The Kingdoms of Evil (57 page)

She began the incantation. "His flesh is mine to enjoy!"

"What?" The Ultimate Fiend hissed at her from behind the curtains.

Finally, her plans were coming to fruition.

"My hands will torment his senses."

"Wait…"

Bloodbyrn was ready to seize her future.

"My teeth shall extract from him the sweet liquor of pain."

"No, Bloodbyrn, wait. Wait just a minute."

"I'm sorry."

It was the next morning, as much as sunless Skrea had mornings.

Even if the sun had shone brilliantly down from a blue sky, no natural light would have illuminated the Ultimate Fiend of the Kingdoms of Evil, who walked the stone bowels of Castle Clouds-Gather, awkward and uncomfortable, in the company of his new First Concubine.

"You do not need to say so, my lord." Bloodbyrn favored her lord with a narrow amber squint. Bathed and dressed in what was for her a relatively simple cloak and dress, she walked just a little in front of Freetrick, arms stiff at her sides.

"Look, it's just…" Freetrick cleared this throat uncomfortably, "It was my first time, and I wasn't expecting…uh," his voice trailed off. There had been a
lot
he hadn't expected during that ceremony. The zombie battle, for example. But at least he could look back on that battle and take some pride in the fact that he had prevented himself, then Bloodbyrn, then himself again, from
becoming
a zombie. And they had killed the creepy un-priest guy, which might have been a good thing. No, what was disturbing to Freetrick was every
other
part of the ceremony.

"I was surprised," Freetrick tried to explain, "and…um. Well, there was the…uh…that ritual, you did. With…
all that
blood."

The cloak swished. "I see."

The silence that followed was the silence that comes right before an earthquake. Freetrick felt the pressure of immense forces and expected something heavy to fall on him. He tried to at least brace himself against a metaphorical door frame.

"The first time, though. Thanks for…uh…" He leaned forward, looked into Bloodbyrn's eyes and flinched. "Look, you aren't making this easy."

"Oh yes?" her voice creaked with strain, "and easy did you make last night for
me
, Feerborg?"

Freetrick sighed. "I'm just saying that there was a lot of weird…dangerous…
weird
stuff going on last night, and I—"

"Failed miserably," snarled Bloodbyrn and sped up, outpacing him. "Failed,
failed
the simplest tasks!"

"Now wait a second—"

"
—
at
every
task you were given!" Bloodbyrn continued, "my bloody god
knows
I gave you little enough to do, and still, my lord, you did not accomplish it."

"Oh yes, my day was so striking easy." Freetrick put a foot down and stopped, raising his voice at Bloodbyrn's back. "Oh poor you with your problems choosing the color scheme of the wedding decorations while I was striking
tortured
for half a day. And stripped naked and drained of
a lot
of blood—do you know what they
did
to me?"

Bloodbyrn stopped ahead of him. "I suspect I do," she said coldly, "since it was I who instructed the servants. Do not forget that the
entirety
of the wedding preparations fell to me."

"And the
advice
the servants gave me," Freetrick went on, deep in the personal hell of memory, "that horrible combination of torture and striking
etiquette class.
"

"Those tutors did not come cheaply!"

"Those maps of the human body?" Freetrick shuddered at the memory, "What is
wrong
with you people?"

Bloodbyrn spun around to face him. "Perhaps if my lord had paid attention to those lessons, he would not have performed so poorly in their application."

"
Fh
yeah, no kidding," Freetrick snorted. "If I had paid more attention to the lessons I would've striking
run away
—"

But Bloodbyrn was talking over him, "Does my lord have any idea of the effort I expended? Not only in every minutia of preparation---guest lists, catering, seating arrangement for the witnesses, fending off the attentions of the undead, but I was forced to make all of
your
preparations as well." She threw her hands up, "Who does my lord think wrote his cue cards, hm? Who
at the last minute
found my lord had studied none of his part in the ceremony and dictated the bloody script even as my dress was being fitted!"

"You could have
asked
me," said Freetrick, "you could have
included
me in the planning of my striking wedding."

"It was not a wedding!" shrieked Bloodbyrn. "It was an un-marriage! An ancient and sacred custom of this nation, of which you, Feerborg,
are king!
Well then, why did you not involve
yourself
?"

"I did involve myself," protested Freetrick. "All that time you were in the other room with your dad, when I was fighting off minions with scalpels you know what I was doing? Talking to the priest, trying to get him to tell me what the striking hell was going to happen."

"Oh?" Bloodbyrn raised an eyebrow. "and what did the Hafdern tell you?"

"He told me…well," Freetrick realized he was not going to strengthen his side of the argument, but forged ahead anyway, "he told me he was going to split your belly and spill your hot blood on the stones of the mountain."

She sighed. "And of course you did not warn me."

"I didn't know he really meant to do it!" said Freetrick, "I thought it was some kind of metaphor…anyway," he protested at her angry headshake, "I
told
him not to! And anyway, I did save your life like three times when we fought all those zombies."

She snorted, "My lord, I am secure in my conviction that if my life had truly been in danger, I would have noticed."

"Wha—" Freetrick sputtered, as Bloodbyrn went on.

"Feerborg, my lord, your protestations are unnecessary. Actually, your actions last night do you
credit
," her voice cracked over the word, as if it proved harder to say than she had thought, "…credit, as I say, if nothing else.
May your blood be drained from you slowly
!" The look she fixed on him was so full of venom that Freetrick expected it to dissolve his head and the stone wall behind it.

"Uh, Bloodbyrn?" he said, "what are you talking about?"

Freetrick flinched back as Bloodbyrn shrieked, leapt forward, and whipped out her little black knife. The flinch then turned into a confused twitch as she turned the blade on herself and sent a red spray flying out from her slashed left palm. The air filled with little particles of blood, which oddly, instead of falling, hung in the air like a red mist.

The mist vibrated. Freetrick's teeth buzzed with it, but before he could complain, Bloodbyrn was shouting at him.

"Enough posturing! Enough playacting, by my god and all his blood! Enough." She leveled a finger at him, "You made an excellent attempt my lord, but allow me this moment of gloating in privacy. Are you upset your scheme did not proceed as intended? Hm? Answer me." Bloodbyrn was very nearly succeeding at a light bantering tone of voice, but her consonants had taken on an edge that could slice silk.

Freetrick eyed the buzzing red cloud them uneasily, "Bloodbyrn, I have no idea what you are talking about."

"Oh, my lord, I think you do." The edge slid further out, glimmering like a frozen razor. "after all, you forced me to perform for nearly two hours."

Bloodbyrn's voice grew colder and sharper with each word. Freetrick recalled the word-magic experiments in refrigeration, temperatures that turned the very air into brittle glass.

"Well, perform I did, flawlessly, before my father and all the dark lords of Castle Clouds-Gather. Did it surprise you, my lord, when I could carry on without any help at all from you? How I could fool them into thinking we indeed consummated my concubinage?"

"Bloodbyrn—"

"Only how is it that you did it, my lord?" Now her voice had reached the temperature that levitated metallic objects. Much further and she would get to the theoretical point of no temperature at all, when things either ceased to exist, teleported to another universe, or exploded. "Tell, me, please. Merely to satisfy my curiosity. How did you remain flaccid?"

"How did I" Freetrick blinked, "---what?"

The slap that followed did not terrify Freetrick because it was bullwhip-strong and overflowing with rage, but because he could sense how much she was holding back.

"
How did you resist me?
" Bloodbyrn's amber eyes nearly glowed with fury, "how could you lie there" a lower eyelid twitched "…
limp!
While all my skills and energies were directed at you? How was it that you resisted the call of my flesh?"

"Bloodbyrn," stammered Freetrick, "I didn't
do
anything!"

"
Exactly!
" she raged. "You did nothing! You did not complete the consummation! So then are you damaged? Castrated? Diseased?"

"No!"

"What then? Tell me, or may the god of blood send his serpents to replace your lymph with venom!"

"Bloodbyrn I didn't
want
to!" The echoes thudded between the buzzing inside of the dome of blood vapor.

"You didn't…want to?" Bloodbyrn repeated incredulously. "Of course you wanted to."

"I couldn't!" said Freetrick. "How could I? You were cutting me! And the whips! And all those guys watching! And the striking manacles! And strike it out I'd just killed like three zombies! And the look on your
face—
" He stopped himself.

Bloodbyrn had looked good naked---very good---but Freetrick couldn't even close his eyes and visualize her without cringing in associative fear. In Freetrick's experience, every time Bloodbyrn looked sexy, something bad happened to him, and he had a pretty strong impression that that was the way she liked it. She was clearly trying to drive him insane. And she was succeeding.

"My lord…" Freetrick had through Bloodbyrn's voice terrified him when it plunged to absolute zero, then when it boiled. Now it was wavering between the two."My lord," She sublimated, "you babble. You refuse to grant me the answer I request." Her voice firmed, but the blood suspended in the air around them bubbled and stank. "Does my lord play a game of tactics with me? Does he withhold valuable information?" She stepped up to him, seeming to tower, although her nose was just level with his sternum. "
How
were you not enflamed by me to your very marrow? Tell me! Necromantic magics? Some sort of Do-Gooder counter-erotic? A debilitating illness or birth defect you have so far kept hidden?
How could I not arouse you
?"

Freetrick's head whipped back as he instinctively recoiled from the blow, and he nearly toppled off his feet when she didn't actually try to hit him. Instead, Bloodbyrn's chin and shoulders had curled in toward her chest. She drew her hands up over her mouth as blood rained out of the air around them, and the dominatrix of lower Joublournie and Carnivé, heir to the Clot of Torture, and first consort of the Despot of Skrea sniffed wetly. "What have I done wrongly?"