Feast of Chaos (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 3)

by Christian A. Brown

  “How is the Wanderer today?” asked Adam after a while.

  The Wanderer was how Adam and the others referred to the dormant entity in her flesh—Morigan’s father Feyhazir, the Dreamer of Passion. Since they’d left Alabion, the Wanderer had not stirred. He slept like a hibernating creature in the depths of her mind. Unless she really paused and listened, usually in the darkness of her room at night, she couldn’t hear him. A better use of these recent days of peace might have been to contemplate and test her covenant with Feyhazir, yet she found herself wasting hourglasses on cloud-watching and walks. For Kings’ sake, a woman was entitled to a break every so often, and she had certainly earned hers.

  “Quiet, mostly,” she said. “He’s there, deep down. Sleeping like a creature at the bottom of the sea. I’m not sure how to wake him; I’m not sure that I want to wake him. Last time I swear I lost a year off my life.”

  “Loss…In Briongrahd, while I worked story from stone, I would see pups grow into wolves, see them throw away innocence and kindness—they never cared or knew what they’d lost. I lost years upon years, waiting for something to chase. I felt my soul, if not my pelt, grow gray from age and sadness.”

  “What an odd—and gloomy—thing to say,” replied Mouse. Turning, she slapped her companion’s arm and he made a canine whine.

  “Gray is, however, a fine color for a pelt,” said Adam, touching her hair. On the voyage to Pandemonia, she’d emerged one morning with a gentleman’s military cut, streaked along the sides with gray. The haircut gave her the air of a military commander. She’d said she barbered herself because she was simply ready for a change.

  “A pelt?”

  “None of us are above animals.”

  Mouse went to slap him again, but he caught her hand and made a small, challenging growl. Too easily she forgot that he was, truly, part animal. He held her wrist longer and more firmly than a friend should, and that flame they’d convinced themselves was smothered sparked up. Accentuated in the morning glow, his lean, tanned physique held a gleam of copper, and his eyes were as deep and brown as ancient amber. His charisma was poorly hidden by the light sash and kilt he wore. Down the valley of his sinewy, tattooed chest hung the dark stone talisman given to him by Elemech. He kept a trim and perfect beard, and Mouse saw the muscles of his jaw moving underneath, as if he were chewing or hungry. Feeling light and a little detached from reality, Mouse watched the man’s gaze move over her slight hips, small breasts, and up to the sharp face people told her was pretty. All the while, the changeling’s nostrils flared as he smelled her perfume of iron, roses, and sage.

  They were interrupted by a strained and aggravated laugh—likely from someone responding to one of Moreth’s witticisms, which were usually at someone else’s expense and often led to arguments. The two returned to the half-circle of furniture set back from the more orderly rows of bolted seats around the stage. There, the company had gathered in typical fashion. Thackery and Talwyn sat beside one another and nursed porcelain cups of tea. Their lordly poses lent them an air of brotherly masters, kings upon thrones. Now that Thackery had cheated time, the sage and scholar looked similar; both had square high-browed faces and stares that glimmered with vast intellect. Still, Thackery’s raven-dark hair and Talwyn’s reddish-gold locks distinguished one from the other. Alastair sat next to the two, hidden in his cloak, tuning a lute. Legs crossed and oozing leisure, Moreth reclined in a seat many chairs away from the others and cradled a book in his hands. Physical separation from the group did not seem to diminish his need for a disagreement.

  “What you’ve suggested is absurd,” he said, not looking up from his book, nor repeating whatever absurdity Mouse and Adam had missed. “Street-level rumormongering. You are intelligent men; please stop embarrassing yourselves. How can either of you—you, especially, Thackery, Thule as you are—not see the connection between the disruption at Taroch’s Arm and the doom of Menos?”

  Not everything had been relaxation and measured preparation aboard the Skylark. Moreth, Alastair, and the crew had informed the lost wanderers of Geadhain’s current events. Of all the ill tidings, the destruction of Menos had become the topic that circulated most often and provoked passionate discussions. Genocide on that scale seemed somehow even more dreadful when no one knew the identity of the perpetrator and all were unable to investigate the area thoroughly enough to venture an opinion. Ruins—everything lay in ruins, the companions were told. Foul entities were said to stalk the remains of the Iron City under a blanket of perpetual night made up of smoke and ash that would not disperse from the realm. Mouse wouldn’t have believed such an old wives’ tale herself if she and Adam had not seen the queer, distant globe of black smoke from out of one of the Skylark’s windows one bright, beautiful day. They had run to fetch the Wolf and asked for his opinion, which had been grim. “I can see nothing but death,” he had said.

  “Taroch’s Arm is missing, gentlemen and gentlewomen,” declared Moreth.

  A hush seized the company. Mouse took a seat before tempers erupted, and Adam knelt beside her chair—doglike and protective. Behind Thackery’s blue gaze, thoughts furiously brewed. Mouse knew he would be the first to explode.

  “Where did you hear this?” spat Thackery.

  “What matters the source?” said Moreth with a shrug. “I cannot tell you where the eyes of Menos peer—what few of them are left—any more than you can speak for Eod’s master or spies. What is important in what I have told you is that his arm was stolen.”

  “Stolen? By whom?” pressed Thackery.

  “A woman and a large cutthroat,” said Moreth. “If I were not needed to shepherd you six lost lambs, I would hunt the culprits myself. They are Geadhain’s greatest game at the moment—perhaps the greatest murderers of any age. I am sure that a man as learned in magikal antiquities as yourself, Sage, could think of a few suspects. Put that Thule genius to work. Let me know what you come up with. Perhaps we can exchange notes.”

  Thackery puffed. Caution stilled his tongue, and he held himself in nervous hesitation. Did he know something? wondered Mouse. The fear in his eyes, the fading of his skin from red to pale, indicated he might.

  “An arm?” she asked. “What’s the harm in a dead man’s arm?”

  “I like an opportune rhyme, so I shall answer,” replied Moreth, finally placing his book down and turning his waxy, expressionless face her way. He wriggled one of his gloved hands. “Not just an arm, Mouse, a talisman. Taroch was a sensualist and aesthete. He believed in the pleasures of touch. He was captivated by the beauty of the sculpture and sorcery he created with his hands. His arm, therefore, was arguably the most precious part of his body, his magik, his soul. Taroch was the lord of transmutation, a sorcerer who could whisper a wind into a hurricane, turn water into fire, or encourage a tremble in the earth into the mightiest quake. What do you suppose a madman and madwoman could do with a relic containing all of Taroch’s power?”

  “Nothing good,” she said.

  “Nothing good,” repeated Moreth, and resumed his reading.

  They sat in an unpleasant silence until Morigan and the Wolf arrived through a gilded arch. Mouse hadn’t seen her friend very much beyond last evening’s festivities. Just then, the Skylark seemed to pass into a cloud, or perhaps a hint of Morigan’s mood manifested, for she flickered with darkness. While Morigan was as striking as ever—with her mane of fire and glittering gold, her buxom figure and sultry pout—she seemed tired after a night of tossing happily in the sheets. Maybe not so happily, thought Mouse, noticing the Wolf’s stormy disposition. Unhappiness hung on his grand, craggy shoulders like pauldrons of stone, and fretting had turned his carved brows into a single ridge of worry that pooled his gaze with black. Both of Mouse’s friends appeared slightly unkempt: Morigan’s hair was twisted into the kind of pleasing spirals in which birds might make their nests, and the Wolf was looking wild and unshaven, even for him. Alastair had stitched for him a leather warrior’s skirt (several attempts at pants ha
d ended in burst seams and frustration), which complemented his sandals and gave him a gladiatorial presence. This morning his veins—the ones at his temples and the multitude on his arms—were full and throbbing. He marched toward the company exuding the menace of the Blood King he had once been. Even Moreth lost interest in his book and stared at the Wolf’s approaching hulk.

  “You two look miserable,” commented Mouse.

  Morigan, rattled by something, tried to settle into a seat beside Thackery, though she looked as if her seat’s cushion was full of pins. The Wolf stood behind his bloodmate’s chair with his arms crossed.

  “An uncomfortable sleep,” said Morigan after the long pause. “Bad dreams.”

  “Oh, fuk,” said Mouse.

  Thackery shushed her and laid a hand upon Morigan’s forearm. Morigan did not glance at him. She didn’t speak for a long, long spell, and then spoke only one word.

  “Brutus.”

  That one word broke the spell of silence. “I saw him in Pandemonia,” she resumed. “Either in the recent past or in our future. I felt the evil that drives him. I touched her, or she somehow touched me…the Black Queen.” Gasps and shivers spread through the company. “I believe she holds great sway in Pandemonia. I believe we are headed into the territory of our enemy. And that is not all, my friends. I encountered…a spirit. Another walker in dreams. Dark and wicked, and willingly so. I cannot say what this creature was or whom it serves, but it is malign and grim and full of doom.”

  Done, Morigan hung her head. The Wolf brought a huge hand to her shoulder and squeezed. Having spent hourglasses in the Crucible conspiring with Gloriatrix and Elissandra, Moreth knew that seers often glimpsed a bit more prophecy with the right prodding, the right questions. This seer was still in the thrall of her nightmare, still attuned to the Fates. He felt as if he could reach out, wave his hand around her, and feel the invisible silver sparks leap from her eyes. There would be no better occasion to press this witch for truths.

  “Would you say that we shall find what we seek?” he asked. “In Pandemonia?”

  Using the fullness of her senses, the buzzing prophets that were her bees, the instincts of the fire wolf in her chest, and the primal rush of her heart as she considered his question, Morigan sought an answer. A specific, determined future could not be found, although the tingle of destiny ran through her. “Yes,” she said.

  Interesting, thought Moreth, and returned to his questioning.

  “What is it? A weapon?”

  “No.”

  “An answer?”

  “Yes.”

  “Shall we meet our enemy?”

  The tingle in Morigan became a jolt. “Our truth,” she snapped.

  Black blades of shadow suddenly crossed the room, and the skycarriage hit a surge of battering winds. The company was forced to ignore the implications of Morigan’s doomsaying so that they could cling to bolted-down seats for safety. Imperturbable, Moreth raised a gloved finger and started to launch into another question for the seer, but the Wolf barked him into reconsidering. A few sands later, when the vessel had not calmed, but only intensified its rocking, Moreth quietly addressed the issue of the turbulence. Not many heard him over the rattle of wind on metal, or paid heed through the flickering darkness; they felt as though they were in a tin can being tossed in a hurricane.

  “It’s Pandemonia,” he explained. “We’ve arrived.”

  IV

  The company gathered in the supply bay of the Skylark as it sputtered over the sea. Its engines struggled to resist the magik-warping effects of Pandemonia; it could not hover here for long. The time for goodbyes was short. Morigan and Mouse, who usually joined in labor, instead allowed the men to pack their steel-girded and warlike oarboat. Sitting in the deep vessel, the ladies craned their necks to watch the black water sloshing over the ship’s bay—a portion of the Skylark’s hull that had been separated and lowered into the sea as a giant gangplank. They wrinkled their noses at the burning stink of salt, brine, and soil that issued forth from the ocean. Caenith did most of the lifting; the other fellows mostly slipped about. Adam would never have a pair of sea legs, Mouse realized, trying not to laugh at his stumbles on the wet dock. Once the oarboat had been packed with supplies and all seven companions were aboard, Alastair untied the rope from its cleat and threw it to the Wolf to catch. The shadowbroker’s contract had been fulfilled: he had brought them to Pandemonia’s border. From this point on, they would be at the mercy of Moreth and Fate. As powerful currents pulled the company’s vessel away, Alastair bid them fair parting.

  “Good fortune and safe travels,” he said, turning his gaze on Mouse. “Watch out for them, Fionna.”

  Strange and meaningful words, observed Mouse, as Alastair rarely misplaced his warnings. She waved back at the man, who was already a ghost in the ocean mist that covered the landscape. The vessel drifted until the Wolf hopped to the stern, grabbed the oars, and began beating the water with his strength. Their craft was deep, its bulkheads so tall only the Wolf got a proper view of the seascape. The rest of the company settled for peering out the unused oar slots.

  For a time, they saw nothing through the fog. They swayed and huddled together for warmth like doomed slaves—with Moreth, perhaps, as their slave-master. He sat alone at the bow of the craft: primly upright, cane atop his lap. Even for this dangerous safari, he had donned his bowler hat. The man’s poise appeared unshakeable. Mouse believed men like him to be the most dangerous breed, because they did not fear death or change. Morigan clung to Mouse, worried about either the Menosian’s unnerving poise or some other terror. Mouse wished she could tell her friend that things would be all right, but she could not lie. The creeping fear of what they’d find here became a sickness in her throat. And she couldn’t see a damn thing. She could hear only the hiss and splash of wind and sea, smell only the salty reek of an unfamiliar ocean. If her father, Vortigern, were here, she knew he would have inspired them all with his charm and composure. Vortigern, though, was dead. He could not be here to hold her hand or to gasp a potpourri-scented breath at the sudden lights in the distance, which flickered as the morning mist broke.

  Perhaps the strings of this mystery were what pulled them like puppets to their feet and had them standing on the benches and leaning against the hull to peer. Spiny, glowing things swam alongside the vessel. The creatures flashed in and out of the dark waters like lures leading the companions on. The company stared, speechless, past the quiet shadow of the Master of El to an island shore that dazzled in places like diamonds, or ice. By the Kings, every tall tale of Moreth’s suddenly rung true. Behind the shore rose a many-humped land of green, blue, and phosphorescent growth. Fuchsia trails, rolling purple clouds, and here and there, flashes of emerald lightning sparkled over the strange land like a colorful mirage. They could not grasp what they felt or saw; they were torn between extremes of awe, wonder, and dread. As they stared, they knew that what they witnessed—however queer—was but a taste of the bizarre, a prelude to the true feast of chaos they would dine on when they landed.

  II

  TEETH

  I

  A beach. That much, at least, the company recognized as they pondered their landing. Near where their boat bobbed, there ran a shoreline of ashen silt, pointed shale, and crystal rocks mixed together like burned and unfinished glass. Gray crabs congregated on stones, or poked their stalked eyes out of the sand like stealthy rogues, watching the strangers. Beyond the beach was a great craggy hill that would challenge each companion’s strength. They shivered when guessing what awaited them atop that climb, beneath a skyline of dense, rumbling, violet clouds. On trembling legs, the company stood aside as the grunting Wolf splashed into the ocean and pulled the boat to shore. Moreth stood ahead, glaring and defiant.

  Although he presented a front as brave as Moreth’s, the Wolf suffered from confusion and doubt. Already, his senses seemed disordered. Warning smells—smoky, earthy, musky, honeyed, mossy—polluted the air with a near insuffera
ble redolence. His hearing fared no better: he was unable to identify a single one of the innumerable animal clacks, tweets, and roars that sung down from the wall of rock. Suddenly, he realized that a hunter—no matter how great—without specific knowledge of his environment and all these alien smells and rainforest echoes, might be a blind and useless man. Morigan’s star, shining steadily in his chest, calmed his nerves and anger a little in this realm of instability. Once the boat was ashore, he stood behind his bloodmate and mind-whispered his fears to her.

  My hide crawls with danger. I do not know what to focus on, or where to bark. The chaos of this realm bewilders my senses.

  I am no better at sorting through the madness myself, my Wolf. Fragments of memory and time are everywhere.

  It seemed impossible that the day could become any stranger, but as she shuffled ahead over the silt beach, Morigan saw lines drawn in the sky—faint scintillating strings of glass, arranged in a definite convergence and pattern. She didn’t know what they were, though her bees seemed to have an idea. Agitatedly, her bees pressed their stingers against their cage of flesh; they wanted to play those strings of fate or magik in the sky and hear their music. Morigan flailed and then found the Wolf’s arm. Like his bloodmate, he’d walked on, nearly unaware of his own actions. He could not see the strings in the sky; instead, he fixated on what lay over the rise they needed to climb. Another mysterious instrument lay there, one with strings that twanged tunes of animal cries, nauseating stenches, and delirious sights.

  The Menosian will guide us; that is why he has come, said Morigan.

  Caenith growled and glared back at the man dusting the ashy sand off his overcoat. Moreth was totally unaffected by the strangeness around them, behaving as if he’d stepped off the deck of a pleasure cruiser to begin his vacation. In his shadow, the two scholars, Mouse, and Adam waited. The Wolf felt as if their positions were a subconscious acknowledgment of their new pack master. The Wolf did not know how not to lead. Was he to fall into step behind this wicked man? Could he actually listen to Moreth’s orders and not rip out his throat? Morigan squeezed the Wolf’s hand before he stormed up the hill.