Feast of Fates (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 1) (5 page)

II

WHAT THE STONES WHISPERED

I

M
origan could not stall her interest in the smith for more than a night. Her sleep had been restless and haunted by dreams of running through a dark forest while being chased by a growling animal presence. A nightmarish plight she oddly enjoyed, for she woke beaming and bright to the day. During her charwomaning at Thule’s silver-topped tower, she lost herself to distraction often and continued to ponder the dream. In it, she was certain that she recalled scents, woodland scents—primal smells of earth, leaf, and fur that she had smelled the previous day at the Armsman. Fancies surely, as dreams were never more than gasps of the subconscious, but all were indications that she had unresolved curiosity toward the smith. More than that, she thought him to be exceptionally handsome, and the further she dwelled on his rough curves and frightening musculature, the hotter her collar became. And yet for such virility, his manner appeared as soft and profound as that of any poet, and that, too, was enticing, for she had not known a balance of those qualities in a man before.

In the very least, I could help him tidy up his home—hovel, lair, what have you
.

“Where are you, girl?” croaked a tired old voice. “You were like this yesterday, and I sent you home for it.”

“Me? Right here, of course. Cleaning, cleaning. What a mess you are.”

She removed the books from the footstool near her master’s chair and patted it, coughing from the dust. Master Thule set down the scroll he was reading and watched her. Wrapped in a charcoal robe that drowned his tiny figure, he looked very much like a swaddled, frowning, and immensely wrinkled child, baldness and all. In his youth he was trim, and a spryness remained with him even as he grayed, regardless of his tendency to sit more than walk these days. His eyes, sharp as winter frost and the same pale blue, belied any sense of age, and they read her befuddlement as patently as any book.

“Physically you are present, yes. However, your mind is elsewhere,” said Master Thule.

Morigan ignored him and collected the volumes she had set upon the floor; she didn’t ask if Master Thule needed them, for it was his habit that when a piece of knowledge was no longer of interest, it was dropped—quite literally. Following this custom, she filled her skirt with scattered treatises and sheaves of parchment, then walked over to one of the bookcases that walled her master’s quaint study. Really, she wasn’t sure how Thule did it, but for an old man who barely left his chair, he managed to cause a fantastic mess on the few hourglasses of the day she was away. She went to the least crammed shelf and slipped the books into whatever narrow spaces she could find. After dusting off her hands, she assessed the place again. In the moony glow afforded by the pale globes rocking on tables or teetering on bookshelves, she saw books, books, and more books, piled atop stools and stepladders, all in varying states of order. For the study, she had given up on any complex system of organization—those always fell apart during Thule’s midnight rampages—and she did her best to keep the different heaps from spreading.

Good enough
, she decided.
Maybe a bit of air for the old fellow. This place has a fusty smell
. She went to the chamber’s only window, threw back the heavy curtain, and invited in the warm golden air from outside. Such a beautiful day greeted her that she leaned out the window to welcome it back. King’s Crown, where Thackery Thule and many of Eod’s masters made their homes, was as resplendent as ever. Beneath her, brightly garbed folks and their entourages strolled down polished flagstone paths or beside clattering
horse-drawn carriages.
Happy, happy you must all be, in your blissful lives. You have so much, and yet you couldn’t even save a woman dying at your feet
. She considered spitting on them, but she had been caught by Thule and chastised for doing that before, so she looked away from Eod’s privileged, as there was much else to catch a wandering eye.

About Thule’s white-and-silver tower rose many more spires, like trees in a woodland of ivy-grown villas and gated gardens, all so small and delightful from her vantage point that they could be miniatures. Past those lay other, less impressive, yet still pristine properties and houses, and surrounding Eod, protecting its beauty, was a grand pale wall, crested like a frozen wave and tall enough to repel any of nature’s or man’s advances. Past King’s Crown, she saw the craggy russet flesh of Kor’Keth Mountain, its peak scraping the heavens. There, carved in ivory tiers into the mountain, was the city’s heart: the palace of the Everfair King. Today, as always, its many-layered magnificence, its boldness of life against rock, took her breath away. Forests flourished on many tiers of the palace, and glistened with dazzling tributaries and flocking birds for Morigan to admire. Other tiers were different aviaries, where flocks of silver sky carriages buzzed to and fro. Some of the king’s technomagikal armada were seen ascending to the higher plateaus of Kor’Keth, for the fortress was thousands upon thousands of years old, as ancient as its ageless king, and had been built far up and within the mountain.

At night, the palace would illuminate the surroundings with starry lights along its balconies and within its woods.
The City of Wonders
was an apt name for those who came to Eod and gawked at that sight among all the others. When alone in her humble apartment, far from her second home at Master Thule’s, as the taps played their drippy jig in her ears, she could stare at the palace for hourglasses on end. Its grandeur captured everything that Eod stood for: the Nine Laws of freedom that allowed common men to rule as masters, and not only those with sorcery or brutality, as many of Geadhain’s other nations allowed; the triumph of magik over nature, for here was a vibrant, fertile realm, raised in the middle of dust and nothingness. On days when her mother’s death weighed the heaviest, she would look at the star-dappled palace and remind herself of how fortunate she was not to be some sewn-up third wife to an Arhad chieftain, a sex slave in Menos, or subjected to any other miserable fate.

And now, she smiled, she had met a man—a superbly strange one, but a superbly charming one, too. Unconsciously, she leaned out the window, sniffing the sky for his woodsy musk, as if he were upwind from her.

“What in the king’s name are you doing? If you’re not careful, you’ll fall right out,” cautioned Thule.

Morigan retreated from the window and turned to her master, who wore a dash of worry. She apologized.

“I was merely enjoying the day.”

“Where is your head today, Morigan? Are you well? If you’re coming down with something, I can make you a tincture.” He began to shuffle up out of his seat like an old dog, groaning and cracking. “Urgh…let me have a look at you.”

Before he righted himself, Morigan was at his chair, helping him to settle again.

“I have no fever or illness. I am fine. A little distracted.”

“I’d say,” scoffed Thule.

Morigan handed him back the scroll of interest for the hourglass—some officiously printed document with grand lettering and a seal that seemed important, which Thule quickly rolled up. Then she pulled a blanket off the back of his chair and draped it over his legs. Thule, who liked to pretend that he did not enjoy being doted on, when in fact he enjoyed it rather much, frowned at her nannying. Certain gesture of hers—the lightness of her touch, the flick of her wrists as if she were a stage dancer—reminded him of her mother, Mifanwae, his previous handmaiden, or even of his wife before that, and his scowl melted.

“Thank you,” he said. “You do take fine care of me, and I am not easy to care for.”

“No, you are not,” Morigan said, grinning.

“Would you like to tell me what has been bothering you now? Or will you keep me in suspense?”

“Bothering me? I’m not bothered.”

“You certainly seem as if you’re in a twist over something. You’ve always been a dreamer, Morigan, ever since your mother brought you here, clinging to her apron strings, and you’d stare at a wall or spot of air, seeing pictures and patterns that no one else could. But today is worse than most. I feel as
if you’re a thousand spans away.” Thule pinched his face. “Is there some scoundrel sniffing around after you? I got rid of Master Simms and I’ll get rid of the next one even faster. No man should behave so basely. The next man who dishonors you will be shipped off as a milkmaid to those filthy lizard-cows of the Arhad, pulling their teats till his hands crack and bleed.”

“No, no, it’s nothing like Master Simms.” Morigan shuddered from saying the name. “Well, it is about a man, I suppose.”

Thule’s face fired with redness, and they each chewed on a silence.

“I’m going to get you some tea,” she declared suddenly, and left the room.

A man
, thought Thule, and rage continued its slow kindling inside him. Morigan was so innocent of her comeliness, so careless of her charm, that he was often the champion of her virtue. Once, a few years back, she had come to him distressed about the holes she had found drilled behind her headboard, bathtub, and toilet—
of all the sickest places
—and shown him the crystals of farsight that were stashed in each. He had mustered his considerable clout with the Silver Watch for an investigation, and the culprit was found to be her very own land baron: Master Gregor Simms. Upon his command, Master Simms was cast out in the desert by dusk, exiled forever from Eod, and on a caravan to Menos, where that breed of man belonged. Morigan knew not the extent of his influence, any more than she knew the other details of his past. He was a private man in the winter of his years, and he did not wield his sway unless it was called for. He cared for Morigan as deeply as any father would. A fitting role, as she had no father, and his child was long ago in the ground. What serendipity that Morigan and Mifanwae had chanced into his life, turning a relationship of convenience into one of love.

All it took was a topple, he recalled. A nasty fall down the stairs, as all old fools eventually do, and he suffered an injury to his spine that not even the master fleshbinders could efficiently mend. After their sorcery, he was left trussed up in casts with a prescription for bed rest while time healed what magik alone could not. In his helplessness, he had commissioned a manservant to assist him. Several, actually, though the first batch were either incompetent or incompatible with his temper. Either way, they fled from his tower. When all seemed lost, fire-haired and fire-tempered Mifanwae had come with her quiet silver-eyed daughter in tow. That was an unbreakable part of the arrangement, as she had no husband or family to care for Morigan.
Mifanwae proved impervious to his ranting and diligent with every task. When he had recovered, his life was so organized and comfortable that he had asked Mifanwae to stay on indefinitely. He even invited the handmaiden and young Morigan to take residence at his tower, but the woman dished him one of her sailor-born laughs at that.

Ha! The job I’ll take, as you’re not too kind and not too mean. You’re just the sort of man I can take orders from. As for the offer of a roof, I already have one for Morigan and me. If we’re being honest, I haven’t had a prick in my house since my daughter came around, and I don’t intend to break that blessed arrangement
, she had said.

Thule was snickering at the ghost of Mifanwae’s pluck when Morigan returned with a clanking tray. She set it down on the footstool that she had earlier cleared and prepared his tea, fitting the porcelain cup into a familiar groove on the armrest of Thule’s chair. With the same nursing care, she then handed him a smoked-fish sandwich—a rarity in the desert and Thule’s favorite—to nibble on. The old sorcerer spent his nights restlessly, distracting himself with knowledge to escape the nightmares that sleep brought with it, and he rarely ate during these periods, so he was famished as she presented the food.

While he ate, smacking away like a child, he spoke to Morigan, whose gaze was again drifting off somewhere.

“There, you’re doing it again. Mooning. Over a man, I take it.”

“I am not mooning,” snapped Morigan.

“You certainly are. And it’s about time that you said who has snared your attentions so, because you’re not a girl given to idle fancy! I know that much. Should I be worried? Is he some vagabond? Some foppish troubadour with a feather in his cap and a pretty smile? Will I have to keep my eye on this one? Is he honorable? Or when he’s done with you will he be chasing the next skirted, titted thing that he sees?”

Morigan contemplated these questions with a frown. Her success with courtship was embarrassingly scant. In many ways, Mifanwae was a shining aspiration of womanhood and self-sufficiency, proof that any woman under the Nine Laws could eke out freedom enough for her and her child, and Morigan inherited many of the same skills. Well after Mifanwae’s passing, these lessons persisted, and she heard her mother’s voice as she trudged
through the day.
Work for what you need; don’t ask for what you can’t earn. You never need someone else’s hands if you have two of your own
. For better or worse, she had grown to be a woman both as strong and as flawed as her mother. Sadly, there was no room in Mifanwae’s life for love. She wondered what had wounded her mother so, what it was beyond an absent lover, for as iron as Mifanwae’s spirit had been, she often wept in the night. Terrible muffled sobs. The sound of broken love. These cries lingered in Morigan’s memory, deterring her from the same fate. She scowled at every handsome smile. She treated her suitors as unwanted visitors in her time alone. She refused to experience the same pain as her mother had. Until the smith. For him, she had the wild urge to welcome pain if that is what it came to. Simply for the chance to hear more of his poetic allegories, or perhaps even to taste the redness of his lips.

“Witches teats! Get a hold of yourself. You can’t even hold a conversation today!” Thule exclaimed, and then proceeded to gobble up what remained of his sandwich and sip his tea.