Feast of Fates
Christian A. Brown
Copyright © 2014 by Christian A. Brown
Feast of Fates work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical. This includes photocopying or recording or using any information storage and retrieval system, except as expressly permitted in writing from the author/publisher.
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 1495907589
ISBN 13: 9781495907586
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014903202
CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
North Charleston, South Carolina
For Cynthia
ON GEADHAIN (GLOSSARY)
I: Paragons, Wonders, and Horrors
The Sisters Three—Ealasyd’Ēl-ə-sid, Elemech ’El-ə-mek, and Eean ’Ē-en: From youngest to eldest in appearance, they are Ealasyd, Elemech, and Eean. The Sisters Three are a trio of ageless witches who live in the woods of Alabion. They are known to hold sway over the destinies of men. They can be capricious, philanthropic, or woefully cruel. One must be careful when bartering with the Sisters Three for their wisdom. There is always a price.
Morigan: A young woman living a rather unremarkable life as the handmaiden to an elderly sorcerer, Thackery Thule. Upon a chance, perhaps fated, meeting with the Wolf, a world of wonder and horror engulfs her. She learns she is an axis of magik, mystery, and Fate to the proceedings of Geadhain’s Great War. In the darkest days she and her companions must face, her heroism and oft-tested virtue will determine much of the world’s salvation or ruin.
The Wolf, Caenith ’Kā-nith: A smith of Eod. His fearsome, raw exterior hides an animal and a dreadful wrath. Caenith is a conflicted creature—a beast, man, poet, lover, and killer. Caenith believes himself beyond salvation, and he passes the years making metal skins and claws for the slow-walkers of Geadhain while drowning himself in bitter remorse. He does not know it, but Morigan will pull him from his darkness and make him confront what is most black and wicked within him.
Thackery Hadrian Thule (Whitehawk): An old sorcerer living in Eod. Thackery lives an unassuming life as a man of modest stature. However, he is a man with many skeletons in his closet. He has no known children or family, and he cares for Morigan as if she were his daughter. Morigan’s grace will touch him, too, and he is drawn into the web of Fate she weaves.
Magnus: The Immortal King of the North. Magnus is one of two guardians of the Waking World. The other is his brother, Brutus. The Everfair King—the colloquial name for Magnus—rules Eod, the City of Wonders. He is living magik itself, a sorcerer without compare, and the master of the forces of ice, thunder, Will, and intellect.
Brutus: The Sun King. Brutus is the second of the Immortal Kings and ruler of the Summerlands in southern Geadhain. Zioch, the City of Gold, shines like a gold star on the southern horizon and is the seat of his power. Brutus is the master of the wilderness and the hunt. His magik has dominion over the physical world and self. He is victim to the Black Queen’s whispers and falls far from his nobility.
Lilehum (Lila): Magnus’s bride. Magnus sought her when learning to live as a man independent of his ageless brother. Through the sharing of blood and ancient vows—the Fuilimean—she is drawn into the mystery of the immortal brothers and imbued with a sliver of their magik. She is a sorceress and possibly eternal in her years. She is wise, kind, and comely without compare. However, she is ruthless if her kingdom or bloodmate is threatened.
The Black Queen, Zionae ’Zē-ō-’nā: A shapeless, bodiless, monstrous entity without empathy that seeks to undo the Immortal Kings and the world’s order. Her actions—those who perceive these things sense she is a she—are horrific and inexplicable.
II: Eod’s Finest
Erithitek ’Ᾱr-ith-ə-’tek: More commonly referred to as “Erik.” He is the king’s hammer. Erik was once an orphaned child of the Salt Forests and a member of the Kree tribe, but Magnus took him in. Erik now serves as his right hand.
Rowena: She is Queen Lila’s sword and Her Majesty’s left hand. Rowena’s tale was destined for a swift, bleak end until the queen intervened and saved Rowena’s young life. Since that day, Rowena has revered Queen Lila as a mother and true savior.
Lowelia Larson: The queen knows her as the Lady of Whispers. Lowelia seems a simple, high-standing palace servant, yet her doughy, pleasant demeanor conceals a shrewd mind and a vengeful secret.
Galivad: Master of the East Watch. The youngest of Eod’s watchmasters, he is seen by many as unfit for the post because of his pretty face, foppish manner, and cavalier airs. He laughs and sings to avoid the pain of remembering what he has lost.
Dorvain: Master of the North Watch and Leonitis’s brother. He is a brutish, gruff warrior tempered by the winds of the Northlands. He is dependable and unflappable. He is an oak of a man who will not bend to the winds of change or war.
Leonitis: The Lion. He is thusly named for his roar, grandeur, and courage. He is the Ninth Legion master of Eod (King Magnus’s personal legion). Once Geadhain’s Great War commences, he will play many roles from soldier to spy to hero. Leonitis’s thread of destiny is long and woven through many Fates.
Jebidiah Rotbottom: A flamboyant spice merchant from Sorsetta. He sails the breadth of Geadhain in a garish, crimson vessel—the Red Mary. Currently he uses different aliases, for reasons no doubt unscrupulous and suspect.
Tabitha Fischer: The sole magistrate of Willowholme. She has assumed this role not by choice but through tragedy.
Beauregard Fischer: A waifish, lyrical young man lost in the Summerlands with his father. In his past and soul lies a great mystery. His cheek is marked with the birthmark of the one true northern star.
Devlin Fischer: A seasoned hunter and Beauregard’s father. He is as gruff and hairy as a bear.
Maggie Halm: A descendant of Cordenzia, an infamous whoremistress who traded her power for freedom from the Iron City. Maggie—Cordenzia’s granddaughter—runs an establishment called the Silk Purse in Taroch’s Arm.
Talwyn Blackmore: The illegitimate son of Roland Blackmore (since deceased). Talwyn is a kind, brilliant scholar and inheritor of all the virtue that escaped his half brother, Augustus. Talwyn lives in Riverton. His thirst for knowledge often makes him cross boundaries of decorum.
III: Menos’s Darkest Souls
Mouse: More of a gray soul than a black one, Mouse is a woman without a firm flag planted on the map of morality. She knows well life’s cruelty and how best to avoid it through self-sufficiency and indifference. As a girl she escaped a rather unfortunate fate, and she has since risen to become a Voice of the Watchers—a shadowbroker of Geadhain. Mouse’s real trial begins when she is thrust into peril with Morigan—at that time a stranger—and Mouse is forced to rethink everything she knows.
Adelaide: Mouse’s childhood friend from the charterhouse. The girl’s fate is the cause of much torment for Mouse.
Gloriatrix: The Iron Queen and ruler of Menos. Gloriatrix single-handedly clawed her way to the top of Menos’s black Crucible after her husband, Gabriel, lost first his right to chair on the Council of the Wise and then his life. Gloriatrix has never remarried and blames her brother, Thackery Thule, for Gabriel’s death. With her family in shambles, power is the only thing to which she clings. Gloriatrix has ambitions far beyond Menos. She would rule the stars themselves if she could.
Sorren: Gl
oriatrix’s youngest child. Sorren is a nekromancer of incredible power who possesses the restraint and moods of a petulant, spoiled child. He shares a pained past with his (mostly) deceased brother, Vortigern.
Vortigern: Gloriatrix’s second son. This pitiable soul lives in a state between light and dark and without memory of the errors that brought him to this walking death.
The Broker: All the black rivers of sin in Menos come to one confluence: the Broker. Little is known about this man beyond the terror tales whispered to misbehaving children. The Broker has metal teeth, mad eyes, and a cadre of twisted servants whom he calls sons. He inhabits and controls the Iron City’s underbelly.
Elissandra: The Mistress of Mysteries. She is an Iron sage and the proprietress of Menos’s Houses of Mystery—places where a wary master can consult oracles and seek augurs regarding his or her inevitable doom. While she is wicked, she is also bright with love for her children, and she fosters a hidden dream and hope no other Iron sage would ever be so bold as to consider.
Elineth: Son of Elissandra.
Tessariel: Daughter of Elissandra.
Moreth of El: Master of the House of El and the Blood Pits of Menos. He traffics in people, gladiators, and death.
Beatrice of El: Moreth’s pale and ghastly wife. After a glance, a person can tell this ethereal woman is not wholly of this world.
Alastair: A mysterious figure who acts seemingly in his own interests. He greatly influences certain meetings and events. To all appearances, he is the Watchers’ agent and Mouse’s mentor. He almost certainly, though, serves another power or master.
Lord Augustus Blackmore: Lord of Blackforge. A deviant powermonger with grotesque appetites.
IV: Lands and Landmarks
Alabion: The great woodland and the realm of the Sisters Three.
Eod: The City of Wonders and kingdom of Magnus. Eod is a testament to the advances of technomagik and culture in Geadhain.
Zioch: The City of Gold and kingdom of Brutus.
Kor’Khul: The great sand ocean surrounding Eod. These lands were once thought to be lush and verdant.
Mor’Khul: The green, rolling valleys of Brutus’s realm. They are legendary for their beauty.
Menos: The Iron City. It is hung always in a pall of gloom.
Carthac: The City of Waves.
Ebon Vale: The land around Taroch’s Arm. It has fiefs, farmsteads, and large shale deposits.
The Black Grove: The forest outside of Blackforge. It leads to the Plains of Canterbury.
Plains of Canterbury: Wide, sparse fields and gullies.
Iron Valley: One of the richest sources of feliron in Geadhain.
Blackforge: A city on the east bank of the Feordhan River. It was once famous for blacksmithing.
Bainsbury: A moderate-size township on the west bank of the Feordhan. Gavin Foss lords over it.
Riverton: A bustling, eclectic city of lighthearted criminals and troubadours. The city is found on the east shore of the Feordhan River, and it was built from the reconstituted wreckage of old hulls and whatever interesting bits floated down the great river.
Fairfarm: The largest rural community in the East. With so many pastures, fields, and farms, this realm produces most of Central Geadhain’s consumable resources.
Heathsholme: A small hamlet known for its fine ale.
Southreach: A great ancient city built into a cleft in Kor’Khul.
Sorsetta: In the South and past the Sun King’s lands. This is a city of contemplation and quiet enlightenment.
Taroch’s Arm: The resting place of a relic of the great warlord Taroch: his arm. The city is also a hub of great trade between all corners of Geadhain.
Brackenmire: The realm outside of Mor’Khul. It is a swampy but pleasant place.
Willowholme: A village located in Brackenmire and famed for its musicians and anglers.
Lake Tesh: The blue jewel glittering under the willows of Willowholme.
V: Miscellaneous Mysteries
Fuilimean: The Blood Promise. It is a trading of blood and vows and a spiritual binding between two willing participants. Magnus and Brutus did this first in the oldest ages. Depending on who partakes in the ritual, the results can be extraordinary.
Technomagik: A hybrid science that blends raw power—often currents of magik—with mechanical engineering.
The Faithful: Worshippers of the Green Mother. They exist in many cultures and forms, and the most sacred and spiritual of their kind, curators of the world’s history known as Keepers, often lead them.
The Watchers: The largest network of shadowbrokers in Central Geadhain.
Ode to the East
A weeping sky, a sea of trees that eats,
what foolish hands and little feet
Do poke and tread upon its fright
Do dare to brave its darkest nights
Those who enter, go alone
Bare as babes, chilled to bone
No steel or magik will save one here
From the wildest things that prowl
—the Lords of fang and claw
Nor the Oldest that do howl
—in their cairns of loam and age
Or the leaves themselves that whisper, tease, and hiss:
lost, so lost, and never found,
hope and blood shall feed our ground
You have entered, and now are gone
Into the shadows of Alabion
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
PART I
CHAPTER I WHERE THE WIND WENT
CHAPTER II WHAT THE STONES WHISPERED
CHAPTER III AWAKE AND DREAMING
CHAPTER IV THE BLACK QUEEN
CHAPTER V THE MOUSE
CHAPTER VI THE BREWING STORM
CHAPTER VII THE BREAKING OF LIES
CHAPTER VIII THE HEART OF THE KING
CHAPTER IX BLOOD PROMISE
CHAPTER X THE FORGOTTEN
PART II
CHAPTER XI THE FORKING ROAD
CHAPTER XII AN UNFORGOTTEN DEBT
CHAPTER XIII THE ESCAPE
CHAPTER XIV WHISPERS FROM THE EAST
CHAPTER XV WELL OF SECRETS
CHAPTER XVI CHASING DOOM
CHAPTER XVII THE LONG NIGHTMARE
CHAPTER XVIII AN UNIVITED GUEST
CHAPTER XIX THE END OF ALL ROADS
CHAPTER XX THE STORM
CHAPTER XXI THE ROAD AHEAD
EPILOGUE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PROLOGUE
The sky was black over the evergreen sea. No moon, no stars, as if the heavens did not exist in this realm. Creatures sang to a moon that was unseen, each cry more unrecognizable than the last. Elegantly these monsters stalked one another; hunting down in the prison of tangled trees, bracken, and thorns, the serpents’ nests and clutching roots that only the maddest ranger might call a forest. Amid the skulking killers, a solitary woman glided through the darkness.
She heeded the whispery winds, which did not lure her into snares as they would other travelers, but told her where to step truly. She asked the tortoise-skinned, ancient trees to move their branches from her path and thanked them as they complied. Many a time, fanged things leaped from the foliage, snarling and slavering for her flesh, and she banished them with the softest whistle or a reproachful shine of her green glass eyes. With her branch of timeworn yew, she prodded her way over stone and twist. When the wind started to natter, she pulled tight her threadbare shawl and kirtle. And if the hike threatened to exhaust her, she would pause, think of her sisters waiting for her, and then push on through the shadows with renewed and ruthless determination: the final resolve of a soul soon to die. She could sense her end in the brittleness of her bones, the fluttering of her heart like a hummingbird’s wings, and the snotty rattle in her lungs. Death was such a familiar friend to her that she could time its nearness within a sand or two of the hourglass. She knew that she still had time, but also that she would not live to see another dawn.
Onward she plun
ged, culling kindness from the vicious woods, taming what those who did not listen to the true voices wrongly called the Untamed. As she went, she basked in the beauty of Alabion; her eyes drawn to dewy leaves glittering as if scattered with diamonds, her ears to the music that echoed through the pines, her nose to the earthy pungency of the mulch beneath her toes. She drank in every sight, sound, and scent; missing none of it, adoring all of it. Soon, the trees thinned to brambles, which rustled themselves apart like kindly doorkeepers for her, and she came to a rocky basin and a steeply rising bluff. Difficult the climb would be, yet she wasted not a speck. Stone was not something that one could sing to in the hope of courtesy: it was stubborn, it wouldn’t listen, and it broke in half before it bent to another’s Will. So she did not bother asking the stone to accommodate her, but steeled her way up the bluff, not once crying out from the scraping of her hands, knees, and feet. Besides, the journey and struggle of life was half the joy, and she reveled in the toil, pain, and sweat of her decrepit body, for it was to be the last rush of life she would know for a while.
Surely the moon admired her spirit, and it peeked out in a sliver of whiteness. As she stopped, huffing, to look up at its loveliness, she saw that she had nearly reached the slyly tucked escarpment that was her destination. A ghostly female figure with billowing black hair and a gaze that glinted green, even from strides away, leaned over the edge: her sister. Hurriedly, the traveler clambered up the cliffside. But she had reached the limits of her strength, and at the end, her sister’s strong, pale arms helped to pull her onto a plateau soft with grasses.
“Eean, the paleness of a death is upon you,” said her sister, hovering over her.
“Help me up, Elemech,” demanded Eean. “I feel like a boulder on two spring twigs, and we have precious few sands left.”
Stoutly, Elemech hauled up her sister by the armpits. They walked over a lush meadow of clover, ferns, and flowers, heading for a cavern draped in vines. In the morning, butterflies and birds would play amid the lea on the cliff, though tonight only evening moths were about. Eean indulged in the study of their dances and one longing look to the sliver of the moon until she was pulled into the cave. Illumed patches of nocturnal fungi spotted the walls here, and it was easy for Elemech to find her way deep through the winding dark, into their refuge. For some time they wandered, deeper, farther into the belly of rock, Elemech never unsure of which branching road to take, even when the fungi dried up and they were panting together in sheer darkness.
Feast of Fates (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 1) Page 1