Feast of Fates (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 1) (64 page)

(There, there, my dry flower, you have nothing to fear. We shall wet your roots and see you bloom again.)

“She took me in as if I was born of her loins. From khek to sword of the queen. I spit on the Fates, but there are nights when I thank them instead.”

“I thank them, too,” said Galivad.

The moment hung between them: a nakedness of feeling, of two lost children in hard adult skins recognizing another of their kind. Abruptly, Rowena turned her back to her companion and mumbled a good night. With such a troubled telling before bed, she had to fight for sleep. Galivad might have seen her fussing, or he might have simply decided to resume his song, but soon the tale of the star-chasing maiden was being crooned into her ear. At once her eyelids were heavy, and in another breath she was out and drifting down the river of dreams.

III

By nightfall, the rain had stopped, and a quilt of fog covered the valley. The oblong markers that littered the road had taken on a fearsome consistency in the mist, as if they were eggs in the nest of a giant horror. To the first legion the gloomy king and Erik rode, and pushed the army to keep up with the pace of their grunting steeds. When at last they rested, the king did not warm the men with ballads, but deepened the chill that had set beneath their skins with a fierce and short speech on valor and death and then left them to their meager fires. The fanciful orations were over, the army realized. The king would waste no more sentiments on rousing their spirits, but on tempering them.

Around the king’s fire were those with the hardest expressions: the legion masters and Erik. The ten grave warriors watched the flames like ancient seers. They discussed reserves and strategy, though for seasoned veterans of war, the council spoke with very little depth. For they knew nothing of what Brutus had prepared for them, and the truth was that this war would not be contingent upon the steel and magik they had brought. As soldiers, they were superfluous to the clash between the two kings. Stormy thoughts of that magnificent destruction sent the legion masters to bed early. One by one, they bid bitter partings and drifted from the fire to toss and turn on their damp bedrolls. Before long, the final good-bye was made, and it was only Erik and the king sitting together on the same stone. As close as they were, the emotional space between them was a gulf. Erik expected a continuation of their silent game of punishment and forgiveness, so he was surprised when the king addressed him.

“It is warm for the season,” said the king.

Once the cooling rain passed, mugginess had set in; for many an hour glass Erik had been sticking to his armor. This was the sort of clammy itch that too much time in a steam house would bring. Nor had the heat abated after the storm; it seemed to be getting worse the farther they marched.

“I remember you speaking of fair winds and fairer flowers, of which I have seen none,” muttered Erik.

“Indeed, there should be,” the king said, frowning as he slicked back his sweaty hair. “In the fall, there should be gardens on every knoll, and
petals fluttering into the valley like butterflies. This place has an incomparable beauty before winter sweeps upon it. Yet if I listen to what the soil and stones tell me, I feel as if spring, summer, fall, and winter, has already come and gone. Come, look here.”

The king left the rock and knelt. He swished his fingers about in the dirt, scooped up a handful, and began to pick through it. Erik was promptly squatting at his side to see what the king was investigating. A white and wormy thing was pinched from the dirt and held up to Erik: up close, it seemed to be a small twist of paper.

“A petal,” said the king. “Long since cast from its flower. The seasons are confused, and the valley has suffered for it. Without the softness of fall rot or the protection of winter frost, whatever seeds were loosed are squandered. Geadhain is a delicate organism, and I have watched her elements and moods shape the very road we stand on. This is unnatural.”

Wistfully, the king rolled up the petal and followed its descent to the ground. Then the cold emerald stare found Erik.

“I am concerned for what awaits us in the South. There is power at work here, a power not unlike my own. One that can twist nature and warp the seasons. And that heat.” The king wiped his brow. “I was right in confiding in you. I believe that my brother has something wicked planned, though I have not yet gathered what. Listen now, my Hammer, for you may well be the salvation of Eod and everything that I have built.”

The words felt tight as a noose around Erik’s neck.

“Come close and give me your hand, Erithitek,” commanded the king.

Erik obeyed. Like a trickster, the king pressed their palms together, and when he lifted his fingers, there lay in Erik’s hand a fragment of green crystal, no larger than a coin. The crystal was as deep as the king’s eyes and as cold as a chunk of ice. Erik’s hand shivered merely from holding it.

“W-what is it?” he chattered.

“My gambit. A bit of magik. More than a bit. Hundreds of bits infused into matter throughout our travel here, done so slowly that it would not shatter such a delicate casing. It holds enough power for a tremendous act of sorcery once it is broken.”

“Broken?”

“Indeed. The stomp of a boot should do the trick.”

“And what is the trick, my King?”

The king clasped his hammer’s metal shoulder and beheld his friend with sympathy. “If the hourglass grows darkest, and we have lost, break that stone. It will see you to safety, farther and faster that any skycarriage. A blink and you will be there, for I have filled that spell with my love and hope.”

Translocation. Erik had heard of this type of sorcery before, though never on so grand a scale. For him, the king had prepared an escape from an inescapable situation.

“Place it somewhere out of sight. If the Fates are willing, you will never have to use it.”

So ended their parley. The king stood and went again to his rock where he would keep a lonely vigil. As his second shadow, Erik would join him in a speck. Though first he caressed the cold piece of magik and pondered the responsibility that this tiny stone held. His freedom from death and his punishment all in one.

I shall not fail you, my King. Nor shall I sully my honor with thoughts of she who is not mine. I shall protect her, true as my own sister, and think no baser thoughts
, promised Erik.
Please forgive me for having ever raised arms against you
.
You who are a father to me, you to whom I owe my life
. When he looked up from his small prayer to his kingfather, the dark and haunted man was observing him. They stared, deep and true, and Erik clutched the farstone tighter, for it was as if the king could hear his promise or read the deeper guilt upon his face even through his helmet. What astonished the hammer most was the slow nod of Magnus’s head: a blessing or acceptance. He wondered if any mysteries, futures, or fates were ever safe from the Everfair King.

He had a padded pocket sewn into his linen under-shirt and he placed the farstone within it. Once that was done, he buckled up his plate and stood behind the king so that they would not cross stares again. More than ever, he was beginning to sense that the king doubted their odds of success. For the looks and exchanges between them these past days, as passionate and hard as they were, felt like final sentiments. The last words of those who know they are doomed.

XVII

THE LONG NIGHTMARE

I

After they were through the thinning pines, Caenith knew that their real danger was beginning. For the skies were busy with flocks of Crowes, cruel black arrowheads that slunk under the veil of gloomy skies, and they had spans to go across the fields of Canterbury before they reached the Iron Valley. Yet Caenith’s senses were growing grander and grander, and the wind whispered to him when the black shapes would come. He knew then when to hunker in the brush and when to hasten across the exposed countryside. Thackery informed him that the Crowes had high-range telescopes and other technomagikal instruments for scanning the ground, so Caenith stuck to whatever wooded belts he could. Without the sun or chronexes, the hourglass could not be ascertained, but Thackery felt that it was afternoon when they huffed their way into a verdant ravine, like a half-laid pipe festering with coniferous growth. Cheerful birds tried to stave the pregnant skies from raining with their songs, and a brook ran through the narrow valley. Their feet had been slapping the soil since Ebon Vale, and Thackery hated to be the weak link in their number, but he felt as if he could go no farther without a moment’s rest. Little Macha, who was insistent to be carried no
more, had kept a brave pace with these two determined men, and she was dark about the eyes and dragging herself with weariness, too.

“A break. A sand to catch our breath. Please,” he requested.

When the Wolf turned to see the seal in her muddy, torn dress and his scraggly bearded companion weaving despite a sturdier walking stick than the last, he realized how indefatigably he had pushed them. Quickly he spotted a circle of hedges shaded by the drooping hands of leafy giants that had appeared among the pines of Canterbury. The ground in the small dell was as comfortable as a bird’s nest with bracken and twigs; one could even lay his head down and sleep a spell if he chose, and the pebbled shore of the brook was nearby to quench one’s thirst. He led the company to the spot.

“Rest here,” he said. “I shall see what can be found for food.”

The Wolf was off as a breeze, rustling the bushes and unheard beyond that. Although they had traveled together for a while, Thackery’s communication with Macha never progressed beyond gestures and smiles, so he used a few of those to coax the girl over to the brook. She drank rather oddly, with her face in the water instead of bringing the liquid to her mouth. When she was done, she stayed kneeling by the brook; trailing her fingers through the currents or sometimes harking to the chirps and calls of creatures.
Lost
, thought Thackery. The poor thing was so very lost. The sensibility of her being along for their journey stabbed his heart and mind in different ways: they could not leave her, yet they certainly could not keep her. And there would come a time where they would have to surrender her. But to whom?

“We shall find a good home for her.”

Thackery had smelled the Wolf’s—not unpleasant—woodiness before hearing him, so he wasn’t as surprised as he should have been. Macha noticed the Wolf and made noises that a girl should not make:
uroo
,
uroo
,
urro
! Friendly, happy even, but utterly strange. They did not glance to each other, but continued to watch the child.

“A mortal guardian could be a problem, considering her eccentricities,” noted Thackery. Like the wise old man he was, he stroked his beard and pondered further. “Orphanages would not take her or give her the sort of care she deserves. I suppose the queen could find a place for her. Whatever your
opinions of the queen, she is a saint toward those less fortunate. The palace is full of those whom her charity has touched.”

“She would still be an outsider,” contended the Wolf. “I have said my piece on the queen as well, and I would rather we find another caregiver. Moreover, while I do not follow slow-walker politics, the signs of war are all around us. The grass shivers in fear, the winds carry scents of smoke and riflepowder. I do not know if Eod would be safe for Macha. Or you, should you choose to return.”

A chill gust swept the ravine, as if Geadhain were in agreement.

“You are right. The signs are all around us, Caenith. So many Crowes in the sky—more than there should be. I suspect that Augustus and the Iron Queen are brewing something vile in Blackforge, as well.”

The Wolf thought back to Augustus’s city. “Grease, grunt, and fire. Hammering and the screech of metal being shaped. I remember these things. I have been a smith long enough to know the sounds of a forge. Many forges. A war camp. Somewhere to the north of the city. Somewhere underground, from the echoes.”

“War.”

“War.”

With their agreement, and their bleak acceptance that these events were beyond their control, the conversation was closed. Macha was up from the bank of the brook and headed their way, too, pointing to something on one of them and muttering in Ghaedic. Thackery turned and saw that the Wolf’s shirt had been removed and made into a wet bundle. If Thackery had to guess, by the dampness of the man’s hair and trousers, he would say that Caenith had been swimming and that those were fish—caught with reflexes and not rods. His supposition was validated once they were back at the hedges eating smelt off Caenith’s shirt as if it were a picnic blanket. Macha had quite the appetite for the fish and tended to swallow them whole, again reminding Thackery of her displacement in the world. Not that Caenith ate with any more refinement. As Thackery nibbled, he smiled at their animalism.