The Kingdoms of Evil (65 page)
"Tempest above!" she snarled. "Will you not simply allow me to ravish you? Give up, my lord!"
"Ah yes," said Freetrick, grinning as his head cleared, "once again, it comes down to you jerking me around. Why do you keep doing this, Bloodbyrn?"
"My lord?" She frowned. "This topic of conversation is not at all erotically conducive. I suggest you drop it, and following that, your pants."
"Our goals are the same, aren't they?" said Freetrick, ignoring the terrible come-on, "So why are you constantly trying to manipulate me?"
"But…I…my lord…" Bloodbyrn frowned at him, "what else am I to do?"
"Talk to me!"
"I do talk to you," said Bloodbyrn, "I might point out that I am doing so at this moment."
"I mean," said Freetrick, "Talk to me without trying to change my mind."
"Oh yes?" Bloodbyrn rose back onto her knees, managing to look just as righteous and superior nude as she usually did with six pounds of corsetry wrapped around her torso. "So only you get to tell me how I should change my mind?"
"I don't do that," Freetrick protested.
"Odd, this must be the infamous ever-lying tongue of the Ultimate Fiend at work," said Bloodbyrn, "because it seems to me that you are currently engaging in just such an activity."
"Argh!" Was it possible that Bloodbyrn saw no difference between considered debate, scheming manipulation, and violent coercion? Stupid, stupid kingdoms of Evil! Once again a gulf yawned between them, wider than words could cross. "I mean," said "Freetrick, when you want me to do something, you don't have to trick me or threaten me or seduce me into doing it. Just tell me, Bloodbyrn, what you want me to do."
Bloodbyrn seemed to considered this, then shook her head. "My lord, you might then reply in the negative."
"I'll only say no if it's a bad idea."
"It will not be."
Freetrick smiled, "Then I won't say no, will I?"
"Yes," she said, "But what if you are in error about the worth of my proposal?"
"Well, then you can tell me you think so."
"I have," said Bloodbyrn. "I have endeavored to make evident the benefits inherent in my demands as clear as possible to you, my lord, even when, in my opinion, the arguments were entirely self-evident. Yet still you did other than what I demanded."
"Well, strike it out, Bloodbyrn, that's because you were giving me bad advice!"
"Nonsense. Name one piece of bad advice I have given you."
"Gibberish," muttered Freetrick. His mind was, of course, blank of examples.
"Have I not kept you safe?" Bloodbyrn demanded, eyes burning, lips curling, breasts …distracting. "Have I not kept you secure, my lord? The one truly dangerous situation you have been in was the direct result of ignoring my instructions and failing to copulate with me in a timely manner."
"Bloodbyrn," he said, "I'm sorry. I…will have sex with you. I promise."
The First Concubine sighed. "And how is that, my lord? Clearly you are unwilling to submit to me, and you cannot make me submit to you. So where does that leave us?"
"Well," said Freetrick, "maybe we shouldn't try to make each other submit. Maybe we can just…have fun with each other."
"Of course," said Bloodbyrn, "domination of one spirit by another is always entertaining."
"Not on the receiving end," said Freetrick, "not for me. Uh…" as the gonad partisans made one last bid for glory, "What if we…couldn't we just have…nice sex?"
"There is a saying in Skrea," replied Bloodbyrn. "that if 'one foregoes the mastication, lover's teeth to sharpness hone, then relegate yourself, my son, to masturbation, all alone."
"Wonderful," said Freetrick.
"Now come here," Bloodbyrn said, straightening her spine, "and allow me to chew on you."
"Uh, No, not now," said Freetrick. Had it been fifteen minutes? "Now we should go."
"Absolutely not," said Bloodbyrn, "I thought it was made clear to you, my lord, that you and I must wait in this chamber, and not emerge until our lusts are sated."
"My lust is at a pretty low ebb right now." That was not entirely true, but Freetrick kept his internal conflicts to himself. "So let's come back here later, after my…our…" he stopped, thinking of, thinking of the monsters, the Cabinet of Horrors, their meeting, his problems, and the solution they might give him. Thinking of the frantic lie he had told DeMacabre.
"Our what?" asked Bloodbyrn suspiciously.
"Our date," said Freetrick.
Chapter the
Fifteenth
In Which the Ultimate Fiend addresses the Monsters
With his bodyguards, retinue, and First Concubine in tow, the Ultimate Fiend walked the black halls of power with the slight bowlegged-ness of a man with a sensitive crotch. He gritted his teeth and cursed Bloodbyrn, Skrean sexual mores, and his costume's wedge-shaped, enameled-steel cup.
"How fairs the Ultimate Fiend?"Asked the Kaimeera, "in…uh, in general?" The feline monster had thankfully lost its feminine soprano, and now spoke with the gravelly voice of what must have been the rather elderly man it had eaten last. "Not that I want to pry, of course."
"Nothing," mumbled Freetrick. "I'm fine. Just getting ready for the meeting with the monsters. Girding my loins, you know."
Bloodbyrn snorted in contempt. Mr. Skree, Skystarke, and the ogres looked carefully blank. Only the Kaimeera was polite enough to laugh.
"So Mr. Skree," said Freetrick, thinking of unseen ears in the walls, "everybody knows that this, um, private death show is happening, right?"
"With terrified submission, Fiend, the monsters ordered to attend know, as well as all those spying upon them, those spying upon the spies, accomplices whom the monsters may have told, and anyone the Ultimate Fiend, in his twisted wisdom, has seen fit to inform. This minuscule boil will no doubt be lanced from the buttock of decadence for failing to advertize the fact with greater efficacy or for doing so with too much."
"No, that's probably fine," said Freetrick. "As long as everyone on the list I gave you is coming?"
"These humble supplicants before the might of his Supreme Wickedness could no more disobey an order from the Maw of Lies than they could express kindness toward a small animal, Malevolence."
"Excellent." Freetrick rubbed his hands together. It looked like the cover story was holding. He would get a chance to at the same time speak to the real movers and shakers of Castle Clouds-Gather and enhance his reputation as a bloodthirsty maniac. "It looks like things are developing nicely."
"Indeed, my lord," said Bloodbyrn, "I confess to being somewhat surprised that my lord would be so…thoughtful."
"Thank you, Bloodbyrn."
The First Concubine inclined her head. The wardrobe goblins in Freetrick's study had hastily wrapped her torso in a black leather sheath with an floor-length skirt of shear black silk. The effect was of a marble statue being drawn slowly up out of a tar pit. "A private Slaughter-Viewing is perhaps a bit conventional, but I must confess to some pleasure at its prospect. It has been some time since a man has taken me on a romantic interlude of such old-fashioned simplicity."
"Rrright," said Freetrick. "I hope you won't mind casting one of those blood anti-noise shields around us?"
"Oh, I see, my lord." Bloodbyrn raised a pierced eyebrow and curled a ruby lip, "quite conventional indeed, but not unwanted, for all that. It would be my pleasure to do so."
Freetrick glared at the ogres, who grinned with six-inch fangs.
"I confess to some cautious optimism," Bloodbyrn continued. "when I state that I believe we have…what was the expression, 'turned a corner.'"
"And found something truly unspeakable behind that corner, I have no doubt," said the Kaimeera, winking at Freetrick was one huge, yellow eye.
"Well," said Bloodbyrn casting a narrow glance at her consort, "I hope at least that my lord will exercise greater propriety than he did at the Villainous Council meeting, or this morning's debacle in the Vile Halls," she paused, as if thinking, "or indeed any time he has been out in public."
"Actually," said Freetrick, "I've been giving some thought to your father's advice about adopting a persona."
"Oh?"
"Well I've been thinking that people are going to respect you more when you act like someone worthy of respect. I knew that back in The RU—it's just that the symbols of respect are different here."
"Really?" said Bloodbyrn, "do tell."
"Yes," said Freetrick, "and" he looked around for looming shadows, "as psychotic as the majority of your dad's advice is, it looks like he's right about the people appreciating melodrama."
"I do notice that my lord has not balked at wearing fashionable clothes today," said Bloodbyrn.
Freetrick looked down at his black-and-red enameled armor with its decorative motif of skulls and spikes. Its cape had apparently been cut from the wing of a giant bat. "Exactly," said Freetrick. "I need to look the part of a King of Evil. I
am
meeting with a bunch of monsters after all."
***
It was the last monster that saved them. Istain never though he would be glad to see talons punch through the flight surface above them. They jerked and wobbled, and then the ground slowed its terrifying upward rush.
The conglomeration of Istain+Madene+wrecked glider+dead monster+
other
monster slowed, banked, circled around, and settled toward the ground.
Istain watched the sand and dust moving under them. "So I'm thinking I'll jump out of this thing, then shoot the monster once it lands us. Sound good to you?"
His head nodded. Istain let his gun dangle and started working on the straps around his torso. The ground was much closer now. Close enough to jump? The giant wings above them flapped and the monster squalled.
Lightning flashed somewhere above them.
"Oh…stink it
out
," his mouth said.
The ground was coming up faster now. Overhead, the monster screamed deafeningly. "What is it?" Istain demanded.
"There's something else," Madene gasped, "something up there---"
He was suddenly sideways. Below him, the ground reached up. Above him, the bird monster shrieked louder, and in front of him—
"Gibbering burning libraries!"
The…this
thing
dangling from the glider's nose lashed out at his face with a flabby tentacle. Istain dropped from his harness.
But the glider was tipped backward, and its caught his body against the ground like a locomotive's snow-plow. What would have been a painful landing turned into an even more painful rolling.
The world turned into a whirling cloud of rocks and sand, a miniature Maelstrom that seemed to batter Istain on all sides at once. Then the hang-glider collapsed on top of them.
There was a sound like raccoons dying horribly in a metal pipe, and a heavy weight smashed down on the tumbling Istain.
Both his and Madene's survival instinct's kicked in, but unfortunately the instincts told them to do different things, and his limbs could do nothing but twitch spastically. Finally, Istain managed to get control of his mouth long enough to yell, "Gibbering
calm down
, Madene!"
Something moved above them.
Istain felt his muscles stop jerking as Madene released her hold on them. He opened his eyes, and could see nothing but folds of canvas. "We're under the glider," he said quietly, "and I think…the thing that killed the last bird monster is still alive."
There was no verbal answer, but his head jerked up and down in agreement.
"We will not die!" said Istain. Then, to Madene, "So what I'm going to do," He fumbled at the strap around his wrist, "is wait until it tries to get at us down here. Then I'll kill it, and then we'll figure out what to do next, okay?"
She nodded his head again.
The fabric of the glider shuddered over them, and something crunched.
"What
was
that thing?" Istain asked.
"Another monster," Madene whispered back, "something more…more perverted than the bird monsters. They were just scaled-up condors with a few oddities, but the thing that just attacked us…Istain I can't understand how something like that can
exist
, let alone fly."
A section of canvas suddenly bulged downward as if a large, amorphous mass had settled onto it. As they stared, the bulge became shallower and wider, and then slid downward. Istain thought of slugs, octopuses, sentient amoebas, and shuddered.
"Oh!" Madene gasped through his mouth, "I saw shadows on the ground as we were coming down. Istain, there's more than one of them."
The monster moved in on them as if it had been waiting for its cue. The broken mass of the glider above them rocked, and then tipped up, and one whole side of their hiding place rose like a curtain to expose the…
things
that waited for them.
One of the things scuttled forward like a monstrous crab,
far
too fast for Istain to shoot. Limbs like leather-wrapped industrial equipment jackknifed up, then seized him the creature bore him to the ground. Its head, now less than a handbreadth from Istain's own, hinged open along too many joints, and it
rattled
at him.