Feast of Fates (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 1) (4 page)

With all their opposing aspects, their stares bore an eerie similarity. Morigan’s eyes held a flash of silver, the legacy of a bastard father she had never met. Whereas the Wolf’s eyes gleamed with the cold gray indifference of an animal peering out in the darkness.

He is like a man sculpted from the earth. Am I dreaming? Have I hit my head? Passed out in the street from the heat of walking all day? Get your wits
together, girl! What in the king’s name am I doing in this ratty forge with a man who watches me as a beast would its supper and from whom I cannot look away?
Morigan cautioned herself.

Sands fled, and they stared and stared, unable to remove their gazes from each other. Morigan had forgotten why she was here, yet she was unafraid, if uncertain of the hungry way in which the large man watched her: his nostrils flaring bullishly, as if he could smell something that she could not. Uncomfortable, she pulled her summery shift tighter about herself despite the stifling heat, and the Wolf noted the teardrop outline of a breast against her damp garment. Her clothing was almost transparent to his cutting eyes, as if she were wrapped in mist, and his heart raced harder. In his head danced thoughts of chasing her through a field, of drinking in her laughter or cries as he nipped at her flesh.

Morigan was not prone to flighty indulgences. She had been offered her share of fair-weather romances; she knew the promises that men made only to break. She recovered her sensibilities first.

“Pardon my intrusion. The door was ajar. I…I am Morigan. Morigan Lostarot.”

How strange
, thought the Wolf, for he never left the door to his den open.

She went down into the room, which had a small step, and stood outside the circumference of the grate. She offered her hand for him to come forward and shake. Curiously, he beheld it. The Wolf operated by requisition only. Slips were left under his door, with orders for weaponry and no face attached to the order. He had his meat delivered in the mornings by a meatmonger, whom he never welcomed in. Rarely did he see a two-legs. He needed to think about how mortals greeted one another. After dusting off his hands on his blackened apron, he walked off the grate and put forth a calloused paw that engulfed Morigan’s hand entirely. As they touched, her arm hummed like a tuning fork, and being close to him, she noticed his queer smell. Underneath the stringency of iron shavings, body odor, and charcoal were more enticing scents of woodland ferns or silky pelts. Morigan couldn’t explain any of it, or why she was so captivated.

The enchantment was shared by the Wolf, and he struggled against the urge to rub her satin skin or even lick it, knowing that such practices were frowned on by slow-walkers.

Following a much-delayed introduction, he said, “Caenith. My name is Caenith.”

His voice was raw, deep, and cracked, like a stone bounding down a chasm in the earth.

“A pleasure to meet you, Caenith. No promised or family name, I take it?”

Promised name! For the love of the kings, Morigan, it sounds like you’re throwing yourself at the man like a common tart!

“No blood or bloodmate that I would answer to, no.”

Nervously, Morigan continued with a smile. It was as beautiful to Caenith as the sun dancing over the water of the deepest springs in the oldest forests; it was an expression of true purity.

“Bloodmate! There’s a term from the ages. In any case, terrific to meet you! If I could have my hand back, that would grand.”

“Yes, of course,” said Caenith, and released her.

Feeling a touch more at ease, Morigan asked the curious smith for a glass of water (she decided against asking to use his toilet, however, as it was not ladylike to squat in an exposed corner). Caenith went off to rummage through his den for an object to use as a cup. A particular quandary, as he tended to fill the sink or tub with water when he needed to drink, bathe, or otherwise refresh himself. While he was away somewhere in the smoky chamber, Morigan wandered to the wall and perused the smith’s wares. At once, her breath was taken away by their exquisiteness, and she drifted with an open mouth, sighing at each item she passed and was afraid to touch out of the delicacy of its construction. If she had her say, these pieces would be displayed above a great hearth, mayhap even in the golden halls of the Everfair King. She ahhed over foils decorated with metal leaves to look as though they were entwined in ivy. She oohed at blades with thorns run down their haft and embossed with flowers. While she said she would not, she dared to trace her fingertip on the cold shields of steel roses, the iron shillelagh made as a grayish leafed branch, and the gauntlet that had the seeming appearance of marble with streaks of gold, platinum, and silver. Each piece bore some element of the natural world, as if flora had miraculously survived the smith’s fire and grown on inside the metal. Every artifact could have been chiseled from the land itself.

What artistry! Eod’s sorcerers were its artists, gardeners, and architects. Here in the City of Wonders, you could not escape their ostentation. The watersculptors, firecallers, earthspeakers, and windsingers created fountains of ever-flowing water, statues of heatless flame, orchards from plots of dust, and skies free of the deadly sandstorms that swept the desert around Eod. Their grandeur was undeniable. But for Morigan, the smith’s work embodied the denotation of
art
better than any sorcerer’s spell could. As she was reaching for a butterfly unfurling its wings on a helmet of netted vines, half expecting the insect to leap onto her fingers, a shadow—and the smell of man, woods, and beast—dropped over her. She jumped and did an about-face.

“Water,” said Caenith.

What she judged to be the broken end of a hollow metal staff was thrust before her, dribbling water. How or why the staff had been snapped was a question she never thought to ask, but probably should have, and she was instead amused by the crude charm of the gesture.

What an odd bird, this one. I swear he’s never had company before. Here I was worrying that I might embarrass myself to a man who doesn’t even have a cup in his cupboard. Or a cupboard for a cup, even
.

She drank the water, thanked the smith, and passed back the makeshift cup to him, which he tossed to the floor. Again the heaviness of his stare, as if his eyes alone could consume her, shivered over Morigan’s flesh.

“Your work,” she said, striking at the tension.

“What of it?”

“I am not a warrior—in fact, I’ve never held a blade—but the craftsmanship is…extraordinary. I’ve never seen anything like it. I feel that I should ask if you have cast some magik into the metal, even though I am inclined to believe that you have not. I simply cannot imagine how hands by themselves can make such beauty.”

The smith looked at Morigan, or through her, as if envisioning another space. “Hands and patience…
Geadhain
—if you don’t know the old name of our world—has secrets that she speaks to any creature, but only the most willing hear her. The sorcerers of today do not bow to the Old Laws, they scribble over them instead. They do not ask the skies to rain; they rip into it with their Wills, and the tears fall. If we listen to the metal, if we hear how it
wants to be made…well, then true beauty can be found. To touch is as much a pleasure as it is a gift. I honor that gift. I honor what I touch.”

Morigan noted that the smith’s attention had returned from its faraway reminiscence and was upon her again, burning off her clothing, sniffing her presence, eating her right up. Other than his flowery, compelling words, there was something about this man that was as off as it was alluring. There was a quality to him that was unlike any person she had met.

“What of you, Morigan Lostarot?” Her name rolled off his tongue like a slow song. “What do you speak to? What voices do you hear? What do you touch?”

Touch?
she wondered. He seemed to be asking about her vocation in his outlandish way. Suddenly, her responsibilities and sensibilities rushed over her, and she recalled that she had a purpose before wandering into the dreamy forge and talking with a strange, talented man who smelled like a beast—pleasingly so, a dog she wanted to pet—and spoke like a philosopher poet. Waving her arms apologetically and rambling in staccato, she fumbled to leave, nearly tripping over helmets, poles, and whatever else cluttered her path. Yet the smith followed her closely, stealing touches of her softness as he moved her around these obstacles or kicked them out of her way.

“Oh shite! I’m a handmaiden to a sometimes-cranky sorcerer! I daresay I’ve been here far too long! How long has it been? An hourglass? More? If it weren’t so dark in here, I’d have a better idea. I’m sorry, Caenith, but I really must be off. My master is quite helpless without me. Old, very old. He doesn’t soil himself, but I don’t think we’re that far off. Oh, thank you, thank you, I didn’t see that. I never did find that firewort, or wormhazel, or whatever I was supposed to find! Where is my mind today? I didn’t get the address of the last shopkeeper that lived here, either. I meant to ask you that, funnily enough! That’s how I ended up here. You probably have no idea where he’s gone. Oh, thank you once more, forgot about the stair. Here we are, then.”

They had reached the door, and Caenith opened it wide to the day. Sunset was upon them, and light poured from the metal roofs of the buildings in the street behind Morigan and lit her in an aura of crimson. Right then, she was a woman of fire, and Caenith was overcome by her loveliness and her honey-autumn scent that a breeze blew his way. His heart hammered as though it would shatter the bone that restrained it, and a revelation split his skull. After
so long alone, after wandering a world where the wind only sang when it was whipped to obedience by the new magik, and the true beauty, the old magik, was a whisper when it had been a roar…here was a miracle. Something of the past, something that should not be, unaware of who or what she was, of how precious a dream she represented. Akin to the pack he had lost, a thousand howling beasts of emotion tore through his spirit. He thought of hunting amid pine forests or loping over golden meadows. He dreamed of tasting freedom and breathing life. He felt the rush of blood in his mouth, the splash of water on his snout, the crash of lightning in his ear. In that instant, the Wolf felt it all: every forgotten beauty of his soul. The realization of who this maiden was or what she could be paralyzed him, and he dumbly sensed his hand being shaken and her bidding him farewell without finding his voice.

He sprinted out the door and into the street and was upon Morigan in a whirl of speed—somehow in front of her when she hadn’t even sensed him coming from behind. The smith had a desperate enthusiasm to him that was misplaced on such a large imposing man, though Morigan found it endearing, as she did with so much of this relative stranger.

“I never said farewell. That was rude of me,” said Caenith.

“Oh, well, I suppose you didn’t.”

“Will you come back again?”

“Why?”

The answer was plain to the Wolf.

“To see me,” he said.

Brazen. Kings be damned, I think I like this man
, thought Morigan. If she was honest with herself, she felt more than a simple budding interest; she felt a gravitation toward his being, as if he could pull her right inside himself. A terrifying experience this was, for a woman so used to being alone. Collecting herself, she spoke.

“You’ve convinced me. I shall come again. Another staff tip of water, another day. Now I really must be off. My master will be worried sick. It was…an unintended pleasure meeting you, Caenith.”

Politely, Morigan bowed and took her leave.

“Safe steps, dear fawn,” Caenith shouted after her—almost in a roar, which garnered the attention of many passing folk. “Perhaps when the Gray Man is ripe and full with beauty, we could stalk the city for a bite!”

A bite?
chuckled Morigan.
Dear fawn? Stalk the city? Gray Man? Is he talking about the moon? I certainly pick the wild ones. If I don’t find a toilet soon, I may just wet myself from laughter
.

Long after Morigan left, the Wolf stood in the street, as immobile as stone, and a source of much elbow pain for whatever folks attempted to nudge past him. He could see the maiden well beyond the time she would become a dot to a slow-walker’s eyes; she was breathtaking at any distance. And when he could no longer spy her, he could smell her still, or at least the memory that he had captured and never let go. The fragrance of the old magik, of earth and spice, of sweat, honey, and nuts: a bouquet of life.

What the Wolf did not know was that Morigan could feel his hungry sight upon her for almost as long as he held it there, and she smiled, knowing this was the case. Traversing Eod’s dusky streets, its usual wonder seemed dull. She passed under spidery bridges and through extravagant, ornately molded gatehouses. She felt the shadows of sky carriages soar over her head, walked by street sorcerers conjuring birds of fire, or took shortcuts through Eod’s many gardens—great expanses of nature, with tree mazes and trellises of fruit and flowers—and stopped not a speck to dawdle. She even forgot how badly she needed to pee. Her heart, her mind thought only of the smith. Of when she would next take the trip to see him.