“I can see that it is bothering you,” said Sorren, startling her.
“I…indeed.”
“I would shut him off if I could. Snap the cord that brought him back like the spine of the weasel that he is,” sneered Sorren, clenching the bedsheets in angry fistfuls. “But it doesn’t work that way, the magik. Life flourishes, even in a garden of death; it puts down roots and grows. That cold body is as much his as it was before. Now I feel that he has his mind back, too, and he will no longer listen as a proper empty reborn should. I cannot control him. Now, if I could get close to him again…”
The nekromancer’s hands squeezed to whiteness, and his gaze twittered with black thoughts. After thinking for a moment, Gloriatrix was jolted by something he had said amid his rambling.
“My son, are you implying that Vortigern has remembered who he was?”
Sorren slapped her with a look as if she was dense. “I’m not implying anything. That is precisely what has happened.”
While Gloriatrix chewed deeply on her ever-complicating issues, Sorren rambled on. Speaking of Vortigern dredged up his most unwanted memories, but also many of his favorite ones, and he waxed bitter while reminiscing.
“I remember when Vort and I were young. We would play out in the gardens among the thornbushes and climb the highest trees we could find. We pretended to be conquering masters, gone to herd the savages from abroad to the mines of Menos. Mostly, we scraped ourselves terribly. Well, me more than Vort. I never fared well with the physical disciplines, as you know. Yet I always tried to keep up with him. I wanted to win his pride, as if that were a glorious trophy that I could put on the mantel of my achievements: Vortigern’s respect. Harrumph…do you remember the day I fell?”
“Hmm? What? Oh, yes, I remember,” responded Gloriatrix. “That was a mother’s worst fear realized: the screaming of children with not a head in sight. I thought that an assassin had come for you both.”
She is chasing the cries of her children through the clawing hedge-maze. Madness has seized her, instinct has hold of her every sense, and she is moving so quickly that the Ironguards are puffing somewhere behind her, calling for her to slow and be wary. But she will not slow, she cannot, not until she finds her boys. It is storming and slippery. The rain burns her eyes, and she stumbles into thorns. The thunder trumpets, yet her calls sound louder than the elements. Please, please, she begs, to whatever forces heed the prayers of mortals—even the cursed kings, if they will court her pleas. Then the bushes part, and her sons are painted in lightning: small Sorren is being held by his wailing brother. Her child is not dead, but glazed and placid, perhaps in shock, judging from the angle at which his leg is twisted.
“You shouldn’t have been playing out there, especially not in a storm. We had the physicians putting those awful drops in our eyes for a week.” The Iron Queen’s mask split with an awkward, much unused smile. “Climbing trees like the apes of Alabion. Really, you two. I knew that one of you would slip, and I’m not surprised that you did.”
Sorren and Gloriatrix saw each other then as they scarcely ever did. Not as nekromancer or queen, but as people. As a child and his mother. Sorren’s honesty welled up, untapped and raw.
“Would it be odd if I said that moment when you found us was the happiest occasion of my life? Even the pain faded for a while. You may have thought that it was both of us screaming, Mother, and I tell you today that it was not. Vortigern was my voice. He was my safety. And when you appeared, that fury, that cold armor that you always wear melted like so much snow in the rain. There was the three of us, and the storm, and yet somehow a peace that no thunder could shake. I would take that moment and frame it, if I could: a phantograph of eternity. That would be all I could ask for, to see, live, and feel that time again and again. How strange you must think I am,” confessed Sorren, and turned away from his mother’s drilling stare.
“You are not odd, my son. It is a lovely memory to hold on to, and we have so few of those,” Gloriatrix said.
They smiled, privately.
Rap-rap-rap!
After the succession of knocks, the door to Sorren’s chamber was opened and an Ironguard made his way in.
“Iron Queen, noble Master, I did not mean to interrupt.”
“You’ve interrupted nothing,” snapped Gloriatrix, once more in her armor. “What news have you?”
“One of the Broker’s men has delivered a message.”
For a speck or two, the Ironguard hemmed and hawed over the scroll in his hand until Gloriatrix ordered the paper from him.
“His words, not mine, Your Eminence,” the Ironguard said, bowing as he exited the room.
Already she was reading the simple missive: I have the witch. I shall hold her here, where it is safe and warm, in chains of cold iron until you wish to collect her. We do not need any further ineptitude in her keeping.
“Filthy scoundrel,” she cursed, and was swiftly standing. “It seems a trip to the Undercomb is in order to gather our tool against the West. Come, Sorren, your presence and power is needed in matters like this. Sorren?”
He was not hearing his mother, but a dim and rusty whisper, like leaves blowing over a tombstone. He was heeding the one from beyond who seldom spoke, and always did so with wisdom. In a way, this was his true mother, for her icy love had birthed him into this world anew. Gloriatrix sensed this, not merely his separation, but the wintriness that crisped the air, the chill that ate at her marrow, and the candles that sputtered out and welcomed darkness. A shadow had entered the room, cast from something immense and unseen.
Said the winter whisper to Sorren’s ears alone: Find her, take her. She is the Daughter of Fate. She is the instrument of our war. We cannot rise against the Black Queen without her. She must be controlled. She must be ours.
“She must be ours,” repeated Sorren.
When his reptilian eyes found Gloriatrix in the gloom, she gasped and shuddered. She did not recognize the stranger who beheld her.
V
Reading the tea leaves was among the oldest of soothsayer traditions; it felt appropriate to Elissandra in light of the confluence of events and powers happening at this moment. Even in the sanctuary of her cement-and-feliron bunker, the ripples of an environment in turmoil still carried: in the pressure in her ears, the vibrating of the bookshelves, the flickering of the sunny globes ensconced about the quaint studious room, and in the rattling of her porcelain teacup set upon its saucer. The world was trembling. And if it shivered this deeply in the earth, she wondered what racket was occurring above. Before going into seclusion, she had warned her immediate family; told them to take their children and most trusted servants belowground. As for the rest of the masters and Iron sages, they could fare for themselves; such was the way of the wild. With every disaster, Geadhain purged herself, and Menos was a city long due for a cleansing.
Tonight, the tea leaves were being coy. They said nothing of the catastrophe, of the Daughter of Fate, or of anything that transpired outside this refuge. As if the future is unwritten, she mused, and was twice as intrigued. The prophecy of lifetimes past is coming to fruition. I wonder what it will bear. A new world, we are promised, and yet the outcome eludes my sight. Darkness or light? Where will you lead us, Morigan? Back to Alabion, I would hope. If anyone can heal the wound left by the Everfair King, you can.
Right when Elissandra was about to push the teacup away, a stunning image manifested: a cloud like a dark claw reaching over the hemisphere of a world and a starscape of sorrowful eyes. She had only a flash, and then the picture shifted out of focus, and she was staring at black meaningless spackle. A Black Queen, she thought of the greedy hand. But who were the watchers in the sky? They could be any of a number of mysteries: the Sisters Three, the Immortal Kings, an unnamed queen. Too many mysteries and not enough answers; no wonder future had no clear divinations. Who were these creatures, these forces? Where had they come from? And what more lay buried in time?
Suddenly, the shelter groaned
and spit a bit of dust from the ceiling. Her children woke from the noise and called out to her immediately. Putting aside her enigmas, Elissandra rushed to her younglings. Two pale youths, one male, the other female, both with their mother’s lean features and silvery eyes, were sharing the bunker’s only bed and stuck to each other in fear. She peeled them apart and fit herself between the two.
“Tessa.” She kissed the little girl’s head. “Eli.” She kissed her other child’s crown. “There is no need to be afraid. We could not be safer here.”
“What of Papa?” asked Tessariel.
Elissandra had used a farspeaking stone earlier to advise their father—her third cousin—to find the sturdiest cellar he could and hole up in it. He would know when it was time to come out. “He is doing business in Carthac. He knows to find shelter. Do not worry for him, my lamblings.”
The bunker shook again; a book slipped off one of the shelves and onto the floor.
“A story,” said Elissandra cheerily, and ran to fetch the volume. The book was one of her favorites from a childhood a hundred and some years ago. A collection of classic tales from Alabion that she had not seen since she was a youngling herself: The Untamed. Fondly, she caressed the stippled green trees on its cover and took a short breath as the tingle of foresight came over her. She settled back into bed with her children and selfishly thumbed through the pages of the book, reading accounts of beguiling enchantresses, speaking bears, ageless sisters, and the saddest story of a lord of Pining Row who buried his bloodmate and then left Alabion forever. The Wolf, she realized, and could not look away from the great beast upon the page.
“Mother, I thought you were to read to us,” complained Elineth. “You seem mostly to be reading to yourself.”
“She’s seeing at the moment, you dunce,” said Tessariel, and slapped her brother’s shoulder. “You wouldn’t understand. You don’t have the gift.”
Quick as a striking snake, the boy slapped his sister back.
“My lamblings,” exclaimed Elissandra, and put a stop to their fighting with some firm hands of her own. “‘Tis no time for quarreling, but a time for unity. Your sister speaks truly. I have been in the grip of many a vision today. Yet even the fates can wait. For here I am with my two lamblings, as snug as any winter beast in its burrow, with food and comforts for weeks, should we need them.”
“Weeks!” the children complained together.
“It shan’t come to that,” clucked Elissandra. “Now listen up and listen well, for I shall tell you the stories of where we have come from. Of a land that we may one day return to. I shall tell you of Alabion.”
The children gathered close and gave all their attention as asked, as pert as two tiny birds to the beak of their mother. Flipping back to the first page, Elissandra began at the beginning of The Untamed with the story of the Lady Dymphana and the wicked fisherman who forced her to be his bride. Even as the chamber steadily rattled, and other books and breakable things began to tumble to the floor, Elissandra’s melodious voice managed to keep her children calm. For there was nothing to fear, all things—fair or foul—had their season, and the best one could do was to weather the worst. Wars would come and wars would go, and this one would be darker than any other. But fussing over inevitabilities was for another day. Down here, in the shuddering dark, she was not an Iron sage or even a seer. She was a mother.
On she read without a care, while above her the storm ripped Menos to its foundations.
VI
After crawling on their hands and knees out of a moldy sewer pipe that barely accommodated Caenith’s size and onto a slippery ledge, the two men carefully came to their feet. Falling would be deadly, dangerous even to Caenith, for under them a pummeling rapid crashed off rocks of metal, damns of splintered wood, and bolls of wire that would shatter bodies like ceramic dolls. The Wolf held Macha as the most precious of cargo. He would not lose her to an accident after coming this far, even though the thread that tied her to life was almost frayed to snapping. Cautiously as cavers, the men spread their backs to the wet stone and crept forward with their hands and feet. Darkness gave them a cover that would have otherwise left them completely exposed, and they followed the ledge until it met with a beach and then climbed down into dunes of refuse.
“To think that you made this journey as often as you did,” said Caenith, in praise of steadier ground.
“I was a younger man, clearly,” wheezed Thackery. “I could not have done this without you, Caenith.”
“Nor I, you,” replied the Wolf.
They celebrated their brotherhood with a nod, and then Caenith was sniffing after the scent of his bloodmate once more. Centuries of the waste of a wasteful nation had accumulated on the shores of the Drowned River: toys and knickknacks, broken bottles, sheets, torn paintings, spoiled food, furniture frames, and springs. Every imaginable permutation of junk did they see, as well as mounds of pure rot, the decay of which they had to shield their mouths from. Regrettably, they stepped in buttery matter once or twice. For the most part, though, the thin roads threading the heaps were free of debris in accordance with city mandates. An order was in place here, as inconceivable as it might be for an outsider like Caenith to construe. Above, the profligates of Menos dropped their shite, piss, and whatever else was the by-product of their all-consuming whims down toilets, or into larger repositories, and left it for the pipes below to sort out. Into the reservoirs it went then, vast drums drawn from the sweet lakes and streams of Alabion, to be filtered through machines and magik. What was deemed drinkable enough was given back to the system, while the larger, less digestible—even by Menosian alchemy—pieces were shat into the Drowned River. Sanitation slaves were supposed to tend to the mess, though it was a bit like shoveling a sandbank in the desert; there was always more sand. In truth, the shore of the Drowned River was mostly abandoned until the garbage reached critical masses that threatened to block the circulation of water out of Menos or had summoned enough rats to cause a dread plague. During such times, enormous teams of slaves would dig in these putrescent piles, wetting themselves in rubbish until their backs broke or fevers claimed them—then they would be thrown into the river to drift away with the fruits of their labors. Thackery kept an eye out for these operations as they slunk through the flies and filth, and saw neither workers nor persons of any sort. The Drowned River’s shores were quite abandoned.
Caenith, on the other hand, understood nothing of this unpleasant infrastructure and thought only of the strange flotsam that would sometimes lodge itself on the banks of Alabion’s streams, back as far as his days there. He shook his head, appalled by the excess of these people. Luckily, Morigan’s sweet trail of incense was all the easier for him to track amid the greasy air, and it was growing riper by the step. Almost, my Fawn, he huffed. I shall take you away from this. Somewhere silent, where the voices and fates cannot reach you. Only you, and I, and Thackery—anyone you choose to invite into our pack.
As the first sounds of existence came to him, the Wolf traded his ebullience for vigilance. Odd sounds those were: whispers, shuffles, snapping, and choked air. To novice ears, those noises were innocuous. To Caenith, they were the music of murder.
“Trouble precedes us,” he whispered to Thackery.
The cluttered hills alongside them became small rises, and patches of stone flooring could at last be seen. Soon the garbage was too loosely dispersed to hide behind, which did not matter, for Caenith could see where Morigan’s fragrance was leading him. With the river rushing behind the compost to their right and a wall in the dimmest distance, the only way off the beach appeared to be the large sphere bubbling out of the darkness many, many strides to their left. He noted holes in the structure, which seemed to have been made of much of the detritus found in the area, although with an architect’s care. Something lived there, and a gloomy nostalgia claimed him—as if there was an echo of Alabion here, albeit one that had ill tidings. A lair, he thought, but his ancient mind was filled with too many rec
ollections to find the one he needed. The quandary did not give him pause, though, and he was quickly moving toward the building. He picked the deepest darks to slip into, even though he did not feel that they were being watched.
When they were almost upon the looming mass, Thackery hissed, “Wait.”
“What is it?” asked Caenith.
“Shouldn’t we take precautions? I have no idea what this place is, and it gives me an eerie chill. It was certainly not here in my days.”
“Precautions are unnecessary. The path has been opened for us, and there can be only danger ahead. Look,” whispered Caenith.
He didn’t have the Wolf’s sight, but as he squinted into the murk of the nearest hole leading into the sphere, he saw a tumble of darkness. “What is that?”
“A body,” replied the Wolf.
Caenith was darting ahead before Thackery could begin any of his frantic questions. He followed Caenith into the dank passage, stepping over the corpse of a man wrapped in black like an assassin. From the way his limbs flopped, he seemed broken in many spots.
“What did that to him?” muttered Thackery.
“I don’t know.” Caenith took several long sniffs and then frowned. “But it’s still here. I smell Morigan, too. Twice. In two different places. The nearest isn’t far. Whatever killed this man is with her. Here, take Macha. I need the freedom of movement, and your magik could bring this construction down on us.” Before handing the girl over, Caenith kissed her sweating forehead. “Ta mued rachaidh mea miongháire gan mhoill, cén uair ta leaghas.” (You will smile for me again, once you are well.)
Macha fell into Thackery’s arms as weightless as a bag of down; she did not have much time remaining in this life. A number of urgencies drove the Wolf ahead: his need to reunite with Morigan, the drumming of water far overhead, Macha’s dribbling chronex, and the confusion of scents that threatened to turn him around in this place. Among these, the reek of these tunnels was the most prominent, overpowering all other smells. It was the muskiness of an animal’s unwashed loins. This was the stink of a creature that, again, he felt he should know. Had he hunted this monster before? No, that didn’t seem correct. Was it a hunter itself, then? Aye, his instincts told him, but how muddled was the mind of the ageless Wolf that he still could not recall from whence. He needed his concentration to pursue the scents of his bloodmate, so he refocused himself upon that. For the tunnels had no real order to their arrangement, unless that layout was meant to confuse, and the paths sloped up and down, left and right, often meeting at the queerest junctions with passageways both high and low. Discouragingly, the walls were sharp with objects, and the lights were few, far apart, and dull as dying embers. But they were never lost, not with the Wolf’s guidance, and they found a macabre trail of bread crumbs, more bodies of the shadowmen, to tell them that they were tailing Morigan’s captors. The Wolf heard footsteps and susurrations well before Thackery ever could. He made a hush gesture and stalked off ahead, leaving Thackery to sneak up as best he could. As soon as the commotion started, Thackery ground caution under his running feet and hurried into the tunnel where the Wolf had gone.
Feast of Fates (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 1) Page 59