The Kingdoms of Evil (16 page)

Istain blinked. "You want me to
fly
to Skrea?"

"Don't be stupid, of course not," said Clanat. "You'll be hang-gliding. Warrior Maidens will get you up into the air, and then you'll use thermals to keep you there."

"Right," said Istain, "cause I know
all
about gliding."

"Don't worry, you'll learn. But it has to be you, because nobody else will be able to tell the flying monsters that you're best buddies with their evil god-king. Get it?" Ahem," the military academician shifted back into formal gear with an almost audible
clunk
, "it is, however, both my opinion and that of my colleagues and learned superiors, that you, Fellow-Enlistedman Scander, are the only person who can successfully penetrate the Skrean border without fatal mishap."

Istain squinted at him for a moment before the meaning of that sunk in. "You can train me to hang-glide, but you can't train anyone else to be buddies with the evil god-king and not get ripped apart by monsters, my right? And if the monsters don't listen?"

Clanat shrugged. "If that doesn't work, you'll shoot them. We're giving you a rifle and a repeating pistol. Both state of the art, and
extremely
expensive. We'd appreciate it if you brought them back to us in functional condition." He gave Istain a flat stare. "Got all that?"

"Are you out of your gibbering mind?" Istain said "I mean, gliders? Shooting monsters? Striking...striking
war
against the striking Kingdoms of Evil? I thought...I mean," Istain looked helplessly at the set expression of the Proctor---his boss, Truth help him!---and grasped at straws. "Isn't war with Skrea supposed to be against the Covenant?"

Clanat raised an eyebrow. "The Covenant? Really?"

Istain threw up his hands. "Well I
thought
we were supposed to leave them alone and just sort of...look at them? Because "only in the darkness can you see light?" Or something? Anyway, to see what Evil looks like so we can be Good. I'm pretty sure we covered this in high school."

"Do you honestly believe that our entire body of government policy is based on
not
being like the guys next door?"

"M-
uh
-uh," Istain shrugged. "I don't know anything about the way the government works. You should be talking to Freetrick."

The Proctor smiled. "That, rookie, is the funniest thing you've said all day."

***

"Sweet True words.
This
is Skrea?"

Hot, sulfurous wind slipped over Freetrick's newly white hair as he looked over the edge of his balcony at the serrated buildings below. Brooding towers and cyclopean monoliths and clustered along canals of what looked like glowing magma, stretching into hazy darkness.

"That is the Necropolis, the city which abases itself at the feet of Castle Clouds-Gather, if the Menacer of Children would refrain from castrating his servant for the correction," Mr. Skree clung like a huge and pale lizard to the sheer wall next to Freetrick, "And beyond the city, the Bleaklands, of which his Viciousness has a particularly sinister view."

The
Bleaklands
? Freetrick ran hands through his hair. The newly bleached skin of his scalp was itching and sweating in the warm, electrically charged air. Even thought it was…night? "Why is it so dark?" Freetrick asked, " Shouldn't it be like 10 or 11 in the morning?"

"My lord," said Bloodbyrn, "of course the sunlight cannot penetrate the mantel of the Maelstrom."

"The Maelstrom?" Freetrick had always thought the Maelstrom, the Storm of Skrea, was a metaphor, or wildly-inflated propaganda from one side of the war or the other. But now, squinting up through his new glasses, Freetrick could see the lowering thunderheads.

"Lo, the peoples of the world despair," Mr. Skree's voice creaked like the hinges on an iron maiden. "About the hub of the thirteen-pinnacled tower of Castle Clouds-Gather, the storm-wheel of the Maelstrom spins, grinding torment unending upon the souls of all those who toil beneath its vast shadow. For Clouds-Gatherer is at the heart of the Shadow of the Ultimate Fiend. And the Maelstrom is the shadow of---"

"It is a large storm cloud, my lord," Bloodbyrn said. "Is that not evident to all of our senses? Now, I should like to proceed with my program, if I may. Mr. Skree I believe my first task for you is to bring forth a sacrifice for the demonstration."

"Very good, lady," said Mr. Skree. "Your cruel whim shall soon bear its bitter fruit at the hands of your servant."

Freetrick took a step back, ignoring the wet-leather slap as Mr. Skree dove into the perpetual night beyond the balcony. Overhead, spurts of lightning cast monstrous shadows onto the clouds. Watching, Freetrick realized he could actually see the enormous, impossible weather pattern moving above them in slow, concentric circles. And at the center of those circles…

As the association clicked into place, lightning flicked across the eye of the storm. Once, twice, and then an arc of blinding light stretched across the black hole in the clouds. For a moment, Freetrick saw an immense, slitted pupil. The eye seemed to swing toward him, filled with actinic rage. It blinked—

Freetrick gasped and looked away.

Bloodbyrn was smirking at him. "Behold the power of my lord's heritage."

"Yeah, it's…great," stammered Freetrick. He jerked a thumb at the lowering storm. "Is the weather always this…evil?"

"It is," said Bloodbyrn. "The Maelstrom has been the eternal mark of Skrea since the days of Skreon the Worst." A land of perpetual darkness? It was ridiculous, impossible, and yet here he was, looking at the dark, striking
sterile
desert with his own transformed eyes.

Freetrick shuddered. "Is it like that over the entire country?"

"Like what, my lord?" Bloodbyrn said.

"I mean," said Freetrick, "are there any plants or animals or anything in the Kingdoms of Evil, or is it just desert everywhere?"

"Oh, by no means." Bloodbyrn walked across the balcony and gestured at one part of the invisible horizon. "There exists vegetation in abundance in the swamps of Sangboire, my own nation. And oh, how horrible those swamps are, my lord, with their slime and their snakes, their delightful malarial vapors, their humidity, which so tenderly strangles one." She sighed, "Which is far indeed from the parching air of this volcanic shaft you Skreans call home."

Volcano? But of course the Castle would be built on top of a volcano. That explained the sulfurous stench. "Wait," he said, "if everything in the Kingdoms of Evil is either barren wasteland or toxic swamp, how do the people here feed themselves?"

"People? Does my lord perhaps refer to the human residents of Castle Clouds-Gather" Bloodbyrn looked puzzled. "For, trouble yourself not, my lord, we feast most splendidly upon the meat of the monsters."

Freetrick gaped. "The..."

"Monsters, yes."

"Monsters like Mr. Skree?"

Bloodbyrn raised an eyebrow. "My lord's tastes are
most
deviant. Though perhaps with sufficient tenderization..."

"No no!" Freetrick held up his hands, "I mean, what kind of monsters?"

"Oh, any kind at all," Bloodbyrn assured him, "and if there are none that fit my lord's preferences, he can always call upon the Life-twisters to manufacture more."

That didn't make sense. "But then, what do the monsters eat?"

"Humorous question, my lord. Each other, my lord," said Bloodbyrn. "Ah, I see Mr. Skree has finally arrived."

An enormous bat-like shadow fell over them and Mr. Skree's wings belled outward as he braked in the air.

"Shall we begin the demonstration?" Bloodbyrn held out her hand and a small object plopped into it. "If my lord has sufficiently exercised his jocularity for the nonce?"

Freetrick looked back at Bloodbyrn, who was holding out something that wriggled, pebbly black and orange. Freetrick made out a disturbingly human grin on a squashed-in lizard face.

Bloodbyrn held the lizard out to Freetrick. "Observe now the subject of our demonstration."

She clearly expected him to do something, but Freetrick was convinced he wanted nothing at all to do with any practice that involved creatures as ugly as that one. "Yuck."

"Oh, My lord should not bestir his squeamishness in such fashion; likely this lizard cannot even speak."

Before Freetrick could express his feelings on the matter more completely, Bloodbyrn grabbed his shoulder and yanked. She swung both of them around until the red light from the open door was to their backs. "Now, my lord will maintain that position."

"Whatsoever the shadow of the Lord of Shadows touches…" she bent and placed the lizard on the ground in front of Freetrick's iron-clad boots. It hissed, then curled up on the warm stones. "Now hold yourself still, my lord, and attend."

"Attend what?"

Bloodbyrn shook her head. "My lord is Skrean, his is the power over death. However,
I
am Sangboise. I pray not to the First God, but to the God of Blood, and the powers I receive thereby are my lord's...to command."

A wicked little smile curved Bloodbyrn's black-painted lips. "My lord will be pleased to observe."

"Uh," said Freetrick, but before he could formulate a sentence, Bloodbyrn flicked a pale wrist and a knife appeared in her hand.

"Is my lord interested? I doubt my lord has seen so fine an athame." Bloodbyrn swept her hand out toward Freetrick and flicked the instrument up between thumb and forefinger. Freetrick found himself staring, cross-eyed, at a little dagger. It was carved from a black, glass-like stone, as long and broad as his thumb, with a curved slicing edge and a sharp stabbing point. The handle held in Bloodbyrn's steel-clad fingers glinted silver in light from his office.

"I suppose the Rationalists do not carry them? Athames are most useful implements in the working of the blood-magic of Sangboire." She twirled the athame in her right hand, looking at the back of her left hand with disturbing calculation. "Now, an incision at the...well, the head of the cephalic vein would be the traditional place to begin a demonstration, but" she rotated her hand to its palm faced upwards, "I believe the thenar venous plexus would be more appropriate. Accessible, but erotic. Does my lord disagree?"

"No?"

"Do
not
back away from that spot, my lord. Keep the lizard in your shadow. Now, thus," said Bloodbyrn, "the incision." With a tiny, deft movement, she slipped the little black blade over the ball of her thumb.

Freetrick sucked in breath, but Bloodbyrn's expression did not change as a line of red drops appeared on her pale skin.

"The god of Sangboire is the Master of Blood," she explained as the drops grew, merged, and became a tiny rivulet that flowed between the delicate fold of skin between the base of the thumb and the palm. "And He grants His worshippers control over the life fluid that springs from their bodies. An incision with an athame releases the fluid into the air where the effects of Blood-magic can be keenly observed. See now, my lord."

Bloodbyrn tipped her hand until the blood ran out of its little pool in her palm. A shower of drops fell towards the ground.

Then stopped.

The spray of blood hung in the air for a moment the coalesced into a single drop. Large and round as a marble, it hung in the air under Bloodbyrn's outspread left hand. "My lord can see the extent of my control." She lifted that hand, and with a pulse of light and heat, the wound in her palm closed. "I can maintain it over distances…" the blood drop whizzed suddenly through the air with a sound like an angry bee, shooting past Freetrick. "…and in a diversity of forms." There was another buzz and the blood drop sprang back toward its mistress. As Freetrick watched, the sphere burst into perhaps a dozen smaller drops, each of which began a separate orbit around Bloodbyrn's body.