Feast of Chaos (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 3) (27 page)

My Wolf, what—

Hunters
.

The underbrush swallowed him, and his mind went silent, too. Thereafter, Morigan could feel only the throbbing of his pulse. Her Wolf was hunting, in a mind state similar to the one that governed her when she wandered the gray netherverse. Squatting together, the six companions listened for any disharmony in the morning’s music of ruffling stalks, wind songs, and heat haze. Nothing out of the ordinary for Pandemonia’s queer wildlife could be heard. Morigan didn’t feel that it was any such creatures that had alarmed her bloodmate. “Adam, do you sense anything?” she whispered, at her wits’ end.

The changeling shook his head. “I do not smell any predators, although my senses are not what they should be in this land.”

“I can help you with that later, skin-walker,” whispered Moreth. His cold, narrowed gaze then slid to Morigan. “You’re a seer. Why are we hiding, waiting, and guessing, when you could simply
tell
us of our danger?”

“I…”

Morigan’s mouth hung open: she had no good answer for the man. In the heat of the moment, she had forgotten that only a few sands ago she’d
thrown her mind across spans of Geadhain to find, unerringly, the souls of her friends in the North. Once, Elissandra had claimed that Morigan did not know the full extent of her powers.
“A fat-fingered and fumbling child
,
”
Elissandra had called her. The white witch had had cause to denounce her, for Morigan tended to call upon her magik only when it was needed, not seeing it as useful in everyday life. Perhaps she feared becoming too reliant upon her magik. In truth, she hadn’t contemplated the matter deeply, though she supposed her stubbornness, humble upbringing, and determination to be in control of her life had contributed to her reluctance. Besides, more often than not the Fates made use of her, and not the other way around. But if she wanted to master her gifts, it was time to stop being afraid.
No better moment than now
, she decided.

“Well?” pressed Moreth, having waited all this time for a reply.

Somewhat angrily, Morigan answered, “Yes. Yes, I can.”

Morigan shut her eyes and released the swarm of her magik. She left her flesh entirely this time; her body collapsed and was quickly caught and cradled by Thackery.
I am the master. I am the Queen of the Unseen
, she told herself and her swarm.
Show me who or what threatens our pack
. Into the air her spirit spun like a maple key.

Pandemonia’s atmosphere was radiant. The sky glowed with a thousand silver rivers of coursing light—etheric currents, each one of them a vein of raw magik, and not so different from the riches buried in the earth. Here, though, nothing was entombed: power flowed freely through the skies and rained down with the water into the soil. Little wonder that Thackery’s earlier attempt to conjure a light had spun beyond his control. He might as well have lit a match in an oil-soaked apartment.
All this power
…, she thought. She wondered where the silver rivers converged, at what glorious sea of energy, of possibility, they arrived.

She sensed that this place was similar to the Hall of Memories. It was a nexus of time, space, and magik. She even felt a comparable, though far more terrible, pull and began to float upward and away from the vaporous outlines of her companions and the mumbles of their underwater conversation.

No. You are in control. You will not be led. You have only one thing to discover here, and the mystery of where the thousand rivers of light converge is not it
.

She sought the fire of her bloodmate, and in the realm between worlds she saw his strong flame burning on the upward slope of a transparent valley. She blew herself toward him, and in a speck hovered over his broad crimson outline.

Morigan
, he said, surprised. He touched his heart, where he could feel her, then looked behind him, sensing her but seeing only fields of blue fronds and unicorn spires. Somehow, she stood near him, although his eyes told him different. The Wolf reached out, lightly, and his hand passed through a breeze that tickled his flesh like the softness of her lips.

I am here, my Wolf
.

The Wolf snorted in shock. He quickly composed himself.
How? I have known shamans and witches who can cast their souls, but even they cannot interact with the living. I felt you. I know that I did. Your warmth…Your kiss?

Although she had no mouth in her current state, a flock of warm, unseen butterflies fluttered over the Wolf as she thought of kissing him. The Wolf grinned.
How?
he asked again.

It is as Moreth said, I believe, and as Talwyn speculated. Pandemonia is a source of magik, life, and fate—a fertile bosom of possibility. I feel that anything I do here will be multiplied untold times. Think, my Wolf, of how your senses found these creatures even over the enormous roar of this place
.

These creatures
, thought the Wolf, and became sullen once more.

In no time at all, he’d found their hunters. A wind sour with ash and the musk of an incredibly sweaty, rancid animal had drawn him to them like a shout. Six riders, huddled in dusty red cloaks and mounted on patient, horned steeds formed a lined guard over the top of the valley, on the final hill the company would have to climb to get out of this patch of Pandemonia. At first, the Wolf had considered dashing up and disabling the riders. It would not have taken long to do, and at most, one of them might have had time to scream. However, the unsettling odor that blew from the six, and the motionlessness that they exhibited even as he began to fidget amid the ferns, held him back. The Wolf could nearly place the smell—the reek of oily scorched meat left to fester atop dead coals—but it reminded him of something from a dream, not a memory.

Do you not recognize them?
asked Morigan’s ghost.

No.

To Morigan, who floated in the membrane between realities, everything appeared dazzlingly clear, sharp, and bright. She could not only see the shapes of things—trees, beasties, and her handsome, hulking Wolf—she could spy the secrets that lay beneath the flesh. She glimpsed the fire of her bloodmate’s spirit: a gold-tipped, wild light contained within the glass lantern of his chest. Indeed, the Wolf’s soul was as beautiful as she had always known it would be.

With her heightened perception, she could easily look to the six riders upon the hill and peer past their glass shells into the matter that constituted their hearts. Each of the six beings was empty, mostly, save for a pointed and black spot. It was a star, or anti-star, the very opposite of life. Each mark was as intricate as an ebon snowflake, as complex as the greater celestial body from which it had come—too complex for even Morigan’s incredible mind to apprehend, for these marks were shadows of the Mother of Creation: Zionae.

You do not see it, my Wolf, though you sense it and smell it. These are not men, not anymore. They are hollow, and they have been marked
.

Marked?

By the Black Queen
.

Now that the Wolf knew Zionae’s smell firsthand, he would never forget it. A growl burbled from his hate-curled mouth, and he prepared to leap from concealment and ravage the slaves of the Black Queen with already bared claws and teeth. Morigan’s sensual, tickling wind blew against his face, giving him pause.

Hold, my Wolf
, she warned.

If her spirit had not manifested here, if he had discerned the nature of the men upon the hill by himself, as he probably would have in time, he wouldn’t have been able to leash his beast. He wanted to ravage the horsemen, for they were the agents and foul children of his father; they were the embodiments of corruption, monsters bred to consume. He’d seen Morigan’s vision of how Blackeyes were conceived. These creatures were almost siblings to him. This thought so unsettled the Wolf that his iron stomach heaved. Still thinking of brothers, sisters, and wicked families, he suddenly detected the stink of man musk upon the riders. From that whiff,
he knew that a huge, reeking animal must have been near them. Brutus. That was his father’s smell—the musk of war, sex, and doom.

I yearn to shower myself in their death. I yearn to howl over their corpses until Brutus comes to challenge me
.

Hold
, she commanded.

For as angry as he felt, he must hold himself back. Morigan looked once more at the black stars in the distant glass men. They were not six separate men, but six roots of a great dark tree. Attacking these roots would alert a larger force to the presence of the company. Now that her bloodmate had evoked the name of his father, she noticed signs of Brutus’s taint on the bodies of the corrupted vessels—powdery markings, as if the six riders had been molested by great gold-dusted hands. Quite possibly, that’s exactly what had happened. At least the soulless riders could not describe to Morigan the terror that had come before their deaths. She found that viewing them abstractly, as little glass and ebon soldiers, brought her some small comfort, too. She’d been spared the sight of their scars and mottled flesh.

They are of many bodies, but only one mind
, she said.
Each is an eye and hand of the Black Queen. We must know why they are here before we reveal ourselves. Somehow, they have already come this close—
Morigan thought of the Dreamstalker, another pawn or servant of the Black Queen, and realized she must have been tracked, either by that villain or any number of creatures or forces they’d yet to comprehend in this strange land.
Please, my Wolf, I know you want your clash with your father, and I am sure you will have it. But we are not prepared. For now, you must be calm
.

The Wolf stayed low to the earth, swallowing his growls and making himself as still as the soil.
Good, my Wolf, good
, whispered the breeze of his soul mate as it caressed his back. Morigan knew she would not be able to placate him forever, that this was a temporary respite. Glaring at the glass monsters atop the spectral hill, Morigan wished these evils away.
You have brought us enough pain, Zionae
, she thought.
Leave us be. We shall have our reckoning with each another soon enough
.

As though they had heard her, the horsemen reined in their mounts, turned around, and rode off into the crimson dazzle of the sun.

They have left…
said the Wolf, as he rose up and sniffed the air for scents of the riders.

Why did they leave?

I don’t know
.

The Wolf smelled the enigmatic, cloying incense of a mystery.
Did you Will them away? Or has something else made them give up the chase?

Morigan had no explanations for him; she felt she’d worked no magik, and there could well be other threats out there to attract the riders’ attention. Paranoid, the Wolf decided to hurry back to the others. Down the hill he strode, embraced by the gentle living wind of his bloodmate. Despite the worries he carried with him, he found himself grinning at the newest wonder of their love.

IV

After the Wolf had returned to the company, and Morigan had, with a gasp, announced her spirit’s reintegration with her flesh, the bloodmates explained their narrowly avoided encounter with the Red Riders.

“Your vision was true, then?” asked Mouse, referring to Morigan’s dream on the eve of their landing in Pandemonia. She was shaking. “Brutus and his forces are here?”

The seer nodded.

“Yes, my father is here,” growled the Wolf. In a fury, the Wolf stomped off, tearing a path through the grasses. The companions hurried after him. A hard pull on Mouse’s arm held her back.

“Father?” hissed Moreth. “His
father
is the mad king?”

“Small detail!” Mouse freed herself and tried to put Moreth at ease with her smile, lovely when she used it. “You and I didn’t have the time to go over
everything
the other evening. Certain bits may have been withheld out of a sense of discretion, a discretion I see I need no longer maintain.”

“No more secrets,” warned Moreth.

Half hidden in the fronds nearby, Adam crouched, watching their exchange. Noticing this, Mouse decided to move before the changeling felt she was being threatened. As she and Moreth continued along the path cleared by their company, Adam circled her in silence. Mouse
ignored Moreth’s presence. She didn’t entirely know why, but she felt guilty about not having trusted Moreth. “I suppose you have questions,” she said, at last.

“I doubt we have time for all my questions,” he snapped. “Will there be any other surprises? Is there anything else I should know? You know, the kind of details one might feel compelled to withhold for discretionary reasons. Not knowing things tends to be the quickest route to death. I am not a man content to exist in isolation from reality, no matter how cold and unpleasant that reality may be. I know for a fact you are missing one, or more, from your number. I hear the whispers about those who have come and gone from your company. The steward of the Blackbriar estate, who went rogue; and he was a reborn, which is strange, since that kind never stray. I have heard that one of the Broker’s men defected, as well. Were they, too, left to flounder? Would those men be with us today if the wisest among you had not kept your secrets in such tight reserve?”

A hitch formed in Mouse’s chest at the mention of her father. She hadn’t stopped thinking of Vortigern—she felt she never would—but she wasn’t as tormented by his ghost these days. Every night before going to bed, she would recall his cold hands and yellow smile, and feel a twinge that was more of happiness than sorrow now.

Moreth read her wince, saw her suddenly watery eyes, and realized he might have spoken too harshly. “I don’t know when to stop myself, at times,” he said. “My father used to call me
Lingua Serpens
…Snake Tongue. Indeed, my mouth often runs away with my mind. A gentleman should know better.”

From somewhere, he produced a pristine monogrammed kerchief and passed it to Mouse so that she might dry the few tears she couldn’t recall having produced. She made quick work of her grief and returned Moreth’s cloth to him.