Feast of Fates (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 1)

by Christian A. Brown

  After they bury the elk’s bones, drape the grave in pine as no ivy is about, and piss upon its rest, they stay in their skins. As if they are still beasts, they pace each other: sniffing, nipping, licking. Quickly their dance turns aggressive. He bites her shoulder, and she bites his chest, they each draw blood. In the snow, next to the grave of their kill, they make love as people, then as wolves, and occasionally as something of each. Many hourglasses later, when they are spent, they track the hidden sun as it moves toward night. Because he is so warm, neither of them are cold, but he holds her as if warming her still.

  Calmly, for he is so sure of the question and its answer, he asks her to be his Fawn. She accepts by smiling, standing, and screaming into her four-leg shape again, then racing off into the woods. For weeks, they hunt together; they sleep in hollows of the Untamed; they bathe in the hot forgotten springs that creep in hidden cracks in the forest. They laugh as people and howl as wolves. When they return to their pack, he forges the ring that she is to wear in her ear until she is interred with it, and they swear their promise together in blood.

  “Goh an deireadh.” (To the end.)

  Caenith’s craft was now finished. He held up the bracelet, fingered it to make certain it would not harm his Fawn. Overall, he was impressed with its construction and likeness. As beautiful as the circle he made for Aghna, if for a different part of the body. One to pierce the flesh, the other to surround it, for what he felt for each woman was as unique as the way he had chosen to express it. He was never much for words or sentimentalities, so he did not profess to understand his nature more than the wind or thunder could understand itself. He knew only that he wanted Morigan, from her fragrances to her taste to her soul, in the instant of their meeting. She was a cool wind to his fiery beast, which, after ages of nursing on blood and then sadness, was in need of a soothing touch. She made him want to be a man, which was an urge he not often felt.

  Solemnly, he prayed to Aghna.

  I think you would favor her, Aghna. You bade me to rip apart and devour my grief and to choose a mate and leader of our pack once you were gone. For all my strength, I failed in that. You cannot ask a seedling to grow in blighted earth, which is what my heart has been since your passing. Yet she has done just that. She is special. Special in ways that are mysteries to me. A mystery in this dying age? Can you believe it, Aghna? Can you believe that this mystery has found its way to me of all the wounded beasts in Geadhain? Her magik is sacred. Her presence as lulling as a full and misty moon. Aye, there is surely a spark of Alabion’s wonder within her. And so far from home…a thousand spans away, you lay sleeping beneath the yews, but perhaps you hear my whisper still. I have found someone who can move me again. Someone I want to protect and bite and warm with my fur. Someone whom I shall share the bond of blood with, should she have it. I hope that you rejoice for me, Aghna, just as I release myself from you.

  He howled until he was sure that the Silver Watch would be called, and then kissed the bracelet and set it aside on his bench. Time to work on being a man, he coached himself, noting his nakedness in the forge light. He started with a quick splash in the tub for once, and then trimmed his facial hair with a knife and the reflection of a shield. To his rack of curios he went next, rifling through the more artistic pieces of his craft—a set of caltrops that looked like thorns, chains, unbonded hilts, his and Morigan’s chalices—for a black ribbon to tie back his hair. On the bottom shelf was his meager wardrobe, and from it, he selected the pants and boots from yesterday, but picked out a black hunter’s vest. It was free of sleeves and as free of constraint as clothing could be. When all was said and done, he inspected himself in the shield he had barbered with and saw what could, at the most casual glance, pass for a genteel man. He took the bracelet, stuffed it in a small pouch, and tied it to a loop in his trousers. Anxious now, with nothing left to occupy himself, he paced, as restless animals do.

  He did not have to wait long.

  Over the stink of the city, a ripeness of spoiled ale, Morigan’s particular smell came to him as even more sour. She was scared, perhaps even terrified, and not far away. The Wolf inhaled her fear, sprang to the hole in the ceiling, and swung himself by a single arm out through the opening and into the orange skies of dusk. Up on the rooftops and dressed all in black, he moved unseen, unheard, but maybe felt as a shadow of menace, like the black hand of death falling upon the lesser creatures over which he leaped.

  III

  What’s happening to me? Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Get out of my head! Get out!

  But the bees were in control of Morigan’s mind, not she. And they were busy. Busy with harvesting the thoughts and soul-secrets of every person in Geadhain; that is how it felt to Morigan. Opening her eyes made the experience worse, for then she saw images atop images, clippings of their lives like phantasmal picture frames, and memories—warm, foul, grand, or sensual—of what those moments were like. Throughout the carriage ride to Caenith’s district, she rocked in the back against the cushions, muttering to the bees to just shut up. As if she’d poked the nest, the transmission of consciousness increased with every denial she threw at them. When the coach master finally stopped, he wasn’t concerned about payment, only about getting the madwoman out of his carriage, and she was dumped on the street—hopefully near to the Armsman, as she had requested.

  She stumbled down the walkway like a drunk, with her hands upon whatever walls or railings were near to keep herself upright. She knew how she must look, she could hear it. Every piece of verbal filth smeared right into her immaterial ear.

  Pretty girl like that, sodded beyond her wit, and it’s not even supper. Shame, whispered one old woman she passed. A woman named Agnes Coldlily, the bees said. Her maiden name, reclaimed after her husband’s death. Once, Agnes had been married to a Hernest Borvine.

  Want to see him?

  No!

  We’ll take you there, buzzed her silver wardens. What a fine ceremony the bees showed her: a sticklike woman and a boorish man in a white hall punctured with sunshine. Every night after their wedding, Hernest took Agnes violently, smashing the headboard with her head or sometimes beating her beforehand. No more, no more, please stop, begged Morigan. But on the bees went, to happier times at least, for now Hernest was dead, and Agnes celebrated with celibacy and animal comforts. Hernest hated cats, so Agnes had seven. She slept with them in the bed and let them make nests out of all of Hernest’s old clothing. Surely, Morigan could have gone on with the details of Agnes’s entire life, but thankfully, the bees buzzed elsewhere. So many minds to wander to, as Eod was a veritable field of succulent pollen, an endless feast of knowing.

  Something wrong with her. Still sweet enough to fuk, said the randy, eel-faced man leaning outside a pub whom the bees found next. She had a few glimpses of what he wanted to do to her, and none of it was pleasant. He smiled, and she worried that he was going to follow her, for she was in no state to defend herself.

  Too much noise. Too much for them to feed on. I need…quiet, realized Morigan. Whatever had happened to her, it was thriving in this environment. A city as condensed as Eod was probably the worst place in Geadhain for her to be. The images and voices were spearing her now, agonizing and blurring her sight, and when she tried to see, she could not differentiate between the real and the immaterial.

  She was in a schoolhouse, listening to a tight-faced woman scold her and feeling shame, and then she was on a beach of rocks and blue water, breathing in calm, salty serenity. She wanted to stay there, but was pulled into the grunting pleasure of a man so obese that he could barely see past his belly while he pulverized whatever was underneath himself. The vision was nauseating, down to the smell of his unwashed skin, and she doubled over. She tripped and her head struck something hard, making the bees buzz angrily, filling her head with vengeful waves of clairvoyance: squealing births, fists striking noses, flashes of rage, terror, and violent passion.

  As she crawled, she called for the only man that she knew might
hear her.

  She called for Caenith.

  At once, the warm wolf wind was upon her, sweeping her up and away. The bees attacked her rescuer, but their hungry stingers seemed not to penetrate his skull. In her swooning darkness, she knew nothing except that it was Caenith, and then only by the smell and feel of him. She could sense her distance from noise and traffic below her, and a slight wind. Was she on a rooftop, perhaps? She guessed as much. Away from the crowd, her mind was clearer. A few of the bees continued their futile assault on Caenith, who was armored, somehow, against their intrusion. The rest were already sparking off and flying toward new targets for inspection. They were voracious; they would not stop.

  With what breath she had left in herself, she gasped, “I…I am all wrong… since…since last night. Bees. Bees in my head. I need to be away from people. Far away. Please…help me.”

  “You are safe, my Fawn,” swore Caenith, and never had Morigan heard a voice so strong with conviction. “If silence is what you need, I know where to take you.”

  He did not ask his Fawn to hold tight, for her arms were like rubber, and she was almost immediately unconscious. He fit her against his chest like a babe and noiselessly vaulted across Eod’s roofs. Few on the streets saw them, for he was a flicker of darkness, ivory, and red, and those who did had no idea what they had seen. In sands, he had skipped across half the city and was nearly to the palace, aiming for the mountains beyond. Unexpectedly, from nowhere a buffeting wind kicked up, offsetting even his imperturbable balance, and he stopped for an instant on a noisy tavern roof to steady himself. The strangest instinct came over him that he had been subject to this wind before, as there was an earthiness to it, a note reminiscent of ripe woods of Alabion, which was quite out of place in Eod.

  He paused a moment longer on the roof to examine his charge, and he noticed her twisted expression and that her beautiful face was dewed with tears. Impulsively, he licked at them and made a sour snarl when the salty taste did not match the Fawn’s. A man’s tears. Even stranger than the wind. He looked around for where they might have come from, but was given no answers save the dazzling nightscape of Eod or the looming facade of the palace. Perhaps someone was crying up there, out of whatever sorrows could be scrounged in Eod, he scoffed.

  She needs silence, he thought, and shrugged off the experience. He continued sprinting along the rooftops, not straying too near to the unfriendly brightness of the palace. Soon he came to the great ivory wall of Eod. He made a loping climb of the bricks and ivy trellises, using only one arm, as he would not endanger or relinquish his charge in the slightest. Over the ramparts he passed, smooth as a shadow of the Silver Watchmen patrolling the heights, and vanished into the desert.

  IV

  The bees drink in the tears like honey. Digesting their secrets, hunting their tale.

  In the space between here and there, the grayness that is neither waking nor sleeping, Morigan travels, led by the bees. She can see them now, as little flecks of silver light that are indeed like a cloud of metal bees. She has no hands or feet, no face or otherwise mortal features, but she is quite aware of who she is. More aware than she will be when she wakes, for here in the Dreaming, all things are clear to her. The silver bees fly through the obscurity, never unsure of their destination, and suddenly Morigan feels herself halt in the amorphous currents. Bright as firebugs, the bees shine, piercing the area with light, chewing away the scenery in a flaming curtain, and she is elsewhere. Her sight balloons into a new set of eyes. Into a new host.

  She bobs in this head, up and down, up and down, as if riding something. A woman is beneath her, writhing and screaming, and she realizes what her host is doing. If she were to wipe away the blood, ice the black eyes puffed with terror, and ease the swelling from the woman’s face, she would be beautiful, as there are shimmers of golden hair and tawny skin, hints of stunning symmetry. Only now, any loveliness is distorted by the foulness of this act.

  “Magnus…please…stop.”

  But Magnus does not stop, and he strikes her with a pale hairless fist. With each plea, he increases the tempo of his thrusting, at times missing her slit and sliding into her other hole without a care. Scratch as she might at her intangible prison—the skull of her king—Morigan cannot escape this witnessing. She is condemned to watch. What confounds Morigan is that as trapped as she feels, an even bleaker condemnation fills her host. He is loathing this act, reviled by himself, as battered in spirit as his victim is. At times, he turns his head to vomit on the cold stone where he commits his crime. Yet he does not stop his pumping, as if he is a vulgar sexual machine. He cannot stop. The revulsion that they each suffer—victim, witness, violator—at the insanity of the act, at the stench of sick in the room, is so utterly nauseating that it will curdle in their souls for eternity. It is a wound that shall never be healed, and the victim, witness, and violator all understand this.

  “Forgive me, Lila,” grunts Magnus, and there is a shimmer of empathy between the golden beauty and her violator before he hits her again.

  A black beast is driving him, a monster, and Morigan can sense it in Magnus’s skull. The bees are intrigued by this, by the wildness of the black beast’s presence and its raw, unadulterated urge to hate and consume. The evil is delicious and they chase it, wanting a deeper taste. With that, the king and his victim fade into silver sparkles and Morigan is freed from the agony of watching. Fast as shooting stars, the bees travel, soaring through the gray mists of the Dreaming as if it were the canvas of space, and in instants, they have tracked the smell of the black beast and torn into another head.

  She needs a moment to adjust to the senses of her new host, as they are incredible. First to his vision, which sees with telescopic clarity in the bloodred luminance: the gothic curves of the architecture, the tapestries of stretched mortal skin hung as hunter’s trophies, and the glistening garlands of entrails wrapped on the pillars of the vaulted chamber. Then with her nose, which is as acute as a hound’s, she can smell the fresh death, the iron of blood, the manure and methane sourness of shite, piss, rot, and sex. And lastly, with her ears, which beautifully capture the screams and sighs and grunts of a sadist’s orchestra of sex and murder.

  Bodies are everywhere: males and females, young and old, some living, some dead, some unknown in their states. They spill beneath her host in a carpet that rolls down a regal flight of steps and into the grand hall. The ones that certainly live groan and clutch their groins, mouths, and anuses. Others that are mobile walk about, but they are altered, unclean. They have been wiped of expression, and there is a redness, a bleeding, and a blackness to their stare, as if their eyeballs were scooped out and replaced with tarry eggs. The black-eyed things—for Morigan does not feel that they are men or women, not anymore—walk around mechanically, inspecting those who have fallen, or herding stumbling, pleading victims into a corral at the base of the stairs.

  At random, one is chosen; a lad, scarcely old enough to have a beard. He drops to the ground and wails as he is dragged by his feet by two Blackeyes up the sloppy steps. He grasps the bloody appendages of those he slithers over, but his strength is no contest for the Blackeyes’ relentless grips. Closer and closer to the top he comes, to a throne where Morigan’s host, the king of this gory nightmare, the monster of all monsters, sits.

  The king stands to meet his meat.

  Come this point, Morigan has been holding her thoughts as still as she can. Even the bees buzz low and cautiously in this host. For she can feel the passions of this monster, his thirst to breed and conquer, to rape and devour. It is the same gruesome desire that poisoned Magnus, only infinitely stronger, infinitely more pure, and it rises in an animal musk about her: the rage, virility, and supremacy. She is aware of her host’s power in that moment and of her own insignificance. Of how he could hunt her and crush her like all those who fill his hall, and she dreads even the slightest awareness of his that she exists. The bees whisper what he intends to do to the boy, how he will trap him under hi
s extraordinary mass and impale him with the horselike hanging of meat between his legs until his seed spreads like a poison, changing him to a Blackeye or a corpse. There are only two results. Just as the king has done or will do to all the others that enter his breeding ground. A gift, as he sees it.

  The lad is thrown at the massive feet of her host. He tries to scamper off, but a bronze hand as large as a foot grips him, encompassing his whole back, pinning him to the slippery ground.

  “My gift. May it change you, as it has changed me,” says her host, and his voice echoes thunderously in the chamber and in his skull. What size is this creature? she wonders. As her host squats over the boy, lowering his obscene shadow and dripping rod, Morigan loses her restraint and shrieks for freedom from this depravity.

  No! I shall not watch! I shall not watch this! No! No! No! No more!

  The bees are not marshaled by her demands; they have their own agendas. Still, her outcry has poked a different nest. What rises amid the mad-dog rage of the king is a blackness and a bleakness all the more terrifying: a voice. So powerful is the speaker that although it whispers, it has the menace of an earthquake happening far enough away to feel the tremors and imagine the screams: a grace with death that is barely escaped. Morigan has no flesh, but her soul shivers anyhow.

  Begone, little fly. This is not your place. These children are my flesh, my puppets, my slaves. Come to my Dreaming again and I shall trap you in my web and suck out your insides. Flee, little fly. Flee and await the coming of my reborn son, the Sun King. Await your turn with his gift and worship me as I rise eternal to the throne of Geadhain.

  Flight is wise, agree the bees, and in a flash of brightness, the rocking grayness of the Dreaming is around Morigan again. She pleads with the bees to lead her nowhere else, to see no more grisly sights. She sobs in the emptiness between here and there, wishing she could wake.