Feast of Chaos (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 3)

by Christian A. Brown

  No sooner had Beauregard finished reading Amara’s final words than Gustavius returned from his poke about the library. Amara stole and burned the last in her series of messages more quickly than a shady gambler swapping dice. Nonetheless, the words remained branded in the spellsong’s mind.

  Beauregard knew that for a long time, possibly her whole life, the Keeper would feel guilt for having written these notes. He felt guilty, too, as if he’d forced her to sin with his sugary pleas. As he and the Iron lord were leaving, he ran back, bowed, and kissed his friend’s cheek. He couldn’t speak his apologies, but he wanted to express his contrition. You need not suffer. I shall bear your secret with honor and see that you are not defamed, he thought. Beauregard was unclear how much of the sentiment penetrated Amara’s cold facade. When he glanced back, she was touching the faded impression of his kiss and staring down at the floor.

  II

  The trip through the keep’s gray and quiet hallways was as brief and unreal as an afternoon dream. Once inside the skycarriage, Gustavius pestered Beauregard over what secrets he kept, but the lad remained reticent. He watched Gorgonath’s vividly painted towers fade with a sense of measured sadness, and spoke not a single word in the many hourglasses of flight it took to arrive in Bainsbury.

  From above, and obscured by the looming hand of night, the land looked as glum as Beauregard’s mood. Below, things weren’t much different; once they had landed, they walked among the tin-patched byres and brushed their knees against the sheep that had escaped the thin fences and taken charge of the mucky, winding roads. Even then, Beauregard only grumbled at the lazy creatures to move. Regardless of the fickle day, which waffled between drizzling and torn bright skies, Bainsbury was a rural treasure. Beneath the waft of recent rain and soil, the air smelled of green: freshly broken grass, daffodils, lavender. A good salt breeze drifted in from the rolling glory of the Feordhan, too, and the two spotted the river hiding behind hillocks and houses. Mud soon covered the men, but the salt air and charm of Bainsbury eventually enlivened Beauregard, and he managed to smile at passersby, who bowed and seemed to know of his appointment with the king. They mostly ignored the grim giant walking with him.

  Beauregard’s renewed confidence waned after he mounted a frontier-style porch and noticed a few of the wicker baskets and yellow forsythia plants that his mother so adored. Tabitha must possess something of his real mother’s—her sister’s—verdant and magik thumb, he realized; she always had plants around, and they survived well into the colder season. He took a breath and loudly rapped on the wood of her door. It was time to speak of Belle, Devlin, and Galivad.

  No answer or sounds came from inside the house. A tune floated toward the pair, though—a tingle of music. It was a folksong from Willowholme, and perhaps another glint of the faery heritage that existed in Tabitha’s bloodline. She’d never sung when Devlin was around, as his father had been opposed to revelry, and Beauregard had annoyed his father with his own antics and strumming. What a lovely voice she possessed: a bit hoarse and smoky, yet certainly female. The men followed the tune around back to a sparse yard where a lean woman in a white apron and blue frock was stringing up laundry. The woman’s tousled sandy hair was nearly the same shade as Galivad’s; they were all related, it seemed. She was an aunt to him and his brother, though, not a mother. How it stung Beauregard to have all these truths exposed and whirling in his chest like a nest of bees; he had to let the secrets out. As Tabitha’s back was to the men, she leaped when she turned to retrieve more clothing from her basket and noticed the shadows standing in her yard.

  “Beauregard!” she cried, and ran to him.

  Rather embarrassingly, she pecked him in kisses. In a moment, she noticed the gray, sour hulk and the absence of Beauregard’s father. Forthright as ever, she asked, “Who’s this lug? And where is your father?”

  “He is an envoy from the Iron City, which is an ally of the West now, as you surely know,” replied Beauregard. Then he held his mother firmly by the meat of her arms, which were no longer as meaty, he found. She looked thinner but beakishly pretty now that the sallowness of starvation from her wasting in Willowholme had been banished by nourishment. However, the lad didn’t know of her trials any more than he’d confided in her of his time in the Summerlands. Mother and son realized they each had agonies to share.

  Gustavius wandered past the clothesline and leaned against the backyard’s single tree. He’d noticed something in the ripple of misty green and blue in the distance that he felt he should watch. But really, he was giving the mother and her son time alone with each other; he knew what bad news looked like. Beauregard and Tabitha walked to the shade of the house and sat upon two spindly chairs. They held hands for a while without speaking and watched a pair of blackbirds—pretty things, though heralds of grief—dancing on the dewy lawn. The fool creatures had no idea winter would soon be here, and yet they could not be blamed for their ignorance, considering the continued good weather. Like those silly birds, Tabitha sensed she had been ignorant of the truth; she had been trying to find comfort in the long letters she received, despite that they avoided any mention of her husband.

  “You first,” said Tabitha, finally and bravely. “I already know this isn’t a casual visit. Tell me how your father died.”

  Grief fell from each as Beauregard described his journey in the Summerlands. He shared his experience as honestly as he had with Amara. No horror or wonder was spared; his mother deserved to know. When he told her of Devlin’s confession upon the battlements, of how he wasn’t their biological son, Tabitha swallowed, clenched her jaw, and closed her eyes as if in pain. In a moment, that passed without a whimper. She kissed the hands of her son when he completed the crescendo of his tale of war, loss, valor, and death. Then they hugged.

  “He died more bravely than I ever could have imagined. More bravely than a hero. My dear big old bear…” she whispered.

  “My father,” said Beauregard, and then sobbed.

  After a while, they rose from the embrace. Bainsbury’s false spring appeased them with its symphony of cricket flutes and rustling trees. The sky seemed darker than its usual spotty overcast gray could account for, and no more flashes of sunlight appeared. The Menosian had vanished, but there was a black imperfection on one of the distant hills that could be him.

  “What of you, Mother?” asked Beauregard.

  Their relationship would never change, no matter what truths were revealed; both the life they had shared and Devlin’s sacrifice would ensure that. Tabitha smiled with melancholy kindness. “Oh, I was given the mercy of the Everfair King and sent here to live in reasonable peace. But it’s hard to accept stability in one place when you know the rest of the world is being thrown into chaos. So I’ve never felt at ease here. You know of what I speak, don’t you? The shiver in the world. Geadhain is afraid, and I am afraid with Her.”

  “I do.” He wished he could say more, but he hadn’t been able to make sense of the spiraling, escalating doom himself. Even the answers he had been ordered to seek had stirred only further questions. Arkstones. Mad Keepers and civil wars. A wyrm of fire and a wyrm of frost. And what in the blazes had Amara meant about infernal powers? Perhaps it had been a slip of the tongue, but his intuition told him otherwise. Was a demented Dreamer not enough of a threat to Geadhain? What could more seriously damage the shreds of peace a man wove together from life’s tatters? The king sent me to find a means to end Brutus, and I have found neither that nor much else we could use against his brother. Every mystery has a mystery. Every past is splintered. I am already sick of being so ignorant, so small, he thought.

  Beauregard’s mother had no difficulty divining his moods. “You take a moment and breathe away your troubles, my son,” she said, and patted his knee. Tabitha stood. “I shall make us tea. The first step toward feeling better is feeling warmer, and it’s suddenly gotten cold out here. I shall fetch myself a shawl, I think.”

  Tabitha left, and soon the sounds of clattering dis
hes and weeping resounded through the thin walls of her house. When she returned to her child, however, she was quite poised, if a tad red around the eyes. A knitted woolen shawl hung upon her shoulders, and she carried two saucers and cups of tea, slightly milky and unsweetened, as Beauregard preferred. She sat, and they heard a grumble from the somber clouds. A stiff wind blew the steam from their drinks into their faces. Tabitha blinked as a wet, cold fleck struck her eye; at last, there was snow. The rainy season had ended: winter was here. They sipped their tea and watched the season change.

  “You don’t seem troubled,” said Beauregard.

  “By the weather?”

  “Don’t be smart, Mother.”

  Tabitha glanced down, watching the ripples in her cup; she saw a sad and weeping woman behind the steel mask she wore. “I can’t be troubled. I don’t have the opportunity to grieve right now. I made a bit of a mess inside a moment ago—you might have heard that. However, none of us can take a moment’s pause for tears, burials, or love, even, until the War of the Kings has ended. I feel as if the atrocities in the Summerlands and Gorgonath were but playground skirmishes. I cannot imagine what will happen when Brutus and Magnus, with their awesome power and fearsome armies, clash. I could very well be destroyed in that inferno. We all could. You certainly have a spirit of luck on your side, though, my son. If I am to depart and join my husband in what comes after, then I shall leave you as he did: honorably, bravely. I hope to live on as a worthy memory. I won’t have you thinking of me any other way.”

  “I shall always remember you that way, Mother.”

  “Good.”

  It was strange to know one’s parent as an adult, as a fellow mourner, as a flawed and yet somehow perfect person. Winter gave a hiss from the clouds as it cast a gentle white breath upon Bainsbury. Elsewhere, farm folk could be heard urging their stubborn livestock off the road—they seemed to be bleating and putting up a terrible fuss for the farmhands. Beauregard didn’t feel the need to ask his mother anything more about what consumed her mind. She was strong and capable. She blinked only occasionally as the snow flew into her eyes. He remembered her hardiness; he had missed it. After they had drunk the last of their tea, they sat with cold cups and cold hands waiting for nothing in particular, for the hourglasses to pass and the emotions within them to settle. Beauregard did not know how long he’d be able to stay. At least until dinner, he decided. Neither he nor the Iron lord had eaten today, and soldiers couldn’t live merely on tea and bloodlust.

  Just as Beauregard began to question where his unwanted attaché might be, Tabitha spotted the black dot again; it was easier to see now that the land was whitening. “Your gloomy companion,” she said, then squinted. “Running. I’d recognize a large man’s jog anywhere—your father, bull that he was, ran like a cart off its horse.”

  Beauregard stood, and Tabitha quickly collected their cups and placed them on their vacant seats. The pair strode past the flapping clothesline and the tree that was now buckling under the rising, unpleasant wind. Behind them, one or many of the porcelain cups or saucers blew off the chairs and shattered against the wall of Tabitha’s house. Mother and son dashed through the field feeling the sickness of danger. Grass and wind whipped at them. Winter had given up any attempt to be subtle, and spurts of snow interspersed with spattering gobs of freezing rain ran over their faces like spittle. Tabitha could now smell a fishy, putrid stench like that of the rotten skin of Lake Tesh—it wound her nerves into spirals. Something wicked was stirring.

  As she and Beauregard climbed a small hill, they lost sight of Gustavius, who’d just descended a mound. A moment later, Tabitha clutched her son’s arm, and the two of them reeled back as the Iron lord charged toward them. Gustavius’s shout blasted through the drizzling howl of the weather. “Back, you fools! Back to the skycarriage!”

  Tabitha and her son had survived enough terror to know not to question a call of danger. Smaller and nimbler than he, they were able to match the furious racing of the Iron lord. Behind them, the land roiled with unwholesome sounds: thunder, which shouldn’t really occur in a winter storm, and noises that reminded Tabitha of gargling beasts. But from how many throats? The noise was loud enough to suggest legions. The fishy scent crept over them now, as if a wharf’s worth of gutted fish was blowing in from the East. She wouldn’t look behind them to see what caused the smell. Part of bravery was the ability to mentally retreat from madness, and she now did just that.

  All around them, the storm pummeled the world: under a distorted shroud of white, they could see only figments of houses and landmarks. A sparkle lay off to the left, beyond the brown watercolor shacks. Tabitha knew it must be one of the king’s glorious skycarriages. As they hurried toward the sparkle, the storm smothering the land grew catastrophic: the wind tore in all directions and was a force against which they had to push. Something awful had come to Bainsbury. Something rotten, vile, and—or so the stink suggested—possibly dead. Most definitely, she caught the sounds of burps, half-gasps, and wheezes from a thousand throats: a horde. Although she wondered what a rotting army looked like, she stayed her course in bravery and refused to test her courage with a glance. Whatever the horde was made up of, it moved fast, nearly as fast as the three of them. The skycarriage seemed agonizingly far away.

  How they reached the vessel, which had landed in one of the farmer’s meadows that rolled between split-rail fences, was a mystery, nearly a miracle. From inside the carriage, a watchman and an Ironguard shouted and waved to them. They, too, must have seen the wave that was crashing down upon Bainsbury.

  Beguiled by her moment of safety, seduced by morbid curiosity, Tabitha turned. The hills were writhing and nearly black. An undulating, dark-gray scab was spreading over the whitened-green as quickly as paint running over glass. It colored and defiled everything it touched. Blurred as they were by the storm, it took Tabitha several specks to realize that the uncountable oscillations were the movements of many forms. Every twist and shudder seemed like the spasm of a flagging, decomposed arm—or some other wiggling part of a stumbling, maggot-filled, jaw-dangling, chewed-up monster draped in seaweed that had pulled itself from the depths of the Feordhan.

  “The dead!” barked Gustavius, spitting with horror and confirming Tabitha’s dread. “Get inside the craft! Now!”

  “The dead?” exclaimed Beauregard, also watching as the blackish wave consumed the hills at a pace impossible to believe. Wildly, he waved his arms. “I don’t even understand what’s happening. And the people of Bainsbury! We cannot leave them! We cannot—”

  Beauregard never saw the punch coming—unlike his mother, who had watched silently as the Menosian clenched his fist. In that moment, she had measured the value of her child’s life against that of others—many others—with the kind of pitilessness only a mother could possess. Tabitha prayed that her child would never learn of her decision, or that he would forgive her if he did. There was simply no way to save these people from this tsunami of death. Like a wave, it had crested and was now rolling down the valley to her home. The wave of raging, shambling shapes spat from a sea of the darkest doom would be at the nearest house in specks. Within a few sands, all of Bainsbury would be consumed by whatever unholy enemy had just shown itself. Tabitha took what felt like a long look at the churning, wavering atrocity. The scent drove her into the sterile steel skycarriage before the Menosian could decide to round her up as he had her son. The skycarriage shot away from Bainsbury.

  Tabitha never made it to a seat, and was thrown around a bit in the short hallway before the vessel reached a decent altitude and steadiness. At that point, she stopped clinging to the handles built into the walls, entered the passenger chamber, and settled on a couch near the feet of her groaning child. Surprisingly, the Iron lord had put a cushion on his thigh for her son to rest his head on. A further shock came when he applied a black satin cloth, with white-knuckled pressure, to her son’s throbbing nose. “It hasn’t been broken,” said the Menosian, as if that should pa
rdon him. “I shall hold him here for a while until the bleeding stops.”

  Beauregard mumbled a few words, nothing intelligible. Sands trickled by without meaning like the pellets of rain or wet snow cast upon the windows. Tabitha unlaced her son’s boots and massaged his feet as she did when he was ill or in need of comforting. This appeared to wake him, but she would have roused him herself, in case of a concussion. He jolted up, threw the rag off his face, batted at the Menosian, and then stumbled to the window. After gazing out at mist and nothingness, he pounded the glass and finally shuffled over to the other couch. There, he collapsed. He snorted blood and mucus. He looked more fearsome than fair. Indeed, as he stared at the two people opposite him, anger and sorrow cast his face in wrinkles that belied his youth.

  “How could you leave those people there? To die? At the hands of…I don’t know. Evil.”

  “I watched them rise out of the Feordhan,” said the Iron lord, and trembled. “The smell was what drew me, and a feeling, a sense of wickedness. I watched Evil as it rose from the Feordhan. An army of drowned souls. Barnacled, rotten, some of them burned, I believe—though I did not stay to look and linger, and set off running. They could have walked beneath the water all the way from the cinders of Menos. I believe they did.” Gustavius shuddered and was done with words.