The Kingdoms of Evil (29 page)

"I count two," said the
Professor-Colonel
, staring levelly at Kendrick.

The Paladin looked at him too, then coughed, "in any case, even the two of you together could not keep guard against both Levanick and myself for the whole of the trek down from these Hills."

"Shut up!"

"You would have to kill one of us," continued the Paladin, "obviously Levanick."

Levanick went pale, and his sword screeched out of its sheath.

Professor-Colonel
Phinneas sighed.
"That was a foolish thing to say, Paladin.
Now I can't drive your Ranger, I can't trust Private-Instructor Fairheart, and…"

The lizard-man's screams abruptly cut off.

"Ah yes.
I can't stand here forever, waiting for your pet monsters to find me." His voice dropped to almost to a whisper. "It seems my duty is clear."

"Oh light!" Levanick shouted as the Paladin's face twisted, "Kendrick, kill him!"

There was a muffled
crack,
and the Paladin flew forward as if someone had kicked him in the back.
Then Phinneas was raising his smoking pistol, pointing it at Levanick.

"Damn you!" Levanick ran at the man, his hand going for the sword at his hip, "damn you to the—" The second
crack,
was much louder than the first.
Levanick's feet spun out from under him and he plowed into the ground.

"You killed him," Kendrick whispered.

"He was an enemy of our nation, Fairheart," Phinneas calmly holstered his weapon, "and he would have killed me, or worse.
He certainly would have done worse to you." This time, Kendrick heard the mechanism snap as Phinneas re-loaded his revolver.
"Now, Private-Instructor Fairheart!" he shouted, "it would be a shame if I had to shoot you, but if you do not drop your dagger, now, I will."

"Funny," a new voice purred from behind Kendrick, "I was about to say the same to you, Rationalist."

The wendigo stepped from the shadows.
"Except I would replace 'shame' with 'pleasure,' and 'shoot' with 'eat.'"

Chapter the
Eighth

In which the Ultimate Fiend casts down the King of Good

"No!" screeched Feerix, "No no no! Fool! Idiot!"

"Strike it, Feerix, 'no' what? I haven't
done
anything yet."

"Precisely. You require lessons in necromancy, and yet you do nothing."

Freetrick sighed as he plodded along the corridor in his heavy ceremonial armor. "Well, what should I be doing?"

"
Killing
something!"

"What?" Freetrick gestured with a razor-tipped gauntlet and nearly sliced the nipple off an ogre bodyguard. "What should I kill?"

"That does not matter!" Feerix snarled. "
Anything.
" He pointed randomly.
"There.
The man in front of you."

"The man in front of me is DeMacabre."

"My ears are burning!" The Duke sang.

Freetrick wished he could wipe the sweat from his forehead without fear of shaving off his own eyebrows. "Feerix, I don't think
this
is quite the right time for a practical demonstration of necromancy."

He gestured, more carefully this time, at the procession around them. Dark aristocrats of every description trudged up a sort of spiral ramp that, as far as Freetrick understood things, wound around the shaft leading up from the magma chamber under the castle to the tower at its peak.

Freetrick and Feerix, as well as most of the rest of the human population of Clouds-Gather, were marching grimly forward in the center of the procession, heavy ceremonial boots clanging off the stones with every shuffling step. He had tried telling himself that he would think of some way out of the mess he had stumbled into. But now, as he passed a row of narrow window-slits showing a drop into a vast lake of lava nearly a hundred feet below, he found it hard to summon any optimism.

"But if you do not practice, how can you improve?" said Feerix, "And if you do not improve, how can I kill you?"

"What," Freetrick gasped as they rounded another corner, "You aren't planning to train me up and the kill me
on the way
to my own coronation, are you?"

"Indeed," said Feerix, "If I can duel and kill you on the tip of the Tower of Death, I can have myself crowned forthwith."

"That would be most convenient," said DeMacabre, "as everyone will already be gathered."

"Thanks a lot, DeMacabre," Freetrick muttered.

"Ah, my lord is most
welcome
!" DeMacabre was walking ahead of them, hands clasped behind his back, his cylindrical black hat tilted like a badly laid tower as the Duke bent low in conversation with what looked like an enormous crab walking beside him. "For did I not find a teacher of necromancy for my lord, even as I…" He turned to look at Freetrick, and for once he was not grinning. DeMacabre's eyes were narrowed, one eyebrow raised.
Even after I saved your life,
h
e expressed.

Burning struck-out libraries
.
Gibberish.
Freetrick cursed his stupidity as the shadows of his convoy crawled across the lava-lit walls. This close to the core of Clouds-Gather's central shaft, the air was baked hot and dry, stinking of ash and sulfur.

"For there it was on the schedule with which my lord furnished me, was it not?" DeMacabre was saying. "Find a teacher of necromancy, and then the coronation ceremony. And as they say in The Rationalist Union, 'thus it was written, thus it shall be.'" There was a gristly chuckle from the giant crab.

"Yes!" Said Feerix. "So we must practice. Choose your victim, Feerborg!"

"Feerix," said Freetrick, "I'm a complete novice. I think you're going to have to wait." As long as possible. Forever, preferably. On the other hand, though, Freetrick suspected he needed training in necromancy to fight off everyone
else
who might try to kill him in the mean time.

From in front of them, DeMacabre somehow contrived to make a noise that
sounded
like a grin. "May I congratulate my lord on his guile."

"And may I congratulate him on his cowardice." The voice rose like a venomous flower from the smaller, much more elaborately garbed person walking beside her father. Bloodbyrn DeMacabre had decided to enter the conversation.

"Horrible morrow, my lord."
Bloodbyrn turned like a rotating super-nova in red and black.

"Nice hat," said Freetrick.

"I thank you." She completed her rotation, and a hole in the blood-colored chaos opened to reveal a pale hour-glass of face, neck, and the inevitable uplifted cleavage. "Shall I walk beside you, my lord?"

"Okay?" Concentrating determinately upward, Freetrick counted four eyebrow rings, three silver studs in various places, and a jeweled golden hoop through one nostril. The furry, monkey-like goblin she was carrying could have worn that hoop as a collar. The serried ranks of Dark Nobility around them paled in comparison. "So…Bloodbyrn. What's up?"

"I am sure I do not take my lord's meaning." Bloodbyrn slowed her pace to match his, her hat expanding in Freetrick's vision like a dying sun. "I see now it was a mistake to study the Rationalist language, as it has become clear that my betrothed speaks only the language of the slatterns in their dens and the urchins in their gutters."

For truth's sake. 'Slattern'? "I meant, how are you, Bloodbyrn?"

"As well as can be expected, my lord."

"That isn't," he gestured at the goblin, "one of the ones Feerix used to attack me, is it?"

"Sadly, no."

Bloodbyrn stared at Freetrick until he coughed and asked, "Uh... you're not mad that I postponed the un-wedding?"

"Why should I be angry, my lord?" Bloodbyrn said, eyes rimmed with black kohl and steaming with irony. "Is it my place to question the decisions of the Soon-to-be-Ultimate Fiend?" A hooked eyebrow ring jumped upward, "however
asinine
they may be?"

"Uh..."

"The next time you feel tempted to make a decision, my lord," she hissed, "I suggest you stop, and think, and then
do not make it
."

"And if you ask my father," she said in a normal voice, "about the details of Skrean laws concerning un-marriage, children, and succession, you may ascertain the depths of the pit into which you have—so glibly, my lord— plunged."

"Now," Bloodbyrn looked Freetrick up and down with an expression that should have etched tracks into his iron armor. The goblin, now riding on her shoulder, picked its nose at him. "I believe I have made myself clear."

Feerix cleared his throat. "I applaud your cruelty. Horrible morrow, Dark Lady Bloodbyrn."

Freetrick nearly collapsed as Bloodbyrn's burning glare left him and turned to wither his half-brother. "Horrible morrow…Feerix."

The prince's face twisted. "So. You dare show your face to me again after the duel we shared, you and I."

"Why, Feerix? Because I won it?"

"You did not win!" Feerix leaned across Freetrick to spit at Bloodbyrn. "You cheated! You distracted me."

"I won," she said. "My blood clot was in your brain. And yet I let you live. I imagine that was humiliating for you." She turned slightly, and addressed the air. "I do hope no one now blames me for your mental ineptitude."

"Bitch! I shall kill you!"

Freetrick wiped spit off his cheek. "How about we trade places?"

"There is no need, my lord," said Bloodbyrn. "For I have nothing to say to this mollusk of a man."

"Mollusk?
Mollusk?
" Feerix's next words were a whisper directed at Freetrick. "That is like a slug, right?"

"Yes."

"
Mollusk!
I shall show
you
who deserves the title! Servant! Bring me my gauntlet!"

"Young Feerix, do be quiet." The voice was ancient, with an evil, gristly hiss that made Freetrick think of scorpions. But only really
bad
scorpions. Scorpions the other scorpions would never talk to, for fear of being told deep and dreadful things that would shatter their fragile arachnid psyches.

"This is neither the time nor the place." The thing walking next to DeMacabre pivoted on four enormous, jointed legs and Freetrick saw it wasn't a giant crab at all.

Or at least, not the kind of monster he thought it was. It was a chair. A huge, mobile chair, made of what looked like twisted wood draped with shaggy furs. The man sitting in the chair, the man who had been talking so intently with DeMacabre turned his head to see Freetrick. Orange light flashed off a silvered monocle. Teeth were bared in the lava light.