by Tim Waggoner
"What are we looking at?" she asked.
"A park. It's a place where people in the city go to get away, feel close to nature, and relax." I smiled. "Kind of like the Wyldwood, only without the murderous shapeshifters."
"Everyone looks as if they're enjoying themselves. I wonder what it would be like to be human, fully human, and live in an ordinary house, work at an ordinary job, and go to the park at sunset."
"As I recall, it was pretty damned good." It had been a while since I had seen Earth except in movies on Mind's Eye broadcasts. But this was a hundred times better, and more heartbreaking, than any movie could ever be. Because I knew that all I would have to do to go there was to step through the glass. I was tempted. If I were going to die for good in the next day or so, at least I could die in the world where I'd been born and lived most of my life.
But I didn't step forward. There was still a chance that I could save myself. And besides, I don't like to leave a job unfinished.
"Pretty isn't it? Especially for Cleveland." Varvara had come out of the bathroom – excuse me, her private chamber – and was standing behind us. "Still, we don't have time for sightseeing." She snapped her long red-nailed fingers and the park evaporated and the mirror was just a mirror again. Devona looked disappointed.
"Any luck?" I asked.
"No, the fools wouldn't even acknowledge my attempts. Can't say as I blame, them, though. I'd have done the same thing; centuries of distrust are hard to overcome. I'll just have to try to talk to them once I get to the Nightspire, I suppose."
"You mean, once we get to the Nightspire," I said. "Devona and I have been through too much not to see this to the end."
"I don't think so, Matt. While you're fun to have around, Dis doesn't appreciate tag-alongs."
"The Darklords always bring a retinue with them," Devona said. "My father does, though I've never had the distinction of being part of it."
"So why couldn't we tag along with your tag-alongs?" I asked.
"Our retinues are primarily made up of Demilords, relatives, high-level city functionaries, and important Earth contacts," Varvara said. "Still… I suppose it wouldn't hurt anything."
"And think how much it'll annoy Talaith to see me there," I pointed out.
The Demon Queen brightened. "There is that. All right, you may accompany me. But we should go now. There isn't much time left before the ceremony starts." She looked at us and then wrinkled her nose. "But perhaps you two should freshen up a bit first."
After Devona and I spent a couple of minutes in Varvara's "private chamber," the three of us headed for the elevator.
As we walked by the bed, I nodded to the still comatose Magnus. "What about him?"
"Let him sleep," Varvara said with a wicked grin. "He'll need all the rest he can get for when I return."
The elevator arrived. We got on and began our descent.
Varvara turned to Devona. "Before, you asked – in quite a snippy tone, I might add – what I found so amusing about Matt."
"I was just–" Devona began.
"What I find so amusing about our friend here is that he is a champion of order in one of the most chaotic places in the Omniverse – an undead Don Quixote, tilting at Nekropolis's windmills on what may very well be an ultimately futile quest to make this a better place." She smiled. "Besides, he makes me laugh."
"I'm just a guy who does favors for people, Varvara, you know that." I hate it when she talks about me that way. Probably because I'm afraid she's right.
The elevator stopped, the door opened, and we were off to the biggest windmill Nekropolis has to offer – the Nightspire.
TWENTY-TWO
Of all the ways I might have imagined traveling to the Nightspire in pursuit of a thief and murderer, riding in the back of a hot pink limousine (with matching interior) wasn't one of them. Behind us was a line of far less striking vehicles bearing Varvara's retinue, primarily demons, but a few humans – mostly music industry and Hollywood types – who served her as well.
Varvara sipped a frozen daiquiri whipped up from the tiny wet bar by her personal bartender, a creature which resembled a levitating sea urchin, and waved through the open widow at the cheering crowds lining the street. Psychographers captured mental impressions for live Mind's Eye coverage of the Renewal Ceremony as we passed, while reporters from both the Tome and the Daily Atrocity shouted out questions to Varvara, all of which she cheerfully ignored.
"It's so nice to receive the adulation of the masses, don't you think?" Varvara said. She downed the rest of her daiquiri and told the urchin to mix her another.
Varvara is probably the most popular Darklord, considering she lets her subjects – and anyone who visits the Sprawl, for that matter – pretty much do as they please. I can't say near-anarchy is my idea of effective social policy, but then Varvara's never asked for my opinion. And I must admit, the Sprawl is the most interesting place in Nekropolis, which is why I suppose I make my home there.
The driver, who I would've taken for just another pretty muscle-boy if it hadn't been for the ram's horns jutting out of his head, spoke over the intercom.
"I have to slow down, Milady. Several Sentinels are coming up behind us."
Varvara pushed a button on her armrest. "No problem, love, but when they're past, speed up a tad. We're running a wee bit late."
I turned around, and through the rear window I saw three Sentinels walking in a row down the middle of the street. They weren't running – I wasn't sure if they could – but they were walking faster than I'd ever seen any of the golems move before.
"Don't tell me," I said. "They're going to arrest us for assault with an exceptionally tacky paint job."
"Remember what I said about you making me laugh?" Varvara asked. "I take it back."
The Sentinels tromped around us and continued down the street, accompanied by boos and hisses from the drunk and drugged-up crowd. Father Dis's police force wasn't exactly beloved by the denizens of the Sprawl.
"Where are they going in such a hurry?" I asked.
"They've been recalled to the Nightspire for the Renewal Ceremony," Devona explained.
Varvara frowned at me. "How long have you been in Nekropolis now, two years?"
"Just about."
"And you didn't know the Sentinels are part of the ceremony?"
I shrugged. "This is only my second Descension celebration, and I spent the first helping a pregnant witch escape her abusive warlock husband. At one point, he actually switched my personality with that of the fetus, and I – well, suffice it to say the situation took some straightening out, and I missed a good part of the celebration, including the Renewal Ceremony."
"You have to tell about that one some time, Matt," Varvara said. "So many mortals wish to return to the womb, but you're the only one I know who's managed to do it!" And she laughed the rest of the way to the Nightspire.
As we approached the slender black needle that was the Nightspire, I noticed something strange.
"Umbriel seems larger than usual."
"That's because it's descending for the Ceremony," Varvara said impatiently. "Really, Matt, are you going to be this tiresome the whole time?"
"More, if I can manage it."
The crowd was thickest as we neared the bridge that led from the Sprawl to the Nightspire. Varvara continued playing the gracious queen parading before her adoring subjects, when a grizzled old man in a yellowed seersucker suit and carrying a sheaf of paper broke out of the crowd and came running toward the limo, and Varvara's open window.
"Oh, no," I moaned. "Not now, Carl."
Carl thrust one of his homemade papers through the window and into Varvara's face.
"Beware the Watchers, Lady!" he shouted wildly, "Beware–" But that's as far as he got before Varvara hit a button and the window slid up. Carl barely retracted his arm in time. He released his "paper," however, and it fell onto Varvara's lap. With a grimace of distaste, she brushed it onto the floor.
"Usually I find C
arl's rants diverting, but I'm not in the mood tonight."
"I'm surprised he was able to approach the car at all," Devona said. "I'd think a Darklord would have better security."
"If Carl had any ill intent toward us, the wardspells on my car would've fried him as soon as he came within three feet." Varvara smiled. "Secure enough for you?"
Devona didn't reply.
The ram's-horn hunk drove us onto the bridge. The winds of the Furies didn't rise, but then we were expected. As soon as we reached the dull, gray, grassless earth of the island on the other side, the sonorous tolling of the Deathknell stopped.
I looked at Varvara, but she said, "That merely means that all five Darklords have now reached the Nightspire. I'm usually the last."
"Why am I not surprised?"
The driver pulled up to the Nightspire and parked behind a double row of coaches and wagons – the other Darklords' vehicles, I presumed. The chauffeur came around and opened Varvara's door, and she slid out, taking his proffered hand and allowing him to help her, though she was doubtless the far stronger of the two. Devona and I had to haul our butts out unassisted, of course.
The other cars in Varvara's entourage parked behind us, and their occupants disembarked, more than a few of them giving Devona and me dirty looks, obviously wondering who we were and how we rated riding in the front of the procession with their queen – especially when they didn't.
The green flames of Phlegethon which surrounded the small island flared higher than usual. Because of the coming ceremony? I wondered. The air seemed charged with barely contained energy, and I looked up. Directly over the tip of the Nightspire, Umbriel, looking bloated and heavy, continued its slow descent.
Varvara started toward the rectangular entrance of the Nightspire, and gestured for Devona and me to follow. I heard a few mutterings from Varvara's other guests. It appeared we'd usurped yet another honor. My heart would've bled for them – if I'd had any blood.
As we walked, I saw Silent Jack atop his Black Rig, a pale woman in a blood-stained dress sitting next him. Jack had brought his wife, Bloody Mary, along with him for this special occasion. The ghostly coachman touched his finger to the brim of his hat as we walked by, but Mary just looked at us with the crimson hollows where her eyes had once been. I thought of the E on my palm, and a chill ran down my back regardless of the fact I had no working nerves.
As we entered, I thought that if Gregor had wanted Devona to carry one of his children so that he might finally get a look-see inside a Darklord's stronghold, how much more excited he would be to actually learn about the interior of the Nightspire itself. Inside was the same as the outside: featureless black, as if the Nightspire had been shaped from solidified shadow. We walked down a long narrow corridor lit by torches of green fire. Varvara's outrageously high heels clacked hollowly as she walked, echoing up and down the hall. She looked like someone who was trying to appear as if she wasn't hurrying, when in fact she was. I had a feeling we were running more than a "wee bit late," as she'd earlier told our driver.
A mural was painted on the corridor's wall showing scenes depicting key events in the history of the Darkfolk leading up to the founding of Nekropolis. The first scene was of a primordial swamp, like the kind you'd see in any Earth museum showing primitive lifeforms leaving the water to take their first tentative steps on land. But instead of amphibians, the creatures emerging from this swamp were shapeless sinuous shadows. I learned later that this event was known as Darkrise and the creatures were called Shadowings.
The second scene was more sinister, showing creatures that were obviously forerunners of vampires and lykes preying on primitive humans. The Darkfolk in the next scene were more developed – looking much as they do today – and they sat on thrones made from human bones while mortal men and woman bowed down to them, worshipping them as dark gods. The fourth scene showed the tables turning, as humans with crude swords, spears, and axes attacked Darkfolk, driving them away from human settlements and into the shadowy wilderness. The next scene skipped a couple thousand years and picked up the visual narrative with the Inquisition, showing Darkfolk being tortured by humans – vampires staked, lykes skinned, witches and warlocks burned alive.
The Wanderyear came next, showing a robed figure I assumed to be Dis traveling the length and breadth of the world in search of other Darkfolk powerful enough to help him create Nekropolis. Good thing Yberio was dead; he'd certainly have felt slighted to learn he wasn't among those portrayed in this scene. The Darksome Council came after that, when Dis met with the five current Darklords atop a wind-blasted mountain peak where the barriers between dimensions were thinnest. Here Dis showed the Lords the Null Plains, the new home where the Darkfolk would build their great city. After that was the Bedarkening – the creation of Umbriel above the Null Plans – followed by the construction of Nekropolis, and then the Descension, when Earth's Darkfolk finally emigrated to their new home. The second-to-last scene showed the city in flames, blood running red in the streets while the Darklords' armies fought with no quarter given and none asked: the Blood Wars. The last image was of Nekropolis as it looks today: the five Dominions at relative peace, the Nightspire rising above all, as if to keep a close eye on things.
The corridor let us out into a vast circular chamber which sloped inward the farther up it rose, and I realized that the Nightspire was hollow. But while the inside walls of the Nightspire were the same unchanging black as the exterior, white marble columns ringed the chamber, and the floor was made of tiled mosaics. Dis had once been the Roman god of the dead, and it seemed his taste in interior decorating hadn't changed since the Empire's fall.
In the middle of the chamber was a large, raised marble dais in the shape of a pentagram. Sentinels surrounded the dais, face out, as if they were guarding it. At a quick estimate, I figured there were maybe thirty Sentinels altogether. I hadn't realized the city had that many. I thought I recognized one, a Sentinel with a faint scar running down its chest, as the one who had taken Varma's body off our hands. I wondered if the golem had delivered Varma to the Cathedral, and if so, what Galm's reaction had been. I supposed I'd find out soon.
The Sentinels were far from the chamber's only occupants, though. Vampires, lykes, Arcane, and half-visible spirits stood in small groups, talking and sampling hors d'oeuvres and imbibing drinks brought to them by bald, red-robed men and women. That is, the living ate and drank. The dead merely watched them do so. Between two columns on the far side of the chamber, a tuxedo-clad pianist with four arms played soft, unobtrusive background music.
"I can't believe it," I said. "After everything I've heard about it, the vaunted Renewal Ceremony turns out to be nothing more than a cocktail party?"
"These are merely the preliminaries to the ceremony," Varvara said quietly. "The ceremony itself will begin shortly."
"Who are the baldies in red?" I asked.
"The Cabal," Varvara said quietly. "Dis's personal attendants. And it would be a good idea to avoid calling them 'baldies.'"
"They look like waiters to me," I said.
"They are whatever Dis says they are," Varvara replied. "Don't bother trying to talk to them; they only respond to their master."
"We must find my father and tell him of the threat," Devona said, and without waiting for either of us to reply, she set off for a group of nearby vampires nibbling on what appeared to be small animal hearts. Varvara and I hurried after her.
She asked the vampires – who were dressed in overdone Bela Lugosi drag – where Lord Galm was. The vampires, who I took to be out-of-towners from Earth by the way they dressed, pointed to the base of the pentagram dais, where Galm was standing talking to Amon in his English hunter guise, Talaith, and a thin man with the gaunt face of a mortician. I assumed the latter was Edrigu. Devona made a beeline, or in her case a batline, toward them. There was one dignitary in attendance I'd never seen but heard a great deal about. Wrapped in ancient cerements, a crimson cape draped over her slender shoulders, a mask
of wrought gold concealing her face stood Keket, Overseer of Tenebrus, flanked by a pair of her jackal-headed Warders. Keket held such a powerful position in the city, she sometimes was referred to as the Sixth Lord, though she had no official standing as such. She stood off to the side, ignoring everyone else, and being ignored right back in turn. Prison wardens are never among the most popular of party guests, no matter what dimension you're in.
I half-expected to see Waldemar there too, but supposedly he never leaves the Great Library. Sometimes I think he is the library, body and soul.
Varvara caught up to Devona and grabbed her arm to slow her down. "I think it would be best if I led the way, dear." From her tone, and the way her eyes flashed, it was clear Varvara wasn't making a request.
Devona looked like she was going to argue, but then thought better of it and nodded. We continued with Varvara in the lead, and as we approached the other Lords, the Demon Queen opened her arms and said, "Darlings! So nice to see you all!"