Feast of Souls

by C. S. Friedman

  She came to the bench and sat on the other end. After a moment she took his hand in hers. His was a large hand, as heavy and coarse as Danton’s own, but it returned her grip with a warmth that made her heart ache. There was a time when her husband had touched her with similar affection. Now the last memory she had of Danton’s touch was the night he had come to her bedchamber. A very different relationship.

  “Your words are sacrosanct here,” she promised him. “I will neither judge you for them nor share them with others, unless you allow it. This I promise you, by the gods that watch over this place.”

  He nodded, his expression grim, and squeezed her hand tightly. Rurick was not the most eloquent of her sons, and she sensed now how hard it was for him to find the words he wanted. She did not try to urge him onward, but simply waited until he was ready.

  “Things have changed,” he said at last. “It’s like—like the very air in this place is different, somehow. Unhealthy.” He shook his head, clearly frustrated with his own verbal inadequacy. “Father is changing. Not for the better. The things that once brought him pleasure no longer do. The political gestures that once satisfied him now only whet his appetite for violence. His temper—it grows shorter and shorter, with his sons, with his ministers, with everyone that surrounds him. And every day he is more of a hermit, locking himself in his rooms with his accursed Magister for hours at a time”—he fairly spit out the title—“while his court whispers in the shadows of his growing madness, and wonders where he will lead the kingdom. Such rumors can bring down a ruler, mother. You know that. Yet he seems oblivious to it all. That’s not like my father at all.”

  No, she thought, her husband was uniquely sensitive to such things. She sometimes thought that not one word passed in the castle without his hearing it, not one piece of gossip was traded but that he knew the source. That he should no longer pay attention to such things was yet another sign of how much was wrong with him.

  “What is my duty as firstborn?” Rurick asked. “To let the High King do as he wishes, even if that leads to the loss of his empire? To stand by his side and try to show him where his folly lies and hope he listens to me?” He laughed shortly, bitterly. “You know what he would think of that effort, mother. ‘Vulture, son of a vulture’, he once called me. He certainly wouldn’t take advice from me, even if I knew how to offer it. And perhaps for good reason.” Once more he looked into the area surrounding them, as if searching for eavesdroppers. His voice was low and hoarse. “If it comes to the point where he cannot maintain his throne,” he whispered, “what is my duty then?”

  “We have not yet come to that point,” she said evenly. Wondering, even as she spoke the words, if they were true.

  The thin lips tightened. “I’ve heard of his plans for Corialanus. Plans the old Danton would never have countenanced. Now he seems to take pleasure in bloodshed for its own sake. As if something in him hungers for violence, above and beyond the call of political necessity.” He paused for a moment, his eyes gazing deep into her own. Deep into her soul. “You’ve seen this change in him too, yes?” His voice was a whisper. “I can see it in your eyes.”

  “That he hungers for violence?” she asked. The words caught in her throat. “That he is ruled by rage now, rather than reason?” Slowly, sadly, she nodded. “It is as you say.”

  More than you can imagine, my son.

  He sat down on the bench beside her. “Why, Mother? Was it Andovan’s suicide that caused this? Or something else? A man doesn’t change so much without good cause.”

  She bit her lip for a moment, wondering how much she dared to say. At last she said, very quietly, “Sometimes he may, if he falls under the influence of another.”

  “You mean Kostas?” Rurick spat upon the ground. “I wouldn’t trust that foul creature to wash my codpiece. Father needs someone who cares about him, to help him keep to his center. You are the only one who can do that. But you—you withdraw from him. The court never sees you anymore. Once you were always by his side, now you are little more than a stranger to this court. And in your absence that vile sorcerer has complete control over him. Why do you allow it?”

  She looked away from him. A tiny knot lodged in her stomach. “Some things I cannot change.”

  “There was a time you would have tried.”

  “There was a time . . .” The words caught in her throat. “Things are different now.”

  “What do you fear? Kostas?” He snorted derisively. “He’s more afraid of you than you are of him, mother.”

  “Of me? ” A faint, sad smile flickered across her face. “Now I do think you are mad, in truth. Why would a Magister fear me? ”

  “I can’t say why, but I’ve seen it in his eyes. Trust me. Whenever your name comes up, it’s like—like . . . you know how when a dog doesn’t like the smell of something, how its hackles rise? Like that.” He snorted. “Though he is not one to be complaining about bad smells, in my opinion.”

  She felt her heart suddenly skip a beat. “What do you mean?”

  He sighed. “Now I know you will think me mad, mother. I am sorry, but the man smells to me like rotting meat. And not only do I smell him when he is around, oh no, but he leaves his stink trailing behind him like a skunk. The very halls reek of it sometimes when he has passed. And yet . . . it’s not really a smell.” His brow furrowed in perplexity. “The wind doesn’t spread it like true smells are spread. And it doesn’t ever seem to fade. And mother, here is the odd part . . .” Something dark and fearful flickered in the backs of his eyes. “I’ve mentioned this to other people, and they look at me like I’m mad. Only a few others can smell it; the rest—the rest think I have lost all reason.”

  She was glad he could not hear the pounding of her heart; she tried to keep her voice steady as she asked him, “Which others?”

  “Valemar. Salvator. Perhaps Tiresia. She said something about ‘the foulness of Kostas’ presence’ when she last visited here. I didn’t ask if she meant it literally. At that time it didn’t occur to me it was anything worth asking about.” He shook his head. “No one else can smell it, Mother. Not the servants, not other nobles, not even children . . . they stare at me as if I am daft when I ask. To the rest of the world, Kostas is no more odiferous than any other sorcerer.”

  Valemar. Salvator. Tiresia. Those were all Gwynofar’s children. Would Andovan have smelled that curious odor too, had he lived? Would his skin have crawled like Gwynofar’s every time Danton’s foul Magister passed by?

  All of her bloodline sensed this thing. None but her bloodline could.

  The air in the courtyard suddenly seemed very cold.

  “Mother?”

  It meant something, that much was clear. But she was suddenly not sure she wanted to know what that something was.

  Rurick’s hand on her shoulder startled her out of her reverie. “You all right?”

  “Yes.” She whispered it. “Yes. Only . . .” She looked up at him. “I‘ve smelled it too. And worse. I can feel his presence, as if an icy wind blew across my flesh.” She wrapped her arms about herself and shivered. “I thought it was a kind of madness. My hatred for him made manifest. But if all of my children are experiencing it as well . . . then there must be more to it than that.”

  Rhys would know, she thought. Rhys knew all the ancient legends; he would know how to read meaning into all of this.

  Gods, how she wished he were here now.

  “Mother.” Rurick’s hand on her shoulder squeezed tightly. “You need to talk to him.”

  “Who?”

  “Father.”

  She drew in a sharp breath and turned away from him.

  “You’re the only one who can. The only one he will listen to.”

  “He doesn’t listen to me any longer.”

  “He trusts you, Mother. Only you.”

  The memory came back to her in a rush, unbidden. Danton’s accusation, his assault upon her flesh, the foulness of Kostas’ magic as it clung to him. “What other man has had
input into my line?” he had cried.

  She turned away from her son, unwilling to let him see her tears. “Things have changed,” she whispered.

  “Surely not that much.”

  She said nothing.

  He came before her, then, and knelt, waiting until she met his eyes before speaking. “I don’t know what happened between you and my father. And it’s not my business to ask. I only know that you told me once, when I was a boy, that you were queen first and a woman second. That all other things must come second to royal duty, for one who wore a crown. I believed in you then.” He paused. “I still do.”

  She did not trust herself to speak.

  Rising up again, he leaned over and gently kissed her on her cheek, then whispered in her ear, “If you forsake him, Gwynofar Keirdwyn Aurelius, then he is truly lost.”

  She could not meet his eyes again, but stared off into the night. “I will see if it is possible,” she promised him. Even to her own ears, the words sounded weak and insufficient.

  From their perches atop the mist-dampened Spears, the northern gods watched in silence.

  Dawn’s light spread slowly over the castle, turret by turret, drawing out dew from the cracks and crevices of its ancient walls. It was a peaceful and silent dawn, with few witnesses. One guard passed quietly below, walking his rounds. A handful of birds rustled in their nests. A single figure atop the roof, dressed in tattered black silk, watched the sunrise.

  Gwynofar’s face was dry of tears now, but streaked with salt from a long night’s weeping. In one hand she held a tiny note, curled tightly into a tube. In the other she held a plump homing pigeon, taken from the royal dovecote. Its wings were banded with white in the manner of northern pigeons, and she could feel in the rapid beating of its heart against her palm its hunger to be home again, to leave this hot and dreadful place for the cool, clear skies of the northern Protectorates.

  Would I could go with you, she mourned.

  There was a tiny leather tube harnessed to the bird’s leg. She slid the note inside and made sure the closure was secure. It would not do for her message to fall out somewhere along the journey.

  Then she cast the bird up into the dawn’s sweet light, and watched as it headed north.

  Rhys, the note said, I need your counsel. G.

  He would know what it meant. He would come if he could.

  She stayed on the roof for a time, watching until the bird was out of sight and the sun had finished rising, and then, with a sigh, returned below to greet the trials of a new day.

  Chapter 30

  SAFE. SHE is safe at last. Thank the gods.

  All senses alert, Kamala tries to hear if her pursuer is still right behind her. But for once she seems to be truly alone. Every other time she has tried to rest, every time she has even slowed down to catch her breath, it was just behind her. And she can’t allow it to catch her. She hasn’t seen its face, she doesn’t even know what it is, but she knows with a kind of raw animal instinct that she must not let it catch up to her or terrible things will happen.

  Now—now it seems she has left it behind. For the moment.

  Gasping for air, she bends forward, her legs trembling and weak from fatigue. She doesn’t dare use sorcery to steady them. The thing that is hunting her can smell her magic every time she casts a spell; the only hope she has to lose it lies in simple morati-style flight.

  Running.

  The forest behind her rustles suddenly, as something parts the brush. It’s here now! It’s coming for her! Desperately she straightens up, gulps down one last lungful of air, and then starts to run again. It is a hopeless, faltering effort, on legs that are past the point of exhaustion. Even as she starts to run she knows it is too already late. She has let it get too close to her. She can feel it reaching out for her—

  She whips about, expecting to see the bulk of some demonic predator bearing down on her, or something else equally fearsome. But there is nothing there. For a moment she thinks that maybe she was wrong, that she is still alone, and her heart begins to ease its wild pounding. But then the darkness surrounding her begins to transform itself, and she realizes it is not simply the shadows of night she is seeing, but something black and fearsome and utterly malignant that means to swallow her whole. She turns and tries to run again, but the ground beneath her feet is crumbling, falling away beneath her, and she can find no purchase. Quicksand. The earth melts into liquid and then begins to rotate—first slowly, as she sinks into it, and then with greater and greater speed—until a whirlpool has formed with her at its center. Vast and powerful, it is sucking the whole of the landscape into itself, devouring trees and birds and even the very stars. Downward, it is dragging her downward, into an unnamed and terrible darkness. Desperately she tries at last to summon her power, but it will not come. The whirlpool closes over her head. Beyond it, beneath it, is nothingness, utter nothingness. She screams—

  Awake.

  Her heart was pounding. Her skin was covered in a film of sweat. But she was awake. The nightmare was gone.

  For a long time she lay still in the darkness. The air was hot and humid, the worst sort of summer night. Finally she raised one hand and called forth a bit of power, weaving it with her fingers as one might weave a cat’s cradle. The air cooled and a fresh breeze blew across her face, drying her skin.

  The nightmares had started soon after she left Gansang, but only recently had they grown so unnerving. The first ones had simply reflected her fears while she was in the city, and she had accepted them as the inevitable price of what she had done. But now . . . now they were becoming something more. Now there was the distinct sense of another presence in her dreams, as if some Magister were trying to enter them, but failing.

  She wished she knew more about dreamcasting. She wished she had stayed with Ethanus another year—another ten years—and learned all he knew about every kind of sorcery, before going off on her own.

  This was the price one paid for impatience.

  With a sigh she got out of bed and stretched her limbs. Her legs felt as though she had been running in truth and the muscles across her back were a tightly knotted mass that hurt when she moved. She bound a bit of power to ease them, remembering what little Ethanus had taught her about the nature of dreams.

  Do not trust people or objects that you see. The sleeping mind often substitutes one thing for another, or distorts the measure of a thing until it is barely recognizable. Trust to your feelings, for those are genuine. Emotions are your signposts to understanding.

  Valid advice, but not very helpful. Her dreaming self feared that something was chasing after her. Did that mean something really was pursuing her, or was the dream simply reflecting her fear of the Magisters’ wrath? Was something truly so close behind her now that it was about to catch her, or did she only fear it was so? Kamala’s mother had believed that dreams might accurately predict events to come, in which case this was bad. Briefly she considered conjuring enough power to remember what her mother had told her about premonitions, but decided against it. If the woman had chanced upon a shred of genuine wisdom it was surely accidental. Besides which Kamala didn’t want to see her again. Not even in a sorcerous vision.

  Emotions were what mattered, Ethanus had taught her. Emotions provided a guidepost to meaning, when all else was chaos. Focus on emotions.

  You fear that something will catch up to you, and that when it does, a whirlpool will form beneath your feet, and it will suck you down into an abyss. You feel as if doom is impending, and perhaps inescapable.

  Ah, hells.

  Perhaps the power was warning her not to go to Bandoa. She had only just made the decision to do so. Perhaps it was responding to that.

  But if so, the power would not confirm it, and at last she was forced to lie down again without answers, dreading the nightmares that would surely come.

  The Third Moon was a sizeable inn just outside the port city of Bandoa with a reputation for catering to foreigners. It was especially popular
with merchants, who often scheduled a visit as they traveled up and down the western coast. So the gossips told Kamala, anyway. It was said to be an odd place, where odd stories were told and odd men encountered.

  For Kamala it seemed the perfect hunting ground.

  Since the night she left Gansang she had tormented herself over what path to follow next. Painfully, she had acknowledged a hard truth: that she had no long term plans, nor any goals greater than “learn to use magic without dying” and “go to the city where you suffered as a child and show them you can’t be pushed around any more.” Now she had gone through First Transition and had her adventure in Gansang and . . . what next? She might have sought out other Magisters had she not just killed one of their kind, but she had, and so probably it would be best to let the dust settle on that little story before she approached any of them again. So, where was she going now? What did she want? What did she hope to become?

  She didn’t know.

  The contract she’d had with Ravi had been promising. Comforting. Let a morati take care of one’s daily needs, so that one might focus upon larger issues. She thought that perhaps she would like to set up something like that again, but not with a landed lord this time. No, she needed to find a man of wealth who traveled, whose retinue would benefit from a witch’s service, and see the world at his expense, without needing to conjure food each night or steal clothing from peasants. Maybe somewhere in that world she would find a place for herself. Until then, she would at least be comfortable.

  Her search for such a patron had brought her to Bandoa . . . and to the Third Moon Inn.

  At first glance the owner did not welcome her. She was still dressed like a peasant youth—though she had added a doublet and several accessories to the shirt she’d once stolen, and so no longer appeared wholly destitute—but she drew out a small purse from inside her shirt and spilled a handful of silver into the man’s palm, assuming it would assuage his suspicions. It did not. Apparently he had an eye out for the kind of vultures that might prey upon his more prosperous guests, and a lone boy coming from nowhere, going nowhere, with a purse full of unexplained silver, fit the bill. In the end she had to bind a bit of sorcery to get him to admit her, and she made him send extra pillows and a flagon of wine up to her room, gratis, in compensation.