The Kingdoms of Evil (72 page)

"There is nothing that cannot be known," he prayed, "nothing that cannot be explained." The pen circled and darted, tracing meridian lines in spiky crimson. "I am…I am Freetrick. I am a namer." He fought for the still calm of the state of holy knowingness, and wrote the runes before his blood clotted in his pen. "I name you…Light."

He completed the spell, waited, then opened his black eyes.

Nothing.

Freetrick looked down through his pince
-
nez at the spell he had drawn. He had made no mistake with it, but it wasn't doing anything. It simply sat there. Clotting at him.

"Strike it!" Freetrick snarled. "What the hell did I
do
last night?"

Word-magic. That's what he had done, but why had it worked then when it
didn't
work now? What had changed? Freetrick drew another word-magic spell, this time in black ink, repeated the standard prayer to The God of Words, then stared at it until his eyes watered, but nothing happened.

"Work, strike you out." The Ultimate Fiend growled between gritted teeth. "Work! Give me what I need to—" He stopped. To do what? To survive? To escape? "To
fix
this place!"

The door rattled as someone on the other side knocked.

***

"You've done something to your room." The Kaimeera padded into Freetrick's transformed office on cougar's paws, its bullet-shaped split in a jagged smile. "Can't quite put my finger on it…" A huge, red tongue hung down over a row of triangular teeth.

"Uh…yeah. I've had a crazy night." Freetrick stuck his fingers under the lenses of his pince-nez and massaged his eyeballs, "what's up, Kaimeera?"

"The Ultimate Fiend wishes to gain cognizance of the sinister motivations of his squirming underlings?" Freetrick gritted his teeth, took his fingers off his eyes, and looked up to see Mr. Skree crawl in under the door lintel. Against the new pale ceiling, his secretary stood out like a toad on a china plate.

"We were going to ask whether you wanted us to call the cleaning staff, Fiend." The Kaimeera sat on its haunches, mouth open wide enough for Freetrick to see the human mouth moving behind the shark-like teeth. "Although I admit it was mostly curiosity that brought
me
here." The monster's huge, yellow eyes scanned the room. "This is certainly an example of potent necromancy."

"Necromancy?" Freetrick squinted at him, then indicated the walls with their scrawl of magical symbols. "What makes you think this was necromancy?"

"By what other name would the magic committed by the Ultimate Fiend be known and feared?" said Mr. Skree.

The Kaimeera cleared its gruesome throat. "I suppose it might have been blood-magic, or a fear magic illusion." The furry neck stretched out as it sniffed at the floor. "But my guess would be necromancy. I mean,
you
did it."

"And thus the Ultimate Fiend is to be even more greatly admired and feared for his mastery of these new dark arts," Mr. Skree interjected.

Freetrick glared at him, then slid off his desk, walked to the wall, and tapped an alabaster fingernail against a rune. "Does that
look
like necromancy to you?"

The monsters obediently examined the symbols webbing the walls of Freetrick's study. "These characters do recall memories of the hated magics of the Do-Gooder Nations to the memories within this rotted brain," Mr. Skree said. "Surely they will strike fear and confusion into the Dark Nobility of Clouds-Gather."

"Yeah," agreed the Kaimeera, "reminding them you've been raised by the enemy, Fiend. It's sure to sew chaos."

"Adept is the Ultimate Fiend at the creation of disorder," Mr. Skree said, though with censure or satisfaction Freetrick couldn't say.

"I wasn't making a political statement. I was doing striking Rationalist magic!"

Mr. Skree and the Kaimeera exchanged another glance. "Surely…the mind of the Magnate of Gore is more twisted than the blighted imaginations of his servants can encompass."

"I'm not crazy," said Freetrick, once he had parsed this sentence. "I was really doing word-magic. Look at the struck-out walls!"

"The heathen symbols are most disturbing—"

"Under the symbols! The wall's like marble! And the floor, and my desk," Freetrick rapped a knuckle against the smooth, not-at-all-like-bone surface. "Or the struck-out
lights
. What do you think caused all that?"

Mr. Skree and the Kaimeera exchanged a glance. "Does…the Taloned Autarch wish his servants to say it was not the power of death channeled by the heir of the First God?"

"The wall is covered with striking word-magic runes," Freetrick grated. "How is that necromancy?"

"The effect does not define necromancy, Fiend," said the Kaimeera, "but the source of the energy."

"Place that contradictory servant in the clutches of this, your most humble automaton, and be assured that its agony shall be long for daring to speak contrary to the edicts of the Ultimate Fiend," said Mr. Skree.

"No," Freetrick said. "It couldn't have been necromancy! It didn't
feel
like…like," what
had
it felt like? Freetrick found he couldn't remember clearly. Everything after that first word-magic spell was vague and shadowy. And where the hell had Bloodbyrn gotten to? Scared off by the explosion of magic? Freetrick looked at his white hands. "Then how do you explain this?"

"Violent indeed is the schedule of the Ultimate Fiend." Mr. Skree's voice had taken on what Freetrick assumed was supposed to be a soothing hiss. "So steeped in blood it is, that the Chief Among Demons has forgotten the women he killed immediately before transforming his room."

"As if I could forget them."

"You could probably have done anything at that point, Fiend," said the Kaimeera.

Freetrick shook his head. "So I was doing word-magic
through
necromancy?"

"Well," said the Kaimeera, "I remember I once was, I mean, I ate a Rationalist soldier who knew some high-level spelling. He would might call what you did here last night…an emulation?"

"So I really
am
functionally omnipotent." Freetrick looked at his feet. "As long as I kill enough people."

"Indeed," Mr. Skree agreed, "and then so mighty is the evil power of the Most Despicable, that he could twist the very symbols of our hated enemy, and use them in his black spells."

"That's one way of looking at it," Freetrick sat on a corner of his remodeled desk as the implications sank in. He traced a finger of the pale surface of the desk under him. It was just possible to make out the lines that had once been spaces between scapulae. "If you don't pray to the God of Words. He won't read your runes. But here, I have people praying for me constantly, and it doesn't seem to take much skill to wield necromancy. All I lack is death energy, and, ha," he chuckled bleakly, "it's not even as if there are any limits placed on me about who I kill."

"
I
think the work you have produced is quite restive," the Kaimeera said, nodding its huge head at the transformed walls. "Nostalgic, even, at least for the parts of me that come from The RU."

"Aha." Freetrick snorted, "Which makes the whole thing even more disturbing, huh?"

"Of course, by both unholy law and ancient custom, the deeds of the despot must disturb the minds of those who dare gaze upon them." Mr. Skree said. "May this chittering excrescence be so audacious as to inquire as to what particular aspect of the current situation the Master of Storms refers?"

"I was referring," Freetrick rubbed a hand through his greasy white hair, "to the how-many-was-it girls I killed to get the energy to do this."

"Surely, the meat of the brain will be extracted from the skull of this servant for the dissenting reply," said Mr. Skree, "and for daring to suggest even the possibility that events could unfold in ways other than those willed into being by the twisted consciousness of the Lord of Shadows, but the assassins who so foolishly attacked the Ultimate Fiend, had they not been stopped, might have caused discomfort or inconvenience to the plans or, Maelstrom blast to flinders all those who dare to suggest such a thing, the body of the Ultimate Fiend."

"It was self-defense," said the Kaimeera, "No Rationalist court would convict you."

"And in Skrea, they applauded," Freetrick said, bitterly. "The Ultimate Fiend finally met their expectations."

"So?" The Kaimeera's mouth yawned wider as it stretched, and white claws unsheathed themselves from the fur of its paws. "Duty and necessity came together. It happens."

"I suppose," said Freetrick, sliding off his desk. He walked to the nearest wall and studied the symbols he had scrawled on it. He almost wanted to keep them. He
really
wanted to keep them. "Strike me out I miss word-magic."

"This shivering wretch would never dream of uttering anything at all in odds with the stated or even surmised opinions of the Ultimate Fiend," Mr. Skree whispered from behind him, "but duty demands the pointing out of the fact that the majority opinion among the Dark Nobility of these Kingdoms of Evil would most likely, forgive this servant, disagree with the sentiment so recently expressed by the Prince of Punishment."

"Oh the Dark lords and ladies would hate word-magic," Freetrick agreed, still looking at the writing on the wall, "it would cause all sorts of problems for them."

"Fortunate for them, then, that such foreign magic is impossible in this nation," said Mr. Skree.

"Right," came the drawling voice of the Kaimeera, "a god's magic cannot work in a Nation that does not pray to Him."

It was as if the Kaimeera had shone a light through Freetrick's brain. He whirled to face his servants. "So why don't you?"

"What?" The Kaimeera reared back from his black-eyed glare.

Freetrick was grinning. "Why don't you pray to the God of Words?" There, finally, was the missing piece in his plans. Prayer was the answer.

"Theology isn't my specialty, Fiend." Protested the Kaimeera, " I mean, I've eaten a hermit or two, but I don't know anything about higher-level magic."

"Well, who
does
know about this sort of thing?" Freetrick rapped his knuckles against his newly non-bone desk.

The Kaimeera looked up at Mr. Skree, who fidgeted on the ceiling.

"Though the grinding gears of the terrible mind of the Ultimate Fiend would no doubt arrive at the same conclusion, should they trouble with such details, it would be the bleak pleasure of this unworthy servant to anticipate the conclusions that must arrive in the mind of the Master of Evil, even as antediluvian monstrosities rise from the tar pits—"

"Tell them…" He needed to avoid arousing the suspicions of the Deep Synod, or anyone else, but he didn't have time to construct another elaborate ruse like the mock-gladiatorial show of the night before. "…tell them…" how about the truth? Grinning, Freetrick commanded his servants, "the Ultimate Fiend wants to discuss... the possibility of a rebellion among the monsters."

***

"Great Master of Misery!" the little translator piped as Grimp squinted at Freetrick's transformed study, "Grimp says he has heard no rumors of a rebellion among the monsters." The huge, humped shoulders of the ogre shifted. Grimp's eyes, wide-set, but disturbingly human under their wooly brows, looked into Freetrick's. Behind Grimp, Commander Skystarke swept into the office, followed by the Kaimeera. The room felt distinctly crowded.

"Well, glad to hear it," said Freetrick.

"Not in the Necropolis," continued the translator, "well, only the outskirts. No rebellion around Clouds-Gather, or rather, only in the out-of-the-way places in Clouds-Gather, except for the uprisings planned by the kitchen staff, of course."

Freetrick eyed the breakfast tray on his desk. "Uh…"

"The
kitchen
staff!" proclaimed Skystarke, "
are
, in
my
op
in
ion,
faah
too involved with their program of mutually assured destruction with the night porters and the lizard-man breeders to have found the
time
to poison
anyone
, Fiend."

Freetrick blinked. "Grimp, I'm not going to kill you. The rebellion thing was a trick to get you out of Dark Synod so I could talk to you." He looked sharply at the Kaimeera, "didn't you tell him that?"

The Kaimeera's mouth yawned to expose a wry twist on its speaking lips. "Far be it for
me
to try to interpret your orders, Fiend," said the Kaimeera.

Freetrick ran a hand over his hair. He had had enough time to pull it back while he got into some clean armor, but he still felt distinctly grimy. "Right. Well…" he looked at the Kaimeera, Grimp, and Mr. Skree. "I didn't call you here because I thought
you
were planning a rebellion." Although he should probably get Skystarke to look into the kitchen staff thing. "I'm more concerned with, well," he spread his hands, "with planning my own."