Feast of Fates (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 1) (44 page)

“W-where are we?” asked Thackery.

“Kor’Keth. Spans from Eod.”

“How did we get here?”

“I dragged you from the rubble.”

Rubble
, thought Thackery, and the jumbled fragments of his memory assembled. Sorren’s taunts:
you underestimate the value of your holdings, too, if you believe there is nothing I can
take
from you
. Truly, the nekromancer had found what remained in life that Thackery valued.
Morigan, Morigan
, he despaired. He remembered an explosion from behind as he tried to transport himself to his tower. Miss Hattersham? It must have been. The force had surely propelled him out of his translocation spell while keeping his matter disembodied enough to live once it reassembled. He was beyond fortunate to be alive.

A shining object was thrown, startling Thackery. Glancing down to his feet, he saw that it was Morigan’s dagger.

“This is all that I could find of her. No scents to the air. No tracks to follow. Only the smallest bit of sunshine,
here
.” The Wolf pounded his chest and stepped from the shadows. Thackery saw that he was as dark as a furnace tender on his clothing and flesh, too. “That is how I know she lives. I
feel
it, for if she was to die, it would rip my heart in twain. Yet whoever has taken her has bound her, in fae iron or whatever you wicked magik-men use to
stifle power in this age. I want their names, Sage. I want to know who I am to
hunt
.”

Caenith spat the word from a mouth of teeth that were abruptly, dangerously sharp, and Thackery recoiled. As Caenith loomed over him, huffing and seething with rage, Thackery confessed a name.

“Sorren Blackbriar. A madman and an agent of Menos.”

“Menos!” barked the Wolf. “Why would the Iron City have an interest in Morigan?”

Only two scenarios were feasible to the quick-witted sage. Sorren was out for revenge, or the Council of the Wise somehow knew of Morigan’s gifts, and even worse, had an idea of how important the young witch was. If there were spies within the palace, the latter was possible, and the former was long overdue. He considered that Caenith might snap his spine if the wind blew the wrong side of his anger, and delicately chose what to say.

“I would guess that they learned of Morigan’s power—through my carelessness in bringing her to the queen or another oversight—and that they intend to use it. She should be safe for a time; they would not harm her, not right away.”

The Wolf sniffed him; the vinegar sourness of a half-told lie curdled off the old man. “You are not being completely honest with me. What you have not said is just as important as what you have.”

“There…there is more, yes,” whined Thackery. He closed his eyes, as the man’s fangs—yes, they surely weren’t mortal teeth—were terrifying him, and the rest of his confession spilled out. “Sorren is my nephew. It is possible that this was an act of revenge for something I did years ago—”

“I care not for your grudges or heartaches of the past,” muttered Caenith with a menacing softness. “Where may I find your nephew? Is he in Menos?”

“I would think so, yes.”

The shadow was off Thackery, and he looked to see Caenith stride out of the shelter and into the sun. Caenith pointed to his right, along the mountains. “Follow the range west for about a day in your slow-walker timing, and you will find Eod.”

In what seemed like lunacy to the sage, the large man slipped off his shirt and began unlacing his trousers.

“Caenith, wait! What are you doing? We should return to the city! The queen—”

“Return to the city? Queen Lila?” scoffed Caenith. “Why do you think I took you so far out of Eod? No walled garden of man is safe, particularly not that one. I doubt your queen would hear my entreaty for aid as kindly as you imagine. In fact, I know she would not. There will be more questions raised than answered by my presence. My time in Eod has passed, and I must find a new life for myself—after I find this Sorren and drink the wetness of his death; after Morigan and I are united.”

“What are you going to do? You…you can’t just leave me here!”

“I can,” declared Caenith.

He stepped from his boots and pants, naked in the sun as a golden idol to a spirit of masculinity. As Caenith stretched his grand arms to the light, Thackery watched the man’s spine slither in a most unnatural way. Caenith howled and dropped to all fours; sweat or other secretions were glistening upon him almost instantly. Although Thackery was racked with a primal fear, one warning that he was about to witness something horrifying and magnificent, he ran up to Caenith anyhow. Morigan’s fate was his responsibility. Sorren’s involvement was, as well, and he would not see either left without justice.

“Wait! Please! Take me with you! I can’t lose her! I love her, too! This is my fault! My burden to bear! I know the city! How to get in and how to get out! Ways that you have never heard of!”

When Thackery fell to his knees before the heaving smith, he wasn’t prepared for what he saw: not the saliva-dripping, budding snout; the squiggling of the man’s veins like little snakes; the sense that Caenith was flowering with bulbs of meat; or that his great shadow was growing ever greater and hairier. As Caenith swelled into something monstrous, he choked out commands distorted by a shifting voice box and wagging tongue.

“YOU…HECCCH…RIDE…TILL I STOP…HOCCH…ONE REST EACH DAY…HECCCH…BRING THE DAGGER…IF YOU FALL…I LEAVE YOUUUOOOWWWWW!”

The transformation ended in a howl, and it had happened so swiftly that Thackery could not reconcile the blurring and explosion of fur, flesh, teeth, and claws until it was over. Even then, his mind screamed,
No, no, no, no,
no!
and all he could do was shake in disbelief while the Wolf panted not-quite-canine breath in his face. Impatiently, the Wolf stomped its paw on the quarried hill outside the shelter; so strong was the monster that smaller rocks slid down the range, and the sudden earthquake surprised Thackery to jittery movement. He scrabbled back from the Wolf, and it padded ahead, stirring more stones and dust, frowning at him with its gray eyes. Those eyes reminded Thackery of who this was, and he halted his retreat. Made no easier by the dizzyingly hot sun, his mind struggled to accept the madness of man and beast as one.

Again the Wolf pawed the hill with annoyance.
We need to go
, he was implying, and he lay his woolly head down so that Thackery could climb aboard his back. If Thackery had any longer to make a decision, he might have disputed his actions to no end. But fueled by a fear of being eaten for his indecision, he managed to find his legs. He found some sense, too, and quickly bundled up Caenith’s trousers, boots, and promise dagger inside the large man’s shirt in case he would, ideally, stop being a wolf.
A wolf! A wolf! A wolf!
his interior voice chanted, and he had to ignore it. Almost giggling in hysteria, he slung on the pack, climbed onto his heaving mount, stepping onto ridges of muscle like stirrups and clambering up between two mounds of knotted strength that were the Wolf’s shoulder blades. Power hummed up Thackery’s groin to his chest as he pressed his face to the soft, man-scented fur, and he had barely clutched fistfuls of pelt in his hands before the Wolf shot across the desert like the arrow of a thunderstrike bow.

While the wind tore at him with animal fury, Thackery laughed, he cried, he sobbed in madness. For the most part, he held on for all he was worth.

V

Poor lass. I wonder what the brothers grim have planned for her. All that trouble and all that death, and she is what it amounts to
.

To the right of Morigan, and thinking these dire thoughts, was a brown-haired woman lined by evening shadows: a fellow prisoner on this craft. Akin to the prison marches of old, when slaves were herded into the mines of Menos to toil until they fell, the two of them were cuffed in black manacles
with chains that connected their feet to their wrists and their wrists to each other. In the swaying, wind-rapped skycarriage, the heavy iron links beat against their bruised shins and shivered their bones with a song of hopelessness. The two were sitting hip to hip, though Morigan was mostly slumped on her fellow captive until a sand ago when she had groaned herself awake, out of an abyss of unconsciousness that had surely held her for a day, or longer. With her first gasp of awareness, she cried out for Caenith using her body and mind. But her communication was twice stymied: her mouth was muzzled by a cloth gag, and the bees never left her head; they only circled and buzzed. A power was restraining her gift, at least the far reach of it, and her instincts told her that the iron she was bound in had more of a burden than mere weight. Aye, it burned her wrists and ankles coldly, like the bite of frost.

She could still sense and hear the unseen by touch, however, and the proximity of her fellow captive was enough to catch echoes of what the other thought. This prisoner wasn’t a warm woman; that much Morigan learned in only a short exposure to her. Which was good, figured Morigan, for the soft had no chance of surviving whatever was in store for them. The cool cunning of the Wolf or another boldness reined Morigan, and she counted her enemies. First, the grim men in fitted black clothing that stood steadied by an assassin’s grace in the shaking cabin. Next, the dead man down the bench, who was calmly stitching an overcoat that Morigan vaguely remembered perforating with her dagger. The biggest concern with that adversary was that it didn’t appear that he could be killed, not by any weapon she knew of, aside from magik, perhaps. The nekromancer and that silver-mouthed thing were not in the cabin, though she recalled them well. Calculating the odds of two chained women against seven very dangerous men left Morigan short of a solution.

Irrespective of her cunning, she would not get far in chains, not without help or an understanding of her fate. Morigan nudged closer to the other prisoner and was given a look of reproach.

Don’t pull away, and don’t show surprise that I am speaking in your head
, whispered Morigan.

Little perturbed Mouse’s steely demeanor, but the hollow voice, the shout in a mental room of her skull almost had her leaping to the ceiling.
She made a small noise of surprise behind her gag, and then shrewdly acted as if she was coughing when attentions snapped upon her. The dead man dropped his coat to the floor and was rubbing her back at once. Mouse made him stop with a glare, and he sheepishly chased down his thread and garment, returning to his task in a speck. When the situation had calmed, and both women were bleakly focused ahead like the preoccupied prisoners they were supposed to be, Morigan whispered again.

We need to talk, you and I. This is the only way that I think it is safe to do so. As long as we are touching or relatively close, you can hear my words, and I can hear yours. Respond if you understand me
.

Mouse concentrated on what she was to say.
Can you…can you hear me?
A pause, as the message was relayed—and was that a tinny buzz, wondered Mouse—and then the woman next to her replied.

Yes. What is your name?

Mouse entered a short debate about how much to reveal to a woman who apparently could enter her head. Hiding the truth from a seer seemed a pointless endeavor, she decided.

Mouse. You may call me Mouse. And you, strange witch?

Along with Mouse’s words, the bees returned with a few droplets of stolen memory nectar. Morigan was silent a spell while she sifted through images of a metal eye; the rank smell of a man’s unwashed sexual sweat; a handsome, dark-haired face hidden in a hood—even with only his thin jaw showing, she knew this man was charismatic—and lastly, a gloomy manor with a rusted playground and scattered cricket set. Feelings of pitiful sadness tainted this final scene, and Morigan was stirred. This Mouse had lost something: her love, her innocence. After requesting that the bees behave in their travels, Morigan sent another thought to Mouse.

Morigan is my name. Where are they taking us?

Menos
.

Morigan swallowed her distress. Every speck in this craft took her farther from the Wolf, though she knew in her heart of hearts that he was on the chase. The hope was there; she needed only to fan the flame.

Why have they taken you?
asked Morigan.

The living one that looks like the dead man beside me, he’s mad as a bull with a hornet up its ass. Master Blackbriar, he is. Sorren by first name. A
nekromancer of the sickest kind, which is saying a lot for those folks. He stole, well
, paid
my employer to own me, and I can only imagine what he will do to you or me after seeing what he has done to others. Stitched a woman—a living woman, ghastly as that sounds—with bags of powder, whistling while he did it. He thinks that I’m someone I am not
.

Again, Morigan saw the dilapidated black manor, its windows frosted with grime. She demanded that the bees stop their foraging. While Morigan’s mind had slipped, Mouse had been repeating a question over and over, wanting it to be heard:
Why have they taken you?

They want something from me
, replied Morigan, and delayed before further explaining herself. Yet the same desperate trust that won over Mouse, that sinking reality that there was no one here to help them besides themselves, persuaded Morigan to be honest—within reason.