Feast of Chaos (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 3) (96 page)

Misplaced sentiments, thought Gloria. “If I cannot change?”

“Winds will blow, running water will wear away the hardest stone. What refuses to change will suffer a crueler erosion. We all must surrender to the elements. Lift our hands—” Elissa raised their hands, fingers interlaced, into a splash of sudden light. “Spread our arms—” The seer parted their hands and embraced the day; Gloria mirrored her. “And rejoice in our bodies becoming dust, wind, and nothingness.”

Embarrassed now, Gloria lowered her hands. Her lip trembled. What would she do without her conspirator in this great game? How would she outwit her enemies without the seer’s insights? Who else could slam back adderspit as well as Elissa? (Unpredictable, fair-weather Beatrice aside.) Here, Gloria realized, was the only friend she’d ever made, other than her brother when they were young. She realized she was listening to Elissa’s final will and testament. Bitterness claimed her. “I shall not rejoice in your end,” said Gloria.

“No.” Elissa smiled. “It is not your way. Know that I have chosen my time. I shall be the bird of sun and moon. I shall become one of the champions of this war. They say there is honor in being a hero; there is fear, too. However, the honor in sacrifice is true.” Elissandra relaxed her sun-saluting arms and again took her friend’s hands.

“When?” asked the Iron Queen.

“Soon. The time for me to be brave is soon.”

Gloria sighed. She had more questions, important ones, but even matters of Death and the War of Wars could wait a speck. She held Elissa’s hands. The breeze came on hot, but it was pleasant. Silver birds fluttered over the spires of Eod. Whenever the creatures landed nearby and strutted
about, they reminded Gloria of gulls. Close inspection revealed them to be mangy, though—beggar kings. They must be confused as to where salt water was, as they were in the middle of a desert. Still, the tenacity of these creatures unexpectedly moved Gloria. They were no different than she. Lost and foraging in a land not made for their tastes. And now she was to lose another of her flock. She wondered, plainly and honestly, how many more losses she could bear.
My realm, my friend, my sons. I am a queen who fights for a throne in a land of ashes
.

“You can still fight for your sons,” said Elissa, who’d heard the whispers of Gloria’s thoughts. “I have seen them.”

“What?”

Elissa clenched the Iron Queen’s hands. A jolt of flesh-prickling power ran through each woman. “Alive or not alive. I feel worms over my face. I also taste fresh air as if rising from a grave. I am dead and yet reborn. I am lost and yet hunted. I hear their names: Sorren, Vortigern. My little Blackbirds. Two blackbirds, lost and flying in the storm. You can be the one to guide them home. Just open the cage, Gloria, and they will fly into your nest. I feel them…I hear them. One running, one screaming. They’re almost here.”

Blackbirds. Gloriatrix’s nickname for her children had been shared with no one, ever. Although Elissandra had implied earlier that at least one of Gloria’s children was alive, she had offered nothing substantial or incontrovertible regarding Sorren and Vortigern’s fates. Gloria gasped. “In Eod?”

“Yes. Both Blackbirds come. They are drawn to you, even though your heart rebukes love.” Elissandra slumped and needed her hands to prevent herself from falling over. When she gazed at Gloria again, the seer appeared wan and spent. “That was my gift to you. Whatever I said. The voice of Fate has left me, though I would urge you to remember my each and every word. You must honor what we have discussed for my children—that, I remember more clearly than your gift.”

“I shall,” vowed the Iron Queen.

The friends sat and chatted. Once or twice, they even smiled. The children could be heard playing some game of hide and sneak with the Everfair King; his cutting laugh suggested he was enjoying the diversion. The sun
rose, and gold burned on a sky soon to be set with evening fire. Death? Who cared about that bony wench? It would be a beautiful sunset tonight. The Witchwall magnified the colors in the air as a lens of crystal casts light. Already, beams of crimson and clouds as bright as bronze warmed that most immovable heart: Gloria’s. Perhaps she and Elissandra could watch the sunset together, thought the Iron Queen. It might be their last.

“Death,” said Elissandra suddenly, and massaged her stump. “Horgot’s death came shortly after he’d lost his hand—ironic. We must speak of Death now, and not my passing. Such information is why you’ve come.”

She and the Iron Queen had been gleefully discussing the Second Chair’s end when the shift in Elissandra’s tone stung the Iron Queen like a slap. It was time to face reality. She stiffened up. In a speck, three shadows arrived behind her: two small, one cold as a winter door open at one’s back. The children must have been summoned by a secret command from their mother, which they then relayed to the king.

“I was told it was time to talk,” said Magnus.

The children of the white witch joined their mother, standing at her shoulders like matching ravens.
You may stay, my lamblings
, Elissandra mind-whispered.
You, too, must understand what we face. It is also time for me to say what each of you knows must be said
. Tearing up, the children shook their heads.
No tears; no fear. Each of you will live and ensure the survival of our line. You will be children that honor your mother and father, not weak, slow-born creatures with minds of putty and bodies of fat
.

Yes, Mother
, the children replied; their tears stopped.

Magnus recognized that an exchange had taken place, a parley between minds. The family of witches now gazed at him and Gloria. “I have seen Death,” declared Elissandra.

“The Pale Lady,” said the girl.

“The Queen of Bones,” said the boy.

“She builds an army from the dead of Menos,” continued Elissandra. Nearness to her final hourglass imbued the seer with cosmic clarity. Details and contexts hitherto shrouded were cleared of their fog. She saw the patterns of destiny—the weaving threads of Fate—that surrounded each man, stone, breath of wind, and fleck of dust. Indeed, the whole of the world had become so suffused with music, light, and movement that it appeared to
be howling with a harmonious fire. She knew things she would never have known without Death’s reaching hand. The truths spilled out of her in a stream. “She should not be here, Death. She has broken the ancient laws.”

“What ancient laws?” asked Gloriatrix.

Elissandra’s children were touching their mother, and they, too, were consumed in the fire of prophecy. Redness scoured their sight, the world twisted, and filaments of power were strung between every obstacle in sight. Tessa spoke for her mother. “Three laws. What is not of this world cannot exist in it, not without a vessel. By entering into a vessel, a Dreamer debases its own power, for its greatness can be wielded only so well with our crude hands. Finally, a Dreamer can rarely own a vessel completely without the living presence of a man’s soul—the two must exist in tandem. These are the three sacred laws of the pact; it is an exchange, really. A trade of power for weakness and tangibility. Still, no Dreamer can manifest in our world without the risk of becoming tainted with mortal sentiments. Death’s lengthy stay in her host—the Iron Queen’s son, Sorren—has corrupted her: he was afraid and weak, and that weakness of character has passed into her. Death sees only wars and conquest. She’s become driven by her fear of Zionae’s impending rise. She thinks to cleanse the world with ash.”

“She possessed my son?” exclaimed Gloria, many eccentricities and heinous traits of her dear Sorren coming suddenly into focus. “It wasn’t his fault then, all the terrible things that he did?”

Compassionately, Elissandra said, “Vessels are not only chosen, they are also sometimes born. A perfect storm of want, need, and power, creates the potential both to wake a Dreamer from sleep and for a mortal to be a vessel to hold them. Your son was made to serve the divine, but he chose to serve a dark one. Many of his actions were his own.”

Gloriatrix whimpered, then bit back further weakness.

Magnus pressed on. “So Death—” Only slightly did he struggle with the concept of an entity so dire striding through their world. “—has built this army out of fear, and to destroy Zionae?”

“Zionae, her potential vessels—you and your brother—all who worship the Black Queen,” said Elissandra. “Death does what she believes is right, though her justice leads to only one judgment.”

Magnus asked the important question: “Death is the one who destroyed Menos?”

“Yes,” said the three.

“Through the body of the Everfair Queen, Death threaded her Will,” continued Elissandra, her hair billowing in a wind no one could feel. “As your bride was not a vessel, and couldn’t be claimed, she wore down the queen’s great resolution with a storm of dark whispers. She tormented the queen with visions of your torture at Brutus’s hands. Death manipulated the queen into doing what she did not have the power to do herself; Death could not have raised a city of the dead with Sorren’s magik, and her dark miracles worked through him, alone. Again, Death was bound by the Laws of the Pact, and Sorren was already weak, ruined, nearing his end as a vessel. Death has since found another vessel—one much stronger, one in which she can flex and cast her might like none before.”

Elissandra glared at Magnus. “You seek to know whether the Everfair Queen is guilty of this crime…” Magnus felt every beat of her pause. “I would say she is no guiltier than the soldier numbed by bloodshed who murders when given a command. If one is left to drown in blood and darkness, that becomes all one knows. You left her, Magnus. Whether you knew you were abandoning her or not, the pain was real. When you leave a creature to face strife on its own, it is either destroyed or grows greater through its trials. Your queen conquered her darkness. She has changed into something hard, a shard of amber. Her stone complements the shard of obsidian that now shares her heart. The shining innocence you knew and desired cannot be reclaimed. I think she is more beautiful now. You will have a chance to see and decide for yourself—”

“My king!” a voice cried. A speck later, a mousey, spectacled man in gray interrupted the gathering. It was Rasputhane, wetly disheveled from exertion. A skycarriage gleamed in the woods far behind him. “My liege, you must come at once. Our city has been breached.”

“Breached?” exclaimed the king.

“By whom?” demanded Gloriatrix, equally aghast. Standing, she scanned the city for smoke, fire, or signs of chaos but saw nothing.

“Your queen,” whispered Rasputhane. “And an army of Arhad.”

“Come again?” asked Gloriatrix.

“You heard me,” replied Rasputhane, and began to hurry with the monarchs toward a skycarriage that had stealthily landed along the precipice. “She’s come back to Eod; she waltzed right in through the Southern Gate. Her army is one, maybe two thousand strong.”

Magnus repeatedly tripped over his tongue, trying to discover words. At least his feet proved more capable. Still, he possessed no voice at the moment. The Iron Queen was more communicative. “How could this have happened?” she demanded.

“We don’t know. Some minor disruptions and chaos occurred at the Faire of Fates sands back: noise, harmless fires, nothing you’d note from way up here; I still don’t have a full report. Now, like the smoke clearing from a magikian’s stage, I’ve been told that an army stands where none had been before. It is said that your queen holds the whole of the Faire of Fates hostage with some kind of enchantment. It is possible that she had agents on the inside. I can’t see how any fool manning the gates would have allowed her army through otherwise. We’ve sent patrols of watchmen into the Faire, and none have reported back.”

“Magik? Enchantment? A coup?” asked Magnus, finally.

“Something like that, yes,” replied Rasputhane.

They reached the skycarriage, and the pale-faced watchmen stationed by the stairs bowed and then motioned the monarchs up and into the vessel. Gloriatrix cast a look back at her friend—her only friend—who was now merely a lonely white dot on the green, and wondered if she should have dragged Elissandra along.

As the skycarriage lifted off, Elissandra, with her omniscient gaze, noted that Gloriatrix and the king peered out the window portals: lost, white, and afraid. His demons barked at the door and would soon be let out. Flickers of Fate drifted around her in a firefly cloud, and silver threads laced land and sky. Magnus wouldn’t have enjoyed her forthrightness over what was to come in the Faire of Fates. Instead, she shared her insights with her children. The three witches watched the world of fire together, and planned how Tessa and Eli would survive the floods and lightning bolts that would strike Eod with a storm of doom—beginning with the arrival of Magnus’s vengeful wife. Such anger Lila had returned with; all
three shivered from the fury of it. A dreadful thirst filled the queen that could be slaked only with blood justice.

Should we go and see, Mother?
asked Tessa.

We can watch from here, my lamblings
, replied Elissandra.
We shall see nearly everything aside from the earthly details, which do not matter as much as those of spirit. And when the sun sets, when the fury of queen and king has been spent, we shall see
it. The children swallowed; they were afraid of
it
. Elissandra gathered them close once more.
Do not fear, my lamblings. It will be a grand event. Tonight, the War of Wars will begin. If you look to the sky, you can almost see the herald of the war. A slick gleam of darkness. A smudge of ash floating in the heavens. It’s almost here. We are running out of time. Do not be fearful, but look to our doom, and gain from it your strength
.

Stealing a bit of their mother’s fearlessness, the children looked. Gazing through the wavering gauze of Fate’s weave and the shine on the Witchwall was no easy chore. But their stares were bright silver knives, and they cut through the splendor, through the atmosphere, and out into space. In the vacant dark, they saw it: hovering, pulsing, and curling with tendrils of black light.