Feast of Chaos (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 3) (5 page)

She somehow sensed him watching her. Rotsoul’s eyes were closed, his body cocooned in blankets. His face was webbed in scars, and he shivered as if he were frail, though she was not fooled. Eean had brought this monster into their home and then shortly thereafter had abandoned the duty of his care so that she might sulk and ponder death. Since that time, Ealasyd had reluctantly nursed the monster. And as much as she detested the task, she found it impossible to turn away from any suffering beast. He surely suffered, even if he was deserving of the torment.

Ealasyd began her duties by cleaning the spit and crusted pus off his face with her rag. The body’s expulsion of infection usually meant the pendulum swung the right way—he was healing. Once finished with his face, Ealasyd hovered and studied the monster further to see if she had woken him, but he remained still. She took a short breath, then brought the cup of sacred water and ancient herbs to the monster’s lips. At least the curative carried a strong, sappy aroma that diffused some of his prune-sweet stink. Before becoming a gloomy old hag, Eean had told Ealasyd that Rotsoul had been on the very edge of darkness—a walking corpse. The stench gave credence to her sister’s claim. Ealasyd looked away while she fed the monster, then squinted here and there to make sure that most of the curative had trickled into his mouth. Some of the medicine washed over his scraggly, unshaven chin. His facial hair was growing in strangely for a man—patchy. A few specks later, the curative in the cup ran dry and she shook what little remained over his face like raindrops. Peaceful. He looked so calm, but then suddenly his brow wrinkled with awareness. He grabbed Ealasyd’s hand so violently and quickly that she dropped her cup.

“Where am I?” hissed Sorren.

Trying to temper her heartbeat and avoid showing fear—as one does when dealing with monsters—Ealasyd replied, “In the home of the Three Sisters of Alabion. Eean brought you here. You asked for her help, I am told.”

Regret twisted Sorren’s face into swollen putty, and Ealasyd repressed a yelp. “I…did,” he finally said, and released her.

As soon as she was free, Ealasyd hurried to fetch a stool. She positioned herself out of reach, next to an iron rod used to poke the fire-stones. “Eean saved you,” she said.

“I remember now.”

Uncharacteristically stoic, Ealasyd watched him as he began to cry. Monster’s tears—it was like watching a toad weep. She doubted that his grief came from anything genuinely kind; at best, he was weeping for something valuable that he’d lost. “She managed to save your flesh…in a sense,” said Ealasyd. “She stopped the great decay, though she could not remove the piece of Death’s great shadow that is within you. Doing so is beyond my sister’s power. You let Death in, and now She can never be removed—even if the worst of her power and presence has gone. You are
tainted
. Or rather, I suppose, more tainted. Is that why you’re weeping? Because of what you will become?”

“I’m not crying for myself—” Sorren began, but a fit of coughing overcame him before he could finish.

Ealasyd waited until he had relaxed into a wheezing submissiveness and then continued. “You can’t be upset for someone else. It’s not in your nature. I can see your insides, Rotsoul; they cannot hide from me. My oldest sister says that my heart is made of sunshine, and like the sun, I fear the darkness. I fear you, helpless though you appear.” She tapped the poker on the ground, then drew a line like a river in the dust. “Hmm…Do you know the story of Frog and Viper?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “I’m bad with stories; I lose track of the details. But this one I remember as clearly as I do my lost sister’s name, as clearly as I perceive your dark truth.” Ealasyd leaned in. “Spring in Alabion is a terrible time. In that season, the Green Mother cleanses herself through forest fires, floods, and storms. One spring—I couldn’t say when—Frog and Viper were racing from the disasters. On the edge of a floodbank, they met. Frog knew he had a decent chance of swimming for his life—from both Viper and the cleansing—and he leaped into the brimming River Torn. However, he was halted by a plea from Viper.
Please, carry me across! Carry me to safety and I vow never to harm you or your children again
.
A marvelous offer
, thought Frog. An eternity of never worrying about this predator again would be a gift to all the generations of his kind. Once the two were in agreement,
Viper slithered onto Frog’s back, and they were nearly to the other side of the deadly waters when—”

Sorren began to groan, thrashing in pain and anger.

“Oh, you’ve heard this tale before,” said Ealasyd, a little sly, a little menacing. “Or you’re smart enough to guess how it ends. Viper bit and strangled Frog, and they both drowned in the flood. You see, you can’t change the nature of a creature. I may not be as wise as my sisters, but I know how animals work. And you, Rotsoul, you’re Viper. Worse than he is, actually. A predator, a defiler. A creature meant to kill and pleased only by killing. There’s nothing wrong with that; it’s what you are. I bet you thought of redemption, of penance, when you beseeched the Green Mother.
Siogtine
is our word for it; at least I think that’s it. I’m very forgetful. Regardless, you thought you would find a path to absolution. I don’t see that in you. I’m sorry. Your soul is simply too dark. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why Eean and our Mother brought you back. Unless there is something for you to kill…”

Then it came to the sister of innocence and sunshine: the reason why the Green Mother had brought the monster back. Excited now, Ealasyd stood and searched for the missing cup. Rotsoul—her monster—would need his greatest strengths for what he was to hunt.

I

THE CRADLE

I

B
ack in Alabion, when Morigan and the Wolf had consummated their marriage, they had sworn they would steal whatever scant sands they could to worship at the temples of each other’s bodies. A bounty of riches then presented itself during the voyage toward Pandemonia. Long days of flight and conversations quickly evolved into an opportunity for the bloodmates to spend as much time as they could together, mostly in their chambers. At breakfast, they’d make an appearance, and perhaps another around lunch. However, the barb—as released by Alastair—was that more turbulence occurred on the back end of the great skycarriage than anywhere else on the vessel.

Tonight, they’d come out of their foxhole and joined the company and ship’s captain for a night of feasting, drinking, and song—the latter courtesy of Alastair. Deciding this was to be a merry occasion, the mysterious jack of all trades produced a potent elixir that managed to inebriate the Wolf after several draughts. It tasted like varnish.
A slow and staggering vintage of rare spirits from the East
, Alastair promised the grimacing Wolf.
Strong enough to drop a herd of cattle
. While the liquor didn’t knock the Wolf over, it certainly flushed his cheeks and had him clapping and singing
along with an uncommon levity. Once the revelry had ended, and after finishing off Alastair’s gift, the heavy-footed Wolf carried his lover back to their cabin. For hourglasses thereafter—possibly until dawn—they made love in the slowest, wettest, most drunken, and delicious way. More of a brute when under the influence, he’d fallen asleep kissing and softly biting her breasts. Soon, Morigan drifted off to his half-snore, half-growl, and occasional suckling, thinking how much she loved this beautiful creature. One of Alastair’s pretty songs from down the corridor—carried through the great metal halls of the skycarriage like music through a pipe—was her final shepherd to sleep.

Morigan steps out onto the cracked-dust desert plain and sniffs. Wider, farther do her perceptions reach than the grandest of wolves, her mate—he who sleeps in another place. Who am I? Where have my bees taken me today? she wonders. The land offers only the most mysterious of clues; whirling clouds, hewn steeps, dunes mossed over with spiny, straggling forests, and a rolling sea of sand that creeps toward a starkly red horizon. Rendered in the morning sun are the glittering threads of many rivers branching over the land—they look like pulsing veins of blood. How sweet and unusual is the air that flows through her nose and down her throat. Upon its current, she tastes the chlorophyll of leaves, the chalk of sand, the spice of mildew, and the refreshing salt of the rivers—inland water that bears the taste of an ocean. What place could be so strange as to hold all of these details and elements in harmony? The answer strikes her then: Pandemonia
.

I am here. No, Brutus is here, she realizes, as her enormous galvanized host begins a thundering run across the landscape. It has to be Brutus in whom she resides, as if trapped with a storm in a bottle. For who else has lungs like bellows? Who else climbs gullies in a reach or two, bounding about like a spastic ape, but the King of the Sun himself? With an astonishing disregard for natural laws, the Sun King leaps from butte to butte, jumping so high and so far that he soars like a wind over the irregular valleys and dashes through waterfalls that pour from winding pinnacles of rock. Following his speedy journey is difficult, and Morigan refrains from flexing her Will to see her host’s secrets or feel all that he feels, for she realizes she is not alone in his mind
.

Zionae, the Black Queen, rides in Brutus, too
.

Frozen, as still as a woman hiding in the closet while a murderer creeps through the house, Morigan holds in check her consciousness and her bees—a maddening effort to maintain. Zionae sibilates on every wind that whisks Brutus’s ears. Zionae rushes through his veins like poison. Zionae perks his nipples and groin with infernal arousal: a need to hunt, kill, and breed. From her hidey-hole within the mad king, Morigan listens to the suggestions of the Dark Dreamer. More intimations and emotions than words are these whispers. Still, Morigan discerns enough of her enemy. Zionae’s madness is a paste of crushed spiders, bent nails, broken glass, aborted children, and the tears and blood of those who have died screaming in horror, a madness so thick that it pours over Morigan, blocking her ability to scream. Better that she does not, lest Brutus’s dark passenger hear, and thus know, of her presence
.

Morigan buries herself deeper into the mad king’s soul. She tries to creep elsewhere, to find a piece of his mind untainted by Zionae’s lust. There is no corner of the Sun King’s mind, though, in which wickedness does not fester. A black poison has washed through Brutus’s soul. Even when Morigan flees to what should be sacred memories of Brutus and his brother, she finds no familial sanctity. Instead, she experiences her host pounding Magnus with his fists, tearing him with his teeth, and thrusting into his pale brother with his gargantuan sword of meat. Is this a memory or a dark delusion? She hopes the latter, as the acts Brutus is committing are depraved beyond measure. When she seeks out Brutus’s memories of Mother-wolf, she finds that these, too, have been corrupted. Now the king fantasizes about devouring his mate, eating her innards, and stabbing his prick into her shuddering dead corpse. Perversion, lunacy, and repellent desires assault Morigan wherever she darts. The whole of Brutus’s mind has become maggoty with death. He and his evil mother would rape the world. They would eat and feast on every meat in creation. Their hunger has no end. Mercy save us all, laments Morigan
.

I must escape! I must wake!

But rather than soaring in a silver cloud to freedom, Morigan is caught in a darkness that clots and constricts around her. The light she seeks seems farther out of reach, a pinhole that vanishes in a blink. Now there is only the whispering darkness. Zionae has found her
.

“Little Fly, I warned you against any return to my Dreaming,”
Zionae says—a screeching of rending metal.
“Come now, let me into your heart and feel the glory of a world without remorse. I feel it in you—a fear. Fear is the root of hunger. Indulge in it. I can show you the heights and depths of passion. Such glories do I see in your future. I shall offer you a spot at my Feast. Kill your pack. Make love with your Wolf on a bed of their corpses, and then kill him too as he empties inside of you.”

A red mist whirls around Morigan. It parts like a curtain to the Black Queen’s cues, and Morigan appears in the grisly scene described by the Dreamer. There, upon a stage of blood, upon a mattress of tangled corpses, Morigan watches herself ride the rigid corpse of her bloodmate. From the pile of flesh beneath the abominable lovemaking, Mouse’s waxen face glares up as Morigan uses her promise dagger to hack, with gusto and virtuosity, at what remains of her mate. If Morigan could vomit here, she would. The doppelgänger turns from her unsavory duties and smiles at Morigan
.

“See what you can become, my child,”
says Zionae, through the doppelgänger’s mouth
.
“
Such glory and beauty. Rise and find yourself anew.”

“No! Never!” screams Morigan
.