Feast of Fates (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 1) (31 page)

“Aye, it is impressive,” agreed Caenith, and pulled his Fawn closer to his warmth as the chill of dusk crept in.

“I had a dream last night…where I was very weak,” murmured Morigan, and her mind was lulled and sent wandering by the ringing sound of blades, the hoof-drums of horses, and the muffled thunderstrike explosions. “I wasn’t myself…I was Queen Lila. As a young woman, no more than my age. A daughter of the Arhad. She had such a difficult life, Caenith. More struggle than I’ve endured, but I feel that I understand her, even empathize with her. To watch a mother die or to throw away your needs at the commands of another are only different sides of the same helplessness. Magnus came to her rescue and brought her into all of this, just as you came to mine.”

Morigan slipped out of Caenith’s heat and stood before him; she was as passionate and striking as the bleeding sun behind her. “It bothers me that I have to be rescued at all. That is not the sort of woman Mifanwae raised. The sort I want to be. I want to be able to protect myself, to protect
you
, should I have to. Reading souls and fates doesn’t help much when a sword is at your throat.”

She crossed her arms, looked out over the field of warriors, and admired their endless dance. Even the stripped-down bodies of those taking a break near the tents were rendered in sinew and strength.

“I think I should learn how to fight. Can you teach me?” asked Morigan.

“A noble aspiration,” said the Wolf. “We shall make a warrior out of you. I can’t teach you even a scrap of what you should know in a day, but I can teach you how to hold a weapon.”

She turned to see the Wolf smiling his sharp smile.

“What is it?” inquired Morigan.

“You’ve found it, my Fawn. What we shall make together!”

“I have?”

“Something as graceful and piercing as its wielder.” The Wolf pondered and frowned. “A mace won’t do for your slender wrists, too bulky and unfitting. Perhaps a rapier? No, no, I don’t want you burdened with a scabbard. A bow, then? Hmm, no, that wouldn’t work, either, not in close quarters, and too much finesse for the point you are trying to make. What then? What then? What would be perfect for the hunter of my heart?”

The Wolf seized her and pressed her hand to his thudding chest. “Of course! The quickest way to any man’s heart is with a light and deadly point. A needle of death you can hide in boot or belt that is as strong as any blade in the hands of a master, which someday you will become.”

“A dagger!” they declared over the other.

The Wolf’s smile grew larger, as if he would swallow her, and he dipped so that Morigan could climb into his embrace. Not even the most eagle-eyed scouts in King Magnus’s army saw the pair move. One sand they were there, speaking intimately and close; the next, they had disappeared. Were anyone to look for them that evening, they would not be found in the palace.

V

“Thackery, you could at least pretend to enjoy yourself,” complained Queen Lila. “I called this feast in your honor.”

“I never asked for it,” huffed Thackery.

His mood was a foul, black storm today and nothing of White Hearth’s splendor could cheer him. Not the music of the two delicate, fair-haired windsingers that floated above the feast and whose voices and fiddle-songs whirled through the chamber on silvery breezes, kissing ears, bending flames, and mussing hair. Thackery found the ruffling an annoyance, and the strings were a bit shrill. The watersculptors were twice as abhorrent and loud as they skated about—
schrrit, schrrit
—on sheets of ice between the tables, and he hated them, too. Even the exquisite food was flavorless as it passed Thackery’s lips. He pushed it away and glanced to the two empty seats at his side.

“Is that where your misery stems from, my friend? Because she is not with us? Do you feel that she has traded you for this man?” asked Queen Lila, and laid her grip on Thackery.

The gesture appeared to cleanse him of his crankiness, and he sighed. “I believe it is. Yes. She is as much—no, and curse me for saying it—she is more of a daughter to me than my precious Theadora was. For I have watched her grow and stumble into womanhood. These pleasures I was never granted with my own child. I have watched her live. She has been my companion for over two decades now. Yes, I certainly miss her. And I am concerned at how suddenly she has surrendered herself to this…man. They have some hold over the other that I shall never be a part of. More than lust. I don’t…bah.”

“They are off trysting, I am sure. We shall see them tomorrow or the day after,” said the queen. She patted her friend and then removed her hand. After a short silence, she added, “I rarely speak ill of others unless it can’t be helped, but that man—Caenith—he worries me.”

Delicately, Thackery suggested, “Are you certain it isn’t simply his resemblance to Brutus?”

“No, it mostly is,” replied the queen. She took a draft of her wine and then motioned for her glass to be filled. Once the servant left, she squeezed out the rest of her thoughts; though they were alone at the royal table, she spoke behind her hand, as if there were spies present. “There are enough
differences, but there is enough that is the same, as well. It is highly unusual, impossible one could say, to meet a man who could be a cousin to the kings. I have not encountered one in my thousand-year rule. Mater Lowelia, Lady of Whispers, has told me that he is a smith, yet I do not see a smith when I look into his eyes. I see the other end of steel:
blood
. I know that taint well. It was the scarcely chained beast that rode Brutus before his surrender to darkness. Who is he, Thackery? What have you not told me?”

There is a growing chance that he could be several hundred years old? Or that he speaks in old and tangled ways like your husband does? Or that you might focus your attention upon him, and perhaps Morigan, too closely if I am to say too much? More lies, old friend. I am sorry
. Hastily, Thackery spun a reply for the queen.

“He is a mystery. If it matters, I believe that he truly loves Morigan, and she feels as much for him. I think he would place himself in harm to protect her, and that right there is a man more noble than the Sun King, who never learned to love at all.”

“Well said, I suppose,” she said, shrugging.

She had more of her wine and watched Eod’s finest scholars and soldiers cut loose from their responsibilities for the evening: clanging cups, chaining hands about their waists while crooning rudely over the windsingers, sliding themselves down the ice, and generally acting like irresponsible fools.
Good for them. They should celebrate each day as if it is to be their last. Soon, even the immortals might meet their end. One of them, I hope
, she brooded.

Thackery watched the queen’s golden comeliness darken, and wondered if his small lie was the cause. He hated that he had to deceive her, but a selective avoidance of the truth was necessary, which also brought to mind the queen’s task in that regard.

“Have you told the king of Morigan’s vision?” he asked.

Bitterly, the queen said, “No.”

As she had predicted, Magnus’s wintry soul had visited her later in the evening, once his men had stopped the march for the night. It was a strange commune, far less vocal than anything they had shared in an age. A few faded images of a desert city built into a precipice like a honeycomb, and clips of broken conversation about his army’s movement were what she was given. From the striking sight, she surmised that they were in Southreach, which
meant that her king had cleared the most desolate of the desert and would soon leave Kor’Khul.
All right?
he asked her, many times over. Nothing more composed than that came out of him, and she assumed that he was inquiring about her welfare.
Fine
, she replied, as short and curt as he was. His frosty, pimpling anger—toward Brutus—died down after that, and that was the sum of their exchange. As close as she and Magnus were to the other, there were portions of their minds that were their own, and she spoke in her quietest place, the corner that was only hers.

Already our love is cracking. Why is your coldness becoming so weak inside me? What is happening to us, Magnus? Is this the cost of lies? First, the barb of deception pricks, then it bleeds, then it infects, and the rot sets in. I am sorry, Magnus, so sorry that we are now lying to each other
.
Thackery is right, an angry king is a motivated king. When this ends, and you have punished Brutus and his dark voice, will it all return as it was? I must believe that, and so I prick you again, and I shall not tell you what I have seen today
.

Gently, Thackery tugged on Queen Lila’s arm to gain her attention, as she was deep in thought with a face pinched in pain—not physical, but the pangs of betrayal.

“I have thought of a way that we could find out
who
this passenger—this would-be queen—might be. I don’t think you’ll care for my suggestion, though. Should I tell you?” proposed Thackery.

From his effacing tone, the queen could tell that she was not going to hear him suddenly pledge to undertake the quest to visit the three wise women of Alabion. A plan he had dismissed before the banquet began as
pure rubbish
. Apparently, he had designs of his own in mind. She should have known.

“You are going to, regardless of what I say,” she replied.

“Indeed, you know me too well. Like a felhound, once I have a scent, I cannot drop it,” admitted Thackery. “Hear me out, dear friend. If this thing that rides Brutus calls him its son, then it would stand to reason that our king is of the same relation as they are brothers. That much we can agree on.”

The queen nodded.

“Good,” resumed Thackery. “Perhaps all we need to do is examine those early memories, childhood ones, those as far back as our king can remember. If there is a mother or a father present, we shall know our true enemy. The
kings couldn’t have come from nowhere, and it’s about time that someone investigated their mystery. Especially when so many fates are tied to their destinies. A seedling can follow a cycle through wind and fertilization that is difficult to track, yet it is still planted and grows the same as all life. There is an
A
and a
B
, which leads to a
C
. We need to find
A
and
B
. I suspect that the answer lies in the Hall of Memories, where our king ponders whatever he ponders, where all the knowledge of our kingdom is cataloged and kept—including his secrets.”

Sternly, the queen shook her head. “Magnus has declared that he knows nothing, and I must believe in what he says. He contemplates within the Halls of Memory so often that he would know the answer you seek, of an
A
and
B
, and he would tell me if he did.”

“Would he?” frowned Thackery. “Think back, dear Lila, to the sands and dawning of your years. Do you remember the red journey that brought you to Geadhain? Do you remember the face of your father? Your mother? Your sister or brother? Your first scream? Your first step?”

The queen did not answer.

“Precisely. One’s recall is never impeccable. Does the king remember only what he is
capable
of remembering? Or does he remember all the details that the wonderful machine in our skull records without our consent? I want the details. The forgotten particulars. I want to see his first breath and what came after that. If I’m completely off base in my assumptions, we shall witness the birth of two beings from nothingness, which is an arcane marvel worth beholding, in any event.”

Angrily, the queen whispered, “My bloodmate is not some experiment of yours. I see that the ties of your blood run deep.” Thackery winced. “First you ask me to hide truths from my king, now you ask me to scour his soul for secrets. I outright ignore any insinuation that he might be deceiving me, and even if we entertain your theory that these memories exist past his recall, the deepest archives of the Hall of Memories are sealed beyond any magik you possess. You would lose yourself to even try.”

Thackery allowed the queen to solve the quandary herself. She was correct that he would not be able to extricate what they needed from the maze of history and magik that was the Hall of Memories. Yet he was not the intended pilferer of this vault.

“The girl! You would use the mind-witch,” muttered the queen, somewhat amazed.

“I would
use
no one. I would ask if she would aid her kingdom. Ultimately, the choice is hers to make.”

“I must think on this,” replied the queen.

Conversation escaped the old friends after that, as they mulled over their worries in silence. In due time, Queen Lila was as ill-tempered as her guest of honor was. As absorbed in themselves as they were, neither noticed the waiflike blond maid, who had tended the queen’s goblet and who had been hovering around nearby tables, suddenly find an excuse to disappear from the banquet. As with most of the palace’s great halls, the White Hearth was warded against poisons, farseeing, or espionage of the mystical variety. However, there was no protection in the world against a clever spy with foxy ears to listen and a serpent’s tongue to whisper to her iron masters.