by Eric Nylund
And curiously, a single cut ran down along his forearm. A trickle of black blood congealed there.
Careless of him.
Or had Mephistopheles’ minions gathered power enough to actually hurt an Infernal Lord?
Indeed. He snugged his cloak tighter and trotted. Time was far shorter than he had realized.
Miles ahead, he spied the tallest tower of the Sealiah’s castles, burning bright with beacons and the swoop and swirl of armored bat defenders flying about.
Skirmishes raged upon the plains and hills and what was left of the jungles, but Louis noted a procession of knights had the right idea. . as they steadily limped down the road back to the castle, dragging those too injured to walk on their own.
A retreat? So early? It seemed unlikely, yet the evidence was before his eyes.
The damned of Hell mended bone and flesh after a long painful process. Wounded typically were not removed from battlefield. It was a measure that smacked of desperation-not mercy-for there was only one reason to bother: to deny Mephistopheles converting even the weakest of her warriors to his cause.
It also presented Louis with an interesting problem. He slowed his pace and hid in the ditch. Sneaking past so many numbers would take time.
He glanced about, seeking opportunity.
And he found it: a battle had taken place here recently. Among broken lances and smoldering opium stalks, one knight lay in three pieces, each part struggling to find the other and its missing head.
Louis removed the warrior’s thorned mail. “Might I borrow this?” He then kicked the knight’s head across the road into the far ditch. “I thank you, brave sir.”
He donned the armor-a tad loose for his frame-and then shuffled forward along the road, joining the ranks of despondent soldiers marching toward their doom.
Through his spiked and slotted visor, Louis watched as the twelve towers of Sealiah’s fortress loomed larger. Atop each flickered a tongue of flame to keep darkness at bay. This fire was ghostly blue. . marsh gas piped in from the surrounding flooded lands. In their murky waters, tangles of razor vine squirmed and thrashed and waited for something to wander into their hungry embraces.
More soldiers joined their ranks-hundred and hundreds, but not the numbers that he knew Sealiah had at her disposal.
How badly had Mephistopheles beaten her?
This concerned Louis, not because he felt any pity for his most beautiful adversary, but because it would not give him the chance to take advantage of her first.
Or perhaps there was more to this? Certainly Louis had no monopoly on deception (even if he was the best at it).
He and the others marched along drawbridges that spanned the wide black waters of the Laudanum River. Along the banks, barrels of oil sat half-buried, awaiting the torch to transform them into floating sheets of fire-unassailable proof against the dark. . for a time.
Louis then stood before the base of the towering mesa that held Doze Torres. The wisteria-covered earthen ramps that had once zigzagged along the cliff face had been torn away, leaving only sheer rock.
He looked straight up and saw industrial cranes perched on the castles’ walls. On their steel cables, a lift descended that could carry three hundred soldiers.
Louis got on with the others, and it rose into the air.
From this aerial vantage, Louis saw not hundreds, but thousands of soldiers and wobbling cannon and catapults and wagons piled high with soldier pieces struggling back toward the castle from every direction. Most of these ragtag lines came under attack from the darkness.
Louis heard their distant screams and futile shots.
Although if he hadn’t just walked through the killing fields himself, he would have sworn it all had an air of theater to it.
The crane lifted his platform over the ramparts.
A silk spider line brushed Louis’s face, and he absentmindedly brushed it away.
Louis then saw a pleasant surprise: the art of the Poppy Queen’s duplicity.
Within the outer walls surrounding the Tower of Whispering Lilacs, camped under tarps to shield their glow, were ten thousand knights-each with gleaming silver rifle-lances and phosphorescing fungus sprouting from their armor and flesh. There were lines of spore catapults, steam-powered missiles, and squadrons of hanging cluster bats. Firepower to not quite assault the Vaults of Heaven. . but enough to have given them a run for their money should they dare.
Certainly equal to any force Mephistopheles could muster.
He glanced back at the devastated, deflowered Poppy Lands.
All a calculated lure? He didn’t quite think so.
Sealiah’s lands (much like herself) had admirable natural defenses, ones she would not have so casually abandoned. The fact that she had chosen this particular deception was telling.
It was also information that Louis could sell-perhaps so ingratiate himself with the Lord of the Mirrored Realms that he could learn something of his plans. . and in turn sell that information to Sealiah for her most delectable favors.
All the while eroding any advantage either might have over the other, so when the final battle came, the victor would be weakened.
He licked his lips. So dangerous. But so tempting.
The crane set him and the other knights down and they limped toward the Tower of Nightshade, darkest among its fellow flowering structures.
Louis fell behind.
There were precious few shadows in the courtyards with all the pink and lime green and robin’s-egg blue light pulsing from the fungus that grew everywhere. He found a sliver of shade, however, entered its welcome depths, and slinked away unnoticed toward the Oaken Keeper of Secrets.
That was where Sealiah’s map room was (if he remembered correctly). All her plans would be laid out there for the taking.
He almost giggled. How easy this would be.
Of course, she would not expect such a skilled infiltrator-and not him of all her relations. Who was he? Lowly Louis? The earth under her feet? It would not be the first time others had fatally underestimated his cunning.
Louis passed the guards and triple-locked outer door of the keep without notice, and glided up the stairs.
The map room would be on the third floor, where her winged insect spies brought the latest intelligence from the field.
He set one finger on the living wood of the map room’s tiny door.
No pulse beyond. It was empty.
He then undid the puzzle knots that would have given any mathematician specializing in topology psychotic fits. He slipped inside and ever so carefully eased the door shut.
Louis was grateful for the cool darkness within. The only light twinkled from the map table in the center of the chamber. From the decided lack of echoes, he felt of the dimensions of this place were larger than he recalled.
No matter. He tiptoed closer and saw the snaking Laudanum River and the Valley of the Shadow of Death, smoldering jungle and patches of black silk draped over fields that marked the locations of Mephistopheles’ armies in the Poppy Lands.
He also noted with great interest that a game of Towers had been set up alongside the map table, white and black cubes stacked and arranged to fight, and a handful already removed from play.
How intriguing.
Torches whooshed to life-thirteen fiery brands about the perimeter of the room-each held by a Champion of the Blood Rose, Sealiah’s personal guard.
Sitting upon a tiny throne, orchids twinning along her arms, was Queen Sealiah in armor that appeared as if it had been painted upon her body-curves of dark silver that flashed with light and shadows and reflections of fire. . and pulsing a nacreous green from the emerald set upon her exposed throat. She was all the more lovely because her features also smoldered with the angry passion that came from bloodlust. . and lust. . and anticipation of the kill.
She held a sliver of dark-matter steel that had existed before the mortal Earth had been dust gathering in void: Saliceran-the broken sword. Its blade wept poison
from its Damascus metal folds that had sent many to a painful demise. She pointed the jagged tip at his neck.
“Welcome, Great Deceiver,” Sealiah said in a mocking tone. “Welcome to your death.”
56 TWO MORE PIECES IN PLAY
Sealiah, Queen of the Poppy Lands, raised one finger, and her thirteen personal guards set their torches in wall sconces and lowered their rifle lances at Louis. They would not miss.
“Not a word from you,” she cautioned Louis.
She held her rage in check only because she felt the smug satisfaction of being right.
Louis had come. He had tripped but a single of her black widow warning lines that crisscrossed every square meter of her castles’ walls. Even without the warning, though, she knew he would eventually have tried to enter this room. It was too much of a temptation for one so far fallen from glory.
And for once, the crowned, clown Master of Deception had been caught red-handed. Perhaps weakened by his association with too many mortals? Or had he only allowed himself to been captured. . part of some more intricate ruse?
Nothing was ever what it seemed with this one.
Louis sighed and nodded his head in the slightest of bows. The rogue even had the temerity to smile!
She admired such daring. Almost enough to forget he had come to betray her and sell her battle plans to Mephistopheles.
Would the slightest of dalliances hurt? Louis was handsome and cunning once more-all the things she remembered that had once attracted her to him. And he was never more attractive than when in the midst of his duplicity.
But such thoughts made her vulnerable. She exhaled. If she took advantage of his weakened position for her pleasures, she would be exposed in their intimacy. . and he would take advantage of her as well.
Perhaps mutual vulnerability was the very definition of “intimate.”
Louis opened his mouth.
Sealiah held up one hand and stood, keeping the jagged end of Saliceran pointed at his throat. She walked over to him.
Louis shut his mouth, no longer smiling.
“Your words are too sharp,” she whispered. “So I shall not give you the chance to cut me.”
She motioned and three of her champions searched him. They found wallet, cell phone, handkerchief, poker chips, dice, and bottle of Irish single malt whiskey-but no weapons.
“His cloak,” she said. This was a game for her now. Certainly Louis would not be here without tricks up his sleeves.
Her champions ripped it off and examined it: ordinary black wool.
Louis held up his hands in mock surrender.
As if this would make her think him defenseless. She knew better than to fall for his simpleton’s misdirections.
She looked from his hands, to his animated angular face, to the floor-to the flickering shadows cast by her guards. . to the decided lack of any shadow attached to Louis’s feet.
“Of course,” she said, “you would not risk coming with it. But where I wonder does your shadow now roam?”
Louis shrugged, and the simpleton look of innocence on his face told her no answers would be soon forthcoming.
“So be it.” She moved to his back and raised Saliceran.
One thrust and she could forget Louis. That would be best.
Under normal circumstances, having him underfoot was dangerous. In wartime, leaving Louis alive could be a fatal oversight.
And yet why did she still imagine him joined with her? Was that so impossible? Him by her side as Urakabarameel once had stood?
Yes.
And a thousand times no.
It had been so long since she trusted another. This above all else was why the Post twins fascinated her: brother and sister, part Infernal, and yet they worked together. It was such an obvious strength, something her kind had long forgotten.
She lowered Saliceran (although the blade twisted in her grasp, sensing her equivocation-and sensing that it would not taste Infernal blood tonight).
“Take him to the Well of Mirages,” she told her Captain. “Set three guards to watch him at all times. Have them stuff beeswax in their ears so he may not trick them with his silvered reptile tongue.”
The Captain grabbed Louis by his shoulders.
“I yet have a use for you,” she said.
Louis’s smile returned-that smirk all men don when coming to the wrong conclusion.
Sealiah was all too happy to deflate his zeppelin-sized ego. “Not for that, my un landed and unimportant cousin. I would not stoop so low for so quick a snack.”
His unassailable grin faded.
“I have another use for you. . involving your family.”
Louis eyed her with suspicion, and he twisted in her Captain’s grasp. “Eliot is mine,” he growled. “Leave him to me.”
The Captain struck the back of his head with a mailed fist, and Louis fell to his knees.
Sealiah laughed. It was good to see him so clueless. There was no greater satisfaction than hoodwinking one’s relations. She ran a razor-edged fingernail down his chin. . careful not to break the skin because the scent of his blood would drive her crazy.
“Not Eliot, my dear Dark,” she whispered. “I already have the boy well in hand.”
Louis’s face registered confusion for one instant, then crystallized into an unreadable mask. He was quickly analyzing and recalculating his plots.
But too late. The Deceiver was no longer playing in this game.
“There’ll be none of your usual tricks,” she said. “The Well of Mirages has once more been repaired and will not bend or fold to your will. Glow fungus covers its walls, so there are no shadows to slip through, either.”[53]
Sealiah ordered her Captain, “Make him comfortable.”
The Captain nodded, understanding that she meant the opposite. He dragged Louis off, and the Deceiver did not even struggle.
In fact, his smile returned.
Perhaps she should have skewered him while she was in the mood. Well, if he turned into his usual annoyance, she could always fill the Well of Mirages with molten lead. Let him grin at that!
But such pleasantries aside, she had more serious matters to consider. Time was short, and Mephistopheles moved closer with every heartbeat-to either destroy her or be destroyed by her trap.
Sealiah turned to the map table and examined the pieces in play. Mephistopheles’s shadows were near the station house. A few more hours and he would cut the rail lines.
Her trap was not merely the hidden army within Doze Torres. Even those forces would only make the final battle more bloody; their two sides were too evenly matched.
Two more pieces have yet to be brought onto the board-figuratively and literally.
The timing was delicate; she had to wait until the last possible moment to maximize the drama. That was a necessary risk. Sealiah knew the hearts of men and how to manipulate them, but she also had to make up the mind of a young woman-and that was a much more difficult task.
She withdrew the letter she had written weeks earlier, and made sure all was in proper order and her signature and seal were intact. All as it should be. No need to let some fussy Paxington protocol stop her greatest ploy.
She gestured at the ceiling, and a tiny mouse-tailed bat spiraled down. It lit onto her cupped hand.
She rolled the letter into the tube fixed to the creature’s leg. “Take this to the Ticket Master. Caution him to tamper not with the seal. He would not wish to irritate the intended recipient. Few survive the disapproval of Miss Westin.”
The bat chirped once, understanding.
She tossed it into the air and the bat fluttered out the window.
So much in balance. Forces of destruction and love and betrayal orbiting her the likes she had not seen since the War in Heaven. She smiled, tasting the anticipation of victory on her lips.
Sealiah turned to her guards and, with a nod, singled out their shortest member.
Her champion came to her, kneeling on one knee, head bowed.
; Sealiah gestured for the spiked helmet to be removed.
Jezebel shook loose her platinum curls. Her eyes burned with hate and she quickly lowered her gaze. “He is dangerous, My Queen. I beg you; give me the order to destroy the Deceiver.”
Sealiah smiled. “Not yet, my pet.”
She appreciated her protégée’s viciousness. Under normal circumstances, she would have agreed with her. It was an instinctual reaction: erase one’s smartest enemies when the opportunity presented itself, and allow the stupid ones to live to breed inferior competition.
But instinct changed and evolved or a species perished. Even for the Infernals. Especially facing the new order heralded by the Post twins.
Sealiah lifted Jezebel’s face. The girl’s shattered bones had mended, and her battle-won bruises all but faded. Only the slightest imperfection marred her features, but for what Sealiah needed her for next, her broken doll had to be perfect.
“We must make you ready.” The bones would have to be rebroken and properly aligned. Sealiah brushed a finger over her cheek.
Jezebel stiffened and stood straighter, and a flicker of horror flashed across her features.
“Are you ready for the next act of our little drama?”
“Yes, My Queen,” Jezebel relied. “I will perish for the cause if so ordered.”
“Very good,” Sealiah whispered, “because that may be precisely what I require.”
57 HOW TO FOIL A DEATH TRAP
Fiona stood in the middle of a war zone.
Not entirely unexpected. . not after the last few times when Mr. Ma had ramped up the difficulty of the obstacle course, but this was ridiculous!
She ducked-a jet of flame roared over her head.
Eliot knelt next to her and pointed his guitar at the pipe hissing fire. He twanged and held a single note, made it waver and warble and growl with feedback.
The pipe sputtered and sparked. It exploded, extinguishing the flames.
She twisted the shutoff valve closed.
Fiona wasn’t sure where Eliot had gotten his new instrument (or, for that matter, how an electric guitar made so much sound without any wires or an amplifier). He’d just showed up at the start of gym class today with the thing. No explanations.