Morigan regains her queenly composure. She takes her friend’s hand, and they walk through the luminous fields, inhaling phantom perfumes of earth and freshness, enjoying the sun on their not-quite faces, staring at each other’s hues. When they have walked and basked enough, Morigan asks why Mouse is here. “My friend, my sister…I did not think I could be summoned, and yet you have done just that.”
“Your father’s gift,” replies Mouse. “I consider it his penance for using me as he did, for wearing my flesh.”
“Explain,” demands Morigan, and the light within her rises like a vengeful silver sun.
As Mouse recounts the tale of her strange abduction, her time with the Amakri, and the relic they now seek, Morigan’s sun sizzles into a soft frenzy. Still, she manages to restrain her anger.
“My father told me that the three of you had found safe harbor with the ghost men,” says Morigan.
“The Amakri—or Doomchasers, rather. It’s a bit complicated.”
“Isn’t everything? Father called them his eldest children; he’s been known to come to Geadhain and sow his seed. So it is not beyond the realm of possibility that they are indeed blood relatives of mine, much like the Daughters of the Moon from Alabion.” Morigan sighs. “I am angry that my father has kept information from me, that he decided we must be separated. I’d never have made that choice myself, yet…I think he was right to make these choices. Still, I don’t know whether my disappointment is his fault or whether we are the ones who err in expecting empathy, mortal empathy, from a creature who is not mortal, a creature who can only emulate and lust after what mortals feel. I have sensed this in my father: longing. How strongly he wishes to understand us, to be one of us, even. There are some barriers, though, that can never be crossed. Hmm…I do not think he means us any harm. Were it not for our separation, as vexing as it is—especially for Caenith, who feels he has failed us—we would not be able to be in two places at once: hunting relics and saving Eatoth.”
“Yes!” cries Mouse, and stops walking. “What of the great city?”
“We’re not there yet, though it’s just on the horizon.” Morigan’s light flickers with uncertainty. “During our approach to Eatoth, I have seen terrible visions of doom. I have seen a city in flames, its great waterfalls running red with blood. I cannot leave those people to their fate, not when we might have the power to stop it.”
They ponder the gloomy, fractured road that leads onward to the unknown. Their moods cause clouds to form in the sky. Looking up at the darkness, and then at each other, they choose to make the most of this moment away from life, war, and responsibility. They will steal this moment of bliss. As they smile, the sky clears.
“How are the others? Thackery? Adam?”
“Have you ever seen a dog that loses his master, then just sits by the door, staring at it? Well, that’s Adam at the moment. He’s only just returned to his two-legged form. We had a bit of an incident when he stayed in his other skin too long. I sense that he remained a wolf because he was concerned about how he might behave as a man—or perhaps he simply felt less lonely as an animal…As for your great-uncle…”
On they walk through the field of sunshine and dreams, talking as old girlfriends would, laughing hard at things that couldn’t possibly be that funny. The Wolf watches from afar—he never leaves his bloodmate to wander alone when they sleep, not anymore. As the women saunter, he keeps his huge, fuming shadow, a wrathful orange-and-red light, pressed low and invisible in the tall grasses. Mouse’s explanation of events does not dispel his unease, his suspicions of the Dreamer. To divide a pack, for whatever reason, is to weaken it. Although he does not have much of an understanding of Dreamers’ behaviors, instinct tells him that these creatures do not act with compassion or kindness any more than lions pity the prey whose bones they snap. For now, the Wolf will play the patient hunter: watching, holding his tongue, and biding his time. If the Dreamer betrays them a second time, he will have a new enemy to hunt.
IV
When the procession shuffled to life the next morning, Talwyn remained at the rear with his companions. The glaring sun painted him in a fresh and red-cheeked light. Mouse, too, appeared refreshed, as if she’d somehow had an invigorating sleep on the hard, frosted rock. Moreth found the pair of them insufferable until the kinks finally worked their way out of his back. Age was catching up with him, despite the excellent physical conditioning that wealth had afforded him in the Iron City. He no longer enjoyed such advantages, and he wondered how many years more he could squeeze out of his body before decrepitude, bone decay, and organ failure began to set in. Creaking bones would be the first sign. His father had been stricken by rheumatism just before all the organ transplants and grafts had been rejected by his body.
They continued on through the windy desert of snow until the sun crawled over the sapphire claws of the mountains. The great mountains caught the interest of the three and pulled them out of their spells. After a time, they realized they were all staring at the same landmarks.
“Not everything is impermanent in Pandemonia,” croaked Talwyn, his voice rusted and dry. He cleared his throat. “There are the Great Cities, and there are places such as this belt of rock where the seasons change more slowly and according to more modulated cycles. Idrytikó Aspídar: the Founding Shield.” Talwyn scuffed his feet in the snow until green land appeared beneath his heel. “Pythius tells me that the stone here never changes, not even when the earth’s skin melts or when potholes of fire appear. The mountains toward which we’re headed are also unchanging, their bones eternal. Pántus Pétrix…the Forever Stones. That’s why the tribe wanders these regions, because patterns underlie their apparent chaos. Pythius suggests that Feyhazir left the relic here because it would not be destroyed or lost over time.”
Talwyn studied the roughly triangular mountains, which bristled with frozen jetties and barnacles of ice like the shells of monstrous crustaceans. He tried to imagine what they would look like in a warmer season. Moreth had no difficulty creating an image of a verdant, mossy range with glass veins of clear water and deep woods in which howling, swooping horrors made a feast of any creature lured into the dark, lush realm. It was understandable that he hadn’t at first recognized the place; he’d been there only once, during a time of green fertility. It was there he had met the love of his life and suffered the loss of his dearest friend. Moreth thought of Beatrice—trying to erase her screeching fanged face from his memory—and felt the slave’s talisman suddenly dig into his breastbone. A reminder, or a warning. He had never thought he would see this place again.
“Some horrible monsters live there, I’m told,” said Talwyn. “We’ll have to be on our guard.”
“What sort of monsters?” asked Mouse.
“The kind that eat flesh and giblets, raw. The worst kind of carnivore.” Talwyn tried to call up the proper phrase. The Amakri had so many names for the beasts: dark mothers, blood sisters, wailing women.
“Leannan Shide,” said Moreth, beating the scholar at the game. “Blood eaters.”
He stared at the mountains and would say no more.
V
A shield of maroon clouds sealed away the stars that night. Soon it would storm, but the procession had covered a great deal of ground by not stopping to rest. They had already reached the foothills of the Forever Stones: slabs of rock that jutted against each other like shattered glass and were covered in treacherous ice. By the light of torches, the Amakri made their encampment in the last of the snowy dunes and green slate that lay before the daunting mountains. They would go no farther now. It was not safe to travel closer to the Forever Stones by night—or so warned Talwyn, on behalf of the Amakri shaman.
Mouse, Moreth, and Talwyn were left to assemble their own shelter for the night, and although theirs was the final tent to be erected and was so flimsy that it shook, they celebrated their victory with congratulations and cold handshakes. Together, these strangers in a strange land were making progress. After their
fur carpets and bedrolls had been set up, they took a breath, fought the desire to simply lie down and sleep, and went to find some food. Amakri hospitality appeared to have run its course, and no one had brought them a meal in days. Apparently, they were part of the tribe now and could fend for themselves.
Outside in the brewing storm, they stayed close, battled flurries and winds that slipped beneath their clothing, and sought the nearest campfire. A few Amakri had gathered at the fire pit they stopped by. The men and women nodded respectfully and made room for the travelers on the stones that had been hauled up for seats. Mouse laughed to herself at the notion of lifting frozen hunks of rock after a nearly twenty-hourglass march. She found it incredible how much these people accomplished in the course of a day: hiking, hunting, moving an entire colony of hundreds.
“Fáok.” (Eat.)
Bowls of sloshing, steaming stew were thrust into their hands by the squatting giantess bundled in white who tended the foodstuffs by the fire. Talwyn hunched precariously on a stone too tiny for his lanky self and tried to balance his food without splashing it. Mouse and Moreth shared a stone, and once the woman had finished passing out food, she waddled over and wedged herself into the space between them. Mouse and Moreth were perfectly willing to accommodate her, especially when they realized that her girth and bow-legged stride were signs she was pregnant. In uncomfortably close quarters, they slurped the Amakri stew, which was always pleasing, if slightly different from day to day depending on what ingredients had been hunted and foraged. Tonight, the meat was beefy, the fat as buttery as caviar, and the spices mostly salt. Mouse, Moreth, and the Amakri woman all finished and sighed at the same time, then laughed at the coincidence. The woman stood, collected the bowls of the others in a stack, and then rubbed her stomach.
“Eíthex nae eínai mae ischyrí drákos, me megálí kérata, kai oh klímaches tou sidírou—nen eínae mae apó klomó, adýnamo dérmae, ópos aftést agnóstou (May you be a strong wyrm, with great horns and scales of iron—not one of pale, weak skin like these strangers),” she said.
This caught Talwyn’s attention, and he looked up from his meal and tripped his way through an exchange with the woman. What was at first a calm discourse soon turned into an argument, which ended abruptly when the woman threw down the wooden bowls and left in a clatter and a fury.
“You pissed her right off,” said Mouse. “What did you say?”
Around the fire, some of the other Amakri were now glaring at Talwyn and shaking their heads, further chastising him, though not as angrily as the woman had. Without replying to Mouse, Talwyn abandoned his meal and walked over to the more moderate tribesmen. With them, he attempted to ingratiate himself in his hapless way—which Mouse was starting to realize might be somewhat affected—and made apologies for his Western assumptions. Within sands, the Amakri were patting him, smiling, nodding, and telling him everything they knew.
Talwyn returned to his companions. He took the angry Amakri’s vacant spot and sat down in a huff. “I didn’t know whether I had heard her correctly,” he said. “I believe she was praying for a child with horns and scales and without our pale, weak skin; she made the latter characteristic sound quite undesirable.”
“What’s wrong with being like us?” spat Mouse.
“Well, what we consider normal doesn’t pass muster here in Pandemonia,” replied Talwyn. “Afterward, when I asked her what she meant, she said they placed such children ‘into the cruel hands of fate.’ I thought she must mean that these unfortunates are cast out into the wild—you know, as is done with the unwanted young women of the Arhad. Those girls are called khek, a word also used to describe the shite ejected from a spinrex’s arse. They’re thrown out of the tribe and left to wander the desert until they die. Aside from the legendary sword of the queen, I’ve never heard of such a one surviving.”
“Awful,” whispered Mouse.
“It is,” agreed Talwyn. “However, although the Amakri are strong and proud, they are not cruel. The cruelty comes from those who judge from circles of wisdom and privilege; Lakpoli, the city-dwelling Pandemonians, are the ‘cruel hands of fate’ to which Temupka, our expectant mother, was referring. Having to give up her child, even a weak one born without valuable traits, would be devastating for her. I was a villain for even suggesting such children might be exposed, cast out to die. They are placed under the care of the Lakpoli, as the way of the Amakri would be too rough for a hornless, soft creature to endure. It’s seen as a mercy, as the children are saved a life of hardship. I shall have to find Temupka and make an apology.”
KREEECH!
The sudden sound was like a sword scraped over slate, and surely came from the mouth of a horror. “Blood eaters,” Moreth hissed, leaping up. Panic broke out in the camp. Moreth barked a flurry of warnings at his stunned companions. “Whatever you do, be still and calm. Blood eaters’ extreme hunger and lives lived in darkness blind them. They can hear, smell, and taste our fear as it boils through our veins. Our heartbeats and footsteps are hammers upon a metal dinner plate to them—and even a scratch from one of their infernal claws can end you with a fever worse than the ancient plague of Menos. Stay close. They take the weak and isolated. They seek the straggling, lonely prey. We need to be calm, like these brave warriors. We must stand together. We must still our hearts, hold our breathing. We must become the snow and silent winter. They will reveal themselves when the night is still.”
KREECH! KREECH! KREECH!
What discordant music the monsters made: singing with the wind, calling to each other. The companions sensed the grating hunger in their pitch, the need to feed. Pythius’s magik horn would not deter these beasts, Moreth knew. Their hunger would stop only when they had gorged themselves on fresh red meat.
“I believe it’s time for me to borrow one of your pistols,” whispered Talwyn.
In a flash, the pistol was in the scholar’s hand, cocked and loaded. Moreth gritted his teeth and also readied a pistol. Mouse felt less confident than her fellows. She possessed only a shiny new dagger taken from the Skylark’s armory, and it already felt slick in her hand. Although she had the power of a Dreamer within her, he hadn’t been much use so far. Nonetheless, she doubted that Feyhazir would let her die. While Amakri scattered for their weapons, the three moved in a tight circle, eyes and weapons aimed toward the twisting sky that echoed with cries. The storm chose this moment to roar, and a white whirlwind descended from above. Within the pale nimbus flickered shadows, darting glints of black that moved as erratically and quickly as schools of ebon minnows. Those can’t possibly be creatures, thought Mouse. But she was wrong. Moreth immediately fired a couple of shots into the storm; he may even have hit a monster or two, as the sky fell silent. They waited. Nearby, the Amakri, no longer panicking, crouched low upon the ground in the white coats that made them indistinguishable from the snow.
KREECH! KREECH! KREECH!
An inky streak shot from the heavens, touched down for an instant, and then took off again in a puff of snow and black smoke. Whatever the creature was, it moved so fast that it left a trail, a dark smear, in the air. Mouse heard a yelp to her left, and noticed that the white-cloaked man many paces beside her had disappeared—snow still whirled up from the ground marking his absence. Then, his screams rang with the thunder in the storm. By the Kings, he’d been snatched up as if tied to the end of a string. Gone. The blood eaters’ cries came again, their throats warbling with gory sustenance. Mouse thought of running for their tent, but she would not leave her companions, Moreth had warned her against running, and the distance between her and the tiny brown dome now felt unbridgeable.
KREECH! KREECH! KREECH!
The world collapsed into terror. All over the encampment, dark comets streaked to and from the earth, causing explosions and noiseless ruffles of sonic force. One, two, ten…Mouse lost count amid the zigzagging confusion. The snowy eruptions and disorienting screams inspired panic in the usually unshakeable Doomchasers. Men and woman who risked be
ing cast out of the tribe for their cowardice ran for the perceived safety of their tents. With a grim calm, Moreth watched as they were pulled into the sky like naughty marionettes.
“Don’t run,” he whispered with disdain. “Never run. Their thinning of the herd is almost over. Soon they will come for the strong.”
They huddled closer. Either Mouse or Talwyn had grabbed the other’s hand; they didn’t know who had initiated the gesture, though it gave them each strength. The three bated their breath and watched as the storm of black lightning slowed, then stopped. On high, the grisly tearing and screams of the dying ended on a whimpering note. At last from the night came a satisfied cawing and the leathery whoosh and flapping of many great wings. The blood eaters returned for more.
Elegantly, the horrors descended and circled the quiet encampment, where at least a thousand warriors and children stayed motionless as rabbits beneath a great flock of owls. The monsters cawed lazily. Lower and lower they drifted, and the shadows slunk away, revealing forms horrible to behold. Mouse, though, frozen with shock, found herself staring into the face of one that breezed over her: a glowing white countenance with eyes and hair of misty blackness, and the mouth of a lamprey eel. Mouse swore she saw the orifice pucker inward and become an anus ringed with razor teeth. That’s where the meat goes to get squished and chewed into pâté, her mind shrieked.
Suddenly, the head snapped toward her, and Mouse’s heart lurched. Mid-flight, the creature paused, effortlessly hovering while flapping its tattered and fuming wings—nightmare appendages that seemed too thin, slow moving, and ethereal to support real flight. The blood eater made a sensual gurgle and uncurled its shrimplike, emaciated body that was jutting with bones. It clacked its black talons and toenails as if in delight. The creature drifted nearer, spiraling down toward them like a demonic snowflake, spreading its lanky mass and smoking wings as if to embrace her. No. It cannot see me, Mouse told herself. It sensed only her heartbeat and fear. Or perhaps it sensed something else…Was that an expression of happiness distorting its hideous, puckered face? Mouse cast off the impression. Indeed, her fancies disintegrated as the acidic wave of the creature’s stench drew nearer: the reek of rot, death, and oniony filth. Mouse noticed the butcher’s apron of blood spattering the creature and began to gag.
Feast of Chaos (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 3) Page 52