Feast of Fates (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 1) (18 page)

“Watch,” she commands her children again
.

Which is the time for such orders to be given; it is the gasp for which she has been waiting. The bloody meat that was once her husband slumps and dies. The rabble have been given stinking produce to throw and are commanded to do so. While the corpse is splattered with rot, she studies the shadowy masters in their terraces, counts the faces of the Council she sees and makes note of who smiles the most: he will perish first. Against the screaming crowd, that is all she has—her vengeance—and it will be her new love now that Gabriel is gone
.

She had done it, too, finished their dream. Along the way, her sons had failed her, and so the plan had to be rewoven. If a man could not take the First Chair, then a woman would.
The Crimson Spring
was what the historians called her rise to power, for never had so many of the Council of the Wise fallen in one season. Between the Broker’s bloody contracts and her son’s black sorcery, six Iron sages were culled in a week. The remaining six were true to their mantle of
wise
and voted for her ascent to Council.

I should thank you for your death, Gabriel, for that pain nursed me on the iron milk. It taught me to be strong, to push beyond what a woman can achieve
. The Iron Queen of Menos pressed her hands to the cold glass, as if clutching the murky streets below.
Mine. All mine. I cannot have family, so I shall have the world. The white and green kingdoms of the immortals, too. A mortal woman, not even gifted with magik, shamed by her family, and about to claim the eternal kingdoms of the North and South, which no conqueror in history has so much as dreamed. Look at what I have earned
.

“Iron Sage Gloriatrix,” said a young man’s unsteady voice, interrupting her thinking. “The Council awaits you.”

Gloriatrix turned from the wall of glass and saw a fancily suited lad kneeling on the oval rug in her office paneled in dark wood. She stepped around her commanding desk—a slate of polished rock mined from nameless ruins of the East—and asked the courier to follow her. Outside her office were many Ironguards, the armored elite of Menos, with their technomagikal rifles cocked and blue fire licking at their muzzles. The men joined Gloriatrix and the courier as they strode echoing hallways laden with gold and onyx wealth: portraits, busts, tapestries, and embellished weapons (from a smith in Eod, if she recalled, and was always struck by their beauty). The entourage stopped in a domed antechamber gleaming from tile to pillar in black marble and lit along the roof by sorcerous stars. Wonder claimed none of them at the splendor, and Gloriatrix tapped her foot while the courier rushed to operate a switch hidden in the darkness. Gears groaned, and the floor under Gloriatrix and her party puffed with the sound of an unsealed naval hatch and began to rise. Gloriatrix’s destiny was not to be crushed, and above her, the ceiling folded away in sections. They were traveling upward through a black glass shaft toward the Crucible’s highest offices: the Iron Crown.

Gloriatrix enjoyed these moments of relative silence and authority, safe behind armed men, staring out over the maroon cloud cover that smothered the ugliness of her city. She found the purple toxicity of the stratosphere enchanting, the way it folded the red evening sunlight in a stain of oil-shimmered rainbows. Other transit shafts were about her and lean ebony skycarriages zipped around. These Crowes reminded her of mastless metal ships twisted with the thorny aesthetic of Menosian craftsmanship. Listening to the hum of the technomagikal platform, she slipped into a meditative state, preparing herself for the maneuvers she was to face in the Iron Crown, where every meeting was a sparring of wits and deceptions. She was still quite dreamy when the transport stopped, and she was led through passages and finally into a grand hall like the star-chamber below. Yet here the lights pulsed on smoky glass, not marble, and the entirety of the bleeding sun warped the chamber in forbidding hues. Under a pillar of red light from the cupola, twelve seats were present; ten filled with ominous figures and two that were empty. The Council of the Wise was waiting on the First Chair to be filled only, as the Eleventh Chair belonged to the last man who made a play against Gloriatrix, and the Council had not yet voted on his replacement. Baleful glares followed Gloriatrix to the largest of the iron seats, and she drank in the Council’s malice with delight. Once her Ironguards were positioned about her chair, she called the session to order.

“Keepers of Menos, wise of Menos, I welcome you.”

“This meeting is unscheduled. What is this regarding?” huffed a portly red-faced man a seat over from hers. He adjusted his lank, spotty hair while waiting for Gloriatrix to respond. As always, Gloriatrix eyed the man with disgust, wondering why the richest whoremonger in Menos couldn’t even be bothered to get a proper scalp from some thick-haired savage and five sands in a fleshcrafter’s studio. His slobbery speech and sweat-stained, strained clothing were measurably repulsive.

“It is scheduled as
I
have called for it, Third Chair. Since you’d like to jump right into it, what this meeting is about, Horgot, I shall tell you.
War
. This is about war. The hourglass is nigh for Menos to strike the kingdoms of the immortals.” Gloriatrix waited for the chatter to die down after her announcement before continuing. “The hourglass is
fated
even, as Elissandra will attest.”

Gloriatrix waved a hand across the way from herself, and all attention shifted to the quiet woman sitting there. She had not taken part in the eruption. At first glance, it was obvious that Elissandra was not an earthly master but a mystical one. Her pale-gray robes, her drawn, bloodless face, and her mane of frost-white hair gave her an ethereal air. When she spoke, it was hardly a whisper, and her silvery eyes saw past the room, as if she was a conduit for forces beyond and not speakers on this plane of existence. She was an astromancer, a sorceress who dealt in cosmology and heavenly portents; her Houses of Mystery and their divinings were among the most profitable ventures in Menos—for every master wanted to know what knife to watch for next. She was also the only other woman on the Council and a silent ally of Gloriatrix. For some time, Elissandra had been working on a project for the Iron Queen. Now the time had come for Elissandra to announce her findings.

“Sixth Chair, tell us what you have discovered,” urged Gloriatrix, snapping her fingers to rein the astromancer’s wits.

“Yes, First Chair,” said Elissandra, rising from her seat. Like an eclipse, she had a dark and ruling presence when she chose to exercise it, and the others gave her their rapt attention. “Gloriatrix, through channels unknown to me, recently came into possession of a relic. A highly significant relic. A key piece of Menosian history that is tied to the destiny of our nation. The Sixth Chair’s scroll.”

“Bullshite!” roared Horgot.

“Quite the opposite, I’m afraid. And the wise in this Council would heed its words, for they are dire and meaningful,” replied Elissandra.

Seventh Chair, Septimus Sortov, youngest and freshest of the Council, had a cheery face and warm red hair that belied his devious proclivities as a nekromancer. He had only heard fireside chatter of the Sixth Chair’s scroll before and made that known to the sages. He also tended to argue or stand against anything Gloriatrix overtly had a hand in, as he despised her talented son.

“Sixth Chair’s scroll? I know that we live on the borders of the Untamed, but surely we are beyond the folklore of savages?”

Gloriatrix stabbed him with a stare. “You are young, so I can excuse your ignorance. Before the accomplishments of Menos, before our glorious achievements, we were a weak and pervious nation that had not yet found
its footing. In our darkest days, we were stricken by famine and plague—a sickness spread by rats that no shaman could cure—and we reached out to the greatest kingdoms on Geadhain for aid, thinking the Immortal Kings to be the keepers of our land. But they spurned us, for they found our culture distasteful. They did not agree that some men should live in chains and others not, while what we do is no more perverse than any natural order of the greater over the lesser. Our founders grew ever more committed to survival then; they learned to take what they needed, to poison their enemies, to spy, and to trust only themselves. We have
never
forgotten the insult of the Immortal Kings, they who would have seen us die. And we have imbued our bodies, cities, and sky with iron, waiting for the moment of retribution when we, as one great weapon, as a nation of iron, can strike.”

“Thank you for the lesson in history. Bravo,” mocked Septimus, clapping.

Elissandra was upon him at once, uncommonly zealous. “You should understand the past to comprehend the importance of the Sixth Chair’s Scroll. Gloriatix’s illustration of our history is important, for it speaks to how deeply our hatred of the kings runs, and of how dearly we would see Geadhain rid of their fickle influence. We are not the first generation, though we are certainly the most lax in our hate when that very flame is what defines and unites us as a people. Our ancestors, the man who sat in my very chair some six hundred years ago, was more passionate and true to the soul of our nation than any in this room—Gloriatrix aside. My noble ancestor, Malificentus Malum, was not content with the piddling espionage of his peers. He sought a way to undo the balance and end the reign of the Immortal Kings.”

“What did he do?” asked Septimus, who was now listening intently.

“He looked for something older and more powerful than the rulers of North and South. A weapon or wisdom, which can be much the same if wielded correctly. He went east into the Untamed. He did what no man dared and met with the Sisters Three.”

While the more learned of the Council were aware of the ancient hags of the East, their merest mention evoked childlike shivers of wonder.

“To reach the Sisters took what strength Malificentus had, and his attempt to return home with his prize ended his life. A nameless grave in the Untamed and a legend to tell the young masters of Menos were all that
was left of his legacy. As the legend goes, he wrote his last testament, and the words imparted to him by the Sisters Three on a scroll torn from his own flesh and preserved in blood sorcery.” Elissandra paused. “I can tell you that much is true, for I have seen and touched my forefather’s skin.”

“You have the scroll?” exclaimed Horgot, who was suddenly quite interested.

Elissandra nodded.

“May I see it?” he asked.

“No,” both the First and Sixth Chairs said together.

Horgot grumbled but made no further protest, and the rest of the Council mulled in silence. Sly workings were twisting inside Septimus, who now grasped the magnitude of this event.

“This scroll, then…it has the power to undo the kings?” he asked.

“No,” declared Elissandra. “Material power was not what the Sisters gave him, as their gifts are never quite what one desires, but what suits a purpose of their own. They gave him the invisible sword of information, instead. Three small utterances, or at least that is all Malificentus was able to share.”

Elissandra floated off, perusing the stretched gray parchment in her mind, recalling the leathery tackiness under her fingertips. Salivating with anticipation, the Council shifted in their chairs waiting for Elissandra to finish.

“Brother will rise to brother. A black star will eat the sky. The old age will crumble to—”

Gloriatrix interrupted the Sixth Chair, who had almost said too much. “
Brother will rise to brother
. That, fellow sages, has come to pass. My ears in the South talk of the creeping madness of the Sun King. They say he herds up the young and strong and takes them into Mor’Keth for blood rites that would turn a nekromancer’s lunch. And in the North, my ears in the palace speak of the Everfair King at last leaving his ivory fortress. For the first time in more than a thousand years, he is away from Eod! Only his queen will remain. One king is mad, the other races to stop him. If ever there was a time where the heart of Eod was exposed, this would be it. This is the hourglass of Menos’s vengeance! By the Sisters’ own words, brother will rise to brother, and the old age will fall.
We
shall be the new age.”

Murmurs of accord ran through the Council. So rare it was to see so much agreement. Nevertheless, Horgot raised a concern.

“Wait, wait. What was that about a black star, and that third proclamation of the Sisters, which sounded unfinished to my ears?”

“It was quite finished, I assure you,” said Gloriatrix. “Should you need further convincing of the Sisters’ omens, have your astromancers look to the heavens, to the darkest, farthest reaches of space, and you shall see a phenomenon that shatters your perception of what we believe is grand in our universe. Show them, Elissandra. Show them how small their minds truly are.”

Nonchalantly, the Sixth Chair swept her hand as if ridding herself of a fly, and a wrinkle of darkness appeared between the circle. With a fleshy rip, the slit widened to a tear, through which the Council could see the star-spun darkness of space. Dwarfing the misty planetoids, however, was a pulsing sphere of shadow: a sun made of ink and curling with smoke, and as extraordinary and humbling a vision as any of the wicked sages had seen. Bored after a moment, Elissandra waved at the image, and it sizzled away to nothingness. She took her seat and added a bit of commentary.

“That is a phantasm of what we captured using our astroscopes. None in my houses have ever known so queer a phenomenon. It is unexplainable. And it is on course for Geadhain.”

“On course? How…how long?” asked Moreth of El, a lanky, trim-faced gentleman in less ritual attire—a suit, bowler hat, and cane—than that of the other sages.

“At its velocity, we should see it in our skies come winter. It should not strike our world as other stars have, but hang above like a black moon. I can only imagine what dark wonders await us,” replied Elissandra, who appeared quite enamored with her doomsaying, while the rest of the Council paled. Except for Gloriatrix, who was riding the bull of change and power.