Dark Kingdoms

by Richard Lee Byers

  Up ahead, something made a coughing sound.

  Potter crept forward, pulled a leafy branch aside, and saw his quarry for the first time. The menagerie keeper had chosen a truly magnificent animal, a cat striped like a Bengal tiger, twelve feet long from the tip of its nose to the root of its twitching tail. A pair of huge ivory fangs curved like scimitars from its upper jaw.

  Perhaps because he was downwind of it, the sabertooth hadn't yet detected Potter. But he didn't want to take it by surprise; nor did he wish to kill it with a long, heavy weapon like the halberd. Either tactic might end the confrontation too quickly, denying him the catharsis he craved. He laid the lance on the ground and drew his dagger from its scabbard, then stepped into the open.

  Instantly, the sabertooth whirled to face him. Its green eyes blazed.

  "Come to me," said Potter, advancing. Already he felt more like an archangel, less like a man. He unfastened his voluminous mantle and it slipped from his shoulders.

  The tiger snarled.

  "No," said Potter, smiling. "You can't frighten me off and you can't avoid me, either, not for long. I'm going to kill you unless you kill me first."

  As if it had understood him, the Phantasy charged.

  Potter hadn't expected anything so big to move quite so fast. Even though he'd been awaiting its attack, he only barely managed to dodge out of the way. As it was, the cat's shoulder brushed him and knocked him reeling into a tree. His armor clanged.

  As he recovered his balance, the sabertooth whirled and pounced at him. Sidestepping, he thrust at its neck with his darksteel blade.

  The dagger punched into the tiger's flesh just above the shoulder. It was a serious wound, as the ripples of darkness proved, but it didn't finish the creature. Spinning, the sabertooth swiped at Potter with its paw, catching him on the hip. The blow hurled him to the ground, and the animal leaped on top of him.

  He clutched at its throat, struggling to keep it from plunging its elongated fangs into his chest. Simultaneously he stabbed the beast, over and over again, while it raked his lower body with its hind legs. Its claws shredded his armor and the flesh beneath.

  Yet he scarcely felt the pain, and for the first time in days he wasn't even a little bit afraid. A pure and joyful savagery possessed him.

  He dragged the dagger down the sabertooth s chest, cutting a gaping gray incision. For a moment the cat fought even more frantically than before. Thrusting its head down, it finally rammed one of its immense teeth all the way through Potter's shoulder. But then the beast began to shudder. It collapsed on top of him, nearly crushing him, and then its carcass melted away.

  As he inspected his wounds, watching them begin to close, Potter reflected that it was a shame he couldn't hold on to the tiger's head and hide for trophies. Of course, the artificers could duplicate them, but that wouldn't be the same.

  And then, abruptly, even though he'd ordered the jungle cleared, he sensed someone watching him.

  Since he still felt godlike, the realization didn't trouble him. Heedless of the pain it caused him, he surged to his feet. Bits of his broken mail fell clinking to the ground. He summoned his halberd and cloak. The former streaked into his hand and the latter floated upward, spread itself like a pair of wings, swooped through the air, and draped itself around his shoulders. Holding the polearm across his body, he assumed one of the Smiling Lord's ritual stances.

  "Come forward," he commanded.

  No one answered.

  "I know you're there," said Potter in his most magisterial tones, "just as I'm sure you know it's treason to spy on a Deathlord. Nevertheless, if you show yourself now, I'll be lenient."

  Still, no one replied.

  With the joy of slaughter still singing through his soul, Potter wasn't inclined to be patient. He'd hunt down the intruder, wring an explanation from the wretch, and then punish him as his temerity deserved. He opened his senses, looking, listening, feeling for vibrations in the earth, and sifting the myriad tastes and odors floating on the breeze.

  He couldn't locate the spy. And that was peculiar. Even before his ascension to his present office, he'd rarely met a ghost with perceptions as acute as his own, ana Charon's grace had heightened them still further. Ordinarily, even Harbingers veiled in shadow couldn't hide from him. And yet he didn't doubt the veracity of the sensations, the small hairs standing up on the back of his neck and the chill oozing up his spine, that warned him something was amiss.

  A pang of human disquiet disturbed the Smiling Lord's divine equanimity. Potter did his best to quash it. So what if he hadn't pinpointed the intruder yet? He'd simply have to move around until he did, in the same way he'd located the sabertooth. It wasn't as if he'd be in any real danger in the meantime. No lurking assassin could pose a threat to the Lord of War and Murder.

  Scarlet lighting flickered and thunder rumbled in the eternal storm clouds overhead. His torn legs throbbing, Potter advanced on a stand of brush thick enough to conceal a human form. No longer meshing properly, two pieces of his battered armor scraped together.

  A light prickling jittered across patches of Potter's skin. Over the course of several seconds the sensation intensified to a hot, stabbing pain. Certain he was under attack, he pivoted back and forth, trying to find his assailant. He still couldn't.

  Another flare of agony wrung a grunt out of him. He decided he needed to see what was happening to his body, even though a part of him cringed at the prospect. He fumbled off one of his steel gauntlets.

  His hand was changing, the fingers twisting, the knuckles enlarging, brown spots appearing on the coarsening skin. It looked as if it was withering into an old man's hand.

  A wraith couldn't perish of senescence. That was an affliction of matter, not spirit. But Potter's could feel his entire body altering, shrinking, becoming stooped and frail, and a numbing trickle of Oblivion oozing through the core of his chest.

  If this wasn't old age, it was a counterfeit, a weapon, just as lethal, and he suspected he had only a few seconds to find the enemy who was casting the curse against him. Any longer than that would be too late.

  Dropping his gauntlet, he turned this way and that, peering about, the weight of his armor, unnoticed only a minute before, now pressing cruelly on his shoulders. He wheezed, unable to shake the panicky feeling that couldn't catch his breath even though he knew he didn't need to. He seemed to feel a heart twinging and stuttering in his breast.

  And worst of all, his vision blurred, and the sounds around him—the recorded jangle noises and the clinking of his damaged mail—-grew muffled. If he hadn't been able to find his enemy before, the very notion seemed risible now.

  Potter's knees buckled. He toppled forward.

  No! he thought. With what little remained of his strength, he jammed the butt of his halberd against the ground and clung to the shaft as tightly as he could. The polearm held him precariously upright as if he were a drunkard leaning on a crutch. I am the Smiling Lord. Charon s anointed lieutenant. I will not end like this.

  As if it had been waiting for this declaration of defiance, his mask invigorated him with a surge of strength. The arcane energy didn't halt his deterioration, but it might allow him to function for a little longer despite it. The world swam back into partial focus. Squinting, he peered about.

  And at last he seemed to glimpse a shadow shifting between two tree trunks, though his sight was still so murky he couldn't be sure. He lifted the halberd and threw it like a spear.

  The darksteel head of the weapon slatrimed into the center of the shadow's chest. Clutching at the shaft, the assassin dropped to his knees. But despite the deadly enchantments which Charon and Nhudri, the emperor's chief artificer, had laid on the halberd, the fellow's body didn't dissolve, nor did his wounding halt the progress of Potter's destruction.

  The writhing thread of Oblivion in the Deathlord's torso grew like a fungus, extending tendrils into his head and limbs. He realized he only had time for one more attack.

  Concentrating w
ith all his fading might, he struggled to conjure one of the greatest magics of the ancient Harbingers' guild, a trick so difficult that most modem students of their Arcanos never mastered it. For a moment nothing happened, but then he felt the power rise within him.

  Suddenly the darkness around the assassin grew blacker, and then clutched at him with inky tentacles. He only had time for a startled yelp before rile thrashing mass of shadow imploded around him, vanishing and taking him with it. Only the halberd remained, softly thumping to the ground.

  Potter hadn't actually destroyed his attacker. He'd thrust him into the Tempest. But at least he was gone, and with his departure, his magic lost its bite. The Deathlord felt the seething mass of Oblivion inside him contracting. The gnarled fingers of his naked hand began to straighten.

  Unfortunately, the fierce serenity he'd derived from the hunt was gone, too. Pain and terror had wiped it away. Feeling entirely human again—human, in horrible jeopardy, and utterly out of his depth—he slumped down on the ground.

  The Pentium's monitor displayed a black step pyramid. The tiny figure at the top made a stabbing motion and then held up an crimson lump of flesh. Cheering blared from the speakers, and streams of blood ran down the sides of the monument. That image dissolved into a picture of a huge stone city on an island, a bewildering complex of towers, castles, and bridges. The water around it turned inky black and began to spin, shaking the buildings apart, grinding the bedrock to shards, sucking everything down.

  Chester was making his presence known.

  Dunn grimaced. The cartoonish display was a waste of his time. And he always felt silly speaking out loud to a computer, even though when Chester was inhabiting the machine, he could hear him and even use the built-in sound system to answer back. The SAD agent wished that somebody else with a little authority, someone made of flesh and blood and consequently able to carry on a normal telephone conversation, had been available for a conference.

  "Hi," said Dunn. "When you get done jerking off, you can let me know what's going on down there. Have you found Bellamy and the girl?"

  The face of a middle-aged black man, a long, narrow countenance with wire- rimmed glasses and graying hair, appeared on the screen. Dunn assumed that Chester had looked like that when he was alive. He'd never been interested enough to actually inquire.

  "No," said the ghost, his artificial voice a little tinny. "Or rather, our agent did find Bellamy at the headquarters of the Arcanum. But she didn't manage to kill him or all the Arcanists either. She only nailed a couple, and then Bellamy stunned her by neutralizing her host body. By the time she came to, everybody had cleared out of the house, and we haven't found any trace of them since."

  "Nice work," said Dunn sarcastically. He reached into his jacket for his tobacco pouch.

  "We'll get them," Chester said. The monitor showed Bellamy lying bloody and mangled in an alley.

  "I don't know about that," said Dunn, sprinkling a line of tobacco onto a rolling paper. "Bellamy knows how to find people, which means he knows how to keep from being found. And no offense, but your crowd has certain disadvantages when it comes to a manhunt. I'm sure it's helpful to be invisible and walk through walls, but on the other hand you can't question live people. Most of you can't even flip the pages of a motel register or rummage through a wastebasket, especially if the what- do-you-call-it, the Shroud, is thick in that particular location."

  "You're forgetting the Puppeteers," Chester said. The screen showed leering shadows riding piggyback on a line of stooped, naked, blank-faced human beings.

  Dunn lit his cigarette and took a long drag, savoring the heat and flavor of the smoke. "I'm not forgetting anything," he said. "Most of the Skinriders are slated for other jobs. If you send them after Bellamy, you risk derailing the whole terrorism thing. I'll tell you what we'll do. I'll come down there and catch him for you. It's what I should have done in the first place."

  Chester's face reappeared on the screen. "Can you get permission to come?" he asked.

  Dunn shrugged. "Probably. If not, I'll go AWOL. I wasn't planning to stay on at the Bureau much longer anyway. After the big day, we won't need a mole in SAD."

  "But until now, it's best if we have one," Chester said. "Don't do anything reckless. Let's stick to the plan."

  "You have your priorities ass-backwards," said Dunn. "SAD doesn't have a clue. With the damage I've done to their database, it'll be years before they get a clue. The Arcanists have never been players, not really, and Weiss and Waxman were a joke. But you worry about them and not a guy like Bellamy."

  "Because they know something about our world and he doesn't."

  "You mean, he didn't. By now, the Arcanists have filled him in. And that means he actually could pose a problem. I admit it isn't likely, but given his skills and personality, it's possible."

  Chester frowned. "And you're certain you could find him and take him down."

  "Hell, yes. Because I'm an even better manhunter than he is. And as we already know, all I have to do is show him my other face to drive him out of his mind."

  "You have a point, but I don't want to say yes or no, not right now. Let me talk to the others—"

  "Hey," Dunn growled, "time for a reality check. My people and I don't take orders from you guys or even the honchos on the pyramid. We're your partners, not your flunkies. I wasn't asking your permission, I was telling you. I'm coming."

  "Now you listen—" Chester shrilled.

  Dunn laid his hand on the computer and discharged a crackling burst of electricity into the works. The device went dead, as did the light fixture overhead. The SAD agent heard the other FBI staffers in the surrounding offices exclaiming in surprise and irritation.

  Since Dunn didn't know much about ghosts, he had no idea whether the zap had actually hurt or even inconvenienced Chester in the slightest. But it had seemed worth a shot.

  Montrose reached the bluff south of Grand Gulf shortly after sunset. He couldn't see or hear anyone moving around the derelict church, and by the time he and his irregulars secured their flotilla and started up the trail, he was reasonably certain that they'd arrived in advance of Gayoso's Legionnaires, who were coming overland to check out reports of Spectre activity in Union Church.

  As he clambered upward—it hadn't seemed especially practical to bring Alexander on a lengthy river journey—he felt his Shadow stir, a sensation like a heavy weight shifting in the depths of his mind. He'd been aware of the bloated mass of the parasite every minute since his visit to the false Pardoner. The nerve-wracking feeling made the stink of the local paper mill even harder to bear.

  Yet swollen with strength as his dark side was, as far as he could tell it hadn't actually tried to do anything to him. He wondered what it was waiting on, and hoped it wouldn't attempt to paralyze him in the midst of the battle soon to come.

  "You're solemn this evening," said Fink, marching along beside him. Once again, Montrose was impressed by the other wraith's ability to gauge his mood despite his mask. "Aren't you worried about undermining my morale?" He leered at the notion that anyone or anything could actually dampen his fighting spirit.

  "I was just thinking," Montrose replied.

  "Still craving a Pardoner is more like it," the big man replied with flawless insight. Montrose had told him about his near-disastrous experience in Under-the-Hill. "You know, if you're worried about your Shadow getting even stronger, you can keep yourself out of the actual fighting."

  "And wouldn't that do wonders for everyone's morale," the Stygian answered.

  "For all their virtues, our fellows are jumped-up bandits, not regular soldiers. They follow me because they imagine I'm braver and tougher than they are. If I tried to lead from the rear, they'd forsake me at the first setback."

  "You have a point," the river man conceded. "It doesn't help their confidence when you look like you're going crazy, either; but on the other hand, maybe it doesn't hurt it an awful lot. They'll follow a lunatic if he's a cunning, vicious lunatic." He
grinned. "Otherwise I'd never be able to find a crew."

  Montrose smiled. "Over the past few weeks, I've learned a secret about you, Mike. You aren't quite as mad as you let on."

  "You repeat that and you'll have to fight me all over again. How are you doing with the big secrets? Do you have any idea what these phony Pardoners are all about?"

  The Stygian sighed. "Not yet. I still haven't found time to conduct anything but the most cursory investigation. But when we get back to Natchez, I'm going to make time." And hope he wasn't starting too late in the game for it to make any difference.

  They reached the top of the bluff, which was as vacant as Montrose had anticipated. The dilapidated church, former sanctuary of the Valhalla Circle, creaked faintly in the breeze, its crumbling spire a notched black blade in the gloom. Down in the mortal settlement, electric lights were winking on.

  "What now?" asked Fink.

  "Wait, I suppose," Montrose replied. "You choose some pickets and scouts while I take a first look around." He soared into the air and alit atop the steeple.

  Clinging there, he removed a small but powerful pair of binoculars—a treasure he'd recently discovered in the markets of Natchez—from one of his cloak pockets, raised them to his eyes, and began to peer about. The gathering darkness made observation difficult, even for wraith eyes, but he glimpsed a flicker of movement at the edge of town, in a dark, decaying block of buildings that looked like a prime location for a Haunt.

  Adjusting the focus, he looked a second time. What he saw made his muscles clench in rage.

  Descending so fast he was nearly in free fall, his mantle billowing around him, he flew back down to the ground, where Fink stood giving orders to half a dozen irregulars. "Never mind what I told you before," Montrose said. "I spotted the Heretics, and it looks as if they're getting ready to make a run for it. If we don't go catch them immediately, they'll slip away."