Dark Kingdoms

by Richard Lee Byers

  He plummeted, dodged around a barbican, and sped on toward a low, sprawling, ruddy sandstone structure resembling a gargantuan temple from the ancient world, a flat roof with pediments at either end supported by rows of corinthian columns. Unwilling to waste time decelerating fully, he touched down hard on the cobbled path outside the structure. The shock jolted up his legs.

  He hastily set Louise on her feet. Her knees buckled. He grabbed her and gave her a shake.

  "You have to walk," he said, "and right now!"

  She drew herself up straight. "All right."

  "In here." Drawing his rapier, he led her between two of the pillars. A scarlet mist smelling of blood and excrement sprang into existence around them, concealing all but the nearest columns and any trace of the world outside. Louise gave a start of surprise.

  "Keep moving," he said, "we have to get farther in." He stalked on, peering about, reflexively counting his steps. In the old days, he'd never taken more than nine before the ordeal commenced.

  This time, he only managed six. Then a man in the red coat and conical helmet of an eighteenth-century English soldier stepped out of the fog, bayoneted musket shouldered and ready to fire. Montrose sidestepped, and the ball whizzed past his head. Sword extended, the Hierarch charged, used a coupe to deceive the apparition's attempt to parry his blade, and stabbed him in the chest.

  The soldier fell backwards, shuddered violently, and lay still. The corpse remained for a moment, giving its slayer a chance to contemplate it, then blinked out of existence.

  "Stay alert," Montrose said to Louise. "He was only the first of many." They hurried on.

  The red mist turned gray, and Montrose found himself walking arm and arm down an alley beside a stocky little man in an opera hat and cloak. The night smelled of burnt coal oil, rotting produce, and horse droppings, whispered with the tinny strains of the bawdy song leaking from a music hall somewhere nearby.

  Montrose sensed Louise several yards behind him, strolling along with a newfound companion of her own. He wondered if his escort and hers were identical, but not enough to twist around and look. Better to devote his energies to trying to finish this encounter with a minimum of pain and inconvenience.

  Pivoting, he attempted to punch the little man in the kidney, only to find that his arm had lost much of its force, speed, and accuracy. The blow glanced harmlessly off. The little man grabbed him and thrust him backwards, slamming his head into a brick wall.

  "Whore," the man in the top hat said, his breath redolent of brandy and tobacco. "Whore." Gripping Montrose by the throat, he reached inside his coat and brought out a long knife.

  Knowing he had no chance, that the insult to his head had completed the job of rendering him defenseless, the Hierarch still scrabbled feebly at the other man's face. Until the knife opened his belly and his viscera came sliding out, at which point his arms flopped down, inert. The murderer dumped him on the ground, knelt beside him, and kept on cutting.

  Montrose felt unavoidable agony and dread, but beneath them he seethed with impatience. Very well, he thought, you won. Kill me. Get it over with.

  At last his pounding heartbeat stopped. Despite himself, he silently screamed his terror and denial, then toppled into darkness. An instant later, shaken but intact, he was standing among the columns once again. The scarlet mist now smelled of burnt gunpowder and mustard gas.

  "Dear God," moaned Louise.

  He turned. Despite her mask, he could tell from the way she carried herself that she was on the verge of collapse, and small wonder. She'd strained herself using her Arcanos to get them inside the Seat, fought three battles since, and just now presumably endured a ghastly albeit temporary demise.

  "Sit down," he said. "I think we're far enough inside the pavilion to take a rest. We won't have to contend with any more phantoms until we start moving again."

  She flopped down onto the stone floor. He looked and listened for pursuing Legionnaires, detected none, then squatted beside her.

  "I gather I just met Jack the Ripper," she said.

  "Or a facsimile of him."

  "Lucky me. But what is this place?"

  "The Beggar Lord's vassals have special retreats in which to contemplate Mystery," he replied. "The Smiling Lord's subjects, all of whom theoretically perished violently, need an academy where they can study war and murder, and this, the Crimson Gallery, is it. Here we wander in the mist, killing and being killed, absorbing the lessons to be learned thereby. Even if you don't attain any sort of esoteric insights—and I must confess that I never did—it's superb martial training."

  She snorted. "My sifu would have loved it, but I'm not quite that dedicated. Why did you bring me here?"

  "I planned to slip into the fortress unobserved. Alas, the beast in the ditch made that impossible."

  "I take it you didn't know the creature was there."

  He grimaced. "No. And people are always tinkering with the defenses. I should have been on the lookout for something that had been added since the last time I reviewed them. I apologize for my stupidity."

  "Don't be silly. You did your best, and you got us in. No one could have done any better." She lifted her hand and let it drop again, as if she'd wanted to touch him but thought better of it. He felt grateful for her forbearance, yet for a moment regretted it as well.

  "Thank you for your tolerance," he said. "At any rate, after the soldiers spotted us, our task of infiltration became more complicated. I had to shake them off our tail. And the best way to do that was to duck in here."

  "Why?"

  "Well, for one thing, we could scarcely afford another second out in the open, and the Gallery was close at hand. But I had another reason, too. I'm hopeful that the guards lost sight of us when we flew around the barbican, and didn't see us enter. In which case they'll have to mount a search of the general area. Still, they'll follow us in here eventually, but when they do, they too will have to cope with the mist and the apparitions. That should enable us to stay ahead of them."

  "ThereV no way to turn the magic off?"

  "Not if we're lucky. Charon created this place himself. I suspect that even the Smiling Lord doesn't know how the enchantment works."

  "Then our situation does sound promising," she said. "As long as we're not bottled up inside here."

  "We shouldn't be. The place is disorienting—it's much bigger inside than out, and the fog dampens sound almost as much as it hinders sight—but I've spent a lot of time in it, and I have my Harbinger's senses to guide me. There are patterns of warped space here, similar to those in the Tempest. Nothing I can manipulate, but useful as signposts. We should be able to find our way through to a secret passage I know of, and that in turn will take us into the palace."

  "But first we have more slaughter to endure."

  "Yes." He hesitated. "I always visited the Gallery alone before. That was how you were supposed to do it. I can't predict exactly how the magic will deal with the two of us being together. Sometimes we may share the same encounter, as when the musketeer came at us. Sometimes the power may separate us so we can each have our own private version of the same experience, as happened with Jack. Or it may conceivably whisk one of us away into some artificial environment and leave the other behind.

  "Either way, when a threat appears, kill it instantly. Should the Gallery cast you in the role of a murderer, dispatch your victim with the same urgency, no matter how sickening the prospect. Your only goal is to conclude the experience as quickly as possible, so we can move on."

  "And besides, the apparitions aren't real," she said. "I understand."

  "When an encounter kills you, remember that your death isn't genuine, either, no matter how much it feels like it. The pain and fear are probably inevitable, but don't let them unhinge your mind."

  She chuckled. "You don't expect much of a girl, do you, James?"

  He smiled. "Of an ordinary lass, no. But I should think that ferocious rebel leaders take such petty annoyances in stride. Now, if
I vanish—"

  "Don't panic. Stand and wait until the magic has had its way with you and sends you back." She started to clamber stiffly to her feet. Straightening up himself, he thought of offering her his hand. But he hesitated, and then it was. too late.

  "Are you ready to move on?" he asked.

  "I'd better be, don't you think? Your Legionnaire friends are going to turn up eventually. Which way?"

  He gestured. "That one. I'll go first."

  "My hero," she said, her voice dripping good-natured mockery.

  They stalked on, weapons at the ready. Now smelling of charred flesh, the red vapor swirled, alternately shrouding and revealing the rows of pillars. Suddenly, hooves drummed on the sandstone floor, A man-at-arms on a destrier hurtled out of the murk, lance couched. Montrose leaped out of the animal's path. Louise's crossbow twanged, and the bolt caught the war-horse in the throat.

  Mount and rider went down with a tremendous clangor of armor. Montrose darted toward the lancer, intent on finishing him, but both phantoms, man and animal alike, disappeared before he could. Presumably the fall had broken the medieval warrior's neck.

  "Drat," said Louise. "When the horse Went, it took my quarrel with it." She extracted a fresh one from her quiver.

  When she'd reloaded, they prowled on. Though her departure was silent, Montrose sensed it when the Gallery carried her away. He whirled, and sure enough, she was gone.

  All he could do was await her return, struggling to curb his impatience and anxiety. What if she was gone; for hours? Or what if the magic subjected her to such a protracted, excruciating death that no one could emerge from it with sanity intact? Perhaps he didn't truly comprehend the forces at work in the Crimson Gallery any better than he'd grasped the hazards of Weeping Bay. For all he actually knew, the hall might subject her to the final death.

  An indistinct, muffled noise sounded off to his right. He turned, peered, saw nothing. He hoped his ears were playing tricks on him. Then, without warning, Louise blinked back into view, kneeling, clutching her chest, the crossbow resting upside down on the floor beside her. "Are you all right?" he said.

  She lifted her head. Gazed out of her mask with tortured eyes. "I was a zoo keeper," she whimpered. "I took care, of the elephants. And Sadie just nudged me off my feet, :put her head on my chest, and pressed."

  "Take a deep—"

  "I loved her. I took good care of her. Why would she want to hurt me?" Louise sobbed, her head lurching downward.

  Montrose grasped her chin and compelled her to look at him. "It wasn't real," he said. "You aren't the zoo keeper. You've never so much as laid eyes on Sadie. It's entirely, possible that neither the brute nor her victim ever truly existed. The encounter pulled you in deep—they do that sometimes—but you have to be Louise again. I'm afraid the guards may already be inside the hall."

  The Heretic shuddered. "Yes. I'm fine. Let's go." Montrose took hold of her forearm and helped her up.

  Peering this way and that, senses straining, they crept forward. The dank mist fingered their faces, bringing them the stench of corpses bloating in the sun. Montrose sensed something he'd never felt in the Gallery before, an indefinable change in the atmosphere, almost as if a storm were building. Then, abruptly as always, swirling red gloom gave way to the wan sunlight of a rainy summer day.

  Looking down at a sea of upturned faces, he recognized instantly where and when he was. He was standing on the scaffold by the Market Cross on the morning of his execution, clad in the same clothing he'd worn then. White gloves. A red suit richly trimmed with silver and Brussels lace. He remembered thinking that it looked well with his auburn lovelocks.

  His situation stunned him, evoked a profound, unreasoning horror that, he suspected, no other scenario could have matched. Why was the Gallery forcing him to relive an actual event from his own career? It never had before.

  There was no way to know. All he could do was endure the experience, preferably while maintaining his composure. According to his biographers, he'd managed it admirably the first time around, so surely he could do the same again. He just hoped he could avoid making the same asinine declarations he'd uttered in 1650. Forgiving his 'tormentors. Praying for young Charles. How .could he say such things without bursting into bitter laughter?

  Or rather, how, he thought suddenly, surprising himself, could he repeat them without withering in shame» given that he'd so thoroughly betrayed the ideals which had inspired them? Scowling, he pushed the ridiculous thought aside. Perhaps his Shadow had slipped it into his mind.

  Looking for the hangman, he turned, and then gave a start of surprise. In place of his original executioner, a, tender-hearted fellow who'd wept as he. performed his office, VanLengen stood before him, flanked by a pair of frowning soldiers. And the traitor's normally ruddy, well-fed face was pale and slack with fear.

  It was the Dutchman's manifest dread, along with the position of the guards, which alerted Montrose to the truth of his situation. This wasn't an exact recreation of his execution after all. This time, he was the hangman, and VanLengen was the one about to dance at the end of three fathoms of rope.

  The Hierarch reminded himself that it was all an illusion. Still, it was a taste of revenge, the only one he'd ever know. And he had to play out the scene in any case, Smirking uncontrollably, he advanced on VanLengen. The prisoner tried to recoil, but the soldiers grabbed him and held him in place. The Spectators growled at his display of cowardice.

  "Would you care to kneel and pray?" Montrose asked with bogus solicitude,; 'T seem to recall that it made me feel a little better."

  "Please," VanLengen said, "I beg you, don't do this. I was his ghoul! I didn't have a choice."

  "I meant, pray to God," said the Scot. "I can assure you, you'll have no mercy from me. Give me your hands. Quickly! Or the guards will assist you, and most likely cause you pain in the process. Either way, the result will be the same."

  Shaking, VanLengen obeyed. Montrose picked up a length of rope and knotted the prisoner's wrists together, tying them as tightly as possible, making the cord bite painfully deep. Then he hung the manifesto—the death wanant—around the traitor's neck. Finally, in a parody, of courtesy, he waved his arm at the ladder. "After you, my faithful lieutenant."

  "No, please—" VanLengen whined.

  "Climb it or I'll fetch the noose down and Strangle you slowly."

  The Judas mounted the rungs, and Montrose followed him up. At the top, shivering now himself with eagerness, the Scot seized the dangling halter and placed it around his victim's throat.

  "My hangman bade me nod to signal when I was ready for him to turn me off," Montrose said. "Permit me to extend the same courtesy to you."

  "Please," said VanLengen. "I'll give you anything, I'll do anything—"

  "Too late," the Hietarch replied. "We haven't got all day." He shoved the prisoner off his perch.

  The rope thrummed and then jerked taut. VanLengen's neck cracked, and the gibbet groaned. The Dutchman's legs pumped for a moment, as if he were running through the air, and then he hung inert, swinging back and forth.

  The crowd cheered. Montrose threw back his head and raised his arms, quaking with exultation. Illusory or not, this was one of the most ecstatic moments of his long existence.

  The world turned dim and scarlet. Through coiling strands of vapor, he glimpsed Louise peering warily about. Though he knew he should rejoin her as expeditiously as possible, his heart cried out in protest. He wasn't ready to depart. Couldn't he remain just a few more seconds to gloat over VanLengen's corpse?

  As if in response to his wish, the red murk vanished. Abruptly he found himself on the platform at the foot of the ladder once more. Despite his joy, he felt a twinge of anxiety. He'd made his kill, so why hadn't the encounter ended?

  He couldn't even guess. He'd just have to continue to play his part and hope for the best. He turned toward the condemned man, expecting to see VanLengen, but this time it was the Marquess of Hamilton, with his flowing
black hair and thin, straight mustache, who stood, looking dazed and sick, between the guards. The Stygian felt his lips stretch into a grin.

  As he proceeded with the second execution, Montrose struggled to remember that he had cause to be on his guard. To act with detachment. But the pleasures of slaying another of his betrayers proved irresistible. By the time he had herded Hamilton up the ladder, prodding him on with the point of a knife he'd borrowed from one of the soldiers, he was giggling like a madman. And when the prisoner hit the end of the rope, the resulting burst of ecstasy was even more intense than before. For a moment the Hierarch thought he'd faint and plummet from the ladder himself, but he didn't care.

  The Edinburgh square dissolved into a dim view of Louise and her environs. He could tell from the hunch of her shoulders and the way she twisted back and forth, like an animal at bay, that now she was genuinely frightened. Perhaps he'd been gone a long time, even though it only seemed like a few minutes to him. Or perhaps she heard the Smiling Lord's soldiers drawing near.

  In a dull, fumbling way, he still remembered that he was supposed to return to her. Yet at the same time, giddy with bloodlust, he yearned to see if the magic would deliver another of his enemies into his hands. He was, he thought with a momentary flicker of insight, like a drunkard who knows he shouldn't imbibe yet gropes for the bottle anyway, but the realization failed to dampen his desire.

  The Sister of Athena vanished. Finding himself at the base of the gibbet, Montrose turned toward the prisoner, then crowed in delight. This time it was Archibald Campbell, the Marquess and Eighth Earl of Argyll himself, with his sour, intelligent face and fleshy beak of a nose, who'd come to die. Argyll the schemer. Argyll the coward. Argyll, the cruelest and most relentless of his enemies. Argyll, whom he'd humiliated repeatedly on the battlefield, yet who'd laid him low in the end with lies and double-dealing.

  Smiling pleasantly, Montrose sauntered toward him. "Good morning, my lord," he said. "I hope you enjoyed your ride in the cart."