For a moment, she stood ruminating while she fluffed, shook, and stomped the grit from her clothing. The Herald always hesitated before entering this hall, not because she was afraid of walking into the warm darkness ahead, but because of a memory she could not clearly recall. Mother Zionae had taken that memory from her, mercifully removing it from her mind. The Herald could remember much of her life and mistreatment. She could remember as far back as the blurry days when Zionae had first whispered to her. She could remember entering into a pact with the Dark Dreamer…she had spoken the words, the vow, to let Zionae in, to free herself from an inconsolable, immeasurable pain…That agony, though, was now a cipher to the Herald. Any trace of the incident had been excised from the soft matter in her skull. Surely, that memory must have been one of horror itself, an event so wretched, so miserable, that the Dark Dreamer herself had been stirred from slumber and moved to mercy.
Whatever it was that had happened, she never wanted to remember it. So she stood there, shaking, fighting tears, clutching and caressing her belly for an unexplainable reason, as traces of this unfathomable terror crawled over her flesh.
“Herald!”
Brutus’s roaring summons came from the deep darkness of the hall; he must have heard or sniffed her presence. Blending in like a chameleon with the bloody shadows, a Redeye in his black-and-red garments lurked nearby; she hadn’t noticed him before. The gaunt, burned-smelling fellow strode forward to take her arm and lead her into the inner sanctum. The Herald left her dark past in the dust where she’d been standing, and strode with confidence to meet the Sun King. The future was meant for those of strength, not sorrow.
Suckling noises could be heard, and the sweaty, bestial reek of the Sun King intensified in the air as she approached. The bloodbath around her was mostly concealed by the dark. Brutus had been either angry or lustful, perhaps both, and the carpet that lay before him was thick with footprints, scattered tomes, and the red, sandy porridge of offal and death. Those who had avoided the full consequences of Brutus’s appetite cringed in the shadows, mewling and bleeding. A few rattled their chains and mumbled prayers; the Herald hoped they would stop, as pleading tended only to enrage the Sun King, and if they kept it up, they would not live to receive the Dark Dreamer’s gift of rebirth. Getting close now, she stepped around a headless, steaming carcass torn in twain from shoulder to hip, and held her nose against the stink of shite and piss.
The Redeye left her to meet the king on her own. She walked ahead, stirred by the carnage, pondering. The Dark Dreamer’s gift brought out the deepest, most untamed desires of one’s heart. Zionae mined from the soul pleasures and urges, both pure and depraved, men had not even realized they possessed. Zionae bequeathed to her chosen their truest desire. The Herald thought Brutus’s must have been to live free of mortal grief and regret, to become a beast unchained. And the Sun King had certainly that wildness.
As for the Herald herself, she’d wanted to forget her darkest pain and to have power over those who had wronged her. She also wanted to live in luxury and elegance, which is where she and Brutus differed. Still, there was room for all desires under the Dark Dreamer’s reign. Brutus would have his kingdom of animal pleasures and endless hunts—elsewhere, back in Central Geadhain, she presumed. The Herald, for her part, would realize her designs for the resurrection of Aesorath, making it a queendom of cold rule and refinement.
Now that Brutus had returned to Pandemonia, they were forced somewhat to impose their desires upon each other. Neither the acolyte nor the son had struggled with the arrangement so far. Holding on to the knowledge of their mutual esteem and the temporary nature of the arrangement made it easier for the Herald to squelch her way through the soupy slop of blood that surrounded the Sun King’s throne. She approached the king as close as she was able, her footwear and toes becoming slicked with blood. Then she bowed to the giant shape before her.
Flames danced in the many braziers placed around and behind what had once been the throne and dais of a Keeper, their light revealing the great shadow that sat on the blocky, hewn throne—a shadow that seemed itself to be made of crude rock. Brutus could always be smelled if not seen: his buttery, lusty funk might have come from a herd of animals. His fiery warmth made the Herald break into a sweat whenever she was near him.
On the wall behind the king was carved a mural that depicted the earliest tribes of Pandemonia scattering from a flaming cataclysm hurled from above: the Day of Skyfall. A scene that had once impressed the Herald with its grandeur, it now seemed childish next to the dark presence of his highness. After bowing, she rose. Brutus came forward to greet her.
A nude, hairy leg, twisted with muscle, thick as a tree, emerged first from the shadows. After a moment, the remainder of the gargantuan king was exposed by the warm light of the chamber. Brutus was always a shock to one’s sight, with his chest as broad and veined as two marble slabs, skin sheened in bronze, hands each of which could crush a ribcage. Upon his chest grew a pelt of the blackest fur, like the proud tufting of a lion, while on his handsome head were curls like those of a king of beast’s mane. What handsomeness the king still possessed was dwarfed by the elemental rage contained behind his tense, snarling facade; his eyes were like spheres of trapped lightning, ready to storm; his jaw could snap bone as easily as bread. A blood-stained sash and kilt made of copper scale covered little of his great glittering flesh. In spite of his grisly traits and odors, the Herald still found the Sun King impressive and alluring: for he was man, sex, power, and death—everything carnal in the world contained in one being.
Once, the Herald had whispered the bitterest truths into his ear. Like a mother bird regurgitating food to her young, she’d nourished him with the secrets of Zionae that had once been fed to her. She and Brutus, therefore, shared an intimacy that transcended respect. He knew this, and now ceased his bellowing and adopted a more temperate demeanor. He stopped, towering over the tiny woman, and spoke. “Herald, I smell worry upon you.”
“You smell anger, too.”
“I do. Why?”
“I was attacked in the Dreaming, nearly killed in an ambush.”
Brutus unleashed a torrent of abuse, examining her with his great hands, his sniffs, and his thunderous stares. She held still for a time, then finally waved him off.
“I have mended what wounds were caused. Your son’s teeth are sharp.”
“My…son…”
He spoke dreamily, as if he did not fully understand the concept of offspring and parenting. As she did every time his child was mentioned, she suspected that part of the memory Brutus sought had been eaten, for his sake, by the Dark Dreamer. There was also a chance that Brutus had evolved so far into his bestial nature that he no longer understood attachments of heredity. It was as if he had become the lion that mated and left his cubs to the care of his pride. She felt she should remind him a little of this attachment, as it related to what she would suggest next. “Yes, your son,” she said. “A child of great power, great promise. A creature of two natures: man and beast. A creature much like yourself.”
“No creature shares my throne. I sit alone,” declared Brutus, with a growl.
“I do not mean to imply that he is greater than you, only that he is great.”
“Strong?”
“The strongest I have seen, other than you.”
“Savage?”
“His bloodlust is art in motion.”
“Hmph.”
Undecided, Brutus paced around in a circle. Hunger often clouded the king’s mind, and clarity would come only with satiety. He called for a Redeye to bring one of the praying natives to him. A man was dragged into the light. Brutus snapped the scream from the scrawny man’s neck, twisted off his pulpy head, and squeezed the essence from him as if he were a sausage. The Herald looked away and busied herself with a study of the mural. She tuned out the king’s gurgles and slurps. She didn’t have to wait terribly long until a freshly crimson king stormed over to her, again ready to talk. She
took note of how he clenched and unclenched his hands, still yearning to squeeze something, and prepared her most delicate words.
“Why can I not remember him?” demanded the king. “This son of whom you speak? I should remember a child born of my greatness.”
“I cannot say. Mother Zionae has also taken memories from me, to make me strong.”
“Why do you mention him now?”
With a finger, she beckoned the king nearer. He obeyed her and knelt. She crept around his grand shoulder, brushed back his oiled mane, and whispered poison in his ear. “I have mentioned him before, my king, only you forget. We forget what we have asked Zionae to help us forget. You would not want memories of him anyhow, shameful and bound like a dog as he is to the Daughter of Fate.”
The king stood up, snarling. Time and again, Mother and the Herald had warned him of this woman, Morigan, a creature as willful and spiteful as his brother. The Daughter of Fate had dedicated herself to unraveling each and every thread of Mother’s great tapestry. This woman had nurtured alliances and thwarted the greatest of Zionae’s feints—often unwittingly, as if her very existence affected destiny. Now, Morigan had claimed his son. Whatever a son was, Morigan’s taking of it felt like another slight to his pride.
“I feel your anger,” said the Herald, trembling, aroused by the rage of the Immortal. Sinuous as a snake, she slithered around the huffing giant. She coaxed his madness with sensual touches to his lower back, stomach, and the inside of his thigh. “As you know, the Daughter of Fate is here in Pandemonia. She has exposed herself. Never have our paths aligned so perfectly; we now have an opportunity to strike. Zionae wanted me to offer the Daughter of Fate salvation, and I have done my best to carry out this duty. However, Morigan is too stubborn, a woman without ears. She will not hear me. Like your brother, she allows fear to deafen her to greatness. I do not know whether either of them can be saved. We are left, then, with only one choice, should Zionae permit us to make it…”
Pausing, the Herald listened with the whole of her heart for an answer. In the windless, stale chamber, the flames of the braziers suddenly flickered, the shadows churned and thickened, cringing men still sane cried out as a warm sickness passed through them, and the Dark Dreamer whispered to her Herald. The whisper was strong tonight, a hammer in the Herald’s head that stunned her with lights and sounds.
Into the deepest dark, a velvet stream of stars and space, she spins. Where have you taken me? she wonders. What do you want me to see? The Herald stops spinning and hovers. A wide plane of darkness, like the mirror into which she often stares, floats before her. A terrible crackle fills her head, like thunder and lightning and broken glass shaken in a bag beside her ears—the voice of her master. As she watches, the shadows painting the mirror of darkness are ripped apart, like gift paper torn by claws, revealing scenes beneath. She must look quickly if she would see them: the Dark Dreamer is not a prophet, and these possible futures will not be clear.
A woman of ivory and fire—Morigan—walks toward a shining dot on the land. The image is rent asunder, and the Herald hears what could be the howl of a wolf before the sounds of thunder and broken glass deafen her once more. From under the torn image emerges a view from within the city Morigan approaches: someone looks upward, awed by the silver towers that reach into the storm clouds. This is Eatoth. The Herald knows the city from the memories Zionae has allowed her to keep. What must I see in Eatoth, master? What? she wonders, as the mirror-pane trembles and readies to break. The glass into which she gazes shatters. Fragments fly toward the Herald, and she is thrown from Dream. One spinning triangle of black glass thrusts into her eye. In the dazzling pain of blindness, the Herald somehow sees a blue glimmer, a light so pure it can only be the shine of one of the greatest of wonderstones: an arkstone.
Brutus watched the Herald. Tonight, Zionae did not speak to him; in fact, Mother had communicated with him little of late. Nonetheless, he felt Mother’s presence surrounding them in the chamber. A less animal mind would have questioned the Dark Dreamer’s confiding in the Herald so much. Instead, impatient and twitching, the king waited for the Herald to awake.
Soon the Herald snapped into alertness, returning from where she’d been; her nose had been bleeding, and she dabbed at it while talking. “Yes. It has been ordained. She has spoken. I know what must be done. I have watched Zionae’s grand designs unfold in a vision. We have a great many tasks ahead of us, my king. First, we must find another arkstone to counter any future threat from your brother. The army we are building here will not be enough; we may need to summon the sleeping Father of Fire again. Of paramount importance is that we stop the Daughter of Fate from reaching the Scar. Our riders lost her in the West, but I know where she intends to go: Eatoth. There, we shall end the Daughter of Fate and reclaim your son. We shall anoint him with the blood of his bloodmate and forever swear him to our cause. Think of that glory, my king, of storming the City of Waterfalls and making its waters run red.”
Brutus was disappointed there would be no immediate action or violence. To soothe the frowning and grumbling beast, the Herald gave the king a sly smile and another caress on the fur trail on his abdomen. “You should be happy, my king. Your son is coming home.”
Brutus felt neither happy nor sad. In a few sands, after the Herald’s hand had descended lower, he forgot everything about this son.
VI
AFTER THE FALL
I
The world as Aadore and Sean had known it was gone. Menos, the eternal city of iron, had fallen. They lived in the aftermath of that apocalypse. The city was filled now with shattered and smoke-shrouded mounds, the muffled red auras of buildings still writhing in fire, and the groaning, sloppy tumble of those iron-boned structures that had withstood the earth’s heaving, splitting, and swallowing. What would this place look like once the smoke faded? It would be yet another nightmare. But they couldn’t think of that now: they had to think of life.
With the ruins of Queen’s Station at their backs, and only smoke and doom ahead, Sean needed to decide where to go. He picked a direction and strode forward. Sean’s leadership was unwavering even when they were out in the wrecked city and wandering amid billows of ashy smog. A soldier, Sean performed at his best during crises. The loud drowning grumble of the city’s slow decay surrounded them, making it feel as if they walked through a thunderhead; the noise was calming and dreadful all at once. In the smoking horror of their city, amid the smoldering pyres, the charred statues that could be men, the burst pipes spraying filthy water and shite, they could not tell night from day. They knew not whether they were sane or insane. It was easier to feel hollow, they decided, though there was really no other option. Only the hollow could have avoided leaping at the sound of that first mortal cry and rushing toward its source. Neither they nor the babe they’d rescued earlier from the collapse of Queen’s Station had cried out in response. Instead, they’d waited, Aadore rocking the baby. The adults almost smiled at their canniness when the screaming intensified beyond a summons, suddenly carrying notes of raw terror. After that, an abrupt silence had fallen. Whoever had screamed was dead. Brother, sister, and somehow even infant knew what to expect now, and they moved more cautiously through the fog of death, ignoring all further screams. They steered away from any contact, lest they met whatever hunted unseen.
Brother and sister stuck to the shells of buildings and carefully tiptoed through the warm soot that remained in the carcasses of ruined houses. They waded through sewage-filled alleys. They walked along great rubble-banked splits in the city that had eaten homes and streets. Throughout their explorations, the infant remained still, content to suck a finger when one was offered. Occasionally, the child coughed because of the bitter, barely breathable air. At some point, brother and sister had wordlessly decided that this child was, and forever would be, a part of their family. They reaffirmed this through glances whenever they peered at each other’s filth-stained faces in the mist. During their prowl, they spoke mostly thr
ough such gazes and expressions. They nodded at holes in which to scurry, narrowed their eyes and shook their heads to indicate a need for caution when shapes shuffled nearby in the murk. These shapes did not suggest living men, and neither sibling wished to probe the heart of that mystery; they sensed it would be revealed soon enough.
Whenever the fog of death cleared for a speck, Aadore would look for signs—not actual signposts, although a few of those still stood, but for indications of where they were headed. At one point, they raced across a broad stretch of warm road that ran with blackish-red oils. The oils were slippery, and she almost fell. Yet Sean, even with his wooden leg and hobble, caught his sister. Aadore reserved her thanks, for there were shapes moving in the streets, and silence was the language of survival. As they hurried for the cover of an alleyway, she saw a ruined storefront with a broken sign: the filthy loaves and trampled tarts littering the ground told her it had once been a bakery. RAMUS, read the half of the sign she could see as she and her brother cowered behind a heap of roofing and wood. She guessed the shop was likely Ramusen’s, one of her favorite patisseries. If that were the case, they were on the right path and making toward home. A combination of Sean’s keen senses and instincts and her wit might just lead them there, she realized. Suddenly, she felt grateful that the Lady El had sent her on so many shopping expeditions throughout the city. Because of them, she carried a map in her mind, though she’d need to be on alert for clues in this chaos. There would be no carriages to expedite the journey this time; reaching her neighborhood might take a day or even longer—
Dead, she thought, her throat dry as bone, all her plotting at a halt. They’re dead.
Shadows shambled past their hideaway. Like iron children, she and her brother remained motionless, managing somehow not to gag as they were assailed by the bouquet of raw flesh that followed in the wake of the horde. They tried to master their revulsion when they glimpsed bowlegged humanoids with burst ribcages spilling swollen entrails, eyeballs swinging on corded stalks from their sockets, bones jutting through torn green skin—or heard snarls from chewed-up faces. As she clung to her brother and shielded the babe, Aadore could feel only her own trembling. She wondered what, in his time away, Sean had seen that could keep him calm when confronted with the walking dead. Regardless, now brother and sister knew what hunted in the fog.
Feast of Chaos (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 3) Page 24