Feast of Fates (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 1) (29 page)

Her husband-to-be glares at her and prepares to strike her, until he, too, hears the noise
.

Suddenly, a whistle of warning cuts the day. It comes from the riders camped in foothills they cannot see. The chieftain’s wives scatter, and she is grabbed by the ones that escorted her and pulled back in the direction from which they came. She is younger and stronger than the wives are, though, and she digs her heels into the sand and makes their job difficult; they slap her to obey, and she slaps them in turn. Her wriggling and fighting takes the wives by surprise, and they drop her as if she is an adder, unsure of what they are dealing with. She isn’t certain herself what she is doing, or pausing to consider the consequences of her misbehavior. With every tingling intuition she has, with every flickering hope, she feels that this moment is special, and she will not miss it
.

Chaos has broken out. The Arhad men are scrambling, the women who dropped her have run off like headless birds. A cloud of sandy thunder is rising over the valley between the twin buttes, and just as she thinks she sees shapes, they emerge: fantastic, beautiful beings, so white that they could be spirits, and upon enchanting beasts that are every softness and grace that the spinrex are not. One of the chargers is not like the rest, and her sight is drawn to him instantly. He is as dark as the others are pure, a shadow upon a midnight mount. He sees her as well, and shouts her name—or enough of it, all rolled together in a flowing way: Lila. The dark rider aims his steed and the wave of warriors toward her
.

The tribesmen spot her, too, as drawn as hunters to a rustle in the sand, and they grab their spears and turn to her as if she is a demon who has summoned this army with witchery
.

“You have brought the king of the North!” they cry
.

The wiser among them grimace and bow to the ground, only her husband-to-be keeps his rage. She has ruined the tribute to his glory, she has corrupted her offering to him; sewing her up will not be enough. He hefts back his feather-rattling spear and snarls as he throws it—he is one of the tribe’s best arms, he will not miss. Staring into death, she realizes that she is not afraid of it and wishes that she had known that about herself sooner. She ignores the angry man and looks for the king of the North, and in that languorous instant, as life slows before its end, their eyes meet across whatever distance and clash, spark, and kiss
.

CRACK!

A fork of sizzling white power careens from the sky, incinerating the projectile that her would-be husband threw before it had hardly left his hand, and the ground erupts in a sheet of emerald flames. In the bosom of the inferno, her wailing husband-that-will-no-longer-be writhes, and the other tribesmen—miraculously unharmed—scurry away from the pocket of fire, throw down their spears, and plead for mercy with their faces to the dirt. The death is so spectacular and the adrenaline in her so high that her knees buckle
.

Through the dust and smoke, trotting over prostrated tribesmen, her savior emerges. He is the most frightful and beautiful man she has known. He does not seem real to her. She sees no weapon, and she isn’t sure how he has protected her, though his body is cooling with a white steam, and her skin prickles from being near to him. Magik, she grasps, and thinks of all the legends she has heard of the Immortal King, whom her people loathe and revere like the forces of nature that destroy them. She is shaking with wonder as he glides off his mighty mount and is abruptly before her. He helps her up with his cold hands. At once, the world fades, and she falls into the well of his green stare. She does not know how or why, but he is as doe-eyed and spellbound as she is
.

“Lila,” he says
.

“How do you know my name?”

“I journeyed long and hard to find you. Your name was a gift from the three wise women,” he replies. His Arhadic is so delicately said, like a poem in how it unfolds in his mouth
.

“Who are you?”

“Magnus of Eod.”

“A k-king, yes?” She stutters on the word not because she is timid, but because she does not wholly understand its meaning—only the intimations of extreme power
.

“Yes.”

“What is a king?”

“A man who rules. A man who tries to sow virtue and justice through the mirror of his actions.”

No direct translations exist for many of the words the king has spoken, and she smiles at her fumbling comprehension. The king smiles, too. He offers her his hand
.

“Will you come with me, Lila? I shall show you my kingdom.”

She looks to the pale strong hand and hesitates; his intention is unclear. Is this a choice? A genuine choice? Or is it merely another road to subjugation? she worries. She refuses to be taken or owned. Not by him, as magnificent as he seems, as powerfully as she wants to surrender to what he offers
.

“I shall not force you to remain. I shall never force anything upon you,” he promises
.

Simply said, and she believes him
.

She takes the king’s hand, and he brings her to his mount. As they ride from the smoldering camp, she can hear the hissing of her terrified tribe, penned up like snakes in their tents or wriggling on the earth. She says farewell to no one. She leans into her savior, holds on to his firm body, feels her heart racing against his, and knows that she is free
.

The bees shine and slice up the desert in silver rays. Momentarily, Morigan is again in the gray tides of the Dreaming: bodiless, buoyant
.

“That was love. True, great love,” she thinks
.

“Your fate will be grander,” declare the bees
.

From the Dreaming they hurry then, sensing their mistress’s keenness to return to her mate. The bees, too, are eager, for a feast of fates awaits them with their mistress as its host, and they hunger for what sweet nectars—what lives, dreams, stories, and ends—she will lead them to next
.

III

“Good morning, my Fawn.”

Morigan awoke to the sight of Caenith’s face, and she alarmed him by kissing it, and he quickly returned the passion. On the softest sheets, they wrestled: tongues, hands, and limbs tangling. They stopped when Caenith’s fangs protruded. Excusing himself, he rolled to the edge of the bed and huffed for a spell. Then he wandered to the corner of their sparse but luxurious white-walled room, where a stone lip burbled a thin veil of water down over a grate. He doused his head in the shower and shook it like a wet beast. Beside that was a toilet, which he made use of, grunting as he peed. Morigan blushed and grinned at his crudeness. When he returned to bed, he saw his Fawn shrouded in lacy netting; her dress hiked, half off, and
her body reclining as if she was prettiest of the autumn nymphs of Alabion. Morigan was acclimating to his moods, and she could read his sniffing desire as plainly as his nose-wrinkling anger. She wondered how much longer they could chase each other; she wanted to be caught. As he passed through the hangings and into the bed, crawling over her until their noses touched and their heats mingled, she spoke her mind.

“What remains in the Great Hunt, Caenith?”

“First, you accept, which you have done. Then, I chase you through woods to show you the truth of yourself, the truth of your feelings for me. You must be cleansed of the ghosts of the past if you are to move forward with another.”

“You have done that for me. I see my mother almost every day, in the smallest of ways. I have never felt lighter,” replied Morigan.

“I am pleased that you are pleased.” Caenith smiled. “I have given you my offering, symbolic of my devotion to you and a token for the sacrifices you are making. This, you have accepted, which completes the second task. Finally, there is one thing that both the hunter and hunted must do together that does not involve a role of predator or prey and represents the step toward unity.”

“What? Name it,” demanded Morigan.

“We must create life or death together, only then have we proven ourselves partners and mates worthy of being joined in blood and promise.”

“You’re not…I mean, I’m not ready to have a child.”
And what would it even be?

Caenith laughed and rolled off Morigan, bringing her with him so that she rested on top of his chest. “Worry not, my Fawn. I’ve never had much success with children, not even with those closer to my kind. I can smell when the bleeding or fertility is upon a woman, too, so we should never fear for accidents.”

Playfully, Morigan slapped his chest. “Caenith, you really have no shame. For the most part, it’s as refreshing as it is honest, though I must draw a certain line. The peeing I’m fine with, but I won’t stand for dropping a cracked stone loaf in front of me, should that thought ever cross your mind. Or talking about my monthly cycles. I am a lady. I do need a shred of privacy to hold on to. Only a shred.”

To her surprise, the Wolf could be embarrassed, and his cheeks flushed red. “I…yes, I shall respect your limits. I shall never speak of those things again, my Fawn. The third test. When I say we must create life or death, a child is but one literal interpretation of the challenge. Another is making a song that the bards would praise for lifetimes, or a house as sturdy as our commitment that would stand as long as the woods around it.
Death
is one end of the challenge that has fewer possibilities attached to it. We could hunt and slay an animal of suitable might, but I would not suggest so dangerous a pursuit, for the strength of our kill must match both mine and yours combined. Or we could hunt one of those who took our heart and wronged it, though you are too fair and kind to be a creature of that sort of vengeance.”

“Oh, well then, making something together sounds nice.”

“Now we must ponder
what
.”

But no ideas presented themselves to the Wolf and his Fawn, and as the starry trellis on the ceiling brightened, as did the world outside, they decided to explore the palace to see if inspiration awaited them elsewhere.

IV

Even for a tracker like Caenith, the labyrinth within Kor’Keth was troublesome. He made do without asking any passersby for directions, as his senses gave him enough of a map to follow. The spice of books and knowledge lured him first to a library, which was a good place to start when seeking answers. Not just any library was this, either, but a temple dedicated to its worship. Morigan gawked as they entered a pearlescent antechamber spindled in the brilliance of a skylight to nowhere. They were surely still under rock, though one would never know from the illusion of day above them. Hallways ran off from the chamber, and from higher up in their ornate loggias—carved with motifs of monsters, battles, and other scenes of legend—a few scholars stopped what they were reading for a speck to peer down at the pair scuffling and whispering beneath them. With no books in the antechamber, Caenith and Morigan wandered down one of the hallways, fingering tomes and treasures of knowledge spanning languages and eras. If there was an order here, Morigan could not uncover it. She knew, though, that this was
a wonder of its kind and was awestruck by the excess of lore: histories, calendars, astromancy charts, journals, scrolls, diagrams, and random sheaves of arcane theory. Surely, Thule had walked these halls, and she whimsically wondered how much of a mess he had left after himself. She was so amazed that she simply had to know more about this place. So she interrupted the reading of a spectacled lady scholar, who jumped on her bench once at the disruption, and then again as she laid eyes on Caenith.

“Excuse me,” said Morigan. “I was wondering if you could tell us where we’ve ended up.”

“Ended up? You’re in the Court of Ideas, and clearly lost.”

“Not lost,
looking
,” replied Caenith, and the woman clutched her book and shrank back onto her bench.

For a court full of ideas, they didn’t find any to help them. All around they wandered, interested for a time in the ancient accounts, which they inspected as indiscriminately as their fancies directed. Morigan discovered that Caenith knew many tongues, for he could read nearly all of what they pulled from the shelves. She wondered idly how old he was to have learned so much. She remembered his counter to the queen’s reprimand and noted that there was indeed a man of wisdom beneath the animal. There came a point where Caenith was reading to her an Orcelean text on the migrating habits of bonesparrows—tiny hairless birds, white as bone, which fed on the offal of the dead. The subject matter was boring, but Caenith’s mastery of the information was not; it was admirable and attractive. She pushed aside the book and kissed him.