Feast of Fates (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 1) (77 page)

VIII

Brutus’s horde surged out of the valley and spilled onto the escarpment in a tide; the chanting did not slow or end as the smaller were trampled by hooves or boots and died praising their king’s name:
Brutus! Brutus! Brutus!
When the Blackeyes and Redeyes reached the barrier of flame, they paused to organize their numbers and herded the skinnier and smaller of their kind—women and children—through the inferno first. Magnus did not wait to watch them get consumed, but sang to the sky with his anger, the bitterness of an eternity of brotherhood ending in this atrocity. The heavy evening clouds grew blacker than the ash could make them and then dazzled with white. Forks of lightning roared from above and landed in the swirling mob outside the barrier; wherever they touched, the land exploded into potholes of ignition.

Up in the nooks of the Fangs of Dawn, the thunderstrike archers wiped their sopping brows and added their bolts to the fray. Then followed the sorcerers, who unleashed arcs of fire onto the earth. A symphony of destruction had commenced, its music crisscrossing the sky in crimson and white power. The whole of the land shook, scattering rock upon the gutsy soldiers who held their ground under the rain of magik; men who watched with awe the starry detonations that made whirling torrents of bodies beyond the green flames. Wonder fled to nerves as, despite the destruction, the chanting horde was successful in snuffing the wall of sorcery with sandbags of their cindery dead, and in many places, the horde was trickling in. An initial wave of piecemeal Blackeyes that made it through were skewered by countless glowing arrows, but crawling over their remains came more and more of the cursed things, and handfuls of viciously barbed riders who wasted not a speck kicking their mounts into a charge. Behind the dread riders, the accursed
firecallers followed, glowing in their auras, and they threw back at the rain of magik and arrows with pyrotechnic explosions and lashes of flame that toppled handfuls of archers and sorcerers from the cliffs surrounding the king. The line had scarcely held for sands, and behind stretched the tail of the horde deep into the valley. The king found him then, his brother, felt him more with his heart than located him with his eyes. At the tip of the tail was a glittering warband that had not lost the luster of the Sun King’s regalia: he was convinced that his brother was there.

Good luck, Erithitek. Hold them as long as you can, and I shall end this
, swore the king.

Mortal sorcerers could rarely translocate without assistance and mechanical computation. However, Magnus was not mortal, and he when he closed his eyes, he saw the strings of brilliant patterns that composed all things—and arranged them into an invisible passage through which he forced himself. Agonizing, but when the pain left him, and his body resumed its shape, he knew that he was successful by the granite voice that called his name.

“Magnus.”

Magnus looked up from the heaps of hot ash into which he had fallen. An enormous float was passing by, one carried on the backs of man-golems and naked slaves, and atop which a parade of feathered male and female concubines swayed in a trance around a huge golden throne. Magnus dismissed other details, like the paint of blood that blemished the abundance of gold, or the repulsive mortal trophies—faces, limbs, and garlands of genitals—that hung off the banners. He was interested only in the massive shape that was rising off the throne and tossing whatever bodies were in its way off the platform. The shape leaped to the burned earth, landing with a tremor, and in the flickering light of war, Magnus gazed upon this heaving giant dressed only in a warrior’s skirt and slathered with spirals of gore, as if they were strangers. Savagery had overtaken him, as violent as the thick musk of death, sweat, and sex that wafted off him. Brutus’s regal beauty, the charisma and pride of a lion, had been warped into hideousness; with his luxurious hair and beard all matted and entwined with bones, his rock-carved, handsome face now twisted into a wolf’s wrinkled growl, and his bulbous, veined musculature made more threatening from a primal hunch, as if he was an ape.
The line between beast and man had been erased, that battle had been won, and Magnus could recognize nothing of Brutus, his brother of forever. For the first time in eternity, their hearts and minds did not reach out to each other, and he saw nothing in his brother’s stormy blue eyes but hunger.

“Hold, Brutus!” shouted the king, and stood. “You are a wild and wounded thing. I would hear your confession before I end your madness.”

Brutus laughed at that, booming bellows that added to the concussions going off in the darkness. While he amused himself, his army slithered on, heedless of this conflict.

“This is your chance to ask for forgiveness,” spat Magnus.

Brutus whipped from his laughter. “Forgiveness! You would dare to speak to me of that! My brother of the long seasons! The cold half of my soul! My partner in eternity! You, who left me for the sniff of a woman’s legs!”

“Is that it?” Magnus threw back derisively. “Jealousy? You would wage war on Geadhain because you could never find a woman, or man, who could bear your bestial lust? Pathetic. How far you have fallen from the man I knew. Look at what you have done to your accomplishments, to the people that trusted you, to the land that you swore to nurture! Do you remember when this was green? When we picked and named the saplings that would grow in the garden of your kingdom? Look around at what you have wrought and you should feel only shame. If you can admit that, then your punishment may be less cruel, but still more painful than you have ever known. This is my mercy for you. As for the dark spirit that haunts you, the one that you have cursed yourself to for this despicable power, I extend no kindness. I shall cast it back into bottomless filth where it belongs.”

“Your mercy?” Brutus bit his lip with a fang and spit the red mucus on the earth. “How little you understand. I do not need your love, your forgiveness, or your mercy. For I have
hers
, and it is vast and warm as the rush of blood and milk in the throat. Hers is a river of darkness without end, an appetite that can never and needs never be sated. She feeds me as you never could. As only a true companion can.”

“Of whom do you speak?” demanded Magnus. “To whom have you pledged this horror?”

“Our Mother, Zionae,” growled Brutus.

While Magnus anticipated some or all of that answer, he was no less confused by these associations that he could not recall, and there was no time to contemplate them. If Magnus had not been his brother since it all began, he might not have recognized the twitch of violence in the other’s face, even hidden under all that beard and mane, which told him that he was about to be attacked. Like a smear of grease across the eye, the giant was upon him. Perilously late, Magnus hurled up his arms and threw forth his Will, and a jet of crackling ice tore up the ash around him. Brutus crashed into the wall, snarled, and then vaulted over it. Brutus called his Will—the magik of the jungle, dominion over flesh and fang—and his arms twisted with brilliance into ragged blades that took the place of his forearms and hands and could rend a stone in twain: his claws. He descended upon his brother, who looked up, stunned, so slow compared to the agility that coursed inside him. Easy prey.

Yes, my son. Make him bleed. Bleed him to love him, it is the only way
, hissed the Black Queen inside him.

In the instant that Brutus’s blade flashed before Magnus—so near that he could see his face reflected—the Sorcerer King lashed out with his Will. His gaze blazed with emerald energy, and the giant was blasted away from him in a smoking arc: plummeting to a stop far away. As quickly as Brutus was down, he was up again, a golden lightning bolt across the black land, and Magnus used that precious instant of distance to shut out the pounding of war and fall deep into himself. He sought the arctic vein of power that ran within him, the magik spawned in the tundra where they were born; forever had he carried an essence of the cold of that place. He broke the skin of memory, and the sum of his great life’s emotions rushed out. He screamed as the power tore through him: from the shredding physical agony, from the rage of Brutus’s betrayal, from the torment of his love for Lila and Erithitek. He screamed as well as Brutus’s bull charge shattered the frozen cascade that he hunched behind, and those golden blades sank somewhere into his flesh. But that pain only made the magik stronger, and Brutus’s slavering grin was wiped away in the nova of retribution, light, snow, and the ripping noise more hateful than the coldest night of the Long Winter that blasted from his delicate brother and consumed the valley.

When the light and devastation eased to a howl, Magnus floated back into himself. He was shivering in a hollow of ice, with frozen waves and twisted spikes radiating outward from him and a veil of whipping snow over the land. His hip and shoulder were numb and rather useless, and he realized that he was in some state of hypothermia or shock. Sloppily, he dragged himself over to a glassy crest, lightheadedly watching the red trails he made on all the whiteness. His wounds were surely grave, though he did not have the Will to repair himself: he needed to rest a speck. The war might have ended, though he could not hear much over the screeching winter he had called.
Is it over? Have I done what I set out to do? Lila, Erithitek, those who taught an immortal creature how to love, this is in your name
. Was he to feel triumphant? For in his stomach there was only merciless grief. Had he ended his brother? The significance of that choked a sob from his bloody lips.
Please forgive me, brother, please forgive me
.

“Do not weep for me, little brother,” thundered Brutus in the storm.

Magnus rolled from his support and swayed to his feet. Strides from him, slumped against an icy finger, was his brother, and in no better shape than himself: his war skirt had evaporated, and his naked flesh was minced and prickling with ice that not even his tremendous heat had melted yet. Astonishingly, or perhaps not so for a man who had endured the Long Winter, Brutus had survived. His fight was spent, though, as empty as Magnus’s reserves of might, so a victory could hardly be announced.

“Damn you,” said Magnus.

Brutus laughed and hauled himself up, huffing as he spoke. “Your strength fills me with pride; for with so much passion, there is surely love. You cannot kill an immortal. Not even you, little brother. You cannot stop what is coming, either.”

Magnus had a sense of what that was: a Black Queen and hordes of men with their souls sucked out for her Will. He cared not for what this monster was, if it was a mother as Brutus said—he wanted no mother that was so vile. With no magik to call upon to defend himself, he used the one remaining weapon that might pierce the madness of his brother: he undid the seal that shielded him from Brutus’s mind and soul. The spell blew away like dust. The wall between them fell. The wildfire of his brother’s spirit roared within him, while Brutus doubled over and whimpered as the winter returned to
his chest. Magnus stumbled toward his brother. He would forgive him if it would bring peace. He would not leave him alone again.

Brutus, end this. Please, there has to be another way
, he begged.
If it is loneliness that has sickened you, then I shall cure that with my company. I shall give everything that I have built to the hands of others and never leave you again. Please, take my hand, and we shall go away. We shall leave the world of men and live as ghosts to the ages
.

Those words were the weapon he had hoped for, and his great brother cringed as the sword of Magnus’s cold love was driven deep. He would surrender it all, as he had said, and live as one beast of two bodies again. The idea was not unappealing to Magnus, either. Losing Lila would be the hardest part, though in a sense that loss had already started, for with the connections between blood-bound souls restored, his first and only sense from her was terror. Erithitek would be a proper king for Eod: virtuous, hard, and strong. He would leave those he loved before he and his brother hurt them more. Brutus would have him. They could sleep as cubs and speak in grunts and whistles without worrying about the courtesies of a world that was not made for them. Magnus slogged ahead toward the fire that was his broken brother, craving that heat and weeping tears that froze on his cheeks. He fell before the trembling giant, a mouse in his brother’s shadow, and offered his hand. He was not afraid of Brutus, not anymore.

It is time
, said Magnus.
Time for us to go
.

Brutus bowed his shaggy head, as docile as a lamb.
I’ve been a monster… the things I’ve done…yes, take me away, little brother. Away from this world I bite at. I need your silence and your cold love and nothing else. In another age, I shall remember how to be noble again
, sobbed the giant. He reached to Magnus.

WEAK!

The Black Queen’s denouncement split the skulls of both brothers. Magnus reeled, and Brutus clamped down upon his wrist, shattering metal, bone, and meat. But the pain was secondary to the passion of the Black Queen that gripped him: the black and throbbing lust, the gurgling illness that made Magnus want to shite, vomit, and fuk all at once. Connected to Brutus’s mind and flesh, Magnus could sense that now, her indomitable hold on his brother. With her whispers, she had poisoned his brother, and her venom was not so
simply cured. He had flashes of her nattering insinuations, her goading to feed his bestial urges—to eat the meat, drink the blood, and pump his seed with abandon—and he reeled from revulsion as well as from the crippling regret at how fantastically he had failed Brutus. Centuries of this torment, this secret madness had his brother endured, and he had known nothing of it while living as a man in Eod.

Brutus! Please! We can still
—

No
, grinned the giant; his teeth all fangs and the wildness again in his stare. Magnus had lost him.

He is mine! As you will be soon, my son. Once you are stripped down. Once I have eaten your Will. Then, and only then, will you be ready for my gift
.