The Kingdoms of Evil

by Daniel Bensen

  Bloodbyrn smiled indulgently up at her father. "You have never been a little girl. Oh the hours we used to spend in the dormitory of the academy, discussing from where we would draw the blood for our nuptial rites…" her smile faded as her voice trailed off.

  "Indeed," said her father, his eyes on the hunched back of the servant. "My child, I know the Ultimate Fiend is…not what you expected, but…"

  "That is enough," Bloodbyrn spoke to the catamite as she placed her thumb over the incision. "Go now, and anoint my lord with my heart's blood, that the ritual of Engenderation may proceed."

  Once the boy had sidled out, she said, "You wish to speak of my Soon-to-be-un-husband, father?"

  In response, Duke DeMacabre raised his hands, flicking his athame forth and slicing open his palm in a single practiced movement. Blood streamed sideways from the cut, and as if caught in a high wind, it swirled about them, effervescing into a fine red mist, which settled into a sphere about their heads. Bloodbyrn felt those tiny droplets resonate with in consanguinity she shared with the last living member of her family.

  The vaporized blood began to vibrate in the air, producing a buzzing red noise that would foil any listening spies. "I know this King Feerborg is not what you expected," her father continued when he was sure their speech could not be overheard."But I think, no, I know, that he will be good for you."

  "Of course he will be good for me." Bloodbyrn pressed her hand to the wound on her thigh as her blood-magic knitted the flesh back together, "Do you doubt I can make my lord do whatever it is I wish of him?" Self-ministration done, she looked back up at her father, who nodded.

  "Your manipulations so far have left nothing at all to be desired. I do not remonstrate you, daughter, I merely express my filial devotion."

  Bloodbyrn supposed it was not so unusual for one's father to be patronizing, after all, and she responded politely enough. "One could wish for a man of more predictable temperament."

  Her father chuckled. "Predictability in early marriage leads to complacency in middle marriage and boredom in late. Without a liberal dash of chaos, your mother and I would, ah, well we would not have remained together as long as we did." He stopped for a moment, obsessed, she knew, by a memory no less poignant for its age, and no less bitter. "Ah well. In any case, I believe our lord's erratic nature is one of his few positive traits. Like a cockroach scuttling about the abattoir floor, he has proved most difficult to squash."

  "In so far as that skill allows him to confuse our enemies, it benefits us," Bloodbyrn admitted. "It only means I must step on him with all the greater force."

  DeMacabre smiled. "I know you can, my most poisonous flower. I wish only to—"

  There was a knock at the door and catamite entered again. This was one of the servants tasked to drain the blood of the Ultimate Fiend, and Bloodbyrn could tell all was not going well with that assignment. Someone seemed to have struck this boy with some force on the left temple. In trembling pale fingers, he held out a sangrail.

  DeMacabre looked into it and shook his head. "This will not do at all. There is not enough blood here to anoint my daughter's front, let alone her back. Go you extract at least this much again."

  "He complains…most forcefully, dark lord and lady," the servant whined.

  "Tell him to cease his contumacion," Bloodbyrn said. "Have you reminded him of the volume of his blood relative to my own? I thought that was an excellent argument in favor of compliance."

  "I-I have done so, dark lady, but he seems…singularly unmoved," said the catamite, trembling, "The Ultimate Fiend said—I paraphrase here to avoid your wrath, dark lady—he said that your glorious and sweetly tender body has much more practice at bloodletting, belonging as it does to a blood-magic-wielding sorceress of much marvelous and terrible power."

  Bloodbyrn raised an eyebrow, "did he now?" She sighed. "Then make it clear to him that if he forces me to oversee the process, he will lose more than merely blood."

  The catamite bowed and left them with the half-empty sangrail. Bloodbyrn fancied she heard shouts from the adjoining room.

  "I admire your confidence, little one," said DeMacabre after the servant had left, "but humor your old father when he reviews some details in these last moments of anticipation before the act itself."

  "Hardly the last, father." Bloodbyrn dipped her fingers into the sangrail. "We have several ceremonies to overcome before the final act." She frowned with concentration. The rite of Engenderation, by which a man and woman used blood-magic to control the inception of a child, was not a simple spell, but it was subtle and powerful. Skilled practitioners could use the technique to select everything from the gender of their future offspring to its political predilections to its taste in deserts. As any Sangboise would say, therein lay the secret behind the strength, intelligence, and beauty of the people of their nation. Critics pointed out the unusually high instance of roaring insanity among Sangboise, but everyone makes mistakes at the best of times. Of course at the time of the spell's casting, the participants would not be doing anything that aided concentration.

  No process can for long remain opaque to determined mental effort, however, and Bloodbyrn was fully confident in her mastery of the technique.

  "Pah." DeMacabre waved a languid hand, "I foresee no major obstacles there. Teirgog the Hafdern priest of the First God may make his play tonight. He would be a fool not to, but I could not prevent his attendance at the un-wedding of the Ultimate Fiend, after all…hmm. m-But let us focus not on details, but on the grand scheme."

  "My part in that is small enough." With deft fingers, Bloodbyrn applied her lord's blood to herself, beginning with the power nexus around her belly and loins, then moving outward in concentric patterns of swirled lines.

  "Small but essential." DeMacabre smiled at her as she traced the blood swirls over her left arm. "Only you can ensure the final act of tonight's little performance results in an heir, after all."

  "A pregnancy and a male embryo," Bloodbyrn summarized succinctly. "I have prepared myself and I am fully cognizant of the spells and rituals. I have no doubt at all that tonight will give us the outcome we desire."

  Next she painted the focusing gyre over each breast, not that her lord needed magical assistance to draw his attention to that portion of her anatomy.

  "I have no doubt of it, either, child. Are you sure the navel vortex is even? It seems lopsided to me.

  "It is not lopsided." Bloodbyrn completed a loop. "So. I will become pregnant with the heir of the Ultimate Fiend, and as his first conquest, I can ensure that this heir will enjoy a distinct competitive advantage over any other children my lord might have, as well as over their mothers. In the normal course of events, that is."

  Bloodbyrn closed her mouth at the sound of footsteps outside the room and a knock. The door opened to reveal the same suffering catamite. The sangrail he held contained even less blood than the last one, but from the look on his face, it was clear Bloodbyrn would get not more from her lord unless she carried out her threat and extracted it herself.

  "This will have to do," she said, "leave us now."

  She stood as the servant hurried back to his unenviable task in the ceremonial seraglio and turned so her back was to her father. "Do you see where I have left the linkages?" Bloodbyrn indicated the places where the channels of blood curved around shoulders, ribs, hips, and thighs.

  "I see them." Of course she could not command the blood to move over her, since her lord's blood contained almost no admixture of her own.

  Her father's damp fingers pressed into the flesh of her back. "The normal course of events, you say, and yet—"

  "I know, we are not merely trying to marry our line into the Skrean nobility." Bloodbyrn said. "Father, it is not tonight, but rather the subsequent nine months that weigh upon my mind. Once I am quick with the child, then…"

  "Then what?" DeMacabre answered, "then you must endeavor to keep it, yourself, and your lord and master alive. Alive and without mistresses, if at a
ll possible."

  Bloodbyrn laughed, "The second task worries me not at all, but as for the first…my lord is so cursed active. He runs about constantly stirring up trouble—foolishly exposing himself to risk, and it pains me to say that thus far, I have been unable to curtail this predilection." She sighed again, "I shall be more vigilant, father."

  "See that you are," he replied. "It would be inconvenient in the extreme should king Feerborg's rein end before his son is born."

  Bloodbyrn agreed. She would have to start everything all over again, and as infuriating as king Feerborg was, Prince Feerix stood next in line.

  "Afterward," he father went on tracing the three central channels down her spine, "well, the necromantic power of the First God would go to the infant if King Feerborg were to die," even by themselves in a thick-walled chamber surrounded by a red-noise generating ensilensure spell, DeMacabre kept his habits of reticence, "that infant will be ours to do with what we please. With the power of the First God in such a conveniently portable package and the sword Clouds-Gatherer in our possession, the Maelstrom will follow our commands, and nothing can stand in our way."

  Bloodbyrn smiled at that. Her father's penchant for drama never failed to warm her heart. "Nothing will stand in our way." She agreed. "Soon we shall be invincible."

  ***

  "The thirteenth black candle is lit, my dark lady!" the blood priest Aman DeSammdie declared as Bloodbyrn and her father strode back into the ceremonial seraglio.

  "Excellent," said Bloodbyrn. The blood painted onto her skin had begun to dry, and she moved carefully to avoid smearing or flaking. "Are the un-holy priests at their appointed places?"

  "They are, dark lady," those were not DeSammdie's plumy tones, but the harsh rasp of old Teirgog, Hafdern of the First God. Still gripping his live mouse, he stood at the apex of the triskaidekagram, now surrounded by black candles. Their nacreous light cast shadows over his face, so his lips and teeth were mere flickers in an oval of darkness. "All is in readiness to begin the un-marriage."

  "Then do so." Bloodbyrn left her father and ascended to the dais where her future husband waited. Black candles shimmered below her in the dark like stars on an oil-slick, shining greasily on the painted contours of her lord's naked body. He was still not as heavily muscled as Feerix, but life in Skrea had already improved things visibly. And then…Bloodbyrn of course showed nothing on her face, but she could not help feeling a small thrill as the Ultimate Fiend's head twisted, that silky white hair flowing like water over one shoulder, and those black, black eyes looking down at her. And as for the rest of him…

  "I can't see a striking thing."

  "When my lord requires the powers of vision, I shall restore his pince-nez to him," said Bloodbyrn, looking up.

  "If I was in the RU, I could spell a program to help me see."

  "This is not the Rationalist Union. Now, my lord, please fall silent."

  "You're not going to chain me to anything, are you?"

  "Not at this juncture," Bloodbyrn murmured over the Hafdern's rising incantation and the creak of the bed as it was lifted.

  "What's that noise?" Feerborg looked behind himself at the bed as it began to rise off the floor.

  "The winch, my lord. Your servants are raising the bed."

  The un-holy priests of death and blood continued their respective chants.

  "Bloodbyrn," said Feerborg, glancing behind them "why is the bed being raised off this dais?"

  "To make room, my lord."

  "Oh."

  Bloodbyrn did not let her lord ask the next question. "All right, my lord, now the next part is very simple. We must move to the middle of the dais and face the priests."

  Even as her lord moved, he whispered, "why?"

  Bloodbyrn stepped backward onto the center of dais, under the rising bed. No-one could see in this darkness if she were to close her eyes, if her expression was not of smug conquest, but of pained endurance.

  "Because, my lord, they are about to un-marry us."

  Naked and painted in blood, Bloodbyrn stood at the center of the altar of the Ceremonial Seraglio beside the strange, incomprehensible boy from the Do-Gooder nations, and tried not to think about the future.

  "Fiends!" Feerborg's response, whatever it might have been, was drowned out by the shriek from Hafdern Teirgog. "Brothers in darkness! Heed my words of doom and despair, for on this day, Merciless the 7th of Skullmoon, Year One of the Rein of His Malevolence Despot Feerborg, the destiny of the universe shall shake to its roots!"

  Bloodbyrn glanced at her lord out of the corner of her eyes. Feerborg was hunching, covering his nakedness, looking ready to leap off the altar and dash out the door at the first opportunity. Dark ladies of the royal blood of Sangboire did not experience panic. Yet the emotion that welled up in Bloodbyrn, sudden and unexpected, was at least very profound disquiet.

  When faced with unbearable circumstances, Bloodbyrn reflected, it was of inestimable benefit to one's mental state to occupy one's mind with pleasant thoughts. A properly constructed mental sanctum could do wonders for one's equanimity, and recently Bloodbyrn had had much cause to make use of her own.

  "Fiends and brothers in darkness," intoned the Hafdern lifting his arms and letting his dark robes fall back from his claw-like hands, "We are gathered here today to witness the initiation of the mortal battle between His Malevolence Feerborg, Despot of Skrea and Ultimate Fiend of the Kingdoms of Evil, and Lady Bloodbyrn DeMacabre, dominatrix of lower Joublournie and Carnivé, heir to the Clot of Torture."

  Now, when circumstances, if not unbearable, were at least extremely disagreeable, Bloodbyrn fixed an expression confidence on her face and retreated in her mind. Back to the subject that had brought her much comfort in these recent, trying times.

  Bloodbyrn thought about kittens.

  "What is the Skrean un-marriage?" Hafdern Teirgog was saying, his voice a screech of singular unpleasantness, "Technically of course, it is simply the Skrean Despot taking a woman before witnesses and then not killing her afterward, but is that all? In our long and hideous history, have we not seen that a hard and cruel woman may spur her man onward to ever greater depths of depravity? That, dark brethren, is the true meaning of the institution of un-marriage."

  A new one, she promised herself, after all this was over. As the king's first conquest she would have easy access to Wrothgrinn's laboratory. Damn the man for supplying her with the temptation, but if this fiasco was not enough to deserve a reward, nothing would be.

  "Many have fought this battle before, and many will do so in the future. It is the greatest battle, the battle between man and woman, from which all other battles perforce originate."

  Bloodbyrn's mind drifted away into a pleasant world of soft fur and damp pink noses.

  "What form shall their un-holy union take?" Teirgog intoned, "Will the bellows and screams of their repeated and brutal conquests shake the volcanic foundations of the castle, as those of King Murdmort and the Dark Princess Rathcurl are said to have done?"

  As long as she remained discrete, all would be well.

  "Will each forever seek new ways to dismember the other, as in King Madgrog and Clawshriek?"

  Bloodbyrn had, after all, concealed her shameful addiction at school, and in the castle, she had much more clout, and more opportunities for privacy.

  "Or, like Skreon the Worst and his consort the Witch Queen Allbane, will they march forth arm in arm to grind the world beneath their boot heels? Only time will tell."

  First, she would go back to the laboratory of the Life-twister Wrothgrinn, confiscate all the kittens—no, only one kitten, mustn't be greedy—and then spirit it back to her private rooms.

  "May their battle result in much violence and bloodshed."

  Good, the ceremony was nearly over. Bloodbyrn could almost feel the kitten's fur, under her fingertips. Sinful as a kiss from the Ultimate Fiend…

  "May it fill their lives with delicious pain and bring suffering to all those around them.
May it cost the lives of many. And may it continue long, before one or both of the combatants are destroyed."

  No. Bloodbyrn blinked. This was no time to be thinking about Feerborg.

  "Now if there is anyone present who knows any reason why this union is not an abomination against nature and decency, let him speak now, or forever hold his peace."

  Bloodbyrn woke from her reverie to glare at Feerix. The prince put his hand down.

  "Your Malevolence King Feerborg, under the Maelstrom Despot of Skrea, Grasper of the Bolt, Lord of Pain, Terror under all Terrors, High Master of the Blood, and Crowned Ultimate Fiend of the Kingdoms of Evil, do you swear to take this woman in the most horrible way possible, to show her no mercy, to heed not her wails of distress, until one of you is inevitably slaughtered?"

  "What?---ow! Yes, fine. I do."

  It was times like these that tested one's equanimity. Bloodbyrn gritted her teeth and pressed her heel warningly into the top of her lord's foot.

  "And do you, Bloodbyrn DeMacabre, dominatrix of lower Joublournie and Carnivé, heir to the Clot of Torture, swear to fight against your husband in all ways, to grant him not one moment's rest without danger, not one moment of sweetness, not one glimmer of light, not one moment of hope, until one of you is inevitably slaughtered?"

  "I do," she said. Yes. A kitten for all of this bother, as well as for the trials ahead. Killing Feerborg would not be simple or easy.

  "Then, press your bodies to each other," said the Hafdern Teirgog, "that your blood will pump hot and your screams shall mingle pain and pleasure."

  Bloodbyrn did so, feeling the charged tingle as the channels of blood on their skins crossed.

  "Let the peoples of the world hear your united cries, and quail with fear."

  Bloodbyrn pressed herself against her lord, her cheek against his chest. At least his body was nicely shaped, she thought, and clearly he thought the same about her given his physical reaction.