The Queen of Lies

by Michael J. Bode

  She smiled. “Holy fucking shit! You’re really alive. Riley! Get down here!”

  “Yeah. I’m immortal or something,” Maddox explained offhandedly. “Look, I need to get some more of that shit Falco had. Like a lot more.”

  “Whoa there, champ!” Esme stepped back and patted his arm, still smiling playfully. “When you start chasing the dragon, you don’t stop with the tail. You were fucking dead an hour ago.”

  “I figured as much—”

  Maddox didn’t get another word out before Riley tore into the kitchen and embraced him in a rib-crushing bear hug. It took the better part of five minutes for them to peel Riley off and calm his exuberant blubbering into something resembling coherent speech. The other lodge members watched quietly from the kitchen door.

  “I were so messed up about it,” Riley said, a catch in his throat. “Me best mate just offed himself not an hour after I got him home. I blamed meself for it. I weren’t there for you when you needed me, you know? I were so fucking pissed at Falco for messing you up like that. You was in a fragile state of mind and not in a good way…”

  Maddox sighed. “I was pretty sure I’d come back. It happened once when I was pushed off the observation tower, and even fucked-up seals are usually reliable. The drugs were just the cleanest way to test my theory.”

  “Should have asked me,” Esme said sweetly. “There’s lots of better ways to go.”

  “No.” Maddox held up one finger. “When I was dying, I saw something. The Guides came to me and lifted my spirit out of my body. They wanted to show me something. Don’t you realize? I can see the mysteries of the universe revealed at the exact crossroads between life and death…and I can come back from it.”

  “I fucking told you!” Riley slapped his knee and pumped his fist. “This guy is the greatest wizard in fucking Creation, he is.”

  “This should be entertaining,” Esme said under her breath.

  “Where can I get more drugs?” Maddox asked. “I’ll also need alcohol and some equipment. Did Falco have a formula anywhere?”

  “So you aren’t mad at me?” Riley asked plaintively.

  Maddox shook his head in irritation. “What? No. Why would I be?”

  “Gran kinda did…her thing on you too,” he admitted sheepishly.

  Maddox looked at the frail old woman who waved back at him with bony fingers. “You turned me into a revenant? What? Why? To guard that shitty treasure pantry?” He paused, parsing the implication that he hadn’t just come back from regular death but undeath as well. “Whatever. I don’t give a shit about that.”

  “You make a good revenant,” she said in her gravelly old voice. “So supple and easy to work with. Not like Falco—they’re always so crunchy when they die afraid.”

  He had to hand it to Gran; she wasn’t half-baked like the others—at least in the theurgy department. The idea of a doddering old wizard was somewhat of an oxymoron. Magic required sharp faculties and an ability to handle the physical strain of channeling energy. The fact that she could raise two revenants meant there might be much more behind those vacant eyes than she let on.

  “And how did Falco die?” Maddox asked, suddenly concerned his formula might be lost. He could guess the ingredients, but it would take a few days of testing to get it exactly right.

  “Falco…” Riley’s shoulders sank. “I didn’t…I were so pissed at him, you know? My last words weren’t kind.”

  “Harrowers,” Esme said. “Totally random freak event.”

  “Tertius died in his sleep after he killed me.” Maddox started thinking out loud, “Maybe there’s some kind of connection.”

  “Bastard deserved it,” Riley said under his breath.

  “There’s no connection,” Esme said, kicking her legs. “People have been dying all over the city lately. It’s no biggie. You should do your thing—unlock the secrets of the universe.”

  “Yeah,” Riley agreed. “We put up some more wards. Should be fine.”

  “I know it’s a big risk,” Maddox said, “but this could be the discovery of a lifetime. To actually commune with the Guides in their own realm. The theurgical power we could unlock could make us—”

  “Gods?” Riley asked hopefully.

  “Maybe. How soon can you get me some more of that shit and a case of firebrandy?”

  The first order of business was creating a proper laboratory. As Maddox suspected and partly feared, Falco’s notes on the formula were less than exact. He’d thrown a bunch of shit together and hoped for the best without much regard for proportion and timing. The recipe was almost laughably simple. Calling on the full might of the Seal of Ardiel, Maddox was able to tidy up the front area without having to touch any of the garbage on the floor.

  For a pack of degenerates, the others were surprisingly efficient as they went about various tasks—all except for Esme, who sprawled cat like on an old bench and flung her dagger at the ceiling. Riley sent Otix and Crateus out shopping while he helped set up the lab—he didn’t know much about alchemy. Gran puttered about, redrawing wards with a stylus that had been snapped in half and tied back together with string.

  Maddox worked into the late hours of the evening, concocting the euphorium as best he could from Falco’s recipe. He made some improvements of course—the quality of Falco’s admixture was poor at best, suitable for turning a profit and making a large volume by taking shortcuts and using inferior reagents.

  He concocted several drams of green crystal with the materials Crateus and Otix brought back. It was far more than he would need, given that a single hit had reacted so violently with the alcohol in his body last time.

  The others were upstairs, whispering and talking. Esme’s voice carried throughout the whole house; it was a lovely musical sound that belied the crude, brash content of her words. He packed the hookah and lit the fire. Next to him was a bottle of firebrandy freshly opened and already half empty. He wanted to be alone for this.

  He took a hit of his euphorium. The fumes were cleaner and easier on the throat than during his first experience. As the vapor spilled from his mouth, it felt like silk brushing his lips. He allowed himself a small measure of pride about that, even though it was just basic alchemy that anyone could learn if he or she bothered to.

  Within moments time slowed to a crawl, and the colors around him intensified to fluorescent hues he’d never seen before. Oranges and greens and purples emerged from the dull palette of the decrepit house, and instead of looking drab, it became a cheerful, happy place. The walls breathed around him as intricate patterns worked their way across everything, hinting at a subtler geometric order to things.

  “I’m ready,” Maddox said. His mouth moved laboriously to utter the words, “Sephariel, Azzailement, Gesegon, Lothamasim, Ozetogomaglial, Zeziphier, Josanum, Solatar, Bozefama, Defarciamar, Zemait, Lemaio, Pheralon, Anuc, Philosophi, Gregoon, Letos. Anum…Anum…Anum…”

  His eyes shut, and suddenly he was standing on a vast bluff that overlooked a verdant valley surrounded by mountains. The sun was rising to the east, and rays of golden light washed across his face as the light pushed its way through the mountains. He was staring into the sun, but it wasn’t the sun—it was a seal. No…it was the seal. It was massive and intricate.

  He stared into the face of Creation and realized the seal was its true name.

  The blinding light cleared, and he found himself back in his chair, completely sober. Riley leaned on one end of the table. Esme sat on the stairs, playing with her knife. Sunlight poured through the windows.

  “It worked!” Maddox exclaimed. “I saw a seal—bigger than a city. Quick, I need a pen and parchment!”

  “You okay, Maddy?” Riley asked with a touch of concern. “We was kinda surprised when we found you down here.”

  Maddox searched desperately around the table for Falco’s formulary, but some things had been moved, and it took him precious seconds to find it. He pulled out his leather pouch with his tools and hesitated slightly when he grabbed t
he gold stylus Tertius had given him. He began to draw what he could remember of the Great Seal on one of the blank pages, careful to get it exactly as he saw it.

  “That looks pretty interest—”

  “Shh!” Maddox snapped. The memory already was fading, and he’d only seen the top third of the seal. Still he felt his rendering was fair; at least it was a start. “Don’t move my journal.”

  He reached for the firebrandy and hammered it, letting the liquid spill over his mouth onto his clothes. He set the bottle down and waited for the alcohol to hit while he went to grab the small hookah. “I had a full rock in here.”

  “Otix,” Riley said. “He really likes the stuff. And after he tried it, we figured it was safe, so we had a little celebration of sorts. It’s a good thing Falco popped off when he did—I don’t think he could call himself a proper alchemist after trying that shit.”

  Maddox checked the flask with the euphorium crystals. There were only two left. “This should have lasted months! What the fuck?”

  “Everyone in this house pulls their weight, so if you want to stay here and send us on shopping trips, you need to provide something in return,” Esme said.

  Maddox cocked his head. “And what do you do exactly? I haven’t seen you so much as lift a finger since I got here.”

  “I facilitate.”

  “Look, we’ll get you more supplies,” Riley said. “The boys’ll be back any moment, and you can make up a bigger batch, right? We need to recover costs and all that.”

  Maddox already was getting tired of this. He didn’t have time to sit around cooking up drugs for a bunch of junkies all day. His exploration was too important. “Gran,” he said at last. “The recipe is in this ledger, with my notes. Anyone with half a brain can do alchemy—you don’t need me to cook for you. Just have Gran do her reanimation thing after I pass away. With the proper direction, a revenant can make all the euphorium you need.”

  “I don’t like this, Maddy.” Riley clutched his body uneasily. “You’ve changed since you came back. Maybe it’s time we slowed down and thought about this…”

  “His body. His choice,” Esme said.

  Maddox packed the hookah and drew another hit. The alcohol was starting to hit him at the same time as the drugs, but he just felt calm and peaceful. He took another hit and another drink and waited for the visions to take hold of him.

  This time he was in a library, but there were no walls, only mist curling between massive bookshelves. Pale, faceless figures wandered about. In place of a proper face, each one had a seal. He recognized Ardiel and Sephariel among them. There was another there—a figure with childlike proportions whose face was hidden. It ran from him, and he chased it through a vast, endless library until he cornered it against a shelf. It turned and showed him its face; it was an entirely new seal that he glimpsed for only a second.

  Awake.

  Maddox reached for his stylus and journal and sketched the seal from memory.

  A pair of naked men were watching him. They were twins with ginger hair and yellow eyes. He didn’t even pause to admire their bodies as he packed the hookah, only to find a rock already waiting for him. There was a fresh bottle of firebrandy and, he noted, a case of the stuff under his feet.

  “Who the fuck are you?” he asked the twins as he gulped the brandy.

  “Your roommates,” the one on the left said. They were seated on a velvet sofa placed against the far wall. Another new addition.

  “How’s your leg?” the one on the right asked.

  “It’s…fine,” Maddox said, warily feeling for any injury. “Why? Should it not be?”

  The twins smiled at each other. “Nothing you should be worried about. We just want to make sure you’re okay.”

  “I’m peachy. Thanks for asking. Now seriously who the fuck are you?” He gulped again, bringing the bottle down to half empty. He already was feeling the effects.

  The twins smiled deviously and, in a single fluid motion, got off the couch and shifted into a pair of large black wolves with yellow eyes. The one on the right barked, and they trotted upstairs.

  “Huh. Changelings. Don’t see that every day.” It was wild magic, the domain of witches and not on the Lyceum curriculum. Witches usually preferred the great forests like Maenmarth to cities, where their affinity for nature strengthened their theurgy. Sometimes their human offspring had their gifts, but it was rare.

  Maddox took another hit.

  The next vision seemed to last forever. He stood in a hedge maze that he realized was laid out like the Great Seal. He made his way as thoroughly as he could, committing the path to memory.

  Awake.

  Gran sat on the couch, knitting and humming to herself. On the floor the wolves Themis and Theril gnawed on a bloody bone that looked suspiciously human. Maddox recorded his vision and drank again. When the buzz hit, he took a hit of the smoke and drifted off.

  Each time the visions offered only a glimpse before hurling him abruptly back to reality. Drink. Pipe. Smoke. Dream. Die. Awake. Draw. Repeat. Each day he awoke at exactly the same moment: the moment he bound his seal. To him, no time passed, but the passage of time was marked at each waking interval by some minor change.

  Some member of the house would be watching him. A fresh bottle and a fresh rock would be ready. A new journal appeared when the old one was filled. He jotted down some notes on the formulation—to prolong the arrival of the drug’s fatal onset, to give him more time in the world that he had come to believe was the true reality.

  He wandered through a ruined city with square glass towers that reached to the heavens. He consulted sigil-faced prophets in a living library. He aided the White Duchess in her campaign against the Red King in an epic battle across realms and dimensions. He spent a summer as the pleasure slave to a handsome demon lord who used him until he was ragged. He learned dream magic from a six-finned fish that lived in a grotto of glowing fungi.

  Eventually Maddox found himself in another house, his supplies still in their same positions. It was a fancy ballroom filled with old furniture covered in white sheets. He couldn’t tell at first whether he was dreaming. Esme reclined on one of the covered couches as she flipped through one of his journals.

  “Esme?”

  “He speaks.” She didn’t look up from the book. “Don’t you need to write down whatever you saw before it goes away?”

  “I just learned dream magic,” Maddox explained. “You can only know or learn it in dreams. Where are we?”

  “The house was getting a little crowded, so we moved in here,” she said.

  “You didn’t answer my question.” He flicked his wrist, and the journal flew from her hands and placed itself on the table.

  “The DiVarian estate. The widow DiVarian died from a harrowing, as did her heirs shortly after. It’s slated for destruction, but I have a friend on the Assembly who says it’s going to be months before anyone goes near this place. The whole city’s in a total panic. It’s beautiful here, really.”

  “When I’ve finished my research, I’ll be able to stop the harrowings.”

  She laughed and sat up. “Research? Is that what you call this? Buddy, you have the most hard-core drug habit of anyone I’ve ever met in my entire existence.”

  “I see visions that can only be given on the precipice of death. I’m so close to unlocking secrets you couldn’t possibly imagine.”

  “So close yet never actually there,” she mused. “There are no great secrets that are revealed to us when we die. Sometimes it hurts, and sometimes you don’t even notice, but when you go, there’s nothing. Just darkness and oblivion. Sometimes the fevered mind plays tricks. That’s all it is. None of this shit is real, Maddox.”

  “How many times have you died?”

  Esme smirked. “I’ve seen enough death to know it’s not a sacred transition—it’s just the machinery of the body failing to support itself. And I’ve done enough drugs to know what it’s like to see a false epiphany conjured from the fabr
ic of my own imagination. Yes, it’s draped in meaning and significance and yet…what things do you really know that you can verify?”

  “I know you’re not what you say you are.”

  “Oh? What am I then?”

  Maddox rubbed his chin and was surprised by the fullness of his beard. “I don’t know…but you’re way too intelligent to be a sixteen-year-old street orphan. And you’re not nearly traumatized enough by the shit you say you’ve seen.”

  “You’re fucking insane, dude.” She tossed the dagger into the air and caught it in her hand. “But we need you to make fifty drams of the good stuff by tomorrow. So you can either get cracking on your own and do your little ritual with the pipe, or I can kill you so Gran can do her thing. Doesn’t matter to me.”

  “In a minute.” Maddox grabbed the bottle of firebrandy and chugged. “Where’s Riley?”

  “Do you care?”

  He took another gulp of brandy. “Kind of. I mean, you’re like this ruthless murderess, and I wake up in a strange place with just you watching me. Maybe you two had a fight, and you cut him open. Just saying.”

  “Fair enough.” Esme sighed. “But he’s busy. You have my word that when you wake up tomorrow, he’ll be here. If he’s not, then you’ll have no problem walking out of here, I’m sure.”

  She tossed her dagger again, and it froze in midair, the point spinning toward her. She took a step back, but the hovering dagger kept its pace.

  “Don’t forget”—Maddox smiled—“that knife can’t do shit to me.”

  Esme snatched her blade by the hilt and nodded. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

  Maddox fired up the hookah and sucked in as much vapor as he could stand. It wasn’t as smooth as his original formula, but by the time he started coughing, he already was drifting off into the true reality.

  NINETEEN

  Reda

  HEATH AND SWORD

  THREE YEARS PREVIOUSLY…

  The witch-hunter shook the rain from his cloak as he stalked into the White Trout Inn. The lightning from the storm outside cast him ominously in silhouette, a lanky shadow of a man with long curls of hair. The tables of drunken fishermen and farmers regarded him warily as he headed to the bar. He slammed his hands on the counter and peered at the bar owner. His teeth were rotten, and his gaunt face was cut by a long scar.