Kings, Queens, Heroes, & Fools

by M. R. Mathias

  “Do you have a better one?” Mikahl grinned stupidly.

  Hyden forced the liquor down his throat and made as if he were a dragon breathing fire across the sea. “Not yet, Mik,” he managed to answer. “But by the White Goddess, and all the gods of men, we’d better come up with one.”

  ***

  Invisible, Phen followed the skull to the hall the red priests had turned into a temple of Kraw. The priests didn’t like the idea of the Queen’s wizard standing over them while they worked, but apparently there wasn’t much they could do about it. After much debate, the three priests finally convinced Cole to relocate them and the Silver Skull. Phen overheard most of the conversation and it scared him. The priest needed a larger room, preferably with a high ceiling, so that any larger demons or devils, and especially the great Kraw, would have room to move about once a gateway to the Nethers could be opened. Cole asked them how a large demon would be able to leave such a chamber without destroying the walls to get out. That caused another argument, about the shape changing capabilities of demon kind.

  Finally the decision was made to move the whole mess outside where there was plenty of room. There was a large enclosed garden off of the royal chamber. The gazebo, the priests decided, would make a perfect dais. The skull was placed on a table while the priests transferred their candles, tomes, and other accessories. Cole made zard servants hang curtains from the eaves of the structure so that the curious eyes of the tower guards wouldn’t intrude. A lectern, stolen from the castle’s chapel, was draped in black silk and the skull was eventually placed atop it in the center of the octagonal floor of the gazebo. A long table was covered with candles, bowls and other items, such as likenesses of Kraw in wood, gold, and stone.

  Phen was in the garden, watching from a distance. He shuddered when his eyes met the milky green chips of jade that stared out of the Silver Skull. It almost seemed alive, as if it were anticipating the red priests’ spells. Phen overheard Cole grumbling about Shaella’s extended flight with her new dragon.

  The eager priests soon grew fidgety, but Cole seemed like he couldn’t care less about any of it. Long after dark, Cole took the skull back into the castle. He laughed at the priests, then he threatened them when they protested. Phen followed him down stairways and through twisting halls. He was led through several rooms, and a passage that no one but the wizard seemed to know about. He had to stop his pursuit when he looked up and realized he was lost. But at least he knew where the skull would be when the priests got around to using it. Luckily Spike found him and led him back to a familiar place in the castle before disappearing again around a corner.

  Phen found that he was hungry, but ignored the sensation for now. He figured he could sleep in the corner of the room the priests had been using. It didn’t look like they would be leaving the gazebo. He decided that, if they came back to the hall, it was big enough for him to stay out of their way.

  Feeling secure in his immediate plans, Phen decided that he needed to eat. He reached out to Spike through his familiar link and went to find the lyna. He ended up at a pantry that was built under a set of little used stairs.

  To Phen’s great surprise, several lyna were gathered there. None of them, save for Spike, seemed very friendly though, and they gave the boy plenty of space.

  “Hello, Spike,” Phen said as he dropped into a squat to rub his familiar behind the ears. Spike loved it, and as long as Phen only rubbed toward Spike’s tail, he didn’t get pricked. “Who are your friends?”

  Spike didn’t answer him with words, but conveyed that the other lyna were pets of the zard, or had been delivered there in the shipping crate they’d been born in. Phen was privy to the odd thoughts that Spike picked up from the others of his kind. When he asked Spike to help him find some food, a female lyna urged them both to follow her.

  Spike conveyed that the female lyna belonged to the Queen’s servant zardess. Phen remembered seeing Queen Shaella take her staff from a zard girl before she’d taken flight on the dragon. He noticed Spike’s smug strut and could tell by the peculiar glances he was getting that his familiar knew how to cultivate the acquaintance.

  “I’ll bet she can’t hear the Queen at night,” Phen said to Spike.

  “Sticka, I am,” the female lyna’s unexpected response found Phen’s mind. “She talks to her demon lover with her magics. She’ll use a silver skull soon to call him back from the dark place he is in.”

  Learning that another lyna could sense his thoughts disturbed him, but his nose was suddenly filled with the warm wholesome smell of cooking bread. His mouth began to water and his belly growled. He hadn’t eaten since dawn, and by his best guess it was near the middle of the night.

  The two lyna distracted a cook while Phen pilfered himself a healthy meal. A short while after he ate he fell asleep in the pantry under the stairs where the castle’s lyna congregated.

  ***

  Cole found that many perks came with the duty of running Westland in Shaella’s name. One of the boons was getting to oversee the dungeon. Like his mentor, Pael, he had a great interest in crossbreeding species. They had different goals in their experimentation, though. Pael wanted to create a race of creatures he could control and use as an army. Cole, however, just wanted to create one terrible and powerful beast. Something he could control, that was capable of battling a pack of breed giants, or an entire troop of men. In the winter, Flick had captured for Cole a real giant. After the invasion of Westland, Flick lorded over the northern lands until Shaella loosed the breed giants. The giant herdsman had ranged down into Westland, chasing after a stray devil goat. Flick captured him and kept him in the cells below the keep at Northwatch. Cole had secreted the giant here to Lakeside Castle’s dungeon. Shaella either didn’t know about it, or she didn’t care. She stayed wrapped up in her chamber most of the time, using the Spectral Staff to communicate with Gerard. She had her twisted world, and Cole had his.

  She wasn’t concerned with his experimenting. At least Cole didn’t think she was. After all, he was following in her father’s footsteps. His prisoner was forgotten for now, though. He was curious about the Skull of Zorellin. According to history, Shokin had used it to open a gateway into the Nethers. The priests were going to try and bring their god back through just such a gateway. Cole knew that the skull had capabilities other than opening portals into hell. Like his mentor, Cole had studied the spell books religiously. He learned that with the power of the skull he could summon a thing or two that he could use in his experiments, and more importantly, he could bind certain creatures to his will.

  That is exactly what he hoped to do with a thing he accidentally loosed into the lower levels. It was a malformed creation—part cave bear, part breed giant. A sentient creature, it had escaped its confinement and was loose. Until he killed or contained it, the lower levels of the dungeon were useless to him. Not even he dared to go down there. He knew that it would eventually starve if he left it alone, but he wanted to try and bring it under his control before that happened. He knew he didn’t have much time to use the skull. When Shaella returned, he was certain that her full attention would be invested in using it to free her lover.

  Cole had already ordered his zard servants to prepare a test subject for him. The lizard-men relished the chance to nab an unsuspecting breed.

  The exauhsted beast growled out and pulled at the chains that held its arms splayed wide. Blood dripped from the wounds that shackles had dug into its writsts. Its legs were in chains too, and stretched so that that the creature couldn’t bend its knees.

  “It’ll be over soon,” Cole comforted ironically, earning a hissing laugh from the zard was watching over the captive. He then sat the Silver Skull on the breed beast’s chest and spoke a series of ancient words three times over. There was a slight humming sensation, but nothing else happened.

  Cole, fearing that the controlling spell hadn’t worked, moved the skull to a table and gave the creature an order.

  “Get your hands out
of those irons. Do it now.”

  For a moment he was disappointed, but then the zard attendant started hissing and pointing at the breed. The huge beast began yanking and jerking at the shackles, tearing the skin from its wrists until a bone finally snapped. It screamed out terribly, but didn’t stop trying to get free. Cole wasn’t paying anymore attention. The skull could do what he needed it to do. He had to prepare so that he could finish before Shaella returned.

  Chapter Thirty – Seven

  The dragon-blooded beast that had once been Gerard Skyler was angry. He’d lost the ring. His long clawed finger stretched it to its limit, and in some recent battle it must have snapped off and clanked away into the endless darkness. He couldn’t even say how long it had been missing.

  It wasn’t a necessary thing for him. Its magic was puny compared to his, but he coveted it. Gerard’s twisted power had grown exponentially. Blistering magical attacks, stout defensive shields, and tricky illusionary castings now came to his mind when he was trying to kill. The things he had consumed, Kraw, and both halves of Shokin, along with a dozen or more of the lesser devils and demons, all chanted the incantations on his behalf. They would protect their host vehemently, but while they were a boon in battle, the rest of the time his mind was filled with arguments and psychotic babbling. At the moment, the intensity of his rage had stilled them. He’d lost the ring.

  He let out a raging roar of frustration, letting a long jet of flame blast from his maw. He then sent a great crackling bolt of crimson lightning streaking through the blackness. He’d searched for what could have been ages, but hadn’t been able to find his prize.

  There were many things in this hell that were equal to his power, and thousands upon thousands of hell-spawned creatures that feared him, but there was one dark hulking monster that was greater than him: Deezlxar, the Abbadon, the dark master of hell. The demons of Gerard’s mind whispered that Deezlxar had found his ring and kept it. Gerard searched the carcasses of every kill he could remember. He scoured the endless brimstone plane interrogating the lesser things and challenging the others. Some fled, some fought and died. Those were consumed hungrily. Some of them sent him this way or that with lies manufactured to buy themselves distance from the powerful malformed creature that he was. Every path he followed led to more frustration, until there was nothing left to do, save confront Deezlxar.

  Demons were born into a hierarchy. Some were just more powerful than others. Shokin’s essence told him this. Devils had a hierarchy as well, but they weren’t born into it. This he gathered from Kraw. He was neither demon, nor devil, yet he was both. He was human, and dragon too. He was a god in his own right, and the urge to challenge the Abbadon was growing. He would have his ring back, even if he had to devour the master of hell and order every inhabitant of this blackened place to search it out for him. He wasn’t part of a hierarchy. He wasn’t created to serve. He’d fed on the yolk of a fire dragon’s egg and was transformed. The power he possessed was power he took from others. He wasn’t subject to the laws of the hells. He wasn’t like any other entity that was trapped here.

  Some of the denizens of the dark had taken to following him; they listened to his ramblings of the gateway, and they often did his bidding. These lesser demons went out in search of the ring, but only brought back tales of Deezlxar.

  Gerard found himself searching for ways to go deeper into the planes of hell. He would find this Deezlxar and learn what the Abbadon was about. Thoughts of the ring, and the mighty evil that had stolen it from him, consumed Gerard. He came upon a great circular stairway that led down into a more potent blackness. Shaella’s sweet voice was the only thing that stopped him from going down. She was calling to him again.

  He forced the chaos in his mind away and responded to her. In his mind’s eye he could see her sprawled on her great bed. He saw that she wasn’t clad in seductively revealing silks this time. She was wearing a leather riding dress that was stretched open across her abdomen, hip-high leather boots, and a high collared riding cloak, that almost hid the controlling collar she wore like a choker, finished off the imposing look. She seemed as she had when he first met her at the Summer’s Day Festival; strong, confident, ready to conquer anything that stood before her.

  How long ago had that been? His brain couldn’t reach back that far. The part of him that was still Gerard was fading. Gerard’s memories had been trampled into oblivion, but nothing could remove his longing for Shaella. Her voice, and her presence in his mind, is what drove the chaos away. She was as deeply embedded into his being as the urge to breathe.

  “Oh, Gerard,” she said happily, almost cheerfully, to him. Neither emotion seemed to reach its way through his gloom. “My wizard, Flick, has brought me the Silver Skull. I have it.” She sat up on the bed excitedly. “And a dragon, my love; he gifted me with another dragon to replace the one your brother stole from me.”

  “Brother?” Gerard rasped deeply. A flicker of a memory, of laughing with a black-haired boy while some giant woman told them a tale, shimmered away. A feeling of his love for Hyden almost formed, but his twisted brain came around to what else Shaella had said, and all that was forgotten. “You have Zorellin’s skull?”

  “Yes, my love,” she cooed. “The red priests are preparing to open the way for you now, this night, at the peak of darkness.” She looked around, suddenly distraught. “It’s midmorning now, my love. In just hours there will be a way for you to come back to me.”

  He looked at his hand, at the long dark finger where the ring should be, and growled. “Not this night,” he rasped. “I have one more feast to attend before I can come give you the world.”

  Shaella deflated at the words. Her excited eyes pooled with tears. The idea that being with her wasn’t the most important thing to him was like a knife in her breast. A deep wound that sent ripples of uncertainty through her. The first tears she could ever remember crying spilled down her cheeks. “What is it that would keep you from me?” she asked in a cautiously controlled tone.

  “If I were to come to you this moment, love, I could give you the earth to rule,” he told her. No matter how malformed he was, with his elongated, almost snouted head, plated brows, and ropey hair, his eyes were still Gerard’s. The devilish look in them pierced into her and set a fire in her belly. “If you can wait until I finish this, I will make you the queen of hell, and earth. Then we can make the heavens tremble in fear, together.”

  She had no designs to rule hell and earth. She wasn’t that concerned with ruling Westland. Oh, the times she would have traded her kingdom just to have him with her again. His deep voice, intense eyes, and his hot slick promises, had rekindled her fire.

  “How long must I wait?” she asked breathlessly. Her tears were distant memories, the doubts forgotten, like clouds blown on the wind.

  “Not long,” he said gruffly. “Have my priests open a portal this night. I will come to you for a time. Have your binding spells ready. I will bring you a taste of what is to come.”

  ***

  Phen woke to the itchy, almost painful abrasion of Sticka’s nettles. Spike lay nearby, sprawled with glazed eyes and an overfull belly. Immediately, Phen began to panic. He didn’t know what time of day it was, but he knew he’d slept far longer than he’d intended.

  “What time is it?” he asked the lyna, realizing how foolish a question it was to ask a prickly cat.

  “Something happens soon,” Sticka conveyed to Phen with uncanny clarity. “The Queen’s master comes.”

  Phen gave Spike a glare and went off to find a window so that he could assess the time of day. On the way he nabbed part of an uneaten meal from a cart. When he was finally able to follow one of the priests out into the garden, he saw that it was only afternoon. There would be time for panic later. A surge of frightened energy snaked up his spine. He decided right then he was going to try and grab the skull.

  The priests were burning a great symbol inside a circle in an open space of the lawn. It was a seal, or a gatew
ay symbol, Phen knew from his studies. He found it easy to slip across the yard and into the curtained gazebo. If the skull had been there, he could’ve gotten away with it, but it was nowhere to be found. Phen figured that Cole still had it. He had a mind to alter the symbol the priests were burning into the lawn, thus changing their spell. All it would take was an extra mark or two. He decided that he might make things worse by tampering. Before Master Targon died, he’d preached about the consequences of such actions. There was still time, so Phen decided to try another tactic. If Queen Shaella was readying herself for Gerard, then maybe her dragon’s collar was lying about her chamber somewhere.

  Phen hadn’t seen the dragon since Shaella returned, but it was the talk of the castle staff. Eavesdropping as he moved invisibly through the castle searching for Shaella’s apartment, Phen heard all sorts of rumors. After wasting an hour looking, and learning nothing, he went back to the pantry and coaxed Sticka into showing him where Shaella slept. Spike had digested his meal by then and was eager to come along.

  Sticka led them up a circular flight of steps to the castle’s second level, then down a long wide hall that was lined with statues spaced evenly along the walls. Huge tapestries and paintings of landscapes were centered between the statues. Phen noticed that the scenery was deceptively lifelike. It was like looking out of a window instead of at pigmented oils on canvas or woven threads. A great waterfall in one of them formed a cloud of misty spray that seemed to radiate off the canvas. Another was of a pasture of sheep. When Phen looked directly at it everything was still, but from the corners of his eyes he would swear that he saw the sheep gnawing at the grass. After careful inspection he saw that some of the artworks were signed. He knew immediately that the names were elven. He cast a spell to detect magic on the painting before him, and was pleased that his instinct was right. He made a mental note to look into the type of magic it would take to paint such a vision. It would have to be a potent spell to last thousands of years.