Dark Kingdoms

by Richard Lee Byers

  Demented laughter shrilled through the air. A black shape like a huge bat—or someone shrouded in a flapping hooded cloak—swooped through the doorway.

  The Smiling Lord uttered a word sotto voce, and the dark shape flew apart in a blast of flame. Montrose gasped in horror, then saw that Louise hadn't been wearing the cape—which she'd evidently snatched from one of the shelves—after all. She'd been charging behind it, using it to shield her advance, and now she opened fire. Her bullets rang and whined as they ricocheted off the Deathlord's plate.

  Prince Ares glared at the Sister of Athena. Montrose struggled frantically, but still couldn't tear himself free of his liege lord's grip. Coils of shadow coalesced, then closed around Louise like a clenching fist. But at the same time, she reached out with her psychokinesis, seized a blazing tatter of cloak, and dropped it atop the Hierarch's head.

  Even War Incarnate couldn't contend with an infinite series of threats and distractions. Eventually, if his foes kept the pressure on, his dominance of one aspect of the battle or another had to falter. And now, at last, as the Smiling Lord fumbled at his burning blindfold, Montrose felt the crushing pressure on his body diminish. Drawing on both his waning strength and powers of levitation, the Cavalier jerked himself to his feet and whipped his arm around in an elbow strike to the Deathlord's head.

  Prince Ares lurched a step backwards. Montrose grabbed the halberd and wrenched it from the other wraith's gauntleted hands, then rammed the spearhead through his breastplate. The bands of constricting shadow dissolved, and Louise emptied her gun into the Deathlord. This time the shots punched holes in his plate.

  But the Smiling Lord still didn't go down. He yanked the burning rag off his head and snapped it at Montrose like a whip. The flames exploded outward in a blast like some colossal dragon's breath, smashing Montrose backward, stunning him, burning him, and chilling him to the bone. His eyes swimming with afterimages from the flash, he murkily saw the Prince of Bloodshed pounce after him, his steel- jacketed hands stiffened into karate swords.

  Scrambling backward, Montrose tried to menace the Smiling Lord with the head of the halberd, but the armored wraith pressed him too closely for him to bring the weapon to bear. The best he could manage was to clutch it across his body like a quarterstaff and use the shaft to block his master's strikes. An unexpected kick to the shin of the Cavalier's wounded leg bought a flash of pain and nearly knocked him down.

  Bellowing a kiai, a knife flashing in either hand, Louise rushed in and attacked the Smiling Lord from behind. The Prince of Murder whirled to face her, and mystic energies rippled the air around him. She sidestepped just in time to avoid a bolt of sizzling light which blasted a hole in the far wall. Meanwhile, Montrose finally managed to step back, point the halberd, and thrust it into the Deathlord's spine.

  The Smiling Lord lurched forward and fell to one knee, his genouillere clanging against the floor. Montrose leaned on the halberd, driving it deeper. Louise stabbed the Hierarch monarch in the neck, slamming one dagger through his gorget and then the other.

  Montrose couldn't see through the Smiling Lord's plate, but he could feel the eruption of black fire in his master's flesh. A bit of the power resonated up the halberd's shaft to sting his hands. The armored form toppled forward. Judging from the hollow rattle when it struck the floor, and the way it sprawled motionless afterward, limbs twisted at unnatural angles, there was no one inside it anymore.

  As Montrose stared down at the empty, battered suit of plate, a bewildering knot of emotions churned inside him. Sorrow that he and Louise had been compelled to slay the lord to whom he'd vowed his allegiance, a generous master till Demetrius poisoned his mind. Sheer disbelief that the two of them had managed to destroy a god.

  Louise touched him on the arm. "Are you all right?" she said. "Your wounds..."

  When he turned and saw the love and concern in her blue eyes, saw that she'd come through the struggle relatively unscathed, he felt a swell of gratitude which momentarily drove every other feeling from his mind. "The wound under my left arm is bad," he said. The fury of battle had enabled him to shut out much of the pain, but now it throbbed. "I'll just have to cope with it for the time being."

  "What happened to the spell?" she asked. "I can't see it. My Arcanos doesn't deal with such things."

  He tried to open his Harbinger senses. In his injured, depleted state, even that simple operation was difficult, but after a few seconds he dimly discerned the magical structure the Smiling Lord had created. "It's disintegrating," he said. "The channels to the whirlpool have all but closed."

  "Thank the Bright Powers," she said. "I don't think the tower is shaking so much, either."

  He realized she was right. He listened, straining, and caught the muffled boom of an explosion and a faint rat-tat-tat of automatic weapons fire whispering through the floor. "Yes, the earthquake is subsiding. Unfortunately, the other Deathlords are still fighting on the lower levels."

  "Won't they stop?" asked Louise. "Now that the enchantment is broken."

  Montrose sighed. "I hope so. But it's possible they don't realize they were bewitched in the first place. And even if they do, they still don't understand how the doomshades sowed mistrust among them. Each still regards his peers as implacable enemies, and therefore, at least some of them may think that now that open war has broken out, the wisest course is to fight it through to the end."

  Louise frowned. "You're saying we have to go down there and convince them to break it up."

  "I suppose I am," Montrose replied. It certainly didn't seem fair, when they'd done so much already. When his wound was hurting worse with each passing second. "And it might be a good idea to bring along something to capture their attention." A bit reluctantly, knowing it was a crime for a lesser being to touch it, he bent over, reaching for the Smiling Lord's visor.

  As soon as he started to move, agony flared down his left side, and he fell atop his former master's armor. Waves of ravenous shadow licked at his substance. Louise cried out and crouched beside him.

  He rolled over and tried to smile at her. It seemed to take all the strength he had. "I'm all right," he said. "I just lost my balance."

  "You're not all right," she said, "and you shouldn't move. I'll go to the Deathlords, then bring you a Usurer."

  Montrose shook his head. "The Seven think I'm a condemned traitor, but at least they know me. They're more likely to heed me than you." He took hold of the Smiling Lord's mask, and a sort of shock sang up his arm. Though he hadn't established telepathic communication with it—he assumed he'd have to put it on for that—he was perceiving the powerful, inhuman intelligence dwelling inside the steel. "Help me up."

  Louise hesitated.

  Montrose wondered just how badly hurt he looked, how badly hurt he was. Rumor claimed that the Smiling Lord's halberd was far more poisonous than common darksteel, that any wound it made festered with a dreadful malignancy. As far as Montrose knew, he was the first of Prince Ares's opponents to survive long enough to assess whether the story was true. "Please. In your place, I wouldn't want to do it either. But we knew we were risking our existences when we embarked on our mission. I can't flinch now, not after coming so far."

  "Like you didn't flinch from invading Scotland," she said grimly, "even know that the young King had sold you out, and you were marching to your death. All right, but you aren't going to perish this time. I won't allow it." She dragged him upright and put her arm around him. It would have been easier if she could have used her psychokinesis, but no doubt, like his, her mystical abilities were entirely depleted. "Lean on me."

  "I'm afraid I'll have to." Afraid that his numb, trembling hands would drop the Smiling Lord's mask, he stowed it inside his shirt. "Let's go."

  They limped toward the doorway. His pain ebbed, but now time seemed to be skipping along, as if existence were a film with sections missing. "Stay awake," said Louise. "Talk to me."

  "All right," he mumbled. His head seemed full of mud, and he had
to grope to find something to say. "You waited a long time before you took any action against my...against the Smiling Lord. I was worried that something had happened to you."

  They trudged through the trefoil arch and headed down the stairs. His flesh began to ache again, though without dispelling the cottony feeling in his mind. "I didn't want to risk revealing my presence until I thought of something genuinely useful to do," said Louise. "You see, from the moment the fight began, it was obvious you had no chance at all."

  Montrose laughed, then stiffened at the resulting jolt of pain. "That isn't a very charitable assessment."

  "Don't get huffy," she replied. Her arm began to slip from around him, and, with a grunt, she shifted her grip. "You're one of the most formidable fighters I've ever seen. But he really did move like the god of war, quick and sure, yet with no sense of urgency at all. He didn't even bother to raise his Arcanos against you."

  "Probably because if he'd activated his mystical powers, it would have leeched a bit of energy away from his spell. Still, I grudgingly concede your point. Dueling one on one, my situation was hopeless."

  Louise half lifted him off the bottom riser. "I don't suppose you'd better try to fly us back down the tower," she said.

  "Not unless you're prepared for an exceedingly hard landing."

  "Then we'll look for an elevator." They shuffled down the gloomy corridor, past the caskets standing upright in their niches. For a moment Montrose had the mad notion than one of the boxes might open its lid, inviting him inside.

  "We were saying that the Smiling Lord wasn't likely to have any difficulty killing me," he said.

  "Yes," she said, "and I could see that he wouldn't have any trouble slaughtering the both of us, either, not if I just jumped out and had at him. Our only chance was to play on his paranoia. To rattle him. I'm glad you had the presence of mind to pick up on what I was doing. It wasn't until you told him that the other Deathlords had come to get him that he really went over the edge."

  "You did the difficult part, driving him to the precipice." His legs went rubbery, and she nearly dropped him. "I just gave him the last little push. I love you."

  "And I love you. It's galling to think of all the time we wasted apart, neither knowing the other had joined the Restless. But it's all right. Now we can be together forever."

  He tried to promise that they would indeed, but a wave of faintness stole the words away.

  The two ghosts stumbled around a corner. Before them, the corridor terminated in a staircase. The flights spiraling endlessly into the gloomy depths seemed to swirl. For a moment, Montrose thought that he and the Heretic nun were back in Charon's secret vault, peering down at the black whirlpool.

  "Well," said Louise heavily, "we didn't find an elevator. Just this."

  "There may be an elevator," said the Scot, "behind a secret door or something. But this time I can't see the path. I'm too muddled. I'm sorry." His incapacity made him feel worthless and ashamed. His eyes pulsed as if they could still shed tears.

  "It's okay," said Louise. "If we have to walk down—" Suddenly her knees buckled, and they both fell to the cold, hard marble floor.

  Montrose fumbled at her with hands gone numb and dead. "Louise!" he croaked. "Louise!"

  "It's my turn to be sorry," she gasped. "I'm out of strength. I used so much, performing all those Spook tricks, and then the Smiling Lord hurt me with those steel gauntlets and his magick. But I just need a minute!"

  Black fire burned inside him, hollowing him out. He felt as fragile as an eggshell, or a smoke ring. "When you recover," he said, "go on without me. I'm afraid I've gone as far as I'm ever going to go."

  "Don't say that!" she cried. "Don't give up!"

  He tried to think of a proper farewell, something that might give her a measure of comfort, then noticed just how deep the silence was. "Either I'm losing my hearing," he said, "or the Seven did had the sense to stop fighting, even without a scolding from you and me."

  Phosphorescence flowered in the hallway, and the Emerald Lord and the Skeletal Lord materialized inside the glow. The silver rat riding his shoulder once again, the angel in the ivory skull mask knelt beside Montrose and laid his hand on the wound below his arm. The fires of Oblivion guttered out. The Scot felt his body take on substance, and the puncture closed.

  By the time the Queen's army reached Woldenberg Riverfront Park, the sun had crept above the horizon, only to lose itself behind a rampart of gray clouds. Despite the overcast, many of the abambo, both the zebra-caped warriors who had participated in the raid on Barracks Street and the supporters who'd swelled their ranks on their march across the French Quarter afterward, had chosen to don sunglasses to protect their hypersensitive eyes. To Bellamy, they looked as if they were striving to be the hippest collection of ghosts around. Had he not been so tense, he might have found the sight amusing.

  He supposed he had a right to feel edgy, after Chester had nearly decapitated him. When he'd awakened with his head still sticking through the broken windshield, he'd found that he'd slipped back to the cold side of the Shroud, but he knew that that alone couldn't have saved him. Had the Creole still been functional, he could have uncoupled himself from the rental truck and finished his enemy off with his hands. Bellamy could only assume that the bespectacled ghost had abruptly succumbed to injuries sustained when the vehicle crashed.

  And whether it nourished his shadowself or no, he couldn't help feeling a cold satisfaction at the thought of Chester's demise, though it was nothing to the pleasure he'd feel when he finally took revenge on Dunn.

  Thanks to the distortions of the Shroud, the park looked as ruinous by day as by night. The aquarium seemed to be crumbling into rubble, Nihils hissed and glittered in the brick walkways, and the plants were either brown and withered or else spotted and foul-smelling with black, mushy decay.

  Despite the dawn, the lines of tall, barrow-flame torches still burned, lighting the way to Geffard's gingerbread-encrusted black riverboat. The carved skull leered between the twin smokestacks. A throng of spirits had gathered before the sidewheeler, and more crowded the decks. Many appeared to be unarmed, and even those who clearly were warriors hadn't arranged themselves into any sort of battle formation.

  The FBI agent lifted his hand. "Hold up a second."

  Astarte turned. She was still having trouble staying in character. On the trek to the river, she'd smiled and waved at some of the abambo they passed, more like a beauty-pageant winner riding a Mardi Gras float than.0 grim warrior queen hunting down her archenemy. "What's up?" she asked merrily.

  "By now, somebody must have told Geffard that we were on our way," Antoine rasped. "But he hasn't gotten ready to fight, or run away either."

  "Maybe he's going to throw himself on our mercy," said Astarte.

  The gator snorted. "After laying a death curse on M—on you, Your Majesty? No way. He knows better."

  "From the looks of things, he's spent his time gathering as many abambo;^: possible* irrespective of their martial prowess or political sympathies," Titus said. "To serve as witnesses, perhaps. But to what?"

  "I don't know," Bellamy said, "but I'm not thrilled about it. He's trying to set us up for something. Even so, having come this far, we can't just turn and slink away. It would convince everybody that Your Majesty fc weak and afraid, and Geffard would just start building a new doll collection."

  "So let's go arrest the son of a bitch!" said Astarte, grinning. "You show us how you Junior G-men take care of business." She brandished her spear and strode forward. Her soldiers followed.

  Bellamy quickened his pace to catch up to her. "Calm down," lie whispered. "Stay alert, stay in character, and let Titus: and Antoine do the talking."

  She rolled her eyes, "I know, I know, for the thousandth time, I know.. Chill already."

  As the procession advanced, the mortals in their path—joggers, commuters hurrying to their jobs, and shuffling, ragged, malodorous homeless people—paled, gasped, and scurried out of the way,
though in all likelihood, none of them could have explained why. Bellamy caught the drone of the wraiths ahead, chattering to one another, and the bouncy strains of the orchestra playing a Cole Porter song in the Twisted Mirror's central cabin.

  The mass of spectators split in two, clearing a space before the gangplank. Antoine glowered up at the two burly, bare-chested guards at the top of the ramp. "We've come for Geffard," he said.

  "I'll see i; he wants to talk to you," said the bodyguard on the left. Marie's supporters growled at the show of disrespect. Other wraiths murmured in shock, or in some: cases, amusement. The warrior turned and ascended a companionway, his machete dangling from his massive fist. He climbed to the uppermost level of the vessel and entered the wheelhouse. After half a minute he reemerged, and Geffard stepped out after him.

  The loa looked particularly respondent in his ornate captain's uniform. Somehow, even the wan gray sunlight was enough to make the gold braid shine. He paused in the doorway to light a cheroot, kindling it by magick, and the scent of cherry-flavored tobacco tinged the air. He smiled down at the spirits assembled on the quay. "Your Majesty," he said. "I'm delighted to see you up and about. I'd heard you were suffering some sort of malaise."

  "You're under attest for treason," said Antoine. The Creoles in the crowd muttered to one another. "Come down and give yourself up."

  "May I ask," said Geffard, "precisely what form this treason supposedly took?"

  Titus gave Bellamy a glance, silently asking whether they should keep talking or storm the boat without further ado. After a moment's hesitation, Bellamy gave him a nod, signaling his preference for the former. He couldn't imagine how Geffard thought he was going to turn the tables on them, yet the traitor must have some sort of notion. But perhaps the loa simply overestimated his powers of persuasion; during his career in law enforcement, Bellamy had met a number of con artists who believed they could talk their way out of anything. And it would be worth letting the Haitian protest his innocence to all and sundry if it enabled the Queen's men to take him into custody without the necessity of another battle.