Dark Kingdoms

by Richard Lee Byers

  Daphne froze, gaping at the menacing scene, and then began to lurch around. I don't have to do this, Gayoso thought. I could still let her go. But simultaneously he snatched out his gun and slammed the butt down on top of her head. Bone crunched, and she collapsed.

  The Hierarch pulled off his hood, strode to the table, and picked up the mirror. For a moment, there seemed to be nothing inside the glass but his own fleshy, hooknosed features. Then the dark eyes shone more brightly, and the grimace twisted into a wolfish grin.

  "Hello, hello," his Shadow said.

  "I brought the child," Gayoso said. Not knowing if it was necessary, he tried to turn the glass in such a way as to allow his dark half—if that was what the mirror creature truly was—to peer out at the girl. Like many of the things he said and did in an effort to get along with the Shadow, the action made him feel awkward if not faintly ridiculous.

  "So I see," the reflection said. "Scarcely the innocent cherub of my fond imaginings, but she'll do. Chain her to the table and we'll get started."

  A few moments after Gayoso strapped the gag in place, Daphne regained consciousness. Spread-eagled, she thrashed, rattling her shackles. Her eyes rolled, and as she struggled to shriek and babble past the mass in her mouth, she sounded as if she were strangling. Feeling queasy, the Hierarch set the mirror on a nearby shelf, once again attempting to position it so the creature inside could see out. That accomplished, he picked up one of the larger daggers, cut off the prostitute's clothing, and discarded his own.

  And then it was time to begin.

  A fresh wave of doubt assailed him, though it wasn't the prospect of torture and murder that gave him pause. As a high-ranking Hierarch, he'd sent hundreds of people to the rack and the stake, sometimes simply to further his own selfish interests. But he'd never offered a sacrifice to Oblivion itself, never groveled before the implacable enemy of all Creation. According to the laws of Charon—and the codes of most Renegade factions and Heretical sects, for that matter—such worship was the ultimate crime.

  Yet if he declined to honor his pact, he risked drawing the wrath of that nearly omnipotent malignancy down on his own head. And after all, he'd spent centuries in the service of Stygia, the Void's eternal foe. Surely no one sin, even an offense as heinous as this, could outweigh that. It couldn't blight his spirit beyond redemption. He'd simply perform the ceremony by rote and get it over with. And then, he vowed, never look in the enchanted mirror again.

  "I call to the great emptiness," he said. "The death beyond death. The darkness beyond darkness. I abase myself before Oblivion. Pity your servant, forgive him the foul sin of his existence, and deign to accept his sacrifice." He made the first cuts, carving a cryptic symbol into Daphne's left thigh.

  And at that instant, he sensed something stir, something that seemed to be inside him, looming above him, and peering up from the depths of the Nihil, all at the same time. He could feel it gloating over his revulsion and Daphne's terror.

  Trying to ignore the ghastly presence, his voice now quavering ever so slightly, Gayoso said, "I prostrate myself before the princes of the Labyrinth, the gods of the Tempest, the angels of annihilation. Gorool of the Claws! Dragon king, mask of the Wyrm, slayer of Charon, give me your blessing." He picked up a small blade like a scalpel and, with a certain amount of trouble—his victim kept tossing her head— slit Daphne's nostrils.

  The sensation of being watched became even more intense. Now he could feel the regard of the Void playing across his skin like a hand petting a cat. At first it made him gag, his body shudder and clench, and then, shockingly, it gave him a pang of pleasure.

  "Mulhecturous," he gasped, struggling to block out this new sensation. "Mother of plagues and cancers, queen of poisons and putrescence, grant me your bounty! Let me drink from your fountains of corruption." He selected a serrated blade and moved to the other end of the table, so he could saw off one of Daphne's toes.

  A sickening joy overtook him once again. He had on occasion relished torture, usually when some particularly impudent rebel or troublesome rival had fallen into his clutches, and now, abruptly, he found himself eager to make Daphne suffer. Reminding himself that he didn't want to become emotionally involved with the ritual, he struggled against the feeling, but to no avail. As he severed the toe, his penis swelled, "Loki," he croaked, "Mephistopheles. Tezcatlipoca. Count of the Wasteland! God of the thousand faces and lord of liars. Whisper your secrets to me. Teach me to deceive and betray." To his dismay, he found he could no longer drone the invocations mechanically. Like Daphne's mutilation, the recitation had become a sensual pleasure. Every syllable made his lips, his face, his entire body tingle.

  Exhilarated and panicky at the same time, he sliced off his victim's right ear. He decided that if he couldn't resist the feelings the sacrifice was inspiring, his best option was to complete it as quickly as possible. He began to chant, and to cut, as quickly as he could.

  But his haste merely intensified his excitement. It was as if he were having sex, slipping into the final frenzy, thrusting faster and faster to reach his climax. Visions arose before his inner eye. The Malfeans, the very devils he was invoking, monstrous and alien. The chaotic desolation of the Tempest and Labyrinth, their domain, a realm so immense it made Stygia, the Far Shores, and the other enclaves contained within it seem as insignificant as a single handful of sand strewn across a desert. And underlying that world, and vaster still, the Void itself, a black grindstone wearing away the cosmos, a vortex of absolute nothingness sucking it down.

  The vista was too terrifying to contemplate, yet so awesome that Gayoso couldn't turn away. No petty human pretension could stand before it. The Anacreon realized that his dreams, his fears, and his very sense of self were meaningless, and the mighty Legions of the Hierarchy and even the Earth itself were equally insubstantial. Everything he'd ever credited was merely a mirage, a ridiculous phantom pretending to exist for one brief instant before Oblivion swept it away.

  For a time—a second? an hour?—he was certain his insights were killing him. How could they not? But as his faith in his own existence shriveled, darkness flowed in to fill the hollow places. He became Oblivion, a jubilant destroyer liberated from every sentiment or scruple, an ecstatic avatar of the Final Death, He dimly suspected that no puny human soul could unite with this power for long without being consumed by it, but the notion failed to trouble him. Time was as meaningless as all the other delusions sane minds embraced. In another, transcendent reality, he'd rage forever.

  Cackling, crowing his incantations, he capered around the table. Often he carved symbols into his own body as well as Daphne's. His loins throbbed with one orgasm after another. The Nihil beside his improvised altar hissed more and more loudly.

  By the time Gayoso reached the finale of the ritual, Daphne was so thoroughly maimed that she could barely twitch. Indeed, her white, vivisected body scarcely looked human anymore. Tittering, pleased with his handiwork, the Hierarch returned to the head of the table to put out her eyes.

  As he plunged a stiletto into the second one, the shimmering darkness inside the Nihil shot up into the room like a geyser. For a moment it seemed to swirl like a dust devil, and then, rearing to the ceiling, to thicken, becoming as solid and heavy as a mass of granite. Suddenly it toppled at the table, smashing down on diabolist and sacrifice alike.

  Gayoso felt a burst of agony, and then he was tumbling through blackness. Certain he was about to perish, to dissolve in the grasp of Oblivion, he yowled triumphantly.

  Instead he slammed into a vertical surface, rebounded, and banged his shoulders against another. The double impact dropped him to his knees.

  His thoughts crumbled and reassembled themselves in new shapes. Dazed, feeling as if he he'd just awakened from some already half-forgotten but supremely frightening nightmare, he peered about.

  He was crumpled at the bottom of a cramped space like a sarcophagus standing on end. A trace of wan green light trickled in from somewhere. Twisting his he
ad around, he saw an oval window set high in the back wall.

  What in the name of the Scythe was happening? How could he be, well, fulfilling his obligation—he cringed at a murky recollection of the demented glee which had possessed him—one second, and stuck in here the next? Hampered by the close quarters, he clambered to his feet and shifted around to look through the glass.

  An instant later, he gasped and recoiled. Because his own face, looming hugely, a necromantic sigil etched in each cheek, was leering back at him.

  "Now that wasn't so bad, was it?" the Shadow said. "You looked like you were having fun."

  "What's going on?" Gayoso asked. "Where am 1?"

  "Can't you guess?" the double asked. "I'll give you a hint." The Governor felt his narrow closet of a prison swivel. Now he could see past his twin into the sacrificial chamber. The pillar of darkness had disappeared, perhaps withdrawn into the Nihil. The table was broken, Daphne's chains were empty, and the black knives lay scattered about the floor.

  The view only increased Gayoso's confusion. There hadn't been any iron maiden or upended coffin in the room for him to be stuck inside now. "Stop playing games!" he said. "Just tell me."

  The Shadow sighed. "You disappoint me, brother. During the rite, when you yielded yourself to Oblivion, you gave me the opening I needed. It's been a long, hard job, eroding your conscience and will, but I'm finally in control of our body, and you're the one more or less trapped in the mirror."

  "No," Gayoso said, his voice breaking. "You can't do this. I control the magic. I'm the master."

  "Then you'd better prove it," the Shadow said.

  Gayoso's prison shot upward and over, until he was lying on his back looking at the ceiling. He barely had time to realize that the Shadow had swung the mirror over his head before the creature lashed it down again. One corner of the broken table flashed up at the glass. When they collided, the pane shattered, and Gayoso's mind exploded with it.

  Montrose's teeth began to chatter with the ghastly chill. Tightening his jaw, he maneuvered through a pack of shuffling, vacant-eyed Drones toward the blue-flecked wall of the pit. Leering as usual, Artie loped along behind him. Montrose had learned that the little abolitionist and his comrades often patrolled their prison, essentially in the desperate hope of suddenly spying some means of escape they hadn't noticed before, and they always did it in pairs. The Spectres and the violently insane made it too dangerous to wander around alone.

  The disgraced Hierarch peered upward. High overhead, the huge steel crane crouched like a dinosaur. "Why does this one section of the wall have to be so smooth?" he grumbled.

  Artie waved his right hand, a habitual gesture. It looked as if he was brandishing an imaginary cigar. "Because the Artificers polished it to keep us from climbing out, Einstein. I think all those pink curls are smothering what passes for your brain."

  Despite his bleak mood, Montrose smiled. Though the two wraiths could scarcely have been more unlike in most respects, Artie's disrespectful manner reminded him of Mike Fink. "It was a rhetorical question. Perhaps, instead of hammering on our leg irons, we should be carving handholds here."

  "Tried it," Artie said. "It doesn't work."

  A short, black-haired woman skulked out of the shadows, her face a mask of fury, muscles twitching. Montrose met her glare with a level stare of his own. After a few seconds, she hissed and turned away.

  "That doesn't make sense," said the Scot. "The stones you people collected are made of the same mineral as the cliff, which means they should be hard enough to chip it."

  Artie shrugged. "I guess the forgers used magic to toughen it up. You've got to hand it to the bastards, they know how to slap together a hoosegow."

  Behind Montrose, a bare foot brushed the floor. He pivoted, ready to defend himself, but it was only a Drone, trudging aimlessly along and fingering his lower lip. "What about a human pyramid?"

  Artie snorted. "For the love of Mike, Jimmy, you're talking to an old vaudeville headliner here. I've worked on the same bill with more acrobats than you could shake a stick at, assuming that's your idea of a good time. But we don't have enough people; we couldn't get high enough. Besides, you can't make like the Flying Rigatonis without attracting the attention of the crazies and the doomshades, and then they do their damnedest to knock the pyramid down. We lost a guy named Amos that way. When he fell, he cracked his head open."

  For perhaps the thousandth time, Montrose reflected that, if not for his shackles, he could fly out of the pit. Grimacing, he pushed the frustrating thought aside. "Still, there must be a way out of here. We're just not seeing it."

  Artie grinned wryly. "Speak for yourself, bubbie. I see it. I did from the start."

  Montrose gaped at him, then sighed. "You had me going for a moment there. But I assume you're setting me up for another joke."

  "Wrong as usual," the abolitionist said. "All you have to do is pound that ugly noggin of yours against a rock, or let one of our nastier neighbors—one without Spectre claws and fangs—work out his hostilities on you. When you're hurt badly enough, you'll pop right out of this quaint little bed-and-breakfast."

  "And into the Labyrinth," said Montrose. "For a duel to the death with my Shadow." Such an ordeal was called a Harrowing, and was commonly regarded as so perilous that few wraiths would ever consider it as a potential solution to any dilemma.

  "Bingo," said Artie. "What's the matter, don't you think you're up to the challenge?"

  Montrose remembered his Shadow possessing him on Earth, and the way it stirred every time he looked at Louise, and repressed a shudder. "I'd prefer not to find out."

  "Me too," Artie said. Suddenly he seemed wearier and more discouraged than Montrose had seen him look before. "Pitiful, isn't it?"

  The Scot cocked his head. "How so?"

  "You've noticed our hosts didn't make me wear any ankle jewelry." Montrose nodded. "So you figured out I don't know an Arcanos. That's because I never tried to learn."

  Montrose glanced around, looking for potential threats. Some sort of brawl had broken out about forty feet away, but so far at least, the melee showed no signs of moving in their direction. "Why not?"

  "I was too busy chasing Transcendence," Artie replied. "Meditating on koans, poring over sacred texts, and all that happy horseshit. Trying to understand myself and the cosmos, and master my dark side. After all that preparation, I should be ready to go a few rounds with my Shadow. But I'm afraid to climb into the ring."

  Montrose squeezed the smaller man's bony shoulder. "That isn't cowardice. It's prudence."

  "Like you'd know," Artie said. "Okay, now it's your turn."

  Montrose blinked. "I beg your pardon?"

  "I confided in you," said Artie, smirking. "Now you tell me your girlish secrets, and we can bond."

  The Hierarch hesitated. "I don't know what to say."

  "Well, there's always the hideous nightmare of your premature toilet training. Or your pathological attachment to your moth-eaten teddy bear Bobo. Or we could start small, with your reminiscences of dear old Cleveland."

  "Cincinnati," Montrose said.

  "Oh, right," the comedian said. "I used to play Cincy all the time. Is it still the wild, mad pleasure city it used to be? Babylon on the Ohio?"

  Feeling increasingly wary, Montrose shrugged. "It's just a town as far as I'm concerned."

  "Which Renegade outfit were you with?"

  Fortunately, the Hierarch had picked up a good deal of information about American rebels during his sojourn along the Mississippi; he knew the names of many of the Renegade organizations operating in the Midwest. "The Jefferson Brigade."

  "No kidding," said Artie. "Then I'll bet you know Debbie Donnelly."

  "I'm afraid not," Montrose said.

  "Ah," the entertainer said. "Well, that's probably because I just made her up."

  "What's this all about?" Montrose asked. "Why would you try to trip me up?

  Don't you trust me?"

  "Very good," Artie said. "
I admire a man with a keen grasp of the obvious."

  "Do you think the Artificers would plant a spy in the pit? Whatever for? We're not even people to them, just bits of raw material, and they're absolutely confident we can't escape."

  "I don't know what to think," Artie replied. He shivered, and hugged himself for warmth. "But certain things don't add up. For one, you're awfully closemouthed about your past."

  "I don't remember too much of my premortem existence," said the Scot. It seemed a reasonably plausible lie. Death sometimes punched holes in a spirit's memory. "And I don't enjoy talking about what's, happened since. Too much of it was unpleasant."

  "Okay," Artie said. "But back in my salad days, before I hit it big, I played a German, an Italian, an Irishman, a Mexican, and even a Jap on stage. I could do it because I've got a knack for dialects. You've got the kind of no-accent accent a guy gets from traveling and talking to a lot of different people. But underneath it, you don't sound a Midwesterner. I hear a trace of Scots, from, oh, a couple hundred years ago?" He lifted his bushy eyebrows.

  "I never said I was born in Cincinnati," Montrose replied. "I emigrated from Scotland when I was seventeen."

  "Oh, so you do remember something."

  "Of course I do," Montrose said. "Once again, I never claimed otherwise. Is this why you distrust me? These petty anomalies?"

  "Oh, there's a little more to it," Artie said. "What particularly bothers me is that you and Louise are: supposed to be old buddies. And yet, you never talk. You stay as far away from one another as possible. Sometimes when you look at her, and you don't realize I'm watching, you sneer, and when she peeks at you, she looks miserable."