The Kingdoms of Evil (87 page)

"This is a game of which I grow tired, father," said Bloodbyrn, "and I know it wearies you as well."

"Indeed." He answered, and could not keep his habitual smile on his face as he did. "The task of self-defense is enormous. It is nearly infinite, but this I swore to myself, that day as I rinsed your dead mother's blood from my lips: that one day, Bloodbyrn, you would be safe." Then, and only then, could the knife be turned inward.

"Father," she bent her head, "I know and appreciate your mission. But I believe if you but trust that my lord's plan—"

"No, daughter. I trust only my own." He would kill first Feerborg, then Feerix, then DeSangaise, Milielan repeated the list to himself, as he always repeated it when the urge to die became too great. Then Guerron DeDïabaisse, then Teirchoke, then Wrothred.

And then the invading Do-Gooders would sweep over the rest. He would pile the skulls of his enemies into walls until Bloodbyrn was safe. Until, finally, Milielan could stop

***

"What do you want from me, Feerix?" Freetrick made an effort not to back up. It helped that he no longer had any space to back up into. "Just give up and let you kill me?"

"Not that," spat Feerix. "Not this, this, show. You and I, battling again. This pantomime." He gestured with his barbed gauntlet.

"What pantomime?" Freetrick ducked to avoid having his ear removed. Metal clanged as he lunged forward and blocked a second jab with his own gauntlet. "You mean you've actually just been playing
the part
of a homicidal maniac all the time I've known you?"

A fist broke past his defense and hit Freetrick hard in the chest. It took a frantic expenditure of necromancy to stop that blow from shocking the air out of his lungs. But he could duck under the next fist, grab the arm behind it at the shoulder, and heave up and away.

Feerix stumbled backward, and black mist flared as he cancelled his momentum. His arms were up, ready to block Freetrick's next attack, but the prince had lost ground. Plus he had used up however much death energy.

Was it possible that Dark Prince Feerix of the Sharpened Thumb got sloppy when he was angry?

Freetrick tried out a sneer of his own. "A better king?" His arm clanged against Feerix's. "Feerix, you poor idiot." Clang. "With you in the driver's seat," clang, "this country would be smoking hole in the ground within the week." Clang "Or you'd be some better man's pet" clang "catamite. How about DeMacabre as master" clang. "Huh? Kill me, and expect to see a
lot
more of him."

"As if I would let myself" clang "be ridden like you," clang.

Freetrick continued the pattern of blocks and attacks. "And what would you call what" clang "you were doing with Teirchoke, friendly cooperation?" clang. "Feerix, you're too stupid to even know you're being manipulated." Clang.

"Stupid am I? At least" clang "I know enough of good governance to kill those who disobey me."

The pattern of attacks and blocks was becoming more regular now, more musical, more catchy. Feerix was falling into the rhythm.

"You think that's all there is" clang "to good government?" Freetrick let his hands continue the beat. "'Do what we say or we'll kill you'? You don't" clang "govern a country like that, you---"

Milielan squinted against the pain raging around his brain. That incessant noise from the boys pressed upon his anger and fear like an implement of torture. Feerborg was talking, again. He was always talking. Wheedling and whining and babbling, undoing all the careful manipulation Milielan had worked on Feerix. It was maddening.

"The boy," he grated, "must be stopped."

"Father, I disagree," said Bloodbyrn, far too directly.

"You disagree? And you tell me so?" Milielan let himself plead, "My daughter, do you not see what he is doing to you? Where is your customary hauteur? Where is your subtly and cruelty?" He would kill the boy before Feerborg could corrupt Bloodbyrn further.

"Father?"

First Feerborg, then Feerix, then DeSangaise, then Guerron DeDïabaisse, then Teirchoke, then Wrothred, and then everything that walked or flew or crawled in Skrea. If it would bring safety to Basorrie's memory, Milielan would sterilize the world.

"Yes, my daughter?"

"Perhaps it is the time for more directness, father," Bloodbyrn pressed. "The Ultimate Fiend is mistaken about much, it is true, but father, he has made me see things," God of Blood help them, her eyes were wide and joyous "…things I had never imagined."

Milielan wept inwardly as his daughter looked into a rosy, love-filled future. A future that would surely destroy her. As it had destroyed her mother. As it had destroyed him. "No."

She looked up at him, "father?"

"No," he repeated. "I will not let them trick you, as I was tricked. I will not let you ruin yourself as I ruined myself. Bloodbyrn, daughter, vessel of half my blood." He reached out, took her by the shoulders, squeezed as if he could drive his convictions through her skin on the tips of his fingernails. "You
will not
fall in love, daughter."

There was another flash of DeMacabre temper in those amber eyes. His eyes, in dearest Basorrie's face. "And what if I should fall in love, father? What business of yours would that be?"

She made no move to escape his grip, and yet it seemed she receded from him, as if down a tunnel. "Bloodbyrn," the Duke pleaded, "think of what they did to your mother."

"Indeed." Oh she was proud. "What
they
did to her mother, because by that time, the poor woman was unable to do anything for herself. Except perhaps to die, and even then, only at her husband's hand."

"Walls to constrain me." Her voice was dark with anger. "Our chateau, the academy, Castle Clouds-Gather…I will no longer be content simply to move from one prison to another."

His deepest fear, cast at him now, of all times. Oh, this was hell, indeed. "But what of our plan? A prison this Castle may be, but so is all the world. Only follow me, my daughter, and we shall
rule
this prison."

"But father," and by all that was bloody, she smiled that terrible, lethal, joyful smile again. "With Feerborg, I can break out entirely."

And Milielan DeMacabre knew he had only one choice remaining.

***

Freetrick rushed Feerix, kicked his knees, knocked him down. Then he kicked him again. The prince's armor rang. If he could just make the idiot accept defeat. Panic and anger fueled another blow to Feerix's chest. Another like that to the head and he might be done with this problem forever.

Black mist burst up from the ground

Freetrick's boot met empty air. He was suddenly hanging above the ground, suspended in a necromantic cloud. Below him, arm extended, face already swelling, Feerix had abandoned all pretense of playacting.

"Fool!" He screamed, "hypocrite!" He clenched a fist, and invisible bands of force tightened around Freetrick. "You say we should all act as we choose, and yet what do you do but enforce
your
choices on
us
."

"No!" Freetrick gasped. "You want to enforce Evil! The choices
you
make will make it so nobody else can choose anything! You'll kill this nation, Feerix."

"So how am I different from you?" Feerix shook his head. "Brother Feerborg. There is Evil, and Evil must rule the Despot as the Despot rules the people. Otherwise," he looked at Freetrick, eyes burning, "otherwise
by what right does the Despot rule
?"

"God of Words save me from struck-out medieval Mandate of Heaven bullshit!" Sparks flashed in Freetrick's vision. Feerix's spells burned his energy as he fought them. "I will not just let you kill this nation. I am going to save Skrea."

***

Although Milielan schooled his face, some quirk of physiognomy must have given his daughter a clue to his deadly intent.

Before he could take a step past her, Bloodbyrn's athame was in her hand. Behind her, Prince Feerix screamed. So the fool could not even be counted on to kill the Ultimate Fiend. "Do not draw your athame, my father."

Milielan did not need to.

The ways of the Red God of Blood are many and strange; he is a madder god than the grim First, and more flexible.

Capillaries burst under Milielan's skin, sweating drops of the life fluid out into the air, where his will caught them up, sent them out as a cloud of deadly particles across the corridor, into the face of the Ultimate Fiend. The vile boy's own magic blocked the attack, of course, but in the rush of pain and color in the air, Milielan could spring forward, the sharpened nails on his blood-drenched fingers dripping with death.

He needed only one small break in the Fiend's protection. One drop of Milielan's blood inside that body. A single drop of blood and a single pulse of the boy's heart, and this threat to dear Basorrie's memory would be so much cooling meat.

Feerborg's face seemed to fly toward Milielan's clutching fingers. His nails were sharp. One cut. One moment of contact, blood to blood…but, no! Pain! Agony!

Red washed across his vision and Milielan stumbled, fell, the joints of his knees suddenly swollen and burning. For a screaming, red-soaked moment, Milielan could not comprehend the sensation. Then he word came to him:
Anticonsanguinarre.

Yes, even a man as such as he, who had drunk so deeply of the bitter blood of man's existence, even Milielan DeMacabre could be surprised, could be shocked by the cruelties of which life was capable. For the blood-magic of
Anticonsanguinarre
could only be performed by a blood relative of the one afflicted.

"Daughter!" he gasped, for it was she, standing over him, pain writ starkly upon her lovely face. So much like darling Basorrie's. But where he had towered over his wife, his daughter's hands were now outstretched over him. Her body shook as his daughter directed against her father the blood they both shared.

"Betrayal!" The fact of the attack itself was ten thousand times more painful than the grinding in his joints. "Betrayal," he hissed between his dripping teeth. "Ingratitude." And when the Duke flung his swollen arm up, his daughter staggered backward. "And stupidity," spat Milielan, rising, "for you forgot the first action one must accomplish with the
Anticonsanguinarre
is to kill one's opponent."

She screamed as Milielan dealt another blow to his daughter, so like her precious mother. For indeed, the same blood flowed in both their veins: blood he could wield as well as she.

***

We can't just stand here and do nothing!

Oh yes we can
, Istain subvocalized.
We've got two snarling leather-and-blood fetishists on one side, and on the other a guy who's
haircut
looks murderous, break-dance-fighting with Freetrick, our friendly neighborhood necromancer. Plus there's the monster behind us, with a face made from was appears to be raw nightmare. And, as we've established, any
one
of these people can kill as soon as look at us, which, thank
gibbering Truth,
none of them are right now.

So you're going to just make us stand here until the prince kills Freetrick?
Istain felt his brows go down as Madene tried to glare at him.

What then? What are we going to do when we lose the only person in this palace who has the power to keep everyone else from killing us offhand?

Out of hand, you mean. That's not a bad point
, Istain admitted,
but what—
Bloodbyrn said something, not loud, but sharp enough to make Istain forget their mortal danger. Her language, shrill and guttural as a tomcat being castrated, dragged a frantic nail across Istain's auditory lobe.

"Burning libraries!" He said aloud.

Later, Madene would disagree, but Istain maintained that both Feerix and the old guy, Bloodbyrn's father, exploded at the same time. In different colors.

There was a black cloud from the one, and a red cloud from the other, and before Istain could curse again, the red cloud was rushing toward them, then the old guy inside screaming his head off, his hands twisted into claws, his expression as terrifying as the cover art on a Death Metal album.

Then Feerix hollered too, like he recognized the reference and wanted to add his own sound effects.

"Istain,
one
of them is going to kill Freetrick," Madene said, "we have to stop them."

"Burning gibberish,
how
, Madene
?
"

"How
dare
---" He began, and then Milielan was on the ground again. The weight that had born him down shifted, and his attacker wrapped gauntleted fingers about Milielan's throat.

By all his blood and bile, it was the boy. Feerborg, called by some the Ultimate Fiend, had had the temerity to lay prostrate a DeMacabre.

"Stop hurting her," the boy's voice grated in his ear.

It was enough to make Milielan smile. "And you think you can stop me?" His face pressed against the floor as it was, his words came out a blurred growl. "Save her from her father? What made you believe you had that right?"

"Shut up! You think I won't kill you?"

"Fool," mumbled Milielan into the floor. "I have drunk from the steaming aortae of men a thousand times better than you." Even as the boy's fingers tightened around his windpipe—stupid not to simply beat his brains out on the floor— streams of Milielan's blood were flowing up, between the plates of his armor, worming through the metal joints, piercing the skin. In the space between one labored heartbeat and the next, the DeMacabre blood infiltrated the body of the Ultimate Fiend.