Queen of Nothing (Marla Mason Book 9)

by T. A. Pratt

  She realized the compulsion to return to Earth, normally so overwhelming when it was time to fulfill her bargain and spend a month as a mortal, was gone. She felt no pull toward the mortal realm at all—as if the deal she’d struck to spend six months of each year on Earth had been broken. The bargain she’d made with her husband, Death. But what could break that arrangement?

  “Marla.”

  The queen spun. There was another god here. That happened, sometimes: they could reach this place more easily than mortals, by passing through certain places that meant death to humans. Volcanoes, trenches in the deep oceans, miles-down caves teeming with blind monsters. The other gods came for favors, or to socialize, but Death and his queen routinely turned them away, too busy with their business overseeing the world’s cycles of death and rebirth—without which there would have been no gods at all.

  “I don’t have time,” she began, and then recognized him. “Wait. You’re Reva. The god of the lost and displaced.”

  Reva bowed his head, not that he had a head, exactly. His form was purer, here, than when he appeared on Earth, and he was a man-shaped fog of mist and longings. “I am. I was... not friends with your husband, exactly... but acquaintances, certainly.”

  “You were? You aren’t any more? Did you have a falling out?”

  Reva shook his head. “Marla. The Outsider... when Death opened a door from this realm in the Outsider’s presence, on that beach in San Francisco, the monster could sense the path to this place. The Outsider could find the passageways, and pry them open, and pass through. After I encountered the Outsider I could sense his actions, you see, because he was an exile himself, one of my creatures, as far from home as it is possible for anything to be. I felt him come here, and I pursued, to warn your husband, but I was too late.” Reva sat down on the stony floor and put his head in his hands. “I’m sorry.”

  The rings. In Felport, fighting the Outsider, she’d noticed it wearing ostentatious, ornate rings. The monster hadn’t worn jewelry in their earlier encounters, but she’d thought the rings were merely an ornament, a refinement of its human costume.

  Her own husband, when he chose to appear in human form, often appeared wearing rings, each holding a precious stone from the wealth below the surface, each gem imbued with strange magics. The Outsider’s increased power, its new abilities, in the final battle... It had stolen those powers from Death, consuming the god and gaining his strength.

  “He is dead?” the queen rasped. “My husband is dead?” She touched the necklace at her throat, where her wedding ring dangled.

  Reva didn’t raise his head. “You’re the only god of Death, now, Marla. I’m so sorry. This realm is yours alone, now... and it’s incomplete. I don’t know what happens next—if you should take a mortal consort, or if another Death will rise to replace your husband, or –”

  In the back of her mind, the mortal part of Marla, the part that still longed to do good in the world, to care for her friends, to make amends, to make a difference, to kill monsters, to do better, howled in agony at the loss of her husband, and in fear at what the uncertain future might bring.

  The greater part of her, the part that was now the only ruler of the land of the dead, howled in agonies of her own.

  The agony of being cut in half, and left alone, to reign in Hell.

  She snarled at Reva. “Go! Begone from this place!”

  “There’s no need to kill the messenger, Marla –”

  “Don’t call me that. Marla is a seed. I am the tree that grew from her. Her time is gone. New burdens have been laid on me, and I no longer have the luxury of bothering myself with mortal concerns. Begone, or I will kill you.”

  Reva held up his hands. “If there’s anything I can do to help you, just let me know.”

  “You are the god of exiles. I am not an exile. I am home.” She turned her back on him, and he wisped away, back toward the volcanic vent or undersea cave he’d used to come here.

  The queen trembled, clenching her fists, her diamond-sharp nails drawing blood. Where the droplets fell, dark red flowers sprang up from the floor, and she howled and stomped them into the stone. Her husband had always handled the rebirth parts of their reign: he was the one who brought back the sun and raised the flowers from their slumber. She was the black-tongued destroyer, bedecked with a belt of skulls, bringer of ice and winter. But now, flowers grew for her, because she was the only one, because she was the all.

  She gestured, summoning the shade of a necromancer named Ayres who’d once thought to command the dead, and even made demands of Death himself. He appeared as an old man in a black undertaker’s suit, head bowed, duly deferent. “You have my sympathies on your loss, majesty,” he murmured.

  “Your sympathies are unnecessary. What is the state of my kingdom?”

  “The dead are uneasy in their afterlives, but nothing has fallen apart; the center holds. An untended garden does not turn immediately to wilderness, and the same is true here. The realm you and your husband built is strong.”

  “You will be my steward, for now,” the queen said. “You are duly empowered. Set to right those things that have fallen out of true, and if you encounter something beyond your powers, tell me.”

  “Yes, majesty.” She could sense his glee at the newfound responsibility and the powers that came with it, but she’d chosen him because he’d been a man of little imagination, and death had not changed him: he would do as he was told and wouldn’t dare try to exceed his remit.

  She looked at the toppled chair, and tears of blood welled in her eyes. She dashed them away. There was no time for mourning. She gestured, and the chair settled itself upright again. Let his throne be a memorial. Another gesture, and the cavern became blackness in all directions, full of stars, each star a mortal life. Some burned bright, and others guttered. She and Death had largely automated the process of death, and the migration of souls had continued even in the brief absence of a guiding mind. There were always complex situations, though: snagged souls, troubled passings—and she spent an interval setting those problems to right, easing paths, unsnarling tangled lifelines, and knocking down the flimsy magical structures of a few sorcerers who believed they’d found ways to confound, or capture, or elude death (the cessation of life) and/or Death (the deity who oversaw those processes).

  When all the lights were taken care of, she brought back the throne room, and collapsed onto her own chair. She and Death used to take turns decorating their palace, expressing their will to create surroundings decadent or severe, Gothic or whimsical, as the mood struck. Now her unconscious mind (for even gods have hidden seas of thought) had decorated her throne room for a funeral, with red curtains, shrouded mirrors, black-blossomed flowers, and scores of candelabras.

  She put her face in her hands and sobbed, allowing herself a few moments of wracking, ruined release. Death. Her Death. She thought of the first time she’d seen him, a swaggering tough, newly birthed from the primal womb of chaos where the gods grew. He’d come to threaten the mortal Marla Mason, to take her dagger of office, which unbeknownst to her was actually Death’s terrible sword, won from a previous incarnation of Death by a sorcerer long years before. The Walking Death, they’d called him then, because he walked in the world. He’d worn his rings, and his sharp suit, and his blade of a smile, and he’d threatened her city, casually exerting cruel power to make her bend to his will.

  But Marla Mason didn’t bend, and had a streak of the contrarian as wide as the river Styx. She’d resisted, and so Death had exiled her from Felport, and taken over the place as his own, holding an entire city hostage. Rather than meet his demands, Marla had chosen to invade Hell, taking her friend Pelham to the underworld with her, planning to seize control of the underworld and hold it for ransom instead. An audacious plan, and one that didn’t work out at all the way she’d intended. Before their fight was done, she found herself married to Death himself, and transformed into a god-by-proxy, because she needed access to that level of power.
Then she’d used Death’s terrible sword, a blade capable of cutting through time and dreams and abstract concepts, and performed surgery on the smug new god: she’d cut away the Walking Death’s cruelty, his caprice, his savagery, and left behind only the parts of him that were good: his mercy, his sense of duty, his sense of humor, his flirtations, his gift for dry understatement. She’d carved him into a man she could love, and into a god fit to rule the land of the dead.

  Who said you couldn’t change a man? You just needed the right metaphysical tools.

  What began as a marriage of magical necessity turned into a love match, in time. Death had sometimes joined her in the mortal world for travels and adventures. She’d learned the ways of gods in the underworld with him. They made love as mortals did, and as gods did, and if pressed, she couldn’t have said which she preferred. Both the mortal Marla Mason and the dread queen of the underworld were closed-off creatures, unwilling to let anyone come too close, devoted to protecting themselves so they could better protect others. But Death had been the greatest exception to that, the only one to truly breach her defenses. He had become the home of her heart.

  Now he was gone. She was a widow. A jagged half of a broken circle, with a realm to rule alone.

  Ayres appeared before her, and she rose from her throne in alarm. One of his eyes was swollen shut, a gouge in his cheek bled, and he held one hand, twisted and withered, against his chest. His undertaker’s suit was singed and torn. “Majesty,” he said. “There is something terrible rising, in the depths of the primordial chaos.”

  The queen scowled. She’d gone into the depths during her last month in the underworld, to kill a monster that had invaded her realm and fed on the souls of the dead... though in the end she’d been unable to kill the beast, and had been forced to make an accommodation with it instead. “Not that dragon again?”

  “No, majesty, she departed as promised, and has not attempted to return. This is... something new. I questioned him, and he struck me. He is rising through the sea of afterlives now. He says he is coming here. He says he is coming for you.”

  The air shimmered, and the queen suddenly wore elaborate armor made of bones, and ice, and precious metals. The terrible sword of Death appeared in her hand, glittering and envenomed. “Some monster thinks I am weak now, because my husband has died? He tries to strike at me because he thinks I cannot strike back? He will learn otherwise.”

  “I am no monster, woman.” The voice reverberated through the cavern, booming and vast.

  Ayres whimpered and crouched, squeezing his eyes shut.

  A figured stepped into the light cast by the candles, and with every step he took, the throne room changed around him: the stone walls became bare rock, the candles smoky torches. He dragged a more primitive realm into immanence with him, and he seemed better matched to life in a cave than a palace: muscular, bronze-skinned, bare-chested and scarred, wearing rough-woven pants with a belt of rope, and no shoes on his feet. His body was that of a man, but his head was an immense bird’s skull, perhaps a vulture's. Red lights glowed and streamed in his ocular cavities, like embers rising on warm updrafts.

  The queen brandished her sword. Whether she felt fear or misgiving was unimportant: she had her duty, and she would defend her realm. “How dare you come to this place uninvited? Those who do so often find it impossible to leave.”

  He stopped a few feet away from the huddled form of Ayres, the edges of his cave shimmering against those of her palace. “I have no intention of leaving. Travel to the mortal world is a corrupting influence. I wish to remain pure.” He glanced at Ayres. “You were a horrible man, weren’t you? Avaricious, selfish, petulant, petty. You would have done even more damage than you did, if you’d had a stronger mind. Your afterlife has not been pleasant, I see, dwelling in a little world shaped by your own failings and fears... but it is not harsh enough for justice. You deserve a worse Hell. Go to it.” He gestured, and Ayres vanished.

  The queen widened her eyes and tightened her grip on the sword. She tried to call her steward back, but though she could sense Ayres, she could no longer reach him. He was back in the bubble of his own afterlife, which—like all the afterlives of every soul in this place—was shaped according to his own expectations, decorated and populated from the jumble of his living memories and the vestiges of his living mind.

  Or, at least, it had been. Now the interior of his bubble was full of fire, screams, pursuits, knives, and more terrible things: punishments inflicted on him by demons. She tried to reach through the barrier, to bring him out of that place of torment, but the permeable borders of his afterlife were solid as iron now.

  She screamed and launched herself at the skull-headed interloper, but he merely crossed his arms, and the ground beneath her feet turned to mud, then solidified again around her ankles, holding her in place. The reality of his cave spread like ink through water, encroaching on her palace, overwriting the red velvets and dark walls with damp, unhewn stone.

  He sat cross-legged on the ground before her, head cocked, and when she swung the sword at his head from her fixed position, he caught the flat of the blade between his palms, twisted his wrists, and wrenched the sword from her grasp. Her armor fell to pieces around her, bone and ice clattering on the cave floor. She stood in a shift of white cotton, and she trembled.

  “There,” he said. “That’s better.” He adjusted his legs, sitting in the lotus position. “I am the new god of Death. The universe sensed the absence of the old god, and drew me into being. I floated in the dark at the bottom of the primordial chaos for a time, growing to understand the realm I was made to rule. I watched your return, and your attempt to set the ruin to right. I admit you are competent, in your way, but your fundamental principles are soft and corrupt. They simply won’t do.”

  The queen frowned. “You are my new husband?”

  He shrugged. “Technically, I suppose –”

  “There is nothing technical about it. I am married to Death. That means I am married to you.”

  “Traditionally, the mortal consort of the god of Death goes into oblivion with the god.”

  “Traditionally, the god of Death and his consort rule for centuries or millennia, and pass on naturally, according to cycles of death and rebirth that are beyond even our understanding, husband. Traditionally, death isn’t murdered by a monster from another universe. I’m not sure what good relying on tradition will do us here, and anyway, I’m not going anywhere. I’m not the hurl-myself-onto-the-funeral-pyre type.” She scowled hard at her feet, exerting her will, and the floor released her feet. Rather than aim a kick at her new husband’s face, she sat down across from him. “We’re going to be working together. Frankly, I could use the help. Let us find a way to move forward, for the good of this realm, and the world beyond.”

  He shook his head. “You stink of mortality, woman.”

  “That mortal core is the whole point of me, husband. Death takes a mortal consort because his business is mortality, and it’s useful to have a reminder of what the living are actually like. I don’t like mortal-me all that much better than you do—she’s irrational and pig-headed and always thinks she’s right—but she serves an important purpose. Circumstances here can become a bit too rarefied and removed from the reality of the living.”

  “Pig-headed? Always thinks she’s right? It is not only your mortal form that exhibits such qualities, woman. I have reviewed your tenure. You attacked my predecessor with his own blade, and altered his personality.”

  “He was unpleasant. I made him better.”

  “You diminished him. How do I know you won’t turn on me some day, and cut away those parts of myself you find objectionable?”

  “I can make a promise. When gods promise, they stick. Though to be honest, you seem rather unpleasant, too. Are you sure you wouldn’t like a trim? I’m a deft hand with a magical scalpel.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest. “You do not amuse. You, a creature born of man and woman, dare question,
dare change, beings born of infinite possibility?”

  “Who are you to question me? Who’s got more experience ruling Hell? You were literally born yesterday. Those scars on your chest are decorative. I’ve earned mine.”

  “I may be new to this world, but I came to life infused with the wisdom of my forebears, and a more basic, fundamental understanding of the nature of my role and reality than you will ever possess. You had to learn to rule Hell: I was born knowing how. That is why my will is stronger than yours, here, and why the nature of this place responds to my desires more readily than yours.”

  “You know, the old Death and I ruled as equal partners –”

  “Nonsense. You were selfish. You insisted on spending fully half the year living as a mortal, leaving the old Death to shoulder the burdens of rule himself the rest of the time, juggling affairs in the underworld and the world above.”

  “The Persephone clause wasn’t my idea. Take it up with my mortal self. I much prefer the distance and perspective godhood provides. That restriction seems to have been lifted, now, anyway, so I can stay by your side.” Somewhere inside the queen, her mortal self howled, and she thought of Bradley, Rondeau, Pelham, those mortals she was so attached too, and of the strangers she thought she could help, too. But the queen could ignore her mortal self’s outrage. In several decades, at most, her friends would be dead anyway, and dwelling here, as would any innocents Marla might have helped. Everyone came here eventually.

  “I have no desire to rule beside you, woman. We have... differing ideas. You and my predecessor ran a remarkably lax realm. You truly let the dead souls organize their own afterlives?”

  The queen shrugged. “Why not? They’re given a little bubble of primal chaos to shape as they see fit. Those who expect flames and damnation get it. Those who expect angels and harps get that. Those with less clear expectations end up in some sort of dreamland of their own unconscious devising. Most of them don’t even realize they’re dead. It keeps them occupied and at peace, mostly.”