“Twelve little birds,” she says, counting the folk splashing out of the water. “Twelve you have given wings to tonight, Whitehawk. Twelve lives and souls.”
He does this for his own justice, and for the crimes of his blood. However, most of all, he does this because he loves her. Because he believes no woman as special as she should ever be in chains.
“Who was she? Bethany?” asked Morigan.
“Bethany,” muttered Thackery, and sneered the next sentence. “My wife and my pleasure maiden before that. I never touched her, I’ll have you know. Not in Menos, not until she asked for it as a free woman. In Menos you can beat, rape, or kill your whores, but it is unseemly to marry them. I didn’t want to do anything but. I wanted her to want me. And when I saw that what I thought I valued was of no worth to her, I threw it away. She called me Whitehawk, after the bird that takes over abandoned nests and raises any eggs it finds there as its own. That is how she came to see me, a Thule—the most vile of the vile—as a parent to the lost. As a person to be emulated. I never felt so proud as I did with her. She made me a greater man than I ever could have been alone. Braver. Stronger. Kinder. What price can one put on lessons like those?”
Morigan slipped her hands from Thackery’s. She didn’t want to steal his past; certain details were his pains to share. “What happened to her, Thackery? To Bethany and your child, of whom you never speak?”
Thackery fished for words, which did not come to him. In the long silence that followed, Morigan’s bees buzzed in wild circles and pricked at the inside of her head. Let us out! Let us out! With their anxiety, the shadows in the room swam like eels, and the sense of dread returned in a throat-choking thickness. A premonition, surely, but a portent of what? Thackery’s past? It couldn’t be. Before she could calm her hive or make sense of the signs, Caenith’s uproar added itself to her unrest. There is trouble, Morigan. I can feel it in you. I know the quickening of your heart, the sickening of your stomach. That is instinct, Morigan. The hunter’s compass. It warns and steers us from danger. You are in danger, even if you know it not. I am coming.
As Caenith’s river surged in her, adrenaline clenched her guts, and she bolted up, kicking over the tray. She fumbled to spin sense out of the alarms shrieking inside her. From outside, a woman’s shrill scream of challenge came, shocking them both even more.
“Thackery Hadrian Thule! Fallen master of Menos! Bastard to your bloodline! Will you stand and answer for your disgrace?”
Aghast, the two ran to the window and looked down. Near one of the courtyard’s grand fountains, with the statue of an athletic nude pouring a jug of water, stood a woman in a dark coat, her arms flung to the sky as if in prayer. They didn’t recognize her immediately, though after much squinting, they thought it could be the white-haired old widow who lived across King’s Court from Thackery.
“Mistress Hattersham?” exclaimed Morigan. “Why is she going on like that? How does she know you? The real you?”
“It’s him,” spat Thackery, his features contorting with hatred. “I don’t know how he’s here; how it’s even possible. Stay here; the wards on the tower should keep you safe.”
“Safe? Thackery!”
Alas, her shouts only trailed the man, who was gone faster than she thought he could move.
“Come, coward! Face your destiny!” shrieked the mad Mistress Hattersham, her voice so shattering that it was a stone to the glass cage in which Morigan kept her bees. Morigan stumbled and caught herself on the windowsill as her minions spun free, siphoning the dew of fate in the air, at last condensing the doom she felt—and its ties to the sage, to Menos, and to the dark lineage of Thule—into a substance that they could feed their keeper. As the bees returned with that nectar and infused their queen with it, Morigan tumbled from the world.
She is in the cabin again; the one where the shadows of Alabion’s trees claw over the house. Never has she watched in this way before: floating as bodiless as a snake of air, circling a scene outside a host, observing as she sees fit. She was correct in saying that her power as a witch was blossoming. Casting aside this irrelevance, she looks to see what the bees have brought her. Little Theadora has just come running to her father after being scared by a man in her window.
(I remember this, yes. Show me. Show me how the fates meet.)
“Sorren,” spits Thackery, with the same wrinkled snarl that she saw him do in the other world a moment past, only with a name this time. Breaking glass sounds, and from the milky shadows of Theadora’s room steps a man: slender, handsome, and pale, dressed in black and with the cool blue gaze of a Thule.
Here, in the Dreaming, Morigan can see past his exterior charm to the tentacles of shadow that writhe about his soul and to the color of that soul itself, which is black. He is death and ruin and everything foul and wrong with a man. He is one who breaks the unbreakable order. Who twists life. A nekromancer.
“Uncle,” he says, with a tip of his head to Thackery.
In what is unexpected from such a gentrified man, there is no preamble, no more dialogue before the violence. As a creature of spirit, outside time, Morigan sees the shadowy feelers lash out and entangle Bethany like a spider’s treat, most heavily about her joints, which are then moved—as though she is a puppet—by the nekromancer’s curling black soul. The black threads pull, and Bethany bats her husband away (while weeping, screaming inside at her uselessness) and jigs off to the hearth to fetch what the nekromancer has bade: a knife. While Thackery shouts at his wife to stay near him, he cannot see the immaterial or the black threads as Morigan can. He does not know if Bethany is mad or terrified. Regardless, he has his child to protect, and he calls to his Will—his love—and streams with white and gold light. In the cabin, the stars that Bethany and he were dancing to not so long ago are reborn in puffs of crystal light, though they are sharper this time, golden caltrops or angry suns, and they whirl about the cabin.
What happens next is blindingly fast, though Morigan perceives it all. First, the stars launch themselves at the nekromancer, only his aura of tentacles and wickedness blooms like a bubble of oil, and the galaxy of lights is gobbed in tarry magik. In specks—and she slows time down to observe—the globules stretch and vibrate and bristle with unlife: transforming into oil-soaked birds of pure darkness and filling the cabin in a cawing swarm. Immediately, in a torrent of blackness, the birds flock to Theadora and are pecking at her soft eyes and flesh. Thule is knocked aside by their rush, and Theadora’s screams are muffled under a pile of shadowbirds; the child is so covered that she could be a black caterpillar, only Morigan dreads what metamorphosis has occurred.
“For Lenora!” cries Bethany, and Morigan can’t decide what appalls her more: how Bethany thrusts and carves the blade into her gut or the pangs and wails of sorrow from her that rack Morigan’s spiritual self. Unbelievably, this is not pain, only regret that her love has ended so cruelly. On the floor, Thule is sobbing and slipping for balance on the oiled guano of the shadowbirds that feed on his daughter. He watches his wife begin to pull out her insides and he careens into madness. The horror overwhelms his physical clumsiness, and he is buoyed up as the light of his rage inflates him and radiates throughout the cabin. In the center of the room, he hums like a star. Spears of sunlight blast from Thackery. With a piercing whistle, the nekromancer calls his shadowbirds to protect him, and they spiral about him and come together to form an inky cocoon.
Seeing the truth of Thackery’s Art as she does, Morigan is lost for a speck in the intricacy and beauty of Thackery’s star, shining so hot with love and anger. It could be a poem or a song written in light, with its golden runes and coronas and pulses.
The light fades.
With its drooping struts, raining shingles, and groaning frame, the smoky cabin will not support itself much longer. Before the nekromancer can strike again, Thule clutches Theadora’s carcass and stumbles to his wife’s hand; he does not stop to examine either of them, as that could destroy him. Morigan can see the b
lack cocoon unraveling behind him; the tentacles are unseen no more but alive and snaking toward Thackery. Yet there is a wash of light, Thackery’s star is born anew, and when the tentacles strike, they only collapse the corner and subsequently the roof on the precariously porous dwelling.
Thackery has transported himself, and Morigan does not stay to find out if the nekromancer has survived the trivial inconvenience of a house crumbling on him, for she knows he has. She has to move quickly through the Dreaming to catch Thackery, for spells of translocation, of moving matter through time and space, are the highest of the Arts; they rarely are precise and are only undertaken with the greatest precautions—of which none have been employed. She worries, then, where his terror and confusion have taken him, if they have indeed carried him and the remains of his family to a place where he can at least bury them in dignity.
Alas, the gray mist of the Dreaming parts to rainy weather on a dismal rocky plain, and there is Thackery, given no mercy. No reward for his service as Whitehawk, no justice for the lives he saved. The remains of Bethany and Theadora did not survive the transit. Perhaps in his crazed mind, he had thought they might still live enough to be saved if only he could get them away from Sorren’s harm. Though clearly the bags of skin he holds, the hollowed-out faces, the fused puddle of bones, and the greasy crimson offal that are heaped on his knees tell a different story. There will be no burial; there are no corpses to bury, only meat. He has nothing. Only meat. He is nothing. He could not save his family, not even a piece of them. His worthlessness consumes him and gives rise to retching sobs. Horrible noises, stabs to Morigan’s metaphysical ear that singe the blackness of this moment into her soul forever. Morigan has a Will here, she is no more a passenger in the Dreaming, but a captain of its tides, and she does not want to see any more.
(This is his pain; this is what he bears and what haunts him still. I must help him. He cannot face this alone.)
To leave, it is as simple as Willing it. The bees surround her and carry her through the Dreaming.
Morigan awoke, heaving and half draped out the windowsill. She collected herself and shouted to Caenith. Thackery, his past. It’s caught up with him. Here and now. A nekromancer. His nephew, I think. You’re right, Caenith, something terrible is in the air, and I must—
In the square, she spotted Thackery’s tiny gray frame approaching the fountain and its mad keeper. No! No! That is a bad idea! buzzed the bees. Clinging to the windowsill, she screamed at the top of her lungs for him to stop, that it was a trap—even if she was unsure how. On the ground, Thackery plodded ahead, grim and set with the readiness for blood. Morigan was shouting that he was walking into a trap, and he was quite aware of that. But he needed only to find the hand that would spring it and cut it off. Mistress Hattersham’s obscene ranting had considerably cleared out the square, and onlookers peered from gated gardens or darted for carriages to take them from the area. It was a chancy game that Sorren played, coming here to King’s Crown, beneath the Palace of Eod. During his exile, neither the boy nor his mother had shown so bold a hand, which made Thackery all the warier.
How foolish I’ve been, to think that you would just leave me to rot in my sadness in a kingdom I thought you could not reach. Of course you can reach here. I forget the malice of the spiders from which I come. One never escapes the family web, cursed Thackery.
As he neared the fountain, he shooed off a few younger masters laughing at the madwoman. “Worthless Thule, a shame to the name,” berated Mistress Hattersham when he was close. He kept a fair reach from her: she was grimly pale, seemed naked under her overcoat, and her abdomen was distended as if she were pregnant. Without a doubt, Sorren had done something horrid to her. The question was what.
“Where are you, Sorren? You spineless whelp! This is what you do? Kill women and children? Enslave the minds of helpless widows? Your Will was never strong enough to work your Black Arts on me! I have no one to defend, nothing to lose. How dare you blame me for the death of a woman who simply didn’t love you! Who killed herself to get away from your touch! Can you blame her, you monster? You fight and whine as you always have, from behind your mother’s skirts. A coward and a child you will always be! Face me man to man, and we shall see who survives!”
“I don’t believe in fair fights,” scoffed Mistress Hattersham. Her face was warped with the squint-eyed, teeth-baring sneer of Sorren. “That’s a challenge for men who can’t outwit their opponents. You underestimate the value of your holdings, too, if you believe there is nothing I can take from you. Know that before you die today, I will have claimed everything you love, everything you care for.”
Sorren was quite communicative, which wasn’t his style, as Thackery recalled: violence above parley. He scanned the deserted terrace for a black shadow. Sorren would have to be close to control his puppet.
“Why are you stalling, Sorren?”
“Patience,” said Mistress Hattersham.
“The longer you stall, the faster the Silver Watch will arrive to have you in chains.”
“Timing is everything,” the puppet said with a smile.
What was the ploy? wondered Thackery, desperate. He had scoured every shadow in the square, seeking the one that was darkest. Nowhere did Sorren reveal himself, not in the shaded alcoves, or as a peering face from behind a half-drawn curtain. While Sorren gloated in silence, a silver shadow circled over the square: the Watch had arrived.
“Our bird has come,” said Mistress Hattersham. “Time is up, dear Uncle. You’re terrible at hide-and-sneak. So eager to confront the villain that you’ve left your front door open. A hint: the best hiding places are right behind you.”
As Thackery whirled about, Mistress Hattersham began to unbutton her coat, freeing her bloated, stitched-up abdomen to the day. With shaky hands, ones that she knew were engineering her death, she dug out the small glass jar that held a red firebug and popped the container into her mouth: chewing on the glass, swallowing the sparking insect into her stomach. The sage was shining with power, ready to cast a spell, and she ran toward him. Sorren’s hold at last broke, or he released a measure of it, and Mistress Hattersham was able to sob—but not to stop her legs—as she threw her arms wide and prepared to embrace the light.
Up in the tower, Morigan had given up on getting Thackery’s attention and was dashing down the stairs when the damnable bees stung her with another vision. She staggered as her mind was torn open to a gruesome sight.
Mistress Hattersham is lying on a blood-soaked mattress, calm and still bound with a spark of life to a tortured body that has been emptied out like a taxidermy specimen. Organs lie in a tidy bundle beside her, and the nekromancer, this monster Sorren, stuffs her with pouches of a black powdery substance that mingles with the blood on his arms into a muddy paste. As he works, he whistles, as if he is a happy baker watching his bread rise. To him, this is as normal a chore as that.
“Put out the pipe, you imbecile! Are you trying to level the building? Do it again and I’ll make another explosive out of you, fool,” he snaps to someone in the room, and then gets back to whistling and filling Mistress Hattersham. He has left in her heart and lungs, buried somewhere under the little bags, and her eyes and all the skin bits that she needs to appear normal until it is time for her to detonate. The eyes, trickling tears, are the last Morigan sees as she spins from the vision.
“An explosive!” Caenith! An explosion, they’ve rigged an explosion to kill Thackery!
KABOOM!
What started with one cataclysmic explosion became a glorious chain of noises, fireworks, and tremors from outside. Each rumble and rip of the air sent Morigan skidding down the stairs. As she fumbled, she dodged debris dislodged from the walls or the flares of blue magik from sorcerous sconces that dropped; were it not for her newfound agility or the fire of the Wolf racing in her veins, she would have been struck unconscious. When the worst of the shocks was over, she was nearly to the bottom of the tower. She saw shadows moving through the dust and ca
lled out to them.
“That’s the witch; seize her,” commanded Sorren. She knew his voice without question.
Out of the smoke they came, swarthy men with cold steel and shrouded faces. She considered racing up the stairs, but her razor senses, as tweaked by nerves as the Wolf’s, detected walls of fire and broken stairs that were unsafe for flight. A fight, then. She found her dagger and surely stunned her attackers by leaping at the first one to appear. Although he was heavier, she had the ferocity of a woman thrice her size and the advantage of height from her jump. When they clashed, her dagger skidded and sparked along the sword he raised and finally planted itself somewhere in his collarbone, close enough to a jugular to that she was showered in red warmth. She had never harmed a man before, but she didn’t hesitate to dig the dagger in and ensure his passage. Perhaps the Wolf was to blame for her bloodlust; perhaps the shame of murder would come later. For now, rage was all there was. Morigan and her prey tumbled like acrobats down the stairs, and she used him as a meaty pillow to cushion her landing in the tower’s lower chamber.
She wasted not a speck getting up. Caenith’s river was turbulent in her, flooding her with a shadow of his strength and anger, and she sprang off the corpse and onto the back of the nearest attacker—who smelled of herbs and death—and gored him repeatedly along his spine. He should have died almost instantly. Instead, he merely stumbled, and by the time she realized that her victim wasn’t dying, his cold grip had seized her and thrown her onto the tile with a strength that slammed the wind out of her lungs. By then, other hands were grabbing her, too many to slash, despite how slippery and spidery she was. In the struggle, her wrist was twisted free of its weapon. At that, she growled in defiance and managed to kick one man in the groin. She choked another with his necklace until that broke off with a flash and sent him flailing away, screaming and cooked by blue fire that ran over him as if he was an oil-soaked rag. She was dropped, and her hunter’s instinct identified that her breaking of the chain had somehow killed her assailant. She wasn’t clear on the details and didn’t need to be. Without her dagger, as the shadowmen regrouped in the smoke-plumed antechamber, this knowledge was her only weapon. Escape was an option, too, she saw, for if she could make it past the men at Thackery’s door, she could flee into the flames beyond. She had to shake her head, for she was seeing two Sorrens, not one, if differently dressed. A woman was on the arm of the more dapper twin. Morigan could feel fear rolling off the woman like a chill and understood that she wasn’t an enemy.
Feast of Fates (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 1) Page 29