The Black Fortress

by E. G. Foley

  She stole one last glance up at the stars before she went through the iron doorway. They seemed to shine a little brighter, their silver magic piercing through the dark.

  CHAPTER 52

  Brood of Vipers

  For Wyvern, the excitement was building. He had not heard anything further from Zolond since his obnoxious candle call. Shemrazul continued to encourage him, so he pressed on in his quest to gather allies for when the time came to act.

  It wouldn’t be long now.

  He was pleased to have gained the full cooperation of the Cataclysm Twins, an eccentric brother-sister pair in their early thirties who tended to wreak havoc everywhere they went, either separately or together.

  Simeon, the elder twin, was a reckless, dark-haired chap with a talent for generating natural disasters. He could stomp earthquakes into being, wake up sleeping volcanoes, and manipulate water in all its phases, so blizzards, hurricanes, and tsunamis were all hobbies of his.

  Amaranth, the younger twin, was a clever, educated miss with spectacles and a dusting of freckles across her nose. Never mind her harmless appearance—the lady scientist specialized in plagues, poison, and disease.

  She tended to follow in her brother’s wake, adding a wave of human misery to further complicate the trouble he had started. Outbreaks of malaria after floods. Influenza after ice storms.

  They worked well together. Powerful as they were, the pair saw the overthrow of Zolond as an adventure.

  That left only a few more members of the Council for Wyvern to visit.

  The following night, he parked the Black Fortress near the White Cliffs of Dover and walked out to the windy ledge to meet with Captain Inigo Dread. Having set up the meeting in advance, he looked up eagerly, with Thanatos seated by his side.

  The manticore hissed nervously as Dread’s vessel, The Dream Wraith, came sputtering down from the clouds toward the cliff’s edge, while the cold Atlantic waves crashed below.

  Wyvern’s long coat blew around his body in the breeze. The descending airship was a sight to behold, chugging and whirring down from the dark skies.

  Floating out behind the vessel was an even more curious sight. The Dream Wraith pulled great fishing nets through the skies, but instead of fish, its nets captured the prayers and dreams, hopes and wishes of the innocent, especially children, intercepting them on the way up.

  Captain Inigo Dread and his grim crew harvested despair, as all of those hopes and prayers were never answered—not because no one was listening, but because they had been stolen by the dream fishers halfway up the skies. These precious raw materials were then turned into food for many breeds of monsters.

  The airship’s haul of captured hopes and dreams floated out behind it as the Wraith drifted down to hover across from the cliffs. The one-eyed captain clomped out onto the narrow wooden deck on his peg leg.

  “Wyvern!” he yelled down over the noise of the propellers, waving from the railing.

  “Good to see you!” Wyvern called back.

  Dread threw down a rope ladder and beckoned Wyvern aboard. After all, the English Channel was infamously windy. Not even a crew as experienced as Dread’s sky pirates could force the great dirigible to hover precisely in place.

  Leaving Thanatos behind, Wyvern climbed up the rope ladder with only one nervous glance down at the dark, crashing waves below. It was cold in the biting breeze. Behind the ship, the captured dreams and wishes glowed in the nets with an aura of sadness.

  Ignoring it, he clambered aboard the airship, then met with the captain in his private quarters. The captain’s wood-paneled stateroom with its curved sides was surprisingly cozy.

  Dread offered Wyvern a drink, then they got down to business. His wand by his side in case the captain didn’t like his plan, Wyvern explained the situation. But, to his relief, a canny grin slowly spread across the sky pirate’s face.

  “Aye, I won’t stand in the way. I mean, it’s a shame about Zolond, in’nt it? But I reckon he done it to himself. We all gotta die sometime.”

  “Indeed.”

  “You really think you can take ’im?”

  Wyvern smiled with cool confidence, but kept his tone modest. “We’ll see.”

  “Humph.” Dread scrutinized him with a searching, one-eyed stare. The other eye was covered by a patch.

  Wyvern had heard the grizzled old salt lost the use of his other eye when he was struck by lightning while tending his ship.

  As for the missing lower portion of his left leg, that had become dinner for a shark once when The Dream Wraith had made a crash landing in some Australian bay.

  “Very well,” the sky pirate said after a brief silence. “You let me harvest the rich pickings to be had above Merlin Hall the night of your attack, and you’ve got yourself a deal. The dreams and hopes of Magick-folk aren’t easy to come by.”

  “You’ll provide cover from above? I know you’ve got the guns for it.”

  “Aye.” The Dream Wraith was fitted with several cannons, including two small but effective swivel-guns fore and aft.

  Wyvern nodded. “Then it seems we have an understanding.”

  “Done.” Dread spat in his palm, then offered Wyvern a handshake.

  Though Wyvern found this crude little ritual rather disgusting, he followed suit, clasping the sky pirate’s hand in his six-fingered grasp.

  From there, it was on to Vienna, Austria, where he tracked down the most unassuming member of the Dark Druid Council, Professor Richard Labyrinth.

  A little academic in a tweed coat with elbow patches, the doctor taught at the university and also saw patients at the lunatic asylum.

  A humorless middle-aged man, pale and balding, he wore small, round spectacles and a pointed beard. But, as dry and mild-mannered as he seemed, in some ways, Dr. Labyrinth was even more dangerous than Raige.

  The general could overcome the enemy by force, but Dr. Labyrinth knew how to get into their psyches and twist their minds until they questioned their own sanity. He didn’t cure mental patients; on the contrary, he drove perfectly sane clients mad.

  Lately Wyvern had heard that Labyrinth had been going after newspaper writers and politicians, the better to spread his insanity on a wider scale.

  When he welcomed Wyvern into his office at the university, Dr. Labyrinth sat down on an armchair by his desk, leaving Wyvern nowhere to sit but on a padded leather couch across from him.

  “Please, make yourself comfortable. You may lie down if you like. Now, tell me. Why are you here?” His voice was a lulling monotone with a slight Germanic accent. “Why are you really here?”

  Wyvern glowered. “Spare me your mind games, doctor. I am here on business.”

  Wyvern then explained the purpose of his visit.

  Labyrinth heard him out, listening in detached silence, slowly turning his pencil end over end on his cluttered desk.

  “Well?” Wyvern finally said.

  The professor adjusted his spectacles. “You say your father has given you this mission.”

  “Yes, that is correct.”

  “But what do you want, Wyvern? What does Nathan really want, deep down?”

  Wyvern gave him a blank stare. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Well,” Labyrinth said in his faint accent, shifting in his chair, “it sounds inordinately important to you to please your father. Why is that?”

  “Have you seen him?” Wyvern retorted.

  “Hmm. You are afraid of Shemrazul?”

  Wyvern sat straight on the couch. “All nine circles of Hell are afraid of him, you idiot!”

  “Now, now, zhere is no need for violent outbursts. It is very plain you suffer from ze megalomania, and a strong case of ze paranoia, as well. But why zis urge to please your father, hmm? Perhaps you think you are still just a little child, ja? One who may not measure up in his eyes?”

  “Enough of your nonsense.” Wyvern shot to his feet. “Are you with me or not, Labyrinth?”

  The professor sighed. “It would not be rat
ional behavior to risk turning everything to chaos when all is working smoothly. I would need…an incentive.”

  And there it was. Wyvern snorted.

  No matter how many fancy words or convoluted justifications the brilliant doctor wished to supply, it always boiled down to that one same question with every human being: What’s in it for me?

  Wyvern didn’t need to be some sort of scientific genius to know that much.

  “What would make you happy, doctor?” he asked, glad to turn the tables on him.

  “Why, Nathan, you know me. All I ever wanted was to help ze human race improve itself. By any means necessary.” Labyrinth’s tone was kind, but his eyes were merciless.

  Utopians were terrifying.

  “If I were given greater latitude to pursue my studies, and perhaps a steady supply of new test subjects to work with—”

  “Consider it done,” Wyvern said. The less he knew about the doctor’s unnerving experiments on the human mind, the better.

  “Hmm, zhen of course I will assist. Always I am pleased to further Progress. Care for a sherry? Shall we toast?”

  Wyvern nodded, then accepted a small glass of the strong amber cordial from the bottle that the professor kept tucked inside his desk.

  “To ze future,” Dr. Labyrinth said.

  “And the Black Crown,” Wyvern answered heartily. Then he clinked his dainty cut-crystal glass to the professor’s and downed his drink.

  Relieved to get out of Vienna with his wits intact, Wyvern hastened on the next day in his quest, this time transporting the Black Fortress all the way to America.

  It slammed down on a sleepy rural stretch of Long Island, New York. That was as close as he dared land to the great city.

  After a tedious two-hour carriage ride, he finally arrived on bustling Wall Street.

  No one could win the war without money, and flashy Mabus Marshwood was the Dark Druids’ alchemist-in-chief.

  Rumor had it the financier was one-quarter goblin, but it did not show in his very human appearance. He looked the part of the wealthy American gent, with slicked-back hair and a trim figure bedecked in fine clothes copied from French and English tailors.

  He lived in a Gilded Age mansion down the street from the Vanderbilts and rubbed elbows in New York society with all the great robber barons of the age.

  Aside from his secret recipe for turning lead into gold, he was wonderfully ambitious.

  And blunt.

  “Oh, I can really make this work for me!” he responded to Wyvern’s explanation of the plan afoot. Marshwood clapped his hands together with typical American enthusiasm. “I like it! How exciting. You know money doesn’t like to stand still, Wyvern. It must flow like water—always moving—but in Zolond’s time, it’s grown a little stagnant, dull.

  “Believe me, I love to capitalize on something I know is happening in advance. But I abhor wasting resources or, worse, backing a scheme that won’t pay off. So let me run some numbers…”

  Wyvern strolled around admiring the paintings that adorned Marshwood’s drawing room while the man himself scribbled columns of figures on a notepad and tapped away on an adding machine, mumbling to himself about dividends and compound interest.

  Eyeing him, Wyvern actually could see a hint of gold goblin in the alchemist’s face.

  Of course, he’d never say so. He needed the money mage’s cooperation.

  When Marshwood had finished calculating odds and probabilities, he straightened up, chewing his lip. “Here’s the thing, ol’ man,” he said. “You have my backing, but I need a bit of reassurance that it’ll work. I’m afraid I’m with Viola on this. But, unlike her, you see, I don’t have an army of vampires at my defense. I can’t afford to face the likes of Zolond by myself if you should fail. I’ll place my bets on you, Wyvern. But for now, I’ll have to stick to the role of silent partner. I hope you understand. It’s nothing personal; just business.”

  “Of course.” Wyvern nodded. “For a mage of your standing, my dear Marshwood, that will have to do.”

  “Good luck,” Marshwood whispered. Then he brightened and cheerfully flipped a coin. “Stay for dinner? The wife’s hosting ambassadors or something.”

  “I must be on my way, but thank you.”

  Wyvern still had one more Council member left to visit, and he wanted to get it over with, because in many ways, he had saved the hardest for last.

  Not yet finished in America, he jumped the Black Fortress thousands of miles to the south, splashing down at the edge of the vast and mysterious Louisiana bayou.

  Steeling his spine that overcast afternoon, with thoughts of the Black Crown and his newly assigned wife and son, he walked out across the precarious wooden footbridges to the swamp witch’s cottage deep in the cypress marsh.

  Mother Octavia Fouldon served as head witch of the Americas, with final authority over all practitioners of the craft, from the Salem witches of New England to the voodoo priestesses of New Orleans and the devotees of Santeria throughout the South.

  One never would’ve thought the plump old Cajun crone was nearly so important, living humbly out here on the swamp with her mangy cat, Miasma.

  But, in fact, Mother Fouldon was the most senior member of the Council, second only to Zolond himself.

  She was a nasty old soul, worse than her horrid distant cousin with the sweet tooth—Grismelda of the Black Forest, who was always luring careless children to their doom in her gingerbread house.

  Witches at this level, Wyvern knew, were almost always cannibals, if only for ritualistic purposes.

  Himself, he found the practice unhealthy and distasteful, but he dared not move forward with his coup until he knew where Mother Fouldon stood on the matter of overthrowing Zolond. He did not need a witch of her power as an enemy.

  Best to kill her now before she suspected anything if she showed signs of opposing his plan.

  Frankly, he wasn’t optimistic. Mother Fouldon and the Dark Master had known each other for at least a century. The swamp witch respected Zolond as one of the few mages on the planet superior to her.

  As Wyvern cautiously approached her rambling wooden shack, he wondered why she did not conjure some palatial mansion for herself. Instead, her poky wooden cottage stood on stilts above the stagnant water, hemmed in by cypress trees veiled with Spanish moss.

  Just then, a ripple in the water underneath the footbridge caught his eye. Blanching, Wyvern only now noticed huge alligators drifting slowly through the black water.

  Despite his being a dragon lord with some inborn authority over such beasts, he took out his wand anyway, just in case any of Mother Fouldon’s monstrous pets decided to attack.

  Fortunately, he made it onto the wooden porch of her cottage, where he noticed a horned goat tied up, munching on some hay, and a big red tabby cat lying on the railing, gnawing on a catfish head.

  It stank.

  Then Mother Fouldon herself came clomping out through the screen door, her face wreathed in wrinkles, a kerchief tied around her head, and a yarn shawl draped around her shoulders.

  A wand as well as a chatelaine’s purse dangled from the belt around her thick waist; she looked at him with a belligerent glint in her hazel eyes.

  “Well, if it ain’t young Wyvern,” she drawled. “What brings you out to my neck o’ the woods, boy?”

  The Nephilim warlock lifted his eyebrows, not exactly accustomed to being addressed as “boy.”

  The pugnacious old witch was chewing tobacco and spat brown juice that dinged into a can, still half glaring at him, sizing him up like he was some sort of an unsatisfactory grandson.

  Though she barely came up to his solar plexus, the intensity of her stare was a little unnerving.

  The goat bleated at that moment, breaking the tension.

  “Nice goat,” Wyvern said, welcoming the distraction, for she was difficult to read and it made him uneasy. “A pet?”

  She glanced at the animal, then nodded at Wyvern, baring her brown teeth in a smil
e. “Every night I feed a goat to the gators.” Then she gave him the evil eye. “Not always a goat.”

  Wyvern hid his gulp; he was fairly sure that had been a veiled threat. “I see.”

  As if on cue, an alligator angled itself perpendicular to the porch, where it floated in the brackish water with an air of nonchalance, as though it wished to listen in on their conversation.

  Considering he had an Orange-Ruffed Darter pulling his personal chariot, Wyvern wasn’t sure why he found the monstrous creatures so intimidating. Probably because his expensive carriage dragon was trained and these were wild.

  The massive alligators were also under the command of a woman who might well be his mortal enemy.

  When Wyvern cleared his throat, gathered his thoughts, and started to explain the reason for his visit, Mother Fouldon interrupted.

  “I already know why ye’re here, devil’s whelp.”

  “You do?”

  She scowled up at him and poked him in the chest. “Old Z’s been a good leader for three hundred years. Why you throwin’ him over?”

  “Because he has been too lenient on the Order of the Yew Tree, Mother Fouldon,” he said in a serious tone. “Why does he let our enemies continue to grow powerful when we could snuff them out and expand our influence? What is he waiting for?”

  “Have you talked to him about it? Give him a chance to explain hisself?”

  “I’ve tried. He doesn’t listen.” He hesitated. “I fear the Dark Master has come under an unsavory influence in recent weeks.”

  She gave him a searching look. “Ramona Bradford.”

  Wyvern nodded. “That’s what I’ve been told.”

  “Humph. She ain’t nothin’.”

  Wyvern kept his mouth shut, but he had heard rumors that the Elder witch had once blasted Mother Fouldon into a stupor during a wand battle about a century ago.

  “Him and his hoity-toity English wench…” Clearly in a bad mood now, the swamp hag clomped away from Wyvern to the goat’s end of the porch. She reached up and pulled the rope on a cowbell hanging from the corner of the porch roof.