Dark Kingdoms

by Richard Lee Byers

  Marilyn cocked her head. "Touche, little Phoenician. Perhaps you're not a credulous New Age idiot. But if one puts any stock in the occult tradition at all— and I take it you do—then one does have to accept that something rather like St. John's gibberish is going to come to pass eventually. And I see a great many signs that chaos is about to clench its mighty fist and crush us in its grip."

  "This is all very interesting," Bellamy said, "but we didn't come here to talk about the Apocalypse." He smiled wryly. "Our problem isn't quite that big."

  "Let's hope not," Marilyn murmured.

  "I'm investigating the Atheist murders," Bellamy continued doggedly. "I believe the paranormal is involved, and apparently Keene did, too. But before he could tell me why, a statue came to life, attacked us, and killed him." Despite Marilyn's avowed belief in the supernatural, the agent still winced to hear himself utter such a seemingly preposterous statement. "I'm hoping that another member of the Arcanum—you— can tell me what he wanted me to know."

  "And perhaps a member could," said Marilyn. "But I'm not one, not anymore. I resigned two years ago. I beat a hasty retreat from paranormal investigation after one memorable night in an old house on Conti Street."

  Astarte frowned. "But you still buy occult books."

  Marilyn shrugged. "Old habits—old interests—die hard."

  "And you must still remember the secrets you learned," said Bellamy.

  "I never discovered any real secrets," Marilyn said. "I just learned to be afraid."

  Bellamy scowled. "Keene made it pretty clear that every member of the Arcanum knows something. Look, I just want to pick your brain. I'm not asking you to go back into the field. Why are you so reluctant to help me?"

  "Keene tried, and he's dead. The dark powers don't like being gossiped about, and they have ways of finding out who's been meddling in their business."

  "If you don't want to be involved," said Astarte, "we understand." Bellamy could see from her eyes that for her part, the statement was a lie. She couldn't imagine how anyone could discover a path into the supernatural and then decline to follow wherever it led. "Give us the name of somebody who still is a member of the Arcanum and we won't bother you anymore."

  Marilyn grimaced. "Just because I left the lodge, that doesn't mean I don't care about my oath. I swore I wouldn't reveal the identities of my fellow members under any circumstances, on pain of bringing a terrible curse on my head." She smiled ironically, as if to deride the notion that the Arcanum could actually muster the magical power to lay a hex on anyone.

  "That's it," Bellamy said. "I've been trying to be patient with you, but enough is enough. The Atheist kills victims two and sometimes three times a week. If you can't see that that's more important than any pledge, you've got a problem. Since I'm not your friend, your pastor, or your shrink, I don't intend to try to fine tune your sense of right and wrong. Instead I'll warn you that the Federal government can be just as obnoxious as any goblin you ever saw. We've got any number of perfectly legal ways to make your life miserable until you give us what we want. With your lifestyle, you're practically begging for it."

  Marilyn glanced at Astarte. "I'm not just trying to keep my word. I'm also trying to protect this young lady from the consequences of her own folly." The girl bristled.

  "I can appreciate that," said Bellamy, "but it isn't the most important consideration, and it wouldn't work anyway. If we can't find any answers in New Orleans, she'll just go looking in Lafayette." Marilyn winced. Evidently she, like Keene, regarded the town as dangerous.

  "If I steer you on to the true Arcanum," said Marilyn, "to people far more knowledgeable than I, will you really leave me in peace?"

  "Yes," Bellamy said.

  "Well, maybe I can help you without violating the letter of my oath." A moth flew in the window and flitted around Marilyn's face. She brushed it away. "Did you notice the"—she tittered—"pardon the cliche, the writing on the walls?"

  "Is it written in the Witches' Alphabet?" Astarte asked. Bellamy gathered that she was referring to some sort of occultist's cipher.

  "Very good," said Marilyn, like a teacher complimenting a clever student. "Yes, it is, more or less. I wrote it shortly after I realized I intended to spend most of my evenings in this room. It serves multiple purposes. Theoretically, it affords me a tiny measure of protection. I suspect that, like the sex and drugs, it provides a measure of therapy. And if you examine it closely and oh so cleverly, you may find the information you need, without my having to speak it aloud."

  "I can't actually read the runes," Astarte admitted. "Not without a translation chart."

  "And I didn't even know what they were," Bellamy said. "Let's not play games, just say what you know."

  "Please," said Marilyn. "Try for at least a few seconds. Give me one opportunity to feel that I haven't entirely betrayed my brothers."

  Bellamy sighed. "All right. Where does it start?"

  "Everywhere," Marilyn replied enigmatically. "Begin wherever you like."

  Bellamy moved to the center of the room, the spot from which he could most easily see the entire ring of symbols. Astarte came and stood beside him.

  "This is kind of cool," she whispered. Annoyed by her frivolous attitude, he scowled.

  He began staring at the runes, looking for the shapes of ordinary letters hidden inside them, or in the spaces between them. He couldn't imagine what else there might be to discover. At first he turned, shuffling slowly, to examine the characters on every wall.

  And then, to his surprise, the characters on one particular section of crumbling plaster seemed to change. Although he still couldn't read them, the curved and angular shapes seemed charged with meaning, like a distant billboard that was just about to come into focus. Fascinated, he peered even more intently than before.

  The sense of imminent comprehension increased. He turned once more and his eyes locked on a string of six symbols Suddenly, irrationally certain that they spelled out a single word, which he was on the brink of comprehending, he fixed his attention on them.

  He heard Astarte gasp, though the sound seemed muffled, as if it had come from a long way off. He guessed that the symbols had changed for her as well. He considered asking her what she saw, but the impulse faded quickly. Speaking would only distract him from his own gazing.

  The six runes seemed to squirm like flies in a spider's web, their tails and serifs writhing like limbs. He blinked and the characters froze once more, but only for a moment. Then they crawled to the left, like stock quotations on an electronic sign, though somehow without ever really changing their location. For a second he felt as if he were hanging above them, about to fall.

  Bellamy's excitement gave way to nausea and a dazed sense of dread. Eventually, it occurred to him that perhaps he ought to look away. He was still mulling the possibility over when the six runes began to give up their secrets.

  To his surprise, it wasn't like reading. A word or phrase didn't pop into his mind. Instead, he hallucinated a scene so intensely it was as if he were really there. He stood on a desolate shore, a cold, howling wind knifing into his flesh, peering across a channel at an island city not unlike a fantastic stone wedding cake, level after level of chambers, corridors, and balconies capped by an immense castle with a black tower rising from the center. After contemplating the forbidding vista for several seconds, he suddenly noticed that, imposing as the cyclopean city was, it was far from the largest thing in view. The flickering thunderheads massed above it weren't actually clouds at all, or at least, not merely clouds. They were the heads and shoulders of mammoth demons, one with two draconic faces on a single head, one with no flesh on his skull, and some with forms so alien that it was only through intuition that Bellamy realized he was looking at sentient entities at all. Each glared down at the world below with a tangible malevolence.

  The sheer vastness of the creatures was intolerable to contemplate. Nothing, not even God, should appear so huge. And though common sense told Bellamy tha
t a single human being was beneath their notice, that their loathing and loathsome gaze was actually focused on the island city, he couldn't shake the feeling they were looking directly at him. He heard himself whimper.

  It's only an illusion! he insisted to himself. You aren't really in this place. Close your eyes or turn your head. Break eye contact with the symbols on the wall and the vision will go away! But he couldn't. Something, either a power in the runes or his terror of the devilish things looming over him, froze him the way the stare of a serpent paralyzed its prey.

  He hated himself for that. It was just like the night of Waxman's death. Once again the supernatural was stripping him of his courage and sense of self. But even his outrage couldn't energize him sufficiently to break the bonds that held him.

  Faintly, through the wail of the phantasmal wind, he heard the voice of the piano, the soothing strains of "Moon River" disintegrating into cacophony. Then bed springs squeaked. Marilyn must have gotten up.

  He realized that she was the true threat, not the giants in the vision. Yet the latter were so awesome, so much more compelling even in their unreality, that he still couldn't tear his eyes away from them.

  A floorboard squeaked as Marilyn approached, even though the surface beneath Bellamy's feet seemed uneven, studded with pebbles he felt through the soles of his shoes. Finally remembering his Browning, he strained to draw it from its holster. His arm merely trembled, the same power that kept his gaze locked on the runes afflicting it as well.

  Astarte sobbed. Bellamy realized that whatever Marilyn meant to do to them, she was doing it to his companion first.

  The ghastly but hypnotic vision faded and blurred a bit, and as a result, the spectacle of the colossal demons became a little less overwhelming. From the corner of his eye, he glimpsed the murky figures of Astarte and Marilyn, overlaid on the desolate landscape of the hallucination like images in a double exposure.

  Exerting every bit of willpower he possessed, Bellamy wrenched himself around to face them. The giants, the island, and the beach vanished like a bursting bubble.

  At the same instant, Astarte fell, sprawling against his legs and knocking him backward. He was still trying to recover his balance when Marilyn grabbed him and rammed a hypodermic needle into his neck.

  Standing beside the Green Head and the moon-dappled river, Montrose surveyed the spectacle before him—his troops, their ranks swollen by scores of new volunteers, the hastily fashioned banners emblazoned with emblems of the Smiling Lord and the Unlidded Eye, the slave coffles, and the wagons loaded with less animate loot, drawn by still other Heretic prisoners locked in the traces—and realized that he was of two minds about it. Montrose the Anacreon rejoiced in his triumphs and the humiliation of his enemies. But another James Graham who occasionally stirred in his memory, a young man who'd written poetry and taken up arms only when his principles demanded it, regarded the spectacle as barbarous and shameful.

  The Stygian grimaced. The new Montrose was a victor. The old one had perished on the gallows. It was obvious whose perspective had more merit. He tried to thrust his qualms out of his mind.

  "Something wrong?" asked Fink.

  "No," Montrose replied. "I was just thinking."

  The black-haired wraith grinned. "Better you than me. Too much thinking's bad for your liver."

  Montrose smiled back. "The Restless don't have livers, but still, I believe you have a point. Everything seems to be in order. Let's be on our way." He turned, put his foot in his stirrup, and swung himself onto his mount, a magnificent white stallion with shining crimson eyes.

  The creature was a Phantasy, a spiritual being analogous to a Skinlands horse, although, according to the more highly respected Stygian metaphysicians, not actually the ghost of an Earthly animal. Such valuable rarities were occasionally found and captured in the Tempest. Montrose's ragtag army had seized this one in their last raid.

  The horse—which he'd named Alexander, after the conqueror whose exploits had inspired him as a boy—was the one piece of loot he'd insisted on keeping for himself. A Grim Rider should have a steed, shouldn't he? Besides, he liked to ride.

  He brandished his rapier. Chanteurs shouted commands or blew flourishes on their instruments, whips cracked, and harness creaked. Kicking. Alexander into motion, Montrose began to lead the procession on a winding route through Under- the-Hill and other ruinous sections of the city.

  The Chanteurs provided martial music, effortlessly drowning out other ruffians who, bereft of musical ability but caught up in the jubilant spirit of the moment, elected to sing along. Sandmen conjured fireworks and showers of fragrant rose petals.

  Whenever the parade passed a Haunt the inhabitants watched it, often peeking warily from their lairs until Montrose's men lured them outdoors by tossing handfuls of oboli onto the sidewalks, whereupon the guerrillas pressed plundered garments., jewelry, books, boom boxes, bound thralls, and even guns into their eager hands. Afterwards, many wraiths elected to march along: behind the army, either in the hope of collecting further bounty or simply for the fun of it.

  Periodically it was necessary to traverse a section of Natchez still belonging primarily to the Quick, Despite the thickness of the Shroud, a number of mortals sensed that something uncanny was in their midst. Some peered nervously about, some quickened their paces, and a prostitute in red leather miniskirt and a coppery wig fainted outright. Instantly a teenager in a baseball cap scrambled out of a recessed doorway, snatched up the unconscious woman's purse, ripped the gold chains off her neck, and sprinted away down an alley.

  Eventually the procession entered the principal street leading to the Hierarchy Citadel. As the raiders climbed it, they continued dispensing gifts, and their demeanor still bespoke swaggering pride and exhilaration. But, glancing backward, Montrose, noticed some.of them checking their weapons. He'd warned them they might meet with a hostile reception at the top of the hill.

  The sprawling Citadel complex came into view. Legionnaires were hastily scrambling through the walls and trying to arrange themselves in formation in front of the entrance. As Montrose rode through the ring of frigid human torches, his Sandmen produced the most dazzling display of fireworks yet. Simultaneously the Chanteurs' song culminated in an earth-shaking fanfare. The Stygian halted Alexander on the last note. His troops stumbled to a ragged stop behind him, slightly marring the pageantry of their entrance. But it didn't bother him. His Highlanders, of whom they increasingly reminded him, hadn't known or cared how to stand at attention, or march in step either.

  The echoes of the fanfare died away. A final blaze of gold and crimson light flickered out, and the shadows deepened again. Montrose regarded the soldiers massed in front of the door, and they peered nervously back at him.

  Finally he said, "Good evening, fellow Hierarchs. I've come to confer with your commanders."

  A small figure squirmed through the front rank of Legionnaires. His face shadowed by the dangling horns of his pink and orange jester's cap, Valentine gave Montrose an enigmatic smile. "My master instructed me to invite you inside for that very purpose."

  Fink, who'd marched through the city by Montrose's stirrup, looked up at him. "I wouldn't go in alone," he murmured, so softly that no eavesdropper, not even a wraith, was likely to overhear. "Make them come out here, or at least insist on taking a few bodyguards with you."

  "I'd prefer to," Montrose whispered back. "But we marched up here the way we did to conjure the image of a dauntless conqueror, a hero so formidable that only a madman would defy him. If I do anything to appear fearful, I risk cracking the facade." He looked at Valentine, raised his voice, and said, "That will be fine." He swung himself down off Alexander.

  "You're the boss," Fink said dubiously. "How long should we wait for you before assuming the worst?"

  "An hour should tell the tale one way or the other," Montrose said. He handed his lieutenant Alexander's reins. "Keep an eye on our flanks and rear. Don't let any Legionnaires sneak down the hill and surround
us."

  He walked forward into the empty space between the two groups of soldiers, his new spurs jingling and his long cloak swishing around his boots. It seemed to take a long time to cover the distance. Despite himself, he couldn't help imagining the assembled Hierarchs suddenly leveling their guns and opening fire. But they didn't, and finally Valentine walked out to meet him.

  "This way, my lord," said the dwarf. He waved his hand, the bells attached to his glove jingling, and the Legionnaires shifted, opening a path to the entrance. Four Legionnaires with shotguns fell into step behind them.

  As they slipped through the door into the derelict building, Montrose thrilled to the echo of ancient anguish still jangling through the air. "We've been hearing stories about you," Valentine said.

  Montrose tried to shake off the disorienting, vaguely nauseating shock of empowerment. "I thought you would," he replied, "if only because so much of our plunder has already reached the marketplace. You should have stuck with me that first night. Joined the crusade. My men are getting rich."

  "Rich or killed," Valentine said. "I told you, I've got a good thing going here."

  Montrose shrugged. "Whatever you say."

  Valentine led him past two sentries, up a rusty wrought-iron staircase which looked as if it might collapse under the heavy tread of the living, and down a hallway toward Mrs. Duquesne's office. Beside the door stood yet another guard holding a pale, gaunt barghest on a leash. The creature's growled as the Stygian and the dwarf approached. Its nostrils flared inside its gray iron muzzle.

  Ignoring the bloodhound, Valentine gripped the brass doorknob and twisted it. The door swung open. As Montrose had discovered on his previous visit, the portal existed on the deathly side of the Shroud. No artificer himself, the Scot could only imagine what sort of Arcanos magic was required to hang a Shadowlands door in a Skinlands frame.