Dark Kingdoms

by Richard Lee Byers

  "For the same reason I helped you: we were in desperate straits, and realized we had a far better chance of getting out if we worked together. Not because you wish me well. Or Stygia either, for that matter. You're a Sister of Athena. You, too, pray for the day when the old order will 'crash and burn.'"

  "That isn't quite true. I'd be more than content to see it evolve into a more humane system. One that would shut down the Soulforges, strike off the shackles of every Thrall, and reopen the temples of the Shining Ones. I just don't think that's likely to happen without a revolution."

  Montrose sneered. "How astute of you."

  Her generous mouth tightened at his scorn. "But I agree that the Legions Serve a purpose when they hold back the Spectres. I believe that despite our differences) all of us, Stygian, Renegade, and Heretic, share a common interest in resisting Oblivion. And if the same malevolent force is fomenting discord in this place and murdering priests on Earth, then perhaps, this one time, I have a duty to prOp up the Hierarchy; corrupt and oppressive as it is."

  "What about your professed duty to our companions?"

  "Artie's resourceful. He'll get the others back to Earth. You need me more. I may not be able to veil myself in darkness.) but you can't deny I have useful skills of my own."

  "No, I can't. But that still leaves the issue of your trustworthiness. I don't dare believe a word you've said about your real intentions. For all I know., you do want the Deathlords to fight one another. Or perhaps I'm giving you too much credit, thinking you truly care about political and philosophical issues one way or the other. Actually, it seems more likely that you just want to look after yourself. Conceivably you've wearied of the rigors of the missionary life, and have a yen to sample the luxuries of the Isle of Sorrows. You imagine that if you give me up to Stygian justice, someone will reward you with a pleasant sinecure in the Hierarchy. You're probably correct. If you can still feign passion as convincingly as I remember, some Anacteon will likely take you for his whore."

  She stared at him for what seemed a long time. Finally she said, "I'm not like that."

  "Damn you!" he snarled, his voice breaking, his eyes throbbing as if about to shed tears. "How dare you pretend to any sort of virtue? You, who swore your devotion, then betrayed me to my death!"

  She flinched again. This time he was sure of it, and it gave him a pang of vicious satisfaction. "I wish you'd let me explain what happened," she said, her own voice unsteady now.

  "No," Montrose said. "I know what yOu did. Even you haven't had the impudence to deny the essential fact. I'm not interested in hearing you bleat about extenuating circumstances, your motives, or your regrets. Even if I believed what you had to say, it wouldn't change my feelings one iota."

  Louise sighed. "All right. I don't blame you for feeling that way. But even if I wag a worthless, despicable creature in 1649, isn't it possible that I've changed in the three hundred and fifty years since? Haven't I been, a friend so far? Don't I seem sincere?"

  He was about to retort that she'd seemed sincere in Holland, which was what had enabled her to ruin "him, when a thought struck him. Why was he rejecting her? If he wandered off alone, he might never see her again, might never find another opportunity for revenge. Whereas if he permitted her to accompany him, he could hack her to pieces as soon as he parted company with Artie and the others.

  Smirking behind his mask, trying to sound gruff and reluctant, he said, "All right, I admit it, you do seem...reliable. I don't forgive you, nor am I prepared to trust you any farther than necessary. But you're correct, I am going to need help to reach the Smiling Lord, so much so that I'm even willing to accept it from you."

  EIGHTTEEN

  Thin and prim in her round, steel-rimmed spectacles, Mrs. Duquesne sat stiffly erect behind her impressive: ebony desk, her smile as cold as it was serene. Gayoso had to admire her. Inwardly the old hag was surely seething with hate and envy, but no one could tell it. In contrast, the green velvet hood veiling his features notwithstanding, it was obvious that Nathan Shellabarger had come to feel profoundly uncomfortable in his fellow Governors' company. The small man kept shifting in his leather chair, and his right hand hovered by his hip pocket, where he evidently had some sort of weapon.

  Mrs. Duquesne tapped the sheaf of papers in her gaunt white hands against the desktop, straightening them. "Is that everything?" she asked.

  Gayoso hesitated, and then, irked by his own timidity, said, "Not quite. I'd like to discuss the symbol of our regime." He nodded at the black hourglass standing on the desktop to her right, between a wooden bowl containing several oboli—a symbol of her fealty to. the Beggar Lord—and the glazed white mask of Tragedy she seldom wore.

  Shellabarger tensed. "What about it?" Mrs. Duquesne asked calmly.

  "I think I should take charge of it," Gayoso said.

  "Surely you remember," the gray-haired woman said, "that by the terms of our covenant, I'm supposed !o retain it until Samhain one year hence, at which point I'll pass it to Mr. Shellabarger."

  "I know," Gayoso said. "But it's the most valuable object in Natchez, and it just so happens that at the moment, I control more Legionnaires than either of you. Ergo, I could guard it better than you can."

  "Ah," said Mrs. Duquesne, "but who would guard us? We're well aware of the size of your personal army, Anacreon. That's precisely why I consider it vital to keep the talisman in my possession. The balance of power, don't you know."

  The Spaniard sighed as if her suspicions had wounded him. "My dear lady, you have nothing to fear from me."

  "Ha!" Shellabarger interjected.

  "I swear you don't," Gayoso continued. "But consider the perspective of our masters in Stygia. For whatever reason, they chose to augment my troops. They appointed me commander of the current inquisition. One can only conclude that they consider me first among equals, as it were. They'll think it odd if I don't have charge of the supreme symbol of our rule. They might even feel that by hanging on to it, you're flouting their will."

  "Oh, I'm reasonably confident that whatever your master has arranged in the way of troop assignments and crusades," Mrs. Duquesne replied, "mine would clap me in irons if I conceded preference to the Anacreon of another Deathlord without express instructions to that effect. In other words, if you want the hourglass, you'll have to obtain such orders or take it by force."

  "And I'll help her defend it," Shellabarger said. "Do you think your Black Hawks and Grim Riders can defeat both our forces at the same time?"

  "Please," said Gayoso, raising his hand, "calm yourself. There's: no need for this hostility. I would never try to seize the hourglass against your will. I was merely suggesting a mote rational arrangement for taking care of it. If you don't think it's a good idea, than we'll forget it. Good evening to you both." The leather straps of his cuirass creaking, the carpet of Stygian iron mesh clinking beneath his high boots, he rose, picked up his rapier, draped the baldric over his shoulder, and opened the door. It wasn't possible to slip through the walls. Chain netting covered them, too, and the ceiling as well, a precaution to keep out assassins.

  Outside in the shadowy corridor stood a sentry in a green sash emblazoned with a black hourglass. The soldier held a barghest On a leash. The bloodhound, sculpted by some Masquer into a grotesque, sexless amalgam of man and canine, robbed of its intelligence by its gray iron muzzle, growled when Gayoso emerged. Though its keeper presumably had the creature firmly under control, Valentine had elected to stay well away from it. Sitting at the top of the rusty iron staircase, the dwarf jumped to his feet at his master's appearance. The silver bells on the horns of his red and yellow jester's cap and the upturned toes of his slippers jingled.

  "Good meeting?" Valentine asked.

  Gayoso felt a surge of rage, and lashed out with a kick. His toe caught the little man squarely in the face, breaking teeth and hurling him backward down the steps. The barghest bayed. Valentine crashed down on the landing below. Rickety as the staircase looked, the impact didn't
even make it quiver. Nothing that happened solely on the dead side of the Shroud could do that.

  Gayoso stared down the steps, intent on grinding the jester beneath his boots. Valentine scrambled to his feet and on down the next flight, vanishing from view.

  His disappearance took the edge: off Gayoso's anger. Halting, he closed his eyes and tried to compose himself. He didn't comprehend everything that had happened when he offered up his sacrifice to the Malfeans. The last few minutes, during which he'd apparently smashed his magic mirror, were maddeningly hazy. Still, he knew he'd changed, changed profoundly, but he didn't want everyone else to know it. Not just yet.

  Perhaps, he thought, he should procure another child and return to his secret haven for a second session of torture and murder. He sensed that would ease and refresh him as nothing else could. His body quivered in anticipation.

  When he felt calmer, he tramped on, soon exiting Mrs. Duquesne's section of the Citadel, a sprawling complex of derelict brick factories and warehouses, and entering his own domain. The labyrinthine Haunt stank of rot and corroding metal, and tiny, glinting Nihils pitted the walls. As he traversed the cavernous rooms and cramped passages, a number of his subordinates saluted him, and he responded tersely. In his present humor, their attentions annoyed him, even though he knew that if they'd been so foolish as to ignore him, their disrespect would have grated on him even more.

  At last he reached the top floor, where the echoes of ancient misery were strongest. The rifleman guarding his own door, a Black Hawk with features sculpted into the beaked and feathery visage of a bird of prey, snapped tO: attention. Gayoso nodded brusquely, then slipped through the wall into his office.

  He snapped his fingers and the three white tapers in the brass candelabrum burst into frigid, pale blue flame. And at the same time, he glimpsed a figure from the corner of his eye.

  For an instant the intruder seemed naked, scaly, and black as ink, with two pairs of shining, slit-pupiled eyes, and two crocodilian sets of jaws jutting from a single malformed head. But even as the Governor whirled, fumbling out his pistol, the other wraith changed into a plump, round-faced woman with freckles and an impish smile. A potpourri of religions symbols—crosses, stars of David, yin-yangs, mandalas, verses from the Koran in graceful Arabic calligraphy, and countless others—covered her voluminous purple gown. Black stains, the distinctive stigmata of a Pardoner, mottled the tips of her short, blunt fingers. All in all, she looked so normal and innocuous that Gayoso wondered if he'd truly seen her previous form at all.

  "Do us both a favor and don't shoot," she Said. "I'm on your side. You can call me Prudence."

  "How did you get in here?" he asked. The sentry outside was mostly for show. The invisible glyphs on the office walls were supposed to keep out intruders as efficiently as Mrs. Duquesne's spider webs of chain.

  Prudence waved her hand at a faintly hissing hairline crack in the floor. "Wherever there's one of those, even a little teeny one, I can generally manage to wriggle through."

  "You're a Spectre, then." The Hierarch's finger tightened on the trigger.

  "As are you, Manuel. We're brother and sister, you and I."

  Gayoso flinched. "No. At the end, I rejected the Shadow. I smashed the mirror."

  Suddenly, though he hadn't seen her cross the intervening space, she was beside him, her discolored fingertips resting on his: forearm. "You broke it because you didn't need it anymore. You're a different man now, aren't yOu?"

  He felt dazed, feverish, and filled with a compulsion to answer her question. It occurred to him that she was using her Arcanos. on him, but the realization had no power to break the spell. "Yes," he said. "When I gave the child to the Malfeans, when I committed what everyone says is the ultimate crime—and enjoyed it—I understood that a man needn't be constrained by laws, his supposed masters, or even his own conscience. He can do whatever he wants. And I want to rule Natchez. Not in the name of the King of Spain, Charon, or the Seven, and not as a member of a triumvirate. As its supreme and unassailable lord. I want everyone in the province to cower and grovel before me. After two hundred years of running the place, I deserve it."

  "Your contempt for any sort of limits derives from an unconscious comprehension that everything is meaningless," Prudence said. Her touch made his skin tingle. "Your urge to mastery is a manifestation of the need to destroy. Open your mind, and see."

  For an instant Gayoso perceived a tidal wave of absolute darkness crashing through creation, obliterating everything in its path. And he himself became one tiny droplet of acid at the crest of the tsunami, lending his strength and fury to the devastation.

  A part of him quailed from such a fate. Sensed that he'd been given one last chance, to step back from the abyss. But the impulse: to do so withered at once;.. For what could be more glorious than to merge with the only pure and valid thing in the universe?

  When the vision faded, he found himself sprawled on the floor. Prudence took him by the arm and helped him up. "Do you understand now?" she asked gently.

  " Yes.," he croaked, awestricken. "I felt Oblivion, working inside me and through me. It was.. .horrible and wonderful. Will I feel it again? Can I learn to do it without your help?"

  She nodded. "Certainly. As the vestiges of your humanity decay, as you come to fathom your new nature, the darkness will possess you more and more frequently, more and more completely, until finally you either fall into the Void or become its perfect avatar."

  His vision-induced ecstasy faded, abruptly giving way to a pang of anxiety. Taking stock, he realized his gun was no longer in his hand. It lay on the floor, where he'd obviously dropped it during his epiphany. He stepped away from Prudence, giving himself room to draw and wield his sword. "So I am a Spectre," he said. "Does that mean I have to abandon my old existence? Have you come to lead me away into the Tempest?"

  She sighed and shook her head. "No, because you don't look like a Spectre. You're a Doppelganger, like me. Our place is in the Shadowlands, exploiting our human facades to betray and destroy. So for heaven's sake, relax. Poor little lamb. You covet that throne so desperately."

  "Yes." He grimaced. "It's foolish, isn't it? The darkness showed me the whole world is filth. And yet I want this one pathetic little piece of it even more than I did before."

  "I told you," Prudence said, "your desire is one expression of the yearning for Oblivion, and its fulfillment will further our cause."

  "If it ever is fulfilled," Gayoso answered bitterly. "I now control more troops than either Shellabarger or Mrs. Duquesne, but not more than both of them together. Besides which, the old crone currently has custody of our mightiest weapon. And my new recruits are fresh out of Stygia, and loyal to the Smiling Lord. They might fight my fellow Governors if I could convince them the bastards intend to depose me, but under no circumstances would they back me if I tried to rebel and establish my own kingdom. It's maddening, really. I've never had so much power, and yet my goal seems as far away as ever."

  "Cheer up," Prudence said. "The apple is about to drop into your grasp. A certain horde of Spectres—my horde—has been working behind the scenes in Natchez for quite a while now. We want to conduct a sorcerous ritual and thus establish a very special base of operations here. It's the first step in a campaign against our ancient enemies."

  Gayoso lifted an eyebrow. '"Ancient enemies?'"

  "Like you," Prudence said, "we weren't always Spectres, nor did we shed all our human passions when we fell into corruption. Rest assured, our revenge will also advance the cause of Oblivion.

  "Before your rebirth, we intended to create so much turmoil and unrest that you and your fellow Hierarchs wouldn't even notice us conducting our real business. Until one day, when we were ready, we'd wrest the territory away from you. Now that you're one of us, however, it would be easier to work with you. Let's conquer the place together. You can crown yourself king, and lord it over your present vassals to your heart's content. Just permit us to pursue our purposes."


  "I don't object in principle," Gayoso said, frowning thoughtfully. "But do you have enough Spectres to overwhelm the resistance you'd encounter if you invaded openly? Every wraith along the Mississippi would take up arms against you, including my own army."

  "To he honest," Prudence said, "there aren't enough of us to pull it off. But things would be different if your soldiers were doomshades, too. Why do you think I appeared to you in the form of a Pardoner?"

  The Governor shrugged. "I don't know."

  "Because I am one, brother dear, just as nearly all the other Pardoners hereabouts are Doppelgangers, also. As you might guess, we've been practicing a somewhat different version of our Arcanos. Unbeknownst to our petitioners, we strengthened their Shadows instead of weakening them. The goal was to spread fear and chaos, and demoralize the populace. A necessary preparation for our ceremony.

  "With no way to control who consulted us, or how often, that was all our masquerade could achieve. Now there are other, more intriguing possibilities. It's a truism, isn't it, that Heresy is a tool of the Void. It follows, then, that your inquisitors are exposed to corrupting influences at every turn. To safeguard their psyches, their commander could order them to visit a Pardoner on a regular basis. Gradually their Shadows will grow stronger and stronger, until, on the night of our coup, my friends and I will contrive to make them dominant. Imagine how surprised the minions of the Beggar and Emerald Lords will be when their fellow Legionnaires suddenly turn on them. Trapped between your troops and mine, they'll crumble."

  Gayoso felt a surge of excitement. He almost imagined he felt a heart pounding in his breast, a pulse quickening in his wrists and neck. "If you really can do what you say—"

  "We can."

  "—I think the scheme might actually might work."

  Prudence said, "Then we have a deal."

  "One question first. Who are these 'enemies' of yours?" He smiled. "I trust I'm not one of them."