Defiant Revival

by Defiant Revival [Dreamspinner MM] (retail) (epub)

  Defiant Revival

  By L. Rockwood

  To free the kingdom from the depravity of Cardinal Aldrious, Prince Micah Helvendeere must take his rightful place as ruler.

  Unfortunately, the prince has been dead for a year.

  Billiam Grimhart, former page to the prince, knows Micah’s assumption of the throne is the last chance to purge Casperland of the cardinal’s corruption. And for that to happen, the prince must be revived. Only one person stands a chance of achieving the nearly impossible: exiled enchantress Shemmy DuBois, a raunchy bog witch with an affinity for corpses and a heart of gold. Billiam sets out to coax Shemmy to their cause, despite what wading through piles of bodies will do to his favorite shoes.

  If he can accomplish it, Billiam might finally get to consummate his love for the prince—something Shemmy is keen to witness. But first, they’ll need to steal Micah’s body, brave a land inhabited by vicious faeries, and accept the help of accomplices as vile and perverse as their enemies. They might be far from typical heroes, but sometimes those are the only people who can get the job done.

  If you like dark and edgy high-concept fantasy that’s not for those with delicate sensibilities, join Billiam, Shemmy, and their Faelock allies as they stage their revolution.

  Table of Contents

  Blurb

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Appendix I

  Appendix II

  About the Author

  By L. Rockwood

  Visit Dreamspinner Press

  Copyright Page

  For Rae, my favorite person. Without you this novel would be nothing but adverbs and dick jokes.

  Chapter 1

  May 2nd, 989

  IT WAS mercilessly hot the day they met, as it had been every day for months. I was surprised to hear that Billiam actually saw a puffy cloud float by. In these years of endless war and seasonless days, they had evolved into a sign of good luck. Like luck, they were fleeting, rare, and ultimately disappointing. The vegetation had been withered from the drought and continually burnt by attack. It seemed no one alerted the air to all the dryness beneath it, for the sticky humidity hung all about. Was the moisture of the earth simply waiting above it until the earth was once again a suitable place to reside? Or was it the corpses piling in the valley that required the company of thick, stinking air? Whatever the reason was, it had been like that.

  The days of slimy sweat and dry throats had been many, and the travelers outside the city walls grew ever fewer. There was nothing different about the day Billiam exited the gates of city Drummond from the hundreds of days before nor the seven suffocating months to follow. What I found surprising was that he had never done anything without style that I could recall. In this vein, why did he start the future on such a bland and thoughtless afternoon?

  I suppose I can forgive him, as there were extenuating circumstances and little to no variety in the weather. This was simply the first available day that he thought he knew what he was doing enough to venture out. Three days later, there actually was a short rain, and all the carts leaving got stuck in the muck and blood outside the gates. That would have made for a far more interesting exit if you ask me. Regardless, on this completely ordinary day, Billiam left the walls of Drummond and had a meeting that changed the entire world. If you are going to do something to affect so many others, urgency can be more important than an entertaining story.

  The city of Drummond was the heart in the enveloping rib cages of the Casperland peninsula. The lungs would be the large forests surrounding the shores of the Casperland nation. The city of Casper lived at the peninsula’s tail, and obviously was intended to be the more successful of the brother cities, given the nation’s name and such. A few villages sat along the western shore. Nothing was stupid enough to get beaten across the rocks of the east. Three towns and a village or five hung around the middle valleys of Casperland, between the competing cities. With other lands becoming a much larger part of the nation’s economy, Drummond’s accessible location and secure, canyon port eventually brought about its growth into the capital it is known as today. This geography lesson is tedious but necessary to show there was something to Casperland outside of Drummond. It shows there was life and community and opportunity outside those gates in the past.

  Access past Drummond grew increasingly exclusive and monitored following the devastating bombing of Casper by the fearsome nation of Knox, over a decade prior. All travel outside of the city had become completely marginalized into government transportation of goods to the two remaining villages and one fishing hamlet allowed to live on in Casperland.

  Before things were made this stringent, merchants could make pilgrimages, and some lucky or stupid families could try to visit loved ones. By the time Billiam finally walked out, however, all exits and entrances of Drummond had to be governmentally approved and were still at the traveler’s own risk. In order for citizens to leave, they could try to get an expatrias permit, the processing of which never took less than six months, not that I’ve ever heard of any being approved. Taking one of the transport jobs could get you out of the city, but with no privacy as your guards and cohorts would monitor you the whole time.

  The best way, and the way dear Billiam opted for, was through the Westend sewer. Cardinal Aldrious hadn’t bothered to have people investigate or monitor any of the sewer systems, as he would never demean himself to think of wading through excrement. Due to this pretense, the guards were not aware that the sewer tunnel had a dry path to an overflow, which emptied into a small lagoon. This runoff was a safe, short distance from the gates, with no wading through human waste necessary, and a relatively easy exit for those of us who knew about it.

  It was nearly midday when the subterranean section of Billiam’s journey met its end. At last, he was able to remove the itchy burlap prison that had entrapped his visage the last hour. In order to make sure anyone else who might be taking a stroll through the sewers could not identify him, he had taken the guise of an anonymous peasant. The dirty shawl bent the shape of his bowler hat slightly, but nothing could distort the noble features and brilliant mustache underneath.

  Billiam was a long wisp of a man, his lankiness making his strength deceptive. He was a well-trained swordsman and archer as well as an immaculate tailor. His thin face was brought to a perfect end with a strong goateed jaw. Unlike what I presume other heroes to think, he saw no value in saving the world if he couldn’t look good while doing it. After smoothing his tailcoat, straightening his skinny black tie, and sneaking a quick peer in the reflection of a puddle nearby, his adventure was able to continue.

  He had only a quarter hour jaunt through the wastes left until he reached his destination—Drummond’s mass grave, bitterly referred to as Peace Valley. The rotting corpses—citizens and foreigners, criminals and the hopelessly ill, enemies to the crown both real and imagined—these were the cost of the “peace” granted us by the cardinal. The beastly creatures controlled by Cardinal Aldrious and his sect, the Mortanions, had to be sustained somehow. The sacrifice of one’s corpse served as a royal pardon.

  Said creatures were wicked winged beasts known only as reapers. They were generally five feet long with double that for a
wingspan; rotten lizards with bodies covered in sparkling, black scales and dusty feathers smothering their appendages. Their gaping mouths housed at least three rows of crimson teeth. It is unknown whether their teeth actually are red or are perpetually stained with human blood; however, it is unlikely anyone who finds out would live to tell us. Their handlers, low-ranking Mortanion brothers referred to as goons, were the only people who regularly patrolled the wastes. They were few but could summon reapers to attack when they saw a trespasser. The beasts would lunge at travelers on their own, but a simple umbrella with a painted red eye was enough to deter them. Thus the purpose of the goons was to summon an attack on said umbrellas.

  Billiam’s parasol was made of a sheet of black silk with a piece of fine red ribbon stitched in around the top and clutched tightly in his left hand. As he approached the cliffs, the odor of sun-dried flesh from the valley finally reached his nose. Pulling his handkerchief out of his pocket, he began to scan the valley of corpses. It took only moments for him to spy his target.

  A huge black and ratty umbrella poked out from the shade of the cliff on which he stood, just a few paces to the right. An eye was scrawled in what was likely blood, though it was an oxidized brown barely resembling the prior crimson. The pole jutted out from a large deteriorating baby carriage fitted with the hairy legs of a man on either side. The frame of a spritely, wild-looking woman could be seen crawling and rummaging through the bodies next to the carriage’s feet.

  This creature was, without a doubt, the famous enchantress Chammerline DuBois the XII, who since her exile had adopted her childhood nickname, Shemmy. This eccentric master of a dying craft was the only hope for his kingdom, the only hope for his heart, and happened to be weighing two obese forearms in either hand.

  He needed to implore her; she needed to know her importance. He feared her wildness but hoped reason could still be won, and thus he beckoned to her, “Hello to you, my lovely girl!”

  “What you sayin’?” A raspy but high-pitched voice, heavily accented by the slang of the slums, rang up to him.

  “I said, a hearty hello to you, my lovely girl!” Although he was shaken by the importance of this interaction, he knew he could still be the most charming man she’d ever meet. She could not resist nor detest him, could she?

  “I assure you, mate, I ain’t lovely, and I haven’t a need for no hullos,” she yelled up with a dismissive wave, never turning her face to him.

  Billiam sensed too much charm was used, dialed it back, and proceeded instead with his honest approach. “Oh don’t worry, miss, I could give a damn whether you are lovely or not; I was simply trying to be pleasant. I am a dandy and shan’t be getting excitement from you either way.”

  Billiam could make out a beet-red blush that appeared all across her face in an instant, forcing her wild eyes to make contact with his at last. She hurriedly gasped out, “Shush yer mouf! That is not a fing you want goons hearin’, and I dun need the damn attention.” It was meant to sound angry and dismissive, but they both heard only excitement.

  He began to realize the secret he used to gain her trust by showing vulnerability, was actually something she was quite keen on. The practice of homosexuality had become formally outlawed following the discovery of the Promise of Aegis and the kingdom’s conversion to the orthodox MortiAegis religion forty years ago. Although it was never an entirely accepted way of life, there were never laws against it prior. Dandy was a common term for homosexual men, and there were also female fans of their shows of affection. Cabarets of such acts could be sought out in certain neighborhoods before Drummond’s conversion. The current rouge upon Shemmy’s face provided Billiam with assurance he would definitely get through to her.

  Relaxed and now confident in his approach, he calmly replied, “You are quite right, but now you shouldn’t fear talking to me, as we are both criminals in the eyes of the crown. Neither of us are about to cry to the goons, are we, Shemmy?”

  “Aye, so yer a fan, Mr. Dandy? I won’t bother arguin’ no innocence, then. Get to the point, eh?”

  “I was hoping to employ you, if you are so inclined. Should we, perhaps, go somewhere a bit less vulnerable before we get to the particulars?” He smiled down at her and noticed the gleam of her grin back up at him beneath her knotted mess of hair.

  “I s’pose yer right, Mr. Dandy.” She had finally decided on the plump appendage she clutched in her left hand and set it in her legged carriage, tossing the reject down, back to the grave. “Come along now, Gam,” she instructed while facing her carriage, before turning to Billiam and singing up with a wicked smile, “let’s go back to my place, dear.” She swayed her arm in an inviting motion, beckoning her visitor down.

  “Oh wonderful, and you can call me Billiam. Also… must I really go down there? Is there not any other way around?” The smell of rotting flesh was enough to permanently scar his psyche. The idea of seeing it up close or, most awful of all, having to feel it gave him the need to be sick.

  “No, Mr. Dandy Billiam. Come on down!” She yelled as if commanding a circus show, full of bravado. “You’ll see a rusted chain ’bout twelve paces to yer right. Climb that and you’ll get only ’bout halfway down, but there’s a great, big fatty to cushion yer fall.” She laughed as she swept her mop of hair out of her eyes. Her face was dirty and smudged with dried blood, but her eyes gleamed a sparkling sienna. Billiam was surprised to see she actually was lovely, although probably sadistic as well.

  Swallowing hard, both stomach and pride, he nodded down to her and began his twelve-pace march, the last steps of his favorite suit. He grabbed the chain and shimmied down the cliff, one pointed loafer at a time. Said loafers met a comfortable stoop at the same time his hands were grasping an inch above the chain’s end. He spotted the purple-tinted soft landing Shemmy had mentioned. All he could think of was falling through its skin as if it were a rotten tomato. If that happened, every fiber in his clothing, every piece of hair on his head and body, were sure to be compromised. To the left of the fat corpse was a spot free of flesh or feces. It was a sharp-looking patch of rock and at least a five-foot jump but appeared quite clean. Billiam realized it was madness and pure egomania to choose broken bones over soiled suits, but his immaculate aesthetic was far too important for him to be able to humble it.

  Kicking hard against the cliff, he let himself go, spinning as far to the left as possible. He could hear Shemmy’s cackling below him as he fell helplessly toward the jagged rocks. Unfortunately it was farther than he had thought. He had no choice but to prepare to roll, holding his hat and tucking in his head, landing shoulder first on a torso. His calves got their fall caught by the rocks, slicing one trouser leg from ankle to knee. Almost completely defeated, he used his last bit of strength to roll onto the ground off of the torso. He pulled his legs close to his chest and wiped dust off of his limbs until his eyes forced themselves shut.

  A jostling motion was the first thing Billiam perceived as he began to rouse. The next sensation was the pittering sound of bare feet slapping against soft ground. His eyes refused to open, and his head throbbed. His back felt comforted, almost embraced, yet his legs were being blown about in a breeze. The musky odor of death that completely filled his nose when everything first went dark still lingered yet had become much fainter. He pried his right eye open slightly to see a wooded path moving around him before it fell back shut.

  If my eyes will not obey, perhaps my mouth shall, he thought to himself. Gasping out a coarse breath, he muttered, “’Emmy…? I’m alive… yes?”

  “’Course ya are, Dandy, no thanks to yourself. I told ya to land on the fatty, not swan dive for a jagged fuckin’ rock,” she replied, sounding irritated and to be a few paces ahead.

  “I… it was too… too disgust… I couldn’t….” The words coming out of his mouth snapped him awake with the memory of the horror that befell him, or rather, that he fell on. “My shoulder! My trousers!” he screamed, while frantically brushing at his shoulder with one hand and g
rabbing at his leg with the other. The top of the hand going for the shoulder grazed against a cheap, tacky-feeling fabric before the hand moving toward the pants could feel the passing air around it.

  Billiam immediately leapt a few paces forward and onto his feet. “You put me in your corpse carriage?” he shouted, spinning around toward his abductor.

  “You was out cold. I ain’t in the habit of waitin’ for nightfall in the middle of Peace Valley, and we got something to discuss I ’spose, so I could’nae leave ya. I hate to admit it, but I dun get sought out too often of late. I’m intrigued, so I got ya in Gam, I did. You did’nae fit well. ’Tis a babe’s pram after all.”

  As mortified as he was, Billiam knew she had saved him. “Right, thank you, miss. I should be fine to walk from here. How long have we been traveling?”

  “Erm… I’d say something around ten minutes or so. We got about two more ’til we at me shack.” She scratched her head, feigning innocence and smiling to Billiam as he marched backward ahead of her.

  “What were you saying about nightfall? Was I out for even a full minute before you hoisted me atop your appendages? I am, of course, grateful for my rescue, but I think it may have been a bit hasty.” Billiam grit his teeth, thinking of how long it might be until he could rip off his suit and burn it. I do not agree with becoming so attached to trivial possessions such as clothing, but I will admit that no coat since has achieved that level of dashing on him.

  “Oi, so yer a neatnik, ey? Ya dun like the dead? Explains yer stupid stunt. I ain’t the patient sort, so if ya want my help, ya better don’t pass out.” Irritated but thoroughly amused by this stranger, she sighed dramatically before pointing ahead of her. “Turn around, Dandy, home sweet home right there.”

  He smiled as he swung his leg around, but the grin was fleeting. This home, as she called it, was barely standing. Sheets of rusted metal tied to each other with large vines struggled beneath a mud-covered thatch roof. Holes were crudely cut through the walls to produce mock windows. A wooden door, vaguely attached to the metal siding with rusty hinges, swung slightly in the wind. To the right of the door, a disembodied arm held up its hand, wielding a muck-covered paintbrush. It robotically slathered the slime against the side of the shack, staining the metal green before drying to an off-white.