Tabitha had still to thank the Iron lord for his intervention, as she knew Beauregard would have charged off thinking to save the day. Perhaps by helping to explain, she could repay some of his charity. “Not everyone can be saved, Beauregard. As much as you wish it, as much as you try. It is not war without death. In this battle, the death, the doom…It’s only now beginning. Come sit with me.”
Tabitha pondered wars, hordes of the dead, and how small she and her light of a child were in this great darkness. With no great solace to offer, she closed her eyes, listened to the rain, appreciated even this bitter moment of safety with her son, and prayed they would have at least a few more days together. Eventually, Beauregard, sniffling and unsure, came to sit beside his mother. They did not speak, though they were together.
XIX
A TRICK OF FATE
I
“I feel as if we’ve been here countless times before,” whispered Thackery.
No one was certain what he meant, but this surely was a strange place. The sorcerer, Adam, Morigan, and Caenith stood apart from the clusters of warriors gathered in an antechamber of crystal and humming silence. The companions had learned this was the bailey before the Purgatorium. It was the heart and bowels of Eatoth, a place that created an ear-throbbing impression of great depth and made one believe in the myths of damnation and enlightenment as preached by the Lakpoli. Ahead, wards and legionnaires assembled quietly in phalanxes—their weapons and stares gleamed with readiness. Aside from Longinus, who’d been reassigned to the company, the rest of Eatoth’s Faithful maintained a respectful distance from the outsiders. Morigan sensed that while she and her fellows were being tolerated, they still weren’t welcome. She assumed that even a minor change would be viewed as an upheaval by people so used to a smoothly functioning, serene existence.
Morigan’s small company stood guard outside the arch and the sealed, glassy door leading into Purgatorium. Morigan’s bloodmate was at her side. She shared his frown, his doubts, and even his position—both rested a hand upon the barrier of translucent crystal beyond which throbbed the arkstone. Like the Wolf, she doubted it was any better than a wall of paper. The Wolf had been testing its resilience with slaps of his hands, though, and it appeared to be durable—enchanted and saturated in magik, like all else in Eatoth. As hard as the material was, his father would be able to shatter it in a strike or two. Sullenly, he and Morigan looked at their companion.
“Been here before?” she asked.
“I thought you hadn’t heard me,” replied Thackery. “I feel as if we’ve already been in this situation. Peril. Doom. Standing around waiting for tragedy to strike. Another thin edge of hope along which we must walk. Remember, we always find our balance on that precipice. We always make the journey. We shall survive whatever comes.” Thackery rose from his hunch and stretched his legs. Adam stirred from his sulk and came over to his companions. The two fellows and Morigan gathered and smiled for the first time since they’d descended to Purgatorium to await the coming of the mad king. Hourglasses had passed while restlessness frayed their nerves. Thackery’s hope was a tonic for each of their private despairs.
“It’s all coming together,” he continued, almost cheery. “Once we’ve repelled this madman and subdued him, we can cast his demon out. Assuming, of course, that the Keeper Superior stays true to her word and allows us—well, you—to handle their precious arkstone.” Now that the company of heroes realized a piece of the corrupted Dreamer lay just in the other chamber, Morigan would soon know everything about their foe: the Dreamer’s deepest, darkest truths. “We are ready, my friends. Today will be our moment of triumph.”
Inside his bloodmate, Caenith’s beast growled and paced. While the others engaged in wistful chatter about Mouse and whatever antics their missing companions might be experiencing, Morigan reached out to her bloodmate.
My Wolf? You fear this moment, don’t you?
I know not if I have the strength to conquer him. I know not if I should be here or out on the field of battle.
She understood his anxiety. They knew very little of Brutus’s plan. How would he enter the city? How would he—or his army—circumvent the wall of pounding water, or the flooding of the catacombs? Why couldn’t she sense anything in the currents of Fate—anything aside from the bodily beat of her fear? If she dwelled on the possibilities, she’d drive herself mad. Morigan didn’t insult her bloodmate by attempting to placate him with suggestions that Brutus wouldn’t reach the antechamber. Brutus needed the treasure behind them to complete his conquest of Geadhain—that was why they were stationed here. Besides, the wondrous skycarriages of Eatoth could ferry them nearly anywhere in a speck. Brutus might possess speed and ease of movement, but his horde did not—if there were to be a frontline, the Wolf could be on it in sands.
My Wolf, you are not alone. The Keeper Superior is safe, under more guard than we ourselves could give her, and we are close to the only place we know Brutus will strike. At her feet lay a set of great shackles made of crude black iron. The chains looked simple and old-fashioned, but they produced a jolt of power when held against bare skin. Morigan kicked the feliron snake and her companions jumped before realizing there was no threat and returning to their conversation. Once he has been subdued, these chains should work to bind him and his power until he can be purged of the Black Queen and judged for his crimes.
Do you truly believe that he can be chained? How can one chain fire and madness?
Once, Morigan would’ve doubted that even technomagik forged by the Keepers of Pandemonia could bind the king—but earlier on, before they had assembled for war, Ankha had insisted it could. When the Keeper Superior had shown him the shackles, the Wolf had huffed in disbelief and slipped one manacle around his wrist, then abruptly slumped to the floor as if sapped of all strength. The feeling of nausea and lassitude he’d suffered was extraordinary. Reverse etherocurrent distributors, Ankha—slightly gloating—had called the technomagikal witchery. Then she’d ordered one of the wards to aid the lethargic Wolf in removing the relic, which were harmless to handle, other than being quite tingly, so long as you weren’t the one in the manacle. She’d explained that the technomagik intensified and redirected power away from itself. Essentially, when clasped on a man’s wrists, the bindings turned him into a grounded conduit, a lightning rod that discharged magik—his own magik—into the earth. Whether the shackles would affect a full-blooded Immortal as they had his son, whether they’d even be able to restrain a raging giant long enough to place the shackles on, were questions that would be answered only when they confronted Brutus himself. Ankha insisted that the distributors would function as desired and would, through molecular reorganization (which only Thackery understood, slightly), fit a wrist of any size, too, when the time came.
However, these worries were less pressing to the Wolf than thoughts of encountering his father in the first place. As his mind wended through these tangles, Morigan—creeping about her bloodmate’s head, not entirely intentionally—sensed the root of his fear. Ah. I see, my Wolf. It’s not the war itself, but what will come after it that concerns you most.
Yes. My mother asked me to forgive him. I do not know how to forgive one so wicked.
Morigan petted his warm furry chest, then kissed it. She took a long sniff of his wood-and-spice scent. She felt a calm sense of assurance that they’d emerge victorious from any war. She loved him too much to fail. First, we must best him: only your strength and speed can do that. You must be the one to chain your father, and in that I see a shade of justice. From there, if we succeed, we shall discover our course.
And if he cannot be chained?
You know the answer to that, my Wolf. What we were made for, what we are capable of doing.
We shall kill him, they agreed.
It would be their last course of action; contemplating it, the Wolf drew his bloodmate in for an embrace. As the Sisters Three had warned, undoing an Immortal would not come without a cost: one of them might
die. He wouldn’t kill his father if it meant losing her. He’d find another way. He’d beat and bloody his cursed father into such a bleating state of submission that the chains would seem a mercy. While holding Morigan, his heat and growl grew.
As emotions tended to muddle a man that was also part animal, Morigan gently ended their embrace when she felt his rage blurring into other hotter emotions. There would be time for rolling and biting later. They had an Immortal to defeat and a vile parasite to banish from Geadhain. Now was the time.
For her bees were finally now abuzz in the hive of Morigan’s mind: a moment of Fate was approaching. An electric tingle passed into her bloodmate, and they stiffened and leaned forward like dogs catching a scent. They stared toward the end of the antechamber. Wards and legionnaires formed a sea of bowing heads as a figure approached. The waves of men parted and revealed a small figure in gray. In the bluish hues of the chamber, she wavered like a woman under water. Or perhaps that was a supernatural reality only the bloodmates could perceive: perhaps no others could see the shadow that dwarfed Ankha’s tiny figure or smell the sickening scent of dead love: burnt roses and sweet decay. This was not the Keeper Superior: it was the shade of the Dreamstalker, wearing her skin.
“Who’s that?” asked Thackery, straining.
“The Keeper Superior,” replied Adam.
“No,” hissed Morigan. “It’s Amunai!”
“Foul witch!” roared the Wolf.
Over the murmuring discord, they heard Amunai laugh, then speak—her spiteful voice hollow, haunting, as if cast across a chasm of screams. Her buzzing words, the utterances of a witch, could be understood by all in the chamber. “Your perceptions are keen, Daughter of Fate and her dog. But you’ve misplaced your forces. The Sun King isn’t here.”
“Na stamatích tian! (Seize her!)” cried Longinus, evidently the sharpest soldier in the room. Stumbling legionaries, obviously confused by this Keeper who was somehow not their Keeper and seeing none of the taint of possession that the bloodmates could, took too long to react. The warriors closest to the Keeper leaped and reached for her, but she twisted away and vanished in a wrinkle of black smoke. Somehow, she’d moved as Morigan could, but even faster. The bloodmates next heard her laughing behind them, on the other side of the sealed barrier. A great crash and sparking symphony arose from the frame of the arch they’d been guarding, and Longinus and their four companions moved back. The phosphorescent blue veins that lit the antechamber flickered, and the smoke of broken technomagik billowed forth.
After waving their hands through the clouds of singed electrical fumes, the companions quickly determined they were whole and then rushed the door. No amount of prying and grunting from the Wolf or any of the others budged the door upward—as it was supposed to slide—inward, or in any other direction. From the tunnel beyond came another laugh from the spirit that had taken Ankha’s body.
“That door is warded with every magik my people know,” said the Dreamstalker. “Rituals older than the first age of the Immortal Kings. It cannot be broken by the son of Brutus, or even by Brutus himself. Only a Keeper can pass through Purgatorium’s gate. Perhaps you can follow me, Daughter of Fate. Come then, Morigan, if you are brave enough to take the leap. See if you can stop me.”
The Wolf roared and slammed the door with his shoulder; it didn’t even tremble. Amunai cackled, the sound echoing away. In the smoke and commotion, they had mere specks in which to execute a plan, a sand or more before the arkstone would be taken. How had they been so duped? Where was Brutus? His army? Subterfuge, not might, was the thorn that had crippled the mighty giant of Eatoth.
“Go after her!” snarled the Wolf. “Catch that witch, and carve her up with your blade of promise. I care not if her vessel must die; the arkstone would be a far greater loss. I know another way, a slower way, to join you. Go now, and I shall be by your side soon.” As he barked his orders, the Wolf half-transitioned into his other self: his eyes clouded and glowed silver, his hands warped into partial claws. He gripped the side of the arch and began to scale the wall. “Adam, Thackery, keep these fools safe while we defend their city.”
Neither the Wolf nor Morigan remained to watch how their friends—and the lone sensible legionnaire—dealt with the mob of wards and legionnaires that now charged toward Purgatorium’s door. In a sterling dazzle, Morigan vanished, and the Wolf speedily clawed his way upward and into the ventilation shaft he’d previously used. The hunt was on.
II
After a dash through Dream, Morigan appeared in a whirlwind of silver light. She stood inside a cavernous chamber that trapped the dark weight of the earth under a film of glass. Fragile, she thought, much like Eatoth’s greatness, which could be undone by pulling a single pin. The rest of the awesome technomagikal splendor of this sanctum she disregarded, concentrating instead on the pillar of blue starlight—again trapped in glass—and the dark figure that fumed shadow before it.
Morigan pulled out her promise dagger. She took one tortured moment to think. In times of war, morality was an indulgence. On the battlefield, there were winners and losers, the living and the dead. No other distinctions could be made. It was unfortunate, but unavoidable: the Keeper Superior must die if this invading spirit were to be cast out. Morigan felt no great compassion for the wicked sister, as she’d driven Amunai to seek the Black Queen’s evil grace. Perhaps a death sentence for both sisters would be fair.
Morigan took a breath, then stepped into and out of Dream once more. She swung as she glimmered back into the world, and aimed down with such murderous force that whatever her blade met would encounter a blood-fountaining end. Her murderous howl became a scream as she fell to her knees and her dagger struck the crystal floor. The floor remained unmarked, but her assault caused her hand and wrist to shiver with pain. Morigan pounced up, feral, and glared around the chamber.
Amunai snickered from afar—she was now nearly back where Morigan had been. “Daughter of Fate. How special you believe yourself to be. You’re an instrument, a weapon—as you have proven through your attempts to murder me. You’re as much a hound of war as your bloodmate.”
Morigan shrieked and danced into and out of Dream again. She was certain she’d slice the witch this time. Again, she swung blindly into the air. From another safe vantage point, hundreds of strides away, Amunai laughed at her derisively. “Look at you, crude and clawing like an angry cat in a sack. You cannot touch me in the real world, where elements rule! I was the Keeper of Aesorath! The Lady of the Winds. North, South, East, and West all whispered their secrets to me. Our sages had mastered the mysteries of flight before wise men of the West even dreamed they might, one day, fly. We invented what you primitives revere as the impossible art of translocation: we sang to the wind and it carried our atoms from one place to the next in an instant. You have no idea what power I possess! I am the wind of the underworld. I blow where I choose as freely as Death. In Dream, you might be faster, wilier, better aware of which paths to take. But this is my world. My domain. You cannot touch me in the flesh. I am gone, like a breeze, before you can even think of trying.”
“My bloodmate will be here in a moment; you should not test his speed,” spat Morigan.
“More meaningless threats.” The shadow woman flickered about the chamber, leaving trails of black smoke. Amunai gloated, her lunatic laughter resounding in the space like the wails in a funhouse of horror: it was magnified as her shadows appeared and vanished faster than the echo of sound. “I shall thank him, too, when he arrives. For you have done what I could not: unmake Eatoth. As this city falls, I want you to know—and suffer from the knowledge—that you have destroyed it.”
“Stop your wicked lies!” screamed Morigan.
Slowly, the many wisps of darkness stilled, and the apparitions faded. Now there was only one distant shadow that mocked her. “Oh, but you have. When I realized how strong you were—your mind, your power—and how that would interfere with my aims, I knew your strength was an opportunity. How does
the mouse defeat the scorpion? She leads the scorpion to a pool of water, where it sees and strikes at a reflection. The mouse lets the scorpion defeat itself. That is what I have done with you, Daughter of Fate.
“Keepers are the cornerstones of their cities. Their astonishing Wills hold all magik and order in their civilizations together. We are chosen for our Will, and for our mental fortitude against suggestion. We are chosen because we cannot be tainted. We cannot be influenced. Our minds can never be breached. Ankha was one of the greatest Keepers. Her wall of Will could not be broken. I could not reach her with my whispers. Yet you…Daughter of Fate…You shattered her wall. You drew out her weakness. You filled her with doubt. Through the door you opened in her mind, at last I could enter her. When I say that Eatoth falls because of you, I tell no lie.”
“No…” muttered Morigan, spinning, though the rush of her bloodmate’s anger kept her from falling into a faint. “I refuse to listen to your deceptions. I know what I have seen: the city of Eatoth in flames, the mad king himself standing in the ruins. This is some illusion or trick of yours. That is all you possess: lies.” In a shimmer of silver light, Morigan sped down the river of Dream, before emerging from the grayness and swinging her blade at a furl of laughing blackness. She missed, again.
Morigan turned toward Amunai’s fading laughter. She saw the specter hovering near the glass tube that held the fragment of the divine. “Daughter of Fate,” said Amunai. “I am good at tricks, about this you are right. I have challenged even Charazance, the Dreamer of Chance, with my latest gambit. For I have deceived not only you, but Fate itself.”
Morigan trembled. Her bees flew wildly in her skull, their stingers piercing the matter behind her eyes. Visions made her stumble and clench her head. A city in flames. Amunai whispering into the ear of a horrible shadow: Brutus. An army marching through a blasted desert. How could none of this be true? She’d seen the future herself.
Feast of Chaos (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 3) Page 80