The Kingdoms of Evil (39 page)

Sausyarr's athame picked up his disgusted snort. "Actually, fellow villain, it will make your rebellious element flee to
my
despotate, where
I
will have to deal with them." There was another snort, "Fortunately, the Naobelites kill most of them for me."

Wrothnyth's hiss filled the pit, "You allow the scum of Naobel into our land? How
dare
you, villain."

"I do not dare anything, Despot Nghiffor," answered Sausyarr. "It is beyond the power of myself and the troops given me to keep the damned Do-Gooders out. Just finding and smashing their standing stones is more than my men can accomplish."

"So breed more monsters, villain." Wrothnyth screeched.

"Monsters?
Monsters
?" Sausyarr shouted the question across the Audience Pit at Wrothnyth. "What good would monsters do against the magic of Naobel? If you know nothing of battling Naobelites, then kindly keep your idiot mouth shut!"

"How dare you talk to me like that, villain? I, Wrothnyth, whose generation-name proclaims the title of Dark Prince to all those with the strength to hear!"

DeMacabre called for order, but nobody seemed to be paying attention. Cheers and boos were rising from the assembled dark lords.

Mist suddenly swirled in the air over the Audience Pit.

"Careful, Wrothnyth." Sausyarr's voice was grim and deep as a glacial lake. "Though you may be Dark Prince with a name that starts with Wroth, you must still ask yourself the question: Who has killed more of late, you or I?"

"I—" but Wrothnyth's answer was drowned out by the tone of an activating amplifier athame, and another voice, yelling, "I have killed more than either of you old men!"

"Who the hell is that?" Freetrick looked around to see Bloodbyrn wincing.

"That," she said, "is Argchoke the Kind, grandson of Teirchoke the Jaded, Despot Noggor.

"That's the creepy old guy in the moving chair."

Bloodbyrn continued talking. "Teirchoke's son lost his lineage their royal generation-name through an act of undue kindness, and now the grandson will stop at nothing to see the name reinstated. His quest can become…tiresome."

"Well, my dear, we should be charitable" DeMacabre's voice floated up from below, "It
is
good to see such enthusiasm in one of the new generation…"

His voice was briefly drowned out by Argchoke's screech: "Now whom must I kill to grant me the name Feerchoke!"

"…but one wishes," DeMacabre continued, "that the young lord had inherited some of his grandsire's intelligence."

And indeed, an old man's voice—Freetrick assumed it was Teirchoke's—sounded over an athame. "That would be someone who's name, in fact, starts with Feer. The Despot North Ftaghor is no more a Dark Prince than you are." Looking, Freetrick could see the old man, swaddled in furs, his insectile chair twisting so Teirchoke could shout at his grandson on the level of seats above him. "Now sit down and stop embarrassing me, you idiot."

"Teirchoke, control your spawn!" Wrothnyth said, "Can you not see that the reprehensible Sausyarr and I are embroiled in a duel of deepest—
hurk
!"

A blast of force from Sausyarr sent the squat noble tumbling backwards to hit the servant sitting behind him. Stone cracked, and mist swirled thick and black.

Sausyarr began to roar in triumph, but the roar died as the mist rushed down at him. Almost too fast to see, black tentacles formed in the air and darted at the white-haired lord. Sausyarr stepped back with one foot, then rose in a spin that turned his silver-gauntleted hands into a flashing silver blur. The edge of one gauntlet connected with a tentacle, and the squirming ectoplasm dissolved back into water vapor.

"Aha!" Wrothnyth rose from the seats, cape billowing in a miniature tornado. In one hand he clutched something large and round. "Who has killed more,
now
?" He flung the round object away, and Freetrick's eyes widened as he saw the hair spread out behind it.

"Bloodbyrn, we have to stop this."

"Ugh,
yes
, my lord?" Bloodbyrn leaned back against him, "
must
you squirm so?"

Sausyarr spun, and the Despot's gauntlet separated from his stiff fingers to hurtle across the Pit at Wrothnyth. Wrothnyth dodged, but the flying gauntlet flickered after him through the air like a fish. With a wail of panic, he held out his hands. Freetrick could feel the pulse of invisible force. Did he have enough energy to reach out and stop them? Not a chance, with just what he had absorbed from his breakfast rat.

The gauntlet struck Wrothnyth's necromantic defenses. For a moment, it quivered in the air, a bare inch before the Despot's pale face, its blade-tipped steel fingers straining toward his eyes. Then it dropped to the floor, exhausted.

"Ha!" Sausyarr roared as the weapon fell out of the air and rang on the stones below. "And there is your precious death, wasted. Your defenses are gone, villain. Now all that remains is to squeeze."

"Bloodbyrn," said Freetrick, "DeMacabre. Stop this!"

Black mist bloomed over Sausyarr's head.

"My lord?" said DeMacabre, "oh very well." He made a pass over his athame with one hand and leaned toward the blade. "Enough." His voice rang like a thunderclap. "Be seated, Despot Nghiffor! And Despot North Ftaghor, the Skull Throne has more questions to ask, and we do not appreciate this distraction."

To Freetrick's surprise—and Bloodbyrn's apparent disappointment—the two necromancers complied. Wrothnyth sat down meekly, and Sausyarr turned to face the Secretary again, the black mist over his head disappearing. "Dark Secretary?"

"The Throne requires that you justify your order of troops," said DeMacabre.

"Monsters are no good for fighting Naobelites. Not when they've got their god behind them." Sausyarr spoke as calmly as if he had not just witnessed a murder and nearly perpetrated another.

"Where is North Fuh-whatever?" Freetrick whispered at Bloodbyrn.

"North Ftagh, my lord. It borders Between on the west and Dewmn Despotate on the North," said Bloodbyrn. "We passed through the Sausyarr's despotate on our way to Castle Clouds-Gather, Malevolence."

"Every summer," Sausyarr continued to address the assembly, "that tempest-blasted Do-Gooder god's influence extends and the Betweeners and their wheel-stones kill more of my staff." He turned with a scrape of steel boots to face the Skull Throne. "I need men, Malevolence. Un-life-twisted men, or else in the next season the Betweeners will strip yet more of our land from us."

Freetrick remembered the INVASION box on his flowchart

"For this reason," said Sausyarr, "I ask for intervention by the Skull throne. For the defense of the lands of the Skrean nation and the Covenant between Good and Evil, force my nephew the Despot South Ftaghor to send men from his levies to my Despotate.".

"mYes," DeMacabre said, "I am afraid that plan would be ill-advised in the extreme, your Wickedness. We cannot take troops out of one border despotate to shore up another."

Why? Freetrick wondered.

"Instead...well...ah!" DeMacabre clapped his hands together, "
I
know! The Marquis DeDïabaisse still commands human peasants from his swamp tower, does he not? Let them be sent to you as soldiers in your war against the Light. And how is that? Agreed? DeDïabaisse? Sausyarr? My lord?"

"Uh," said Freetrick.

"
Ex
-cellent." DeMacabre clapped his hands again, "That's
that
all sorted out then. Let us continue shall we?" He looked around for his next victim. "Ah yes, your Fiendishness Despot Hlirghor. Speak before the Skull throne, and may you be destroyed utterly if you displease He Who Sits Upon It."

"Fiend!" Came a voice from the assembly, "I petition the council for funds from the royal Fiendish treasury!"

Freetrick sat up. "What for?"

"Ah…" came DeMacabre's voice: "The Ultimate Fiend Demands an account of your nefarious machinations, lowly minion!"

"Fiend!" came the reply, "My greatest invention yet, my lord! For the people!"

The people? Freetrick bent down to DeMacabre, "Is it a public works project?"

"Modest worm!" Sneered DeMacabre into his athame, "can your puny intellect encompass the concept of 'public works project'? For that, you parasite, is what the Lord of Misery demands to know."

"Oh yes!" Wrothug answered after a short pause, "It works the public, well, my lord. And it is a spectacular improvement upon the peasant squisher mark one."

While Freetrick gaped, DeMacabre filled in, "and why can your own taxes not fund this project, dog?"

"I have squished my tax-payers, villain."

"Ah yes, of course," said DeMacabre. "Very well, then. I declare—"

"No! No way!" Freetrick shouted.

"That the Skull throne will not fund this project, you hapless cephalopod." DeMacabre finished smoothly, but his face tilted up to display his raised eyebrow to Freetrick.

"DeMacabre," hissed Freetrick over the rising growl of assembled nobles, "we are not going to use Clouds-Gather money to fund a project that will…"
be really really horrible and insane. But of course that wouldn't convince anyone. "I won't permit a project that will kill our taxpayers."
Freetrick finished.

DeMacabre pursed his lips, "really, my lord. Some things are more important than money, if I may say so."

"But it will squish them so much
more
!" came the plaintive voice of Wrothug.

"You must sit strait, my lord," said Bloodbyrn, squirming on of Freetrick's tilted lap, "This is most uncomfortable."

"No, funding, DeMacabre," said Freetrick leaning over further. "In fact I want your athame. I have some things to say to these guys."

The grumbling from below rose, crested, then abruptly fell silent as a new voice boomed over through the air.

"HOW DOES IT WORK?...OH, NOT SO CLOSE To my mouth? Okay. Can everyone hear me?" The various nobility of the Kingdoms of Evil took their hands from their ears.

"This is Free—Feerborg, your Ultimate Fiend," boomed their lord and master in a slightly more modulated roar. "It's been…it's been great to see you all today…to see the work of our government in action. So, uh, thank you. Oh for crying out loud Bloodbyrn, just get off my lap!"

Lords of terror and death craned their necks as a series of amplified grunts, squeals, and muffled curses echoed over their heads.

"Okay," the voice said presently, "I want to thank you for all the hard work you guys have done so far. You've…sure done a great job of being evil. So give yourselves a hand."

There was the sound of clapping from the Skull Throne. The assembled dark rulers of the earth struck their mighty gauntlets together, cringing in embarrassment.

Freetrick cleared his throat, "Ahem. So, um, you can imagine how difficult this is for me to say, but…I think…that we all would do well to consider…perhaps…a…well, a policy of government that isn't so…bad?"

Silence from the dark aristocracy. Even Strakhblargle's gutted servant stopped gurgling to look up toward the Skull Throne, a horrified expression in his dying eyes.

"But," said one of the Skreans, a young man in silk-draped black iron, "my lord, the Twisted Ways of the First God are ours alone to follow."

"Thus it is written," grated another, "in the Covenant of Good and Evil."

"Well..." Freetrick had meant to lead into this gradually, with some sort of presentation. If only he could use necromancy to make a slide projector. "Think of it this way. If you all did
such
a good job or running the Kingdoms of Evil according to the Covenant, think how much
better
things would be if we, you know, sort of forgot about the Covenant entirely?"

It was Teirchoke who rose from his chair to break the silence. "The Ultimate Fiend orders us to abandon the Covenant of Good and Evil?"

"Well," seated on the Skull Throne, a bloody enchanted dagger in his left hand, a spiny dominatrix slouching mutinously at his right, doubt entered the ink-black eyes of the Ultimate Fiend. This had all looked much better on paper. "yes?"