade thrust deep as he noticed the bundle that she cradled by her breast. A child? he thought, infuriated. Even when he realized that not enough time had passed to bring a child to term, he felt no less betrayed. “What have you done to my people?” he demanded. “What have you done to yourself?”

  Suddenly, the queen was closer; Erik as well. She’d traveled in a slithery flash. Erik, though, had simply moved far faster than a normal man should. Regardless, his queen and his son were both now before him: his twin banes. Magnus could see their whole glorious transformation written in their stares and bodies. Bloodmates: they who breathed, twitched, even blinked, as one. Their betrayal sickened him. He found Lila’s scent—also tainted, sweeter and spicier—nauseating.

  “I have done nothing to these people,” replied Lila. “Only those who have something from which they want to break free can fall under my thrall. I am surprised that you have nothing you regret.”

  I am not enthralled, thought Gloriatrix. I am all that I need to be. She’d left her Ironguard some ways back in the midst of the comatose horde and crept toward the front. She’d been smart enough to take her guard’s gun, and she remained inconspicuous, using the immobilized folk as cover.

  “Is that why you have come?” spat Magnus. “To throw your union in my face? To humiliate me? I am humiliated. I am broken. I never believed I would see the day that my most trusted child seduced my wife. Have neither of you any shame?”

  “Shame?” Lila laughed, and her fangs and forked tongue flashed at the king. “We came so that I could deliver a message from the dead that may yet win this war. We came because we were declared villains, declared honorless, and we are neither. We came because we were repudiated by this kingdom—one I built as much as you did—and forced into a hunted exile. I came to clear our names and to
face the man who wronged me.”

  Thunder rumbled, and lighting began a white dance in the dusk. “Wronged you? You fuked my son! Surrendered your virtue to him! I have been betrayed by both of you, beyond measure.” The arrogance of a man destined to live forever flared up within the king. “I should smite you for treason! Matrimonial treason. The betrayal of honor!”

  “You may try, but you will fail,” threatened Erik.

  Lila checked her bloodmate with a secret word that Magnus sensed but couldn’t hear himself. Softly, but not kindly, she whispered, “You betrayed me before we were wed, Magnus. By promising yourself—your soul, your everything—to another.”

  “Another? You are mad,” said the king.

  The queen of snakes and spice circled her former bloodmate. “I have seen the past through the eyes of the silver witch. She showed me your life with your brother. You two bled, fed, suckled, and who knows did whatever else to each other. It was beautiful, what you and he shared. And untouchable. You loved him long before you ever played the game of loving me, a normal woman. I could never fill your spirit as he did. Yet now that he is a beast unchained, you shun the wretched aspects of his nature. You have wed yourself to a beast, and his bride you must be. I have wed myself to honor, and his name is Erithitek. Calm your thunder and storm, for they are no greater than mine.”

  Suddenly, the sandstorm that ruffled through the Faire went from fickle to violent. From the deepest desert hollows, sand, rock, and grit—the essence of Lila’s rage—was conjured. The storm gathered in an instant, turned the sky brown, then rolled over Eod in a hateful wave. Either the stinging assault or Lila’s absorption in her enchantment stirred the catatonic audience from their fugue.

  Anger, shattered pride, and a haunting sense that Lila’s accusations were not entirely unwarranted summoned an answering fury in the king. A crackle of thunder ran through the clouds, and a wind that glimmered with shards of ice wailed down. Sandy torrents scoured stone and flesh, and hail pelted the marketplace. People shrieked and ran for cover; they felt that another day of reckoning had come. Many were horribly bewildered as to why it was they were outside in the Faire of Fates, apparently under assault from both the elements and an army of rag-tag warriors that was barely visible in the shearing of light, winter, and sand. The queen and Magnus were lost in the chaos.

  Gales pummeled Erik, and winds threw him far, but he found purchase in the maelstrom by sprouting claws of obsidian. Slowly, he crawled toward the juddering pocket in the hurricane where he sensed the golden light of his beloved, where the scorned Immortal lovers stood unscathed in the heart of this horrible upheaval.

  “You ruined me!” screamed Lila.

  A runny tentacle of sand flung itself from the wall of wind that encircled the sorcerers. It was demolished by a spear of lightning and scattered the calm space in dust. There was no confusion over the ruination of which she spoke. It was clear to both which event it was that had utterly destroyed their marriage.

  “I was not myself!” insisted the king.

  “Were you ever? Were you ever honest with me?” asked Lila, and the howling sandstorm brought by her anger ebbed to a wheeze so that she might hear his excuse.

  Magnus answered with his heart. “No.”

  With that, each of their storms fell apart. An emerald flash crackled through the air, and the hail eased into a drifting snowfall. It was lovely, as if the winter solstice had come early to Eod. The whiteness offered some of the light stolen by the hourglass. In the soft glow, the king saw that Lila had returned to a form closer to the one he’d wed: golden, enchanting, and without scales or serpent’s charms. But that reptile, too, he valued and respected now, for it had always been inside her. Magnus took a step toward the memory of who they’d been for one thousand years, and hoped that enough mercy remained in this remade woman that she would be able to appreciate his regret.

  “I was never honest with you,” he said. “Or with myself. I wanted to be a man, but I cannot be what I am not. I used you to weave an illusion of happiness for myself. And for a time, we were happy—or at least as happy as two people deceiving themselves can be.” Reaching out to her, he gingerly touched her cheek, a gesture that had once made them smile. Now, they both frowned, and his fingers felt cold to her. “An illusion. You feel it, too. You wanted escape, and so did I. What we built, however—this empire, our legacy—does not have to end with our love. I know what you want to hear, Lila. I am sorry. I am sorry I hurt you. I am sorry I lied to you—as sorry as you have been to live that lie—for so many centuries.”

  Navigator Lila, though his matrix is extraordinarily complex, I detect the measured heart rate and lowered phosphorus levels of a resting conscience, said the Mind from the tight cradle of her arms in which it had weathered the storm of the king and queen.

  “I know,” said the queen, to both that entity and her former husband. Here was an admission that their love was finally at an end, that Magnus rued his actions. With that release, she sighed. Magnus, sensing her sentiment, pressed his forehead against hers in a final expression of what had now faded between them. Lila sensed their fragile harmony was about to be broken; she felt a clenching of rage in her heart—it wasn’t her own, but Erik’s. Stumbling, she stepped away, turned, and before she could mind-whisper or stall him another way, Erik manifested in a black blur.

  “Don’t touch her! You have lost all right!”

  The voice sounded as if it came from someone wailing from the bottom of a dark hole: powerful, elemental, born of rock. Erik? Magnus couldn’t place it, and a speck later, any attempts to place the voice were cast into the dirt as he was thrown to the ground like a toy soldier by a ton of solid matter.

  The Everfair King, crackling with arcs of emerald power, rose from the ground. He spat blood and glared at his attacker with eyes that mirrored the black and green thunderstorms that had so abruptly gathered above. Through the majesty of his anger—a sheen of green rage that licked at his form—Magnus saw a creature armored in obsidian plates that fumed with a golden light not unlike his aura. A sorcerer?

  Lila, standing aside from the clash, carefully backed away. In a few flickers of magik, she’d slithered back to her warriors. While she and Magnus had just forgiven the unforgiveable, she felt pulled in two directions by her heart. She could have made a plea on behalf of Magnus to Erik, though she strained to speak in mind or with mouth to deny her knight his vengeance. Was this not her vengeance, as well? Whatever Magnus’s reasons, and pardons, the savagery of his raping her would never be eased. Erik had come to extract a bloody retribution from Magnus akin to what he had wrought upon his queen—if not sexual, than passionately violent. In truth, Erik’s heart was her heart, and so she knew they’d both come for blood. Blood would be the font in which the three of them washed away their sins. Violence was not only a man’s work, though he would do it better than her. She wanted Erik to beat her former husband as she’d been beaten, and she stopped denying her thirst. Lila’s face hardened, her scales subsuming her beauty. Accepting that this was how it would have to be, Lila inspired her army with a wind of spice, and she and the Arhadians gave their voices to sing the warriors’ war song, hoping to see Erik claim the triumph he deserved.

  As king and obsidian knight circled one another, Magnus at last identified the man under the monster: by the monster’s familiar battle stance, and by the cold concentration in his ebony eyes—those had changed, though, lost all flecks of blue, and were blacker than space. “Erik,” he hissed. Thunder groaned and split the night.

  “I am the knight of the queen of Eod,” declared the obsidian knight, stomping a craggy hoof that shook the ground as terribly as had Magnus’s thunder. “Do not call me by that name. Ask my pardon for your transgressions, and I may let you leave this place without causing you grievous harm.”

  “Without harm…” The king’s rage built and exploded. Suddenly, the skies flashed and roiled, and a rain of electricity fell from the heavens in a twining nimbus. Power en
gulfed the king. Magnus vanished into the luminous pillar. However, the light quickly waned into sparks and thin dancing twists of lightning, and from the smoldering hollow where once a handsome king had stood strode forth a warrior of winter. The king’s glassy armor shone like the Witch Lights of Pandemonia—all the many shades of his soul from white to teal to crystal green. In gauntlets more talon and icicle than metal, he clenched a blade pulled from an arctic forge, one that seemed too large to be wielded so lightly. It smoldered with his wrath, steamed with a freezing power. A horned helm of emerald ice hid all but the king’s pulsating green eyes and twisting black hair. Magnus could have been the lord of the winter hunt himself: a primeval Dreamer conjured from myth.

  When the king spoke, his voice, too, came out distorted, echoing and crackling like permafrost. “I see that you have grown,” he said. “New weapons, new courage. You would never have raised a hand to me before; you quailed when last given that opportunity. In a sense, I am proud. I see that Lila’s blood—my blood—has changed you. In all of my lifetimes, I never thought to bear a child through ritual rather than love. We are now more father and son than ever before. Very well, my son. If you believe yourself to be the child no longer, come! Let us see how strong your fists have grown. Challenge your father!”

  Over the city, now rendered heinously bright by the Witchwall’s scintillations, the storm continued its dazzling rumble. The warrior women matched nature’s beat with their song of valor.

  Elsewhere, the Iron Queen, Rasputhane, and what remained of the Ironguard and watchmen who hadn’t fled had found one another at last. They crouched in the creaking remains of an outdoor theater. A barricade of broken wood, beams, and curtain tatters gave them no real protection from the storm about to begin. Gloriatrix had refused to be taken back to the skycarriage. Besides, it was too late to flee, and she wouldn’t risk taking off with the elements as temperamental as they were. Here they would stay, as witnesses to an historic moment. It was the end of a dynasty, Gloriatrix felt—which was only fair, given that her own kingdom lay in ruins. All should be reduced to ash; all should be rebuilt. She smiled as the first emerald hammer of lightning struck the flagstones with an explosion of black dust.