Feast of Chaos (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 3)

by Christian A. Brown

  My sister, whispered the Keeper. Amunai.

  The moon pulsed, his heart raced, and his stomach sank in dread.

  V

  Morigan’s leap into and out of reality took her to the base of the grandest staircase she’d ever seen. At the top of those steps stood a palatial building with pillars and fluttering banners that flashed silver in the moonlight, though they were likely blue. White stone guardians, some nude, others scantily dressed in throws or shoulderless robes gazed down from their pedestals under the shadowed peristyle. The figures brandished giant spears and had touches of metal—crowns, belts, armor. They are the fabled warriors, founders, scholars, and sages of Eatoth, thought Morigan, her mind effervescent with knowledge and energy from the witch’s moon. She wanted to get closer to them, and vanished in a silver ripple.

  In a speck, she stood in the shaded colonnade. She walked and stared upon giant men and women, knowing their names and histories immediately, having no need for the facts inscribed on the copper plates that adorned their square pedestals.

  Calginius Rex, she thought as she tapped the base of one great stone man of yore. He was fierce: a man with frown lines heavy even for a stone face, and a brow carved into an entanglement of wrinkles. The statue wore a circlet of gold leaves upon his head and held his spear as if it were a staff of rule. You were a leader, in a sense. An orchestrator of social change. I cannot say whether what you did makes you a villain or a hero—the line between the two seems so hazy to me these days. You offered the outcast tribes refuge from Pandemonia’s ferocity, but only so that they would do the labor that you and your Faithful would not. Vassalage. Protection in exchange for servitude. I suppose the outcasts live happier lives than some of our slaves in the West. Visions filled her then, of men and women around campfires and a grove that was not far from here. They appeared tired, dirty, and threadbare, but their closeness to the earth brought them comfort. They reminded her of the long-vanished Romanisti people, of whom Mifanwae had sometimes spoken. Morigan realized that some of what she was rhapsodizing over was taking place right now in another’s head. My Wolf, she thought, but she did not whisper it to him or interrupt him. They were each dedicated to their hunts.

  The next statue to which she wandered could have been of the Keeper she’d met today. It depicted a short-statured woman with the most severe gaze Morigan had ever seen upon a statue; its eyes of pitch dark were set into recesses of shadow. Though it was an inanimate watcher, she felt naked beneath its scrutiny. Morigan would not be cowed, however, and she glared back at the austere Keeper. I know all of your secrets, Teskatekmet, first Keeper Superior. Like your General Rex—the right hand of what would become a righteous army—you molded the unruly masses into a nation of loyal citizens. You turned the worship of nature into your personal theocracy, transformed savage rites into civilized rituals. In the process, you bred obedience into the ones who followed you. What folk would not follow one who could show them such miracles? Aye, you learned that you could use your gift—your extreme sensitivity—not only inwardly, but outwardly, too. You learned that you could use magik and that magik would make you a queen. We are almost kin, you and I, although I disagree with all that you have built. It feels tainted.

  Teskatekmet’s eyes seemed filled with black hate. Morigan’s wolfish ears suddenly heard voices and footsteps—legionnaires on patrol around the Exhibition. She hadn’t seen them yet, nor had they spotted her. Nonetheless, she would prefer to avoid making their acquaintance.

  On the long wall that ran beside the colonnade was the shadowy arch of an entrance. She ignored the door, instead stepping into Dream as easily as if she were diving into a gray pool, and then emerging from the ethereal tides on the other side of the wall. The space was opulent, with polished squares of slate, brass bulbs set on poles wound with velvet rope, and a grand fresco on the roof. It was also cavernous and empty aside from a few stone benches, which were designed to strike a primal note amid the elegance. A huge flight of stairs led to a landing where portraits of more of Eatoth’s ancient luminaries glared at the intruder from behind glass frames. Morigan took the echoing walk to meet them, sneered back at most of the painted ghosts, and then climbed the stairs to the right of the landing.

  As she ascended, she caressed the cool balustrade, and her head flickered with the thoughts and feelings of all those who had touched the same stone. How right she’d been to come here, to this nexus of Eatoth’s fate, history, and desires. In one speck, she saw lifetimes upon lifetimes. She watched as the artisans and earthspeakers hewed and manipulated this stone into its pristine shape. She peered into their lives, and wandered down the branches of the families and friendships they valued. Empowered by the witch’s moon, and rising every day in her own might, nothing was beyond her ken; she saw everything. She felt their stomach-twisting hate for the outcasts, for the tribes who refused to submit to the rule of mind-speaking women and silent men. What they truly felt was fear, a scornful suspicion of people who were not as weak as they, people who did not want to be ruled but instead fairly governed.

  When she reached the hallway at the top of the stairs, she continued to caress the railing and see where her thoughts and impressions took her. Chambers boasting monstrous skeletal remains from some of Pandemonia’s colossi intrigued her, but not enough that she felt moved to leave the railing and its drip of memories. They were only beasts: they didn’t possess the Fates that she sought. She caught wisps of their souls anyway—wafts of their musk and echoes of the terrible roars they had possessed when their bones were wrapped in flesh.

  Before long, she wandered down a corridor of windows, most of which had been covered for the night by cinched drapes. The narrow slits of light reminded her of serpentine eyes. For a moment, she was reminded of Eod’s queen, heard a rattle, and smelled a puff of cinnamon, sugar, and sulfur. Then the impression passed, and she drifted over to one of the galleries.

  In this room, she returned to herself a little and examined the tableaus that rested on small stages about the chamber. Morigan walked to the nearest, a representation of ancient Pandemonia featuring a small line of people wandering through a hostile desert. Black birds with the faces of lizards circled over the wanderers, and the scene stirred her with a sense of impending doom. As she came to a metal podium—a squat pillar upon which was balanced a tilted plate of metal—a glaring light sputtered into life above the desert, the crow monsters suddenly croaked and flapped their wings, and the nomads came to life. It was all simulacrum and illusion. She studied the moving tableau for a while, but it never appeared to progress very far into the future. The crow beasts flew on a loop. The nomads walked on a track hidden in the sand. It was effective nonetheless, and she could almost feel the heat of the sun’s phantasm, hear the babble of the wanderers’ primitive language, and the whisking of sand off the stage. However, the grit vanished in flickers of gold as it brushed Morigan’s boots. What a wanton waste of magik—all this just to tell a simple story. That’s what books and imaginations were for. What people had such magik to squander? she wondered. The question stirred her hive and made her move, dreamily, to the next tableau; the scene she abandoned fell into darkness and stillness as she left.

  “Father,” she muttered.

  While there was nothing of Feyhazir to be seen in the frozen imagery, she was certain he was there. Before her, a rag-wearing woman with heartless black eyes knelt in a wasted garden. The gnarled witch’s hand of a tree reached over the small figure. When Morigan came closer to the plaque and pedestal explaining this history, the tableau sputtered into motion. A moon, not a sun, birthed light upon the sad scene. The woman rocked upon her knees: it was Teskatekmet, but here she was young, scrawny, starving. Whispers from the earth could not feed her. As Morigan’s fingers grazed the plaque, further scraps of the tale flitted within her. You were alone. The seasons of Pandemonia were the harshest they had ever been. The land refused to settle, even for a speck, into a shape that could be farmed or hunted for nourishment. E
ven the grass was poison, and the rain came down as a sleet of fire. You lost thousands upon thousands of those who wandered. You waited for the Green Mother to guide you toward the faintest tease of life. Yet she did not. She does not believe in fairness, only the balance struck by the rule of the strong over the weak. Your people were not strong. They should have died—such was the Green Mother’s decree. Yet you set your Will against hers. Your bright and powerful Will. There came a point of such desperation that your people began to eat one another. You, though, refused to eat the flesh of your tribe, and so…you died.

  Mildly appalled, Morigan watched a vision float in above the tableau like fog over a lake. In it, men and women carved up emaciated corpses and gnawed on the remains with a shuddering revulsion. Some wept, some vomited the remains of their kin. Most of them ate and numbed themselves to their wickedness. Eatoth’s historians hadn’t recorded this vile truth, not in this or any other tableau in the Exhibition.

  Morigan’s vision faded. She was back in the Exhibition again, and time had progressed in the tableau: Teskatekmet, drained by her hunger, had fallen before the tree. Teskatekmet called out for mercy, once, as she died. After the woman had slumped to the ground, Morigan saw a twist of silver smoke slithering out of a hollow of the trunk—it was a snake, though not one of this earth. Feyhazir, she thought. She would always recognize her father regardless of his form. Still, the Eatothians had added the grandeur necessary for a Dreamer’s presence, and the tableau thundered with drums, noise, and madly played string music. Feyhazir wound down one of the tree’s branches—the longest one, upon which grew a single green bud. Morigan, squinting, watched as the serpent reached the bud and kissed it with his forked tongue. The touch sparked magik, and the green bud fattened, split, and dropped a shining red fruit into Teskatekmet’s arms. The fruit of knowledge, thought Morigan. The seed of all the ingenuity and bloated elegance of Eatoth had been planted there, with a covenant. Not a fruit, realized Morigan. The fruit was only a metaphor for the gift, the pact Teskatekmet had made with a Dreamer. My father from the stars is the one who taught you how to do more than just listen. After he brought you to life again and made you his vessel, you learned in moments the secrets master-sorcerers ponder for centuries. Then, resurrected and empowered—that was what you wanted from him, pride and power—you returned to your tribe, and they saw you as a queen from beyond. Soon, you instructed all the Keepers of Pandemonia in how to use their Wills for a more self-serving purpose than being silent maids to Geadhain’s aches and woes. You hoped that your tribe would share in your vision, and become great like you. Most did, yet there were those who betrayed your dream, those you denounced as faithless, who would not come to live with you in your cities of stolen knowledge. They wander in exile still, and only use their Wills in the purest of arts—for healing, listening to the land, and aiding Nature’s will. Amakri, which means ‘scornful” to you, and ‘strong’ in their language. The forefathers of the outcasts from your new order wouldn’t sell their souls for wisdom as you did. But what else did my father teach you? For Will alone could not have erected these civilizations on foundations that change at least every season.

  While she pondered this question, the bees buzzed and her feet moved. She passed various tableaus, paying them little heed. She was distantly aware of scenes of stones being hauled and raised in red, cracked lands—places that would burst with phantom fire if she came close enough to trigger the tableaus to life. She assumed that would be the City of Fire, in an earlier stage of its development. From another tableau, she caught the sparkle of a single glass tower in a small diorama of a city; the place was so quaint, she almost didn’t recognize it as ancient Eatoth. Other stories tempted her. There was the creation of industrial mills. Tiny workmen surrounding a honeycombed tower that Morigan knew would make beautiful music when struck by the wind—that was Aesorath, when it was still young and beautiful. And finally, more miniature men lay down tracks for one of the glass bridges she’d seen in Eatoth’s sky.

  Morigan was unsure how long or far it was she wandered before she stopped at the fated display. It was simple compared to those that preceded it: a crystal floated over a mechanical-looking pedestal about as tall as she. She was immediately drawn to the shard, even though she knew it wasn’t real. The mere promise of what this model mimicked was as grand as the moon’s pull. Morigan flickered and passed through the ropes surrounding the display. Suddenly alive with light, the shining blue crystal cast carousel shadows about the chamber. She reached out and touched the glass around the object. One of four, she thought, her mind exploding with prophecy. Four great fragments, pieces of a larger mass that fell to Geadhain along with its greatest Dreamer, Zionae. Four stones, four wonderstones...A stone of pure fire in which metals and weapons are forged that are nigh unbreakable. A stone of eternal wind that pushes away the same sandstorms we suffer in Eod and allows men to travel as fast as a breath of air. A stone that brings verdure and immutability wherever it is placed. And a stone that can calm the rain, sweeten the water, and cleanse any wound. Your people protected these relics, Teskatekmet. You once revered them as holy, and knew of their celestial origins. They were treasures of such power that the Green Mother forbade their use, warning you in whispers of what such power could do. And then my father tempted you to push your power further: to use the arkstones to inflate your grandiosity, your vision of ruling Nature rather than serving her. Feyhazir, the serpent. Feyhazir, the tempter. Lord of Desire, not Love…I have been wrong. As were you, Teskatekmet. You were to protect the wonderstones, not tap their power. Nay, “wonderstone” does not fully represent the majesty of these treasures, for they came from the vessel that bore Zionae to our world: an ark—the arkstones.

  A gray hand clawed over her sight, and through the mist, she sensed teases of a time and place. She saw a city that tinkled with music and sang with wind, then watched all its astonishingly tall auric flutes and bridges of glass threads crash in upon themselves in an orchestra of ruin. She knew that the cornerstone pulled from this grand and yet delicate creation had been small, but potent—an arkstone’s destruction or removal was surely why Aesorath had fallen. Then, the caterwaul of Aesorath’s collapse threw her into a second vision, this one of scorching, bellowing destruction, as an infernal fire rose beneath a city of gold and machinery—Zioch, she believed, and that sound must have come from a king of monsters. Zioch was swallowed by a volcanic sinkhole, down the throat of that astonishing beast. The vision then shattered to nothingness.

  She was on the floor, breathing heavily. She’d witnessed the end of Aesorath, and she knew as well what that grumbling, fiery apocalypse was—incomprehensible destruction tied to an arkstone. The latter, the monstrous call, she had heard before while watching Magnus’s army and hope being consumed by flame. It was the growl of the Elemental of Fire—Brutus’s pet.

  Her hunt had gone well. She’d found an ancient trail of lies and omens that suggested the nature of Brutus’s intent. Although she failed to understand why it should be so, she knew what Brutus wanted, what he would come to Eatoth to claim: the arkstone, a piece of his master. She may have found the breadcrumb she needed to understand the motivations of the Black Queen. Her stomach twisted as she thought about the kind of chaos and evil Brutus could create with a talisman of Zionae’s celestial might. She thought, too, about what she might learn if she were able to lay her hands upon that piece of Zionae’s flesh.

  Some of tonight’s revelations weren’t as sobering as they were sad: her father might not be as benevolent as he portrayed himself to be. She knew she had to find her bloodmate. And she now heard footsteps hurrying toward her: the lights and noises she’d triggered in the Exhibition must have drawn the notice of the legionnaires guarding this place. She sniffed for Caenith’s wood-and-sweat cologne and reached for him with her heart. Then she stepped into a ripple to nowhere.

  When three confused legionnaires burst into the chamber, the lights were still fading, but there was no one to be fou
nd.

  VI

  Morigan could take great leaps through Dream, but she instinctively sensed a danger in pushing this art too far. As soon as she started to feel disoriented—unsure of where she was heading, or unclear as to her motivations—she would leap out of the gray flow of eternity and walk until the disorientation passed. The bees proved capable guardians, too, and gave her warning stings when she was being reckless.

  First, she appeared in a green and lively woodland that startled her with its crowds, songs, and old homes. Trees and dwellings were nearly indistinguishable. Tents and campfires surrounded one hollowed building constructed around an oaken giant that grew in the space between the deteriorating outer walls. Morigan saw glass towers gleaming over the treetops behind her. She’d taken a bigger leap than intended. Morigan hunkered in the abundant natural growth of the area, staying away from crowds, and waited until her head cleared of vertigo. When recuperated, she vanished; only a shaggy dog laying at the feet of one of the musicians she had been watching noticed her disappear in a flutter of sliver light. It took her nine more leaps, and a few short rests, to travel across Eatoth and reach the tower of the Keeper Superior.