The Kingdoms of Evil (23 page)

DeMacabre's hand fluttered at him, "I am sure I do not know, my lord."

Freetrick frowned, but before he could say anything more, there was a wheeze from above like the sound of a squashed accordion. "May the wings of blackness descend on this crawling servant for the interruption, but perhaps an answer would please the Doer of Misdeeds. Between five and six thirteen of a thirteen of thirteens now toil under the gaze of the center of the Maelstrom."

Six times thirteen cubed. Call it thirteen thousand for a generous approximate... "That's
it
?" Freetrick looked up at the ceiling. Mr. Skree was invisible under the cover of mist, but Freetrick wanted to yell at something. "In the whole striking nation? Or are you counting only pure humans?"

The mist swirled, "The tally includes all sentient beings the demesnes of Skrea, Malevolence. If one's standards for sentience are low, the count rises."

"Standards are…low?" Freetrick remembered the ogres outside his door. "I see. Well am I going to meet any of the smart ones?"

"
Several
have already met you, my lord," said DeMacabre. "I assure you they were horrified
in the extreme.
"

Freetrick thought of the rustlings in the walls. "Do you think I could meet
them
, maybe?"

"Oh, my lord should not bother himself over
this
rabble." DeMacabre slapped a hand against the wall. Something on the other side said "ouch!"

"Fear not, my lord, but only inspire fear in others," DeMacabre went on, "for our destination is the Vile Halls, and there, I offer my personal guarantee, may I be strung up over the scorpions if my lord does not make the acquaintance of the very
darkest
of the Dark Aristocracy." DeMacabre's pace quickened. "Now, the door is just ahead, so if my lord would follow…"

They stopped in front of a wall, apparently no different from any of the rest of the corridor. DeMacabre touched the tongue of a snarling monster incised into a buttress, a section of the wall swung inward, and Freetrick mentally added another item to his list of things to do: find out how to get around in a castle where every stupid door looks like part of the wall.

The hall beyond was even darker than the one they had come from, its walls and low ceiling decorated with a profusion of grotesque carving.

"Ah ha. Here we are." Said DeMacabre after some time, "the spiral stair. We are close now."

"Good," said Freetrick, although in the darkness the stairway looked claustrophobically tight. DeMacabre's upswept shoulder pads cast weird shadows against its walls as he began to descend. He placed a foot on the landing.

"Ah
Fiend!
" the Duke spun around, his head level with Freetrick's belly, staring up all wide crooked smile and huge crazed eyes.

"W—blech!" nearly fell backward as he flinched from that face. "What?!"

"I have forgotten something!" The pointed teeth gnashed in the gloom, far too close to Freetrick on the tight stair. "Whilst I retain the memory, Fiend, I
must
ask you."

"Yes?" Freetrick wondered if DeMacabre practiced that face in front of the mirror every morning.

The teeth gleamed. "I find that you have not informed any one of your persona, my lord."

"My what?"

"Your persona, my lord." DeMacabre turned and began again to descend the staircase. "That is to say, your quirk, my lord, the distinctive feature that identifies your person to the masses. Might I inquire as to its nature? So as to prepare the servants, you see. How embarrassing it would be, after all, for you to be given a bath in the blood of lizards if you preferred to kill them yourself, for example."

"So...like a hobby?" Freetrick wondered where the lizard blood came in.

"Mmm…
most
personae, my lord," corrected DeMacabre, "deal in some way with death, and how the Despot best likes to see it…administered. Your father, for example, may the blood never dry from his hands, well, you see, his hands—"

"I think I get it." Freetrick said.

Their footsteps rang on the stone steps.

"…my lord?" said DeMacabre eventually.

"Well," said Freetrick, "how about Freetrick, the Guy Who Didn't Kill Anyone."

DeMacabre laughed. "Oh, my lord. Bloodbyrn has
told
me about my lord's sense of humor, but I was ill prepared for its magnitude." He put his hand to an apparently featureless section of wall and pushed. The wall slid aside. "Ah, here we are. My lord? The Vile Halls."

Freetrick hoped his feelings of unease would depart once they got to the castle proper, but as they left the secret passages he was convinced that while they were quite large and grand, the Vile Halls had also been well named.

Mist shrouded more high ceilings, more cyclopean columns towered, more corridors ran off into absolute darkness, and much disquieting statuary…sat there. But there were also more people.
Well
, Freetrick thought as he and DeMacabre emerged into the red light of the hall,
only if my standards for 'person' are low.

The probably-people scurried, strode, lurched, and in one case slithered over the black stone floor. Some simply stood, outlined in red light from the lava-filled trench that ran down the middle of the hall. The Skreans themselves, though…No matter how much Freetrick squinted, he could never manage to resolve a single being from the crowd. All he caught was impressions, some huge and hulking, some wiry and whip-like, some short and hunched, some composed of swarms of thousands of finger-sized pieces. Freetrick saw insects, horns, swinging chains, leather-webbed wings, flaming hats, capes of all descriptions, retractile claws, poison-tipped tails, eyes that were wide or slitted or black and stone-like or simply far too numerous.

"Ha!" said DeMacabre, turning to Freetrick and grinning, arms outspread, "Welcome," His voice rose in a bellow that echoed off the massive columns "Welcome, Feerborg
king!
To your court!"

The motion of the crowd stopped. A hundred heads, horned, spiked, flaming, or simply very, very big, swung in his direction. A number of eyes focused on him. A number of mouths gaped open.

The broadly-defined people of Skrea roared their welcome.

Chapter the Seventh

In which the Ultimate Fiend meets his Family

Kendrick Fairheart's boots crunched over a brown carpet of pine needles. Around him and his regiment rose the walls of the dry creek bed, and the tall, cool trees of the alpine forests of the high Bulwarks.

Kendrick walked near the head of the small column, surrounded by plodding men in the tan and blue uniforms of the Rationalist army. They pushed wheelbarrows of equipment or carried large packs, heavy with charts and draftsman's tools. Their faces were blank with fatigue or sour with foot-soreness, and they looked ahead or down, where their shadows showed dark against the needles and stones.

The other men circled around the engineering corps, wearing mottled brown leather, flapping with outline-blurring tassels at collars and sleeves. The Betweeners were most often stocky and point-nosed, gloved hands resting against swords or wheel-stone talismans more often than on the butts of muskets. Naobelite Rangers. Their job was not to survey the land, but the danger that lurked there.

Now, the only light came from directly overhead, where the forest canopy broke over the creek, and the spindly boughs of black oak and madrone reached out from between the pine-boughs to claw at the sky. Away from the gully in which they marched, the forest quickly sank into midnight blackness. Several times now Kendrick had thought he saw eyes glowing from out of that murk.

"Private! Eyes front!" The barking voice struck like a lightning bolt out of the clear air. Professor-Colonel Phinneas had not bothered to turn his head, but simply bellowed from the front of their column. "If I want you devoured by monsters I will striking order you into those woods, but until I do, you will leave the darkness to the Rangers."

Kendrick jumped, and cursed himself for it. The officious old Professor-Colonel had not, after all, spoken his name. If Kendrick leapt like a startled deer every time Phinneas opened his mouth, everyone would know…

What? That Kendrick
thought
Phinneas was constantly watching him? That Kendrick
suspected
his blindingly fast progress from civilian to enlisted engineer half-way up the Bulwarks was due to more than just his qualifications? Well, if that got him to Freetrick faster…

Kendrick grunted. Gerhanis was Kendrick's re-loader, which meant in any battle that required more than one shot from Kendrick's musket, he would have to trust his life to the man. Unfortunately. "I'm not upset about Professor-Colonel Phinneas."

"Thinking about a girl then?" The military engineer swung closer to Kendrick.

"No," said Kendrick. He wished that the laws of the Covenant allowed murder. It would feel good to strangle this man.

"Whelp," Gerhanis jogged the big pack over his shoulders, "that's what I'll do after this is all over. We'll get across the mountain, lay some rail, and then I'll take my pay and find me a girl."

"Good," said Kendrick.

"You don't believe me? Are you saying I couldn't get a Love-wielder if I wanted one?"

"He isn't, but
I
am," came Levanick's voice. The Naobelite Ranger matched his pace to theirs. "'Lay some rail and go home'? What makes you think it will be that easy? What is it you think we're doing here?"

Gerhanis grunted sullenly. "I
think
we're building a railroad right up to the front door of the bad guy. Then we'll stuff him so full of Rationalist firepower he chokes."

"I would trust the Paladin over your Universal Science, Rationalist," said Levanick. "This isn't machine country. This is hero country. So you must both keep trust in the Paladin and say your prayers to Naobel."

"It isn't
our
Universal Science," Gerhanis snorted, "it works everywhere. That's why it's called 'Universal.'" He grinned at Kendrick, and didn't seem to care that Kendrick did not smile back. "So how about you think good thoughts about
us
? The Paladin might be protector of the innocent on
this
side of the mountains, but when we pass out of Naobel's territory, it'll be Universal Science engineers that fight off the monsters."

"You would do well to—" Levanick's voice cut off as his hand went to his chest. After a second, Kendrick felt it too, a sudden heat, and a growing vibration from the new wheel-stone that hung on a chain around his neck.

"A beast of the Storm," Levanick leapt up the side of the gully, where other Rangers were gathering to peer into the darkness.

" 'A beast of the Storm,'" mocked Gerhanis under his breath, "who gibbering talks like that? What makes him think those talismans are anything but superstition yet anyway."

"
Silence
!" Professor-Colonel Phinneas shouted at them, "all soldiers, muskets out, forward!"

For once Kendrick was glad to obey the Professor-Colonel's orders. His wheel-stone was buzzing more strongly now. The gully was deeper here, the feet of the Rangers standing at its edges on a level with Kendrick's head. It would be a good place for an ambush. And there was that smell on the air. It was faint, but as foul as rotting meat. The stink of corruption, of all good things perverted. The scent of the Storm.

"Lizard-man !"

Someone
screamed and Kendrick felt
Gerhanis hand on his backpack

"Get down!"

Kendrick fell to one knee with the other engineers, and looked up in time to see the
woods
erupt
with monsters.

Kendrick's eyes caught a blur of shadow sweeping out of the forest. One of the Rationalist soldiers on the
embankment
raised his musket, but the creature was on him before his finger could tighten around the trigger. Kendrick glimpsed a perfect arc of blood hanging in the air like a rainbow before the chaos of battle closed over the company.

Shouting, inhuman shrieks, rippling shadows under the trees, bright flashes of
word-magic
, and the numinous glow/hum of Naobel's Blessings. The sharp crack and stink of muskets firing. The feel of his hands on the greasy barrel of his own weapon as Kendrick fumbled it around, pulled at the catches, tried to swing the damned machine around and bring it to bear on the screaming monsters descending on them.

The musket was too long, too unwieldy, and no matter how many times he had practiced he was going to die now because his fingers were too panicked to understand his brain.

Something shoved Kendrick hard on his back, and he fell forward against a fallen backpack. Gerhanis's backpack. But Gerhanis was gone.

Kendrick went down on one knee, both hands around the musket barrel, now miraculously free. He breathed, a sharp squeeze of his lungs that sent shudders down his body and brought black swirls before his eyes.