King Pinch

by David Cook

  “I’m sure he did what he thought he must,” was the old official’s icy reply.

  “Is that what you’ll say when he turns on you?” The rogue cut free another strip of cloth as they reached an intersection. He let it drop at the start of the branch they took.

  “I have been loyal to Lord Manferic and he recognizes that. He will reward me for my effort.”

  “I see. Bors will be prince, you’ll be the regent, and Manferic will dangle you both before the crowds as his puppets. Always the dog, never the one holding the leash, eh, Cleedis?”

  The old man never broke his slow stride, though Pinch knew the words stung his warrior conscience. “There is no dishonor in loyalty, no shame in the rewards. I have done well by my life, far better than your mangy existence.”

  Another piece cut away. Pinch palmed it and continued his work. “I, at least, have my freedom. I choose what I want and I take it.”

  “Hah! That pathetic lie. Tell me, Janol, are you here now because you choose to be or because you’ve been trapped by your own greed and lust? You scramble for what I have, and not able to earn it by your own skills, you steal it from others. Or you used to—I’ve seen your hand though you try to hide it. Tell me, what becomes of a one-handed thief?”

  Suddenly, Pinch lost his taste for conversation. He followed behind his guide, who was showing unusual vigor as they wound though arched passages, down stairs, and through vaults until they finally reached a large crypt just beyond a bridge that spanned an underground stream. Even before they entered the chamber, Pinch could feel the tingle of fear that had touched him in the necropolis. Manferic, cold and decaying, was near.

  Cleedis stopped at the entrance to the room, sheltering the light from the door. “Lord Manferic, I’ve brought Janol,” he announced to the darkness.

  “Bring him in,” resonated the chill voice of the dead.

  Pinch paused at the door. If Sprite had followed him, he needed to stall for as much time as possible while the halfling scurried back for help. His plan, such as it was, depended on the others. He had few doubts what fate Manferic intended for him once the goods were passed over. He needed the distraction the others would provide if he wanted to escape alive.

  Cleedis was in no mood to dawdle, perhaps motivated by fear of his dread lord. He impatiently drew Pinch through the door and into the center of the floor. The chamber had the pungent air of shriveled leather, the peculiar dry scent of decay.

  The chamberlain fiddled with the lamp, lowering the wick until the flame was little more than a spark. It exaggerated the limestone walls even further until they were black canvases upon which played a grotesque shadow play of leaps and shimmers.

  Something moved at the very outer layer of this bleak hell. Pinch saw it only by a shadow that stretched the thin limbs into an enormous insect scuttling across the wall. The shadow moved with a chiseled rattle that spoke of bones. It sounded like a skeleton the rogue had once stumbled into while breaking into an alchemist’s garret, but it made him feel like a moth drawn too near the deadly flame.

  “Chamberlain, you kept me waiting. There is no time for waiting,” the shadow rasped like a bellows wheezing stale air, whispery yet harshly echoing from the stone walls.

  “My apologies, Your Highness,” Cleedis fawned. Using his sword as cane, the old man stiffly got himself down on one knee and bowed his head before the former king. “The path here confounds old men, my lord, and makes them loose their way. I have brought you Janol so that you can reward his service.”

  The shadow scraped closer, stepping into the edge of the dim light. In the sheltering darkness of the catacombs, Manferic the lich stood uncloaked before them both.

  It wasn’t as disgusting as Pinch expected, in fact it was barely disgusting at all. The thing that had been his guardian—Pinch could not change guardian to father so quickly—this thing almost looked alive. Certainly at midnight Manferic could have hurried through the streets unremarked, at worst a poor consumptive in search of good air. His face was drawn and stripped of fat. The skin was pearly gray and translucent as if someone had painted it over with wax. Pinch had expected the eyes to be deadest of all, but it was just the opposite; they burned with a life more ferocious than any living man’s. They were the furnaces of Manferic’s will, the driving ambition that kept him alive.

  In that gaunt face, Pinch barely recognized the likeness of his guardian, now father. Death had not changed him nearly as much as the fifteen years apart from each other. He was thinner and sharper of bone, and he stood half-hunched as if bowed by some great weight. But when he moved and when he spoke, even in that sibilant whisper, he was still Manferic, the imperial arrogance just as Pinch remembered.

  As Manferic stepped farther into the light, the first impression was denied. A flicker of the lamp highlighted a white spot on the lich’s cheek, a spot that suddenly wriggled and twisted. Pinch was suddenly aware of the pale grave worms that wriggled out of the smooth skin and dropped to the floor with every step. They crawled out of the ruin of the lich’s ears and tangled themselves into the matted filth that remained of his hair. Manferic, when alive, would never had tolerated this. Dead, the decay that was corrupting his flesh was of no concern. The lich was sustained by the dark combination of magic and will; the body was only a husk to hold it all. This was no longer Manferic the king, but a thing that Pinch could never call else but “it.”

  “Give them to me,” the thing coldly demanded. It turned its burning gaze full on Pinch. The fires of its desire riveted him and then proceeded to pour into his soul the cold terror of its existence.

  Although the lich was appalling to behold, there was no logical basis for the intensity of his fear. Had it been his sword, his purse, even a friend that the lich demanded, Pinch very certainly would have succumbed, so oppressive was the fear on his heart. Fortunately, what the lich demanded cut to the soul of what mattered for Pinch—to surrender without profit.

  The rogue clutched the bag. “Payment first.”

  The Manferic thing scowled, unaccustomed, as both lord and omniscient horror, to resistance from a mere mortal. “Indeed,” it clicked through its lipless mouth. “And what is that?”

  “Fifty thousand nobles,” Pinch responded, the burden of fear lifting from him. Haggling with a broker, no matter how fearsome, was something he understood, and understanding broke the dread awe.

  “Vile rogue! The price was set at forty,” Cleedis interrupted.

  Pinch assumed an air of great injury. “Liar? I spoke the truth, dread lord,” he lied brazenly.

  “Enough,” rasped the undead thing. “I can well guess the truth of it, Pinch. You forget; I know who—and what—you are.” Those fire-filled eyes blazed into the thief, boring pits through the bone. A dread discomfort crawled like lice over the regulator’s brain, itching and poking at the very thoughts of his mind.

  Pinch fought the feeling, tried to block it out. He knew what it meant. The lich was probing his mind, rummaging through the tangled mass of his thoughts and memories. Pinch knew the trick well enough; it was one of Maeve’s old standbys.

  “I see it clear. You hoped to cheat me of forty—”

  Manferic cocked its head with the looseness of death. “Father,” the lich whispered. Without breaking its transfixing gaze, the thing spoke to the chamberlain, who had prudently stepped aside. “Cleedis—he knows,” the mealy lord hissed.

  “Yes, my lord,” the old man fawned, trembling at the darkness in his lord’s voice. “He only just confronted me.”

  “So, Janol—you are fatherless no more.”

  Perhaps there was still a mote of sentimentality in the creature that Manferic had become, for the thought probes retreated. Pinch held back his sigh of relief. The lich’s feelers had come too close. If Manferic learned he was bargaining for a fake, that would be the end of the whole plan, and Pinch’s life, too. Of course, if Sprite didn’t arrive soon with the cavalry, it would all be over. He needed to stall.

  “It ex
plains much,” he answered, doing his best to sound detached from the emotion it raised in him. “And nothing. Why did you deny me?” the rogue asked as calmly as he could.

  Manferic’s eyes flared as if to say, “I do not answer to you, mortal,” but then the light of hate died away. “You are a bastard. When Manferic was alive, it was not proper to acknowledge a misconceived son.”

  The lich spoke of its living existence as if that were the life of another being.

  “So why did you keep me around?” Pinch demanded before Manferic could press him for the regalia. He needed the time talk bought.

  The lich shuffled closer, rotted lips drawn back to show yellow-black teeth, a horrid grimace that might have been a smile. “Because—because Manferic liked you.

  “Do you think it was an accident—or chance—that Cleedis brought you here? There are a hundred thieves in Ankhapur, but I sent Cleedis for you. It was no accident; it was planned. With your help, I will rule Ankhapur.” The lich rattled to a pause, letting the offer register in Pinch’s eyes.

  “I need your eyes and ears, my son. You will be the master of my spies, you will find my enemies and reveal them to me.” The ragged Manferic looked at his maggot-ridden hand with bemused interest. “You will introduce them to me and I will entertain them,” he whispered more to himself than to Pinch. Just as abruptly, he once more fixed his fierce gaze on Pinch. “I’m offering you Ankhapur, my son, not just a handful of paltry coins. Who else will do you that well? Give me the regalia and let us share the glory.”

  “So you can kill me as soon as I do?”

  “I could kill you now and take it,” the lich rasped, “but I want you at my side. Manferic knew this day would come.”

  “You and your plots drove me out of Ankhapur.”

  “Strength in woe—that was tempering. You would not be who you are now if you had stayed. You would be a lackey of your legitimate brothers.” Manferic pointed a skeletal finger at Pinch’s chest. “Now you are strong and resourceful enough to take a place at my side.”

  “Lord Manferic …” Cleedis finally found the wherewithal to speak. The old man had pulled from inside himself the fearless cavalryman of his youth. His stooped shoulders were pulled up, the lined face smoothed with determination, and all framed by the billows of his thin white mane. Gone were the trembles, the ague, and the arthritis that had bled his majesty. So firmly outraged, Pinch could see the Cleedis of years past, the fencing master and horseman Pinch had so long ago admired. His voice was filled with cautious indignation. “I have served you loyally, great king, in expectation of my due—”

  “Lord Chamberlain, my faithful servant.” The lich twisted around to look on the old officer. “There has always been the most honored of places for you in my plans. Indeed, your greatest service is about to come.”

  The chamberlain smiled and bowed with all the humility of a fox, but before he could look up a ray of light the color of an algae-choked pond lanced from Manferic’s fleshless finger to strike the loyal noble in the center of his head. It was as if the old man had been struck by a hammer. With a scream, he reeled back but the beam played on him. It rippled over his head and across the side of his face. Everywhere it touched, the skin festered and burst into red-black sores of diseased corruption. Cleedis flailed his arms as if he could beat the light away, but all that did was crisscross his arms with the bloody sores.

  The scream became a whimper and the whimper became a sloppy gurgle of pus and blood as the ray destroyed deeper and deeper flesh. Cleedis stumbled backward until he fell to the floor and then, mewling, he crawled away, smearing a track of red slime over the rough stone floor. Manferic kept the grotesque ray mercilessly playing over the chamberlain’s body as the pathetic wreck tried to drag himself to safety.

  As the whimpering became bubbling sobs, Pinch turned away. Even for Cleedis, with all his ambitions and lies, this was no deserved end—this ulcerated mass that was bleeding its life out on the floor. Pinch didn’t look back until the crackle of the spell had faded. What was left of Cleedis was unrecognizable—a mass of blood-soaked clothes and bubbled flesh that spared not a single feature.

  “You killed him,” Pinch gulped. The grotesque execution stripped away the rogue’s normally chill demeanor, leaving him only to gawk at the horror on the floor.

  “It has all been planned for,” Manferic croaked, teeth bared in a garish smile. The undead king turned to Pinch once more.

  “Give me the regalia, Janol, my son. Join me against your half-brothers and we will be masters of Ankhapur.”

  “Or?

  The lich ratcheted its head toward the oozing mass. “Or die,” Manferic promised.

  The cavalry had not come; the choice was no more. Reluctantly, Pinch opened the bag at his side and carefully set the Cup and the Knife on the floor.

  “Ankhapur together it will be, Father.”

  Heart-to-Heart

  “Attend me,” Manferic wheezed in his throat-grinding way before withdrawing into the darkness. “Bring your light and come. There is time before I must act.”

  Why should I follow this dead thing, Pinch wondered? The instinct to flee rose in his mind. It was a good instinct, one that Pinch had learned to heed and treasure over the decades. He’d listened to it as a thief, and even before when he’d fled Ankhapur. It was urging him to flee now. It would be easy to outrun what Manferic had become, and he was willing to risk a spell in the back rather than enter this monster’s lair.

  Perhaps Manferic knew his bastard son too well, for with a single word he understood Pinch’s mind and acted on it.

  “Ikrit.”

  A stealthy rustle and a throaty animal growl demanded he look to see its source. Sure enough, behind him was the silver-white shadow of Manferic’s pet quaggoth. A feeling of professional amazement incongruously struck Pinch as he marveled at the creature’s skill in escaping notice. Of course Manferic would have resources here. Pinch should have known. The lich might be dead, but that didn’t matter. It was the power of its mind that sustained it.

  There was no choice. The choice had already been made, and there was no avoiding the consequence. Perhaps it would be no worse than remaining in a room with a still-festering mass of flesh. There was an odor beginning to rise from it, the scent of rotted fish. It was something more than that, the smell of an almshouse during plague, where the wretched diseased, too poor to donate to wealthy healers, suffered through their erupted pustules and fevers to live or die as the gods chose.

  Carefully avoiding the puddles of putrescence, Pinch followed his newfound father into the dark void. A heavy tread confirmed that Ikrit was close behind. The flame that clung to the end of the lantern wick guttered and swayed as he walked, creating ghastly shadows that wrapped themselves like veils around the tattered cloak of his guide’s corrupted flesh. Pinch didn’t follow too closely, pushed back by the stench of decay. He hadn’t noticed it before, his sense of smell sealed by fear.

  As he followed the lich through the tunnels, Pinch’s mental wheels sought to formulate a new plan. There was still a hope that Sprite would come and pick up the trail. Indeed, even he, no tracker or woodsman, could have followed the trail of rot and grave worms that dripped from beneath Manferic’s cloak. Of course, it was more likely that all help was lost to him.

  Alone, there was little hope. With his branded hand, he could hardly manage a sword, so there was no chance of cutting his way past the quaggoth, even if he were a trained swordsman—which he was not. Likewise, he had no magic the match of Manferic’s skills, so escape by that means was unthinkable. He could try slipping into the darkness in hopes that they would lose him, but that was a fool’s chance he wasn’t yet so desperate to try.

  The single choice that remained was to take advantage of what Manferic offered, as duplicitous and uncertain as that offer might be. Pinch had no faith in the truth of the lich’s words. The creature wanted him for something, though for what he could not say.

  At last they came to pas
sages familiar to Pinch, passages beneath the palace. These they followed past branches the rogue ought to have known, if he’d had more time, until at last they reached a stairs he was positive he knew. The way rose up and curved, and ended in a blank wall. They had returned, back to Pinch’s apartment by some roundabout way. The quaggoth dutifully pressed against the barrier, and the stone swung open with a grating groan. No fabric fluttered out of the jamb, Pinch quietly noted. Sprite and crew were somewhere underground.

  “The lights, put them out,” Manferic commanded, standing aside to let the rogue through. Pinch did so, all save one, as the quaggoth followed him about the chambers. When the job was finished, the beast herded him over to a hard stool by the bed, there to stand watch over the man.

  Once the room was dim, Manferic ignored his prisoner to rummage through the drawers and chests of Pinch’s belongings. At first, Pinch feared the lich had guessed his deception, but the search was far too calm for that. It was going through his clothes, tossing aside cloaks, doublets, garters, and robes, apparently selecting a wardrobe.

  “Get dressed,” the lich croaked, tossing the clothes to Pinch. “You don’t want to miss the ceremony.” The creature clicked its teeth in cold laughter.

  Pinch did as he was bade, all the time watching for some chance to escape. There could be no good end for him in all this.

  “You have questions, don’t you?” Manferic teased while the rogue slowly dressed.

  Pinch said nothing, suspicious that the lich’s sudden garrulousness was some new trap.

  “Of course you do—like why did Manferic raise you? Go ahead, ask,” the lich urged with a rattling chuckle. “Ask and you will learn.”

  “Then why?”

  The rotting face did its hideous smile. “You were Manferic’s insurance,” the lich explained, persistently talking about its own past as if it belonged to another. “Insurance against his sons.”

  “Insurance?” Wonders of all, Manferic apparently felt talkative, like the aging father passing his wisdom down to his son. The lich was sentimental in a cold and heartless way.