Feast of Souls (44 page)

Emotions were what mattered, Ethanus had taught her. Emotions provided a guidepost to meaning, when all else was chaos. Focus on emotions.

You fear that something will catch up to you, and that when it does, a whirlpool will form beneath your feet, and it will suck you down into an abyss. You feel as if doom is impending, and perhaps inescapable.

Ah, hells.

Perhaps the power was warning her not to go to Ban-doa. She had only just made the decision to do so. Perhaps it was responding to that.

But if so, the power would not confirm it, and at last she was forced to lie down again without answers, dreading the nightmares that would surely come.

The Third Moon was a sizeable inn just outside the port city of Bandoa with a reputation for catering to foreigners. It was especially popular with merchants, who often scheduled a visit as they traveled up and down the western coast. So the gossips told Kamala, anyway. It was said to be an odd place, where odd stories were told and odd men encountered.

For Kamala it seemed the perfect hunting ground.

Since the night she left Gansang she had tormented herself over what path to follow next. Painfully, she had acknowledged a hard truth: that she had no long term plans, nor any goals greater than “learn to use magic without dying” and “go to the city where you suffered as a child and show them you can’t be pushed around any more.” Now she had gone through First Transition and had her adventure in Gansang and… what next? She might have sought out other Magisters had she not just killed one of their kind, but she had, and so probably it would be best to let the dust settle on that little story be-fore she approached any of them again. So, where was she going now? What did she want? What did she hope to become?

She didn’t know.

The contract she’d had with Ravi had been promising. Comforting. Let a morati take care of one’s daily needs, so that one might focus upon larger issues. She thought that perhaps she would like to set up something like that again, but not with a landed lord this time. No, she needed to find a man of wealth who traveled, whose retinue would benefit from a witch’s service, and see the world at his expense, without needing to conjure food each night or steal clothing from peasants. Maybe somewhere in that world she would find a place for herself. Until then, she would at least be comfortable.

Her search for such a patron had brought her to Ban-doa… and to the Third Moon Inn.

At first glance the owner did not welcome her. She was still dressed like a peasant youth—though she had added a doublet and several accessories to the shirt she’d once stolen, and so no longer appeared wholly destitute—but she drew out a small purse from inside her shirt and spilled a handful of silver into the man’s palm, assuming it would assuage his suspicions. It did not. Apparently he had an eye out for the kind of vultures that might prey upon his more prosperous guests, and a lone boy coming from nowhere, going nowhere, with a purse full of unexplained silver, fit the bill. In the end she had to bind a bit of sorcery to get him to admit her, and she made him send extra pillows and a flagon of wine up to her room, gratis, in compensation.

That night she slept on a real bed, beneath a roof that morati had built, and ate food and drank wine that had not been conjured, but rather farmed and fermented in the morati way, without a hint of sorcery. It was refreshing.

At night the merchants came.

Some of them were travelers, tired and dusty and brusque with their servants after a long day on the road. Some had come by sea, and were taking advantage of a night’s berth in Bandoa to seek a bed that did not rock with every wave. There were at least a dozen true foreigners present when Kamala arrived, not counting the servants and retainers who gathered in shadowy corners to await their need, and the locals who had come to hear their tales. A charcoal-skinned man from Durbana, whose ears gleamed with golden hoops, as elegant and exotic as a jet statue. A fair-skinned Eynkar from the Protectorates, whose pale blond hair gleamed albino-white in the lamplight. A swarthy Anshasan wrapped in desert-style robes, with indigo tribal markings tattooed upon his face, who called for a round of some fermented mint drink for all those who would tell tales of foreign places, then settled back quietly to listen as the stories flowed.

Whatever these men asked for, Three Moons supplied. Never mind if it was a rare honey wine from the Free Lands, sour-spice cake from Calash, or bread baked in the style of some obscure town at the edge of nowhere; even a half-jesting call for the flesh of some rare beast from the Forest of Midnight resulted in half a dozen dried strips of flesh being supplied, that had been donated to the Inn by a traveler from the Dark Lands. It cost them a pretty penny to have such things served up, of course, but these were men who had money to spare, and they seemed to consider it a kind of competition to see who would spend the most for some foreign treat… all the while eyeing one another like wolves over a fresh kill, knowing that tonight’s drinking mate was tomorrow’s business rival. While the same proprietor who had given Kamala such a hard time beamed with sweaty pride as the tables of his inn were piled high with rare delicacies, knowing that no other establishment could rival his offerings.

Well, it explained the prices, anyway.

Not a woman was among the crowd save for an occasional servant, and of course the whores who came from Bandoa to court the favor of these wealthy men. Kamala sank into the shadows in her corner of the room and pretended not to notice the various expanses of flesh they bared in their attempts to seduce one merchant or another. The sight of them brought back memories that made her stomach churn, but she didn’t blame them for it. A woman alone in the world had very few options open to her. Kamala would have had few options, and might be baring her breasts in rivalry with the rest of them right now, had not her special gift pointed the way to a different fate.

She wanted to do something for them. Change their fate—change the world that had shaped them—change the very nature of mankind, perhaps. But she couldn’t. Not all the sorcery in the world could alter the forces that had made these women what they were.

There was food in front of her, but her appetite was gone. Every time one of the men ran a hand up the skirt of one of the women, or fumbled drunkenly at half-bared breasts, she flinched inside. The pain was hypnotic in its intensity, freezing her in place. Dark-skinned hands reached out of the past to stroke between her legs, leaving a slug’s trail of scented oil in their wake—

“A tale of Sankara!” someone called.

There was laughter. Kamala shook her head and tried to shut out the images of past abusers that gathered around her like a wolf pack. Why had she come here? This was a mistake—

“Ah, the Free Lands!” A stout man with red hair almost as bright as Kamala’s own rubbed his greasy hands together lustily. “A dozen prosperous cities within a day’s ride, and all with rivalries enough to make any man’s fortune.”

“I hear the Summer Feast in Deshkala nearly caused the island itself to sink beneath the weight of the food.”

“Or the weight of the guests,” the Eynkar chuckled.

“Well of course, they must outdo the Spring Feast of Orula.”

“And the Winter Feast of Lundosa.”

The man with the ebony skin stood, a tankard in his hand. He swayed a bit as he did so; the whores on both sides reached out to steady him.

“An ode to Sankara,” he said, bowing slightly. The whores applauded as he cleared his throat and began to sing, in a tenor of surprising clarity:

Oh tempt me not to pleasure, lass, For I have been where bliss resides And kissed, beneath an azure sky, That secret place where lust abides.

And tempt me not to travel, lass, For I have traveled far and wide And found within a witch’s grasp The key to earthly paradise.

Oh, tempt me not to warm embrace

Within your arms, however blessed,

For I have known a Witch-Queen’s grace

And cannot bed the second best.

So tempt me not to speak of love. My heart’s entranced by witchery I will not love, save by her spell, Nor dream of my soul’s liberty.

The brief performance ended with a bow and received much laughter and applause. One of the whores tried to kiss him on the mouth as he fell into his seat, but his tankard got there first.

“Aye, that’s Sankara,” said the redhead. “I remember the Witch-Queen’s midsummer feast. There were fireworks enough to fill the sky, and she made them dance as if to music.”

“I’m surprised she did not dance among them,” the Eynkar said.

The redhead chuckled. “She could have if she had wanted to.”

“Aye, and died young for it.”

“Die?” The redhead snorted. “Didn’t you hear? She has the favor of the gods. They won’t let her die.” He winked. “She is lover to all of them.”

“The women too?”

“Aye, goddesses most of all. They are frustrated creatures, you know.”

“Too often ignored by their husbands for thunderbolts, or chariot races across the sky.”

“Just so.”

Quietly Kamala said, “Tell us more of this Witch-Queen.”

A few of the merchants turned about to see where the new voice was coming from, but most were too busy drinking or fondling their whores to care. “What do you wish to know?” the Durbanan asked, without turning around. His accent was liquid, foreign, exotic.

Is she real
? Kamala wanted to demand.
Is there truly reason to think she is not dying of her witchery, as others do, but has found some other way
? But she dared not ask those things. These men were well traveled and educated and knew much of the world; she was an ex-whore, a hermit’s student, who knew nothing of current affairs in distant lands. If the depth of her ignorance became obvious, they might not accord her respect enough to answer her questions.

Or they might, if they sensed the intensity of her need, ask too many questions of their own.

She tried to keep her voice casual as she said, “How much of the story is legend, and how much truth? Do you know?”

Now the dark-skinned merchant looked back, scanning the room for the speaker, but Kamala had drawn the shadows around her so that she could not be found. “It is truth that her palace overlooks the port of Sankara. I know this, for I have been there myself. And that she holds parties to which not only the rich and the noble are invited, but anyone who amuses her, where all manner of foreign entertainments are offered. These things also I have seen. Whether she beds those men as well…” he shrugged. “Who can say when a monarch’s flirtations are meaningful, and when they are merely… diplomacy?”

“And her power?” This time she made the words seem to come from somewhere else, and in a more familiar voice, so that she would not draw attention to herself. “Tell us of that.”

“What of it? She is a witch, renowned for her skill. No drought has ever come to Sankara that she has not transformed to rain. No enemy has ever laid siege to her lands, but some great disaster laid them low before armies even met. Plagues travel around her city rather than through it, and likewise avoid the lands of her allies. Winds blow when the merchant ships in her port have need of them. Her fireworks are more magnificent than any I have seen a Magister produce… and I have seen many.”

“Yet she does not die,” Kamala’s fake voice mused softly.

“Not yet. Kantele be praised.”

“For how long?”

“Who knows?” He chuckled, and chucked a whore gently under the chin. “A woman does not tell her age.”

“She’s been in power forty years,” the redhead offered. “No one seems to know where she was before that.”

“Birthed full grown from a giant clam shell, no doubt.” The Eynkar chuckled. “Isn’t that the kind of thing the southern gods like to do?”

Forty years!

Kamala asked nothing more, but let the men go back to their own drunken chatter. Leaning back in the shadows, she exhaled sharply. Forty years! If one assumed this woman was not a child when she claimed her throne—could not have been younger than the age of majority, or legends would surely have immortalized that fact—that meant she had already lived a respectable lifetime, nearly as many years as morati were ever given. Yet if these reports were true, she used her power more freely than any Magister.

Is she perhaps a Magister herself
? she wondered.
Or is there some other path for women that is possible, that this one has found
?

Somewhere deep inside her, a cold ache reminded her of the price she had paid to be become what she was. What would it be like to face eternity without the need to murder an endless succession of innocents? The thought brought with it sharp recall of the dream-child she had murdered, and a sudden wave of nausea that reminded her of the cost of human compassion.

You dare not regret what you are. Not even for a moment. Human sympathy is anathema to the power that keeps you alive.

Quietly she shut her eyes and tried to center herself anew. The murmuring voices of the merchants rose and fell in the distance, unheard, as she envisioned herself back in the forest with Ethanus. Remembering that first day when she had come to him, so determined to become his apprentice, so utterly intolerant of the suggestion that a woman would not,
could
not, be a Magister. She had sworn back then that she would let nothing stand in her way. Now there were hints that another woman had found an answer—perhaps a different answer than the one Ethanus had provided—and Kamala knew she could not rest until she learned the truth.

When her heartbeat was steady again and the feeling of nausea had safely subsided, Kamala got up silently and left the common room, binding enough power that no one saw the front door open as she passed through it, nor heard it as it fell shut behind her.

The inn had been built upon the rise of a hill facing Bandoa. The stables where guests’ mounts might be sheltered, the open fields where wagons and tents might be pitched for the night, as well as the more prosaic accommodations that all men require, were over the rise of the hill, out of sight of passing travelers. There were guards present, no doubt, but they could not be seen by any casual observer, and Kamala doubted they would make their presence known unless some thief or vagrant decided to test their readiness.