A pestilence of pride, p.1
A Pestilence of Pride, page 1
A PESTILENCE OF PRIDE
The Four Horsewomen of the Apocalypse
Book 4
_______________________
A.A. Chamberlynn

Books by A.A. Chamberlynn
The Four Horsewomen Series
A War of Daisies (Book 1)
A Death of Music (Book 2)
A Famine of Crows (Book 3)
A Pestilence of Pride (Book 4)
A Bargain with Angels (Book 5)
A Dance with Demons (Book 6)
A Song for the Devil (Book 7)
The Zyan Star Series
Martinis with the Devil (Book 1)
Whiskey and Angelfire (Book 2)
Vengeance and Vermouth (Book 3)
Death and Dating (Book 4) (Quinn Chronicles)
Death and Promises (Book 5) (Quinn Chronicles)
Death and Eternity (Book 6) (Quinn Chronicles)
Black Magic and Mojitos (Prequel Novelette)
Sorcery and Sidecars (Origin Story Novella)
Zyan Star Book 7 Coming Soon!
The Timekeeper’s War Series
Huntress Found (Book 1)
Huntress Lost (Book 2)
Huntress at War (Book 3)
Other Books by A.A. Chamberlynn
Of Blood, Earth, and Magic
www.AlexiaChamberlynn.com
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A land ravished by magic, a circus of rebels, a girl with a deadly secret.
Copyright © 2021 by A.A. Chamberlynn
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
For information contact A.A. Chamberlynn at www.alexiachamberlynn.com
Cover design by Novak Illustration.
Chapter One
Penelope
When the red wolf appeared, Penelope thought it was just another of her dreams. Or perhaps, since the world was tearing apart at the seams, it had wandered down from the mountains in its confusion. But when it trotted up next to Domino and looked at her with unnaturally glowing ice-blue eyes, she knew it wasn’t from around here at all.
Dynah rode behind her, her arm gripping Penelope’s waist loosely, and Felicity rode behind Willow, since their horses had been left in the realm of the Fallen. Ruby Mountain lay behind them, and they rode through a landscape of dead locusts. Overhead, the sky hung gray and sullen. Not a normal sky, threatening rain, but a strange shade as if something were leaking into it. Something not of this earth.
“How far is it?” Willow asked the riders ahead of them.
The closest one, a woman with long, flowing red curls, turned and cast a glance back at them. “We’ll be able to cross soon. First, we need to get further away from the rift caused by the breaking of the sixth seal. It makes our magic unstable.”
Penelope cast a glance over a Willow. The unspoken question passed between them… Cross what? It was about the fiftieth such question she’d had in the last hour. Since the band of riders in green cloaks had shown up and told them that The Morrigan, their employer, wanted to help them. And that they had to defeat the anti-Christ.
Everything that had happened in the last day was a blur.
Finding the key in the Forest of Time. Sekhmet killing Sahkyo and abducting Dynah. The battle with the Others at the mines. Zane’s injury and disappearance. And then of course the anti-Christ—for now they knew that’s who she was—rising from the ashes of the Others, followed almost immediately by Sekhmet breaking the sixth seal.
Penelope could feel it, the damage done when the seal broke. Rift was the perfect word for it. A tearing, a separation in the world. A fatal wound from which she didn’t know if they could recover.
She let out a slow, shuddering breath and Dynah squeezed her lightly. “I feel it, too,” she whispered.
Penelope didn’t respond. What could she even say? They had failed. In every possible way. She felt Domino’s hoofbeats beneath her as they traveled across the barren land, and she wondered if her horse could feel the end drawing near, as she did.
“We’re almost there,” called one of the flame-haired riders ahead.
“What if we’re riding straight into a trap?” Dynah asked, her voice low so that only Penelope could hear.
The same thing had occurred to Penelope. There had been few people who hadn’t betrayed them of late. Of course, she was quite used to that kind of treatment. She’d faced it her whole life, come to expect it, really, just because she looked different than everyone else. But her gut told her this was not the same.
“I think we can trust them,” she said to her sister. “At least enough to hear them out. Hear whatever it is they’re offering, and whether we’re willing to pay the price they ask in return.”
“Everyone just wants to use us,” Dynah retorted, her tone bitter.
“We don’t have much to offer,” Penelope snorted. “Four Riders who can barely control their powers?”
“But if this Morrigan person can help us with that, no doubt she’ll just want us to work for her.” Dynah’s hands tightened on Penelope’s waist. “Wield our magic for her bidding.”
Penelope shrugged. “Perhaps. We’ll find out soon enough.”
She knew she sounded as if she didn’t care, and it wasn’t that. She’d just burned up so much emotion already, anguish and rage and sorrow, that she had nothing left to give. A week of sleep and some food was sorely needed. Not that they would get it.
The Morrigan’s riders stopped at a river that cut across the gray land in front of them. It looked treacherous, dotted with rocks and flowing swiftly down from the mountains to the north. Penelope recognized the river; it wasn’t far from Hawk’s Hollow. But the land had changed so much in such a short period of time. It was both familiar and surreal. Not like the home she knew at all.
“We can cross here,” said one of the women.
“I’ll open the path,” said another.
Penelope and Willow exchanged glances again. One of the women rode her horse out into the middle of the river. Then she pulled a long dagger from the leather sheath at her hip. It was no ordinary knife, but a blade made of glass or crystal. As she drew it, a pulse of magic moved across the sky, and a faint hum filled the air.
The blade glowed as she lifted it over her head and began to draw strange shapes. Where the tip of the sword touched the sky, runic markings appeared, glowing bright green. The hum grew louder, and Penelope felt a wash of icy air move over her. The woman drew five runes in total, and then, with an abrupt movement, she stabbed her blade into the air. It disappeared, as if she’d cut into something of substance instead of the sky, only the hilt still visible.
And from the apex formed by the runes and the blade, a white light shone down, arcing out to each side, forming a doorway to another realm.
Behind her, Dynah gasped, and Penelope felt her own heart begin to race. The light from the doorway glowed so brightly that Penelope couldn’t see what lay beyond. But she could feel the magic there, wherever it was. As strong as salt lacing the air on the shore of the ocean, something she could both smell and taste on her tongue.
Two of the red-haired riders went through first, then Willow and Felicity followed. Domino snorted nervously, but she patted his neck and squeezed her legs against his sides to urge him forward. When they reached the riverbank, he stepped in slowly, setting his hooves down carefully in the strong current. Step by step, they made their way across the swift water toward the doorway of glowing light. As they approached it, Penelope had to lower her eyes because it hurt to look directly into it. Domino dropped his head as well and plodded forward slowly. Magic surged around them as they stepped through the portal.
And then they were through.
“Welcome to Tír na nÓg, the land of the Tuatha Dé Danann,” called one of the riders.
Penelope blinked and her vision cleared. The first thing her eyes registered was green. A verdant landscape sprawled before them, rolling hills of jade and emerald. Having lived in dusty Colorado her whole life, a pallet of red and brown, the brightness of the place shocked her senses.
The second thing to catch her attention was the huge castle sitting on a hill about a half mile away, a massive construct of gray stone with towers and high walkways and an arched entrance into a large interior courtyard. Trees rose on each side of the castle and continued beyond. Something about them didn’t seem quite natural, but Penelope couldn’t put her finger on the reason she felt that way. Looking at them just sent a shiver up her spine. They held magic within them, that much was clear. But then, this whole place felt saturated with it.
They rode the short distance to the castle in silence. Penelope turned, just once, to look behind her as the portal closed. She saw the wolf slip through, right before the doorway vanished, and she realized it must belong to one of the Tuatha Dé Danann. Her home lay behind her now. It wasn’t just the magic that buzzed around her in this pl
When they reached the courtyard, Penelope could feel the heavy weight of many eyes upon them. Most of the people had red hair, like the four riders who had guided them, but some had blonde or brown or black hair. All of them, however, had pale skin, and she began to feel very conscious of her own cinnamon tone. It didn’t seem, however, that any of them lingered on her in particular. Just the four of them in general: the Riders of the Apocalypse.
One of their guides, the one who had opened the portal, dismounted from her horse and turned to face them. “I am Brigit,” she said. “I’ll be presenting you to the Morrigan and will help you with anything you need while you stay with us.”
“Where are we exactly?” Felicity asked, her brown eyes wide as she looked around.
“The Tuatha Dé Danann hail from Ireland,” Brigit said. “I suppose you could say this realm is a mirror image of our homeland. From the time before, when its people still believed in magic, and the world was young.”
Her voice held a note of sadness at odds with the lyrical lilt of her words. Penelope had a bit of a hard time interpreting her thick accent, though she found it beautiful.
“We will take good care of your mounts,” Brigit continued. “If you’ll entrust them to our care while we seek an audience with the lady of this place.”
Willow looked over to Penelope and Penelope gave a small nod. They dismounted, and two of the other riders who had accompanied them took Bullet and Domino and led them toward a stable on the far side of the courtyard.
“I hope Moon is okay,” Dynah said softly, biting her lip.
“I’m sure he is,” Penelope said. “He’s safer with the Fallen than on earth.”
“Follow me,” Brigit said, making a gesture with a gloved hand.
Brigit led them across the courtyard, her green cloak flaring out behind her. When they reached the wing of the castle farthest from the front gate, they passed through another large archway into a long, wide hall. Far ahead of them, Penelope could see a set of bright green double doors made of painted wood. As they walked, she wondered how many rooms they passed by on each side. The castle had to have hundreds of them. Just this one part seemed to stretch on endlessly, and there were three other wings.
At last, they reached the green doors, which were guarded by two warriors in head-to-foot brown leather, swords and bows at their sides. They opened the doors silently, without so much as eye contact, and Penelope and the others passed through into a huge chamber. Penelope sucked in a breath of wonderment. She’d never seen anything like it. Not just in its sheer size, like a cavern, but also because it was instantly clear that this place did not follow any ordinary rules of architecture.
The first half of the room seemed ordinary enough—a gray stone floor and walls, and the occasional column rising to a domed ceiling overhead. But that’s where normalcy ended. Penelope knew then why the trees she’d seen had seemed so strange. Because about halfway across the enormous room, stone began to bleed into trees in such a way that Penelope couldn’t tell if the room was indoors or outdoors. For a moment, she thought the outer wall of the castle had simply been knocked down and left open to the forest. But even beyond, where the stone floor turned to moss, and the domed ceiling shifted to foliage, columns still rose up, part stone and part tree trunk, and no sky could be seen through the tree branches.
And if Penelope had thought the land of the Tuatha Dé Danann glowed with magic before, it was nothing compared to the power in this place.
Before she could ponder its strangeness further, something caught her eye at the back of the room. A large black throne rose from the mossy forest floor. Like the rest of the room, it seemed partially stone and partially organic. Black vines and roses wove through and around it. The figure on the throne wore black as well. As Penelope strode closer, she could see a mask of feathers over the woman’s face. Dark feathers that shimmered with a hint of blue and green, like that of a raven or a crow.
She was the source of the magic in this place, the lady of the realm, the one who had summoned them here, at the end of the world.
The Morrigan.
Chapter Two
Dynah
Brigit stopped at the throne and kneeled before her mistress. “My lady, may I present to you the Four Horsewomen.”
Dynah felt the piercing gaze of the woman on the throne. The eyes behind the strange raven mask were dark, almost black, and they carried a weight to them like she’d never felt before. In those eyes she felt the stars, her unique elemental power. As if universes lived within them.
The woman’s hair was dark, too, a cascade of midnight down one shoulder. Her skin stood out in stark contrast to everything else, glowing almost, the only thing on the throne that wasn’t some shade of ink or obsidian. The Morrigan’s long, white fingers wrapped around the arms of her throne like claws.
Dynah wasn’t sure if she should bow. Would it indicate to the Morrigan that they thought themselves beneath her? Show weakness? They were the Riders of the Apocalypse, after all. Dynah didn’t think they needed to bow to anyone. She didn’t feel the way Penelope did about their control of their powers—everyone had either feared them or tried to get them on their side, since the moment they’d transformed. And that meant they were valuable.
So she stood tall, and she met the Morrigan’s dark gaze with her own icy blue one, and she did not bend.
The Morrigan’s lips twitched upward in the hint of a smile. “Well met, Riders. The bringers of doom. The bearers of the end of all things. The ladies of our final fate.” Her voice had the same Irish lilt as Brigit, but it reminded Dynah of the forest in which they stood. Of the darkness and the deep.
“Well met,” Dynah echoed with a small nod. “Thank you for reaching out to us.”
“I should say I’m a tad bit late,” the Morrigan said with a wave of her hand. “The sixth seal is broken, and the anti-Christ has risen. I’m not sure now that there’s much I can do.”
“Then why bring us here?” Willow asked, crossing her arms over her chest, brows arched.
The Morrigan turned her dark gaze to Willow. “Because I’ve never backed down from impossible odds before, and I’m certainly not about to start now.”
“What’s in it for you?” Penelope asked. “Why help us? We have many enemies.”
A snort, which sounded incongruent coming from the lips of someone radiating such power. “Because I wish to survive. The angels are hell-bent, ironically enough, on destroying the earth realm. And since Tír na nÓg is a mirror of the earth realm, if it ends, so do we.”
She swept her dark eyes over them, and Dynah had to focus all of her energy not to flinch from the power there.
“Do not think me your savior. I do not offer my assistance for reasons of altruism. I simply wish to continue existing.” The Morrigan shrugged. “When I heard you defied Heaven, I thought that perhaps we have more in common than meets the eye.”
“And you think you can teach us to use our powers?” Dynah asked. “What do you know of the unique powers of the Riders?”
To her right, Dynah saw Brigit’s eyes widen. Apparently, people did not speak thus to the Morrigan.
But the Morrigan had that faint smile on her lips again. “I know little of the Riders. But I know magic like it is my own blood. My own heartbeat. I can help you learn to control it.” She paused a moment, her gaze sliding over them again, assessing. “I’ve also caught rumor that you possess strange magic not known to the previous Riders. That you can control certain elements.”
“That’s true,” Penelope said with a nod. “I control the night and darkness.”
“I have a kinship with metal,” Willow added.
“I can summon stars,” Dynah said.
Everyone looked to Felicity, but she lowered her gaze and twisted her hands together in front of her.
“She can control water and earth,” Dynah added hastily.
She cast a concerned look over to her friend. Felicity had broken Sekhmet’s control over her barely an hour ago. And before that, she’d suffered possession for days off and on. Would Felicity recover? Dynah simply didn’t know what the long-term effects could be, and not knowing terrified her.
