The company was in danger. Morigan took a speck, a precious speck, to listen to her bees. She and the Wolf had traveled far, so far, from their bodies and the mortal world that it now felt more like a dream than this. What she saw of that otherworld was no dream, though, but a confusing nightmare with flashes of silver light and screams: ghost men were swarming two of her friends. For once, the Dreamstalker, this Queen of Lies, had spoken a truth. The Herald’s death could wait. Morigan spurred on her fire wolf, and the two galloped off and vanished into a ripple in the sky.
With Morigan gone, the magik that bound the Herald to this vision suddenly ended. She shrieked in rage and then disappeared in a twister of bugs and sand.
VII
The Herald awoke, torn back to awareness by a jolt of pain and fear. Rarely did she experience either, and she lay entangled in her sheets in a cold sweat. The heaving of her breath and the hammering of her heart dazed her. She could not recall the last time she had felt her mortality. Or tasted the bitter liquor of fear in her throat. Or smelled her own fear-rank armpits. Interesting; irritating. That damnable Daughter of Fate and her mongrel lover.
Cursing and groaning from the deep, raw tooth marks and claw marks in her forearm and shin, she rolled from her bed and onto the dusty floor, landing hard and groaning again. After a moment, she stood and stumbled across her wide room, which was lavishly decorated with crimson veils, tiles trimmed in glossed red ceramic, clay statues of men and women engaged in penetration and murder, and sometimes both. During her progress across her chamber, she added much of her own blood to the ruby patterns on the floor. The animal-son of Brutus had grievously harmed her.
At the other end of her chamber hung an oval mirror framed in an orgy of small gargoyles. Since she looked at herself many times each day, she knew what she should see. The maroon punctures, seeping red trails, welts, and one glistening fissure that winked with a hint of bone exerted a pull of fascination she could not resist.
She called to the power that lay within her: the divinity of the Black Queen. Zionae’s glory filled the chamber with a dark aura, and veins of black spread over her. Although the Dark Dreamer was the Mother of Creation, her magik was primal and unkind, and the Herald cried out as it twisted her guts and flesh, ripping her matter. Then, in the inferno of pain, the Herald was reborn. The shadow enveloping her pulsed, then faded, and she rose from the floor to which she’d fallen.
In the mirror, she examined the tanned, unbroken skin on her arm and leg. She swept back her tumbling ebon hair and cast admiring stares at herself through catlike eyes while tilting her small chin from side to side. Finally, she did a slow spin to check her voluptuous backside and then her small, brown-nippled breasts. A hundred years and then some, and she looked the same as when Zionae had first spoken to her.
Morigan and her misguided fellows fought the wrong enemy. They knew not the benevolence, honesty, and purity of Zionae’s rule. The Dark Dreamer offered many, many gifts, and every one of them came free if a person had the Will, the right, to live. The uninformed daughter did not understand that the Dreamer crushed only the Wills and souls of the weak, the ones of no worth. Men and women of the greatest mettle, however, those who could withstand the screaming presence and shattering grief of the Mother of Creation, those who were as fierce and wronged as Zionae herself…those champions were forged into paragons.
Paragons like myself, thought the Herald.
From an age ago, she remembered the voice of the Keeper Superior, chastising her for having taken the briefest of glances into a pool of still water, telling her how immoral it was simply to like oneself. Child! You vainglorious whore. A Keeper’s role is to watch, never to intercede. We are the ear, but not the voice—the wisdom, but not the hand, of justice. Do not cultivate an appreciation for your flesh, for what men would consider beauty. Looking outside too often will damage your ability to look within, much as I shall now damage you with this cane. Pray for your sins.
“You would have me be nothing.” The Herald scowled. “Now, I shall become everything.”
Once this bout of mad passion subsided, the Herald realized she argued with the ghost of a woman ages departed from this life. She went to dress herself. Brutus would need to be informed of last night’s intrusion, if he hadn’t already sensed the disturbance himself. She and Brutus shared many experiences, as each had been touched and chosen by Zionae; however, they rarely spoke in each other’s heads for his mind was a whirlwind. She preferred to report to him in person.
She came to a grand cherry-lacquered cabinet carved in hideous motifs—screaming women, horned men with pronged genitalia—and threw it open with a gesture and a burst of Will. Hanging on a peg within were many fashionable garments: ball gowns, frocks of emerald lace, flowing satin shifts. The Herald dallied while deciding what to wear, ultimately selecting a hooded gown so sinfully maroon that it seemed black. It almost resembled one of the bland habits commonly worn by a Keeper, but it had been darted on the bodice, laced like a corset, modified to have princess sleeves and flow at the waist—it was far showier, fit for an appearance at court. She’d embroidered the hood and trim with feliron thread: an enchantment to deflect blades and magik. A shame she couldn’t wear such protections in Dream, where her only defenses were illusions and horrifying disguises. Morigan appeared to have figured out her game, the clever girl.
Illusions still served their purpose in this world, however. Hastily, she picked out a pair of amethyst-studded sandals from one of the many rows of ornate, stilted, and strange footwear in her armoire, then strode back to the mirror. She fluttered her fingers over her face in a motion that suddenly puffed her visage with a black cloud like a lady’s powder. When the shadow dust had wafted away, her face appeared bronzed, her eye-sockets arced in purple, her cheekbones highlighted, her lips painted in a glossy, winey hue. “Mirror, mirror…” she said, thinking of the ancient faerytale of the West.
This time, though, it was the villain who would enjoy a happy ending: this time, the Daughter of Fate would die.
VIII
The Herald walked along the windy ramparts, her garments flapping in the sand and storm. From over the broken crenellations to her side, from all the way down in the dilapidated jails beneath the city, came a chorus of screams from the newly captured tribesmen—music to her ears. What grand suffering, she thought: metamorphosis could not be rewarding without pain; her own transformation had been no less agonizing.
Such an abundance of voices meant good tidings for the army they built here. As more men and women were hollowed out, more Blackeyes were born and sent to harvest bodies. Given the hardiness of Pandemonia’s natives, she and Brutus had seen even greater success here than in Central Geadhain: some of those who survived the often fatal transformation retained a shred of individuality, were capable of freethinking, as she and the king were. Thus she and the king had not only fodder now, but also generals and heroes for their cause. Brutus’s blood and seed, the essences of an Immortal, possessed mutagenic wonders and properties that she continued to discover to this day—wonders that had allowed Brutus, not a sorcerer by definition or study, to raise enormous golems of flesh and seared ruin to assault Gorgonath. Brutus had reanimated dead matter through a rudimentary rite of bloodmagik, simply opening his veins over a charnel pit of corpses, and then sculpting the sloppy, malleable decomposition into gargantuan worms.
That, at least, was the tale told by the Sun King, and she had no reason to question it. After the blood rite had been performed, he had commanded the monstrosities to move, to rise, and they had. Amazing, she thought; his magik seemed more art than discipline. The blood of the Immortals could change the building blocks of life itself; it could transform man into another species. Such an opportunity must not be wasted. The Herald imagined what miracles of meta-engineering could be achieved with the winter secrets embedded in Magnus, and regretted that she had not been present for his brief capture.
The Herald passed a few of the new breed: men shro
uded in scarlet cloaks, their eyes aglow with fire, all visible body parts branded in incandescent runes. A diminutive Redeye opened a creaking, half-shattered door for her as she exited the outdoor path. The gesture was not an extension of the mindless automation of most of Zionae’s vessels, but a conscious act of courtesy. She sensed the vestiges of the proverbial cocoon still clinging to this pupa, and did not bother him for anything more. In a few days, the Redeye would be able to speak, if necessary, and to engage in the planning for war.
The Herald considered herself a modern, and quite liked that the terms for her soldiers had been imported from the fearful flocks of the West: Blackeyes and Redeyes. Simple and clear in their distinctions. She gave the new Redeye a smile, and he responded with a stiff and ghastly grin before she passed into one of Aesorath’s great towers. The whole of the ancient city was made such that, bridge to tower to bridge, it stretched across the land like its own horizon. Reaching back through her ancient mind, she recalled how the city had shone before its fall. She would make it shine again, if with a redder, more ominous light. She remembered the first time she’d witnessed Aesorath’s majesty, through the glass of an airborne vessel—another wonder among wonders she and her sister had seen after being taken by the Keepers.
When the Keeper Superior herself, the Holiest of Holies, comes for her, “relieving” her from her simple life of hunting and surviving, she resents her. She feels as if her fate has been ordained for her, that she has been robbed of choice. In the sleepless nights that follow, she misses the songs and joy of her tribe. She misses the simple act of speaking, which she is told she will need to start learning how not to do. For she has inherited the great calm, they say: the ability to hear the world’s most ancient and buried secrets—or something like that. She doesn’t care. She has never felt special. She has never wanted for any wonders beyond her mother, father, and sister. At least her sister has been taken, too, so they are fellow sufferers. Not to speak or to sing—that is a sentence of eternal misery.
But as she is shaken awake on the skycarriage, she feels her first pang of excitement. Out in the desert rises a shimmering gold line; great spires and glorious twists come off of it like rays from a sun. Can this be a real place? What is she seeing? More of the City of Winds comes into view, more of its auric towers with pointed crystal roofs and lines of windows wrapped like ribbons of glass around great cylinders. The whole horizon shines, and dawn has only just begun. As she watches, dawn creeps behind the shimmering city, and her eyes are dazzled with rainbows and spots. She cannot glance away. She doesn’t want even to blink. She holds her sister, also awake now, and their joy grows to hysteria as the wind rises and flows through Aesorath’s carefully, artistically crafted channels, archways, and smokeless piped chimneys. The whole city sings for the sisters: high and low flutes, whistles and wordless gasps that are nearly voices. She and her sister are scolded by the Keeper Superior for laughing, then separated from each other.
An unpleasant voice echoes in their heads once the wards have finished giving them a cursory beating: “Do not corrupt yourself with mirth. Do not surrender to even the smallest vice. You are to be ones on high; you must be above mankind. This is only a pilgrimage to the four Great Cities; you will find no enjoyment or permanence here. You may never see the greatness of Aesorath again; you may not survive your training in Intomitath. Remember every whistle, stone, and grain of sand; your memories will be all you have on your journey to the afterlife.”
I shall see the city once more, decides the young woman. I shall make it mine.
According to what she could remember from before the blackness had clouded her memory, she had fulfilled that vow and ruled Pandemonia’s most glorious city. Some of Aesorath’s grandeur had survived the fall of the city. Between the larger pillars supporting the dizzyingly tall tower through which she walked shimmered vertical strings as fine as those on a glass fiddle. There had been a time when musicians, talented Faithful, had sat on the age-softened, deteriorated benches near the wall of music and played warming melodies that had made the whole of Aesorath hum. It would become one great hymn, one grand meditation, sometimes lasting for hourglasses, in which the city could share. The space was empty now, filled only by the tapping of her feet and the faint chattering of sand vermin. The vacancy would have disturbed a woman of lesser character, but she found the silence comforting, as if it were a promise waiting to be fulfilled. As she passed through the song tower and out onto another brittle walkway and crumbled parapet, a screaming wind tore at her and banished her wistfulness.
Sandstorms clouded her view of the desert, but she could hear the tapping of fine tools and the dragging of stones as Blackeyes labored in the dark courtyards below. Brick by brick, they were clumsily rebuilding the fallen city. A hum of machinery purred under her feet: in the subterranean depths, her workmen were restoring Aesorath’s ultimate achievement, the ancient Gate of Wind. She remembered its ornamented beauty: it had been like a wreath of glowing serpents and mist. She’d ordered that the Gate be restored with newer, darker touches: carved, lamprey-like figures and winged horrors. The last time she had been down to see how far her workmen had progressed, she’d sat upon a gargoyle statue waiting to be worked into the great ovoid frame of the Gate, and lost an hourglass or more to gawking. With this technomagik, and sufficient energy, Brutus would be able to transport himself anywhere in Geadhain. Once the Gate was complete, no realm on Geadhain would be safe from his army.
Although the workforce was made up of brainless automatons, progress had been made in rebuilding the city and its ancient technomagik. The Blackeyes couldn’t be blamed for their awkwardness: the weakest of Zionae’s children were but remotely operated puppets. It was a miracle that the Blackeyes could handle warfare and complex tasks at all; that they could do so was a credit to her master’s Will. The Herald expected that the pace of work would increase in the coming weeks as more and more people were converted and more Redeyes emerged from the chaff. In the months since Brutus’s return to Pandemonia, they had raised nearly three thousand men: an alchemically bred army birthed from the perfect elixir of Brutus’s blood, seed, and magik (the recipe was another of her masterstrokes of genius)—no raping required, though try telling the king that. The tribes of Pandemonia had forsaken her many lifetimes ago, or so it felt to the Herald; they had left her with nothing, as nothing. The Keepers forbade the use of her name: it could not be spoken or recorded in their sanctuaries. She-who-will-not-be-named. She had been purposefully forgotten by her people, erased from history. Soon, though, the wretches would remember, would speak her name in horror. I am no sad story. I am triumph. I am glory.
The Herald’s haven lay a fair walk from the nest of Zionae’s son, and while she was Lady of the Winds, a supreme master of the element itself, and could have transported herself to Brutus in an instant, she wasn’t above a good stroll. It was good practice to clear her head of wandering thoughts before engaging with the king, who required her absolute attention. So she entered and exited another empty, music-less song tower, then moved from the higher tiers of the city down an ancient stairway built into the battlements. After reaching the ground, she traveled along the outskirts of Aesorath. The winds and howling lessened at this elevation as she bade them to be quieter; the yellow moon’s shadow revealed here and there the faint shades of Blackeyes and of the sand pits and shifting dunes that had once been verdant landmarks. Neither tree nor green could survive without the arkstone’s magik. When she’d smashed Aesorath’s arkstone, she hadn’t realized the destruction would be so complete. In a handful of hourglasses, this city, which had stood untouched for thousands of years, had crumbled like a wet sandcastle overwhelmed by a tidal wave. Without the magik of the arkstone, Aesorath’s graceful glass towers and courts had no protection from the furious elements long kept at bay. Hiding in the catacombs beneath Aesorath as the city tumbled in upon itself, she’d had no view of the destruction. She felt it was better left to the imagination anyway, as she wand
ered through dust and sneered at the bones of her enemies ground into small granules under her feet. I did this, she thought, relishing the destruction. One woman—only a girl, then—had erased an entire civilization. And she had done more than that, even: she had heeded the voice of the Dark Dreamer and recruited Brutus to the cause.
After a long battle with the elements, the Herald returned indoors by way of an arch that appeared in the sandy haze. A deep, warm hallway tunneled through strides of stone and led her into a long hall lit with braziers and laid with a torn runner that gleamed with hints of gold thread. Other signs of opulence lay all about: dust-filled goblets, a huge, cracked globe of Geadhain drowning in a small dune, and metallic bookcases with grimy crystal shelves. Some of the real treasure of this realm had once been displayed upon these shelves, lore now scattered and lost along with a million ancient candles in heaps of sand. Directly across from the Herald as she entered stood a tarnished copper-and-feliron portcullis that could have withstood a blast or two from Magnus himself. The vault was opened now, its treasures no longer sealed or safe. She’d read much of that forbidden knowledge, here, or in many of Aesorath’s cloisters of contemplation; cavalierly absorbing the wisdom of these tomes and scrolls while dribbling crumbs or wine over the holiest of papyrus. The Faithful were denied most worldly pleasures, and she was now free of their rules and shame. As the Herald thought back to her lessons with the Keeper Superior, back to when this vault of sacred wisdom had glittered and shone with vainglorious wealth, she felt the same contempt now as she had then for the Keepers’ convenient bending of morality.
Feast of Chaos (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 3) Page 23