The Kingdoms of Evil (32 page)

"Of course you have grown up west of the mountains, and must have seen all sorts of foolish rituals" whispered DeMacabre, leaning in close to Freetrick, "but rest assured we do things right here in the Kingdoms of Evil. To think," he chuckled, "of binding the civil contract without actually witnessing the consummation. How droll."

"What?" Freetrick felt as if all of his body's fluids had drained down to his feet. "
What
do you expect to witness?"

"Best focus on the present, now, my lord," said the Duke. "Let the un-wedding be something to which my lord can look forward. If my lord survives the coronation, of course." DeMacabre looked at Freetrick's expression and chortled, "my lord, I joke! Ah ha! What a face my lord has on his skull. Survive indeed. Aha." He wiped a tear from one eye.

"Uhh..." Freetrick was still grappling with translating DeMacabre's offhanded comments. They weren't going to make him have sex in front of an audience, were they?

"In all seriousness, my lord," continued DeMacabre, "If my lord has any trouble, simply call to my daughter for help. Aha. As in the un-wedding, come to think on it. Eh?"

"Wait," Freetrick shook his head, "help?"

But the priests had stopped chanting. Everyone was looking at him expectantly.

"Alright, my lord. Now to recite the Covenant."

"Huh?" Freetrick looked at DeMacabre, "I don't know the Covenant."

"Just the central verses, my lord," the Duke whispered from between the stretched lips of his smile, "and it does not have to be in Ancient Skrean."

"I don't know the struck-out thing in any striking language," Freetrick whispered, fighting not to tremble under the massed gaze of his murderous family. "Why didn't anybody tell me about this?"

"Surely the guilty party will be slaughtered," said DeMacabre, "but worry not, my lord, for a solution to your predicament is at hand."

"Huh?"

"Simply repeat after me. Ahem." DeMacabre cleared his voice, "minions, the time of reckoning as arrived."

"Minions, the time of reckoning has arrived."

"Try to sound like you mean it, my lord. Doers of Good, prepare now to meet your most implacable nemeses."

"...implacable nemesis...ees."

"Louder, my lord. Your dark reflections, embodying of all you hold most in revilement."

"...revilement!" Freetrick tried to shout.

"We really must work on your evil voice, my lord. Now, here for the important part." DeMacabre cleared his throat. "All you create, We shall destroy."

"All you create, We shall destroy." As Freetrick repeated them, the words seemed to take on their own life.

"All you shape, We shall distort."

Freetrick's voice rose, taking on disturbing vibrations that seemed to echo in the thunder of the clouds above them."All your virtues, We shall oppose!" He continued, only a fraction of a second after DeMacabre's prompt, "All your hopes, We shall shatter!"

Lightning cracked the air, grounding itself in one of the thirteen towers that ringed them.

"Into that which you breathe life, we shall bring death!"

Thunder rolled over them, drowning out DeMacabre's voice, but somehow Freetrick's words were still easy to hear. "For we are the Kingdoms of Evil. Kneel before our might, and weep bitter tears into the dust and ashes! For your eternal opponent is come!"

Light, a column of it, red and brooding, shot from the hole at the center of the platform. Clouds shuddered and spun as the beacon pierced the Maelstrom's eye.

"The time has come..." DeMacabre prompted the gasping and sweating Freetrick.

"The time has come to uphold the dark half of the Covenant for the glory of the First God. We are become Ultimate Fiend of the Kingdoms of Evil, Tempest above and First God Below."

"No!" Shouted DeMacabre.

"No…?" Freetrick jumped in his armor. "What? DeMacabre---"

"I, the highest ranking of the Crimson Sangboise Court, do not accept this despot to rule over us!"

"Nor I!" Shouted someone in wolf furs from the other side of the platform. "The Fear Barons of St'tdrakh will
never
bow to an oppressor, even one so mighty in his Evil as the Despot of Skrea!"

"A test!" DeMacabre said, or more likely, recited. He flung his hands out, cackling theatrically. "A test to prove that he, who would be Ultimate Fiend, is mighty enough to crush all enemies!"

There was a sepulchral cheer from the gathered people.

"What the hell was all that about?" Whispered Freetrick, not daring to look at DeMacabre. "A test? You never told me about a test!"

"You are in luck, my lord," DeMacabre failed to answer, "I hear it is not always possible to bring in a real foreign king for the ceremony."

"What? What are you---"

"Hurrrrah!"

Freetrick jerked, "What the hell was---" he turned, but DeMacabre wasn't beside him any more. The Duke was moving at a slightly-faster-than-polite ooze away from him. Everyone else in the crowd was backing away too. Everyone but one.

"Hurrah!"

A man was striding out of the crowd, away from the iron box that now stood open on the platform. He was big, broad-shouldered in a strange tattered garment that might once have been a white and gold uniform. His hair and beard were long and matted, a single mass of fuzz the color of old snow. He also carried a battle-axe in one hand. And now he was running, very fast, toward Freetrick.

Freetrick dodged. Or tried to. His armor was so heavy he could manage nothing more than a sort of sideways lurch. The ax, when it slammed into his side, imparted its own momentum, and Freetrick skidded across the platform, like a kicked tin can.

He put out his arms and legs, and all the various spines on his armor exploded into sparks as she slowed, then stopped with his boots hanging over the edge of the gaping hole at the center of the platform.

Of course.

Freetrick could feel the barbarian's footsteps as the man lumbered toward him. "I don't want to fight you!" He shouted, as he scrabbled furiously to pull himself upright.

"Fiend!" The barbarian bellowed, "I shall wipe your slime off the skin of this world!"

Freetrick got to his feet in time to see the man swing his axe back, and ducked just in time to avoid having his head knocked off.

His attacker grunted.

"Hold on a second!" Freetrick pleaded. "I don't even know who you are."

"Don't know who I am?" The barbarian hefted his huge axe again. "Then learn well, evil one. I am Yorinhart, son of Thorinhart, and I would be king of the lost nation of Vaingloria!"

"I've never even heard of Vaingloria!" Freetrick heaved his armored bulk around and tried again to duck as the axe swung around.

He didn't duck fast enough. There was another impact that rattled Freetrick's bones. He felt something pop in his back, and the ground came up to smack him in the side of the head.

Freetrick blinked his eyes open to see the bearded face of Yorinhart son of Thorinhart.

"This is a game," Freetrick croaked desperately. "A ceremony. You know they're going to kill you."

"I know that, you monster," The barbarian leaned down. His eyes were a bizarre, oddly arresting blue color. "You think that matters?"

"Help," said Freetrick.

"Stop toying with him!" Someone yelled from the audience.

"Go for the jugular! The jugular!" Screamed another.

Yorinhart rose, swinging his axe around. "Let this blow be for all those whose homes you destroyed." His voice was rising. "Who's people you slaughtered, or made into foul beasts."

"Help me!" Freetrick called out again.

"Let this be for the mothers,
eaten
by their own children!" The exiled king went on, his voice cracking, "the brothers, tortured to death by their brothers! Let this blow of the mystic axe Wraithcleaver..."

"Help! Why did you give him his axe?!"

"...be my greatest cut against the demons that rise against Goodness and Light."

"Help me!" Said Freetrick again as the ax began its downward swing.

In the crowd, DeMacabre sighed, accepted a wry look from Bloodbyrn, and tossed the goblin she gave him at Freetrick.

The furry monster arced through the air like lawn bowling ball, and neatly skewered itself on the blades of Freetrick's outstretched, armored fingers.

There was a blinding flash of lightning from the Maelstrom above.

The axe did not connect.

Freetrick was on his feet. More than on his feet. He was
flying
. The armor suddenly seemed to weigh nothing. Nor, for that matter, did Yorinhart son of Thorinhart. Freetrick darted inside the king's reach and shoved his attacker backwards.

"Monster!" The axe came up again.

"Enough!" Freetrick held up his hands,
pushed
...and blackness congealed out of the air around the head of the ax. It stuck there, embedded immovably in a miniature Maelstrom.

Now Freetrick
pulled
, and another patch of black mist wrapped about Yorinhart's middle and dragged him toward Freetrick. Who raised his razor-tipped gauntlets.

"Finish him!" Someone bellowed.

Freetrick blinked, the lightning flared across his eyes and went out. "No." He said, "wait."

He brought down his hands and looked up into the face of his enemy. "There's no need for either of us to die."

"Foul beast!" snarled the king. Spit flew from his mouth as he wrenched himself about in Freetrick's necromantic bindings. "I will kill you for what you did."

"
I
didn't do anything!" Freetrick shouted.

"Death!" from the audience.

"Shut up! Look," Freetrick said, more quietly, to the king held prisoner in front of him. "They kidnapped me the same way they did you. I'm not Skrean. They just put me in charge here."

"Truely?" Yorinhart's strange, sky-colored eyes squinted at Freetrick's face, as if seeing him for the first time. "Shining heavens, you are but a boy."

"Just calm down for a second while I sort this out," Freetrick said, darting glanced to left and right. People were approaching now, the audience closing in the ring around them.

"And yet I see upon you the mantle of the Evil One." Yorinhart whispered. "The night-dark eyes, the moon-white skin."

"Yeah, well they put this mantle on me."

The king's eyes narrowed as he hefted his axe. "And you clearly command the powers of death and the forces of the Maelstrom."

"You mean those guys?" Freetrick jerked a thumb back at his minions. "I can't command them to do crap. Do you know how hard it was for me just to get an edible breakfast out of them? Look." He held out his hands. "Just put the axe down, and we'll get your…political situation sorted out and I'll happily send you back to wherever you came from."

"Vaingloria."

"Right. I've got no problem with Vaingloria," said Freetrick. "It sounds lovely."

"It was," said the king, "before you invaded."

"Well," said Freetrick, "there's a new king now. Or there will be after this ceremony is over. And I'd like to…uh…start a new chapter of Skrean/Vainglorious relations." He held out his hand. "What do you say?"

Yorinhart looked at the hand, then back up at Freetrick. "What mummery is this?" He said, "I can never trust you, fiend."

"Yes you can," Freetrick insisted, "I'm one of the good guys."

The king looked at him then. He was, Freetrick realized, a rather old man. The other Skreans were all around them now, reaching out.

Yorinhart, son of Thorinhart, shook his maned head. "Then I pity you, boy. I pity you."

Something wrenched at Freetrick's necromantic senses. Someone else pushed, hard, against the king of lost Vaingloria. Then again.

And Freetrick, who had only absorbed the death of one small goblin, could not resist the pressure.

The king's blue eyes stayed locked on his as the man slid sideways. And into the pit at the center of the platform.