Feast of Chaos (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 3) (10 page)

The company, particularly its largest member, restrained their appetites. In this ever-changing land, Eatoth could be days or even weeks away; their supplies would have to hold them until they reached their destination, as the fauna was unsafe for consumption.
Too unknown, too rich in life
, Talwyn mused as they’d hiked and chatted that day.
I propose that in an environment such as this, life proliferates and changes at a hyperactive rate, so each species, old or new, rapidly evolves its own defenses and properties to ensure survival in the face of absolute hostility
. In other words, almost all animals in Pandemonia were either poisonous or dangerous, even those, such as weasels, who occupied the seemingly harmless levels of nature’s hierarchy. Moreth’s vigilance certainly suggested this was the
case. Even as the company rested in its pocket of tranquility, the master watched the white moths for signs of viciousness. He twitched at every call of the loon creatures.

“A few hourglasses of sleep,” said Moreth. “We shall split the watches; I shall take the first.”

“I shall watch my pack,” declared the Wolf.

“Suit yourself,” replied Moreth.

The Wolf settled into his familiar pose of a man mimicking a waiting dog—on his haunches, his hands on the ground, and back erect. Morigan and the others lay close to their protector, using their packs as pillows and cloaks as blankets to be shared. It wasn’t long before snores were competing with the songs of the loon beasts. While the others slept, the Wolf and the Menosian maintained a standoff. They didn’t speak or even look in each other’s direction. Hourglasses passed, longer than Moreth had promised the company, but the Wolf could smell their vinegary fear and weariness, and felt no urge to wake them; his Fawn seemed especially far away, drowning deep in dreams. Without embarrassment, the Wolf had hiked up his kilt, in plain sight of Moreth, and began counting stars while he pissed; it was then that the master addressed him.

“What it must be like to be you,” said Moreth. “All sinew and power—anger, masculinity, and lust. You are a storm of a creature. I know why my ancestors adored you, for you wear what you are without shame.”

Snorting, the Wolf shook his prick and tucked it away. “Shame? Why would I ever feel shame unless I dishonored myself with my pack?”

“I suppose that makes sense,” said the master, and walked toward the Wolf. Depending on Moreth’s mood, he could be one of two men, noted the Wolf: a sophisticated master or a stealthy predator, like one of the cats that stalked Alabion.

“We are similar, you and I,” professed Moreth. “I would not insult either of us, however, by calling us brothers. We are fellow predators, although we are different species of carnivore. I do not shed my skin and become something terrible, as you and the young changeling do, according to the not-so-quiet chatter of your friends. But we understand the scales of blood, you and I. We know how to kill and feel respect, not remorse.”

Intrigued, and aware of nothing of deadly terror nearby, the Wolf crossed his arms and listened.

“As hunters, we observe.” Moreth stopped and cannily looked him up and down. “We see patterns in the world and in our prey. We live in danger. When last I came to Pandemonia, I had a companion from the land of chaos. I bought him in the meat markets of Menos. He stood out like a lion in a field of lambs—as you do. Gloriously wild was this man, who we shall call the Slave…I never learned his tale, which I am sure was a legend in its own right, as his tongue had been removed before he and I met.

“Once, you won your freedom from my family’s Pits, or claimed it, anyway.” A low growl escaped the Wolf; Moreth dismissed the threat with a shake of his head. “I consider that matter as old and dead as the skeletons to whom it is owed. My father and forefathers were too despicable to be honored by any debt of blood. We shall have no quarrel over that. The Slave—he, too, won in the ring. He was one of only three victors. In what was the El Estate, we had a small wall on which we displayed the victors’ portraits. The first was of Belladonna, the temptress of the pits. I am told men pray to her spirit, believing her to be a saint who can grant vengeance. Lesser known are those pictured in the other two portraits: the Slave and the dark shadow of a monster-man mounted on a pile of bodies; I think you know him well.”

“Did he have a name?” asked Caenith. “The Slave?”

“No name,” said Moreth, touching a finger to his chin in thought. “He did not file one with the Iron Crown after claiming his rights as a free citizen of Menos. We predators among men, though, do not need names. You do not name a lion, you simply know it is king. He was one such animal—a savage soul, a true hunter. I would have died in Pandemonia without him.”

A brown man wrapped in earthy garments kneels in the weeds. When he is motionless, his lined skin makes him indistinguishable from a hunk of wood or a camouflaged lizard. He becomes one with nature—unseen. Only a flash of the stone talisman attached to the leather cord about his neck warns that he is neither bark nor lizard. But the Slave’s prey never notices this glimmer, or anything about the hunter at all—not until its death has already been determined
.

The Wolf caught a whiff of sand and blood, and tasted bitter wine in his mouth—the essence of whatever memory had distracted Moreth.

“You might not agree…” said Moreth, ending his silence. Moreth’s fingers were under his shirt, touching something—a twine of leather, a necklace, the Wolf determined. “But fathers are mostly useless entities. We learn the most from those who act; my father, Modain of El, was not such a man. Now the Slave,
he
taught me skills most men never learn. After he won his freedom in the Blood Pits, he wanted to return here, to Pandemonia. I can’t say what impetuousness or stupidity claimed me, but I also thought to challenge myself here. As a free man, the Slave had no obligation to teach me how to survive. If he had been wrathful, he could have let me play the fool from abroad, traipsing about in the jungle. But he chose to let me live; and it
was
a choice, I realize now. He brought me into his company as a lesser animal to a greater. He brought me into his pack.”

Pack
? wondered Caenith.

“You’ve used the term more often than you realize,” said Moreth, smiling. “I know we see eye to eye on certain matters, wherever our allegiances have been placed in the past.” Moreth slipped off his glove and laid a cold white hand on Caenith’s warm granite chest. He felt the pulse and power trapped in the Wolf’s great bronze cage of flesh. The Wolf, curious, did not repel Moreth’s touch. Moreth’s smile widened, revealing teeth unusually sharp for a man. “All that might,” purred Moreth. “Like a fire made into a man. I would envy your power, I would seek to take it, if I did not understand that it was not my place to possess it. You are a king of men and beasts. But here,” Moreth removed his hand, “you have lost control of your power. Pandemonia does that with all magiks, even those embedded in our instincts and our very natures.”

“How did you know?” asked the Wolf, shocked.

“The Slave,” replied Moreth, moving away from the Wolf and granting Caenith respite from his calculating eyes and cold hands. “Animalistic, he was—part of the reason why he did so well in the Blood Pits. The Slave tore men into the tiniest morsels, and the more the crowd roared, the greater grew his rage. He was like a dog in the midst of a feasting hall, howling and barking at every clanged plate. His symptoms and yours are the same: sweating, twitchiness, darting stares, jittering hands. You’ve displayed every one of these and more since we arrived in Pandemonia. That is a side effect of the gift of extreme sensitivity to one’s environment;
a gift for which I can only train. However, the Slave was mortal, too, and I’d wager that the sights and sounds in
your
head surpass those afflicting even the most bestial of men. Your head must be full of bells, aches, and shitty smells.”

“Yes,” admitted the Wolf. Rather a friend to pain, the Wolf had thus far ignored the fist pounding behind his eyes, which had not let up since this morning.

“The Slave taught me how to embrace my animal through scribbled notes he always made. He told me of how he had learned to exercise serenity in chaos. He told me that Pandemonia was not loud; it was simply that I was not
listening
.”

The Wolf scowled. “Listening? There is too much to listen to.”

“Pick something,” said Moreth. “One sound. A single wing flap. A howl. A spider’s crawl. It doesn’t matter what. One thing, and one thing only.”

Scoffing at the idea that a mastery of Pandemonia’s din could be achieved though a charlatan’s meditative exercise, and despite having the pride of a beast that did not bow to suggestion, the Wolf nonetheless attempted what was asked of him. Finding a state of peace in which to begin reflection proved the Wolf’s first obstacle. A sound, one not from Pandemonia, eventually beckoned his mind: Morigan’s soft and unmistakable breathing, soft as cotton to his ear. Once he had discovered her music in the orchestra playing in his head, the pounding, surprisingly, subsided a touch. Next, and unintentionally, the Wolf began to smell her honey-and-onion sweat, and then the perfume that gathered at the back of her neck, rich as the dew of a rose petal. He must have been smiling.

“I see you’ve found a bit of peace,” he heard Moreth say from somewhere nearby.

The Wolf nodded.

“Now hold onto that presence, use it as your anchor, and simply roam from smell to smell, noise to noise. Pick and choose from the market of many things, and remember that you are the one with the coin and desire. You decide what is worthy of your attention.”

A market. Naturally, a Menosian would make analogies in coin. Still, the Wolf kept Morigan’s sounds and bouquet circling in his skull, along
with apparitions of their lusty tumbles—their sweats, the slap of their bodies, even the barbaric taste of her sweet blood, which he’d once or twice drawn in pleasure. Whenever Pandemonia’s grotesque clamor cried for dominance in his senses, Morigan’s elements grounded him. As a beast that ruled and did not wait, the concept of peace, of calm before action, was wholly new to the ancient Wolf. No wonder he could not steady himself in this realm, when he came to it screaming and snapping. For Pandemonia had teeth, too, and infinite mouths with which to bark back at him. After dwelling on Morigan’s various wonders, the Wolf rolled his senses outward. He hunted and found Thackery’s leather-scented wisdom, then the book-spice and new-baby smell of the innocent scholar. Then his senses moved on to Mouse and Adam, who shared some of each other’s grease, rubbed off through a close friendship. Upon Moreth, he smelled blood and ether: strong, bitter aromas in keeping with his personality. No longer in doubt, the Wolf now flew his senses wide. In one heartbeat, he tasted the iron soil, shivered from the ruffling of the moths’ wings that played in the night, and listened to the scaly shuffle of fat-bellied vipers as they slid along the earth. But far as he went in that instant, Morigan’s faint scent clung to his memory like morning perfume. She was his anchor.

“Quick study,” commented Moreth.

The Wolf woke from the casting of his mind. Moreth had settled on the ground near the others and was fluffing a pack as a pillow.

“You were a fine teacher,” admitted the Wolf.

“Now that you’re listening, and smelling, and all the rest, I shall get some sleep. Wake me in an hourglass. Dawn will come soon, and I need to see the stars before we set out. Although…” the Menosian smiled. “Perhaps you can lead us to Eatoth now.”

Caenith watched the man remove his bowler and place it neatly beside his pack. Then Moreth shut his eyes, sighed, and breathed more and more slowly; he lay like a corpse: on his back, hands crossed on his chest. Freshly attuned to the world, and no longer distracted, the Wolf knew Moreth was not quite asleep. “Why offer your help?” asked the Wolf.

“The Slave is dead, and I was but his student,” replied Moreth, his face frozen and only his lips moving. “I did not make it to Eatoth on my own, and I would not make it there again without aid. I need a true hunter
behind whom I can stalk in the shadows. I know my own strength and that of others. I ally myself with the strongest. We are not friends, though we do need each other. Let us accept that, Blood King.”

Thus the Wolf did. That night he watched over all six of his pack, even the stray coyote from Menos. Did he trust Moreth? No. Coyotes and wolves were natural enemies. He did, nonetheless, respect the wily creature.

IV

Who am I? wonders Morigan
.

These youthful brown hands that she contemplates in her lap—clenching something dry and balled—and the curled wisps of dark hair fringing her vision, belong to someone else. Around her, dusty bookshelves gleam with a tarnished elegance—they are of gold or some other aureate mineral—and there are numerous pedestals stacked with scrolls. Morigan doesn’t understand the reason behind the uncountable candles—a graveyard of candles—that clutter the tall, stuffy room. Many have been snuffed and snuffed again by the wind; their cooled wax has bled over tomes and tables like bulbous mold. A few candle flames flicker, casting shadow puppets in the dusty heights of the chamber
.

How queer. Morigan feels as if she is two women at once. She has a daydream of the other body, the one that is held elsewhere, bouncing and warm in the arms of someone strong. Who is that woman? Who is this? In this deep and powerful Dream, she fights to remember herself as defiantly as she once screamed into the darkness of Death where Vortigern’s soul floated—the forgetfulness here is nearly that profound. Defenders of their mistress, the bees buzz loudly their warning of walking in the Dreams of Pandemonia. In the land of Chaos, the barriers between worlds are as brittle as the paper scrolls that often crumbled in her hands while she tidied Thule’s tower. Thule—yes, she remembers her sort-of-father, then her mind reclaims the man-wolf and the rest. How could she ever have forgotten Caenith, even for a speck?

Angry and wary, understanding that Pandemonia’s pull is stronger than Alabion’s, Morigan leaves the body of her host to observe the young woman who has summoned her here. Barely out of girlhood, she is pretty in an Arhadian way: tanned from sun, dark of hair. Her eyes are as deep and telling of pain as scars burned black. She smells of the spice of knowledge, as
her Wolf would say—a fragrance that coils up the nose and would have made her host sneeze if the girl herself had not been inundated by the same must since her youth. Eighteen, realizes Morigan, in a sting of knowledge. The girl is eighteen summers old. At least that’s how old she looks, but there is something eternal about her presence. Morigan receives a name, too, though not from her bees. Instead, she gleans this name from the note that her host unfurls and then crumples again and again in her hand
.