Feast of Dreams (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 2)

  FEAST OF DREAMS

  A Novel of Geadhain

  CHRISTIAN A. BROWN

  Copyright © 2015 by Christian A. Brown

  Feast of Dreams is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical. This includes photocopying or recording or using any information storage and retrieval system, except as expressly permitted in writing from the author/publisher.

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 0994014406

  ISBN 13: 9780994014405 (Forsythia Press)

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2015902430

  Toronto, Ontario

  For Justin, Michelle, Barbara, Kimberly, and Sarah.

  And Mom too—as always.

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Part I

  I The Web of Fates

  II Scars

  III Echoes

  IV The Opposite of Love

  V A Sea of Trees that Eats

  VI The Forgotten

  VII Strange Bedfellows

  VIII Blood for Blood

  IX The Hunger

  Part II

  X The Pitch Dark

  XI Three Shadows

  XII Pursuit, Surrender, Despair

  XIII Mother-Wolf

  XIV A Gamble

  XV The Sisters Three

  XVI Hand of Doom

  XVII A Not So Ordinary Day

  XVIII Shadows Over Eod

  XIX Fire Against Flame

  XX Sacrifice

  XXI Alliance of the Damned

  XXII New Dawn, New Duty

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  On Geadhain (Glossary)

  —Lady Pale—

  A quickening pall o’er eve doth glisten;

  Twinkling sights, starry night,

  In deepest of darks, do listen

  For the slithering crawl,

  The worm that gnaws.

  Each bite, a letter of pain,

  Spider to spine, blood to wine,

  Be the sacraments of her name,

  Which, while never spoke

  But by madmen and damned,

  Needn’t be to invoke;

  Or abjure her thin hand,

  A sweep of her grace,

  Gaunt beauty of her face,

  And with the white lady

  In ashes, you stand.

  —Kericot, poet of Geadhain

  PROLOGUE

  “Oh! It hurts! She’s full of sprites today,” said Elemech.

  She doubled over, and her face went white as the moon daubed on night’s ebon canvas. She and her younger sister, Ealasyd, had been gazing out over the deep, green peaks of Albion when the kicking began. Elemech weathered her strain with a twisted face and was suddenly and feverishly sweating through her clothing—particularly below her swollen breasts and belly. Within her Eean kicked again. She was anxious to be born, and Elemech doubled over and huffed in pain.

  “Sister!” cried Ealasyd, and she clutched at Elemech. “This is too much. We must take you inside, and I shall fetch blankets and comforts for you.”

  No comforts this eve, fretted Elemech.

  Indeed, she would have no release from her worries tonight—not from the restlessness that had driven her out of a warm bed or from the agony of the soon-to-be-born’s acrobatics in her womb. It was quiet in Alabion. The little hearts of the wood waited with bated breath, quailing in anticipation of Eean’s return. The hush was profound, for any moment now Eean would push her way into the world. Beyond this, a deeper anxiety was felt out in the night. A fear. With a hand to her mouth and another upon her stomach, Elemech scrambled from her stone and backed away from the precipice’s edge and away from the woods. A dawning truth was upon her, and its importance so took her that the abrupt and heavy wetness between her legs, the knotting of her womb, and the faraway calls and faint pulls of Ealasyd—who was leading her somewhere—faded to insignificance.

  She cast her hidden senses out into the night; her intangible feelers whispered through the trees and fur and caressed a thousand creatures’ bodies and minds at once as a breeze of sentience. These primitive souls and their fates she could sense: the bird a hunting cat was to eat within the hourglass, the wolf that was to end that cat, and the slow and silvery years that wolf would dodder through until peacefully dying in the darkness of his den. Tripe. None of it mattered. Where were the five beacons of possibility—Morigan, her savage lover, the old man, the dead man, and the one who named herself after a rodent? She knew they were in the woods, and yet somehow they were impossibly invisible to her. They were not dead, for she could feel the gnawing premonition of their importance as if she were some lesser being. Nonetheless, her talents simply could not find them. Unbelievable. How could this be? No creature, from the meekest to the mightiest, could escape a certain whiff of destiny.

  When Ealasyd laid her older sister down upon the grasses, she knew they would not be returning to the cave for blankets and comforts. The birth was rudely happening here and now. The mucus that had washed over her small feet moments earlier and Elemech’s wavering declared it. Elemech wouldn’t be much use to her in this ordeal either, for the pain or some other catalyst had thrown her into a vision—or at least that was what she presumed Elemech’s vacancy of expression meant. She gently asked what Elemech was seeing.

  Elemech was surprisingly alert and glared at her. “Seeing?” she wheezed. “I’m not seeing anything.” The truth sobered her and returned her to her body and its necessary labor. “Incredible,” she whispered. “She’s broken it.”

  “Broken? What’s broken?” puffed Ealasyd. She was attempting to tent her sister’s legs and not getting much in the way of cooperation from Elemech, who seemed immobilized or possessed.

  “The order of things…Fate.”

  Ealasyd succeeded in hiking up her sister’s robe and frowned at what she saw. It was quite red and unpleasant looking. “Oh my…oh dear. I think something down there is winking at me. Goodness. Sorry. Someone has broken Fate? That doesn’t sound pleasant. Hopefully we can fix it, but right now you need to put your head down and get ready to push.”

  “You don’t understand,” panted Elemech. “Nothing can escape Fate. No creature can be free of the loom. What have we made in our desire to meddle? What have I…”

  A scream throttled Elemech, and she was not able to speak through the shuddering pain. Eean was on her way and violently swimming down the red river of life. Perhaps her mother’s grim intuition motivated her. Sparklers of light went off in Elemech’s head; she felt herself tear, and her blood’s warmth blanketed her thighs and the ground. In starry anguish she spun and spun, and she was lost in a torrent of images as red as her torment.

  A pale king is dangled by his ankle like a smelt by its tail above his giant brother’s hungry, crocodile mouth. All the world is in flames behind them; a sunrise roars as if it is a wyrm—perhaps it is—and breathes fire and ash. She whirls in the searing cloud of death and is thrown over the ruins of three cities: one, where the whiteness still shines; another, darker than the soot that stains it; and a third, colorful but shattered and splattered with bodies. Great wonders of destruction are each of these places. She thinks this as she passes over them in her wind of consciousness. How many lives have been lost? She looks up, and for an instant she sees a star and then a face upon which it is drawn. It’s a lad’s face, and he is pretty and black
of hair. He is important. He is a key of possibility.

  That was all she was given before returning to her grunting body. Nowhere in the maelstrom of visions did she see Morigan or any of the souls linked to her. They were all outside of Fate. The instrument had become the maestro. She could not see Morigan’s destiny because it was beyond her. It was no longer hers or anyone’s to know or touch. As the infant’s head crowned, Ealasyd began to cry, and Elemech sobbed along with her—though not for the child’s arrival but for Geadhain’s fate.

  PART I

  I

  THE WEB OF FATES

  I

  For days now, their company had been traveling the Untamed. We’re here to stop the greatest of all wars and to find the chink in the mad king’s armor. For that, we need the wisdom of the Sisters Three. Epic shite, Mouse, so keep up your gallant front. Of this she reminded herself repeatedly, as if her recitation of the cold facts would bring her more reason to tread this horrid domain. How many days they’d wandered, Mouse could not say—not that time mattered here beyond day’s light and night’s dark. Hourglasses were a modern convention for which this primeval land seemed to have no use. Mouse had numbed herself to many of the nuisances of the woods: the briars and their bloodthirsty barbs, the spongy lining of her boots that never dried in the loam and muck through which she slogged, the feel of a snake gliding over her while she fitfully slept, the throat rattles of animals as deep as wind instruments, or the frequent startles as something leathery, furry, or scaled cast a shadow upon her yet never attacked. They feared what sort of predators her dead father and the Wolf might prove to be. All these uncounted grievances Mouse had put aside for the sake of this mad quest to find the three oldest witches in Geadhain. This was a hero’s journey. In her opinion, she shouldn’t even be on it.

  Still, in the end, despite every dread and torture she had escaped, including her own self-doubt, the bugs were testing her resolve. For if it wasn’t a gnat nibbling at her, it was a spider falling onto her neck or another unseen thing scuttling under her clothing. Perhaps she had the sweetest blood of the company, or the insects could sense her natural terror of tiny, many-legged things. She awoke every morning scratching and frantic, and she ended her weary days in much the same way. No one else appeared similarly bothered.

  From dawn to dusk, the Wolf boldly led them through the vast forest as if he owned it. Mouse learned from fireside chatter that he actually did or at least had once—as much as anyone could rule the Untamed. If they were thirsty, he sniffed out a babbling brook of sugary, crystal water from which to drink. If they sensed danger, he silenced it with a bark. At times, he darted off only to return with the carcass of a beast that had come too close to their company. In such moments, his bloodmate, Morigan, might kiss him, and Mouse would find a flower to distract herself or a gnat to swat. There was an animalism to their passion that made her uneasy. As travelers, the five never wanted for nourishment or worried about danger in even the thorniest and most hissing wealds they explored—not while a lord of Fang and Claw protected them.

  When not defending herself from insects, Mouse would watch the woods in wonder. The grand, moss-bearded oaks were so old and imposing she could imagine them as dormant giants. They exuded a sense of watchfulness and wisdom. Amid these sleeping guardians, smaller tree species flourished without particular obedience to the rules of nature. Pines spread heavily at their tops like umbrellas instead of rising in coniferous shapes. There were birches with gray bark, knots, and holes ran straight through them. In these burrows, feral eyes often gleamed. All her life, Mouse had heard stories and henwives’ gossip about the Untamed, but neither the eloquent poems nor the scariest or silliest rumors really captured the place’s strangeness. Perhaps faery stories came nearest with their undertones of magik and otherworldly happenings. Aye, the magik of Alabion was undeniable. The glassy butterflies refracted sunlight, the winged lizards fluttered by her ear and whistled tunes as if they were flutes. The childlike dread that claimed her came from some of the larger shadows the Wolf growled at—ones even he deemed too much of a hassle to hunt. In such instances, she was reminded that death was only a misstep away. Many a time, her father’s fast reflexes caught her from stumbling into a jagged rock made to split her daydreaming head, a hole that crumbled inward to be twice as deep as it appeared, or the coiled presence of a serpent that declared its poison with a rattle. She was more careful after these incidents. Nonetheless, the quietude of their travel lent itself to absentmindedness, for Morigan and the Wolf never spoke—not in words at least. She had learned they did so in currents of emotion and thought. All the trekking appeared to burden her great-uncle Thackery. He spoke only when addressed and then in a terse manner. Her father, Vortigern, was vigilant about her care and mistakes—though he, too, was quiet. He seemed as preoccupied as the rest with troubles or concerns he did not share.

  At night, however, the fasting from conversation ended. The Wolf would find them a star-bright clearing in which to camp, and there they would light a fire and partake in food and chatter. Mouse came to look forward to these occasions, and throughout her daily toil, she would long for the fire’s crackle, the Wolf’s deep laugh, and the feel of her father’s cold hand on her back. Somewhat against her will, camaraderie—an unwelcome stranger—had tiptoed into her heart.

  II

  No sooner had they stopped that night than Caenith and Vortigern were on a hunt. They left Morigan to build the fire. Thackery’s magik and capabilities for fire starting were as useful as wet matchsticks here in Alabion. No amount of grunting or concentration would summon his magik. Once Morigan had rubbed two sticks into a sputtering of flame, the three companions gathered about the fire. They smiled, spoke of nothing in particular, and passed around the waterskin Alastair had left them. Soon a chill crept into the woods, and the flames were a welcome friend to their pale cheeks. Settling into an easy silence, they looked about the tree-circled slab of limestone they had claimed and into the wispy forest shadows that seemed to curl like smoke. They listened to the woods for a sign of their fellows. Time fell away, the cold sharpened further, and the three huddled closer to the fire.

  “Do you feel that?” Caenith’s deep voice startled everyone except Morigan. “The claws of winter,” he continued.

  He had appeared from the murk with the dead man’s shade behind him. He was in a loincloth, and fresh blood splashed his chest. Mouse leaped a bit at his ferociousness. With a crimson grin, he held up the crumpled body of a stag nearly his size. In a moment, the two joined the others at the fire. Vortigern had also been successful with his hunting. He dropped a pair of furry corpses and then went to his daughter, while Caenith settled in behind his bloodmate. The Wolf did not wipe off his paint of murder, and Morigan seemed unconcerned. Instead, she busied herself with their meal. She rolled up her sleeves, produced her elegant dagger, and started gutting what hadn’t already been pulled from the carcasses. A silence settled over the company, and there was only the squelching of Morigan’s butchery to hear.

  “Perhaps a story,” suggested Thackery.

  During their evenings together, Caenith had revealed his propensity and talent for storytelling to those who did not know him as well as Morigan did. One of his stories was preferable to Morigan’s bloody music.

  “Hmm,” pondered the Wolf. “A tale.”

  The Wolf began speaking, and they were all pulled into his spell. They nibbled on the meal quite absently once it had been distributed. Mouse was a master at escapism, and she found these tales especially captivating. After one blink, the Wolf’s booming incantation had taken her from the campfire to the White Lake’s shores. She learned there of the changeling Dymphana, of mortalkind’s betrayal of her, and finally of the tragic end to her story—how the cruelty of man taught her and the other children of Alabion to hate.

  “A bitter lesson,” finished the Wolf, “and I can tell from your sour faces it is not one that has warmed your spirits.” He smiled and wagged the half-eaten shank
he was chewing on at his audience. “But it is an old lesson, a grievance from a bygone age—and as we can see from our fellowship here, it is a caution, not a law. The old and new can coexist. I am as old and stubborn as they come, and I have found a place in my heart for each of you in this pack.”

  “Pack?” said Mouse, and she smiled.

  “A pack,” stated the Wolf.

  They finished off what portions of the meat they wanted, and then Caenith stomped out the fire so those who needed rest could have it. The bones of their meal were kept off to the side. When the deepest darkness came later, Caenith and Morigan would sneak away to bury the remains and murmur their thanks in the oldest tongue to the beasts’ spirits. In Alabion, Caenith felt it necessary to observe every rusty custom he remembered. As much as these lands had once been his hunting grounds, they were a friend to him no more. Alabion was a stranger—possibly a wicked one—and there were cries and scents to the woods he did not recognize. He felt that honoring the old ways of the land might spare them from the Green Mother’s capriciousness.

  Shall we?

  Morigan tugged Caenith out of his brooding when her suggestion did not stir him. Tireless Vortigern aside, the camp was now asleep, and the bloodmates gathered the bones and slipped into Alabion’s tangles. Although Morigan would never be as acutely tuned to the physical world as her mate, she had adopted a shade of his wildness. She moved more quickly than she ever had as a woman and was even lighter than her mate, who crushed bracken and huffed at her heels. He was graceful only when he chose to be, which was not now. Sometimes he would lead, but tonight she found the place that called for the bones to rest. After a timeless race panting through darkness, splashing through ponds, and hiking moss-covered hillocks, she brought them to a copse of skinny, white trees that shone in the blackness of the woods. There they dug at the soil and leaves on the ground, laid the bones in a shallow grave, and gave thanks to their spirits. Morigan knelt, kissed her hand, and touched the soil afterward. It was not the gesture traditionally associated with the ritual: urination upon the site. Instead, this was an honor she had devised. The Wolf smiled when she was done.