He was fading in and out, not sure how much of his memories he was sharing with Mouse. Nonetheless, she kept to their arrangement, remaining as quiet as a veiled confessor of Carthac behind a wicker screen listening to all a soul’s ills would. Moreth continued. “Have you ever heard the Soldier’s Dirge?”
Mouse didn’t reply.
“An old tune—they would sing it after the passing of a warrior, back in the less civilized days of sorcerer kings and wars. I guess it’s just as uncivilized now. Hmph. Regardless, I sang the dirge over his body after I laid him in the closest thing I could find to holly in this kingsforsaken land. I kept my voice strong against the thrust of sorrow, which can be nausea and pain in one. I didn’t realize how tireless these hunters were, though. I didn’t know that his killer had followed us that far, not until I finished laying him in green. She was there…A naked woman, white as snow. Feral, besmirched with dirt and twigs, and savagely beautiful. She has the most extraordinary stare, my wife, and the most exquisite body…My song of dark love and grief had teased her into her less horrific skin. She had, though, come to finish her meal—my friend—and that I would not abide.”
Several moments passed. Mouse heard Talwyn and Pythius laughing quietly by the campfire. Moreth’s next calmly spoken words created a jarring contrast to that happiness. “I shot her at least a half dozen times. The blood eaters soak up bullets like a wet couch. Takes thrice the amount to slow them down as it would take to kill a man. Even then, they won’t die unless you shoot the head clean off. As she lay there, writhing at my feet, I considered using however many more bullets it would take to do just that. Perhaps I’m a shallow man, for her beauty spared her. Even then, as a wounded monster, she held on to the shape of herself: her mortal shape, a woman fair. I sensed that she wanted the pain to end. I’d lost the bag of blood eater heads in the bushes somewhere, and I decided that she would be a far better prize. I pumped her full of enough iron to knock her into a bloody sleep, and I returned with her to camp.”
He had carried her far from the Forever Stones and all the way back to his camp. Whenever she had stirred, he had sedated her with feliron bullets. Once at his encampment, he decided to remain. Where else could he go? What life awaited him back in the West, if he could even reach those shores? Instead, he stayed for the melting of winter to spring, and then the quick rising heat of the summer that followed—about three months, by Pandemonia’s chronex. No nomads or blood eaters wandered into his solitude. Moreth and the monster were alone.
Days seemed to disappear entirely, so engrossed was he in the twisted and sadistic games he played with the blood eater. He’d dug a pit and reinforced it with the bones of some of his and the Slave’s greatest kills. Afterward, he’d shackled and thrown the blood eater into it. Then he’d conducted experiments to see what would bring her pain: steel, fire, bullets, whips. He found that sunlight, which these creatures were supposed to fear, merely made the creature hiss and squint for a time. He learned that the beast understood pain and deprivation, though they didn’t affect her very deeply. Before long, he discovered this was because her suffering at his hands was overshadowed by an agony far stronger than anything he could inflict: a hunger that knotted her from the inside and made her shriek and sweat.
In time, the line between disgust and desire was effaced. Although he despised himself for the sentiment, he began to pity the beast that had murdered the man he’d loved. His feelings must have been the result of his own pain and deprivation, or some kind of mental illness. Still, she was beautiful, even if she was a monster, even if she howled and sometimes became wrinkled and fanged and flapped in her prison with dark wings. She was his to keep: his curse and his burden. Her animalism, her beauty, and her violence, all made her even more alluring.
Moreth denied the feelings flowering in his heart for as long as he could, but his punishments diminished. He started to share his hunts with the monster, throwing scraps of bloody meat into her kennel, meals she snarled at and consumed in a speck. At least she was an easy pet: she didn’t seem to shite or piss. It was as if all that she ate was digested down to the last drop.
Soon, he brought her whole, living meals and studied the orgasmic frenzy of her consumption, an act as lustful as sex. Her bobbing bloody breasts, the way she silkily rubbed her red-greased thighs together as she took that first noisy crunch…Usually, she bit and swallowed the head of an animal in one munch. Occasionally, he masturbated while she devoured. She seemed to know what he was doing in these moments, and sniffed the air for his seed.
When puttering about the camp—checking traps and sharpening blades—Moreth found himself humming that old warrior’s tune, the first his monster had ever heard. Whenever he did, he would notice her straining her head up through the bars in the dirt, as if she were eager for whatever squealing thing he might drop into her cage, or sniffing for the fresh paint of his semen upon the ground. Moreth noticed that her frenzy quieted, her beast stilled, while he sang. It was as if it were not a monster, but a woman, who listened.
One day, she startled him by croaking out a few notes herself. Her voice was as rough and sultry as his own, and the awkward duet they performed—she did not understand any of his tongue—was charming. He lowered into her pit some water for her throat, which sounded dry, and this became another ritual of their days and nights. In the evenings, he worked, and they sang. Eventually, they found a harmony together.
One night, after she’d eaten, he’d masturbated, and they’d sung, Moreth stood near the cage. He stood and looked at his monster. She seemed—and not for the first time—a wronged and shivering woman. He couldn’t see a remnant of the terror he’d trapped. Guilt and horror wormed in his stomach. He had nowhere left to go and no one who loved him. This woman of ice and terror, the object of his torture and affection, was the whole of his world. He wondered if she would kiss him or kill him. He couldn’t read the clouded sentiment behind the frost of her stare. It was time to find out. Time to move and join his hunter-father in the warrior’s afterlife if that were to be his fate. It would be a noble enough end: being ravaged and raped by a monster. Moreth could think of nothing more beautiful. He shot the lock off the cage, threw back the bone grate, and then tossed his pistol in the sand. He spread his arms.
“Come to me,” he said.
He closed his eyes and listened to the irons rattling in the pit. Malnourishment hadn’t weakened the blood eater, for only a speck hence, a chain-clattering shadow leaped from the pit and pinned him beneath icy talons and cold iron chains. By the Kings, she was the coldest thing he’d ever felt. Cold as a coffin of ice. Even her breath felt like winter’s cough; his skin shrank on his bones. Her gasps and her scent were sweet: a sickly sweetness like dried apples in a mortuary. Go on, kill me, he thought. He had not felt the arousal of pain for some time, and his body and prick stiffened as her claws tightened on his arms and blood welled forth. Then the monster made a strange sound, almost like the ones that accompanied her hunger pangs, but more plaintive and whining. The claws loosened, and talons explored his body like chilled scalpels, shredding the clothing they touched, lacing his skin with red. None of this, though, was meant to kill him. He knew this as his monster pressed a frozen kiss on his collar—just below the beating artery through which ran most of his life—and gently sank her fangs into the meat of his chest. The pain and pleasure of her needles and the suction on his chest made his prick sputter and leak across his loins. When his monster lover had finished her appetizer, she moved down his chest and began to consume his white cooling essence—
“And we lived happily ever after,” said Moreth, then snickered.
Moreth’s story had paralyzed Mouse with its graphic intensity. She took a few sands to compose her thoughts. “How were you not poisoned by her…affections?”
“I have turned that question over and over in my mind for years. I have found no satisfying answer. If magik comes from the heart, and the blood eaters are creatures of magik, then I would postulate that
Beatrice did not Will me to die. Simple as that.”
“How have you been together for so long? How does she eat? How have you kept this a secret?”
“Masters with deviant appetites are hardly irregularities in Menosian society, Mouse. I learned, quickly—after an unfortunate encounter with a kindly, wandering Amakri family—that Beatrice would need to be fed, and often. I sang for her every day and especially at night, too, when her pains were worse. After we’d returned to Menos, I did everything in my power to curb her hunger. Music worked, though she needed to be regularly fed a melody or song, and it had to come from the heart—which it did, when I was around her. When I wasn’t nearby, she attended orchestras or we hired the greatest performers of the realm to sate her hunger. For many years, we did well at keeping her darkness in check. She appeared to all to be naught but a lady of refined musical tastes. It wasn’t until we were visited by a songstress from Heathsholme, that we realized her monster was not fully caged.”
Mouse dared to ask. “Songstress?”
“Beatrice devoured her; my wife was weeping and soaked in blood when I came upon the scene. She claimed she couldn’t help herself; that she was compelled, as if through magik, her hunger had been so ravenous. If you’d seen Beatrice’s torn expression, or her chamber—dripping and red, yet with no remains, not even a shoe about—you would have believed her, too. Elsa, her lady-in-waiting learned our secret. I think she’d known all along what Beatrice was, for Elsa was already in the bedchamber, changing sheets and scrubbing floors, when I arrived. She must have known something of these creatures, or of magik. She told me to take Beatrice to the Blood Pits.”
“Why there?”
“A theater of battle and blood, where sweat, valor, and death thicken the air to a fog you can breathe right in, when you can taste the essence of life. I’d never wanted to take my monster there, for fear she would be incensed. However, immersion in death, in passion, was precisely what she required. Beatrice could spend an hourglass at the Pits, watching a few men gut and shite themselves, and be full for a week.”
Moreth’s head and shoulders fell, the confession of his life finally over. “You may think me a monster, now, like her—though I am merely a man in love. I’d do anything for her. I’d feed her my own flesh. At times, I fully realize what she is, and the urge to avenge my hunter-father wells within me, my hands aching for a pistol. However, I could never end her. She’s a part of my hunter-father, a part of what mercy I possess.”
“Love.” Mouse laughed. “What a mess.”
“Indeed.”
Mouse leaped up and dusted the snow off her arse. Moreth rose as well. They knew that if they wanted a wink of rest, now would be the time to take it. Weary and suddenly feeling the pull of sleep, they shuffled toward the camp. Moreth took Mouse’s arm before they came within earshot of the others. “If anything should happen to me, see that Beatrice gets my necklace and hears how bravely I fought.”
Mouse shook off his hand and glared at him. “I don’t think so. Tell her yourself. Men doom themselves with those kinds of promises. Think of what she would do in a world without you and live for that.” She puffed and stomped away, then threw herself into an angry cuddle with a half-asleep Talwyn. “Put your arm around me! Not like that, you’re sticking me with your ribs. Move a bit. Yes. Good. Goodnight.”
Survive, thought Moreth. If only she fully knew what awaited them, what Moreth had caught whispers of from the huntsmen: the Veins of Death. Moreth had survived them once, though he and the Slave hadn’t gone very deeply into them. And it was in the depths that the Dreamer would have buried his secret chalice. For there, no fool, no soul, not even a rat, could survive, and any treasure would be safe for eternity. By a miracle, their small, stealthy party might make it to the chalice, but he doubted that all of their number would see daylight again. I shall, for Beatrice. Moreth picked a solitary spot in which to curl up. He didn’t lay upon his cloak, but allowed the cold to seep into his hip and shoulder. Its chill made him think of his wife, and he went to sleep dreaming of Beatrice’s embrace.
IV
For a time, Pythius watched as the day’s first trembling light squeezed through the crack in the ceiling and danced upon West Sun’s face. Even in this somber hole, the man shone like gold. At last, he roused the others, they prepared themselves, and then climbed out of the cavern and into the day. A slash of charcoal tore the sky in an angry scar and sealed away the sun. Under that rumbling wound they strode through the valley of white monuments, choosing lower paths with higher obstacles when the storm finally came. They huddled close together and walked in pairs. Talwyn and Pythius led the war party.
Watching the pair as they talked, Pythius nodding thoughtfully at whatever Talwyn said, Mouse reflected that the scholar had been shown great respect since his time as surgeon for the Doomchasers and his display of shooting prowess. She didn’t know why she was so concerned about everyone else’s happiness all of the sudden, but it gave her a begrudging joy to see them shoulder to shoulder, to watch Pythius gallantly prevent the scholar from slipping.
As the land became higher, they moved more cautiously. Mouse shivered as they strode along icy paths carved through ragged valleys so deep, cold, and dark that light appeared only as a vein of distant white. Mouse heaved a small sigh of relief whenever they emerged from these claustrophobic canyons. They saw less of the city as they wandered. Winter ruled this kingdom and entombed its glory in crystal. Golden shadows occasionally peeked through their prison of frost, and now and then the warband walked over plates sparkling with refractions from artisans’ creations. However, the overwhelming sense was that the City of Ghosts was ancient and forgotten: Pandemonia’s bizarre ecosystems had spent millennia reclaiming whatever civilization and efforts man had once made here. Mouse felt they would never see the true beauty of the ruins under their feet.
At the head of the company, Talwyn chatted off the shaman’s ear. He asked every conceivable question about the ruins and the people who had lived here. A kiss of afternoon sun eventually wheezed itself from the clouds with a windy cough that parted the heavens. Cheery Talwyn took it as an omen. He was easily excited these days. His time with the company had produced memories for which he would be eternally grateful. I regret nothing. I have finally lived. I only hope that I will live to see more of our world’s wonders, for she is a woman I could adore. You’re certainly charming as well, he thought, studying the charismatic and reptilian blue man scowling at his side. At some point, Talwyn had exhausted his current round of questions, and they hadn’t spoken in some time.
“Flévech tou Thanáto (Veins of Death),” said the shaman suddenly, pointing higher up the foothills to a blurry charcoal smudge under the black awning of the towering Forever Stones. Talwyn thought he could see smaller, rounder spots in this stain. Portals or tunnels, he assumed, and recalled Pythius’s telling him of a labyrinth. Knowing this was their destination, he felt his happiness wither. Pythius, undaunted, had not broken his stride while Talwyn gaped. The scholar rushed to his side. After several sands, with their goal approaching, Talwyn’s head filled with questions. The scholar’s Amakri was now nearly as smooth as the shaman’s, and they spoke like kin.
“How far into the Veins of Death must we go?” he asked.
“As deep as the Dreamer buried the chalice.”
“How deep did he say it was buried?”
“Deep.”
“I’m assuming there will be dangers.”
“An army of the worst monsters of our realm.” Pythius turned his blue-scaled head and glittered with menace from his crown to his suddenly curled—and fang-revealing—mouth. “According to legend, the blood eaters rule every step of the ruins below, dark places that have endured because they are built of the eternal stone of this land. It is said that in the heart of the darkness lives the queen of their kind, sitting on bones and death and ruling her unholy brood.”
Talwyn swallowed.
“I shall keep you safe from her fa
ngs. I have my own,” added the shaman with a sly grin and a snap of his teeth. “She is only legend, this queen. Blood eaters are verminous abominations, and breed like rats. They have no organization to their tribe.”
You could be so very wrong, thought Talwyn; he’d learned too much of monsters, both legendary and real, to share Pythius’s certainty. The truth was often the strangest fiction of all. He changed the subject. “If we find this Covenant, this chalice—when we find this chalice—what will it do for your people?”
“It will restore us to our might.”
Talwyn understood the population issues affecting Pythius’s tribe: the decrease in traits—scale, strength, imperviousness to magik and magikal suggestion—that defined the Doomchasers. As a scholar, he wanted to know the procedure behind a reversal of generational, biological decay. “How? What will you do with the chalice?”
“We shall drink from it,” whispered Pythius reverently, gazing skyward. “We shall share the blood of Feyhazir as our ancestors once did. We shall drink his blood from his cup and grow strong.”
“Blood? What about Mouse? The vessel?” asked Talwyn angrily.
Pythius placed a strong hand on the man’s shoulder. “We would never harm the vessel. Blood does not mean death. Blood is life. Blood is sacrament. Sharing blood is sharing truth and love. We would need only a few drops, not enough to end her life, or even to endanger it. Have you never shared blood with another?”
Feast of Chaos (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 3) Page 68