Dark Kingdoms

by Richard Lee Byers

He'd have to pass through the portal without a clue as to what was waiting on the other side. But he didn't intend to go through utterly unprotected. Defying his own fatigue, he strained to invoke yet another Harbinger power. For a moment nothing happened, and then blobs of shadow oozed from his skin. The droplets expanded and flowed together, enveloping him in darkness. When the process was complete, he could still see his gray hands and forearms paddling in front of him, but while the effect lasted, no one else should be able to see him at all.

  He swam into the oval. He didn't feel anything remarkable when his hands plunged through it, just more cold water on the other side. But when his face touched it, a barrage of sensations—searing heat, violent nausea, a throb of excruciating pleasure—assailed him, as sudden and disorienting as the explosion of a bomb.

  He thumped down on a tile floor. Transported from water to air, he instinctively gasped a superfluous breath, then lifted his head and looked around.

  He'd emerged into what appeared to be an artist's studio, full of canvases in various stages of completion, the air tinged with the sharp smells of paint and turpentine. A row of French doors stood open, admitting a gentle breeze, the twittering of birds, and yellow sunlight. There was no sign of the gate through which he'd entered.

  It all looked like a scene from the world of the living, but his Harbinger senses indicated otherwise. He was still inside the Tempest and he'd better start looking for a path that would carry him on to the true Earth. He stood up, water pattering from his sopping garments to the floor.

  As he slunk toward one of the French doors, a painting caught his eye. He pivoted and gaped at it, startled because it depicted a moment from his own life. Perhaps ten years old, he was jumping a favorite bay gelding over a tumble-down fence. Kincardine, his family's principal castle, rose in the background.

  Disconcerted, he prowled from one easel to the next and found himself the subject of every picture. In one, he was writing a poem at his desk at St. Andrews; in a second, marrying his young bride Magdalen; in a third, leading the wild charge at Tippermuir; and in yet another, weeping over the lifeless body of his son John, slain by the rigors of a ghastly winter march. Taken together, the oils told the entire tale of his thirty-seven years of life.

  And that, he reflected, wasn't good. It quite possibly meant that, his cloak of shadow notwithstanding, one of the denizens of the Tempest had noticed his presence and taken an interest in him.

  All the more reason to get out of this enclosed space and begin searching for a Byway. But as he turned back toward the French doors, another door in the far wall clicked and swung open. Princess Louise of Bohemia bustled into the room.

  She was exactly as Montrose remembered her, willowy, graceful, and bright-eyed, with smutches of paint on her hands and the tip of her nose, and her honey-blond tresses intent on escaping her elaborate coiffure. Clad in a faded, unfashionable gown, perhaps a hand-me-down from some more affluent friend, she moved toward one of the paintings with the brisk air of someone about to set to work.

  The sight of her flooded Montrose's heart with rage and, even knowing what he now knew, a bitter yearning. Fighting for self-control, he told himself, It isn't really her.

  And yet it was just conceivable that it was. Since his own demise, he'd encountered a couple of his earthly acquaintances among the Restless, though never before someone for whom he harbored such powerful feelings.

  Suddenly he was running toward her, as helpless to stop himself as a quarrel shot from a crossbow. His veil of darkness dissolving, he grabbed her by the arm and spun her around.

  Startled, she squealed and recoiled, nearly upsetting her easel. A brush fell from her hand to clink on the floor. When she looked up into his face, her expression of alarm melted into a smile. "Darling!" she gasped. "You frightened me half to death." She tried to embrace him.

  Gripping her forearms, he held her slender body away from his own. "Are you truly she?" he demanded.

  She cocked her head. "If you're teasing, I must be slow this morning, because I don't understand the joke."

  "Are you Louise," he asked, "or just something that plucked her image out of my memory? Either way, you must be a Spectre. Otherwise, you wouldn't be here."

  "Where, in The Hague? It can be tedious sometimes, but I wouldn't be so unkind as to suggest that it's only fit for the dead." She smiled another smile, then knit her brows when he didn't respond in kind. "You aren't joking with me, are you? Something's wrong."

  If she was real—and despite himself, with every passing moment he found it more difficult to recall that she probably wasn't—was it possible that she didn't know she was dead? He'd encountered wraiths suffering from a similar state of confusion, but always in the Shadowlands, the portion of the Underworld contiguous with the world of the living, not deep in the Tempest.

  "Don't you understand?" he said. "We're spirits now. It's been three hundred and fifty years since Holland."

  "Don't be silly," she said. "Touch my skin. Go on, don't be shy." Hesitantly, he stroked her cheek. "Don't I feel alive?"

  To his amazement, she did. Her soft flesh was warmer than the cool substance of the Restless; and when, trying not to derive any pleasure from the contact, he shifted his fingers to her throat, he felt a pulse. And then, impossibly, a similar throbbing in his own breast.

  Perhaps he was the one who was addled. Perhaps they were both alive, and his long sojourn in the Underworld had merely been a kind of fever dream brought on by grief and care.

  But no, surely that couldn't be. In the real 1649, Louise had painted his portrait. But she wouldn't have tried to capture his whole life on canvas, and she certainly wouldn't have used her art to prophesy his defeat and execution. Or if she had, she would have hidden the paintings away to gloat over in secret, not left them sitting out where he might see them. Roughly, he turned her toward one of the nearest oils, in which a bound and bare-headed Montrose rode the hangman's cart into Edinburgh. "If I've gone mad," he growled, "then explain this."

  "I'm sorry if it disturbs you," she said. "It's just a bit of foolishness. I hoped I could paint away my fears. That it would help me be brave when you set sail for Scotland."

  "Liar," Montrose said. "This scene already happened. You made it happen. You urged me to take that villain VanLengen with me. I trusted him to scout and he betrayed us to Strachan. Afterward, he told me that you bade him betray me. Why? I adored you. I meant to ask for your hand once we installed young Charles on his throne. How could you turn on me?"

  Louise sighed. "At this late date, I'm not sure I even remember, and what does it matter anyway? This, my dearest James, is a magical place and time. Let's not waste it talking of hurtful things. Let's savor the warmth and the tingle of life in our veins. Let's make love the way we used to." She attempted to enfold him in her arms.

  Resisting a terrible urge to respond in kind, Montrose thrust her back. "The truth matters to me. Tell me, or I swear I'll send you to the Final Death."

  Louise grimaced. "Very well. If you must have it so. I betrayed you for money. Your enemy Argyll paid handsomely to ensure that your expedition would come to a swift and inglorious conclusion."

  Montrose stared at her.

  "Is it so hard to understand?" she asked, her generous mouth sneering. "My family and I were impoverished exiles, living on charity. Did you think that didn't gall me?" She laughed. "You were always such a romantic fool that you probably did. You thought I was too ethereal for such base concerns."

  "Perhaps so," said Montrose heavily. Paradoxically, now that she'd admitted her guilt, his anger had suddenly lost its edge, leaving him dazed and sick. "VanLengen said you'd sold me for pay, but for some reason I always suspected there was a deeper explanation. I imagined that I'd dealt you some bitter hurt without even realizing, that somehow, it was my own fault—"

  In the blink of an eye, Louise turned into a hunchbacked parody of her former self, with blazing, slit-pupiled green eyes, a slavering muzzle lined with jagged fangs,
and tangled of writhing, hissing serpents sprouting from its shoulder blades. Even as the creature changed, it lunged, one of its huge, black-clawed hands streaking at Montrose's belly.

  Miserable and befuddled as the Stygian was, the transformation caught him entirely by surprise. But he had a swordsman's reflexes, and they served to wrench him out of harm's way. The creature's claws merely shredded his shirt and grazed the skin beneath.

  At once the Spectre pivoted to strike again. Instinctively drawing on what remained of his depleted strength, Montrose flew backward, knocking down easels as he went, until, his knees flexing, he touched down lightly on the other side of the room.

  He'd never liked running from a fight, but it would be foolhardy to continue this without a blade, a bow, or a gun. He pivoted, seeking the nearest exit, and they all crashed shut at once. He launched himself at the nearest French door, ramming it with his shoulder, and rebounded. The panes of glass felt as strong as iron.

  The Spectre charged. Glancing up, Montrose saw that the ceiling was too low to permit him to soar above the other wraith's long-armed reach. Pointless, then, to squander precious energy staying continually airborne. He snatched up an easel, dumping its picture—a depiction of a solemn Montrose signing the National Covenant—on the floor. When the creature pounded into range, he clubbed at it.

  Its hands shot forward, grabbed the easel, tore it out of Montrose's grasp, and tossed it away. Without breaking stride, the Spectre hurtled on.

  Montrose sidestepped, nanowly avoiding the other wraith's talons, and slammed a punch into its side. The Spectre grunted and dropped to one knee; but as it did, two of the snakes growing from its right shoulder twisted and struck, biting the Stygian on the cheek and neck.

  Even as he recoiled, Montrose felt an icy burning like the kiss of Underworld fire suffusing through his substance, leaving weakness and a sensation of fluttery lightness in its wake. Like darksteel or a Spectre's ebon fangs and claws, the poison carried the taint of the Void. Another dose might dissolve him into nothingness.

  The Spectre lurched up, turned, and limped toward him, its uneven gait perceptible even inside the folds of its voluminous skirt. Evidently it had landed hard on its knee. Hoping to catch the monster by surprise, Montrose gave ground, trying to look as if he were even weaker than he felt, then sprang into the air and kicked.

  The bold savate attack caught the Spectre squarely between the eyes. Montrose tried to tumble over its head and fly out of its reach before it could retaliate. But his powers of flight abruptly failed and he plummeted on top of it. The two combatants collapsed in a heap together.

  Montrose thrashed madly, trying to get clear, certain that he wasn't going to make it. In a second the Spectre would shred him with its talons, and the snakes would sink their fangs into his flesh. Finally, he realized that every part of the creature, including its serpentine appendages, was unconscious.

  Trembling with weakness, fear, and loathing, he dragged himself to his feet and repeatedly stamp-kicked the monster, snapping its neck and smashing its skull flat, grimly aware that even those injuries wouldn't necessarily kill it. He'd need darksteel for that.

  Darksteel, he realized suddenly, or the natural armament of a Spectre. Grinning, he knelt beside the creature and reached for its wrists, intent on slicing it to pieces with its own claws.

  Sustained ripping sounds split the air, as if a giant were tearing pieces of paper. Startled, Montrose peered wildly about. Though everything still looked the same, his Harbinger senses revealed that the unstable substance of the Tempest was churning. This strange little world was about to come to an end, as if it had required the conscious will of its resident Spectre to maintain its existence.

  Jagged black cracks snaked through the floor, the walls, the ceiling, and the air itself. Montrose extended his awareness, groping for a portal or a Byway, but found nothing. And then, with a crash and a roar, reality shattered, and water exploded through the breaches. An instant later, the light and the air were gone. He was floating in the ocean depths once more.

  Grimly sure that he effort was futile, he reached out again, seeking another exit from this trap. And this time he sensed air and even a Byway above his head. Evidently he hadn't returned to the same part of the sea. He floundered painfully upward.

  The black water grew gradually lighter, until even dull mortal eyes would have noticed the change. Then Montrose's head broke the surface. Paddling feebly, he swiped his long hair out of his eyes, blinked, and looked around.

  The rippling curtains of phosphorescence in the starless sky were predominantly silver and violet now. The expanse of the Sea of Shadows extended as far as the eye could see in all directions, with no land anywhere.

  Montrose could feel that he was indeed floating squarely in the middle of a Byway, a sea-lane leading out of the Tempest. But it didn't matter. He lacked the strength to swim or fly far enough to get to safety. Despite all his striving, he was still going to perish.

  The sheer unfairness of it infuriated him. A howling tide of darkness rose inside him as, at this moment of anguish, his Shadow fought to seize control.

  He wasn't sure he could muster the will to resist. What did it matter if his personal demon finally gained the upper hand? If it didn't destroy him, something else would.

  And then a point of light appeared on the water.

  Without meaning to, Montrose dived underwater. Frantically he fought to reassert control of his rebellious body. For several seconds, nothing happened. He couldn't even feel his limbs. But at last he broke the Shadow's grip. Cackling, the demon scuttled back to its hiding place in the depths of his psyche.

  Montrose struggled to the surface. The light was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps the Byway had already carried it to another layer of reality.

  No! It had to be here. It was just that his vision had gone blurry. "Help!" he cried. "Help me!" The call sounded faint and thin, more of a wheeze than a shout.

  But off to his left, a soprano voice answered, "Hang on!" Turning his head, he spied the light again. Gradually it glided closer, until he could see that it shone from a lantern hanging on the ornately carved prow of a small lateener. A tall woman perched by the tiller, her face shadowed by a black cowl. She studied the man in the water for a moment, then extended an oar. Montrose clutched at it, and with no apparent effort she hauled him aboard.

  Montrose flopped down in the bottom of the boat. He doubted he had the strength to sit upright. It was a stmggle just to roll over and look up at his rescuer. "Thank you," he gasped.

  She reached into the folds of her layered cloak, brought out a tarnished silver flask, and handed it to him. "Drink," she said.

  With considerable effort, Montrose managed to unscrew the cap and raise the bottle to his lips. The liquid inside it seared his throat much as liquor would burn a mortal.

  At once he felt a glow of renewed strength and warmth, somewhat alleviating the chill he'd taken in the water. Simultaneously, he experienced a flare of bitter resentment directed toward his savior. It was intolerable that she should see him, an aristocrat of the Hierarchy, reduced to a helpless, shivering supplicant! And surely that was a contemptuous sneer, half hidden by the shadow of her hood!

  He was able to quell the surge of anger because he understood what medicine she'd given him. Though they had no need for conventional food and drink, wraiths derived sustenance from pure emotion; and centuries ago, some forgotten genius of an artificer had fashioned flasks that could capture the essence of hatred.

  Montrose would have liked to guzzle the bottle dry and recover his vitality completely, but that, he judged, would be an abuse of his rescuer's kindness. Reluctantly he replaced the cap and handed the elixir back. "Thank you," he repeated, his voice now only a little hoarse.

  "Don't be too lavish with your gratitude," she replied, replacing the potion inside her cloak. Somewhere off the starboard bow, something splashed, a sound like an earthly fish jumping. She peered into the darkness for a moment, evidentl
y making sure her craft was in no danger. "Ferrymen don't indulge in charity. We always claim a fee for our services."

  "I'll pay it gladly," Montrose said. He laboriously sat up and set his back against the side of the boat. "I thought I was done for. I'm James Graham, in life Marquess of Montrose, now an Anacreon in the service of the Smiling Lord."

  "And I'm Katrina," the Ferryman said. "I know you, Lord Montrose. How did you come to find yourself in such a predicament?"

  My idiot master and his idiot minister sent me on a fool's errand, Montrose thought, his resentment fanned hotter by the influence of the potion. "Raiders attacked my convoy. After they overwhelmed us, I dived into the ocean to escape."

  "And what was the object of your voyage?" Katrina asked.

  Montrose hesitated. Two thousand years ago the wayfarers called Ferrymen had served Charon, the now-vanished founder of Stygia, as pathfinders, psychopomps, and warriors. But they'd renounced their allegiance when he proclaimed himself emperor. Since then, they'd wandered the Underworld pursuing their own mysterious ends, never foes to the Hierarchy, but no longer allies, either. And thus, not one to whom Montrose would ordinarily confide the Smiling Lord's affairs.

  "I warned you that you owe me for my help," Katrina said. "I choose to claim my due in the form of information. I pledge to hold whatever you say in confidence."

  Montrose decided that in that case, it wouldn't do any grievous harm to tell her. When he reached America, his business would become public knowledge anyway. "The Smiling Lord dispatched me to lead a campaign against certain Heretics fomenting strife along the Mississippi River."

  "An Inquisition," Katrina said. "That explains your current affiliation. I'd heard you belonged to the Fifth Legion."

  Montrose forbore to ask how she knew he'd been transferred from the Black Hawks to the Grim Riders when he was no longer wearing the Unlidded Eye. Rumor had it that Ferrymen were masters of all the old-time guildsmen's secret arts and other, stranger sorceries as well.

  Katrina trimmed the sail. "And why this particular venture?" she asked. "Why now?"