Feast of Fates (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 1) (19 page)

“As you can see, two omens toll, and the third comes as surely as the cock crows. The tides of our world are shifting and ready to be steered by brave captains. We shall be those captains. Or I and Elissandra shall be, at least. Will you join me in this war? Shall we unseat the ancient kings, which the fates themselves have deemed unworthy of rule? Whose deaths the stars send a herald to proclaim?”

“Aye,” promised Septimus. The rest of the Council followed suit around the circle, with Horgot holding out until the end.

“Aye,” he snorted. “Though let it be known that I say the titted members of our Council are keeping secrets to themselves. I wonder, how did you even acquire such a prestigious relic? I would like to see the scroll for myself,” he said, and folded his arms atop his belly.

All fair suspicions, but ones which neither the First nor Sixth Chairs would answer. Gloriatrix would never tell the Council that the most important piece of Menosian history washed into Menos through an underground channel that drew from Alabion’s sweet waters; that it bobbed its way to the Drowned Shore and could have been lost forever amid the trash. Somehow, the Broker’s clever hands found it there, outside his lair; he said it
smelled like old magik
. He gave it to her during one of their meetings regarding the expulsion of her recent enemy on the Council. He often gave her gifts, thinking that they were friends or some other grotesque relation, and was utterly ignorant of what he had discovered. Gloriatrix would never announce this association or how she got the relic. Elissandra, on the other hand, was content to keep quiet on the incomplete verse of the Sixth Chair’s scroll out of whatever esotericism muddled her stare, and due to arrangements discussed between the two women during previous private meetings.

“I have given you my answer on that. Do not ask again,” spat Gloriatrix. “The Sixth Chair’s scroll may one day be on display in a hall dedicated to our glory as heroes in the Great War. Even then, should you survive it, you will never lay your greasy fingers upon it, as it will be enshrined in sorcery and dedicated to
my
name.”

Anger gurgled in Horgot’s throat, and Gloriatrix’s guards dropped their flame-tipped rifles in his direction. The Third Chair quickly ceased his outburst. Gloriatrix smiled, which looked painful on her face, and gave her last instructions to the Council.

“With your approval, I shall set a handful of my forces into motion,” said Gloriatrix, having already set many, many wheels turning, which they knew nothing about. “When we next meet, I expect that each of you will have gathered a substantial calling of your own for a march.”

The Iron sages, including Horgot, bowed their heads.

“Excellent. Our meeting is adjourned,” declared Gloriatrix. She remained in her chair, stroking the cold metal of the armrests, while the
Council drifted off into the shadows. She spoke aloud, mostly to herself, as they left.

“Remember, Iron sages, we shape the future of Geadhain. A world without kings. A world ruled by those of iron hearts and wills.”
A world ruled by the Black Queen
, she thought, and turned over the unsaid third verse of the prophecy, which was of little interest to nine of her fellow sages, for it could never apply to the ones with sausage between their legs.
Brother will rise to brother…a black star will eat the sky…the old age will crumble to the rise of the Black Queen
. An Iron Queen wasn’t enough, she decided. The Black Queen had more appeal.

“Iron Sage?” inquired one of her guardsmen, for she had been still for sands.

“A moment longer,” she said, and looked up to the darkening sky and starry roof, imagining her reign as the queen of all Geadhain.

VI

THE BREWING STORM

I

K
ing’s Road, the snaking strip of buffed white slate that wound all the way to Eod’s Palace, was clear of traffic this morning, and sparkled in the sunshine as brilliantly as a vein of gold. Today was a day of great celebration, where all of Eod, from the workmen to the masters, would have a glimpse of their reclusive king. Such was not an occasion to be missed or left uncelebrated. And though the King’s Road was bare, the sidewalks were not, and people clustered like eager spring flowers on shop steps, tavern awnings, or rooftops. Masters of the elements, minstrels, and entertainers roused the masses to a frenzy, filling the skies with glittering explosions of magik, crooning ballads of Magnus’s glory, or awing the crowds with funambulists treading invisible ropes of air.

Thackery Thule was at the railing of an inn’s porch, being elbowed by tankard-clanging oafs and generally affronted by the spectacular spectacle. He was as surly as those about him were joyous. Too many thoughts occupied his head for this to be a happy occasion, though he knew that it was one of paramount importance, and not to be missed, no matter how perplexed he was over his vanishing handmaiden and her mysterious lover.

I do hope that bloody pigeon flew safe and true
, he fretted.

After two days with no sign of the girl, he had made contact with The Watchers. A missive sent by carrier bird was all it took. Rather archaic compared to farspeaking and other technomagikal advancements, and never guaranteed to reach its recipient, yet this was The Watchers’ way. Timeworn and honored traditions, predating modern conveniences. A Voice would come, sooner rather than later, he supposed, but the waiting was agony.

If I could take it back, Morigan, all those cruel words I threw at you, I would. Please…please be safe. If this Caenith has harmed you, I…I shall kill him
, swore Thule. Without warning, the noise around him became riotous and drew him from his thoughts. The mania of the crowd meant one thing: the king approached. As distracted as his insides were, Thule was magnetized by the silver-shod army that came trotting into sight.

Knight and beast alike wore the spiny pearlescent armor of Eod, as if they were creatures marched from beneath the most enchanted reaches of the sea.
The Silver Watch come riding, riding, from under the Great Desert’s waves. Lay down your swords, spare your lords. Ere dawn comes, the battle is won, and you have not mercy, but graves
, went the old soldiers’ tune, which captured the essence the king’s army. While Eod had not warred in the last century, its soldiers prepared as if they were under constant attack, and the will of the king’s army was a legend across Geadhain. Thule noticed it in the confidence and bearing of knight and steed, in their absolute focus, distracted by none of the glitz surrounding them. From his visits to the palace, he recalled the precision of the watch as they sparred in Eod’s golden courtyards, waltzing about like ribbons of silver, lethal in their precision. The pale-hooded masters of the elements who rode amid the knights held themselves with identical pride and poise, yet without armor, and wove their spells with the same sophistication as their brothers and sisters slung steel. Also among them were Eod’s thunderstrike artillery, with their crystalline, electrically twined bows; their darting, hawklike heads; and twitching gauntlets. They needed no further announcement of their threat. He remembered a day when he was taken with a rare moment of sky gazing; he had witnessed the mystic archers strike down a fleeing Menosian skycarriage. Still he remembered it, for it was as if a storm of lightning had launched itself from the ramparts of Eod’s great wall, instead of from the sky above. He had covered his mouth in
awe and doubted that anything but the smallest scrap of seared iron drifted down into the desert afterward.

All this to quash an uprising of savages?
pondered Thule, who had heard the rumors of troubles in the mountains of Mor’Keth. A curious story. Although the revelers around him might be too enamored to delve deeper into suspiciousness, Thule was not. He had seen military assistance, and then he had seen marches of war. This force wasn’t large enough to be the former, though it was certainly well ammunitioned enough to be the latter. Surely, a strategic misdirection was in play.
Where are you
really
going, Magnus?

No better a time to ask such a question, for the first through eighth legions had passed and the king appeared among the final. Last out of the city, but first upon the field of battle if the legends sang true, and the crowd first hushed and then roared at the king’s inspiring presence. King Magnus was humble to their noise, stiff in his saddle, and he nodded to his people and caught as many stares with his striking green gaze as he could. Dressed in pearl armor and silver-chained furs with a thin crown caught in his loose, wind-kissed hair, he was as fair as his name described. He rode upon his mythic black mare, Brigada, a horned beast, thick and tall as a Northman’s ox, with the face, mane, and tail of a mare. Queen Lila rode alongside the king on a comparable creature, only white and more slender—the male of the species, oddly enough. Not many but the most learned knew of her origins as an Arhad bride to be what gave the queen her caramel and gold beauty, and it was impossible to believe that so youthful-looking a maiden could be older than many of the stones in the street.

Thule waved to them both, more spiritedly than the rabid masses about him, hoping to catch either of the royals’ notice. Age had shrunk his shoulders, and he barely rose high enough to stand out among the children. He would have flashed a bit of magik to make himself known, but there was already such a spectacle that whatever he attempted would hardly be seen. Fate would have it that the queen’s serpentine attention weaved through the crowd and somehow found him on the porch. She was hailing and smiling at every face that beheld her, but she lingered upon Thule a speck longer than most, and gave him a nearly imperceptible nod.
Old friend
, she seemed to say, and in that eerie, synchronized manner that Thule had noted between her
bloodmate and her, the king’s emerald awareness was suddenly upon him, too. Thule couldn’t quite read that stare, though it was longer and sharper, as if assessing him for his fitness to a duty unsaid. As though the king could read his mind, Thule silently called out to him.
King Magnus, my friend. Why do you go south? Who is the true enemy that you face? With these hands, I have touched old magik. A girl that bears the wonders of the East. Arts of the Moon, a gift that not even the House of Mysteries could touch. Is she an omen? A sign of a rising tide? Why do I feel as if Geadhain is waking to a fire in its house, or plunging into a nightmare?

An elbow from behind interrupted Thule’s connection, and when he looked to the royals again, he saw merely the flapping white banners of Eod, with their crest of a silver fist shaking at the sun. Thule shook his own fist at the pennant, and then grumbled his way through the crowd, unsettled by the instinct that the world was facing tumultuous changes, and that Magnus, Morigan, and by association, he, were all somehow involved.

II

Eod’s grand mercantile, the Faire of Fates, was bustling with bodies and gossip that day. The ladies were gabbing about the fairness of their king, the men guffawing with respectable lewdness about the curves of their queen, and all were equally blithe about the peril brewing around them. Or at least the peril that Thule suspected. The Faire of Fates was distracting enough without the chattering, and Thule found himself missing the utility of his handmaiden more and more with every sand, particularly when it came to the contemptible task of
shopping
. Ask him to fetch a bloodroot from the shrieking groves of Alabion, and he would oblige, even at his age. Yet the Faire of Fates was a different and hostile wilderness of its own that he was terrible at navigating.

Thus he slunk along the shadow of Eod’s white wall, weaseling through the crowds, tents, and platforms thrown up with seeming abandon; staying on the outskirts of this massive jumble of commerce as much as he could. Delights of every imaginable configuration called to him, deterring him from his task. He dawdled once to gawk at a stage with a watersculptor riding a
viscous steed of mist, then again at a wind-flutist whose notes lifted him into the air. The stalls of succulent meats, fruits, and savory vegetables were what he had come for, but he was as helpless as a child with a shopping list and had no idea what to purchase without Morigan present. So he overpaid for a few loaves of bread, cheese, and some coils of smoked swine, and told himself he would make do until Morigan returned. Which she
would
, he promised. While caught up in that sentiment, he did make one final purchase at the Faire. He stopped at a table laid with elemental baubles, and he bought a pair of liquid-fire earrings, molded in two loops, like the symbol for infinity.
Those will look lovely on her
, he thought, pocketing the item and giving a much unused smile to the burly merchant who had sold them.