Dark Kingdoms

by Richard Lee Byers

  Inside the room, sheets of Stygian iron mesh overlay the floor and walls and even covered the ceiling, a guarantee that no ghostly assassin could flit in or out by the usual method. When Montrose and Valentine entered, the guard pulled the door shut. A key clicked in the lock.

  The three governors of Natchez regarded their visitor. Beneath his steel domino, Gayoso's mouth was drawn so tight he was nearly snarling. Nathan Shellabarger, the Emerald Lord's nominal lieutenant, a small man whose features were completely concealed beneath a green hood, seemed nearly as tense. He had at least managed to sit down, but his right hand kept opening and closing, clutching and plucking at the gray fabric covering his thigh. Only Mrs. Duquesne, the Beggar Lord's vicar, a thin schoolmarm of a woman with round, steel-rimmed glasses and gray hair pulled back in a severe bun, seemed completely unruffled. Ensconced behind her massive ebony desk—its surface empty except for a large black hourglass, a glazed white mask of Tragedy, and a wooden bowl containing several coins—she studied Montrose with the slightest hint of an ironic smile.

  "Hello, Anacreon," she said.

  "Hello," Montrose replied. "It's nice that at least two of us are courteous, don't you think? Perhaps good manners haven't vanished from the world entirely."

  "We've already shown you more courtesy than you deserve," Gayoso said. "We should have ordered our troops to whip you away from our door."

  "You unmasked when I came to you as something little better than a mendicant," Montrose said. He shot Mrs. Duquesne a grin. "No offense to your master intended." He switched his gaze back to Gayoso. "It seems reckless if not perverse to refuse to do as much now that I'm addressing you from a position of strength."

  "For heaven's sake, both of you, show your faces," Mrs. Duquesne said testily. "This is no time for posturing. We have business to discuss."

  Gayoso hesitated, then grimaced and removed his domino. Shellabarger pulled off his hood, revealing bulging faceted eyes like huge emeralds embedded in an otherwise nondescript face. Crouching in the corner nearest the door, Valentine smirked to see the two Anacreons pressured into doing something against their will.

  Montrose inclined his head to them. "And good evening to you, gentlemen. Once again, I've come to discuss the mission which our august master the Smiling Lord entrusted to me, or rather, to all of us."

  "Come with a band of cutthroats at your back," Shellabarger growled.

  Montrose raised an eyebrow. "Pardon me, my lord Anacreon, but 'cutthroats' is a harsh term for valiant members of the Order of the Unlidded Eye, even if they are irregulars."

  "Are you mad?" Gayoso demanded. "Do you seriously claim that those rabble are Legionnaires? I recognize some of them. You've got the worst scum from Under-the- Hill out there, Mike Fink and twenty others nearly as bad. Condemned criminals!"

  "Not anymore," said Montrose. "I pardoned them."

  "You can't do that!" Gayoso said. "You can't just abrogate our edicts and policies—"

  "You're mistaken," Montrose said. "With the authority of the Smiling Lord behind me, I can do anything necessary to fulfill my responsibilities. Now, let's talk frankly. I asked you to help me crush the Heretics operating in your bailiwick. You knew it was a legitimate request, but for your own reasons, you seized on every pretext to deny me. Evidently you assumed I'd spend the next few centuries sitting idle hoping you'd relent, or slink back to Stygia with my tail between my legs, and that either way that would be the end of the matter.

  "But it wasn't. Denied the use of your troops, I found soldiers where I could and commenced the campaign without you. In just a few days, I've destroyed several Heretic Circles and enriched the economy of Natchez by filling the markets and barracoons with new merchandise. I've made you look timid and weak by reminding the loyal Hierarchs of the province how an Anacreon is supposed to behave. It's conceivable that I could convince them to rise against you and install me in your place, and even more likely that I could prevail upon the Deathlords to depose you, now that I'm in a position to get a message to them.

  "But I don't want to. Despite our rocky start, I don't bear you any ill will, nor do I have any desire to be an Earthly governor. I just want to finish my appointed task and go home to the Isle of Sorrows. And you can still help me. As effective as my mercenaries are, they'd be far more effective fighting in tandem with regular Legionnaires. And knowledgeable as my man Fink has proven to be, I have no doubt that you three have access to intelligence beyond his ken.

  "So I'll ask you one last time. Will you put your resources at my disposal as our masters bade you, or rebuff me again and suffer the consequences?"

  "By the Scythe," said Gayoso, "how dare you threaten us?"

  "Is it a threat to delineate the reality of your situation?" Montrose asked. "Some might regard it as a kindness."

  "Let's talk about the reality of your situation," Shellabarger said. Montrose noticed that the man's hand had slipped inside his hip pocket, probably to grasp a small pistol, or, conceivably, some more arcane weapon. "You rashly walked into this room alone. What makes you think we'll let you walk out again?"

  Montrose sighed. "Now who's dealing in vulgar threats? I came here without bodyguards, but scarcely unarmed." He opened the front of his mantle, exposing his rapier and pistol. "And at the risk of sounding immodest, I imagine I'm a better fighter than any native of this Citadel, and that my Arcanoi are at least as formidable as any of yours. I'm reasonably confident that I can cut my way out of your clutches if I need to."

  Gayoso sneered. "And I'm just as confident you're wrong."

  "All right, for purposes of argument, let's say I am," the Scot replied. "My amiy is at the gate. If I don't emerge from this parley within forty-five minutes, they'll assume the worst and react accordingly."

  "A band of criminals," said Mrs. Duquesne crisply, "driven by avarice. I question whether such men are capable of loyalty, and, therefore, that they'd risk their necks on your behalf. I imagine they'd be just as happy to continue their plundering without you. If you don't return to them, they'll merely slink away."

  Montrose suspected that was a shrewd guess, but he wasn't about to say so. "You might be surprised. I'm making them rich. That can inspire a measure of affection even in the most depraved. Moreover, they hate you people for putting prices on their heads, and they know the Citadel holds an abundance of treasure. They just might storm the place."

  "Let them try," said Shellabarger, his insectile eyes glinting. "They're just muggers and gangsters. No match for real soldiers. Our men could defeat them anywhere. Crushing them on our home ground will be child's play."

  "Once again," Montrose said, "you might be surprised. My fellows are the creme de la creme of the muggers and gangsters, as my lord Gayoso pointed out himself. Besides, you could encounter difficulties even if you win. Let's suppose that in the battle, the force controlled by one governor sustains heavy casualties, while the troops of another escape relatively unscathed. Wouldn't that upset the balance of power among the three of you? Are any of you inclined to risk it?"

  "You make a convincing case," said Mrs. Duquesne, fingering the base of the hourglass. "Not that I needed convincing. As a loyal vassal of the Deathlords, I always meant to place my soldiers at your disposal, just as soon as I could work out the administrative details."

  Montrose bowed. "Thank you, my lady. I humbly apologize for misconstruing your intentions."

  "We don't have to do this," Gayoso said to her. "Natchez is our territory. We don't have to cede control of it to anyo—"

  Mrs. Duquesne picked up the hourglass, inverted it, and set it down with a thump. Sand, barely visible through the dusky glass, began to trickle from the top chamber into the lower. Though they tried not to show it, both Gayoso and Shellabarger quailed. Montrose surmised that the hourglass was some sort of magical weapon, and that the woman in the spectacles had just cocked it.

  "I'm throwing in with our guest," said Mrs. Duquesne. "I advise the two of you to do the same. Otherwise, I suppose we'll
have to consider our detente at an end."

  Scowling, Shellabarger took his hand out of his pocket, stood up, and extended ii to Montrose. "I'm with you, my lord Anacreon."

  "And I," said Gayoso through clenched teeth.

  TWENTY-ONE

  As the Sister climbed the path to the ruinous church on the bluff, doing her best to tolerate the choking stench of the paper mill in the nearby town, she realized something was wrong. She didn't hear any voices, merely the cries of birds, the sighing of the wind, and the churning of the muddy river below her. No! she thought. Please don't let it have happened again.

  She often sojourned with Heretic Circles as she traveled up and down the river. Since the Sisterhood of Athena didn't proselytize on behalf of one particular faith, many of her fellow religionists didn't regard her with the same loathing they felt for missionaries of rival sects. And over the course of the last few days, working her way south toward Natchez and the Louisiana border, she'd stopped at two Heretic Haunts, only to find them silent and empty.

  When the Restless fought, they didn't leave behind the same kind of mess as the Quick. The slain dissolved, their bodies devoured by the Void. No stench of blood or gunsmoke hung in the air, and ghostly missiles and explosives couldn't mark the walls of a Skinlands structure. And with raw material at a premium, someone often scavenged every broken arrow and spent cartridge.

  Thus the Sister hadn't found any concrete evidence that the strongholds had fallen to violence, but she couldn't think of any other explanation. Perhaps there were more of the same type of Spectre that had nearly destroyed her in Greenville, attacking Heretics up and down the river.

  She wondered if there might be some still lurking in the derelict church above her.

  If so, they were likely to spot her as soon as she reached the top of the rise. Since the building sat alone on the bluff, well removed from the shanties of Grand Gulf, she couldn't see any way to sneak up on it, certainly not in broad daylight.

  She hesitated, weighing caution against her desire to examine the site for some clue as to what was actually going on, and then a wail of anguish sounded overhead.

  If some of the Heretics were still here and in trouble, it was her sworn duty to help them. Thrusting her trepidation aside, she broke into a run. Her owl pendant bounced against her breasts.

  Fleetingly grateful that wraiths didn't get winded, she scrambled onto the top of the bluff, she heard other noises: A rapid shuffling of feet. Pieces of wood swooshing through the air and clacking together. A whack and a gasp of pain when one of the sticks slammed against flesh. Evidently, two people were fighting with clubs.

  The Sister ran on past a pair of sharp-smelling pine trees. Sensing her presence, a circle of bobwhites exploded up from the tall yellow grass. As she plunged through the crumbling brick wall, between two arched windows now covered with plywood, she pulled off her sunglasses. The tinted lenses, invaluable for protecting sensitive wraith eyes against the sunlight, would only hinder her inside the building.

  Indeed, the musty nave, illuminated only by the light diffusing through a few tiny holes in the rotting walls and ceiling, was so gloomy that a mortal would have experienced difficulty navigating it at all. As worshippers of Odin, Thor, and the rest of the ancient Viking gods, the resident Heretics capable of exerting power across the Shroud had painstakingly erased every bit of Christian iconography, replacing crucifixes and saints with hammers, Valkyries, miniature longships, and representations of the world tree Yggdrasil.

  In front of the altar, which was carved with scenes that owed more to Jack Kirhy than thousand year-old Norse art, one lanky young man stood over another, hammering his victim with a baseball bat. The fellow on the floor had curled into a ball in an effort to shield his head and the more sensitive areas of his body. His own broken cudgel, another bat, lay a few feet away from him.

  The Sister knew them both, and since each was a member of the Valhalla Circle, she couldn't imagine what had brought them to this pass. "Stop it!" she cried. "He's had enough!"

  Philip, the wraith on his feet, kept on swinging as if he hadn't even heard. The body of Warren, the man on the floor, began to ripple and steam. Even though the bat wasn't made of darksteel, he'd taken so much punishment that he was about to vanish from the Shadowlands into the depths of the Tempest, a transit so perilous few survived it.

  The Sister sprinted forward. Unwilling to take the time to circumvent the pews, she simply ran through them, simultaneously marshaling her Arcanos. As soon as she felt the power rise within her, she reached out with it, grunting with effort, snatched up the spear on the altar, and whirled it at Philip, seeking not to drive the darksteel point into him but to bash him with the shaft.

  The length of wood cracked him across the back of his head, staggering him, sparing Warren another blow. Plunging through one of the benches in the first row, the Sister grabbed Philip by the arm.

  The contact stung her hand so badly that she nearly yanked it away again. She could feel the rage and self-loathing boiling through Philip's substance like a swarm of angry hornets.

  "Your Shadow has taken control of you!" she told him. "You have to push it back down!"

  Snarling, the pupils of his gray eyes seething, he tried to break her grip. She strained to keep him helplessly off balance. He didn't manage to tear himself free, but despite her sifu's assurances that the grapple she was employing would neutralize any opponent, no matter how big and strong, he managed to shift the bat into his free hand and lash it at her skull.

  She jerked up her arm to block. Pain stabbed through her wrist. She thrust her face so close to Philip's that an onlooker might have imagined she meant to bite him. "Fight it!" she said. "Ask Tyr to help you!" If she recalled correctly, the one- handed god was his particular patron.

  He pulled back the bat for another blow, and then the shimmering darkness vanished from his eyes. His weapon tumbled from his hand and clattered on the floor. His knees buckled as if he meant to follow it down. Awkwardly, her battered arm throbbing, she caught hold of him anew, and he slumped against her.

  She hoped he wasn't going to faint. Some wraiths did when such an episode ended. "You're all right now," she said. "It's gone."

  To her relief, he drew himself up, supporting his own weight, and looked wildly about. "Warren! My god! Is Warren—"

  She turned Philip around until he was looking at the motionless form on the floor. "There. See, he's out cold, but he's not fading. He'll be all right, too. What unleashed your Shadow? And where is everybody else?"

  Philip began to sob.

  "Please," said the Sister, "tell me. If I don't understand the problem, I can't help."

  The Heretic shook his head. Strands of his long, mousy brown hair slipped down his high, bony forehead. "You couldn't anyway. No one could."

  "You don't know that," the missionary said. She guided him to a pew and sat him down. "Just pull yourself together, start at the beginning, and tell me the story."

  He shrugged miserably. "All right. Why not? Have you heard about the priests and the Pardoners disappearing?"

  She cocked her head. "No, not unless you're talking about what the Quick are calling the Atheist murders. A string of serial killings."

  He irritably waved his hand. "I don't know anything about that. I'm talking about something that concerns us wraiths. I heard a rumor that over the past few weeks, in various Necropoli along the river, a few Heretic teachers and Pardoners—"

  "The two sorts of counselor to whom a wraith might turn for spiritual guidance," the Sister murmured thoughtfully.

  "—have vanished. Personally, I didn't think much of it. The Restless disappear for all kinds of reasons all the time. Slavers or Spectres catch you. Oblivion grabs you and you become a doomshade yourself or fall into the Void. Or maybe you just get sick of where you are and move on, either to somewhere else in the Shadowlands or into the Tempest to look for your version of Paradise. So I wasn't particularly worried that anything would happen to ou
r own priest and priestess, and certainly not to our entire Circle.

  "But last night, Warren and I went down into Grand Gulf to watch a couple movies and then hang around the Necropolis. About two in the morning, we heard shooting and screams coming from the temple here. When we looked in this direction, we saw the muzzle flashes of the guns. We ran back as quickly as we could." He averted his face. "But we didn't charge right back into the thick of things. We stopped a ways back and tried to scope out what was going on."

  The Sister didn't understand why he was ashamed. Resting her hand lightly on his forearm, she said, "I would have done the same thing."

  "What we saw," Philip said, "was that the temple was under attack by a whole bunch of people. A lot of them looked more like bandits or river pirates than any Legionnaires I ever saw, but they had banners with emblems of the Smiling Lord, the Beggar Lord, the Emerald Lord, and the Unlidded Eye on them, so I guess they must have been Hierarchs even so. The leader, a guy with long, wavy red hair, had a black cape and a fancy sword, like some kind of Stygian honcho."

  A swordsman with a mane of auburn hair. Old joys and sorrows stirred in the Sister's breast. But of course Philip couldn't be referring to the same person she'd known. Surely such a splendid soul had never found himself mired in the purgatory of the Underworld in the first place. Annoyed at her own sentimentality, she tried to push aside her memories and focus on the present situation.

  "Warren and I could see right away that our people were losing," Philip continued. "The Hierarchs had us outnumbered and they were better armed. And so—" He faltered, then took a deep breath. "And so we just hid and watched while the Stygians took everyone else prisoner, chained them up, marched them down to the river, and carried them away on their boats. I saw what happened to Barbara. My girl friend. They took her clothes off and put their hands all over her. There was so much fear in her eyes!"

  "Do you think you actually could have helped her?" the Sister asked. "Or would you merely have gotten killed or captured yourself? I'm sure she wouldn't have wanted that."