Feast of Fates (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 1)

by Christian A. Brown

  Sparse as the strategy was, it was plenty enough for the Wolf; he stood and stretched. While it hadn’t been an hourglass, Thackery’s weariness cried out, for he knew that the beast-carriage would shortly be leaving. Agonizingly, Thackery trussed up the pack and placed his arms through the makeshift straps; they burned like pulled rope across his skin and fit into the red grooves on his flesh with familiar masochism. If not for his sleepless nights, he would surely have collapsed a dozen times over; he was still quite shocked that he had not.

  He sighed. “Let’s go.”

  The Wolf waved at him for silence and then darted up one of the sandy trails branching from the canyon. Thackery pursued him, climbing out of the windy channel to arrive on a plateau as lonely as an island in the wavy sea of the desert. At the edge of the island, the Wolf crouched and leaned into the night, sensing something that Thackery did not. Quietly, Thackery went to him and stood behind the man. He was no hunter, yet he could sense the tension in the night: the sudden stillness of the wind until the only scrape of sound was his hoarse breathing. Caenith pulled him down and covered Thackery’s mouth—his head actually, given the size of the hand—to silence even that. A prudent notion, for Thackery might have shouted at what appeared next. At first, his eyes deceived him into believing it was a second row of dunes superimposed over the first or that he was seeing double. Out in the desert, something massive, something the length of a city street, undulated through the desert. How silkily it moved that only the faintest mist of sand announced it, and by that, Thackery could estimate its absurd size. How stealthily it swept under land, with at most a faint hum to warn—or mask—its menace. Once, a piece of the monstrosity exposed itself in a sinuous movement, and he saw a glimmering encrustation of shale and scurf. Had he not just eaten a lizard, he might not have made the comparison to scales. But his wonderstruck mind could not categorize what beast had scales of rock and gemstones, scales as large as the slab he trembled on.

  What is the snake that eats the city…that swallows up man and house? he wondered. The answer struck him as the glittering coil descended into the sands, and the vast entity glided its way along a trail of starlight. Soon its movements could no more be tracked, not by his eyes, and when the Wolf felt that they were out of danger, he uncapped Thackery’s mouth.

  “I have seen it before,” said the Wolf, still quiet. “A beast from another age. It is not the only descendant of its kind that I have seen in Geadhain, and but a babe to the elementals of old.”

  “That was a wyrm!” gasped Thackery.

  “If that is what you call them, yes,” whispered Caenith. “A predator not even I would cross. Children of the Green Mother are they. Powers that not even you element-breakers can tame. Monsters of earth, fire, wind, and water swim in the body of the Green Mother. The ones that live in the sand or soil like this can hear the smallest vibrations, and running feet are like drums to them. Your scream—had you made one—would have been a dinner bell, for they hunt without mercy. We shall wait a few sands more; I do not wish to test if I can outrun one of the true masters of Geadhain.”

  “I have never seen one. You hear of such things…read of them, even.”

  Thackery was unable to say more. He could not capture his awe and insignificance in words. As if he were a child seeing magik for the first time, he felt that innocent and new. He found himself holding the Wolf’s warm arm and was pleased when the man did not instantly shake him off, as he needed the stability to tie down his soaring astonishment.

  “Time is wasting,” said the Wolf.

  Thackery removed his grip and stepped back to watch the freakish transformation that was to unfold.

  “We shall take a longer rest for you once we have left the sands behind us, Thackery,” promised the Wolf.

  Those were the last of Caenith’s words that Thackery would hear for a time, though their sincerity infused the old man’s limbs with the strength he would need to hold on to the Wolf again. For Caenith had addressed him by his name and with respect.

  II

  One quality that the Wolf never erred on was his honor, and true to his word, Thackery was allowed his first few hourglasses of solid sleep once Kor’Khul was a sandy memory. He was deposited somewhere softer than the last bed and twitched into a fevered sleep in specks. He dreamed of a wyrm of rock chasing him and eventually swallowing him whole. In that darkness he drifted; perhaps he was being digested, but he certainly wasn’t dead.

  Under the gloomy mantle of dawn, he awoke from the strange dream. The grayness of a threateningly rainy journey was a refreshing change from the desert’s stinging light, against which he had squinted his eyes. In another welcome variation from the norm, Caenith had dressed himself in his sooty clothing and even tied up the wild nest of his hair with a strip of cloth. The third of the day’s small miracles was a cooked meal that had been prepared for Thackery, and it was the succulent smoldering of a hare’s gamy fat to which he awoke. He slapped his cheeks to liven himself and chewed on rabbit while breathing in the fertile mist of the lowlands that they had arrived at last night.

  From their camp on a lightly treed hill, Thackery could stare east over a rolling valley. Deep glens glittered with water, and bushy dells dotted the green skin of the land. Here and there were piles of carbonized shale or half-risen cliffs that looked like tired old women in black robes and emerald shawls. From this dark stone, Ebon Vale got its name, and while the soil most immediately surrounding these deposits was not ideal for growth, pastures and farmsteads could be seen, their pens shuffling with fluffy shapes that Thackery guessed were sheep or cattle. After the blistering emptiness of Kor’Khul, these smoke-piped dwellings and their cozy comforts were exactly what Thackery needed to lift his spirits. Alas, he would be visiting none of them, he figured, judging by the pout on the Wolf’s face. Surely, the strain of Morigan’s capture was chipping away at even Caenith’s great resolve by now.

  He could feel the Wolf’s impatience weighing over him as he ate, thus he did so quickly. Once Thackery finished his meal, he cursed and hobbled himself up. The Wolf stomped out their fire and was promptly leading the way. On their brisk stroll down into Ebon Vale, a castoff rowan branch called for Thackery’s attention, and he picked it up and made a cane of it. Having the support of a third leg sped his huffing crawl into a limp that could almost keep pace with Caenith’s stride. As the crisp air of the valley cleared out Thackery’s fatigue, their last night of travel through the desert returned to him. His hands had finally unclenched from Caenith’s fur and he had fallen, which explained one of the greater aches on his hip among his collection of miseries. He remembered flopping in the sand, completely spent of any energy to right himself, and sobbing for Caenith to go on, thinking that this was the end for him. However, Caenith had not abandoned him, but carried him like a babe for what remained of Kor’Khul, eventually laying him down to rest.

  “Thank you for not leaving me last night,” said Thackery.

  “You love her, too,” replied Caenith, without turning around or slowing his stride. “I have hidden myself too long from man’s customs, and I shall need a guide in how you slow-walkers behave. We are in this together, you and I.”

  As the morning yawned itself awake, the temperamental skies teased with thick shafts of sunlight as well as bursts of rain. The companions stamped over great tiles of slippery shale and along damp trails wending through bracken and bush, trading sand for mud and scratches, though happy with the exchange. Often and with longing, Thackery stared toward the distant farmsteads that Caenith never led them toward and wished for a warm bath, a blanket, or even a patch on his vagabond’s garments. While this unkemptness would do in the wilderness, they would have to clean themselves up properly before entering civilization. As if he had read the old sorcerer’s thoughts, Caenith veered from his eastward path and took them down a mossy chasm to emerge into a dell. There, a brook sprang from the wall of black bedrock and bled out into a lily-spotted pond. Without speaking, the men drank the
ir fill and then stripped, bathed, and scrubbed their clothes as clean as they could. Of the two, Thackery looked incomparably worse for wear when they were done, and Caenith offered him his voluminous shirt to wear over his rags, which made for a sort of nightgown.

  “Thank you for the gesture,” Thackery said with a sigh. “I feel ridiculous. But that’s as presentable as I think we’ll be until Taroch’s Arm.”

  The Wolf nodded, and they were moving again. The land welcomed their travel, and the weather improved to a dampness that left a cool perspiration upon their skins as they hiked. Caenith continued his avoidance of farmsteads and people, and Thackery felt very much alone for their journey. Two explorers, perhaps, in a land yet unmapped and uninhabited. Soon he wasn’t yearning for firesides, but celebrating the grunt and toil of his lungs, the aching of his feet, or the nose-tickling ripeness of soil and pine in the deeper paths they wandered. All pleasures that he had neglected in his silver years: the churnings and wonders of life within and without. Ahead of the contemplative sorcerer, the Wolf entered a similar solitude. He thought of Morigan, of her captors, and of the creative and horrifying ways that he was going to rend their flesh with his jaws.

  By dusk, the silent pair had bobbed up and down the dips of Ebon Vale and paused on a shale rise to survey the area. To the west glowed the evening hearths of many farmsteads; there were fewer lights to the east. The going that way would not be easy, for the rock had surrendered to tangled forest. Thackery advised that they would be best to follow the path of the mountains, which would eventually open to scrubland and a grand riverbed, where Taroch’s Arm awaited them, and the men plunged onward.

  Indeed, as Thackery had forecasted, the land was a chore to traverse, trapped with fallen logs to trip upon or supple branches that were bent aside only to lash back at the offense as a whip. Yet Thackery blundered along, with Caenith helping him out of the worst of his troubles, and never once complained. Deeper and deeper they hiked, until hollow cries and strange birds made music to the moon. When the Wolf was satisfied that most of the farmsteads were at their heels, they stopped under great oak that glimmered as a tree of silver in the moonlight, and Caenith kicked off his boots and shimmed from his pants. Thackery knew what was to be done, and he gathered the discarded items while Caenith snapped and growled his way into new furry flesh. From out of a boot fell Morigan’s dagger, and it shone amid the leaves for a moment before Thackery shakily retrieved it. He mumbled a prayer to whatever forces watched Geadhain that she was still, impossibly, safe and then wrapped everything up into a bundle made with his gifted shirt. He climbed aboard the heaving beast, held on tight, and was momentarily speeding through the woods. He knew that the Wolf’s relatively casual stroll through Ebon Vale was so that the weaker of them could recuperate his strength—a kindness with an expectation attached, for he did not think that another stop would happen until they reached Taroch’s Arm. And cry and scream as his muscles would at the trial being forced upon them anew, Thackery would not let go or slip from his mount again. Just as Caenith relentlessly pushed his body past sleep, need, or want, so too would he push himself as far and as hard as he was able, until Morigan was safe and Sorren was in the ground with the dead he so favored.

  III

  At a distance, Taroch’s Arm hid its iniquity well. The city was grand and layered into a receding cliff of yellowed stone, with terra-cotta houses, circling gulls, and bountiful sunshine. Yet as they approached from the southwest, Caenith noticed a shadow draped over the regions along the waterfront. He saw bony peaks of what could be masts or the skeletal fingers of a giant beast, and a haze lingered there as if a fire were recently smothered. No fire was this, a playful breeze told Caenith as it bore scents to his nose; only industry and an abusive amount of that witchroot herb that folks who wished to forget often smoked. Past the indistinct harbor front crashed a choppy cobalt river that seemed born of the ocean. Dangerous rock islands dotted the strait, warning ships without steel-and-magik hulls that this would be their doom. Roads veined in many directions, high and low, to different areas of Taroch’s Arm, and traffic filled them all. Folks here came from all corners of Geadhain, from the warm lands to the south or the snowy settlements north of Kor’Keth, eager for what could be bought or bartered.

  Caenith and Thackery crept from the grasslands and joined the larger roads, walking along the wayside while caravans and howling idiots rode past. No one paid much heed to a shirtless giant and a dirty old man, beyond the brief and fearful stares that Caenith’s size usually evoked. The road twisted on, and eventually the two men passed under a stone arch to enter Taroch’s Arm: a city unguarded but for narrow-eyed men who clung to the shadows and carefully appraised every traveler.

  IV

  “Who are we seeking?” asked Caenith, frowning more than usual.

  “Someone that I helped many, many, many years ago,” replied Thackery. “She owes me a debt that a bit of coin will hardly repay, though it will be all I request of her. Hopefully, she has passed the obligation on to her kin, as I’ve outlived the lion’s share of everyone I know.” But few of those I hate, sadly.

  “Well, let’s find her soon and be on our way. This place is rank.”

  After living in Eod for so long, the Wolf had come to take its cleanliness and advanced technomagiks for granted. Most slow-walker cities stank, plain and simple. Few civilizations were afforded the benefits of Eod’s sewage-disposal systems, so the undertone of urine sitting in pots in countless homes or splashed on alleys was as persistent as cat piss on a rug. Piss wasn’t Caenith’s only cause of distress; the sharp sweat of excitement and money lust had entrenched the stone beneath them, and nauseatingly sweet witch-root aromas were in constant supply from the shouting, pipe-huffing persons who swaggered in the streets. Again, Eod’s civility had spoiled him, for he remembered slow-walkers as being drastically more respectful than the louts of Taroch’s Arm. Here, he was jostled by the laughing crowd or rudely elbowed to move. His patience was quickly wearing to its last fiber, and he felt that he might snap if another inebriate nudged him; or worse, he might nudge back and send the man flying a dozen paces. The streets were too narrow for his wide self as well, and many of the houses had been converted into shops and encroached farther onto the road with greedy awnings and stalls. Caenith paid no attention to what was being sold, as no mortal thing on this earth mattered but for the dagger tucked into his boot. Three days she has been gone. Three days, his mind chanted. Despair was not clenching his chest as much as anger was. He wanted hot, hot blood and revenge upon his tongue, and soon.

  Thackery was more attentive to their surroundings. Cities were his wilderness, and he led Caenith here. As Thackery inspected the clay houses, he could see little numbers hammered in iron faceplates near their door frames, and the streets were marked by crude arrowed signs placed at intersections. By following the signposts for the better part of the morning and scrambling to assemble the faded correspondence that he had read many years past, Thackery successfully toured them up stone steps and through shade-hollowed streets. He was confident that he knew where he was headed. He got lost only once, and never told the Wolf—who was too preoccupied to notice—and they successfully arrived at their destination.

  A few knocks on the door of the dwelling and a brief chat with its burly occupant informed them that, sadly, this was not the case: the original owner had died, and her daughter had sold the home twenty years ago. Clearly, they had disturbed the man’s afternoon drinking, and he wasn’t partial to any further questions, leaving them with the suggestion that they should fuk right off before he fetched his blade. A twitch in Caenith’s eye was all the indication that Thackery had before the giant seized the man and disappeared inside the home so swiftly that it was as if they had blinked from existence. Some clatters and thudding came from within the house, and just as Thackery was charging inside, Caenith filled the doorway.

  “He gave me an address,” said the Wolf. “One eighty-five Cordenzia Boulevard.”
>
  “You didn’t hurt him, did you?” whispered Thackery.

  “Nothing that won’t heal.”

  Thackery pulled his large companion into the street and hustled him away. In a lane several blocks from the house, they stopped, huddled, and Thackery spoke in confidence. “I appreciate the information, let that be said. Still, you must be careful, Caenith. No undue attention to ourselves. People don’t even know that I’m alive, and I would like to keep that confusion going for as long as we are able to. This city has eyes of its own, too, which we would not want upon ourselves.”

  “Eyes?” wondered Caenith. He had seen the slinking, shrouded men who prowled the streets. Perhaps Thackery meant those.

  “Well, Fingers, technically,” corrected Thackery.

  An unusual slow-walker history was flitting back to Caenith. He didn’t often delve into the details of slow-walker politics; they were always fighting, killing, and angry for one reason or another, and most tales were the same if with different players. Thackery reminded him of this particular insignificance.

  “Taroch’s Arm is so named for the warlord, Taroch, who once ruled the East between Kor’Khul and Menos. When he was deposed—unpleasantly, as warlords are—his quartered remains were given to each of those valiants who slew him. His right arm ended up here; there is a shrine that carries it to this day, in fact, as an object of historical worship. For while Taroch was a warlord, he was also a master sorcerer, tactician, and economist, responsible for half the currencies and markets that exist in Geadhain today. A ruthless genius, the man was, and most of Geadhain fell into chaos once his iron grip eased in death. Until the kings stepped in, that is. You have to wonder why King Magnus and King Brutus allowed the man to rule for so long—a century—if his reign was truly as vicious as the historians say.”

  Thackery was wandering off, chasing some runaway thought. Caenith snapped his fingers, which Thackery noticed had a bit of blood upon them.