“Brutus,” Queen Lila said spitefully.
A violent red washed through the chamber, and the image folded away.
In the other realm, the place of music and memory, Morigan’s bees were unraveling the threads at the speed of thought. Quite distantly, she heard a name spoken, Brutus, and knew she should hunt it.
More, more. Show me more, she demanded.
In the stone burrow of a cracked and blasted plain swept by sand and wind, she hides. Her host is the king, and this is his memory. He has made a small green fire to warm himself and is waiting for his brother to return. Somewhere out in the dusty turmoil, his brother hunts to bring them meat and the treasured roots that they can squeeze for water in this lifeless land. This is better than the Long Winter or the Wet Season, though, this Season of Dust. As time drifts by, he paces the cave, stitches up his skin cloak with a bone needle, and practices the tongues of the animals he has heard that stalk the Season of Dust or the ages that were endured before. He thinks he can do better than their caws and roars, and rolls the sounds on his tongue, making them prettier to the ear.
(One day he will hone and share these sounds with others. One day he will teach our world how to speak, Morigan understands in her absolute awareness.)
Sometime into his exercises, Brutus returns. As always, his brother moves too fast to be seen and is simply before him. While he is pale and transcendental, his brother is all things primal. Rawness is embedded in him; it can be noted in his unkempt beard and his luxuriously oiled black hair as curled as a lion’s mane; or in his face like a mountain chiseled by lightning—carved nose, caved cheeks, and staid brow; or in the grotesque majesty of his body, a tower of twisted golden muscle, anatomically perfect, yet magnified to an obscenity of bulges and sinew. His sapphire gaze is the empty gaze of a hunter king: a remorseless stalker that has killed countless prey, and it does not soften even as it looks upon his frail brother, this dwarf to his giganticness. Nonetheless, the searing fire that consumes Magnus’s chest tells him that he is loved and in no danger from this blood-crusted, naked titan. More than that, Brutus has brought what they need for survival, and throws down the crumpled skylizard that he has plucked from the heavens amid what water-roots he has foraged that day.
As they eat, they chat in their heads, playing with the sounds that Magnus was working on instead of their grunts and pulses of spirit, which has been all the language they have known thus far. Except for each other’s names, which ring true in their heads.
(How? Who told you these names? wonders Morigan. And I’ll be damned if that king isn’t twice the size, rage, and shape of you, Caenith, with a likeness that chills my soul.)
Once the skylizard is gnawed clean of meat—not even its organs left by the giant’s appetite—the brothers curl up. Large one over the small one, hot one over the cold one, and they sleep. Even at rest, they bleed fire and ice into each other and haunt the same dreams.
Quaint. It is good to know that Brutus was not always such a monster. Where did you get your names, though, you who had no words? This is not far enough back. I need to go farther, commanded Morigan. More of the thread was chewed, and another memory spilled into her consciousness.
This is an earlier age. A Wet Season. Her host and his brother are slogging through mire and bog, surrounded by hungry plants with serrated leaves and swatting off bloodsuckers as large as sparrows. The ones that land on Brutus, he is too lazy to swat, and they die by their own voraciousness as their stingers snap off on his brushed-gold flesh. But with impossibly agile hands he crushes the ones that would pierce his brother, or snaps the spines of the snakes that wind through the muck, and Magnus is left unharmed in a world that should kill his delicate self. Perhaps he is not so helpless as he appears, though, and when the greater dangers come, the floods and storms that not even his brother can beat back with might, and they are forced to hide in pockets of muck, he can steer the torrential waters off their burrow or ask the lightning to strike somewhere else. One such storm has just passed, and there will not be another for some time. The sky will tell him when it is angry, when it is time to hide, as is the way.
Lulled by this security, her host is not paying attention and he slips into a sinkhole clogged with thorns and sharp stones that rip his tender flesh as his brother hauls him from it. This is hardly the first occasion that his weaker self has been damaged, and his brother coos gently to stem the tears while he carries him to a patch of hardened mud. In a swarm, the mosquitoes follow them, and he wipes some of his brother’s red essence on his back and shoulders to keep them busy killing themselves while he sets his charge down. The killer’s stare in Brutus softens, and the fire inside her host goes wild as a forest of burning trees: Magnus is sweating and shaking with the courage of his brother instead of the fear of his injury. Brutus treats him as he has always done, since the first scrape that festered, or the first bone that snapped and would not mend like his did. He chews into his palm with teeth that are suddenly sharp and clasps his brother’s shredded shin with that hand. His rich purplish blood is immediately soothing to Magnus, and the fingers of fire and frost between them intensify to a whirling dizziness, a closeness where they cannot say who is wounded, who is strong, who banishes the thunder, and who tears the throats from their meals. When it is over, Brutus licks off the blood and dirt on Magnus’s leg. He is satisfied that not even a scar remains. Brutus hoists his brother up on his shoulders and strides on through the bog.
The Fuilimean, this ancient rite of sharing blood or being with another. So this is where it began. Without words, with the oldest of promises: to live and love the other. While it was interesting, this was not what Morigan sought. She was reversing time, though, going earlier and earlier into the ages, chewing up every one of the king’s memory threads. Almost there, thought Morigan, and her bees tore ahead down the final fraying line of golden memory, arriving at a tangle, an axis where all such filaments met.
She finds herself in a snowy arctic hollow, cracked by a howling outside. Here in the Long Winter, the cold is vicious and unchallenged by sun. Her host shivers among the crystal teeth of the cavern; his brother’s heat is gone, and he is a springling himself, unable to stay warm even under the heaps of pelts in which he has buried himself. So he quivers and waits for the giant to return. This is how time has passed; this is their life. Brutus hunts, they eat, they sleep. They are patient until the Long Winter’s endless darkness breaks for a moment with sun and they race out into the tundra to find a new hole to house them before the snow comes down again.
Her host wishes that he could be stronger like his brother, even though the winds whisper to him when they will be calm; this is not a skill that is as valuable as raw might. To pass the time, he sings along with the storm, or makes a familiar sound that is not of the land or beasts of the Long Winter.
“Broo…tus.”
(Yes, yes, that is the name. Who taught you that?)
Conjuring his brother’s sound fills him with fire and hastens his pulse, and when the other knows that he is being thought about, it is not long before he is summoned from his hunt. Soon after, Brutus climbs in from the crack in the roof, swings from stalactite to stalactite without a care and lands before him; even as a youth, his brother is thrice the size of himself, hairy in places that he is not, unscathed by the cruel winter but for a melting glaze on his skin. Disappointedly, Brutus shakes his frost-beaded mane. No meat was found. Lately, the Long Winter has been a bitterer garden than they are used to; its sparse corners of green where furry things live to be hunted is shrinking and vanishing under ice. Brutus will have to feed him as he has since they were smaller still, and he bites his hand and cradles his brother, who begins to suck on the wound like a teat—mewling in pleasure.
(No one but each other…for how many thousands of years? No language, no comforts but love. Total dependence. Even acting as food for the weaker of you. One to hunt…one to guide. Have you ever been separate creatures? I wonder. For you seem like two halves o
f the same, my kings.)
Her bees were consuming every glowing drop of memory that floated around her as a rainstorm suspended in time.
She sees a landscape of split earth and magma, smothered under a cloud of ash. An Age of Fire. Her host is clinging to the mane of his brother, who crawls more than he walks, though is still large enough to ride. As young as they are, they know to rely on the other, and while Brutus hops over the scorching shale, Magnus leads them to murky pools that have whispered to him—deep down in charcoal shafts, where they can drink foul water or eat the tasteless, gelatinous fish that swim there. Failing that sustenance, they will bite each other and nurse of that nourishment. In these safer pockets, quiet from the rumbling of the world above, they sleep like sooty kittens and burble their name-sounds to each other.
Younger. Show me the moment. The first moment. The names, commanded Morigan, and the bees flooded their mistress with visions of lava seas, precipitations of flaming rock, and a sky torn with meteors. The bees peeled through age to that pinprick of recall, that one single memory that not even the king could remember, as his mind had not yet formed.
She is in a womb. If she could not feel the hardness of rock under her chubby infant flesh, she would have thought it to be natural cavity, so syrupy and dark the space is. For all the darkness, there is light. Two shimmers of movement. At first, Morigan cannot comprehend the details, and her host’s budding eyes certainly do her perception no favors. But she hears the name sounds, though spoken by voices that are not mortal, but are akin to the crackling of earth or static. Elemental booms more than speech.
“BRU-TUS, MAE-GUH-NUS.”
Dribbles of dirt fall from unseen reaches, loosened by the noise, and her host is dusted off by two sets of hands that are slickly black and silver as starlight. The touch electrifies and chills him, and as with the heat of his brother, these paralyzing currents convey what words cannot. Love, hope, promise, all the sentiments of a maker to its child. Magnus reaches for the fingers, clasps one, and it puffs away like smoke. Angrily, not wanting to leave, the Makers utter the names of their children in the earth-womb again.
(They cannot stay, knows Morigan. They are only Dreamers to this world.)
The shouts of the Makers fade like thunder, and no hands are there to brush away the rain of soil. The Makers are gone. Before her host can muster a cry, something grunts and burbles beside him. As it pulls him into its warmth, he feels its fire spread across his skin, then inside, too, and he knows that he is safe, that this is his brother, and that they are all that they have and all that the other shall need.
(There. This is what came before, thinks Morigan. Caenith waits for me with a fire of his own that beckons. I shall return to him.)
In the Hall of Memories, the pipes had trumpeted, and the memory-cloud roiled with scenes. The company’s astonishment escaped in gasps as the history of the king was unveiled inside misty panes. First they watched Magnus peer out over a wind-blasted wasteland and fumble through the rigors of primitive language. Is he? Could that be? cried Thule, as the implications of this vision rattled him. Time continued to reverse itself, through a primordial swamp, a shrieking tundra, and a world of fire. Through each of these inhospitable torments, the brothers bled, fed, and leaned on the other for support. They were mother and father, caretaker and teacher. They were the sum of what the other knew. None of the observers, not even the queen with her king, had seen or known such intimacy, and the chamber throbbed with color and warmth, regardless of how grim was the scene on display. For the hall understood the kings’ brotherhood, which was as unquenchable as the world was volatile around them. The queen was not jealous as much as she was cowed by how poor her love for the king was by compare.
What a fool I was to think that I could love only one of them, she despaired. They are beyond love or lovers, they are the same man. And curse you, Magnus, for allowing me to believe that you could be mine.
When the womb of shadows appeared in the memory-cloud, not a single member of the company breathed until the vision rippled away. Even as it passed, when the pipes sputtered out their last smoke, the mist sizzled away, and the starry floor slowed in its orbit, the companions found their breath but not their words. They had heard the sonorous voices of the kings’ makers, seen the silhouettes of silver and deep starlight—skins of the cosmos, not mortal flesh—and knew that they were witness to the start of a mystery. Though as to what came next, no opinions were presented or even formulated in their stupor. Caenith heard Morigan stir and inhale, coming back from what fantastic spaces she had wandered; he caught her as she swooned from the bench.
“I’m tired,” she croaked.
The metaphysical journey through the Hall of Memories had taken a fair toll on Morigan. She could hardly keep her eyes open and had pins and needles running from her face to her feet. Gathering her up in his arms, Caenith said, “My bloodmate needs to rest. We are done here.”
As for the queen, she wanted to be alone, to find reason in what she had seen. As quickly as he had announced his exit, Caenith was gone. Thule lagged after him, muttering to himself and fidgeting with his fingers as if they played an invisible instrument. No doubt, he was burning with thoughts. Rowena stayed behind, quiet as she ever was. However, today she was not so inconspicuous and laid a hand atop her trembling queen’s. They did not speak; there was nothing to say, no words to console a woman as old as any remembered age, yet younger, weaker, and more fragile than any of the prehistoric specters that had haunted the Hall of Memories.
II
I feel as if we are being given the boot, snickered Morigan, and behind her, Caenith nodded. How better to explain their sudden eviction from the palace the next morning, when they awoke to find an attendant knocking at their door. With polite smiles and obsequious courtesies, he explained that their stay was at an end. Oh, the queen would see you off, but she is in court today, tending to matters of justice, the lad had stated. With his new senses, Caenith could smell the milky-sour stink of a lie on him and knew this was not the truth, but what the attendant was instructed to say. If she is to be shunned for revealing the black skeletons in Eod’s royal crypt, then so be it, spat Caenith. He wasn’t the greatest admirer of Eod’s sovereigns anyhow, as aloof and clandestine as they were. In the passageways, the glow-weave was still dim with early light. Serendipitously, they bumped into Mater Lowelia—always about, it seemed. The mater was distressed to see them go; she flung an embrace around Morigan.
“Deary mittens! Could my day be more soiled, I ask? My darling lovebirds are out of the nest! I suppose you have a tree of your own to get back to.”
“We do,” said Morigan, smiling.
Although she hadn’t thought over which house she would return to, now that she was bound to another, her tired suite in its noisy neighborhood felt inadequate to the rustic hole-in-the-roof den of her Wolf. At that, Caenith’s river raged in her, agreeing with her choice.
“Oh, just look at the two of you!” cried the mater, pulling Caenith into the hug. “Goodness, you’re a hard thing! Like a man of stone and bark!” After kissing each of their faces, she pushed the two away from herself. “Do come by the White Hearth, when next you’re in the palace. I’ll fix you up a proper feast, better than the one you missed.”
“That would be lovely, though I do not see us in these halls again anytime soon,” replied Morigan.
“Maybe not, maybe so. I have an eye for excellence, they say, and not only with what I spice my pots or how I can scrub a floor to shine your smile in. For people,” winked the mater. “The palace is a place for greatness, and you each have a dollop of your own. You two found your way here once, and I hope you’ll find your way here again. If not, I’ll invite you as a guest of the mater herself. This I swear!” To stop the tears, the mater bit on a knuckle. “Shoo, my rose. Go on now before I get misty.”
With heavy hearts, they parted. Of all their encounters in the palace, they would most miss the mater. As sad as their leaving was, the lo
vers quickly discovered cheer at the thought of finally being together, unhindered by responsibility or nightmares. Those were for the queen to sort out now, and Morigan felt no remorse for leaving this dark riddle with Her Majesty until she was doubtlessly called to involve herself in it once more.
A break, she excitedly panted to her lover. From bees and kings and darkness. Only you and me and the current between us. Whereas previously, back in their private glade, Morigan was apprehensive of losing herself to her mate, of forgetting where he began and she ended, she was excited to finally accept that surrender. Alone, in the privacy of their den. I would like that, growled the Wolf.
A winding jaunt had them out on the grand anchorage, with its many silver birds lifting off to parts unknown. In the skies were a scattering of unusually gray clouds, and the day was heavy with shadows. Gray and haggard, Thule matched the sentiment of the heavens and greeted the bloodmates with a nod as they approached the skycarriage set for their departure. Rowena was present and escorted her three passengers inside, seating them in a familiar cabin: in two groups across from each other, like before. As Rowena was to leave them to see to commanding the ship, she paused at the door. A skunky musk wafted to Caenith’s nose—a warning of threat.
Feast of Fates (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 1) Page 27