The Darker Lord

by Jack Heckel

  Thankfully, we didn’t have long to watch. Vivian’s eyes began to flare brighter, and she harmonized, “Here we go.”

  Chapter 26

  It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad Multiverse

  We landed in powdery red dust. The impact was not terribly hard, and for that, I was thankful. I coughed and blinked before rising to my knees. The sky was the color of butterscotch with a sun that seemed small and faint. Red sand dunes surrounded us and stretched in all directions.

  “Where are we now?” Valdara asked as she helped Drake to his feet.

  “I have no idea, lass,” Rook said with a cough as he also pulled himself off the ground. “Ask Mr. Subworld here.” He nodded his head in my direction.

  I spun about, but there were no landmarks, nothing to distinguish this world from any other made of a lot of red dust. “I don’t know . . .”

  “Well, I’m naming it the Sea of Red Dust,” Drake said as he tried to brush the stuff from his robes. “Seems to be the only thing here.” He held up his hands as if in supplication. “Which I’m not complaining about, because it beats the hell out of where we were.”

  Rook took a swig from his flask. “Well, I’m goin’ to call it Barsoon, because if we don’t find a bar soon I’m goin’ to run out of whiskey, and that’s about the only thin’ that’s keepin’ me goin’ at this point.” He looked at me. “Lad, why don’t you ask our tour guide where we go from here?”

  “We aren’t done?” Valdara asked.

  “No,” replied Vivian.

  “Do you know what we need to do here?” I asked.

  She smiled and replied harmonically, “Wait.”

  “For what?” Rook groused. In response, a series of loud guttural sounds, followed by a rapid set of loud hollow pounding noises, issued from behind the dunes surrounding us. “Forget I asked,” he said softly, and drew his ax.

  Three enormous—as in, two-story-tall enormous—white-furred creatures with four arms emerged atop the nearest dunes. They were massive colossi of primate power, and their eyes glared down at us with pure hate. A lot about them bothered me, including what they were doing in a desert, but at the moment the size of their teeth was all I could focus on.

  “Apes!” shouted Valdara as she drew her sword and chakram. “Drake, remember the Steaming Jungle of Itnauy, and those crazed ape men who couldn’t believe we could talk?”

  “Remember? I’m the one who drove out the serpent people.” He lifted his staff. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I miss the good old days.”

  “Our best chance is to concentrate our attacks,” Valdara said. “Drake, distract the one on the middle and the right, and use every defensive spell you can to stay alive. Rook and I will attack the one on the left and take it out quickly. Then we concentrate on the center one until it falls, and we finish off the last of them. Avery, stay here and use your spells to support whichever of us is struggling. If things go badly, we’ll use this spot as a fallback position.”

  We all nodded, and I think all of us felt better to have Valdara in charge, but before we could put her plan into action, Vivian said, “Don’t attack them.”

  “What!” all of us said at once.

  “What are we supposed to do, lass?” Rook asked with a grunt of dismay. “Ask them to tea?”

  “Wait,” she said serenely.

  We didn’t have long. With roars that echoed across the empty landscape, the apes charged, taking enormous loping, jumping steps that covered twenty feet a stride.

  “Can we attack now?” Drake asked.

  “Wait.”

  They were near the bottom of the dune hills and tearing across the small valley toward us. They would be on us in seconds.

  “Why are we listening to someone who admittedly is not all here?” Valdara asked. No one had an answer.

  When I could see the whites of their eyes and the plaque on their teeth, I called, “Viviaaaan?”

  “Wait . . .” she said.

  When the apes were sixty feet away, I began beseeching the gods for help. When they were forty feet away, Vivian’s eyes began to glow. When they were twenty feet away, I felt the tug of her spell on my brain. A split second before we vanished there was a swirling of energy and Moregoth’s men materialized next to us. The sound of their screams followed us through etherspace.

  We appeared in an ancient, ruined city, on what must have once been a grand plaza, but which the steaming jungle around us was reclaiming inch by inch. Before us was a hulk of a man with a mane of black hair cut square around his face. He was wearing a loincloth, and across his back was strapped an enormous sword. He had been walking down the broad stairway of a soaring temple carrying an ornately decorated chest, but stopped when we appeared. The man stared at us with sullen, volcanic blue eyes for a moment, then his voice boomed forth, echoing through the empty city. “If you have come to claim the jewels, then know that they are mine, and we will see who feasts on death first!”

  Drake, Valdara, and I looked at each other in total bewilderment, but before any of us could tell him that he could keep his treasure, Vivian stepped forward. “Mighty warrior, I seek not your riches, but your aid,” she said in the most vulnerable, waifish voice I had ever heard from her. “A man comes. A pale man with flesh like paper and lips like the dead. If he follows me from this place he will kill me.” She fell to her knees, her eyes downcast. “Only you can save me.”

  Without a word, the man set the box down and drew his sword with a smooth, practiced motion. His eyes burned with a bestial light. “Never fear, fair one. I will crush your enemy. He will fall at my feet, and you shall hear his lamentations on the air.”

  Vivian’s spell tugged at the back of my skull as she smiled and said, “Thank you, great warrior.” Once again, we were pulled through etherspace.

  When I questioned her about the man and how she knew he would be there, Vivian fixed me with her gold-glinted eyes and said she simply knew, and also knew what she needed to say. It became clear that Vivian’s spell was operating with an intelligence. It was what Rook had said about the hypocube; the spell was taking us to Sam and Ariella, but it was choosing a path based on some deeper internal calculation about what it thought we needed. Obviously, it had come to the conclusion that what we needed most was to shake Moregoth from our trail. Unfortunately, it had also determined that the best way to deal with the Moregoth problem was to take us to places of mind-boggling lethality and hope he died first.

  We emerged in something resembling an ancient Egyptian temple. Torches illuminated sandstone walls, and brilliantly colored hieroglyphics covered pillars and statues of gold embossed with blue lapis lazuli. There were lines of men in ornamental masks and gilt robes standing in front of us. Up a broad set of stairs, an altar stood before which a man in high-priest garbs held a still-beating human heart. He pointed a shifting finger and opened his mouth, and from it flew a swarm of glittering black beetles. Before they could reach us, the spell pulled us back through the safety of the ether.

  Each time we transported, the story was the same. We appeared in a world or a place beset by deadly peril. Sometimes it was immediate: once, our group and Moregoth’s both appeared in the middle of a storm of nothingness at the edge of a decaying reality yearning for a name. Sometimes there could be quite a long delay: one time we found ourselves on a pleasant grassy ledge up the side of a mountain. It was perfectly sized for our little group and well sheltered from the elements, and we took Moregoth’s absence to rest and recuperate.

  This was first place we had landed since our frenetic journey began where I had the time to talk to Vivian about what was happening to her. It was the morning of our second day there, and I found myself sitting next to her. She was intently watching a bird that was busily eating the snails that lived in the cool dampness of the ledge. A strange and enigmatic smile curved the corners of her mouth. Something about the scene was deeply disturbing.

  “Do you think I’m evil, Avery?” she asked, breaking the silence between us.<
br />
  After what she’d done on the faun’s world I’d given the question a lot of thought. That I didn’t really have an answer yet was probably answer enough, but I also knew that some of my disgust at her was guilt over all the “noble” magic I’d done over the years without thinking. And all of that was confused by the fact that I thought I was falling in love with her. The pause between her question and my answer was long enough that she left off her study of the bird to stare at me instead.

  I dropped my eyes and sighed. “I don’t know, Vivian, but if you are, then so am I. Let me ask in return, do you think we’re evil?”

  She frowned and said nothing. About the time I thought she might not answer at all she said, “I don’t, but then I’m willing to accept that I may be a bad judge. The universe at least appears to think I am, and who am I to argue with its judgment?”

  “What do you mean, the universe thinks you’re evil?”

  She drew her knees up into her chest and rested the side of her head on them. “I mean I am often cast into the role of villain. I lied to you in Baum’s world, Avery. I wasn’t Dorothy. I was the witch. That’s why I asked you so many questions about her. The Munchkins were terrified of me.”

  “Yes, but that’s probably because you can do magic and—”

  She shook her head and began to tick off examples on her fingers. “In Carroll’s world, I was the Queen of Hearts. In Lewis’s world, I was the White Queen. In Howard’s world, I was the barbarian king’s temptress.”

  “What about the ape world?” I countered. “You were not the villain there.”

  “Maybe I was,” she said with a sad sigh. “How do you know I wasn’t the reason the creatures went out of their way to attack us?”

  I thought about this for a minute and asked, “Even if you’re right—and I’m not saying I agree with you—why would that be the case?”

  “You’re going to laugh at me, but I think the universe knows what I did on Trelari. I think it’s punishing me.”

  I did laugh. “You think you have some sort of universal karmic debt? If that sort of thing happened, then why wouldn’t the universe be coming after me? I was literally the bloody Dark Lord!”

  She smiled again, but the smile didn’t reach her gold-ringed eyes. “But that was only prologue, Avery. Since I’ve known you, your story has been about redemption—your redemption. If you’ll remember, I was the villain of the last book. What if that’s what I am? What if I’m the thread of evil woven through the narrative of your life? What if I’m the enemy?”

  “Gods!” I shouted, my voice echoing about the ledge and startling the bird into flight. “My life is not a bloody book. This moment we’re having isn’t another episode to be neatly encapsulated in a chapter headed with a pithy title. Nothing is guaranteed. And stop taking all the blame for what happened in Lewis’s world. I’m the one that gave you the key. You warned me there would be a price if we kept going: war and horror and death. You wanted us to walk away, to enjoy lives of quiet contentment. I chose this path . . .” I lowered my voice, because my anger had turned to emptiness. “Have you ever considered that I may be just as advertised: the villain of the piece? After all, I am the Dark Lord?”

  Silence stretched between us. In time the bird returned, and Vivian went back to her study of the creature. I had sunk back into my own troubled thoughts when she spoke again. “I am sorry about the faun. I hope you know that.”

  “I know,” I answered.

  And I did. She’d destroyed the faun’s world, not because that’s what she wanted, but because I wouldn’t. That was Vivian. She still believed that the ends justified the means. I was not so certain, either that what we were doing was right, or that we had a right to do it regardless of the cost. It was becoming more and more apparent to me that humility was what was needed, and that humility was a quality Mysterium mages were not well known for.

  In fact, the more I considered everything that had happened since Trelari, the less ridiculous the idea of Vivian and I being universal symbols of evil seemed. My existence as the Dark Lord had been reflected through the multiverse. There was no reason Vivian’s life as the Dark Queen shouldn’t have been reflected. I was still thinking over my own place in the universe, and whether my reputation was the reason waiters invariably got my order wrong, when Moregoth appeared, followed moments later by an enormous red dragon that smashed the side of the mountain to bits just as we faded away.

  And so it went. Vivian’s spell was without remorse. No matter the danger, it always seemed to pick the right moment to have Moregoth arrive so he and his men would receive the brunt of whatever doom was waiting. It ground away at Moregoth’s army like the sea does the shore. He was down to a handful of men when we faced off against him on the deck of a pirate ship. I suppose some part of me had begun to pity the Sealers, but it was still a very, very small part.

  The captain, who, based on his smell and behavior, must have been drinking since the night before, stared back and forth between us as we glared at each other. “What the two of you need,” he slurred, “is rum. Rum makes everything better. Savvy?”

  “Be quiet, shadow!” Moregoth said coldly.

  “Hey, I’m Captain Jack . . .” he began to say, and went down under a hail of fire from the Sealers.

  Moregoth must have given some signal, but if he did, I never saw it. I studied the four men remaining from Moregoth’s original army. They looked hardened to the point of brittleness, and there was a madness in their eyes that seemed perfectly understandable given all they had been through.

  Moregoth also looked bad. He was still pale, and tall, and creepy, but the long hair that had once fallen elegantly down his face was matted, and the dark make-up around his eyes and lips had smeared so he now looked more unwell than sinister.

  “End this, Moregoth,” I said. “End it before anyone else dies.”

  “Tired, Dark Lord?” He gave a hollow, wheezing laugh. “I’m just beginning to enjoy myself. I will never stop. I will hunt you to the ends of the multiverse, even beyond the boundaries of this world and into the sweet oblivion of the next. You will find no peace. There will be no end.”

  I am not sure how I would have responded. Probably I would have done something stupid like try to punch him . . . and miss. Fortunately for all of our dignities, Vivian stepped forward. Her eyes were glowing, and that all too familiar feeling of pressure was building in the back of my skull. “If you will not end it, then I will,” she said in an angry, discordant voice.

  The water around the ship began to churn and froth. The deck began to roll and pitch. The entire vessel was twisting and turning in the water as though it were caught in a vast whirlpool. A second later, a swarm of massive tentacles erupted from the water and lashed onto the deck. As our bodies were pulled into the ether, a shadow ascended from the depths. Moregoth’s eyes went wide as a giant, gaping, beaked maw closed around the ship.

  We appeared in a downpour outside a low-slung, two-story building. Above the door was a painted sign of a dancing pony. We stood, letting the rain beat down us. All of us were breathing hard and staring about looking for a threat, but nothing happened. After a minute or so, Drake asked, “Was that it? Is . . . is Moregoth gone?”

  “If he’s not, then I don’t think the bastard is killable,” Rook said.

  “What was that thing anyway?” Valdara asked.

  Vivian answered in a dreamlike voice. “‘He lived below the thunders of the upper deep; Far beneath in the abysmal sea, His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep.’”

  Rook leaned in and whispered. “No offense, Avery, but your girlfriend is a little scary.”

  “It’s a poem by Tennyson, Rook,” I said. “I think ‘that thing’ was a kraken.”

  He gave a grunt that let me know exactly what he thought about poetry. “Well, whatever it was, if it managed to eat Moregoth I’ll raise a toast to it. Speakin’ of which,” he said, looking up at the inn’s placard, “I say we go inside. Get out of the rain. And ge
t hammered.”

  “Are you saying after all that traveling, through all those worlds, the gateway took us here to get us drunk?” Valdara asked in disbelief.

  Rook gave her a melodramatic shake of his head. “Remember lass, it’s not what we want. It’s what the portal thinks we need.”

  Drake pushed past them to the door. “Well, at this point, I’m not one to fight the fates.”

  Chapter 27

  A Party Line

  We walked through the door into the warm chaos of a pub on a miserable night when no one feels like being alone. Crowds of people and dwarfs and elves and halflings were seated around long trestle tables in the center of the room, and smaller, private tables set along the walls and in the corners. A crackling fire burned cheerily in the grate, and merry music filled the air. A curly haired halfling was dancing atop a table as the crowd clapped out a rhythm.

  “Looks like home,” Valdara said, and she seemed to relax a little.

  “Aye, lass, that it does,” Rook grunted happily. “I’ll get some ales. You find us a table.”

  She did, off to one side, as far away from the revelry as possible. There had been a weaselly little fellow sitting and watching the dancing halfling with a dark eye, but Valdara leaned in close and said something, and he had abandoned his spot with remarkable speed. Soon Rook returned with seven ales: one for each of us and three for him.

  As the group had taken to doing in every world, we first made sure Vivian was safe and comfortable. The traveling had taxed her most, both physically and emotionally. The spell, for as much as it had saved us time and time again, had turned her into a vessel. Her actions had not always been her own, and her memories were often clouded. I could see from the slight glimmer in her golden-ringed eyes that the spell was still on her, only dormant. She would be herself for a time, until she was not.