The Kingdoms of Evil (12 page)

"Oh," said Feerborg, "gibbering struck-out crap. I'm still here. Sweet words," he ran a hand over his face, and the light in his eyes vanished. "it feels like I've been hit by a bus."

Bloodbyrn cursed softly, but profoundly.

"What did you say?"

She did not sigh. "Nothing, my lord."

Under them, the ogre's titanic muscles heaved, rain-slick, pushing against the quaking ground. Massive fingers and toes slid and gouged and clutched at the rocks and mud, and the monster's cries were lost in the howling of the wind. Stumbling, lurching, nearly toppling in the cruel gusts, the carriage crested a last rise in the tortured ground. Then it began to descend. Bloodbyrn's hopes descended with it.

Well, at least the idiot would be easy enough to murder.

Chapter the Fourth

In which the Ultimate Fiend is Unimpressed

The word-magic lights failed as the express locomotive rattled past a station, and one of the Proctors started to swear.

Istain Scander turned from the train's smudged window and made an exasperated expression at the martial idiot. "Was this your first clue we were leaving the Rationalist Union?"

"Shut the gibber up," snarled the Proctor, a stringy little troglodyte named Sergeant-Lecturer Lucan.

The other Proctor, Captain-
Assistant
Clanat, had a more effective way of expressing his annoyance. "You could complain," he said to his underling, "or you could get up and light the gas lamp."

"The uh...?" Lucan jerked away from his eye-lock with Istain. His Adam's apple bobbed. "Oh, right. The gas lamp."

Istain rolled his eyes.

"I wasn't...I mean I know how they work of course," Lucan rose unsteadily to his feet, "I wasn't sure it was completely...uh....safe, Associate."

Neither was Istain. "Uh…don't those things run on pipes full of explosives?"

"Ah, for the innocence of a life spent never more than a kilometer from Byblos City." Clanat was away from the window, across from the lump of sullen silence that was Madene, the wanna-be Warrior Maiden.

"You are aware, Sergeant-Lecturer Lucan, that from now on, we'll be operating outside the effective zone of word-magic?" Clanat was closer to the gas lamp over the door, but neither he nor Madene made any move to light it.

"Excuse me, Associate," said Lucan, grasping the gas valve at the base of the lamp. "I'm...of course, the gas is nothing to be scared of. I'll just ...light the lamp, sir." Of course, once he turned on the gas valve, he couldn't find the fire-starter knob. The air filled with the odor of rotten meat, and Clanat made a dry comment about small wooden boxes filled with flammable gas.

By the time Istain and Lucan felt safe enough to pull their heads back through the open window, Madene had lit the lamp.

Istain seated himself, thinking furiously of ways he could express his opinion, both of sadistic military mind-games and smart-ass college girls. He wished his notebook worked out here. He could write down some of the insults in his head.

But his implants were so much dead ink and crystal, and
Madene and the
two proctors didn't provide much in the way of scintillating conversation. Istain was traveling with two stuffed-shirt, power-tripping fascists and a girl who thought a good time was an hour spent meditating under a waterfall, and a good conversation was an argument that she won, probably conducted through her hair.

And even that would have been an improvement over Madene's grim silence. The surly environmental-science-major hadn't said two sentences to him since the Proctors had arrived at Eldritch College and bundled everyone into transport spheres. Zathara had gone back to the Nation of Love, Kendrick to Between, and Istain and Madene were on their way to Virgin Soil. For
some
reason.

Now, Istain could only take so much boredom before the words in his head started to overflow. No matter what the Proctors said about socks and his vocal chords.

"What in the burning libraries are we
doing
here?" asked Istain for what must have been the ninetieth time
.
He
wondered if they were as tired of hearing the question as he was of saying it.

The Proctors exchanged a look and, glory be, one of them actually returned the conversational volley. It was Lucan who spoke. Maybe he was bored too. "Well, our, you know, good friends to the north have asked for a visit from your friend Madene, and your government is happy to oblige, that's what."

"Right," said Istain, "because the High Maiden got all those heart-shaped letters Madene sent her through the Warrior Maiden consular services and decided she reciprocated. Come on, guys. What on earth does our friendly neighborhood dictatorship want with two college kids?"

"I am glad to see your Eldritch degree hasn't entirely blunted your analytical skills," grunted Clanat, the boss.

"I haven't gotten a degree yet," said Istain. "In fact, I'm missing classes right now, rolling through the frozen ass-end of grassy no-where."

"The High Maiden herself requested me, Istain," said Madene.

Istain narrowed his eyes at her. "That's what these Proctors say, anyway."

"When we cross into Virgin Soil, I'll come into my Maidencraft powers."

"Yes," said Istain, "but the High Maiden has powers too. And all the women in her army. They don't oppress two thirds of their population on the power of suggestion alone."

"Ha ha. Cute." Clanat leaned into Istain's field of vision. "Remind me to smack you on the head if you open your mouth in the presence of a Warrior Maiden official."

"You plan to use me as a spy, don't you?" Madene said.

Istain looked across the carriage at the Proctors, and caught two expressions of stony surprise in the guttering gas-light.

"That is correct, Ms. a'Leagh," Clanat told Madene, "and we would appreciate your aid. We believe that any information you can relate will do incalculable benefit to the Rationalist Union's interests."

In other words, Madene and Kendrick were bought and paid-for, owned either by a Tome-Headed Academic Governor in the RU, or a bare-chested tree-worshiping fascist in Virgin Soil.

"How, exactly, is Madene going to learn anything useful to the RU?" Istain wanted to know. "And why are you unloading a teenager on the regime her grand-parents fled from? And what does
any
of this have to with Freetrick?"

Clanat spread his hands, "Let's just say that, given the current geopolitical environment, the good-will of our neighbors to the north is very important to us."

Absolute gibberish. "Okay, I guess you guys just have to have Madene, no other college chick secret agent will do, my right?" he jerked a thumb at Madene, who scowled at him from under her hair. "But in case you haven't noticed, I'm not a virgin woman. What on earth do you want with a word-wizard five hundred miles north of the RU?" Where word-magic worked about as well as clicking your heels and wishing really hard.

The senior Proctor eyed him for a moment, swaying with their carriage's movement. "Mr. Scander," he said eventually. "You obviously have a high opinion of your own intelligence," the Proctor made it sound like that might not be a good thing, "and your grades are good, whatever that means at Eldritch these days."

Istain made a face. "Grade inflation jokes? Really? My grades are good because I like what I'm studying." He flashed a palm at them, useless tattoos sparkling. "How many Boolean operators have
you
embedded into
your
skin recently?"

The Proctor continued as if Istain hadn't spoken. "You are politically disinterested, and most of all, you have a connection to the boy. Feerborg."

"His name is Freetrick," said Istain.

"That wasn't the name we were given."

"Okay whatever. But it seems to me that if you need a big dumb man mucking around with the Warrior Maidens, you should've brought Kendrick with you, not packed him off to Betweener boot camp.
He's
her boyfriend, not me."

Lucan snorted, though. "You talking about the one studying engineering? He has bigger problems right now than a pissed off girlfriend."

To which Madene hid behind her hair and growled. "Wait until we arrive in the nation of my people, gentlemen, and you shall know the meaning of that phrase." Coming from a silver-clad queen of the Sacred Oak, that might have sounded intimidating. But Madene was a surly, hyphenated-Rationalist teenager and didn't make the impression she was hoping for.

The older Proctor looked at her with an expression that matched Istain's sentiments closely. "In any case, rest assured that both of you are important for your government's efforts in Virgin Soil."

"And those efforts are?"

"All right." The Proctor leaned back into his cushion and addressed Istain in his most professorial voice. "So tell me. What do you know about Warrior Maidens?"

"What's to know?" Istain answered. "They worship a warrior goddess, who gives them magic that only works for virgins, girl virgins."

"The phrase is 'pure in thought and deed,'" Madene quoted, sanctimoniously."You know, Istain, I think he was asking me."

"No, Madene," Istain said, "if he wanted your opinion he would have asked us about our psychoses constructed to justify our social maladjustment. We're going to the
real
Virgin Soil, Madene, not the fairy-land spoiled middle-class Rationalist girls use as a setting for their bi-curious fantasies."

But Madene was talking over him. "The Warrior Maidens' patron deity's full name is Deusca Maw, which means the Maiden Mother. She's very much like Naobel of Between, because she protects her people from the Kingdoms of Evil."

"Well except for the whole conquest and oppression thing," said Istain, "or did your grandparents flee Virgin Soil because they didn't like the décor?"

That did it. Madene blew up. "What the hell is wrong with you?" she shouted at him, "Don't you have any respect for me?"

Finally, a good argument! "I sure as hell have no respect for your culture-crush on those imperialistic, man-hating psychopaths. You can't have sex or you lose your magic? What kind of deity would promote a magical system like that?"

"Yeah, this is not about Virgin Soil, Istain," said Madene, "this is about you and
your
sexual insecurity."

"Trust me, Madene, sex with me is extremely secure."

"All right," Clanat said, in a bark that would have carried to the back of a crowded lecture hall or the far end of a drill-sergeant's practice yard. In the confines of the rail carriage, it rang off the inside of Istain's skull. "I should have known the didactic method would be useless on Eldritch students. Both of you kindly shut up while I tell you what I need you to know."

In Istain's opinion, they didn't need to know
anything
about Virgin Soil. Who cared if the High Maidens who ran the place were a church or a government or a military junta? When he had wished for entertainment, a lecture in political science was not what Istain had had in mind.

"…and the High Maiden Kadene a'Meaduedia, who, let us not forget, invited us here, is one of the few High Maidens who appears in public at all. She is extremely dangerous," Clanat continued.

"It's pronounced a-mad-weh-ja." Madene said.

"Thank you," said Clanat with heavy sarcasm. "Now, is there anything else either of you would like to add."