The Kingdoms of Evil (78 page)

"Lord Feerix!" The lizard-woman called again, grinning with savagery as she blocked Freetrick's attacks.

"Ah ah!" came Bloodbyrn's voice as Feerix bellowed with frustration. "Best to concentrate on me, old lover! Else I will penetrate your defenses."

"Tempest blast you, wench!"

The plan flashed through Freetrick's mind like lightning. "Bloodbyrn, let Feerix go! And kill this woman…monster!" He shouted.

"What?" Squealed Bloodbyrn.

"Yes!" Feerix bounded from the red haze.

"What?" The Monster Killer looked confusedly over Freetrick's shoulder. Freetrick's gauntleted hands shot up, closed about her throat. There was pain in his abdomen—Feerix's power pressing against his meager defenses.

"Bloodbyrn!" Freetrick gasped.

There was a flash of red, shocking against the black and gray stone, a solid bar of liquid that Bloodbyrn directed through the air and gathering black mist, through the defenseless skin of the Monster Killer. The lizard-woman had no magic to call upon to block the attack, and when the enchanted blood touched hers, the Monster Killer jerked once, and died.

Glowing blackness washed over Freetrick's vision.

***

There was a crack like thunder, and bits of stone flew from the dungeon walls as Freetrick's twist of energy slammed Feerix against them. Now the rage and fear had an outlet, now reason and emotion both pointed in the same direction.

"Feerix!" Harmonics in Freetrick's voice shivered the solid stone of the corridor. "We will end this
now
!"

Thunder crashed, high above them and behind several layers of stone wall, but still loud enough to drown out all other sound. It was therefore only after a few seconds of practical deafness that Freetrick was able to understand the weird, open-mouthed expression on Feerix's face as the prince picked himself up.

Feerix was laughing.

The black mist around Freetrick suddenly sharpened into a cutting edge and slashed across his forehead. As Freetrick brought his hand up to wipe the blood from his eyes, another solid patch of necromancy sliced at the back of his neck. An invisible hand clutched his small intestines, and strange winds howled at him from all sides.

The bottom fell out of Freetrick's rage as he realized that Feerix was a much better necromancer than himself. He dug into his new reserves of energy, flailing wildly at the attacks that swarmed over him. Somewhere in the dizzy confusion, with blood running over his eyes and phantom fingers palpating his chest cavity, Freetrick recognized that Feerix had neatly forced him into a defensive battle. He couldn't spare the concentration to focus on attacking, and so his half-brother could imagine new torments at will. It would only take one of them to break through.

Desperately, Freetrick attempted to enclose Feerix in another fist of power, but in the half-second it took for him to focus on the attack, his defenses lapsed, and a wave of hot agony splashed over his face. For a terrifying instant, Freetrick felt the probing edge of Feerix's life-twisting penetrate his innate necromancer's defenses and brush against the tissues of his brain. Would Feerix bother to transform him into a monster, or would he just give his half-brother and rival a quickie remote lobotomy?

Freetrick felt his opponent slip out of the magic encasement. He couldn't see, because of the blood in his eyes, and now the black mist that had coalesced around his head. The floor began to shiver and buck beneath his feet, and tiny, vicious bolts of lightning flew at his eyes. A sensation like millipede legs crawled up his back. Freetrick couldn't summon the concentration necessary to cast a counter-attack, let alone think of one creative enough to take Feerix by surprise.

Try strength then. Without warning, Freetrick expanded the protective forces on his skin into a bubble, then a flat screen, then a rushing battering ram that shot out at Feerix. Where Freetrick thought Feerix was. Freetrick's peripheral vision caught a movement in the mist and he lurched sideways just in time to avoid being punched in the face by Feerix's gauntlet. He lurched into a wall of force that closed around him, that squeezed him, that took all of his power to stop from crushing him, that left him hanging in the air, completely defenseless.

Freetrick felt the attack rushing toward him, a strike to cut through his defenses and twist his internal organs, but could summon no more necromancy of his own to block it. Feerix was laughing up at him like a madman, black mist boiled around them, and the attack
didn't come
.

"
Ahh-
ha!" Feerix screeched, his eyes wild, his grin enormous. "Congratulations,
dear half-brother
. You have finally become enough trouble to merit my full attention!"

The prince cast out his left hand and the black mist swept away and vanished. Freetrick squinted against the relative brightness of the crystal light. Against a wall, Bloodbyrn slumped, pale and, literally, Freetrick was sure, drained.

"Look at me, you worm!"

Freetrick's eyes darted back to Feerix. Right hand outstretched to hold Freetrick's invisible cage, panting with exertion, eyes glittering with malice, Feerix grinned at him.

"Look at me, for I shall be your death!" The invisible cage shook.

"Feerix, you fool," gasped Bloodbyrn from her place against the wall. "You would kill him now, without witnesses, and place yourself in my father's hands? That would be a useless, thoughtless gesture even for you."

"Shut your blood-sucking bitch up!" Snarled Feerix, his eyes still boring into Feerborg. But he seemed to think for a moment, before his face curled again into its habitual expression of rage and contempt. "Yes. You
will
meet me in the Arena of Mutual Slaughter."

Freetrick blinked. Bloodbyrn had just very adroitly stopped Feerix from killing him.

"Well?" The prince hissed.

"Well what?" Freetrick remembered the last time he'd been in this position. Had Feerix run out of reasons to keep Freetrick alive?

"Do you accept my Challenge of Monomachy?"

"Monomachy? What the hell is monomachy?"

"Black and dripping
god
I am weary of your ignorance!" Feerix looked angrier now than he had at any time during their actual battle. "Answer me!"

Somewhere in Freetrick's exhausted brain, something clicked in the area responsible for remembering his classical education. "Single combat?" Then came the more recent memories of reading through court histories. "You're going to try to succeed me."

"I am going to
disembowel
you, Feerborg, before the entirety of the Dark Nobility."

Bloodbyrn hissed in a breath as Feerix's face snapped back into rigidity. "You have graduated from pleasant diversion to cause for alarm, my lord." He sneered. "Congratulations."

Freetrick tried not to let his terror show. Frantically, he dug through everything he remembered about Skrean duels. He had certainly studied them while he was trying to ban them. "Well…what if I say I won't duel with you. What if I reject your call?"

"What if I simply extend my power and rip your bleeding heart from your chest right now, half-brother?" Gripping fingers of solidified mist pressed against Freetrick's ribs.

"Feerix," said Bloodbyrn, "what delusion convinces you that Feerborg is so dangerous to you?"

"You flatter your man, Bloodbyrn," said Feerix. But he snorted, and the fatal spell relaxed. "His immediate death, while gratifying, is not important enough to give up the game I play. Tomorrow," he glared back up at Freetrick, "we shall meet at the Arena of Mutual Dismemberment, and there, under the eyes of the assembled dark nobility of the Kingdoms of Evil, we shall have our duel."

"Well what if I won't participate in your game?" Only after Freetrick said it did he see Bloodbyrn's gestures. Gibberish, he had just struck-out another of her attempts to save his life.

But Feerix only laughed. "I suppose it would be too much to expect a decent lack of cowardice on your part." The disgust smoothed out, became…craft. "A contingency which I have, of course, planned for. You will fight me,
my lord
."Feerix looked up at his helpless half-brother with a vile, leering smirk. "You will fight me, or forfeit the life of your friend Istain."

***

"
Istain?
"

Bloodbyrn searched her memory for such a person, but, exhausted as she was, its provenance eluded her.

He was someone important, apparently, for the voice of her lord had taken on an edge that other, less well-disposed persons might have called hysterical. "No. Strike you out, Feerix. You don't have
Istain.
Istain's in the RU!"

Aha. It was only a small, clue, but it was all Bloodbyrn needed to ascertain that Feerix had somehow acquired one of her lord's old acquaintances from his time living across the mountains among the Do-Gooders.

Moist blood, why had she not thought of that? Bloodbyrn found herself wondering, first at Feerix's cleverness, and then, when the ridiculousness of the application of that adjective to that person became clear, at the identity of the dark noble who had put Feerix up to this. Who was backing Feerix's bid for power against her and her father?

"Let's say I don't believe you," Feerborg was saying. "What then, huh?"

"Well then," the prince retorted in, to Bloodbyrn's mind, an excessively obnoxious tone, "let us say that if I do not see you
tomorrow
at the Arena of Mutual Dismemberment, he will have great and mortal cause to say…now what was the phrase he taught me?" Feerix gave what he probably thought was a sly grin to his prisoner. "I shouldn't have given the letter back to you."

Feerborg responded to this gibberish as if his half-brother had reached out with a gauntleted hand to seize him by the throat. "What?" He choked.

"That was a phrase you would recognize, from what the Do-Gooder told me." Feerix shrugged. "But if you need further convincing that I truly hold your friend in my clutches, I can give it. Provide me with but a little time, and I can supply you with a finger or toe…"

"No!"

Bloodbyrn closed her eyes. Feerix had her lord Feerborg now, body and life-force both. Was it possible that her father was behind this? But if so, why had he not told her of his new hostage? And if not her father, then who?

"Then you believe me?" said the prince, "Good. And Feerborg, half-brother, what I do to him will…" he jerked his head at the body of the female prisoner Bloodbyrn had dispatched for her lord, "make a few purple scales look like a positive improvement."

Thunder shook the corridor and Bloodbyrn hissed with pain as her ears popped. Black necromancers' mist filled the air and Lord Feerix staggered back under what must have been a great and unexpected blow. The prince put his hands up as Feerborg descended on his half-brother like a furious god.

The idiot.

***

Of course it took lord Feerix a bare moment, once he had recovered his equilibrium, to strike back at his sibling's vainglorious offensive. Blackness flared, and the Ultimate Fiend was sent spinning through the air to smash into a wall, then the ceiling, where he stuck like a wet wad of paper.

Bloodbyrn considered her options carefully. Another reminder of the exigencies preventing Feerix from simply killing his half brother might cut this cruelty short, or might enrage the prince enough to do the very lasting damage she sought to avoid. An attack with the blood-magic might purchase the time to escape, but only if Feerborg cooperated, which he would most likely not.

It was with great satisfaction that Bloodbyrn saw her lord begin to struggle and rage in the grip of Feerix's necromancy. In his situation, she would have done exactly the same—amusing Feerix with futile struggles until the prince's mood was sufficiently lightened. If only Bloodbyrn could be sure that her lord's actions were so calculated. Despite what she had told her father, the man was damnedably difficult to predict.

"Let me go!" the Despot of Skrea said, and Feerix dropped him.

Bloodbyrn allowed herself to slide a little more down the wall. Feerix was simply enjoying the game, and Feerborg would be in no real danger unless he could once again legitimately threaten the prince, the chances of which were rapidly diminishing.

Feerborg rose from the floor, slipping on the drying goblin blood that still coated its surface. His face was twisted, eyes still crackling with lightning, but he was gasping with exertion, and the hand he held before himself trembled as he forced his magic through that extremity. He groaned, and the black nebula around him twitched at another invisible attack from his half-brother. "Feerix!" Her lord panted, "please. Wait a sec. I want—Strike it, Feerix, let me talk. Is—is Istain okay?"

Bloodbyrn winced, her depleted blood pounding in her temples. Was her lord actually attempting a ruse? Though Feerix was unlikely in the extreme to be taken in by the gambit of false compassion, Bloodbyrn could do nothing but muster her blood for an attack, should her lord by some chance manage to distract the prince. And if not, then it was becoming increasingly clear that the job of extracting them from this situation would fall to her.

Bloodbyrn drew more blood into readiness, squinting with the pain of it. Was her lord actually attempting to
negotiate?
His plan of attack must be twisted indeed, and Bloodbyrn hoped fervently that it would prove successful. For her part, Bloodbyrn would have blood for perhaps one more attack only, before the risk of unconsciousness became too great to ignore.