Feast of Fates (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 1)

by Christian A. Brown

  “I…I am sorry. You seem as if you are dressed and on your way out.”

  Caenith stared but did not speak. Distantly and with sorrow, he remembered the Daughters of the Moon, victims of the New Age, with their milky skin and coats of nettles, raven feathers and black leaves: garments with haunting similarities to the lacy bodice and sweeping train that Morigan wore. She was as magikal as these phantoms of the past, but paler and prettier still, and her bust and cheeks were flushed from rushing. He could taste the salty-sweet sweat of her on his palate and hear the pounding of her blood as a rousing tribal drum in his ears.

  “I was waiting for you,” he said.

  Morigan looked around suspiciously. “You…you were?”

  “I—” Smelled you down the street and hurried to make myself presentable. “I felt that you would return today, that the winds would bear your sweetness my way, and I see that Geadhain has granted my wish.”

  “I see. How very…strange,” replied Morigan.

  Caenith welcomed her with a grin; his canines were unusually long, they glimmered in the lamplight. “Cups! I have been working on cups! Come inside, dear fawn.”

  Cups? And there’s that “fawn” talk again. I think he’s some manner of a lunatic, thought Morigan, and against what little sense prevailed in the company of this man, she went into Caenith’s shop. Inside was brighter than she remembered, and small lamps had been lit in vases on the floor. She had to blink to understand them, these twining metal flowers, their petals opened and stigmas made of flame. She stopped to admire one, seeing the wick inside the fire, amazed that this was not magik, but more of the smith’s work, impossibly detailed and manufactured by enormous fingers.

  “Resilience and beauty,” said Caenith, breathing over her neck. “The strength of steel and the beauty—and power—of fire. I was inspired to create them this morning. The metal’s song was clear with how it was to be made. Do you like them?”

  “Yes, they’re…lovely.”

  “I agree,” muttered Caenith, and he placed a hand upon her back, leading her farther into his den. “Cups,” he promised, but said no more.

  Silent and torn, Morigan’s heart raced, and she wondered if Caenith could feel the fear hammering through her ribs. Who is this man? Who is this man who can reach into me and twist out my hidden sentiments? Stop walking and think! Think! This would be your chance, Morigan! To escape this before… Before what? Something terrible? She did not sense a dark end ahead, but a precipitous cliff, and one that she wanted to leap right off. Images of wolves and sharp-toothed smiles, of metal flowers and moonlit forests flashed in her head. Before she knew it, she had leaped off the cliff, for it was only Caenith and she surrounded in the soft orange shadows of his forge. Only their gazes appeared to shine in the dimness, and those found each other like swords, clashing.

  Her scent had soured with panic. More than anything, he wanted Morigan to be at ease. He apprehended how confused she must be by the mesmerism between them. By the calling of old blood to old blood. He sought to appease the fawn with the clumsiness of words instead of the language of sniffing, biting, and howls.

  “I sense that you have reservations about me. About being here in the dark with a stranger. Please, do not fear me, as unusual as my manners might appear. I am an antiquarian, you could say. I honor customs that modern minds do not. I assure you that you are safe, that you have never been safer. What happens between a man and a woman should be as natural as the first kiss of frost on a lake. Close your eyes and imagine.” Morigan complied and was swimming in the dark honey of his voice. “Hear the first breath of winter…dry gasps punctuated by stillness. A song, should you listen, sung by Mother Winter. Tenderly, she hums the life beneath the water to sleep and slides a glittering blanket over her tired children. Mother Spring dawns, and she sings a different tune. One of tinkling water and cracking freedom, and the fishes and reeds stretch and celebrate their nourishing rest. Would one break that frost before Mother Spring does in her gentle way, would he smash at the winter skin and shatter it with ugly passion, the harmony of the music is corrupted. The purity is lost. Look at me, dear fawn.”

  Morigan rose from her imagining of chiming ice and wriggling lake children.

  “I would know you, I would chase you, and then I would claim you—should you allow it. That is the way of the Great Hunt,” said Caenith, bowing his head.

  The Great Hunt? she wondered. Still more of his eccentricity, but she understood that he would not force himself upon her. He would not break the ice.

  “So this is a hunt?” she quietly asked.

  “What else would it be?” said Caenith plainly. “But in the Great Hunt, we must each choose to submit to our roles. A Wolf is nothing without a chase, without forest to overcome, or a fawn to catch. Will you be my Fawn?”

  The woods, the running, and the Wolf in her dreams came back to her. That sense of fleeing from a beast, yet giddy from the pursuit. If the animal had caught her, would she have screamed or sighed? wondered Morigan, and she had no answer. Caenith watched her silver eyes darken and wondered if he had overstepped his bounds or spoken too freely. She was a slow-walker, after all, or at least had lived as one and did not know of the gift she carried.

  You need to act more like a man. You are confusing her, he cautioned himself.

  “Cups! Forget my request for the moment. I was to show you cups.”

  Caenith hurried off, and gingerly Morigan followed, stepping around the warm grate that her host walked over. They met on the other side of the room, past a set of large bellows. She saw a worktable, covered in tools, and a sitting bench, also strewn with implements, molds, and partially completed armaments. Balled and discarded waxed paper was strewn hither and thither about the bench, and she assumed that Caenith ate while he worked. She wasn’t sure if there was an indecipherable organization at work here, but the man lived like a savage. Caenith cleaned the detritus off the bench with a single sweep of his arm and then led Morigan to sit, ushering her down most elegantly. She noted rusty stains on corners of the trash at her feet and assumed it was anything but blood, for she was already fretful enough about being here and still quite preoccupied with the congruence of her dream and the elements of her host.

  “One moment,” said Caenith, with that sharp smile of his, and he darted off to a shelf along the wall stacked with smaller gleaming items that she could not identify in the dim light. By the kings, the man is quick on his toes, thought Morigan. He rummaged around for a speck, and then moved to the lavatory and fidgeted in the shadows there. Patiently Morigan waited. Soon her attention drifted back to the bloody parcel wrappings—yes, she was certain it was blood now—and she jumped in her seat when she looked up and Caenith was in front of her. He was holding two silver chalices, inlaid with the most intricate designs; pictographs perhaps, though his large hands covered most of the cups. He extended one to her, spilling some of the water inside in his excitement.

  “I thought of these as well, when making the flowers. I do not entertain, and my hospitality on your last visit was lacking.”

  Thoughts of bloody parcels fled her as she examined what she was given. Like the rest of Caenith’s work, the chalice was exceptionally crafted; his ability to coax beauty from metal was unparalleled. She turned the object in the light, and it moved as a sorcerer’s illusion would: this forbidding scene of a dark wood, a full moon, a maiden, and a wolf. The two figures were especially captivating, and though she only looked into the mirror once each day when she finished her bath and was not prone to preening or vanity, the lines and lips of the etched woman she saw were her own. To the humongous wolf, all shaggy fur, darkness, and fangs, she did not draw many equivalents. Nevertheless, the eyes were familiar, for they were upon her this instant.

  “Does it please you?” asked Caenith.

  Morigan was aware that something immeasurably strange was occurring between her and this man, that these symbols and warnings of moons, wolves, chases, and hunts all bore imperative
meanings. But in that moment, with Caenith’s heat and smell all about her, her head was syrupy and free of sense. She didn’t care what it all meant.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “A toast,” said Caenith, his stare sparkling, as if he knew of her yielding.

  “To?”

  “To awakenings.”

  “Awakenings,” repeated Morigan, and greedily drank the water in her chalice, for her throat was very dry.

  Caenith lapped his down like a beast, and it trickled over his beard. He collected their cups, brushing Morigan with the soft fur of his chest as he leaned over her to set them down on the bench, and then offered his hand to her.

  “It will be a white moon tonight. Half full. The moon of the witch. Tonight, the old magiks can be tracked by those who listen, and my ears are sharp.” Morigan thought she saw Caenith’s ears twitch. “Come; let me show you the secrets of this stone forest and whatever secrets sing themselves to me. Will you run with me?”

  “Yes.”

  Bewildered and enthralled, sweating and shaking, Morigan slid her soft fingers over Caenith’s gritty palm; they each shivered from the sensation. He smiled then, his sharp and beautiful smile, and swept her into his arms; she instinctively hugged his thick neck. Abruptly they were moving, fast enough for the shop to disappear in the bat of an eye—perhaps she heard a door slam shut—and then they were out under an ivory fingernail of the moon.

  The Wolf and the Fawn had begun their chase.

  III

  When Morigan thought back on her first night with Caenith, her memories would take on a dreamy consistency and she would have piercing spikes of imagery, yet no clear picture of events. Caenith had promised to show her the old magik, a term she wasn’t aware had a meaning until that evening. For Eod was the pinnacle of sorcery and arcane thought on Geadhain, a realm ruled by an ageless king, where even the harshest elements failed to stymie life. But the magik contained in the City of Wonders was not what Caenith meant. Beneath the glory of the city, under the stone foundations, the pipes, and the sewer labyrinths, was where the true secrets, this old magik, was to be found.

  Quickly, quicker than anything imaginable, they were off the streets and in these dank spaces. Scenery smeared by them. Her cloak was torn off from the speed and sent spiraling into the night, but neither of them was interested in its rescue, and she was nowhere near cold. In truth, Caenith was carrying her, surrounding her like a warm wind, and she felt utterly safe. She did not raise an alarm at this uncanny mobility, did not plead the question of what are you? that any reasonable person would. For she didn’t want her disbelief to shatter whatever spell this was. A sorcery that she, born in Eod and exposed to magik all her life, could not classify. His breath and heartbeat were heaving about her, and she could not sense much other than the faintest odor of where they were or a hint of metal tubing. Shortly those signs faded to perceptions of depth and darkness. They had gone farther underground. She shut her eyes and felt the rise and fall of his legs, moving like pistons in a technomagikal engine, and was lulled into a daze by his rhythmic grunts.

  She became so calm that it was almost a sleep, and when the cadence stopped, Caenith ever softly said, “Open your eyes, dear Fawn.”

  Morigan was set down, and she nearly swooned from the sight before her. For she had never seen a wonder in Eod that matched the yawning chamber of rock teeth, their tips crystallized in garlands of pure clear ice. Or the diamond lake upon whose shore they stood, which was as still as glass and wafting her face with breaths of cold misty air. From the depths of the water, lights played up in a kaleidoscope of blues and greens, and the back of the cavern seemed to stretch off into an indigo darkness. Fathomless, timeless, she felt as if she had stepped into another world.

  “By the kings,” she said, and then clasped her hands over her mouth, for her voice echoed and caused the placidity of the place to tremble, the ice to chime, and the lake to quiver.

  “This is not of their making,” whispered Caenith into her ear, so lightly that only the smallest ripples took the shore. “But another magik. Older than them, even. I think that is what drew him here to Eod, the Everfair King, however many ages ago he settled. He felt this pull, like the calling of the moon to a lonely wolf. I wonder if he even realizes what lies beneath his palace. I do not know what purpose it serves, this place. Or how deep those waters are. But there is a presence here, sleeping and calm…a peace. I come here when I want to listen to the old songs. Or to remember who I have lost.”

  “Who you have lost?” whispered Morigan.

  She could feel Caenith grow heavy behind her, and she turned in his arms to look at him.

  “Everyone. Everything,” he confessed. He lifted a lock of her crimson hair to his nose, sniffed it deeply, and then let it fall from his fingers.

  “You have lost someone, too. A precious heart…someone important to you.”

  Morigan did not ask how he knew this, or what followed.

  “A she-wolf…a mother.”

  Caenith tilted his head back and howled: a guttural, animal warble as deep and fluid as a baritone singer’s voice. The cavern went mad with crystalline music. Ice cracked and fell, showering them in diamond dust. They held each other in that spinning moment and grieved together, she for Mifanwae—her laughter, her rustic wisdom, her strength, and her beauty. She missed her mother more than she had allowed herself to admit in many years. The Wolf grieved the Moon Maidens and Changelings, the death of the old magik, and the birth of the new.

  The howling stopped, the glittering rain drifted to a stop, and they held each other still. When the silence had thrummed for many sands, and he could sense the Fawn calming again, Caenith pulled back from Morigan and brushed the slivers of ice from her.

  “I feel that I should ask her spirit for its blessing. Before you tell me your answer.”

  Ask her spirit? My answer? Morigan was confused.

  Caenith dipped and cradled her in his arms again. We’re going on another trip, thought Morigan giddily. Another trip indeed, and in specks, the hidden kingdom of crystal and ice had disappeared, and there was just the warm, panting wind that bore her through darkness. The transit was less disorienting if she simply shut her eyes and surrendered herself to the journey. If this was only a delusion, she never wanted it to end. She wanted to stay mad forever.

  Silver cups and maidens…the smell of pine and sweat…a black wolf hunting in the night. I am riding the wind. Is this real? she would wonder. Then she would chance a glance at Caenith, with the sky whirling past him; they were back in the city once, and then under a black star-dotted swath of night. Each time their eyes met, he flashed his carnivore’s grin, telling her that yes, this was real. Soon a cold wind was blowing, and she sensed the openness of the desert, though not as harsh. She listened to Caenith grunting and springing up rocks, and could only imagine the phenomenal athletics he was performing, but she did not look.

  Finally, they slowed, and Caenith’s footsteps were heard scuffing on hard earth. She asked to be set down. He obliged; again, with exacting care, as if she was made of glass. Morigan stretched her arms, sore from clutching for so long. When she realized where they were, she leaned on Caenith and somberly asked, “How did you find this place?”

  “It wanted to be found. It had a song unsung. A lonely melody, crying on the wind like a nestling in an empty nest. You have not been here in some time.”

  “No, I have not.”

  Once and only once had she visited the buttes of Kor’Keth, had she climbed the steep terrace of red clay, and that was to bury her mother. Thule had accompanied her, and it was branded in her memory as the most grueling trial of her years. For although Thule was a master sorcerer, one who could evoke incredible powers in moments of crisis, he was stubbornly averse to using magik for anything except the most menial of duties. So they had climbed, and shared the dead weight of Mifanwae’s corpse between their scrawny arms. She was a wee sprout of a girl at the time, though she ached as terribly as t
he old sorcerer did. All day it took them; sweating, scraping themselves, and weeping, until the cold light of the moon shone over a place high enough to suit Mifanwae’s rest.

  I want to be able to see the moon, clear and bright over my grave, Mifanwae had told her on many an occasion. Grim conversations to have with one’s daughter, but Mifanwae had a sickness of the heart that sorcery could stall yet never cure, and she had long ago accepted it. We chose well, Mother, thought Morigan. For the stone cairn that held Mifanwae’s remains had soundly withstood the ravages of time and the elements. It had not fallen down, as she had often worried might have happened. Nature had been kind and had filled the stones with a grout of dust. It had softened the appearance of the monument into a seamless rise, as if that lump in the land, on that solitary outcropping of rock, had always been. Caenith and Morigan stood downhill from the cairn and then followed the watery white path of the Witch’s Moon up the slight incline to the monument. As Morigan approached, the worst of the memories assaulted her. She might have fallen if Caenith had not had so firm a hold on her, if he was not leading her as a shepherd leads a lamb while she wove in and out of the world—remembering.

  She is in King’s Crown; the tall white spires of buildings are casting black shadows today. She remembers this moment as dark, as gloomy as if the sun had gone away, which, in Eod, is impossible. She is upon her knees. She feels so low, poor, and stripped. She has never felt so useless. What else could she feel, as her mother gasps and clutches her throat? As the tincture to ease her attack lies broken in the street—dropped before it could reach her mouth.