Feast
of Dreams
Four
Feasts Till Darkness, Book
Two
Christian
A. Brown
Genre: Fantasy Romance
Book Description:
As King Brutus licks his wounds and
gathers new strength, two rival queens vow to destroy each other’s nations.
Lila of Eod, sliding into madness,
risks everything in the search for a powerful relic, while Queen Gloriatrix
threatens Eod with military might—including three monstrous technomagikal
warships.
Far from this clash of queens,
Morigan and the Wolf scour Alabion, hunting for the mad king’s hidden weakness.
Their quest brings them face to face with their own pasts, their dark
futures…and the Sisters Three themselves.
Unbeknownst to all, a third thread
in Geadhain’s tapestry begins to move in the wastes of Mor’Khul. There, a
father and son scavenge to survive as they travel south toward a new chapter in
Geadhain history.
Book Trailer: https://youtu.be/rURqUni_lco
Excerpt
“My queen, it grows late.”
#2
“My queen, it grows late.”
Queen Lila was
about to address the enormous man casting his silver-hued shadow over her as
Rowena. But no. Her sword was gone
and neck-deep in espionage with the master of the East Watch, and a hammer
named Erik was her guardian these days. What sad eyes the man had, more black
than blue—as morose as those of an owl perched over a graveyard. She could see
them glinting from beneath his darkened visor. Rarely did she spot the hard,
hidden handsomeness of the man—his black hair, broken but appealing face, and
stubble crisscrossed in scars. Come to think of it, aside from the moment his
naked, scorched self had abruptly manifested in a cindery puff within the
Chamber of Echoes some weeks ago, she hadn’t seen him without his helm. He was
hiding then from the absence of his king or another private torment. She had
been staring at him rather unabashedly for quite a spell. The sparkle of fiery
colors off the immaculate polish of his pristine armor hypnotized her. His
voice snapped her out of her trance. How quickly evening’s shroud had fallen.
“Time has escaped
us,” commented the queen.
Erik gently led
her from the bedside she attended. As they passed the hospice’s cots and floor
pallets, the hands and voices of the wounded reached for her. Erik watched the
queen’s remorseful looks and the aching way she touched the feet of certain
sufferers or the backs of weeping kin. These days she was cold and ruthless in
her judgments within the palace. She had become a steel queen to stand metal
for mettle against the Iron Queen rising in the East. In these particular
confines, however, where the faltering breath of the ailing made the air humid,
and it was thick with the stench of eucalyptus poultices and incense to mask
the rot magik would not heal, the queen’s mask cracked or was simply cast off.
Genuine pity replaced it. She had come here each day for the past fortnight since
the storm of frostfire had struck Eod. “The day of ruin,” the people called
it—when first the skies were bare and then suddenly forked with red lightning,
spitting shards of ice and arrows of flame to the earth. None of sound mind
could have prepared for that wailing apocalypse. Thousands were killed
instantly. They were boiled inside tarry craters the earthspeakers were still
working to fill or entombed in buildings that could not hold against the
storm’s wrath. The injuries were uncountable, and they were still being
reported. Those with only singed or frostbitten flesh dismissed the pettiness
of their wounds and carried on with tourniquets and grimaces. Others had to be
scraped from streets or, if mauled but living, extracted from rubble and taken
to a growing encampment of emergency sites erected near the palace. Here was
where the queen always found herself once the details of war, supply lines,
allies, enemies, and stratagems had worn her patience to a snappy disinterest.
Somehow in these miserable hospices, the queen seemed peaceful, albeit sad.
Time and again Erik made one-sided conversation
as he guarded his new charge—he never managed to say these words. You blame yourself for this or for my
kingfather’s fate. You see these sins as your own. You feel the weight and
needs of this entire nation upon yourself, and what a terrible weight that must
be to bear. You are not alone, though, my queen. As adrift as you might be, I
am here. I shall be the rock you need. I have made a promise to the great man
who speaks to us no more.
The night he had appeared so rudely at her
side, she held him and told him she could not sense the king anymore. The icy
flame of Magnus’s soul had gone as cold as a forgotten hearth.
“What does it mean? What does it all mean?” she’d sobbed.
She was without her lover and partner in
eternity, and he was without his father. They were agonizingly alone. Only on
that night did she cry for the king and never since—as far as Erik had
witnessed. He and the queen did not speak of their grief again or further
pursue the reality that the Immortal King—missing and utterly quiet in his
queen’s mind since the battle with his mad brother in Zioch—was quite possibly
dead.
At the hospice exit, Queen Lila stopped so
suddenly that Erik almost elbowed his liege. With what Erik perceived as a
speck of wariness, she half glanced over her shoulder, and her gaze swelled
wide with fear. She was staring at something behind them. Erik looked as well
and reached a hand to his weapon. However, he saw nothing aside from the rows
of squirming sufferers moving on their bloody, sweat-soaked cots like man-size
maggots. What horrible times these were.
“Have you forgotten something?” he asked.
Queen Lila wished she could explain the hairs
that prickled on her neck or the chill of Mother Winter’s mouth that blew the
humidity from the chamber, but no one else seemed to feel it. Most of all, she
wanted to find a less hysterical explanation for the shadow—tall as a mountain,
black, and somehow bright—that hovered in the corner of her eye. She would not
turn around and look at it. She could not. She was afraid that if she opened
her mouth, she would involuntarily scream. What
do you want, shadow? Why do you haunt me? Why do you come to me in dreams?
“My queen?”
“No. I need nothing more,” she answered curtly
and moved ahead, trembling.
#2
“Fine playing,” said Maggie.
The Silk Purse’s
proprietor sat down at the table where the night’s entertainment fiddled with
his lute’s strings. The bard glanced up and smiled at her with his eyes,
although he kept on tinkering and tuning to the pitch of his voice. Maggie
watched him for a spell. The man was mystifying. He was as distant as a dream
one forgot and so far into himself, his music, or some secret obsession that
she might as well have been elsewhere. He was certainly handsome, though, and
in their short conversations today, he’d proven a capable and witty talker. She
wanted a bit more of his talk.
“Will you be
staying on another night?” she asked. “Before heading back to…”
She realized that in all their discussions, the
man had never told her where he had come from—or where he was headed. Or much
about himself at all. Even stranger, she couldn’t pin down how she’d made his
acquaintance. Had he come knocking at the tavern door yesterday? Had he smiled
a dashing hello with a lute over his back and a promise to play for coin? That
seemed right.
“Would you like me
to stay?” he asked suddenly.
He grinned from
ear to ear and displayed his offer of companionship as confidently as the fox
he reminded her of strutting around the henhouse and picking its prey. She
could see him evaluating her body—her full breasts, strong hips, thick,
wind-tossed hair, and comely face. She was as chipped and beautiful as a
sculptor’s favorite piece. She wore her hardship plainly, but it had not dulled
her beauty, and he seemed to appreciate her weathered self. As for the fox’s
proposal, Maggie was a sensible self-made woman without need for a man. Once or
maybe twice a year, she took one to her bed, but she never asked him to stay or
even to break a morning fast with her. Whatever her hesitations, when the fox
smiled—fiery and daring—she lit up and felt as warm as a woman sinking into a
bath. A decision was made. A little outside of herself, she slid his hand over
hers. She reinforced her agreement by standing up from the table and leading
him past her tired staff as they cleaned up the night’s mess and rolled the
drunks outside. The trip up the stairs and into her chambers was fuzzy.
Suddenly, they were alone and kissing in the dark. He whispered of her beauty.
“Like a cameo of Diasora,” he declared.
She wondered who Diasora was while he plucked
his fingers upon and within her as though she were his lute. They tumbled into
chairs, onto the carpet, and onto the bed. She wasn’t sure where they were half
the time. She swallowed his hardness just as he ate and kissed the mouth
between her thighs. Together they rolled and tumbled about in the dark and
moaned in ecstasy. She rode him against the wall and swallowed his gasps as he
spilled himself inside her. It was careless, and she should have known better.
Apologetically and with a perverted grin, he cleaned out with his tongue what
he had done, and passion carried her mind away again. Through the haze of their
sex, she would remember his handsome smell—vanilla, subtle incense, and sweeter
herbs such as marjoram. Sometimes he sang to her ears while playing the
instrument of her body. She would most remember this—his passion and
musicality.
When they finished, dawn had come. It cast its
hard rays though the curtains and into their humid nest of sin. Maggie should
have felt embarrassed or shamed even, but instead she snuggled into her lover’s
taut flesh while he continued caressing her breasts. Milk drops, the bard called
them, for their pendulous whiteness and succulence. She chuckled as he said it.
She would have slapped any other man who made nicknames for portions of her
anatomy.
“Where will you go?” she asked.
She knew this was a fleeting encounter. Men as
artistic at loving as he were called to greater passions than women.
Alastair kissed her breast. “Well, I shall stay
in Taroch’s Arm a while longer. I have another task to which I must attend. One
more meeting after this.” He sighed and looked off with his multicolored stare
to count the ceiling’s lines.
Maggie snuggled into him further until she
realized what he’d admitted. “Wait! Meeting?
Is that what this is? What is your aim?”
She leaped from the bed. Alastair went after
her and backed her into a corner. He appeared stricken and white from regret.
Rather brazenly, he kissed her so deeply she lost her breath. Although Maggie
allowed it, she slapped him as soon as their lips parted. He grinned and rubbed
his cheek. “What fire you have!” he said, adding sadly, “How much you remind me
of a woman I once knew. Do understand. This is not how I had planned our
parley. I am not ungrateful, though, for this turn of events. I would stay for
a thousand kisses more if I could. However, my master is most demanding of my
time.”
“Master?” she exclaimed.
“You are fortunate, Maggie. Most serve masters
and destinies from which we cannot break. You have made so much of yourself
without the hands of others. Despairingly, I must ask this of you. It’s a task
you cannot refuse.”
I can,
and I shall, she thought. No man, not even a roguish
wanderer, could boss her around. Then the fox whispered a secret and those
familiar names to her: Thackery, Caenith, Rowena, and Galivad. By the time he
was done, she had no resolve to argue. She had only an unwanted urgency to
pack, make quick arrangements for the Silk Purse’s managerial duties, and
leave. She had no choice—not with so many lives at stake. While she busied
herself about her apartment, the bard came to kiss her a final time, and they
fell onto the bed. For all their grinding, they did not make love. Soon he
stopped, studied her, and soaked in her beauty. Maggie closed her eyes. She
would not watch him leave. When she was certain he had gone, she pulled her
sturdiest boots from under her bed and put them on.
Feast
of Fates
Genre: Fantasy Romance
Date of Publication: September 9,
2014
ISBN: 978-1495907586
Word Count: 212K
Book Description:
"Love is what
binds us in brotherhood, blinds us from hate, and makes us soar with desire.”
Morigan lives a quiet life as the
handmaiden to a fatherly old sorcerer named Thackery. But when she crosses
paths with Caenith, a not wholly mortal man, her world changes forever. Their
meeting sparks long buried magical powers deep within Morigan. As she attempts
to understand her newfound abilities, unbidden visions begin to plague
her--visions that show a devastating madness descending on one of the Immortal
Kings who rules the land.
With Morigan growing more powerful
each day, the leaders of the realm soon realize that this young woman could
hold the key to their destruction. Suddenly, Morigan finds herself beset by
enemies, and she must master her mysterious gifts if she is to survive.
Available at Amazon
and Createspace
Feast
of FatesExcerpt
Menos was darker than usual: its clouds as black as
the shadow of fear that haunted Mouse. The city felt more menacing to her. She
saw shadows in every corner, noticed the glint of every ruffian’s blade or
slave’s chain as though they were all intended for her. The warning of Alastair
played inside her skull on a loop of nightmare theater.
Feast of Fates, Excerpt #2 (533 Words)
Morigan took the bracelet.
Menos was darker than usual: its clouds as black as
the shadow of fear that haunted Mouse. The city felt more menacing to her. She
saw shadows in every corner, noticed the glint of every ruffian’s blade or
slave’s chain as though they were all intended for her. The warning of Alastair
played inside her skull on a loop of nightmare theater.
A
hand over her mouth startles her awake, and she twists for the dagger in her
pillowcase until she recognizes the shadowy apparition atop her, who hisses at her
to calm.
“Alastair?” she gasps.
The hand unclenches and the willowy shadow retreats to more of its own; she can
only see the scruff of his red beard in the dark.
“Get up, Mouse. Get dressed.”
Her mentor sounds annoyed or confused; she is each, but finds her garments
quickly enough anyway.
“I don’t like good-byes, so let’s not call this that,” Alastair says with a
sigh. “But it will be a parting, nonetheless. You need to go low. Lower than
you’ve ever been before. A new name won’t be enough. You’ll need a new face. I
don’t know how or who, but the sacred contract of our order has been broken.
Your safety has been bought.”
Mouse knows the who and how, and as she glances up from her boot-lacing to
explain to her mentor her predicament, she sees that he is gone. Just empty
shadows, echoing words, and the sound of her heartbeat drowning out all the
rest.
She expected the dead man and his icy master to emerge from the dim nooks and
doorways of the buildings she passed at any instant. With a hand on her knives
and a fury to her step, she swept down the sidewalk; no carriages for her
today, as they were essentially cages on wheels—too easy to trap oneself in.
With its sooty storefronts and their wrought-iron windows, its black
streetlamps that rose about her like the bars of a prison, Menos was
constricting itself around her, and she had to get out.
You’ve
survived worse than the nekromancer, she coached herself,
though she wasn’t certain that was true. She hurried through the grimness of
Menos, dodging pale faces and quickening her step with every sand. By the time
she arrived at the fleshcrafter’s studio, she was sweating and stuck to her
cloak. She looked down the desolate sidewalk and up the long sad face of the
tall tower with its many broken or boarded-over windows. When she was sure she
wasn’t being pursued by the phantoms that her paranoia had conjured, she pulled
back a rusted door that did not cry out as it should have, given its
appearance, but slid along well-formed grooves through the dust. She raced
through the door and hauled it closed.
It was dark and flickering with half-dead lights in the garbage-strewn hallway
in which she stood. Mouse picked through the trash with her feet, tensing as
she passed every dark alcove in the abandoned complex. Hives, these places were
called, and used to house enormous numbers of lowborn folk under a single roof.
In Menos, even the shabbiest roof was a desirable commodity, so the building’s
ghostly vacancy meant that it likely was condemned by disease at one point.
Soon the stairwell she sought appeared, and she tiptoed down it, careful not to
slip on the stairs, which were slick with organic grunge.
Couldn’t
have picked a nicer studio, she cursed. I’ll be lucky if this
fleshcrafter leaves me with half a lip to drink with. Lamentably,
speed and discretion were her two goals in choosing where to have her face
remodeled. Such stipulations cut the more promising fleshcrafters off the list
and left her with the dregs. She hadn’t put much thought into what she would
have done, or even if she would end up hideously disfigured. Monstrous
disfigurement could even work in her favor, as she bore an uncanny resemblance
to that crow-eviscerated woman whom she suspected was the object of the
nekromancer’s dark desire. I’ll take ugly over dead. Over whatever he
has in mind for me.
Feast of Fates, Excerpt #2 (533 Words)
Morigan took the bracelet.
“I accept your offering.” The Wolf’s face lit and she thought that he would
leap at her. “Yet first, I have a request.”
“Anything, my Fawn.”
“I would like to see…what you are. The second body that shares your soul. Show
me your fangs and claws,” she commanded.
Perhaps it was the steadiness of her voice, how she ordered him to bare himself
as if he belonged to her, that made the Wolf’s heart roar to comply. He did not
shed his skin but for the whitest moons of the year, and even then, so far from
the city and never in front of another. In a sense, he was as much a virgin as
she. With an unaccustomed shyness, he found himself undressing before the Fawn,
confused for a speck as to who was the hunter. The flare of her nostrils, the
intensity of her stare that ate at him for once.
I
have chosen well for a mate. She is as much a Wolf as I, he
thought, kicking off his boots and then shimmying his pants down to join the
rest of his clothing. No bashful maiden was Morigan, and she did not look away
from his nakedness, but appreciated what she saw: every rough, hairy, huge bit
of him.
He howled and fell to all fours. Bones shifted and snapped, rearranging under
his skin like skeletal gears. From his head, chest and loins, the soft black
hair thickened and spread over his twisting flesh. His heaving became guttural
and sloppy, and when he tossed his head up in a throe of agony or pleasure, his
beard had coated his face, and she noticed nothing but white daggers of teeth.
Wondrously Morigan witnessed the transformation, watched him swell with twice
the muscle he had possessed as a man, saw his hands and feet shag over with fur
and split the soil with black claws. Another howl and a final gristle-crunching
shudder (his hindquarters snapping into place, she thought) signified the end
of the change.
Her dreams did not do Caenith justice. Here was a beast twice the size of a
mare with jaws that could swallow her to the waist. Here was a monster that had
stalked and ruled the Untamed. A lord of fang and claw. The birds and weaker
animals vanished, knowing a deadly might was near. Around her, the Wolf paced;
making the ground tremble with power; ravishing her with his cold gray gaze;
huffing and blasting her with his forceful breaths. While the scent of his musk
was choking, it was undeniably Caenith’s, if rawer and unwashed.
Morigan was not afraid, and was flushed with heat and shaking as she slipped
the bracelet on and knelt. She did not flinch as the Wolf lay behind and about
her like a great snuffling rug and placed his boulder of a head in her lap. No,
she stroked his long ears and his wrinkled snout. A maiden and her Wolf. Soon
the birds returned, sensing this peace and chirping in praise of it. And neither
Morigan nor the Wolf could recall a time—if ever there was one—where they had
felt so complete.
Author Bio
Bestselling author of the critically
acclaimed Feast of Fates, Christian A. Brown received a Kirkus star in 2014 for
the first novel in his genre-changing Four Feasts Till Darkness series. He has
appeared on Newstalk 1010, AM640, Daytime Rogers, and Get Bold Today with
LeGrande Green. He actively writes a blog about his mother’s journey with
cancer and on gender issues in the media. A lover of the weird and wonderful,
Brown considers himself an eccentric with a talent for cat-whispering.
Facebook Goodreads Google+ Twitter Website
Guest Post
Please welcome Four Feasts Till Darkness Series author Christian A. Brown to Diane’s Book Blog.
Women In Fantasy
Just a second, everyone put away the
pitchforks and stop brandishing those Gertrude Stein books at me as if they can
compel the misogynistic demon from my flesh. This isn’t a diatribe on feminism
in literature–I wouldn’t dare to touch such a heavy subject without an array of
facts at my disposal. As a fantasy writer, I don’t really deal in facts, as
much as possibilities. What I would like to discuss is the
portrayal of women in fantasy, what I like, and what I don’t like, what I think
needs changing. I’d like to keep this dialog as uncontroversial as possible,
and focus on how these characters are written, more than diving into the
societal influences that make writers craft women in this manner. That’s
psychology, and I’m not a psychologist. Okay, moving on, I’ll start with the
stuff I can’t stand–expect hyperbole and potential cussing.
Women who are powerless. To me, nothing is more irritating than watching a female lead take
a backseat to the action. I understand that characters need time to “grow” into
their heroism, however, the foundations for that backbone should have been laid
prior to that mettle being tested in a life-or-death situation. Otherwise, my
suspension of disbelief is being tested. Even if a heroine is in a situation from
which she cannot escape, she should always be thinking of escape, and not
complacent with her miserable existence. At least that spark of free-will can
be convincing impetus for a future act of daring. In the event that your
heroine ends up chained in a basement, and awaiting the most wretched fate
imaginable, she should be testing her chains, wondering who she can pounce on
when they enter her cell, or looking for a rat bone to pick her irons.
Whatever. She should be doing something, or sure that she will
somehow live. That fire for life is what keeps me, as a reader hooked. When
characters give up, so do I.
Women who are overly negative. As a man who writes some pretty snappy ladies, this can be a
delicate act to balance. Cynicism is fine, particularly if that character has
endured hardships. But when all she does is harp, or whine, or question her
strength, that character becomes as unpleasant as the people in real life who
do that. You know that friend that you have who calls you up to complain
about her weight/ marriage/ job? Negative Nancy the sorceress, can have the
same tone and repellence. Negativity can serve a purpose, and a hero
should always suffer moments of doubt. But the strongest people do so silently,
or among their closest allies, and never often or vocally (unless they are
giving a rousing speech against their injustice). Finding a balance with humor,
can help to offset a character with a naturally acerbic demeanor. At least it
gives the reader something else to focus on.
Women who need to be constantly saved
(usually by an all-powerful figure). Similar to the
first point, although I believe it deserves its own mention. Getting
saved once by your beau, assuming our heroine
has exhausted all of her resourcefulness, and is really, truly, screwed, is
fine. Sometimes, despite everything, we just cannot extricate ourselves from a
mess. We need help. Alright. Help arrives. Then, she trips and falls down a
well in another ten pages. Shortly after calling for help and being rescued,
she decides to go for a walk in the Forest of Ultimate Evil. Probably a bad
idea, given the name, but this girl (I’ve demoted her from womanhood for her naiveté),
doesn’t have the good sense God gave a toothpick. Don’t worry, here comes
Damien Glorylocks–knight, and secret royal blood of a long forgotten dynasty–to
save Clueless. From now on, we’ll just refer to my sample heroine by that name,
as it tends to sum up a lot of decisions that writers place in the minds of
their female leads.
Stupidity.
Coming off that last point. How stupid can one character be? Okay, we all make
dumb decisions. In fact, it’s necessary for characters to do one or two things
in error, and thereafter grow from that experience. The key here is grow. Grow.
As in, not do that stupid thing, or comparable act of stupidity again. If
you’re on the 3rd arc of your trilogy and your character is still figuring out
the fundamentals of how to control her dragonblood, faery-magic, or whatever,
then you have a problem. Similarly, if you’re deep into your story and Clueless
still can’t figure out why the Dark Elves want her dead so badly, then you
probably haven’t done a good enough job as a writer giving the reader–and
potentially Clueless–information. Readers like to be in the know, and if your
character is being kept in the dark, often treating your audience the same
risks aliening them. So if these scenarios are occurring in your books, then
your character (and audience) is not learning, they are not growing. And if
you’ve watched one season of Honey Boo Boo, you’ve watched them all.
The only thrill in that entertainment
is in watching the mediocrity unfold. We do not want our stories to be
banal, we want them to be inspiring, and teaching of greatness. Mediocrity is
for the real world, it has no place in fantasy.
Things I like. Here, we have a shorter
list, as most of these things are self-explanatory.
Normal characters. By this I mean, they have no supreme, miracle, magic. No great
hidden power. These women are just tough as nails, and have learned how to kick
life in the balls. Almost universally, readers like these sorts of characters.
Sure, later on in the story-line, that character may struggle to hang with
their mystical friends, and as end-of-the-world events unfold, it takes a deft
narrative hand to weave them through those troubles unscathed. Still, the value
of a normal character in an otherwise epic fantasy cannot be understated, for
they create a bridge between our world and the fantasy.
Women who make their own choices. Decisiveness. I love this trait in characters. As a storyteller,
characters who do not waver with indecision, move the story forward at a steady
pace. Otherwise, you can end up wasting pages on internal dialog, which can
make a character seem weak, which then threatens to lose the reader.
Women who fight. I’m not saying that every heroine has to be a martial expert, but
even a princess can have lessons in fencing, and if you make the heroine a
blacksmith’s daughter, she would surely know how to swing a blade. Again, this
cycles back to women being helpless, which I personally hate to read.
Witty, curious women. Witty, is not the same as bitchy–another fine line that can be
crossed. And curiosity may have killed the cat, but it shouldn’t kill the
heroine. A sense for questioning order, a rebellious spirit, and someone who
can take the slings-and-arrows of life with the occasional laugh, all make for
engaging characters.
I have another 90 pages of editing to do on
my second MS, so I must bid adieu to deal with that duty. I hope that my
ramblings have been thought, and not anger, provoking. Do keep in mind that the
above represents only my opinions, and there are as many ways to write
characters as there are writers in the world. These are just my pet-peeves, and
the pitfalls that I try to avoid.
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