Feast of Fates (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 1)

by Christian A. Brown

  Chaos has seized the marketplace, and the mob is upon them at once. One of the Watchmen tries to raise his whistle, but he and his steed are pulled to the ground. The others of the queen’s guard cluster around their precious sovereign and cut at any hands that draw too near, painting their white horses in freckles of blood. With his savage instincts controlling him, Erik grips the reins of Queen Lila’s mare in one hand; in the other, he wields his trusty hammer, sweeping men away like dust to a broom. He is doing his best to guide the regiment out of the vicious bog of treason and toward the panic-stricken streets where they might break into a canter. Suddenly, he smells the ozone of magik and through the glaze of blood and movement, he sees the anarchist upon the podium crackling with red light like a powder keg and likely about to go off much the same. He realizes that they need a distance they may not have time to make, so he does what duty would have him do: he casts away his weapon, saddles up next to the queen, screams, “Trust in me!” and then throws the two of them to the ground with his body over hers.

  The blast heaves the earth a speck later: vomiting destruction, tossing horses, people, and stones like paper cutouts. Yet while shrapnel and flames shower down, the queen is safe beneath her metal mountain. The explosions have dimmed to screams, and he removes himself from his charge, drags her to her feet, and stumbles through the smoldering vapors that have become the Faire of Fates. He needs to get the queen somewhere secure; no other concern matters—not his limping leg or the bent shards of armor in his back. Like an angry mule, he kicks aside whatever hindrances of wood or flesh present themselves. He is frenzied and not particularly heeding his surroundings beyond finding something calm.

  “Stop,” says Queen Lila. “You must stop.”

  She is not the one whose commands he obeys, not the father who found him in the Salt Forests, and yet he cannot deny her request. Not with his body, anyhow, for whatever toll he has taken in shielding her is too grave, and he spins and falls on a hard stone floor with glimpses of rafters and the scratches of hay at his fingers—which have lost their gauntlets during flight. While the queen mumbles, he blinks in and out of darkness. He can feel his essence bleeding out of himself as if a warm towel has been laid over his back, though the pain itself is too strong for him to feel. Sliding, sliding into numbness and darkness, walking down the long black stairs to oblivion he goes. At least the queen has been protected. He will visit his ancestors with pride and is glad that he has not failed his kingfather. He so easily accepts death. He does not fear it, not as he fears failure. His eyes close, and there is only the dark staircase. He wants to see where it leads, what mystery awaits him.

  And then the light fills him: his heart leaps, his eyes flick open, and a groan of ecstasy breathes him back to life. What is this that has awakened him? What is this that strips raw every nerve in his body and swells every sense tenfold? Magik. The soul of another has touched his. He sees the stable where he is risen—the horses, sunshine, pails, and other insignificant things—but more than those he sees the woman who saved him before taking that final step. He sees her fretting gaze of gold and her sympathy that pains and elates him with a rush like fire up his spine. Is it inappropriate, his sudden urge? The desire to touch the face of this woman? He does not consider decorum or stop himself, but reaches to the queen and cups her face in a rough manner that her shiver indicates she is clearly not used to. Yet she does not retract herself from him. Time drags into eternity, though eventually the alarms and the besmirching of the queen’s beauty with his grimy prints awakens him from the moment. He remembers his duty and discovers his shame.

  “My Queen,” he says. “We must get you to the palace. The king will want to know that you are safe and sound.”

  She said nothing, not even a thank-you for her safety, as if she was embarrassed to speak. Nor was he ever to see her again, more than in passing, until the day she fled her bloodmate’s chambers—when she begged him not to bring his sword upon the king, and he listened at once, for he would have done anything she demanded. However distant their crossings between those two points in time, he had thought of her almost every night for many years. He remembered the warm honey of her sorcery, the touching of their souls, and he could sense in moments when they met, where he bowed and she smiled, that she had never forgotten it, either. Whatever that was, that moment of theirs away from the world, he did not deceive himself that it was anything more than illusion. A fantasy, an image for when the rod needed to be oiled, which he found himself doing more and more since that union. Still, when thoughts of Lila and sex intertwined, the result was guilt, as she should not be thought of that way by any man, ever. He had married himself in spirit and commitment to the bride of his king. He had damned himself from love. Nonetheless, when he reasoned with himself, if that one memory of the queen and him was all that he would ever have, it was enough to last him a lifetime.

  “The Fangs of Dawn,” said Magnus.

  Days had it been since the king had spoken; Erik sat up in his saddle and dropped any thoughts of the queen into the wasteland. He looked for what the king spoke of and saw a range of mountains rising up like the teeth of a titanic snake buried in sand: the tips of Mor’Keth, chewing at the red sun of dusk. Into massive canyons they descended, through bleached steeps and walls that should have been hummocks and gullies of the deepest green. Still, they had come too far and seen too much to let the Sun King’s new sorcery daunt them. The pass between the Fangs would take them toward Zioch, and that was all they cared about. With renewed vigor, they rode ahead, and would camp one final troubled evening outside Fangs of Dawn before moving onward to strike the heart of the Sun King’s realm.

  V

  “Riders!”

  The cry came from ever-watchful Erik as he surveyed the land from beside his master, and was confirmed by a scout rushing into the warmaster’s camp a sand later to tell them what they already knew. A red sun, a warring sun, was upon them, and the king was shortly seated on Brigada and racing to meet their visitors in the darkness of the Fangs of Dawn. Accompanying the king came three legion masters, a small cavalry, and the hammer, who rode at the head of the line with Magnus. The hammer darted his suspicious eyes to the three mounted figures that they approached, as well as to the tumbled spires of stone and the shadowy canyon beyond them, watching for signs of an ambush. When they arrived at the mouth of the Fangs of Dawn, the riders did not approach, and the king reined Brigada from going farther. For a while, the two forces held a cold silence with the other. The king was the first to break this.

  “I am King Magnus, brother to the master of the Summerlands. Come forth and announce yourselves.”

  The riders did not move, but stayed draped in the heavy gloom of morning shadows. While details of the trio were evasive, their hunched and thorny shapes—one quite smaller than the others—bespoke of strangeness. Their steeds, too, for they did not neigh or hoof the sand as horses should and could have been a nekromancer’s reborn; only the king did not sense any of the icy magik of death clinging to them. Another power was present, however, crawling in the shadows, webbing the three in menace, which, while the king could not name it, was far more chilling than any nekromancy.

  “I ask again that you present yourselves!” he commanded, afraid of neither Brutus nor his tricks.

  At that, the third and littlest of the riders detached itself from the others. The king’s men drew their weapons as it slowly trotted forward into the crimson morning light. At first, the Watchmen were taken by pity, for this was a child, as young as those the fathers among them had sired themselves. Though as it continued to near, they noticed the black greasy pits where it should have eyes, the arcane scars carved into its hairless forehead, and the tarnished armor that had been affixed through fleshcraft to its skin: a metal jaw, a pauldron of razors, a golden cage fused across the ribs and groin. Once, this armor had been a whole suit of the bladed, gilded plumage, like rays of sunlight and the feathers of a metal peacock, in which the Sun King’s men woul
d preen and strut proudly. Now, it had been reconstituted and perverted, the same as this child. Before it stopped and addressed them, the king knew that this child was nothing more than a mouth for a Will that was elsewhere.

  “I bear a message from the Sun King and his master, the true queen of Geadhain,” said the child in a sexless, rasping voice that upset the mounts of the king’s cavalry as though a snake were loose among their hooves. The child’s gray colt was unmoved by its rider; though from its oily stare and the black froth spattering from its muzzle, it was clear that the beast was also infected by dark magik.

  “I recognize no queen of Geadhain!” challenged the king. “Nor do I bow to faceless cowards who would hide in the skins of children!”

  “You think yourself virtuous. You think yourself a defender of life. I shall show you how wrong you are, my son.”

  My son? thought the king.

  The child slid off the horse and walked ahead a few paces, causing the king’s retinue to bear their arms. When it saw their defensiveness, its face jerked into a grimacing display of teeth, as though it was a marionette. The child did not move farther forward, but knelt before its mount.

  “What is a child but meat that has not matured to flavor?” said the Black Queen. “What are any of you but grains of sand in the desert? Meaningless. Each of you. As passing as the leaves in the seasons of death, the seasons of my Name, for I am Change and Chaos. Quiver in your metal skins, warriors, for you are nothing to me. Except for you, my son. You are a vessel of promise, and I shall give you purpose. I shall fill you with my Will once you surrender to me, and we shall remake the world.”

  “Surrender? I shall never surrender!” exclaimed Magnus, and a spiral of winds rose about him, pushing his cavalry away.

  “You will surrender,” said the Will inside the child. “If it makes you feel better to choose, then choose to come to Zioch and stand against the armies of your brother. Come to your defeat. It will be one of many that will smooth away your hard wall of ice until it is too weak to stop me. You will surrender. You will be mine. Greatness awaits, and you will have greatness, willingly or not. See how little life means to me, how insignificant these meats are, and you will begin to comprehend the glory of the designs that I have for you.”

  After it was finished, the child threw back its arms as if to welcome the wrath of the wind-wrapped king or the lightning that had gathered in single black cloud above. Yet the king had a heart of mercy and could not strike this creature, no matter how foul. He hesitated, and the choice was taken from him. In a blitz of violence, the dead gray mount was suddenly wrenched by an invisible bridle up onto its hinds and came pounding down upon the child beneath it like mortar blocks on a bag of wet tomatoes. The child was killed almost instantly; however, that was not the end of the Black Queen’s malice, and as soon as the execution was over, energy twisted the horse from within and it toppled in a heap upon its victim. Unceremoniously, efficiently dead, each life as worthless as the Black Queen had promised.

  In a gasp the king’s swirling wind and anger left him, and he and his men had only disgust in their stomachs. Fear as well, from the knowing that what they faced was an entity worse than Brutus, any enemy without body or emotion. The Black Queen drove the spike of terror deeper as she spoke through her new mouths: the twin riders that had remained behind in the Fangs of Dawn.

  “Your mercy is your weakness, my son,” they said. “Once you are hollowed out, I shall show you the glory of a life without pity. Enter to Mor’Keth and accept your destiny.”

  The riders turned and made dusty trails into the canyon.

  “Do not pursue them,” commanded the king. “Return to the camp. I shall speak to the men once we have crossed the Fangs of Dawn.”

  Which was all he was to say on the matter for the moment. No words of reassurance, no explanation for the inconceivable events they had witnessed. No denouncement of the entity’s lies, or truths. Only cold rule. Nonetheless, this is what the soldiers needed, not more confusion to muddy their resolution. King Magnus raced back to his troops and the Watchmen followed: faithful, brave, and unquestioning in their march toward death.

  VI

  Tanned backs, golden tracks, the paths wend to and fro.

  Into dales as green as the Northern King’s gleam

  Streams where the fish leap right to your dish

  And fields are as chaste as virgin lace.

  Bring your drum, bring your voice,

  Leave your sorrow and rejoice

  For frowns cannot abide the golden hair of dawn,

  Nor can sadness hide from chase and kiss of fawn.

  Here the wind is sweet, and time is sweeter spent

  On soil untouched by winter’s lament.

  So bring your song, and clap your hands

  For you have come to the Summerlands.

  Kericot, the famed bard of Carthac, had penned that tune upon taking his first breath of Mor’Khul: or the Summerlands, as he had coined it. For there was only one season in Brutus’s lands; it was never winter, hardly wet enough to have a spring, and fall appeared only as a shedding of leaves that even then filled Mor’Khul with an apple fragrance and not the faintest tinge of decay. Kericot had never returned to Carthac, and whittled out his years wandering Mor’Khul and composing poems of its beauty, as in love with the land as if it were a maiden fair. When the bard looked out from the higher points of Mor’Khul, from the mossy nipples of these great breasts of rock, as he was fond of poeticizing, he would speak of the wavy land beneath as an emerald woman. Of the gold and green mountains as a spine he would caress; of the misty folds as pools of sensuous sweat; and of flocks of colorful birds as dreams taking flight. All sights comparable to the woods of Alabion, which he had also seen, though without any of the darkness or fright. Often, he waxed passionate on the smell of Mor’Khul as a woman; and in more lurid poetry, the earthiness was her sweat and the honey-rose, sugar blossom, and all the other saccharine-termed flora were the waft of her womanhood. Magnus had always found Kericot’s poetry accurate in describing his brother’s kingdom; in capturing the raw essence of life that radiated from every rock, leaf, river, and breeze. While his own kingdom had flourished inward and born springs of magik, intellect, and ingenuity, Brutus’s had come to reflect his opposite nature. In the Summerlands, the trees grew taller, the animals meatier and wilder, and every color from glorious green to harlot’s red saturated the land with his brother’s furor. Mor’Khul was the product of millennia of his brother’s passion feeding the soil, flourishing all growth for spans and spans, and there was not another realm in Geadhain that could claim to be as beautiful or bourgeoning. Or at least that was how Magnus and Kericot had remembered Mor’Khul. What he was looking at now was a nightmare that could not be.

  Past the escarpment where the king and his closest stood, the land plummeted into a vast smoldering basin. An ocean of lava had once filled this space for sure, and had since cooled to a mottled igneous skin that belched torrents of hot ash onto the faces of the men who gaped at the destruction. Across the land, glowing crevices and spits of fire remained, telling of a great heat that persisted under the ground. They stared and stared, enthralled at the scale of Brutus’s madness. They stared and stared, and could not see a scrap of green from their vantage point until the highest humps of Mor’Keth: mountains that were no longer gray but black as heaps of charcoal. Coal to feed the furnace that had become Zioch, once a City of Gold, now a City of Darkness. The city could not be adequately captured through the fog of smoke, but an intimation of its sheer sprawling majesty, its chronex-shaped towers of gears and metal, or its great wall of scaffolding and stone could be sensed. The fiery apocalypse had not spared the city; in fact, Magnus believed it was at the epicenter, so dense was the smog. Ghosts of that infernal blast still haunted the Summerlands. They painted the firmament like a storm with clouds of soot and despair, hiding what should be the morning sun. All this gloom, and yet there was no change to the wilting temperatures that
bathed them in sweat, or the heat that they gagged like gruel into their lungs. Nor was there cotton enough to wad their ears from the howling wind or the grumble and constant grinding of the earth as if the land were sick. Not one among them had ever beheld a more cursed place. Except the king, perhaps, who had lived through the Age of Fire.

  If the elements were not enough to make them cower, or the mountain of smoke and menace that was Zioch did not cause their legs to quiver, then these men could no longer be broken by fear. King Magnus stayed at the edge with each of his legion masters, forcing them to look ahead with him until he was certain that they were unshakable. When he could feel their obedience, pert and hungry as attack hounds, he turned to his commanders and hammer and inwardly smiled at their dirty, determined countenances.

  “I shall save my motivations for those not made of pure steel, as you lot are,” he said. “We must decide how we are to wring victory from this travesty. Your ideas, men! Do not wait your turn, speak!”

  The warriors and their king conferred in a tight circle. Magnus had a sword, more for show, though he could use it, and he carved a map of the Summerlands and drew the strategies they presented. Smart men, ruthless men were these, warriors of a thousand battles and scars, and there was no wanting for hard tactics. While they had yet to see the Sun King’s army, confronting it head-to-head on the lands outside Zioch would be foolish. Who knew what traps lay under the hot black earth or how dangerous that terrain would even be to cross? They would lure Brutus to their encampment, then; bury themselves in the Fangs of Dawn like bandits in a pass, and force their enemies through a narrow gauntlet. Many times, the men of the war council steered themselves from discussing how overwhelmed they would be, or the nature of the foes they would face. For after the incident outside the Fangs of Dawn, there could be no doubt of the fate of all those empty villages and missing villagers—of all the merchants, wanderers, and even spies who had failed to warn the world of what Brutus was conjuring here—tens of thousands of men, women, and children surely made into unwilling conscripts for a colossal mindless army. Such a force had been cultivated for a single purpose: the reaping of Geadhain. But again, this they did not consider beyond a trifle lest it invite doubt and weakness. They could not and would not say aloud the stakes if they failed here and the Sun King’s monstrous army was allowed to swarm the land. Nor did a single head raise issue with the king over the dark power driving Brutus, or its mention of Magnus as its son. None of that mattered on the battlefield anyway, not to these steel souls who spoke only in terms of victory and defeat. That was their role, as soldiers. What came after—punishment and rebuilding, they hoped—was for the king, councils, and sages to debate.