Feast of Fates (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 1) (33 page)

While the sweat poured and the fire roared, she practiced more of her mindwhispering. Caenith, quite accustomed after her first invasion, was always ready with a reply. In many ways, it was more efficient than speaking, particularly in times such as this where conversation was hindered.

The sand is now; the metal wants to sing. Fetch the cast, my Fawn
, he whispered back, not the answer she was expecting to her question on metallic simmering points, though she jumped to his charge. Without fear, with only his scorched apron and gloves to protect him, the Wolf squatted in the licking flames and thrust his tongs deep into the white-hot center of the forge, extracting the crucible, which itself glowed as if it held the sun. Morigan tried not to stop and gawk in awe at the Wolf, taking only short glances at his intrepidness, and was able to drag the heavy, black, iron-and-stone cast to Caenith in time for him to pour the liquid fire. Once the crucible was left to cool near the lowering flames, Caenith stripped off his apron and gloves and helped Morigan get out of hers. Even beneath their protections, they were tarred as two birds doused in oil. He held her filthy body to his, and they watched the metal for a spell.

“The making is not complete,” he said suddenly. “Come, my Fawn. Metal does not wait.”

He sat Morigan on the bench while he gathered his chisels, mallets, and a smaller anvil, arranging them before his Fawn, and then knelt behind her. Once set, they began to coax the radiant ingot to life. Many a time, Caenith wrapped his grip around Morigan’s fist to give the hammer strength, and it shivered through them as a singular twitch of exertion. Or when it was his turn to draw and bend the metal with wrathful strokes, he did not realize that it was Morigan’s hand that held the ingot steady between the pincers. He was her might, and she was his balance; together they were one set of hands, one body. If two beings could be any closer, Morigan crossed that final threshold, and the bees bore messages to and from their minds so as not to disrupt the song of the metal. She could hear it as they labored, the music of which Caenith always spoke: the clink of correctness, the hum of pleasure.
The spattering of their sweat was like a constant applause as the weapon was pounded into shape. Morigan’s throbbing hands, cracked throat, and hunger dwindled. The hourglass was unknown to her, and there was only the song, smoke, and sweat.

Eventually, a creeping awareness came over her that the redness of the metal had left and that they were using different, finer tools and speaking less and less with the bees out of concentration. The song was slower now. Not far past that, Caenith repeated something several times, and Morigan woke from her dreaminess standing over a pail of black water. She was looking at a dagger lying in Caenith’s scarred palm.

Knowing Caenith’s work, she could tell that it wasn’t purely his. It had a sleek hilt and an elegant blade, curved as a carving knife would be, but she spotted none of his flourishes, other than perhaps its balance and the airy heft that she found as she picked it up. Still, she discovered his artistry as she turned the blade over: on the spine and cutting edge was a calligraphy of runes and etched ivy.

“Exquisite,” commented Morigan, though she could not read any of the letters. “What does it say?”

Caenith’s fingers were too thick to point out the particulars, so he pointed along the blade as he described what was written. “In ancient Ghaedic, it tells our story. Here, of a wind that brought you to me. There, of a lonely smith, a broken wolf, a shattered man. You, the woman of fire and old magik. Our trip under Eod. The first time I tasted you…it’s all there, up until this moment. It may seem bare, only because our story does not end with this day; it begins. I doubt that as the seasons pass there will be room enough on the metal to inscribe it all, though we shall try.”

Morigan kissed the instructing hand and held it to her chest.

“What now?” she asked.

“Now I bind its hilt, find it a sheath that will fit, and you tend to those blisters on your hands. Cleanse the toil from yourself. My tub works…I shall join you when I am finished. So that we can consider a name,” said Caenith.

“A name,” agreed Morigan.

She wandered to the corner. Once there, she was amused and not terribly surprised to learn that Caenith’s tub had none of Eod’s modern conveniences—no faucets or taps, only an arm-operated pump. Thus, with more
sweat and grunting, she got to work on filling the bath. At least the water she pumped was steaming and delightfully scouring on her skin, once she had undressed and slid into the tub’s roomy ceramic embrace. She was reclining with her ears under the water when she felt Caenith’s presence shadow her. For a time, Caenith watched the Fawn. He was holding their dagger and breathless at the nymph—her net of red hair, silky limbs, and lily-white breasts floating on the water. When he climbed into the tub, black-skinned and monstrously aroused, with his canvas of knots and veins coruscating in the sensuous light of dawn, Morigan was as terrified of as she was excited by what was to happen. Sex was not his intent, however, for they had not taken their oaths. Caenith set the dagger down on the rim of the bathtub, untied his hair, and doused his head. Then he scrubbed his beard and torso. After cleaning off enough of the dirt, he glided his hands up Morigan’s thighs and pulled her near so that their softest parts touched. She could feel that he was no longer hard with desire. In fact, his features were weighed with remorse. Morigan cupped the sides of his face and waited for him to say what was clearly troubling him.

“You have cleansed yourself of doubt. You have put the pain of your mother in a box of memories, where you can honor and examine it as you wish. But I have yet to share my sadness and my wickedness with you,” said Caenith.

“Your wickedness?” asked Morigan.

Shamefully, the Wolf nodded and would not meet her eyes.

“Tell me,” she insisted.

“I…am old,” he sighed. “I have wandered to many places on Geadhain. My tribe in the East has long fallen, or been driven to dishonorable ends to protect our kind. I have seen the Salt Forests of the West, the Land of the Sun King in the South, Eod in the North, and all places in between. And once, the Iron City, too.”

“Menos?”

“Yes. Years, hundreds of years ago. I lived there. I…killed there. In the pits where men fight other men for the entertainment of masters and for coin. I was the greatest of that age. A…a monster, some would say.”

Morigan could not claim to know much of the Iron City, only that its society was as barbaric as Eod’s was righteous. She knew that one could find
any pleasure in Menos, no matter how dark, so long as one paid for it. The sicker the sin, the greater the price. Nonetheless, nothing could sour her feelings for the Wolf. She needed to understand his state of mind, though, for she knew he was a hunter, not a ruthless killer. She wanted to know what had driven him to abandon his virtue.

“Why?” she whispered.

Caenith fought for justification himself.
What brought you to that pit? What kept you there?
he frowned. As tight as their bodies were, and as raw as the moment was, a few of Morigan’s intrepid bees crept into the chinks in Caenith’s armor, which they had yet been unable to penetrate. The nectar in him was sweet with sorrow and self-loathing. The bees drank, and Morigan blinked.

She is in a roaring coliseum, underground surely, for the noise echoes painfully in the ear, and the dankness of death is like a fog in this airless space. At the center of the ring, she stands, screaming to the vile masters who cheer her from what they think to be safe distances, though she could bound to every one of them and rip off their heads with the merest wish. Her body is impenetrable; she could not be stronger or faster if she were steel and lightning. She needs no armor, no sword; those are for the fleshy piles of sundered limbs and spooled entrails that warm her feet
.

“I am death. I am the Wolf. Worship and fear me. You live only because I have not hunted you yet. I live because I am life. I am unbound by grief. I am alone. I am lord of all,” she rejoices. Yet all that exits her mouth is a garbled howl
.

In a breath, she returned to the world and spoke. “A wolf without a pack. A man whom time cast out. I can see the sadness that you carried with you. Too proud to die, too weary to live. You wanted to forget, as that was all that remained of you. You gave in to every black urge in your spirit. You surrendered to the Wolf. You let the beast ride you because the man was tired of living.”

“Y-yes!” exclaimed Caenith. “Did you? Were you—”

“I was. Slipped right in. I think I am growing stronger, but that is not the point.”

“No, it is not,” scowled Caenith, and tried to look away again.

Morigan held his head. “Face this. Speak of this. This is what you must do.”

“My Fawn, you must know that I would never again—”

“You can’t say that, Caenith. The darkness is there, waiting, in all of us. Sadly, it is wilder and more demanding of its freedom in you than in most. How long have you carried this, Caenith? This terrible guilt? Is this why you now create in silence? Seeking to balance through discipline and art the crimes you feel you have committed? Is that not just the other side of the sufferance? It seems no better than surrendering to the Wolf.”

“You do not know what you say. I feel nothing but regret for those years. I took many lives. Hundreds, possibly thousands. The red haze I was in does not permit me to recall how many I tore in twain.”

Morigan was fearsome as she said, “Lives that chose to be taken. There are worse fates in Menos than offering up one’s life to the sword, I hear. I am not one to lightly consider murder; every life is a loss. But there is a difference between death by choice and death by cold error or design. And what of your choices? If you are a man who can live many lifetimes, then be just that, Caenith.
Live another life
. You have already proven that you can. As a smith and a hermit. Now it is time to choose another. A life with me. Perhaps a balance of man and Wolf will bring you the strength that you need to tame each.”

She could sense the conflict boiling under his twisting face in how his heart sped up and he suddenly wrenched her against himself, wrapping his grand limbs about her until she thought she might go numb. As he released himself of his ancient shame, his body slowly unclenched. He had not been weeping, although his flesh trembled with similar relief. He gazed upon his Fawn in wonder.

“You are a woman like no other. I feel as if each new day you become something greater.”

Morigan blushed and smiled.

“I have thought of a name,” she said.

“For what?”

“For my dagger. What is the old Ghaedic word for penance?”

Caenith pondered, then replied, “
Siogtine
, though it also means the freedom that comes after. The quest and the reward are as one.”

“Then you have earned your penance, and I shall be your reward.”

The Wolf’s eyes caught the light of dawn peeking through the roof and flared it to glory.

“If you will have it, I would bleed myself and swear myself to you. Tonight,” he declared.

“I would have it,” answered Morigan.

As the sun invaded the den, they washed each other clean. Sometimes Caenith licked Morigan’s pearly skin, as wolves do, and she accepted it, as she accepted him. Though their flesh was tempting to the other, any passion was restrained by the jittery excitement of what they were about to do. For Morigan, it was the final plunge off a cliff that began with exhilaration and had not relented since. For the Wolf, it was the elation of finding this most precious she-wolf and woman who could love him as not one thing but two, and whom he felt all the solitude of his life had prepared him to revere, honor, and protect. They dressed their glistening forms in what sooty clothes were about, having decided to see if the palace could provide them with finer attire. If not, they would make the blood promise as is. No petty mortal decorum would stop them. Tonight they would speak the oldest oaths and bleed their devotion into the other.

Tonight they would be one.

II

How quickly the day fled in preparation for their union. While the plan was for an unassuming ceremony, everything changed once the lovers appeared at Thule’s chamber, invited themselves in, and informed him of their intentions to be wed by blood and ancient promises. The sage received the news with a pale bleak face, like a man who had been told that he had days to live.

“I should tell the queen, if you will permit me,” said Thule. “A marriage of this sort—of blood and promise—is historic. These are not customs often seen, and I would like to partake in them, too, if there is room.”

Caenith stepped forth and clapped the old man’s shoulder as if they were comrades. “In the
Fuilimean
, the blood promise, one or each supplicant can be accompanied by a parent, mentor, sister, or brother. Any who loves them, wholly and truly. I have no one. She has you. The greatest honor among those gathered to celebrate the promise is with the one who binds us. I think that you should tie us.”