‘Now the formalities are over, are you going to let Black Annis drop dead of hunger?’ Sati held her tongue, although she was fuming inwardly. Not only had that stinking deformed fish from the sea insulted them all by referring to Fenn as if she had polluted Faery blood in her veins, but now Bambi and Ishran were locked closely together, intensely staring into each other’s eyes. With a sinking heart, Sati knew they were reading each other’s minds, and that often this was a form of foreplay for the Azephim males.
Sweet Alecom! First Charmonzhla, now a Sea Hag! She smiled widely, refusing to let Black Annis witness her dudgeon.
*
‘What I find difficult to fathom, Bambi,’ Ishran said as he downed a fourth glass of Azbright, ‘is how you’ve managed to get away with it. Has the whore that mismanages Faia no hint that you and your associate are part of her staff?’
Bambi smiled and, in a split second, pulled a heavy Glamour over herself and sat transformed, a perfect parody of a country maid.
‘Will ya be wanting ya sheets pulled down, sir?’ she asked. Ishran roared with laughter, slapping his black velvet-clad thigh. Even Sati gave a small smile, and dipped her head, to acknowledge the skill of the Glamour.
‘What of the Janusite?’ Sati asked Bambi. ‘Ano is no fool, and he is very close to the Bluite. Surely he has sniffed out a possible future when he is around you?’
Bambi shook the golden sausage ringlets that now cascaded from under her cap.
‘Nay. Swishnzeer the sorceress, who resides in the Hall of Drowned Sorrows beneath the waves, has spent centuries perfecting a Glamour that would not be penetrated by those on land. Besides, even if Ano did see a future, he is forbidden by Janusite code to disclose it to Mary Muck.’
‘To Mary Muck!’ Ishran cried, lifting his glass of Azbright.
‘To Mary Muck!’ Black Annis echoed, waving a thighbone of Faia child in the air.
‘To the day when Azephim angels and Sea Hags will conquer Eronth and I fuck Mary Muck up the arse!’ Ishran toasted again. Black Annis’s yellow eyes spotted the look of contempt that Fenn shot at Ishran. Then she noted the small china plate filled with miniature chocolate pomz that Fenn was snacking on.
‘Chocolate pomz!’ she yelled. ‘What’s wrong with maug?’ Fenn jumped, and Sati rushed instantly to her defence.
‘Fenn has never been a great lover of maug, Black Annis. Ishran and I like to support her choices. It shows an independent spirit, so valued in the Azephim lore.’
Ishran snarled violently at Fenn from the opposite end of the table, and Fenn cowered in her chair. Following his cue, Black Annis snarled, too, and her milky yellow eyes flashed their disgust at one who was feeble enough to prefer pomz to maug.
‘Have you seen the Faery Queen bitch Diomonna?’ Sati asked, hoping to change the subject. Black Annis belched loudly. ‘Nay, although my swans tell me it’s rumoured she’s still pining over the Webx Gwyndion, the one she imprisoned in the Hollow Hills. The winged slut believes herself to be in love!’
Sati shrugged. ‘It be a testing time for lovers. Aphrodite has not long collected the body parts of Adonis, and Faia is eagerly waiting on Lugh, the sun god, so they can carry out their mourning procession.’
Ishran startled them all by banging the table loudly. ‘Those useless fucking rituals!’ he screamed, flecks of spittle and gore still hanging from his lips from the maug. ‘As long as the pathetic, redundant goddesses remain in power, and the Bindisore slut sits on her skinny arse in Faia, the fucking rituals continue! Who gives a rat’s ball if Lugh and his magic spear manifests, or Persephone rises or descends? Superstitious mumbo jumbo! Even the useless gods don’t care enough to be on time for their own empty rituals!’ There was a stunned silence, broken only by the howl of Solumbi outside.
‘You think the Webx will come to the Wastelands looking for his Hostlings?’ Bambi queried gently, her eyes shining.
‘Who gives a fuck?’ Ishran screamed. ‘May his Hostlings stay tethered to the Eom for eternity! The Webx have no control over the Eom! The goddesses are dead! They have no power, they have no balls! Only I, Ishran the Ghormho, control the Eom!’
Except for the minor fact that you haven’t been able to charge it, Sati thought, but dared not say it. Her eyes met Fenn’s across the dinner table and knew she was sharing the thought. The two had to restrain themselves from laughing out loud.
Bambi sighed, and rested a plump, freckled hand on Ishran’s knee. ‘The Sea Hags have a lot to be grateful to the Ghormho for,’ she simpered. Ishran smiled back at her, vulnerable to her flattery, and Sati could guess what was going through his mind when he surveyed the sea creature with her plump bosom and thighs. She hoped he would refrain from mounting the maid until dinner was over. There was a time, not so long ago, when she might have joined him in his amorous pursuit of Bambi. But since the loss of her leg, and her energies spent over the years in rearing Fenn and attempting to conceive, she tended to conserve her sexual energies.
‘Come, Fenn.’ Sati stood up abruptly as she sensed Ishran’s kylon beginning to unfold. ‘I feel it is time we retire to the Fire Tower and leave the Ghormho to his pleasure.’
Black Annis cackled with malicious glee. No doubt the ancient cannibal would continue to sit there, stuffing her face, while Ishran had his way with Bambi on the table. Quickly Sati and Fenn departed from the room, refusing to acknowledge Bambi’s presence. How Sati hated the Sea Hags and all the creatures that lived in the hidden depths of the ocean! Her natural domain was the air. The sea mysteries both baffled and repelled her.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The one from the Faery race looks on with eyes that are blind. Roses burst into flame beneath her feet. The kiss that he gives her is filled with poison. Into Alecom’s arms she will fall. A price will be demanded for the changeling. Her lips are blue, her mouth is filled with death.
— Condensed from the Tremite Book of Life, Column MLII OFJ O
As she always did, Fenn soon gave up trying to keep count of the Azephim guards, who saluted her and Sati with a clanging of armour as they passed by on the exhausting climb to the Fire Tower. It never failed to give her a secret thrill to ascend the hundreds of steps on the tiny winding staircase, sensing that Sati revealed the mysteries of the Fire Tower to very few people. The Zegerist, the protective thought-pattern guard, stumbled toward them as the two women approached the Tower. Sati sent her scent out to him and he ceased in his attack, permitting them to enter.
‘When will you teach me to make a Zegerist?’ Fenn asked as she always did.
‘Not yet, Fenn. You are not quite ready to learn how to empower a Zegerist. Continue your meditation studies for a bit longer, and then I may open your third eye for you.’
Fenn made a face. ‘It’s boring trying to meditate!’
‘Well, stop trying. Just allow it to happen.’ By now they had entered the round room of the North Tower. There were minimal furnishings, for this was where Sati performed her magical work. Seven magic mirrors hung on the turret walls, each protected from view by a heavy black drape. The configuration of stars, moons and planets was favourable for mirror scrying. Preparation time for mirror-gazing depended on how deeply Sati wished to consult her mirrors. Each one represented one of the Azephim astrological signs, being made of the corresponding metal and consulted on the appropriate day.
Sati pulled one of the drapes back to reveal an image of the Crone Khartyn, and her apprentice Rosedark. The two were seated in Khartyn s cottage, a small thatched dwelling outside the borderlands of Faia village. On their table were heaped grains, bowls of corn and bilberries, all prepared for Lughnasadh festival. A large black cauldron was decorated with stems of grain. Both women looked strained as they pored over an ancient parchment spread out on the table before them.
‘Now what are they up to?’ Sati pondered, vainly attempting to read the flowing script of the text the two women were studying. She strained further into the glass. An extract from the Book of Life, perhaps? It was impossi
ble to read through the mirror.
‘She’s so beautiful,’ Fenn said, referring to Rosedark.
‘That Faian milkmaid?’ Sati sniffed. ‘She be nowhere near as fair as Fenn!’
‘I’m not beautiful,’ Fenn replied. Sati glanced at her with an odd wrench in her heart. It was true that Fenn was not beautiful in the sense the word conveyed in Eronth. Her face was too pale, too pixie. She was like a fragile white shadow, lost in the Azephim castle. But it pained the Azephim Queen to see Fenn admiring Rosedark’s Faian peasant beauty. Rosedark was a turnip girl, giving herself airs and graces because she served Khartyn. But to Sati, Fenn was truly beautiful.
The image in the mirror began to change. Now the glass showed a Lightcaster in what appeared to be an inn or boarding house. Sati concentrated, attempting to make out the location. It wasn’t Faia. Perhaps New Baffin. She smiled with satisfaction when she observed him — polishing his pricker and torture instruments.
‘Not much longer,’ she said maliciously to Fenn. ‘He will soon sniff them out.’ Fenn studied the Azephim Queen. It was beyond her comprehension why Sati hated the Crone and her apprentice so much that she had gone to the trouble of hiring a Lightcaster and summoning him to Eronth not once, but twice. Despite her seasons of onerous rehabilitation as she attempted to magically heal her violently amputated leg, the Azephim Queen had never ceased her determination to destroy Khartyn and Rosedark. Sati sniffed the unspoken criticism, and it inflamed her hatred for Khartyn even more.
Passing her hand over the mirror, she and Fenn now studied Mary, the High Priestess of Faia. Mary was seated in intense discussion with Ano, a Janusite and Chief Council to Mary. The fragment of conversation they overheard concerned the possibility of a peace treaty between the Imomm and Wezom Faery tribes.
‘Look at the freak Janusite!’ Sati said cruelly. ‘He’s so much in love with Mary, like a disgusting meerwog, or a Bluite dog!’ Fenn studied Ano, mentally disagreeing. She found the Janusite attractive, despite his two heads — one that looked to the past and one to the future. Where Sati saw weakness, Fenn saw loyalty and devotion. Before she had time to admire him further, however, the mirror changed its scenery to reflect one of her favourite images.
Fenn loved following the travels of Gwyndion the Webx, who had come to Eronth from his native planet of Zeglanada. Fenn had become attached to the sensitive Webx and his faithful meerwog, Samma. She loved observing his daily routine as he studied and meditated for several Turns of the Wheel. As she had grown, she had observed the young Masachinoneaf mature into the early stages of his Oakdeer growth.
Out of all the characters Fenn scryed upon regularly, Gwyndion was her favourite. Sati could taunt that his life was boring and there would be more action to observe in the Outerezt, but Fenn found the Webx’s dedication to his studies and meditations soothing. Her private wish was that Sati would spend more time educating her and less on her endless scheming plans to conquer Eronth. There was so much Fenn was ignorant of in the known worlds, and it remained a constant frustration for her.
Over Turns of the Wheel, she had come to respect Gwyndion for his ability to closet himself away from the outside world and educate himself. He seemed to desire only knowledge, not the company of other beings, with the exception of his meerwog, Samma. She had felt a sense of loss when he had flowered into Oakdeer, and Mary had given him permission to journey to New Baffin, where he would be granted access to the reclusive Tremite Scribes. She knew the handsome Webx had been disciplining himself to enter the Wastelands in an attempt to retrieve the Eom for his people and to rescue his Bowz from the deadly spinnerets they were imprisoned in.
Fenn dreaded having to witness any confrontation between her beloved angel parents and Gwyndion, She suspected the Webx would be so sensitive he would not survive the encounter.
Tonight Gwyndion and Samma had made their camp in a field where wild ilkama grazed. First they had carefully checked the area for any flowers or trees that might be hidden entrances into the land of the Hollow Hills. Fenn knew Gwyndion and Samma still shared the apprehension of being recaptured by the Imomm people after their escape from the Hills. Their Faery shock would always linger faintly within their etheric beings.
‘So the Webx has left Faia,’ Sati commented with a sanguine smile. ‘Where would our woody siblrot be making to?’ Fenn thought briefly of the Webx Hostlings Rozen and Tanzen, tethered to the Eom in the dungeons of the castle. They had hung suspended, in the Webx’s spinnerets, neither living nor dead, for many Turns of the Wheel, and yet the Eom still refused to reanimate. She wished for the briefest moment that Gwyndion had remained under Mary’s protection in Faia, or that he would give up his quest and return to Zeglanada.
‘No doubt Queen Slut Diomonna is keeping an eye on the handsome Webx,’ Sati said. Fenn remained silent as she always did when Sati unleashed her venom on the Faery kingdoms. She felt an indefinable sense of loyalty to them, a bond that she would never dare mention to the Azephim Queen.
The picture in the mirror changed again to reveal Black Annis continuing to eat lustily, as Ishran mounted Bambi, and slid his kylon deep inside her as she lay among the plates on the table. The maid’s legs were high in the air over his shoulders, and she screamed, half in pain, half in pleasure, as he thrust inside her.
‘That Black Annis is such a greedy old sow!’ Sati said frowning. ‘Perhaps you are right, Fenn, I should have flown today.’ Abruptly, she shape-shifted into a large black raven. ‘I might fly now,’ the Sati raven said. ‘Will you be all right to dismantle the Zegerist?’ Fenn nodded, secretly pleased to be left alone in Sati’s magical tower. She watched as the raven flew swiftly into the night sky of the Wastlelands.
It was far from the first time Fenn had raided the cabinets and drawers of the tower room. Ever since she was a small child, she had been fascinated by Sati’s vast collection of magical oils, crystals and feathers. Indeed, Sati had a priceless collection of magical feathers she had stolen from spellbinding birds in all the known worlds. Fenn loved to peruse them, marvelling at the exotic colours. She would wonder at the unusual gifts Ishran had given Sati over the seasons, trinkets that now lay carelessly heaped on wooden benches. Jewellery, brass pots from different worlds, killing pipes, vials of poisons, photographs of Sati and Ishran in strange locations. There were precious Books of Shadows, bound in Bluite skin, containing detailed instructions of Sati’s occult workings. There were tiny coloured vials of essences and herbs, and mummified body parts collected from all the known worlds.
What fascinated Fenn the most, however, was a small blue photograph album with a butterfly on the cover. Inside the album were photographs of a woman Fenn took to be her birth mother. The photographs had been taken on the Blue Planet. There was one of her birth mother, heavily pregnant; two men stood either side of her supporting her with their arms. Whenever Fenn focused on the men in the photograph, she had an impression of sadness, and a spiky red word, AIDS, would come into her mind. In another photograph, her birth mother was smiling down at the tiny baby in her arms. In another, Jessie, the dog who still lived with Fenn in the Wastelands, posed proudly next to a tiny girl whom Fenn took to be herself. She loved to study the image of her small, dark-haired birth mother, trying to receive impressions from the photograph. The dominant emotion sliding into her mind was that her birth mother had lived with fear, a tremendous amount of fear.
In vain, Fenn would attempt to find resemblance between the woman in the photograph and Sati and herself. She was, after all, Sati’s Bindisore sister. Ishran and Sati had related the tale to Fenn, the story of the two sisters, so unlike in temperament and looks, who were hatched from their eggs by an eagle. Emma, Fenn’s birth mother, had been fostered out to a Crossa and had grown up on the Blue Planet, never realising her true heritage for a large part of her life.
‘She was a half-wit,’ Sati had ranted at the young Fenn. ‘That’s why she was banished to the Blue Planet, because they are a race of feeble simpletons. Jessie has more bra
ins in her head than she did. She created a lot of trouble when she came to Eronth, swanning around with the Crone and Rosedark as if she owned the place! They sent her back eventually, because she was such a disruptive influence. That’s why Ishran and I rescued you from her. She was terribly negligent, Fenn. All she ever cared about was her ridiculous paintings, and she had no idea of how to bring up a child. She couldn’t even look after herself. Why, the night we came to rescue you, there were nits in your hair and rats running through the house. Even poor old Jessie was covered in fleas and lice and begged us piteously to take her as well. Night’s claws! Neither of us wanted to bring a dog to the Wastelands. It’s a big responsibility just making sure the Solumbi don’t eat her. But we wanted what was best for our little Fenn!’
Fenn doubted every word of this story. They had most likely killed her birth mother, she thought, killed her because they desired a child so much. It was well known that Sati’s belly was cold and winter-barren. Also, Sari blamed her sister for the loss of her limb. She claimed Emma had poisoned Artemis’s mind against her, causing the Goddess to hack off her leg. It was another one of Sati’s stories that Fenn doubted.
Although she liked to fantasise that her birth mother was still alive and that she would one day travel to the Wastelands to collect her and Jessie and take them to live on the Blue Planet, she could sense when she held the photos that Emma was indeed dead to her physical form. This knowledge made her sad, but it was also strangely thrilling that Sati and Ishran would want her, Fenn, so much that they would cross worlds for her.
The one image in the photographs Fenn couldn’t relate to, or receive any impressions from, was herself. Try as she might, she could not identify with that tiny baby, or that laughing, chubby, brown-haired girl. Maya — the word entered her mind. Maya. She persisted, but no further impressions would come. Giving up, she replaced the small album carefully back into the cabinet. There was no telling when Sati would return. She could fly for days, or be home in a second eyston. Fenn didn’t dare risk the Azephim Queen’s wrath, if she returned to find Fenn engrossed in a memory book of her birth mother.
Bride of the Stone: Circle of Nine Trilogy 2 Page 6