The Kingdoms of Evil

by Daniel Bensen

  "Okay, but what about Istain?" Feerborg demanded. "At very least, Feerix'll keep him as a hostage. "

  And a useful hostage he would be indeed, Bloodbyrn considered, if only the Do-Gooder could be wrested from the clutches of their rivals. "Indeed," Bloodbyrn agreed, "it was most unwise to demonstrate your feelings for him before witnesses."

  "We have to rescue Istain," Feerborg said. "That has to be our first priority."

  Bloodbyrn considered the depth of feeling she saw in her lord's face as he made that command. "Yes," she said, "it might be, at that. But how can we find him?"

  Feerborg had several ideas of how to do this, but they were notable more for their enthusiasm than their utility. "So what am I supposed to do?" He demanded when she told him this, "Sit back and wait for your daddy to fix everything? Bloodbyrn, I know he doesn't have my best interests in mind. I doubt he even has your best interests in mind. Hell, if I was him I would just let Feerix kill me and then marry you to him."

  Though Bloodbyrn's skin had prickled with nervous goose-flesh, she made great effort to keep her voice calm. "That is a ridiculous idea, my lord."

  "Is it?" Feerborg glared at her. "The message Feerix gave to me, before I provoked him into revealing his own agenda, that message was from your dad. I assume it was basically the same thing your dad said to you, himself: 'Stop gibbering with me, shut up and obey orders, or I'll kill you. Am I right?"

  Sweet bodily fluids. Bloodbyrn, mind whirling, tried to seize the question he offered her, to answer it with something that would re-direct her lord's terrible, dangerous, analysis. But, for the first time she could remember, the words would not come.

  Feerborg's beautiful black eyes bored into hers. "I thought so. Hell, I wouldn't put it past the old reprobate to snatch Istain up himself. Use him as a lever on me." He leaned closer to her. "That won't happen, Bloodbyrn." His voice grew lower, "Will you help me make sure it doesn't?"

  Bloodbyrn could not control the impulse to glance at the scar on her wrist, and the corresponding one on his. "My lord," she said, "you cannot plan to act contrary to the wishes of my father."

  "Can not?" He said, "Or may not?"

  "I meant the word in its most literal interpretation, my lord," Bloodbyrn said. "You are not able, at this time, to act in any way that would lose you the support of my father and his party. Lose them, and from what power base would you protect yourself?"

  The Ultimate Fiend thought, and Bloodbyrn found herself actually wondering how he might answer.

  "Well…" he looked at her, lightning still flickering over his eyes. He looked like a predator contemplating its meal, a life-twister examining his deformed experiments, like, in fact a Despot of Skrea.

  "My lord," she said, "are my interests not also yours. Did I not say I would aid you?"

  He sighed, looked at the spy-less walls, then back to her. "I'm teaching the monsters word-magic, and when they revolt—"

  "Pardon?"

  "They'll revolt."

  "word-magic?" That was not the secret she had expected. "You refer to Rationalist magic, and my lord that is also impossible. The monsters would be killed immediately if they were found praying to any god but the First."

  "You see why it's important then," he said, and his voice was as cold as the abyss those onyx eyes reflected, "that no-one finds out about this, Bloodbyrn. I guess what I need to know...." His white skin seemed to glitter with frost as the Ultimate Fiend gazed upon her, and calculated her worth. "Is if you still need to be convinced to join me."

  He stood, the Despot, white face stark and terrible in its frame of black armor below, and billowing black mist above. Twin sparks of actinic light dancing in the black, bottomless sea of his eyes. He did not even voice his threat aloud.

  "Oh my lord," breathed Bloodbyrn, "You are finally learning!"

  The Ultimate Fiend reached down, and drew the smiling Bloodbyrn up to his, still unfortunately armored, chest. "I'm glad you approve," he said, which spoiled the effect, but somehow warmed Bloodbyrn's heart even more than the previous display of villainy.

  Chapter the Twentieth

  In which the Ultimate Fiend binds his Concubine to his Will

  In his shadow-swathed bed chamber, the Ultimate Fiend of the Kingdoms of Evil lifted his face from the neck of his concubine and said, "Uh…oh. Sorry."

  There was a rustle of black silk sheets in the darkness. "Do not worry yourself, my lord."

  "Well, I didn't—"

  "You did." There was a sound in the darkness that might have been a sigh.

  The sheets rustled again as the Despot rolled off his concubine. "Well…um….do you want me to…uh…I don't know, but…"

  "My lord, no further action on your part is necessary."

  "It striking well is!"

  Freetrick sat up in his bed, glaring. Suddenly illuminated by the light from his eyes, Bloodbyrn's upturned face was a pale oval against the black sheets.

  "Look," he said, "I want to…you know."

  "I do not know." She was looking at him with that striking blank expression. The one that meant she was pissed at him.

  "I didn't…well, you didn't…strike it." Bloodbyrn's face disappeared into the darkness. Embarrassment apparently wasn't the proper emotion to make his eye lightning work.

  "I did not reach climax, perhaps my lord means?" Freetrick could no longer see it, but he knew her I'm-pissed-at-you-and-now-you-have-to-make-it-better voice. "But why should I?"

  "Why should you!?" Freetrick nearly left the bed right then and there, but it was possible that Bloodbyrn wasn't actually being sarcastic. "Because I'm the guy! It's…supposed to be my job to help you…be happy?"

  There was a moment of silence, then, "Is that how things are in The Rationalist Union?"

  "I thought it was the way things are everywhere. Don't people everywhere have sex the same way?" Then he remembered his experience in the Ceremonial Seraglio. "Well still, you deserve…something too."

  "What did my lord have in mind?" Was that warmth coming back into her voice? She was certainly snuggling against him in an affectionate way.

  "Well…" Freetrick allowed his hands to run over her curving waist and hips. He had just had sex! And it wasn't over! The Ultimate Fiend quashed an un-manly giggle. "I have formulated a fiendish plan, my dear."

  ***

  Kendrick swung his axe through the belly of a hissing lizard-man.

  "Naobel!"

  His cry rang off the gray Bleaklands dust, echoing out into the empty spaces under the twisting Maelstrom. Three other creatures twitched back from the light as his talisman flared, but the light faded…

  And as the light faded, the lizard-men closed. Hideously elongated fingers twitched and clutched. Eyes huge and vicious stared. Scaled limbs reached, slick with blood, black in the light of the lava pits around them.

  "Naobel!" Kendrick called again, but under the Storm, his god's power had faded to a mere glimmer. They had used up valuable reserves of prayer attacking this nest, but there was no helping it. His army needed food.

  Kendrick brought up his axe to block the first lizard-man as it attacked. His heave at its chest became a sideways swing that slammed the blade into the ribs of the second. The third, though, attacked from the opposite side, and before Kendrick could overcome his weapon's momentum and bring it to bear, the beast was on him.

  Clawed fingers and toes dug into his tough leather jerkin. Fortunately it was small, and Kendrick could grab it by the bony ankle with his left hand and rip it from his body. A snap of his wrist dislocated its knee, and a round-house swing brought the little creature, still squealing, into the face of the returning first attacker. That distracted the monster long enough for Kendrick to hoist the axe, then bring it down.

  The battle was delicious, but it eventually ended. And when it had, there was work to be done.

  "It says it can guide us past the settlements." The new convert they called Eagle Eye knelt in the gray dust, his hands twitching and undulating in the signs
that the lizard people used in place of true speech.

  The object of his interrogation, a thin and shuddering lizard, looked up at Kendrick and hissed.

  Kendrick's lip curled. Could he kick it to death? On the one hand, killing the cur might lose them valuable information. On the other hand, the Covenant made it clear that it was wrong to commit even a small Evil for a greater Good, and surely allowing this thing to continue to live was Evil. Yes, but later, he decided. And not in front of the men.

  "We need no guidance," said Kendrick. "The Storm has surely seen us and knows we are coming, even if the witch doesn't tell them."

  Eagle Eye looked up at him, the scars sloughed-off scales turned to a nest of shadows by the lava light. "Paladin, if the Ultimate Fiend knows we are here, how can we hope to enter the Necropolis safely?" The convert's hands writhed in lizard-man sign language as he spoke, though he stilled his fingers when he saw Kendrick scowl at them.

  Kendrick smoothed his expression. "We aren't attacking the Citadel of Evil because we want to stay safe," he said. "We are attacking it because that is the right thing to do. Are you Good, Eagle Eye?"

  "Yes!" The ex-monster nodded eagerly.

  "Good." Kendrick pointed at the injured lizard-man, sprawled in the dust by its former ally. "Now find out if that creature knows anything useful about the defenses of the Necropolis, and report to me what you learn."

  The small lizard-man looked up at them and hissed. Kendrick wondered when he would have the opportunity to practice torture on it.

  Shaking his head, Kendrick turned away from Eagle Eye and his vile prisoner and walked further into their camp the former nest of monsters. The nest was---had been---a disorganized collection of pits dug into the gray dust of the Bleaklands, lined with bones and the chalky tubes of lava-worm casings.

  Coming down the Bulwarks, Kendrick and his party had raided monster nests that looked more like human villages, with domed huts of wood and bone. Here, though, at the center of the Maelstrom, rain never fell. The only thing to fear in the sky was attack by a flying monster, and against that threat, the lizard-men of this nest had built walls and watchtowers, again of bone and lava-worm casing. Neither fortification had protected the corrupted creatures from Kendrick.

  Now his men were systematically sifting through the white-powder wreckage of the nest, setting aside food, chopping down and harvesting the lava-worms, and dragging the dead lizard-men into a central stack. Others were seeing to the wounded or keeping guard against further attack. The men who had nothing more pressing to do were praying, building up the company's reserves of Naobel's Blessing.

  They had long since passed out of the god's traditional lands, of course, but a sufficiently large group of worshippers could generate an area in which Naobel's Blessing was more than superstition, even here under the very Maelstrom, itself. Indeed, some of the lizard-men had already been washed clean of their corruption by their talismans. Walking past the pile of corpses, Kendrick could see several burst skulls, malformed limbs, still-bloody wounds where scaled skin had rotted away.

  "Paladin!"

  Kendrick looked up from his pleasant reverie and scowled. Gerhanis was approaching, waving. "Yes?"

  "Paladin. Kendrick. Do you need anything?" Gerhanis, though converted back to humanity after the rout of the Witch Tinesmurk, was nonetheless a different man from the one Kendrick had met. Kendrick had changed too, of course. He was now worthy of Gerhanis's fear.

  "Yes." Kendrick jerked his chin toward the pile of bodies. "What's the status of the re-supply? How are their have stores of food?"

  Gerhanis made a face. "Pretty bad, sir, I mean, Paladin. Worm jerky, of course, and some fungus powder. A few more exotic things."

  The men had taken to calling him Paladin. Kendrick allowed this. "How much, Gerhanis?"

  The ex-Rationalist-ex-Monster shook his head. "Not enough to feed all of us, Paladin. Not even for a day."

  "Package what there is for our onward march." Kendrick ordered. "We leave after one sleep-cycle." One advantage of never seeing the sun was that it had been easy to train the men to sleep in shifts.

  Gerhanis looked uncomfortably at the jumbled corpses on the ground beside them. "And the...remains of the monsters, Paladin?"

  Kendrick weighed his options, as he always did. And as always, the balance came out clearly on one side. The men needed food. An army marched on its belly. And the Covenant had no word to say against what his instincts told him.

  "Cook them thoroughly," he said, turning away.

  ***

  Many hours later, a happy, tired Freetrick welcomed his new councilors into his redecorated office.

  The formerly bone surface of his desk was littered with diagrams, columns of arcane calculations, and countless lines of written prayer. With a twist of one white-fingered hand, the Ultimate Fiend spun one of these last across his desk, where it was caught by Skystarke.

  "Your new marching orders, gentlemen," Freetrick said, grinning. "Make everyone start copying these out."

  Grimp's hoof-like fingers moved and Mr. Skree made a sort of bony rattle. Skystarke nervously ran his hand-length tongue over his fangs. Grimp's translator squeaked to itself and stared at Freetrick with enormous eyes. They had a question they wanted to ask, Freetrick knew, but didn't have time to guess their problem.

  He continued with his explanation. "So, look," Freetrick reached across the table to point out a particular line on the parchment in Skystarke's hand. "this is important. Things are going to get serious today, and I need as much word-magic juice as you guys can manage to squeeze out." He looked up at the monsters for their reaction, and saw that all four were glancing nervously between him and the bedroom door to his right. "Uh…really." He tried to focus their attention. "You give me enough energy today, and the New Skrea starts tomorrow. So…" the translator let forth an agonized squeal.

  Freetrick sat back in his chair and adjusted his pince-nez at the monsters. "Okay, clearly something is going on that's way more important than the revolution I'm planning, so does anyone want to tell me what that might be?"

  "Horrendous morrow, monsters."

  Freetrick twisted around in his chair to see Bloodbyrn sway through the door to his bedroom. She had tied one of the sheets around herself in lieu of a robe and she looked wonderful.

  "Your chamberlain wants to know how much you told me, my lord," she said. "The answer to that, gentlemen, is everything."

  "We stand before you, my lady," Skystarke said, after only a moment's shocked silence, "ready to be dismembered for our crimes against you and your caste."

  Freetrick's train of thought, which had momentarily stopped to examine the scenery of his concubine, jolted back into motion. "She doesn't just know about our plans, guys, she's in on them." He couldn't stop the grin that came to his face as he said that. Strike it, just looking at her made him feel dizzy with happiness.

  Skystarke only stared waxily, and Mr. Skree looked as if his brain was cooking with the effort of suppressing his thoughts. Only Grimp had enough wherewithal to move his hands in question. "He wants to know, fiend, what new plans the Most Horrible the Duke DeMacabre has in store for us. Of course he will want many of the new writing monsters killed—"

  "If I turn you all over to my father, you mean?" Bloodbyrn snapped, "Well, what is to stop me, if you displease me, minions? For these are the Kingdoms of Evil, and the lives of the small will be ground beneath the boot heels of the mighty!" The monsters winced as she pointed a sharp-nailed finger at them. "So you miserable cretins will go back to your assigned tasks, even though it mean your death, for your lives and mine are clutched in the talons of the Ultimate Fiend."

  Skystarke and Grimp looked at the floor. The translator was hiding, and even Mr. Skree's face looked grimmer than usual.

  "Wait," said Freetrick, "no."

  "My lord?"

  Bloodbyrn turned an expression on Freetrick that made him want to run away, but he faced her and said, "No, Bloodbyrn. That's not th
e Skrea I want to make. No more melodrama, no more threats." He stood from his chair, and swept his gaze across the people assembled in his office. "We have to be able to trust each other, here."

  "Oh indeed my lord?" Bloodbyrn hissed furiously, "and how shall we do that? Pledge vows to each other like the contemptible Do-Gooders? Or perhaps you simply wish to continue to undermine my authority before the servants?"

  "No," said Freetrick, "I just—" But even as he said the words, Freetrick realized that he was, in fact, arguing with her. Their first lover's quarrel in the middle of the revolution? The first crack in the terrifyingly delicate shell that held them all suspended above the not-very-metaphorical-at-all pool of lava?

  No. The revolution would work. More importantly, his relationship would work. The Ultimate Fiend intended to both survive and continue to have sex with Bloodbyrn, and so he said, "I'm just glad, Bloodbyrn, that you agreed to play the part of old Skrea while I demonstrated the new Skrea. If all goes according to plan, the threats…well that I told you to say, those will be the last ones the monsters will have to take seriously." Freetrick glanced at Bloodbyrn, who wasn't taking it well. Strike it, if only he could take her aside and tell her—"because all of us know that an empowered monster population cannot be controlled by force, only cooperated with, for our mutual benefit."

  Bloodbyrn let out a tiny huff of air. Her controlled expression did not change, but her body relaxed until she no longer looked poised to rip out Freetrick's throat. "Indeed," she said, "for I stand behind my lord Feerborg and his New Skrea. I trust," her eyes flashed amber warning, "that all those gathered here understood the point my lord and I were making." The monsters and Ultimate Fiend flinched back as her gaze swept them. "In fact," she said as Freetrick opened his mouth to continue, "to convince all you…people of my commitment to our joint machinations, I should tell you my secret, deadly until we achieve our reformation."