Feast of Fates (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 1) (73 page)

“Masters.”

The warriors and the hammer jumped to military alertness.

“We shall stay the day and night and help these people in all the ways that we can. Seventh Master, your sorcerers can provide clean water for the people of Willowholme. Eighth Master, the duty falls upon you to organize and dispense as much of our provisions as we can spare. Zioch is less than a week away at a breakneck pace, which is how we shall ride on the morrow. We can worry over our stores once we have finished
speaking
with my brother. The rest of you masters are to help where it is needed. We have many hands and much need to fill them with tasks. If there are to be tears, let us make them tears of joy. Show Willowholme that there is no war against tyranny on the battlefield or the tyranny of suffering that cannot be won by the Watchmen of Eod.”

The nine legion masters barked their assent, saluted, and were stamping up the hill. Tabitha was stunned by the whirlwind of what had been said and done.

“Tabitha,” continued the king, who was not yet finished with his orders, “while your pride does not want to hear this, I need you to organize your people for a march.”

“King Magnus—”

“I know what you have said, and I would not lightly ask you to leave what you love and have known.” Bitterly, the king gritted his teeth, and a waft of cold came from him. He spoke with the rawest candor, and Tabitha was magnetized. “Seasons are changing. We are all to lose things that we hold dear. That is the nature of life: that it cannot exist without death. A lesson that you might think a man who lives forever does not know. But I know it all too well. I have seen more that I love pass than you or all those you know will see in your lifetimes. I know when the seasons are turning, and that time is upon us. If you stay here, a terrible summer or a terrible winter will come. And whoever remains in Willowholme may not survive it.”

The king was talking in metaphor, and while she was no poet, he was not difficult to decipher. A king did not secretly herd an army south for an exchange of peace or pleasantries. Whatever was to occur in the mountain ring of Mor’Keth would have consequences, and the king was fairly warning her of that. Stay, and there would be more loss. Go, and they might have a chance to return to Willowholme one day when the seasons had calmed between the kings.

“I-I shall do as you ask,” she promised.

“I thank you,” said the king. “If you head east to the River Feordhan and follow its shores past the smaller settlements, you will reach Bainsbury. Speak to Gavin Foss, elected lord of Bainsbury, a man whose forefathers and I have a history back to when they were camping in huts. Tell him that the king of Eod has ushered you there, and he will take you in. Your people are legendary for their skill in charming a catch from the waters of Lake Tesh, waters that few can tame, for the fish swim deep and are as canny as snakes in how they hide. You will be welcome for your trades. And your music, too, which is wonderful, and I regret I shall not hear.”

“Tonight! We shall play for you and your army tonight,” pledged Tabitha. The weeks had been unbearable, and she was near to tearing up and embarrassed that she had nothing else to offer for the king’s generosity but songs. Yet he nodded, and she noticed the slightest smile, which told her that this was enough. There was much to be done, and the day’s wick was shortening, so she bowed to the king and the strange silent suit of armor that followed him, and then slogged away. King Magnus called after her with an unusual question.

“Your husband and son. What are their names?”

She paused. “Their names? Why?”

“Because if they do not return to you, then I shall ask my brother where they are to be found. In his lands, he should be aware of all who enter. If he is not, then I shall seek their fates myself. One way or another, you will have peace.”

In a day of euphoria and surprises, more of the king’s compassion was almost too much to bear for the beaten leader of Willowholme. She spoke gushingly about her family, and perhaps bent the ear of the king more than a humble woman should have, but this pale and glorious man’s compassion prodded her onward past her usual discretion.

“Beauregard…well, I would have said he’s about the most handsome man I’ve seen, until I met the Everfair King. He’s dark-haired, but fair in the face, and with a spot of freckles and a birthmark on his cheek that looks like the one true star of the North. I feel he is a great man, and I hope that he is alive to see that destiny through. His father, Devlin Fischer, is about as tough and tall as those changelings in a faery story: a bear, perhaps. My bear. You’d know him to see him; just look for the largest, hairiest man in the room. If
you hear of them…” She was unable to finish, and embarrassed now that she had prattled on for so long. She turned to hurry off. “Don’t mind my troubles, please forget what I have said,” she muttered.

“I shall not. Neither their names nor their fates,” swore Magnus. His statement made her buckle at the knees, though she did not look back and was choked on a sadness.

“We are nothing if not the value of our word,” said Magnus to his hammer. “I do not make promises that I cannot keep. You know this, Erithitek.”

“I do.”

Then the king’s mood shifted, and Erik felt as if he were standing next to a block of ice. On the one hand, this was not an altogether unwelcome change from the heat. On the other, Erik understood where the king’s temperament was and could not stop his mind from slipping into thoughts on seasons. Winter particularly, and he was certain that he would see the king’s before all was said and done. He wondered what mark it would leave on the world. Another Lake Tesh, only frozen? All of Mor’Keth imprisoned in a glacier? Or a third untenable, imaginative devastation that would scar Geadhain beyond belief? Although he had never truly feared this man, as he shivered in the cold that grew greater and greater and flurried the air about them with snowflakes, as he saw the black winter storm brewing in Magnus’s eyes, he felt that he should.

II

As the king had told Tabitha, the Watchmen of Eod were a force to be reckoned with, and a battlefield of mortal strife was no exception. When Tabitha returned to Willowholme, it was to a flurry of fastidiousness: silver men shouting her people into orderly lines and dispensing waterskins from sorcerers; these shirtless, sweating men—and shirted women—who stood over buckets and squeezed liquid from the air itself as if it were a sopping cloth. Tabitha had not met many sorcerers, only the ones who discovered their craft and quickly left for cultured cities to train in, and she paused to watch their miracles. After a speck, the itching frostbitten ring around her wrist
reminded her of another sorcerer, a man whose very touch could bring winter, and she hurried off to the responsibilities he had imparted to her.

Everywhere she went in Willowholme, the Silver Watch had arrived beforehand, and it was far easier to inform her kinfolk that they were about to become refugees once they’d been plied with food, blankets, and the care of fleshbinders. This uncanny art, fleshbinding, fascinated her as much the conjuring of elements: how these sorcerers reached under people’s skin and moved bits about like putty was equal parts grotesque and fascinating, and she tried not to become distracted by it. As she bustled along the ground and under the latticework of the trees above, delivering her message and witnessing wonders, she often returned to the king’s words. His insistence that change was imminent—and catastrophic, from the sound of it. The more she considered their meeting, the more pronounced his melancholy became, as well.

Throughout the day, in fleeting moments, she saw the king around; removed from his armor and dirty as a common man in wear and work. He was always fixing something: a person, a cart to be readied for the mortal migration, even the shoe on a child’s foot. No task was too small or too far beneath him, and while she respected this, she felt that much of it was penance. Whatever he spoke of back on the shore of Lake Tesh, these seasons and promises, the reason for his army marching south, it would end in tragedy. And she pitied him for it. She didn’t know why, and more than once she stopped to hold her tears as she thought of his sad, stormy beauty.

With evening’s kiss, the heat reduced itself to a muggy sweat. All the people of Willowholme, from the smallest to the eldest, had learned of their new fate and agreed to it. The wagons were loaded and drawn in a circle down the stone road from the king’s snaking camp, and Willowholme was darker than it had been since Lake Tesh was untouched in the wilderness. Tabitha had promised the king music, and that he would have. She rallied her kinfolk and their lutes, harps, flutes, and drums, and made a procession from their encampment down the stone road. King Magnus had been humble when praising the musicians of Willowholme, for here was the birthplace of some of Geadhain’s greatest minstrels. That night, they showed the Silver Watch what sort of magik they could weave: a miracle without sorcery that coordinated hands, voices, and hearts. Up
and down the stone road, the people marched, so that all could hear them. And while war had not been mentioned—not by Tabitha or anyone—they sang songs of victory for the king’s men and songs of glory for when men fell with a sword.

In the morning, when Tabitha woke, it was to the earthquake of the legions heading south. Along with the other survivors of Willowholme, she raced to the road and shouted and wept for their safety in the South. As strange as the sentiment was, as implausible the notion that her family’s fate was somehow intrinsic to the mind and motives of the Everfair King, she felt that he would keep his promise. That he would bring her husband and son home. Once the dust faded, and even as the night fell on the caravan’s first day north, she held this promise to her, wishing upon it like a star, and certain that it would come true.

III

Even for men born in the desert, the heat was unbearable. As their horses made a dusty drumbeat over the fractured and ancient stones of the Bridge of Summer, the army’s mounts and soldiers huffed to make use of the syrupy air that stuck to their throats. Tabitha had been fair in her warning about the nauseating smell of Lake Tesh farther on, and the king and his sorcerers had to weave nets of wind to push the foulness away. Even so, the undercurrent of rot lingered, and the sight of sun-split fish coating the lake like scales on a dead leviathan left a taint in the mind that was just as unpleasant. The army crossed the bridge as the sun began to set, yet they were not granted the cool respite of evening, and against what they understood of nature, the land continued to stoke itself hotter. In the wavering heat, the desiccated grasslands took on the illusion of a savannah. Many men among them did not know how green and lush this land should appear, and it was simply another misery to add to a long, growing list. But the king knew the land differently, and saw dust instead of loam, dry veins instead of brooks, and insects and snakes, with not a furry creature to be found. Since they had committed almost half of their remaining provisions to the people of Willowholme, hunting in this wasteland would be a challenge, and the going from here on would
be a hungry march, indeed. Magnus worried not so much over this as he did over what was causing the land’s dehydration. He was not, therefore, paying attention to material matters, certainly not as much as the unceasingly vigilant Erik, who noticed the wisps of smoke in the distance before the king, the scouts, or anyone else did. When Erik alerted his master, the king waved him away to investigate, and the hammer and a dozen other riders charged toward the signal on the horizon.

They rode hard and fast to the east of the king’s line, aiming for a cluster of hills to which a haze clung like the smoldering of a dead campfire. This was an old fire, Erik realized, the remains of a blaze long burned out, but so fierce at its height that it had polluted the area with ash. From across the stale air, it summoned them with promises of doom, and it did not disappoint as they cleared the hills and descended into a scorched valley of matchstick houses. Whatever village had been here was once grand and quite verdant, if judging by the withered trees that remained. The scouting party trotted through the wreckage, covering their mouths with their cloaks, shaking their heads, and wandering without much direction, for even their steeds could not make sense of the destruction. Among the black silt, they found puddles of cooled metal or tangles of wire, but nothing with the frailty of paper, leather, or wood had survived the temperatures of the flames. No bones, either, and Erik could not decide whether it was a relief that these people were still alive, or a sadness that they were still alive and had been stolen for a darker fate than death.
Magik
, was Erik’s thought for all of this, for nothing but a sorcerer’s flame smelled so strongly of sulfur or burned hotter. Those with the hammer shared in this silent observance. He could see their concern over mystic powers at work carved on their faces like cruel scars. Once the scouts had dwelled long enough to paint themselves and their white steeds in soot, they rode from the ruins. The king had not waited for Erik and his riders, and it was not until dusk that they caught up with the nighttime fires of the army. The scouts rode through the camp bearing dark tidings with their stained presences, and while men wondered what the message was, they did not ask for fear of the answer. At the warmaster’s circle, the riders broke apart, and Erik approached the nine warlords and their pale king, all wise and still as owls upon their logs around the fire. Erik removed his helmet and bowed to his liege.