Dark Kingdoms

by Richard Lee Byers

  A feeling of lassitude came over him. His head swam, and he felt a small portion of his vitality flowing down his arm and into the statue. He recognized the sensation from other magical operations. Demetrius was enhancing the link between him and the statue.

  Suddenly the figure's left shoulder shattered. Potter reflexively blinked, but no flying grit stung his face, not did any shower to the tabletop. Apparently that portion of the image had simply disintegrated. A dazzling beam of white light blazed from the jagged hole.

  Demetrius grunted and went rigid, then resumed his incantation.

  A portion of the figurine's left hip cracked with a noise like a gunshot and disappeared. Another ray of glaring light shone forth. The Oracle's head jerked spastically to the left.

  A section of the statue's neck burst into nothingness. Demetrius cried out and clutched at his throat with his free hand. A fierce radiance burned through the cracks between his fingers. Potter realized that his lieutenant had developed a wound in the same place, and with the same bizarrely luminous characteristics, as the image's.

  Such an injury would probably have killed a mortal in a matter of seconds. Lacking any blood or true vital organs, wraiths were more resistant to most sorts of damage. Indeed, the resilience and plasticity of their substance lay at the basis of the shape- shifting art of the Masquers. Still, it was obvious that Demetrius was hurt. "What's happening?" Potter asked.

  "It's fighting back," the Oracle said through gritted teeth. "It doesn't want to be consumed. But I'll be all right."

  He resumed chanting. Another piece of the clay figure exploded into nothingness. An instant later, a shining puncture opened in Demetrius's biceps.

  Now nearly hidden by the glow of their injuries, the bodies of the two combatants began to exhibit further changes. Demetrius's substance flowed. At certain moments, breasts and a newly convex belly bulged out the front of his toga, and a second face snarled and gibbered on the left side of his head. Patches of his skin took on the hard, hairless appearance of pottery, while portions of the statue turned to skin. His body shrank, and the talisman swelled. Apparently the figure was trying to trade places with him in some unimaginable way.

  It looked to Potter as if the Greek was in serious jeopardy. He wondered if he should remove his hand from the statue and terminate the magic. He dreaded losing his advisor and confessor, his only friend. How could he get along without him? But he also cringed at the thought of forfeiting what might be his only real chance to learn the identities of his hidden foes. His ignorance was a torment. He often felt as if it was driving him mad.

  Demetrius's left eye exploded, a white ray blazing out of the socket. The Oracle screamed and thrashed, but somehow maintained his contact with the image.

  Enough! Potter thought. This has to stop.

  But just as he was about to pull his hand back, Demetrius croaked, "No!" The sound came from three sources, his true lips, the ones belonging to a half-formed countenance oozing and bubbling on the side of his head, and the only mouth the talisman currently possessed. "I beg you. I can do this and I will."

  Trembling, his mouth dry, Potter left his fingers where they were.

  Demetrius chanted rhythmic, grating syllables in yet another unknown language. With its abundance of consonants and paucity of vowels, it sounded as if it had never been intended to issue from a human throat. The pale amber flames in the lamps along the wall flared and guttered in time with his words, while shadows seemed to pinwheel on the floor. Though Potter had locked the door, a blast of hot wind dashed it open to crash against the wall.

  The corona of light around Demetrius flared even brighter, like a star exploding into a nova. Startled, Potter had no choice but to avert his eyes and recoil. Just as he began to move, he felt the statue dissolve into nothingness beneath his fingers.

  After a moment, the ambient glare dimmed and contracted into a pearly orb. Squinting, still half dazzled, Potter saw that Demetrius, his body whole and unblemished once again, was cradling the ball in his hands.

  "Peer into the center of the light," the Oracle said. "Quickly, please. I can't hold the power for long."

  Potter stared into the silvery glow. After a moment, a mote of blackness blinked into existence at its heart. The speck expanded rapidly into a picture, a scene, until it became all that the Deathlord could perceive.

  Their backs turned to him, two figures crouched over a table in a cramped and shadowy chamber. One was small, stooped, and wrapped in a gray mantle. Her hair white and wispy, she was leaning on a gnarled walking stick. The thin man beside her wore black and white, and over it all a cloak the color of dust. A mechanical silver rat perched on each of his shoulders, ruby eyes gleaming, wire whiskers twitching, hinged feet clutching to maintain their grip.

  The conspirators' masks, his a grinning ivory skull face, hers the carved wooden visage of a withered crone, sat discarded on the table. Between the visors lay a large piece of parchment with curling corners.

  At first Potter couldn't make out what it was, but then his perspective shifted. Now it was as if he were peering over the plotters' shoulders. The parchment was a map of a portion of the Onyx Tower. Her withered hand trembling, the woman pointed at one of the parks, a painstaking recreation of a Skinlands jungle.

  Excited and dismayed in equal measure, Potter took stock of his own sensations and perceptions. This vision was different from those which had preceded it. It didn't feel vague, dreamlike, or unreliable in the least. "I think you've done it," he said.

  "What's happening?" asked the now-invisible Demetrius. His voice sounded faint and far away.

  "I see the Ashen Lady and the Skeletal Lord," Potter said. "They're alone in a room, unmasked, looking at a map of the Tower. She's pointing to the park where I was attacked. And this time everything is clear. I'm sure I'm witnessing something that actually happened."

  "So they're the ones," the Oracle said.

  "Yes," Potter said. "And that's bad, though not as—"

  The scene shifted abruptly. Potter found himself peering at the summit of one of the castle's tallest towers. Illuminated by flares of jade and azure lightning, the storm clouds of the Tempest churned overhead. Beneath the parapet, their forms half- obscured by the eternal darkness, rose a thousand other gargoyle-encrusted spires. Here and there across the city wavered points of sickly light, barrow-flame lanterns and torches.

  In the center of the rooftop, four masked wraiths marched widdershins in a circle, chanting maledictions. A man in a scarlet robe brandished an empty sack.

  Another in green dexterously manipulated a pair of crimson dice, clicking them together like castanets in time to the incantation. A one-legged fellow in saffron rags thumped along with the aid of a crutch, a wooden bowl in his free hand. The woman with the tangled mane of raven hair didn't walk so much as caper. Each pace was a step in an antic dance, and the harlequin marionette whose strings she was manipulating mimicked her every move to perfection.

  Gradually a translucent figure took shape in the middle of the circle. Potter gasped, because he was looking at his own cloaked and armored form. The four conjurers shouted a word of power in unison. A jagged bolt of black lightning crackled through the image.

  Potter felt a stabbing pain in his own chest. He jerked convulsively, and the phantasmal scene vanished. He was back in his meditation chamber. Demetrius's hands were empty. Evidently he'd exhausted his plundered magic.

  "Are you all right?" asked the Oracle. "You cried out."

  "No!" Potter snapped, trembling. "I mean, I'm not injured. But the vision changed! I saw the rest of them, the Quiet Lord, the Emerald Lord, the Beggar Lord, and the Laughing Lady, working together to lay a curse on me. That must be why I've felt so weak and confused lately."

  "Thank goodness that at last we know for certain. Now we can take steps—"

  "Are you stupid?" Potter cried. "Don't you understand what I just told you? It isn't just one or two of them. Every single one of the other Deathlords is out
to destroy me. I can't contend with all six of them at once. If I had any sense, I'd cast myself into the Void right now. It would probably be a less painful demise than the one they have in store for me."

  Demetrius laid his hand on his shoulder. "Please, compose yourself," he said.

  Potter began to snarl an angry retort and wrench himself away. Then he met his lieutenant's calm, compassionate brown eyes, and a spasm of shame took a bit of the edge off his terror. No matter how hopeless his plight, Demetrius, who'd repeatedly risked his own existence to help him, didn't deserve his abuse. "I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to shout at you. You must flee Stygia tonight. There's nowhere for me to run, nowhere far enough, but they might not come looking for you."

  Demetrius scowled. "Do you think I'd abandon you in your time of need? I won't permit you to abandon yourself, either. Think, my lord! The situation isn't as bad as it could be. It isn't six united against one, as it was in some of your nightmares. If I understood you correctly, you saw two separate groups working against you. Isn't it likely that the cabals are scheming against one another as well? And that the members of each are even now plotting to betray their fellows as soon as it's to their advantage to do so?"

  Potter ran his fingers through his straw-colored hair. "I suppose. When all's said and done, only one of us can be Emperor. But still, with everyone striving against me—"

  Demetrius turned and grabbed Potter's steel visor. Despite the panic still yammering through his mind, the former British soldier felt a jolt of shock. It was a kind of sacrilege, or at least lese majesty, for an underling to touch a Deathlord's mask. "This is you," said the Oracle, holding up the face plate for his master's inspection. "The Smiling Lord. Master of the Seat of Burning Waters. A demigod.

  An archangel. The incarnation, the pure refined essence, of war and murder."

  Potter felt a faint stirring of pride and hope. He didn't know whether to embrace it as the herald of his salvation or reject it as a heart-breaking chimera. "In some sense," he said, a little hesitantly, "I suppose that's true."

  "Of course it is," rapped Demetrius. "Charon wouldn't have chosen you if you weren't capable of becoming the entity your office requires. Now I've heard it said that each of the Seven is equally powerful, and I imagine that on an abstract level it's so. Each of the others embodies a particular aspect of death, the same as you do.

  "But don't you see, that abstract level doesn't matter. By resorting to violence, they've entered your sphere, where none of them can match you."

  "So you actually think I stand a chance against them?" Potter asked. "Even though many of the visions foretold my destruction?"

  Demetrius waved his hand, brushing such defeatist reflections aside. "The omens reflected your probable fate when you were ignorant and irresolute. Now that we finally have some answers, the weave of destiny has changed. Of course you stand a chance, if you muster all the cunning and vast resources at your command, and fight your rivals as mercilessly as they mean to battle you. Dispatch your own assassins. Suborn your enemies' troops. Find ways to manipulate the wretches into attacking one another. And finally, when you've worn them down, trap them and put them all to the Final Death."

  Potter nodded slowly. "You know," he murmured, "it might be possible at that, and in any case, what have I got to lose? Better to go down fighting than be slaughtered like a sheep."

  "No one's going to slaughter you," Demetrius said firmly. "In a few weeks your so- called peers will be naught but a fading memory, and you, Dread Lord, will be the new Emperor of Stygia."

  FIVE

  Astarte made the call from a pay phone outside a 7-Eleven in Slidell. Cars growled up and down the busy street, past tire stores, discount furniture outlets, and fast-food joints, filling the air with the hot stink of their exhaust. People kept brushing past her on their way to and from the store entrance. Some of the locals—the ones who didn't approve of piercings, black lipstick and nail polish, and spiky magenta hair, she assumed—glowered at her. Other rednecks leered at her, checking out her tits and ass, and murmured smutty comments to one another.

  All things considered, it wasn't an ideal location for Astarte to touch base with her mother back in Dayton. But she didn't want to do it from the motel where she and Marilyn intended to spend the night. For all she knew, Dunn and the other werewolves and ghosts had tapped Mom's phone, and would trace the call. Or maybe they had some way of monitoring every phone in Louisiana. Such a notion sounded paranoid, but as Astarte had already learned the hard way, it was all but impossible to guess what supernatural creatures could or would do. That seeming lack of any rules or limits was what, even more than the violence and the freakish ugliness of some of the beings they'd encountered, had bothered Frank Bellamy most.

  At the thought of Frank, her eyes stung, filling with tears. With his straight- arrow haircut, clothes, and attitude, he was the last person she would ever have imagined herself falling in love with. But once she'd gotten past his FBI-man reserve, he'd turned out to be warm and generous, with a wry sense of humor. Unlike most people of her acquaintance, he really believed he could make a difference in the world. That was part of the reason he'd become a cop. And deep down inside, he'd been lonely, just as she had. Somehow the combination had won her over.

  Now he was gone. He'd stayed behind with Dunn in the house off Elysian Fields to buy her time to get away, and she hadn't seen him since. It was remotely possible that the werewolf had taken him prisoner. But she knew that in all likelihood Dunn had torn him apart and feasted on his remains.

  The phone on the other end of the line stopped ringing. A sound, so muffled as to be unrecognizable, emerged from the receiver in Astarte's hand.

  Astarte blinked away her tears and covered her other ear with her hand, trying to block out the rumble of the traffic. "Mom?" she said. "It's Emily." She hadn't introduced herself that way to anyone since she'd adopted what she thought of as her true, occultist name, borrowed from the Sumerian goddess of love. But at the moment, it felt right to do so. "Are you there?"

  Another indistinguishable sound.

  Astarte hoped that her mother wasn't too zonked on her pain pills to converse intelligibly. "It's really noisy here. You have to speak up."

  "All right, all right," said Mom, comprehensible at last. "I'll shout. But it will be bad for me."

  Astarte sighed. Every petty demand and inconvenience was "bad" for her mother, and the fact that she really did suffer from migraines, chronic fatigue syndrome, and a bad back—or at least had found doctors willing to testify to insurance and disability boards that she did—didn't make her complaining any easier to bear. "I don't want you to strain yourself, Mom. Just do the best you can, okay?"

  "Okay," said Mom, sounding slightly less sullen. "I miss you. It's hard for me to manage by myself. Are you still in New Orleans?"

  Astarte fingered the steel ring in her lower lip. "In a town just outside of it right now." She, Frank, and the Arcanists had decided it was safer to stay in a series of motels beyond the city limits, though they still had to venture inside it to snoop around.

  "Are you ready to come home?" asked Mom. On the street behind Astarte, a horn blared, and tires screeched as someone slammed on his brakes. "Because I don't have any money for a bus ticket. You hitchhiked down, you'll have to hitchhike back."

  "I don't need money," Astarte said honestly. Marilyn and the other surviving Arcanists had plenty, and they were picking up her tab. "I'm going to stay a while longer."

  "Why?" Mom demanded. "What are you doing there?"

  Astarte was tempted to tell her, just as she'd told her when she'd cut school, smoked marijuana, shoplifted, started having sex, and had her nipple pierced, simply for the somewhat masochistic pleasure of provoking her. She could hear the words in her mind: I'm investigating a gang of monsters who are committing serial murders. And looking for this guy I like, praying I'll find him in one piece.

  Instead she said, "I'm doing what I told you. Visiting some of the
people I met on-line."

  "They're weirdf: aren't they?" said Mom accusingly. "They're into all that devil worship and astrology."

  Astarte grimaced. "Yeah. They shot Kennedy and put fluoride in America's drinking water, too."

  "What?"

  "It's a joke, Mom. They're just people. They're nice." In a way, Astarte thought, it was too: bad that the Arcanists weren't the sinister coven of warlocks her mother was imagining. Maybe then they'd have a better idea of how to cope with the current crisis. But the truth of the matter was that, despite years of dedicated study, Marilyn and her colleagues didn't seem to know much more about the paranormal than medieval physicians had comprehended about the true nature of disease. They hadn't .even realized there was any such thing as a living werewolf until Astarte had escaped from Dunn to tell them so.

  "If you stay away much longer," said Mom, "you're going to lose your job at the boutique. Why can't you come home?"

  A bunch of reasons, Astarte thought, even if none of them makes total sense. I can't just run away while there's any chance that Frank is still alive, I have to try to stop the Atheist murders—there's nobody else to do it, nobody who understands. And despite all the horror she'd experienced, the supernatural still fascinated her. Even now, she couldn't quite lengo of the notion that there was something there besides depravity and carnage, a transcendent reality of miracles and passion, and that if she could only become a part of it, she could leave the tedium and disappointments, the fundamental banality, of her mundane life behind.

  "I don't want to come home yet," she said. "I don't care about my job. It sucks anyway. And I'm having a good time."

  "I'll just bet you are," said Mom resentfully. "I've heard about New Orleans. It sounds like just your kind of place. And what do you care if I have trouble getting up and down the stairs?"