The Kingdoms of Evil (31 page)

Kendrick looked down at the Paladin. The Light of the Mountain, slain by this sneering Rationalist. Kendrick's fists were clenched again. He could feel them hitting the flesh of the man, breaking his bones, plunging thumbs into his eyes…no.

Kendrick shook his head, remembering Madene. Phinneas was a human being. His real enemies were the monsters, always and
only
the monsters. The monsters who…

"The Paladin was cooperating with you," Kendrick said.

"Oh, he told
you that, did he?" The wendigo rolled its eyes. "Stupid of him. But
you understand why, do you not?" It gestured toward Phinneas, who was staring at them coldly, "This man was leading an army through the Bulwarks to end your way of life forever. Surely for that he should die."

Kendrick shook his head, violently.

"No?" The wendigo's voice had turned soft and cajoling. "But you'll
enjoy it so much, little Betweener. Hurting him."

"No." But even as Kendrick said the word, he was thinking. Killing humans was wrong, yes, but wasn't Phinneas an enemy of his Nation? And furthermore, if he could gain the trust of these monsters…and
it would feel so good to stop that man's breathing with his hands
.

The chief wendigo chuckled, while the other wendigo whimpered from the ground.

Kendrick looked up into those inhuman eyes, and saw his own reflected there.

What would Madene tell him to do? Yes, to kill a human was Wrong, but in doing so, he would be able to later kill many more monsters, saving many more humans. Besides, Phinneas just killed two Betweeners, and how many more in his career before that?

"And most of all," it said, "think about how much
fun
it would be."

"Yes." Kendrick smiled, stepped forward.

And something rose up from the ground and smashed, screeching and flapping, into Kendrick's back.

He jolted sideways as the other wendigo bounced off him.
"Don't!" it shrieked, "don't don't don't don't don't do it!
Oh…oh Naobel!"

Light sparked from the three talismans, the monsters all flinched, and Phinneas took this opportunity to drive his elbow into the ogre behind him.

"Don't!" the insane wendigo howled,
"Oh please. No more pain."

"Tempest above!" snarled the lead wendigo, "I do not have time for this.
Someone kill the damaged one, then the Rationalist, then---"

"Move," Phinneas said, "and I shoot your leader." He was standing free now, pistol out.

"Second verse, same as the first, hm, Rationalist?" The wendigo smiled. "But what does he intend to do with his hostage, hm? Does he have any sort of plan?"

"Yes," said Phinneas. "Let us go."

The wendigo's chest rose with its amused snort. It glanced at the second wendigo, who had crumpled back into a sobbing ball on the ground. "Why should I? Because you'll shoot me? Rationalist, I am not a wendigo because I have no allegiance to any but myself. I am a wendigo because I enjoy hurting people." Again the black eyes slid to regard Kendrick. The lips smiled. "My mission is more important than my life. Just as yours is to you."

"I never doubted it," said Phinneas, his gun moved, "which is why I will shoot the boy."

The gun moved to point at Kendrick.

"She needs him, doesn't she?" said Phinneas. "Queen Tinesmurk?"

Phinneas smiled at the wendigo's look of shock. "The Skrean queen in exile. Yes, she came to
us,
too. She won't be happy if you go back without her son's friend."

"We could make a revenant of his corpse," said the wendigo.

Phinneas snorted, "and walk the zombie all the way to Castle Clouds-Gather? I doubt it."

The wendigo's smile vanished. "How do you know that, Rationalist?" Then re-appeared, "are you looking for more reasons I should kill you?"

"Let us go," said Phinneas again. "Me, the boy, and that poor fellow there." He nodded toward the damaged wendigo.

"And I ask again," said the wendigo, "why should I do this?"

"Two reasons," said Phinneas. "One because I will shoot the boy and wreck your plans. And second because you will enjoy hunting us. Won't you?"

The wendigo tilted its head back and barked a laugh. "A good point!" It looked down at its damaged partner, then at the two ogres, then at the bodies of the monsters, and the Paladin. Abruptly it nodded. "Very well. I shall wait a day, I think. And then, ah, the fun will begin." Its eyes narrowed, "Go now."

"Come." Said Phinneas.

Kendrick stared down at his hands. Then at the Paladin, dead in his blood. Then at Phinneas.

"Come I said," said the Rationalist.

And Kendrick went, damning himself.

***

Coronation begins

Freetrick knew they were getting close to the top of the tower when the crowd in front of them began to compress, turning from procession into crowd. As people in terrible and ridiculous ornamentation backed away to give him and his entourage room, Freetrick was struck by memories of concerts and clubs in Byblos. Now, at the front of the crowd, would be a line of bouncers---ogres most likely. And beyond the ogres...

"Horrible morrow, young Feerborg."

The guys in charge of the show. There were three of them.

"The Corrupted Ones of the Deep Synod," murmured DeMacabre. "On the left," with a blood-red top-hat and a sticky slug-trail on the floor behind him, "is DeSammdie, bloodless priest of Chesain. On the right," cloaked in the pelt of an enormous wolf, and probably seven feet tall, "B'glafn, fearless priest of St'tdrakhorod. And---"

"Young Feerborg…" Said the one in the middle. The one in the long black cloak with its crown of obsidian tentacles, and what seemed to have a pet bat hanging from his shoulder. "Yes?"

The figure thrust its head toward him. Gray jowls flopped from a face sick with age and evil, a husk of damp flesh hanging from brittle and ancient bones. A cleft amid the wrinkles opened to reveal a black toothless pit of mouth and an eye, huge and white as a boiled egg, winked from the shadows under the cloak.
"You will die, young Feerborg."

"Uh…"

The black mouth opened again. "You will die, your memory will fade, you will become the dust, then less than dust."

"My lord," DeMacabre said while Freetrick tried to work out whether the dust thing was a real threat or just another Skrean ritual, "may I present His Fiendishness the Dark Prince Hafdern Teirgog the Deathless, Heirophant and Chief Corrupted of the Dark Synod. He is...oh let me see...brother to Teirborg, which would make him your great-uncle, my lord. Such sweet suffering does family bring."

The pale eye hove back into view. "My lord, may your death be an inspiration and a warning to all future generations."

"Thank you?"

"And now allow me to pronounce the malediction." Hands jerked up from the folds of the dire gray depths of the ancient man's robe.

"Oh, I'm---" said Freetrick, "---
gurk!"

And Teirgog proceeded to clamp his hands around Freetrick's neck, lift him, armor and all, off the ground, and with great ceremony to strangle him

How was the old man doing it? Freetrick kicked feebly as the priest chanted atonally. Could necromancy give a crazy old man the strength of ten crazy old men? Only as Freetrick's vision began to dim did the unholy priest release him to fall, gasping, to the floor. Perforce, Freetrick knelt there, while his horrible uncle finished the chant and made a mystic pass that seemed to move the fingers of one hand right through the palm of the other. "Rise now, my lord," he said, "and prepare to take your place at the apex of Clouds-Gather, the Eye of the Maelstrom."

"And now we get up," said DeMacabre, as Freetrick rubbed at his throat and glared at the priest, "and
move
through these doors and out onto the Triskaidekagram. Excellent, my lord. Now we wait here."

They emerged from the winding corridor onto a huge open platform. It was round, or rather, Freetrick saw, donut-shaped, with an orange-glowing hole at the center he was sure extended all the way down to the volcanic caldera the castle was built on. Radiating out from that central shaft, Freetrick could see gray patterns inscribed in the black rock of the platform; cruelly hooked lines and jagged curves, converging at the circumference into thirteen points. And from each of these points there rose a black tower, covered in stone barbs and what Freetrick hoped were gargoyles, jabbing at the Maelstrom above.

The storm hung over them like a corpse's shroud, purple and writhing with slow evil. In its center, precisely aligned with the outlet of the volcanic shaft, the storm's eye flashed with lightning.

"Ah," said DeMacabre, "mm we have arrived at the top, the very
tip
, my lord, of Castle Clouds-Gather. From there, one can look out to the Necropolis and Skrea beyond, up into the Eye of the Maelstrom, or down, my lord, into the molten heart of the volcano."

Freetrick, who wanted to do none of these things, shivered, and turned around to look at the potentates filing through the door behind them. He saw Bloodbyrn, walking with her goblin to a spot on the platform opposite himself and DeMacabre. She and the goblin both glared at him.

"So..." Freetrick whispered to DeMacabre, "Bloodbyrn still seems pretty pissed at me."

"Indeed it was so, my lord," said DeMacabre, "and may I
complement
my lord on bringing his intended to such a state of emotion. If an old man can be forgiven the presumption, I might express my happiness to see demonstrated my lord's capacity to… arouse such
passions
in my daughter."

Freetrick tried to keep his expression blank. "DeMacabre," he said, "you are an inexpressibly creepy human being."

The Duke smiled greasily, "
Flatterer
."

And here came prince Feerix, with his habitual expression of constipated rage, following Teirchoke in his crablike chair.

"Uh," said Freetrick finally, "what was that Bloodbyrn meant about marriage and children customs?"

"Oh the un-marriage?" DeMacabre made poo-pooing gestures with a hand that would have looked at home breaking out from the clotted earth of a grave-yard. "My lord, my daughter is a credit to her upbringing, and an eminently suitable bride of darkness, if I may say so myself, but she lacks the…what would be the proper way to express it…the
patience
or perhaps the serenity, yes, the
serenity
that maturity brings. If she had lived as long and had drunk as much blood as her humble father," the pads of his long, pale fingers flattened against DeMacabre's ruffled chest, "she would not have worked herself into such a state, my lord."

"She seemed...pretty anxious."

Lava light reflected in crazy orange sparks in DeMacabre's eyes. "I believe, my lord, that my daughter was concerned about the matter of what we call
Primacy in Flagrante Delecto
."

There was some milling around the door now. A big box or something being man-handled---or monster-handled as the case me be---up, onto the platform.

"What does that mean?"

DeMacabre flapped his hand, "Only that my daughter is impatient, my lord, as are all young ladies, to demonstrate their skills. On the stage, as it were, for the first time."

The dark princes, ignobles, lords, and ladies continued to file out of the door, taking up positions around the edge of the platform at the top of the tower. There were people from the Vile Halls, an uncle of some description with the tall metal hat, and the other ignoble nobles.

"On...on stage?"

"Indeed, my lord. Mm, but now, I sense the ceremony will soon commence. If my lord wishes, we can tour the Ceremonial Seraglio at a later time, where he can get a feeling for the...I believe the actors call it
blocking
."

"Wait a second, what exactly does the marriage ceremony entail?"

"Un-marriage, my lord. Marriage is a disgusting Do-Gooder institution, and we of the kingdoms of evil shall have none of it!"

The three priests were the last to come through the doors onto the platform. They walked, oozed, or stalked to the central hole, where they stopped with a triple-thud of staffs on stone, and turned in place, capes and cloaks billowing in the hot wind rising from the volcano below. Over their heads, the Maelstrom churned, and dry lightning cracked between the clouds and metal spines that stretched up above their heads. The priests then began to chant in ancient and profane tongues.