The Kingdoms of Evil (89 page)

Darkness flashed over Freetrick's vision and pain burst across his left temple. Freetrick struggled to remain airborne, wheeling away from his half-brother's next blow. Freetrick could not fight back, could not run, could only feel his energy, bought at such great cost, begin to drain away.

A downward-directed push, and Freetrick shot upwards, out of a cloud of personal torment. He jigged to avoid another questing tentacle, and ran into a second. Feerix was playing with him, howling with laughter as Freetrick frantically dodged. Necromancy closed around him like the fingers of a glove. He stuck in the air, trapped.

Feerix smiled, a terrible sight of blood and broken teeth. He did not move in for the kill. "What was
that
, brother? It was almost impressive."

Freetrick sent a silent prayer of thanks to the First God. Or in any case whoever had first conceived the villainous monologue.

"All that running," Feerix mimed ducking, his gauntleted hands spread, "and dodging?" He laughed again, "If that is what they teach warriors in The Rationalist Union, the upcoming war will go well for us indeed." He took a single step forward, then stopped again.

War?
Freetrick looked down, past his half-brother's grinning face past the length of his black-armored body to the floor under his feet. The word-magic spell written there in blood.

Bloodbyrn's memory was excellent. She had written the spell exactly right. Now all he had to do was activate it. And hope the monsters had prayed enough for this to work.

At his sides, Freetrick's fingers twitched. Deep in his throat, he murmured the words of power.

"Fool." Feerix's smile vanished. "Weak and whimpering
fool
! With your
choices
and your
Rationality
! You would have doomed us all." Another step forward.

Feerix was almost within range, but Freetrick's fingers continued to twirl, his mind danced with lines of force.

This would never have worked in the RU, or even in Skrea earlier than the previous couple of days. Even now, with how many dozen monsters praying to the God of Words, and Bloodbyrn's influence moving the fluid on the floor, no one but the heir of the First God could have worked this spell. Sangboise blood-magic wrote the programming of Rationalist word-magic powered by Skrean necromancy.

"You disgust me," Feerix snarled as blood ran across the onyx tiles under his feet. "How
can
you be king?" Feerix was screaming now, trembling with emotion. "How could the First God have chosen
you
to carry His power? Answer me, with your reason and logic!" Spittle flew from Feerix' mouth as he brought up his claws to rip through Feerix's throat. "Why should the black magic not run through my veins?"

"Good question," said Freetrick, and he spoke the final word of power. The spell beneath Feerix snapped closed.

Feerix's swinging gauntlet slammed to a halt as if he had struck a wall. The prince grunted in surprise, then cried out as he saw the network of thick, red chords moving across his arm. They quested as if alive, weaving over and through his flesh, binding it, transfixing it.

Feerix tried to back away, but the same red bonds had infiltrated his legs. They crawled across his skin like a living net, extending branches up and out around Feerix' torso. He could not cry as his throat was sewn shut, but tremors shook his body as the net punched through him, budding shoots through his shoulders and back. Feerix shook until his feet left the ground and he hung, suspended in a tree of blood.

Black mist flared and writhed as Feerix focused the strength of his magic against the spell that bound him. Freetrick braced himself for one of those bolts of power to strike out the runes on the floor, but Feerix ignored them. Instead, he poured death energy into the streams of solidified blood that held him. Those attacks were easy enough to fend off, between Bloodbyrn's blood-magic and Freetrick's necromancy. The branches of the fractal cage quivered, then, as Feerix's magical reserves finally failed, went still.

Freetrick let his breath out. His vision swam and blood still oozed from his cuts. He stumbled toward Bloodbyrn. Shuddering, he held her.

In which new Problems emerge

"Facinating!
I
ngenious
!" The harsh caw of Wrothgrinn's voice echoed off the basalt walls of the hallway. "And my lord is sure the prince yet lives?"

The blood tree stood in the middle of the corridor, red roots dug into the black floor, red branches reaching up into the swirling indoor mist. Feerix reached out from the heart of the tree, face still frozen somewhere between rage and surprise.

"Most ingenious!" said Wrothgrinn again.

Freetrick turned to observe his uncle. The life-twister was standing in his habitual hunched, steepled-hands posture, the only smiling person in a circle of grim and exhausted onlookers. The monsters in what Freetrick thought of as his revolutionary council looked like they were ready to bolt. Istain was pale an exhausted-looking, his face twitching. And Bloodbyrn wouldn't even look at him.

"He ought to still be alive," Freetrick said. "Blood is still moving through those veins. It just happens to be moving around outside his body now."

"Yet he does not breathe, my lord."

"That doesn't matter," said Istain, standing abruptly straighter, "He should get plenty of oxygen diffusing through all that surface area. See how red all the blood is?" He gestured at the imprisoned prince with an uncharacteristically brisk movement of one hand. "If anything it's superoxygenated."

Freetrick frowned. He needed a chance to talk to Istain about what had happened in Virgin Soil. "And here I thought you hated biology."

"I did," Istain slouched back down again. He muttered something else, but Freetrick couldn't hear whatever it was under Wrothginn's crow of delight.

 "Facinating!" the life-twister said again. "A state, not of un-death, but un-life! But how long can it last? I imagine there is some..." He giggled, nibbling on the tips of his fingers, "possibility of
infection
?"

Freetrick grimaced. "There's a worse problem. I can't keep people out of this corridor forever, and all it will take is one person to strike out a rune in the programming on the floor," he gestured at the blood letters, clotted now, but still in the right shape to command the attention of the God of Words. "Truth, and even though I've got a round-the-clock rotation of monsters writing prayers to the god, I'm still worried the magic will fail and...well..."

"The prince will be released from his prison to seek his terrible revenge?" Wrothgrinn inquired eagerly.

"Not so much," Istain said. "Any random deletion from the program will probably make that guy explode. Or at least bleed out from a hundred places at once. I don't understand what's holding the whole mess together as it is."

That, at least, sounded like the old Istain. Freetrick opened his mouth to tell his friend about his plans for the prince, but Wrothgrinn raised a finger like the questing head of a blind snake.

"A moment," said the life-twister, his expression pensive. "About these...monsters praying."

Ah, here it was. The first of what Freetrick was sure would be many similar conversations. Diatribes. It would be best to make a strong impression from the beginning.

Wrothgrinn continued. "Is my lord sure that...uh…"

"That what?" Freetrick demanded. "That it's legal? Yes. Because I said so. That it's safe? Yes, because if any necromancer tries to stop a monster from praying to the God of Words or learning to read, I will hunt them down and…" he jerked a thumb at Feerix inside his tree. "Right. And if I'm feeling
particularly
un-merciful, I'll let the monsters practice spelling on them first. Got it?"

"The point, my lord, has been most thoroughly gotten, my lord," said Wrothgrinn, clenching his long fingers under his wagging chin. "And pleased I am to…to
clasp
it."

"Really," said Freetrick. "You're not surprised in any way that I've overturned the entire Skrean social and political system?"

"Why would I stand in the way of such
chaos
my lord?" Wrothgrinn made little gestures with his long fingers, perhaps indicating chaos. "And besides, what would it be to give magic to the monsters, but the greatest test of the work of myself and my predecessors?" Wrothgrinn curled his own right hand in front of his lens-adorned face. "To think that we, the life-twisters who made these monsters," he looked up from his own palm to raise a crazed eyebrow at Freetrick, "can see them grow to rival us, to usurp our power," fingers twitching, he raised his face toward the ceiling, "to murder us all in blood-
drenched
and
cathartic
uprising! Yes! Yes, my lord!" His hands flew into the air like skeletal doves. "Why," he said, "it will be like raising children."

Freetrick opened his mouth. Closed it.

"However!" Wrothgrinn's hands snapped closed, leaving a single finger, which the life-twister thrust forward didactically. "What I
had
planned to ask was whether it was truly, that is to say,
possible
for all the monsters to be taught, my lord, to read. Yes!" The finger wriggled. "For many lack eyesight or the hands to hold writing tools or turn pages." Wrothgrinn's own hands mimed these actions like dancing crabs. "Not to mention the stupider goblins and lizard people, which, in
my
opinion, my lord, lack the mental capabilities necessary for literacy. Hm!" He nodded to himself.

Freetrick looked at the ogre Grimp, standing mutely at the edge of circle. He thought of the mind trapped in that bovine body. "Well, Wrothgrinn," he said, "you're a life-twister, aren't you? Why can't you fix the monsters?"

"You mean," the man gasped, "make them less…monstrous?"

"Let's say more functional."

Wrothgrinn chewed a yellow fingernail as he appeared to consider the proposal. "Hmm…ah
HAH!" H
is left hand came up to hook a huge lens into place over an eye. "Indeed, my lord's artistic genius bounds to ever higher levels." He swung his hugely magnified eye toward Grimp, Skystarke, the Kaimeera, and Mr. Skree, who all cringed back slightly.

"Of course, what better conclusion could there be to my exploration of Perversity? What greater iconoclasm…" his fingers pressed together over his lips, then slowly spread, like a blooming lily, "than to make of a monster…a man?"

"Well, wonderful," sighed Freetrick. "I'll have a schedule drawn up for you and…"

"Yes, yes, fine." Wrothgrinn had somehow crossed the corridor between one moment and the next and was now subjecting a quivering Skystarke to magnified scrutiny, "I am an artist. My secretary bugs handle such things as schedules."

"Okay, but...do you need anything? Before you begin?" Freetrick wanted to know.

"Like what? Heavy gauge stitches? A bolt of lightning? A fresh brain perhaps? Bah!" Wrothgrinn scoffed as he palpated the loose skin over Skystarke's face. Freetrick's chamberlain gazed forward, his eyes half-lidded, his lips tight. "My lord underestimates my artistic integrity if he thinks I have any use for such for petty gimmickry," said Wrothgrinn. "I require only time and silence to compose my next masterpiece."

"Well, good," said Freetrick. That was one more problem taken care of. At least for the moment. Which left…Freetrick glanced at Bloodbyrn, who was looking at him.

"My lord," she said, her voice colorless, "I fail to see the utility in my continued presence here. May I be given leave to depart?"

Freetrick opened his mouth to answer her, and could not. Instead he said, "…I'd appreciate your advice on what to do with Feerix." He nodded toward the frozen prince.

Tiny silver hooks glinted as Bloodbyrn's lip twitched. "Kill him."

Freetrick shook his head. "I can't do that, Bloodbyrn."

"Yes you can," Istain raised his hand. "I vote with Gothic Lolita. Let's just---ow!" Freetrick's friend winced, then shook his head hard, and said, bizarrely, "Freetrick, you have to let him live."

"Istain," said Freetrick, "are you---"

"Never mind!" Istain said, "just listen to me, Freetrick. You can't kill the prince."

"Can he not?" Bloodbyrn's voice was as frozen and unforgiving as a glacier. "What are you to give orders to the Ultimate Fiend?"

"Who are you to tell me not to?" Istain retorted, still in that weird, un-Istain-like voice.

Bloodbyrn took a step forward, but then the light went out of her eyes. "The choice of what to do and what not to do now rests with the Ultimate Fiend." She shook out her black curls and gave Freetrick a look that made him feel as if a hand had just closed over this throat. "I have done with choices, I think."

He tried to answer, "It's not---"

"Oh, do whatever you wish, Fiend." she said, eyes twitching away from his, "I might only inquire why I was ordered to be present here, since my advice and interests are clearly to be ignored."

There was an uncomfortable silence, which the Grimp's translator broke with a shrill squeak."Fiend...dark lady...Grimp agrees that the obvious thing
would
be to kill him."

"I agree!" said Wrothrginn, running fingers through the Translator's fuzzy coat. "The would-be claimant, should he still live after the duel, is generally ritually sacrificed before the masses. Indeed and the energy you might gain from such a deed would last you days. Ooh!" The life-twister clapped his hands. "I have some knives of knapped obsidian I have been waiting for an opportunity to try on a live subject. If my lord likes..."