"We were going to ask whether you wanted us to call the cleaning staff, Fiend." The Kaimeera sat on its haunches, mouth open wide enough for Freetrick to see the human mouth moving behind the shark-like teeth. "Although I admit it was mostly curiosity that brought me here." The monster's huge, yellow eyes scanned the room. "This is certainly an example of potent necromancy."
"Necromancy?" Freetrick squinted at him, then indicated the walls with their scrawl of magical symbols. "What makes you think this was necromancy?"
"By what other name would the magic committed by the Ultimate Fiend be known and feared?" said Mr. Skree.
The Kaimeera cleared its gruesome throat. "I suppose it might have been blood-magic, or a fear magic illusion." The furry neck stretched out as it sniffed at the floor. "But my guess would be necromancy. I mean, you did it."
"And thus the Ultimate Fiend is to be even more greatly admired and feared for his mastery of these new dark arts," Mr. Skree interjected.
Freetrick glared at him, then slid off his desk, walked to the wall, and tapped an alabaster fingernail against a rune. "Does that look like necromancy to you?"
The monsters obediently examined the symbols webbing the walls of Freetrick's study. "These characters do recall memories of the hated magics of the Do-Gooder Nations to the memories within this rotted brain," Mr. Skree said. "Surely they will strike fear and confusion into the Dark Nobility of Clouds-Gather."
"Yeah," agreed the Kaimeera, "reminding them you've been raised by the enemy, Fiend. It's sure to sew chaos."
"Adept is the Ultimate Fiend at the creation of disorder," Mr. Skree said, though with censure or satisfaction Freetrick couldn't say.
"I wasn't making a political statement. I was doing striking Rationalist magic!"
Mr. Skree and the Kaimeera exchanged another glance. "Surely…the mind of the Magnate of Gore is more twisted than the blighted imaginations of his servants can encompass."
"I'm not crazy," said Freetrick, once he had parsed this sentence. "I was really doing word-magic. Look at the struck-out walls!"
"The heathen symbols are most disturbing—"
"Under the symbols! The wall's like marble! And the floor, and my desk," Freetrick rapped a knuckle against the smooth, not-at-all-like-bone surface. "Or the struck-out lights. What do you think caused all that?"
Mr. Skree and the Kaimeera exchanged a glance. "Does…the Taloned Autarch wish his servants to say it was not the power of death channeled by the heir of the First God?"
"The wall is covered with striking word-magic runes," Freetrick grated. "How is that necromancy?"
"The effect does not define necromancy, Fiend," said the Kaimeera, "but the source of the energy."
"Place that contradictory servant in the clutches of this, your most humble automaton, and be assured that its agony shall be long for daring to speak contrary to the edicts of the Ultimate Fiend," said Mr. Skree.
"No," Freetrick said. "It couldn't have been necromancy! It didn't feel like…like," what had it felt like? Freetrick found he couldn't remember clearly. Everything after that first word-magic spell was vague and shadowy. And where the hell had Bloodbyrn gotten to? Scared off by the explosion of magic? Freetrick looked at his white hands. "Then how do you explain this?"
"Violent indeed is the schedule of the Ultimate Fiend." Mr. Skree's voice had taken on what Freetrick assumed was supposed to be a soothing hiss. "So steeped in blood it is, that the Chief Among Demons has forgotten the women he killed immediately before transforming his room."
"As if I could forget them."
"You could probably have done anything at that point, Fiend," said the Kaimeera.
Freetrick shook his head. "So I was doing word-magic through necromancy?"
"Well," said the Kaimeera, "I remember I once was, I mean, I ate a Rationalist soldier who knew some high-level spelling. He would might call what you did here last night…an emulation?"
"So I really am functionally omnipotent." Freetrick looked at his feet. "As long as I kill enough people."
"Indeed," Mr. Skree agreed, "and then so mighty is the evil power of the Most Despicable, that he could twist the very symbols of our hated enemy, and use them in his black spells."
"That's one way of looking at it," Freetrick sat on a corner of his remodeled desk as the implications sank in. He traced a finger of the pale surface of the desk under him. It was just possible to make out the lines that had once been spaces between scapulae. "If you don't pray to the God of Words. He won't read your runes. But here, I have people praying for me constantly, and it doesn't seem to take much skill to wield necromancy. All I lack is death energy, and, ha," he chuckled bleakly, "it's not even as if there are any limits placed on me about who I kill."
"I think the work you have produced is quite restive," the Kaimeera said, nodding its huge head at the transformed walls. "Nostalgic, even, at least for the parts of me that come from The RU."
"Aha." Freetrick snorted, "Which makes the whole thing even more disturbing, huh?"
"Of course, by both unholy law and ancient custom, the deeds of the despot must disturb the minds of those who dare gaze upon them." Mr. Skree said. "May this chittering excrescence be so audacious as to inquire as to what particular aspect of the current situation the Master of Storms refers?"
"I was referring," Freetrick rubbed a hand through his greasy white hair, "to the how-many-was-it girls I killed to get the energy to do this."
"Surely, the meat of the brain will be extracted from the skull of this servant for the dissenting reply," said Mr. Skree, "and for daring to suggest even the possibility that events could unfold in ways other than those willed into being by the twisted consciousness of the Lord of Shadows, but the assassins who so foolishly attacked the Ultimate Fiend, had they not been stopped, might have caused discomfort or inconvenience to the plans or, Maelstrom blast to flinders all those who dare to suggest such a thing, the body of the Ultimate Fiend."
"It was self-defense," said the Kaimeera, "No Rationalist court would convict you."
"And in Skrea, they applauded," Freetrick said, bitterly. "The Ultimate Fiend finally met their expectations."
"So?" The Kaimeera's mouth yawned wider as it stretched, and white claws unsheathed themselves from the fur of its paws. "Duty and necessity came together. It happens."
Freetrick shook his head and pushed himself off the desk. "But I didn't have to enjoy it so striking much."
The Kaimeera shrugged its feline shoulders. Mr. Skree looked faintly scandalized.
"Shall…this decomposing wreckage call for the cleaning staff to scrub these symbols off the wall, Fiend?" he asked.
"I suppose," said Freetrick, sliding off his desk. He walked to the nearest wall and studied the symbols he had scrawled on it. He almost wanted to keep them. He really wanted to keep them. "Strike me out I miss word-magic."
"This shivering wretch would never dream of uttering anything at all in odds with the stated or even surmised opinions of the Ultimate Fiend," Mr. Skree whispered from behind him, "but duty demands the pointing out of the fact that the majority opinion among the Dark Nobility of these Kingdoms of Evil would most likely, forgive this servant, disagree with the sentiment so recently expressed by the Prince of Punishment."
"Oh the Dark lords and ladies would hate word-magic," Freetrick agreed, still looking at the writing on the wall, "it would cause all sorts of problems for them."
"Fortunate for them, then, that such foreign magic is impossible in this nation," said Mr. Skree.
"Right," came the drawling voice of the Kaimeera, "a god's magic cannot work in a Nation that does not pray to Him."
It was as if the Kaimeera had shone a light through Freetrick's brain. He whirled to face his servants. "So why don't you?"
"What?" The Kaimeera reared back from his black-eyed glare.
Freetrick was grinning. "Why don't you pray to the God of Words?" There, finally, was the missing piece in his plans. Prayer was the answer.
> "Theology isn't my specialty, Fiend." Protested the Kaimeera, " I mean, I've eaten a hermit or two, but I don't know anything about higher-level magic."
"Well, who does know about this sort of thing?" Freetrick rapped his knuckles against his newly non-bone desk.
The Kaimeera looked up at Mr. Skree, who fidgeted on the ceiling.
"Though the grinding gears of the terrible mind of the Ultimate Fiend would no doubt arrive at the same conclusion, should they trouble with such details, it would be the bleak pleasure of this unworthy servant to anticipate the conclusions that must arrive in the mind of the Master of Evil, even as antediluvian monstrosities rise from the tar pits—"
"Yes, Mr. Skree! The…that buffalo guy."
"Grimp," said Mr. Skree, "guard of the Hafderns and Blood Priests of Deep Synod, Malevolence."
"Well, tell him to get down here."
"And what should we tell his bosses, fiend?" the Kaimeera asked.
"Tell them…" He needed to avoid arousing the suspicions of the Deep Synod, or anyone else, but he didn't have time to construct another elaborate ruse like the mock-gladiatorial show of the night before. "…tell them…" how about the truth? Grinning, Freetrick commanded his servants, "the Ultimate Fiend wants to discuss... the possibility of a rebellion among the monsters."
***
"Great Master of Misery!" the little translator piped as Grimp squinted at Freetrick's transformed study, "Grimp says he has heard no rumors of a rebellion among the monsters." The huge, humped shoulders of the ogre shifted. Grimp's eyes, wide-set, but disturbingly human under their wooly brows, looked into Freetrick's. Behind Grimp, Commander Skystarke swept into the office, followed by the Kaimeera. The room felt distinctly crowded.
"Well, glad to hear it," said Freetrick.
"Not in the Necropolis," continued the translator, "well, only the outskirts. No rebellion around Clouds-Gather, or rather, only in the out-of-the-way places in Clouds-Gather, except for the uprisings planned by the kitchen staff, of course."
Freetrick eyed the breakfast tray on his desk. "Uh…"
"The kitchen staff!" proclaimed Skystarke, "are, in my opinion, faah too involved with their program of mutually assured destruction with the night porters and the lizard-man breeders to have found the time to poison anyone, Fiend."
Grimp's huge, shaggy head nodded, and his hoof-like hands moved.
"He says," said the translator, "that in short, things are remarkably calm."
"Good to hear," said Freetrick.
"And therefore, he wonders why, if he might ask such a thing, his use is to be cut short by the Ultimate Fiend."
Freetrick blinked. "Grimp, I'm not going to kill you. The rebellion thing was a trick to get you out of Dark Synod so I could talk to you." He looked sharply at the Kaimeera, "didn't you tell him that?"
The Kaimeera's mouth yawned to expose a wry twist on its speaking lips. "Far be it for me to try to interpret your orders, Fiend," said the Kaimeera.
Freetrick ran a hand over his hair. He had had enough time to pull it back while he got into some clean armor, but he still felt distinctly grimy. "Right. Well…" he looked at the Kaimeera, Grimp, and Mr. Skree. "I didn't call you here because I thought you were planning a rebellion." Although he should probably get Skystarke to look into the kitchen staff thing. "I'm more concerned with, well," he spread his hands, "with planning my own."
The Grimp snorted steam and his translator squeaked. The Kaimeera's killing jaws closed to muffle a scream while Skystarke's upper lip snapped up over his face with a sound like wet cloth tearing. Even Mr. Skree lifted his desiccated eyelids a slight fraction of an inch higher than usual.
"Far be it for you to question my motivations," grinned Freetrick, "right? Well, you all know my opinion of how things work here, or fail to work." He clasped his hands behind his back as he paced between his desk and the far wall of his office. "The current system of government is unsustainable on every level." He looked at them. "So I want to overturn it."
Mr. Skree was the first to recover. "Fiend," he said, voice so dry it could have been used to embalm corpses, "Gladly will the servants of the Ultimate Fiend march in his dreadful wake," Mr. Skree hurried to add, "as many have done before, casting aside all thoughts of self-preservation and historical precedent, forgetting with an act of will, for example, the Rebellion of Othswug, in which the Despot of Skrea's attempt to reform his kingdom resulted in the annihilation of his million-strong force of monsters and Terror Lords."
"And the loss of Itlix to the !Quatl," added the Kaimeera.
Mr. Skree fixed the other monster with an ice-colored stare "Insolent cur. To speak so disparagingly of the rebellion the current Monarch of Mayhem seeks to duplicate. Such words may discourage the black heart of the Ultimate Fiend."
"I was thinking…" Freetrick said, "more along the lines of successful rebellions. Any of those?"
The five faces before him were so different they stretched the definition of the word, but each bore the expression of an underling trying to formulate the answer to their boss's impossible question.
"None, Fiend."
"Two words, Mr. Skree? I see I've disturbed you." Freetrick raked his assembled minions with his most menacing glare, then snapped on a smile. "The Revolution of the Independent Press. The secret of movable type escaped the control of the Librarian Priests. And then the renegade publishers allied themselves with the Collegiums to form the modern Academic Government?"
Freetrick strode to his desk and picked up a sheet of parchment. He handed it to Grimp, who took the sheet in a hand like an mechanical excavator and rolled an eye down at the lines and boxes of his monarch's Fiendish flowchart. The little translator scrambled up onto Grimp's shoulders for a better view.
"So the peasants taught themselves to read," Freetrick explained, "formed these crazy subversive underground libraries, and, uh…well they tore the old Librarian Priests apart." The Ultimate Fiend looked at his advisors. "You see how this could be applied to Skrea."
The monsters looked at each other.
"Fiend," said the kaimeera with obvious care, "literacy will not help the monsters. Word magic doesn't work in Skrea."
"It will if we pray to the God of Words," said Freetrick. "So what do you say, gentlemen?" He twirled a pen between his fingers, eyes sparking, "how about a spelling lesson?"
***
"That idiot Bleeryarr!"
"What is it? What happened?" Zathara stared up at Tinesmurk as the queen let herself down from the top of the barricade. The hairy paw of the second goblin seized one of the stakes and began to pull itself up.
"Take care in how you address your queen," Tinesmurk let herself drop to the ground. "Oh," she said, "but I am not the age for this ridiculousness. You," she straightened, glaring at Zathara, "have caused more damage tonight than you can know."
I have caused more damage? It was not my idea to declare myself Kendrick's enemy by imprisoning him. The only way to ensure Kendrick will not attack would have been to make ourselves entirely helpless before him---which I suppose I neglected to mention to you. Zathara schooled her expression. This attack could mean an advantage for her, but only if she survived the night. "I apologize, Malevolence."
"Bleeryarr was my best supporter here. The son of the Despot of this province," Tinesmurk muttered. "And worse, under this blasted naked sky," she jabbed a hand at the blackness above them, "I have no way of absorbing his death." The queen closed her eyes and let out her breath. "When the sword is once again is once again in my hands…well."
With a chill, Zathara realized that the queen did not know what to do next. You were never very good at this, were you girl? They nearly ate you alive at Clouds-Gather, then they took advantage of you in The Rationalist Union, and now a Betweener is slaughtering what support you've managed to scrape together. You just aren't a very good tactician. Your only real talent is retreat.
"Malevolence," Zathara said, "we can flee."
"Do not think to advise me,
girl," the queen's lips drew back over her teeth. Zathara wasn't afraid. If she had intended to kill me, boys and girls, she would have done so already. My suggestion that she use me as a hostage against Kendrick continues to drive her.
From behind the wall came a shout: "Maulrag! Come to me! I can save you!"
Tinesmurk narrowed her eyes at the barricade. She shook her head and turned to their two goblins.
"Monsters. Carry us. We flee Eastward through the pass to where the Naobelite's powers will dim."
"We follow a Truth that is higher than masters," Kendrick's voice called as if in response, "higher than queens! Join us in obedience to Covenant!"
Tinesmurk's head twitched back as if from tentacles of a jellyfish. "And thence to Skrea. And Clouds-Gather. Let us be gone!"
From beyond the barricade came a voice Zathara recognized as Maulrag's. It screamed as bright white light flared. So the seeds I planted in that monster's head bore fruit, after all, boys and girls. Too bad Kendrick's ironclad sense of honor extended only to humans.
Zathara forced herself to relax as the huge hairy hands of the second goblin closed around her waist. The beast hoisted her over its too-small head, and Zathara clasped her arms and legs around its back.
Enormous muscles shifted under her and the monster began a long, loping run. Into Skrea. Zathara wasn't certain whether she feared her destination more, or her company, or the person she knew would soon come after them.
***
"Will they do what I told them?" The Ultimate Fiend leaned back in his newly comfortable chair. "Will they teach the other monsters to read the True Words?"
After two hours of spelling practice, Skystarke and Grimp had gone back to their duties and Mr. Skree had gone to lie down. Only the Kaimeera had stayed. It shook its head. "I…don't know, Fiend. I think so."
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