Feast of Chaos (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 3) (100 page)

Gales pummeled Erik, and winds threw him far, but he found purchase in the maelstrom by sprouting claws of obsidian. Slowly, he crawled toward the juddering pocket in the hurricane where he sensed the golden light of his beloved, where the scorned Immortal lovers stood unscathed in the heart of this horrible upheaval.

“You ruined me!” screamed Lila.

A runny tentacle of sand flung itself from the wall of wind that encircled the sorcerers. It was demolished by a spear of lightning and scattered the calm space in dust. There was no confusion over the ruination of which she spoke. It was clear to both which event it was that had utterly destroyed their marriage.

“I was not myself!” insisted the king.

“Were you ever? Were you ever honest with me?” asked Lila, and the howling sandstorm brought by her anger ebbed to a wheeze so that she might hear his excuse.

Magnus answered with his heart. “No.”

With that, each of their storms fell apart. An emerald flash crackled through the air, and the hail eased into a drifting snowfall. It was lovely, as if the winter solstice had come early to Eod. The whiteness offered some of the light stolen by the hourglass. In the soft glow, the king saw that Lila had returned to a form closer to the one he’d wed: golden, enchanting, and without scales or serpent’s charms. But that reptile, too, he valued and respected now, for it had always been inside her. Magnus took a step toward the memory of who they’d been for one thousand years, and hoped that enough mercy remained in this remade woman that she would be able to appreciate his regret.

“I was never honest with you,” he said. “Or with myself. I wanted to be a man, but I cannot be what I am not. I used you to weave an illusion of happiness for myself. And for a time, we
were
happy—or at least as happy as two people deceiving themselves can be.” Reaching out to her, he gingerly touched her cheek, a gesture that had once made them smile. Now, they both frowned, and his fingers felt cold to her. “An illusion. You feel it, too. You wanted escape, and so did I. What we built, however—this
empire, our legacy—does not have to end with our love. I know what you want to hear, Lila. I am sorry. I am sorry I hurt you. I am sorry I lied to you—as sorry as you have been to live that lie—for so many centuries.”

Navigator Lila, though his matrix is extraordinarily complex, I detect the measured heart rate and lowered phosphorus levels of a resting conscience
, said the Mind from the tight cradle of her arms in which it had weathered the storm of the king and queen.

“I know,” said the queen, to both that entity and her former husband. Here was an admission that their love was finally at an end, that Magnus rued his actions. With that release, she sighed. Magnus, sensing her sentiment, pressed his forehead against hers in a final expression of what had now faded between them. Lila sensed their fragile harmony was about to be broken; she felt a clenching of rage in her heart—it wasn’t her own, but Erik’s. Stumbling, she stepped away, turned, and before she could mind-whisper or stall him another way, Erik manifested in a black blur.

“Don’t touch her! You have lost all right!”

The voice sounded as if it came from someone wailing from the bottom of a dark hole: powerful, elemental, born of rock. Erik? Magnus couldn’t place it, and a speck later, any attempts to place the voice were cast into the dirt as he was thrown to the ground like a toy soldier by a ton of solid matter.

The Everfair King, crackling with arcs of emerald power, rose from the ground. He spat blood and glared at his attacker with eyes that mirrored the black and green thunderstorms that had so abruptly gathered above. Through the majesty of his anger—a sheen of green rage that licked at his form—Magnus saw a creature armored in obsidian plates that fumed with a golden light not unlike his aura. A sorcerer?

Lila, standing aside from the clash, carefully backed away. In a few flickers of magik, she’d slithered back to her warriors. While she and Magnus had just forgiven the unforgiveable, she felt pulled in two directions by her heart. She could have made a plea on behalf of Magnus to Erik, though she strained to speak in mind or with mouth to deny her knight his vengeance. Was this not her vengeance, as well? Whatever Magnus’s reasons, and pardons, the savagery of his raping her would never be eased. Erik had come to extract a bloody retribution from Magnus akin to what
he had wrought upon his queen—if not sexual, than passionately violent. In truth, Erik’s heart was her heart, and so she knew they’d both come for blood. Blood would be the font in which the three of them washed away their sins. Violence was not only a man’s work, though he would do it better than her. She wanted Erik to beat her former husband as she’d been beaten, and she stopped denying her thirst. Lila’s face hardened, her scales subsuming her beauty. Accepting that this was how it would have to be, Lila inspired her army with a wind of spice, and she and the Arhadians gave their voices to sing the warriors’ war song, hoping to see Erik claim the triumph he deserved.

As king and obsidian knight circled one another, Magnus at last identified the man under the monster: by the monster’s familiar battle stance, and by the cold concentration in his ebony eyes—those had changed, though, lost all flecks of blue, and were blacker than space. “Erik,” he hissed. Thunder groaned and split the night.

“I am the knight of the queen of Eod,” declared the obsidian knight, stomping a craggy hoof that shook the ground as terribly as had Magnus’s thunder. “Do not call me by that name. Ask my pardon for your transgressions, and I may let you leave this place without causing you grievous harm.”

“Without harm…” The king’s rage built and exploded. Suddenly, the skies flashed and roiled, and a rain of electricity fell from the heavens in a twining nimbus. Power engulfed the king. Magnus vanished into the luminous pillar. However, the light quickly waned into sparks and thin dancing twists of lightning, and from the smoldering hollow where once a handsome king had stood strode forth a warrior of winter. The king’s glassy armor shone like the Witch Lights of Pandemonia—all the many shades of his soul from white to teal to crystal green. In gauntlets more talon and icicle than metal, he clenched a blade pulled from an arctic forge, one that seemed too large to be wielded so lightly. It smoldered with his wrath, steamed with a freezing power. A horned helm of emerald ice hid all but the king’s pulsating green eyes and twisting black hair. Magnus could have been the lord of the winter hunt himself: a primeval Dreamer conjured from myth.

When the king spoke, his voice, too, came out distorted, echoing and crackling like permafrost. “I see that you have grown,” he said. “New
weapons, new courage. You would never have raised a hand to me before; you quailed when last given that opportunity. In a sense, I am proud. I see that Lila’s blood—my blood—has changed you. In all of my lifetimes, I never thought to bear a child through ritual rather than love. We are now more father and son than ever before. Very well, my son. If you believe yourself to be the child no longer, come! Let us see how strong your fists have grown. Challenge your father!”

Over the city, now rendered heinously bright by the Witchwall’s scintillations, the storm continued its dazzling rumble. The warrior women matched nature’s beat with their song of valor.

Elsewhere, the Iron Queen, Rasputhane, and what remained of the Ironguard and watchmen who hadn’t fled had found one another at last. They crouched in the creaking remains of an outdoor theater. A barricade of broken wood, beams, and curtain tatters gave them no real protection from the storm about to begin. Gloriatrix had refused to be taken back to the skycarriage. Besides, it was too late to flee, and she wouldn’t risk taking off with the elements as temperamental as they were. Here they would stay, as witnesses to an historic moment. It was the end of a dynasty, Gloriatrix felt—which was only fair, given that her own kingdom lay in ruins. All should be reduced to ash; all should be rebuilt. She smiled as the first emerald hammer of lightning struck the flagstones with an explosion of black dust.

The king charged. More heavenly hammers struck the land, and the stone man stomped and stomped, causing the spine of the world itself to shake. Gloriatrix was thrown down—losing her gun—and caught by Eod’s spymaster. She shook off his assistance, using him primarily as a climbing post on which to stand and look out upon the vibrating land.

What could even be seen through the foggy storm descending from the heavens? There was dust—a coughing, eye-watering quantity of it. There were flashes of green and gold light going off that would have tempted her toward delirium had it not been for the mesmerizing dance of two jewels in the chaos. One was black, the other emerald. They reminded her of the shooting stars she and Thackery had once seen on the clearest night she’d known in Menos. But these were men, or powers that wore man-like forms. She heard their weapons of obsidian and ice smashing against each
other. The calamity unleashed torrents of snow and pelted her with a rain of scorched soil. In specks, she was filthy and covered, and yet she could not look away. For it was too exhilarating, being in the presence of real divinity. As hard as Rasputhane—shocked and concerned for her safety—and her Ironguards tried, they couldn’t convince her to sit down.

Lightning thrashed in a web from above, and it became impossible to determine which storm was where. Then, in a moment that would be remembered forevermore, a black meteor launched itself on an angle from the billows like an arrow flying in reverse. It hung—glinting, growing a golden flame around itself, and growling, she thought—and then retraced its arc to the earth, landing with an impact as heavy, fiery, and great as expected. The shockwave vaporized the cloud below, blasted apart the storm above, and forced Gloriatrix to the ground with a slap of heat.

Her head rang; her eyes watered. She had the taste of blood in her mouth. Still indomitable, she stood with the rest of her groaning company and looked past the crumpled and scattered wreckage across a sparking, flame-twisted, and pockmarked square. Even in the midst of so much devastation, the warrior maidens sang; she could hear them now that the thunder had stopped. Indeed, they sang on because the battle was not yet over: through the ash and fires, the king and his son still danced. Gloriatrix wondered if the Immortals had stopped their dance for even a moment as the world skipped a beat. She assumed they hadn’t, for they parried and spun with a speed so great their movements were difficult to distinguish.

To her, they were garlands of black, gold, and green—incredible spirals. They threw each about like glowing rag dolls; their aerial acrobatics defied the laws of physics. Into the sky they leaped, hovering like a star of two colors. Gloriatrix feared the consequences of another fall, and this time braced herself, but when the star split, one half—the green one—was cast into the wall above Lila’s army. There, it bounced back from a dusty impact and tackled the black bolt already hurtling in its direction. The streaks twisted, rolled across the sky like ribbons in love, then veered downward and carved a smoldering rut in the flagstones before breaking apart. On sky, on land, it didn’t matter: the Immortals were stuck to each another, bound by their anger, apart only for instants. The dance, the renewed and booming thunder, and the lights were a divine pageantry.
Certainly all the people of Eod had climbed out onto their roofs and turned their eyes toward the spectacle.

The fury of the conflict seemed to be waning, the blows the two exchanged less apocalyptic. Perhaps they had become aware of the damage they were doing: the Faire of Fates was now a wasteland, and no doubt there were many lying injured, if not dead, among the tarred heaps. Magnus’s rage had overpowered his compassion.

Occasionally, the Immortals froze in a wavering tangle, and she could see that they now looked much as they had at the start of the battle. In those moments, she heard them barking at one another, though their voices were rumbles and blaring crackles, and she could make no sense of them. Soon, she realized that the battle was indeed slowing, that most of the fight was taking place on land rather than in the sky, and that she could finally see the shapes hidden in the blurs. She didn’t dare approach the coruscating pit in which they still battled. Nor would she test her feet on a split land still trembling with tiny earthquakes from their blows. Sadly for her, she wasn’t privy to their confessions.

“I loathe you.” Erik grunted. In one hand, he clutched the sizzling blade of his father, dark blood pouring over his obsidian-gold knuckles. Sloppily he swung at his father with his free fist. Erik’s armor was chipped and much of its shale plating had been cleaved away: what remained gleamed with a polish of blood. Magnus’s icy mail had been shattered. Half a helm, a vambrace, and the whole abdomen of the king’s breastplate had been carved away. Blood concealed his paleness, but not the glittering fragments of shattered emerald buried in his flesh. Neither warrior could continue this for much longer. The king’s blade had been whittled down to a thick wick of light. Erik’s hands were numb, and he was sure he was missing a finger. He hoped it would grow back. The pain didn’t bother him. Rage pushed his extreme tolerance even further; he’d fight for Lila forever if he must. “You never deserved her,” he spat.

“You speak the truth,” huffed Magnus.

With a groan, Erik pushed them apart. Spent and shocked, he fell to a hand and a knee. Erik’s rocky plating crumbled away from his muscles, leaving him nude and defenceless. Magnus, at last released from Erik’s astonishingly strong and determined grip, staggered and also slumped to
the ground. Only the flickering brand of the king’s weapon prevented him from collapsing: he rested both hands on its hilt. He Willed away his armor, and it faded from him in a shimmering wind. He knelt before his son—a real and true heir to his strength and power—in bloody rags and spoke his heart’s greatest secrets. There was no longer thunder in his voice.

“You feel that I have wronged you, by dishonoring Lila,” he whispered, “and I have. I defiled her. I allowed my love for my brother to blind me. I took her; I did not earn her. I see that now, although that wisdom will help neither of us heal our wounds. I do not believe we can ever be healed. Know that I have always acted with virtue as my goal, Erik. In my quest to be a man, I built many houses of sand that are now being swept away by the black tide that comes for us. I thought we were stronger. As a nation. As a family. I lived in a prison of my own illusions. I do not blame you for what you have done. In fact—” Magnus coughed and gave his son a bloody smile. “I am proud of you.”