Dark Kingdoms

by Richard Lee Byers

  "What's wrong?" asked Louise.

  "There's a Maelstrom brewing," Montrose replied. A cold, stinging wind began to moan, lashing the grasses and bushes this way and that. Thunder cracked, and a dazzling flash of lightning split the sky. When the glare faded, the wasteland seemed darker than it had been before. Strands of a deeper blackness writhed through the murk like tentacles questing for prey.

  "What do we do?" asked Louise, her voice steady.

  Montrose peered about, seeking shelter, or a spatial rift leading to another part of the Tempest, where the storm might not be occurring. There was nothing, not along this portion of the road. But as every veteran Legionnaire knew, stelae like the one ahead often marked the site of a portal between dimensions. "For the time being, we press on," he said. He freed the rope hanging from his saddle, knotted one end to his saddle horn, and tossed her the other. Her steed squawked and ruffled its feathers. "Attach this to your saddle. It will help us stay together."

  Louise tied off the line. "Done."

  Groping in a saddlebag, the Scot found his glossy black ceramic mask. It ought to provide at least a bit of protection against the wind. He pressed it to his face, then kicked the paint into motion.

  The storm wailed and tried to rip his Inquisitor's cloak from his back. His eyes soon felt as if they'd been scraped raw. Squinting and blinking, he kept looking for traversible fractures in space, a cave, or even a large indentation in one of the hillsides. Still nothing.

  His Shadow had been relatively quiet since his experience in the Crimson Gallery, as if his visionary confrontation with his old enemies had broken its power. Now, however, nourished by the Maelstrom, the parasite bestirred itself to whisper that his Harbinger powers were inadequate to cope with the present danger. His ineptitude was going to destroy him, and Louise with him.

  Scowling, he strove to block the taunts from his conscious mind, assuring himself that he and Louise were going to survive. Honed by the demands he'd placed on it during the course of his recent adventures, his Arcanos was stronger than ever, and even in the old days, it had seen him through fouler storms than this. At least so far there weren't even any Spectres springing from the darkness. The Legions had evidently done a good job of keeping the area clear.

  He twisted back and forth. Everywhere he looked, space kinked and bubbled in a continual ferment, but none of the fractures endured long enough for him to exploit it. He glanced back to check on Louise. Now wearing her own golden mask, her shoulders hunched against the gale, she gave him a nod to show him she was all right. But her mount wasn't faring as well. The wind had torn away most of its plumage and gouged raw white lesions across much of its body.

  Montrose faced forward again. He mustn't stray from the road. Some ancient Harbinger far more adept than himself had determined its course and laid powerful enchantments on the paving stones. It was almost certainly safer than the ground to either side.

  With a clatter, a nearby stand of plants resembling white bamboo stalks with long, serrated leaves transformed. Grew taller. Sprouted mandibles, multi-jointed legs, antennae, and triangular sets of bulbous faceted eyes. Montrose's stallion whinnied and reared. Struggling to control the animal, the Cavalier simultaneously pointed the CAR-15.

  But he didn't need it. The creatures' metamorphosis from plant to insect was incomplete and unsuccessful. Still rooted in the earth, evidently trying to free themselves, they writhed frantically, spastically, and in a matter of seconds their exertions tore their spindly bodies to pieces.

  Montrose and Louise rode on. A jagged bolt of lightning flared, glinting on a small, squat form ahead. For an instant, he could have sworn it was Valentine, then saw it was actually only a vaguely human-shaped rock.

  A split second later, images cascaded through his mind, flickering by so rapidly he could only barely make them out for what they were. Valentine snooping in Montrose's quarters in the Citadel at Natchez, crowing with delight when he found the traitorous journal. The dwarf, now clad in conventional modern attire rather than motley, accepting a green sash from Gayoso. Mike Fink mauling the little man.

  Montrose knew the Tempest was conducive to portents and revelations, and now it was evidently telling him that Valentine had betrayed him, and been well rewarded for his efforts. And that the jester had eventually run afoul of Mike—or was destined to. Perhaps he was plotting to ruin Montrose's lieutenant as well. His master Gayoso might well relish the former outlaw's downfall.

  Montrose's muscles clenched with hatred. He'd offered Valentine an honorable way to advance himself, and the wretch had turned him down. Evidently his nature was so corrupt that he simply preferred skulking and double-dealing. He wondered if Mike had already destroyed the dwarf, and rather hoped not. He could derive a great deal of satisfaction from doing the. job himself.

  Something touched him on the arm. Startled, he jerked and peered wildly about. Louise had ridden close enough to put her hand on him. Because, preoccupied with his loathing: for Valentine, he'd ridden off the road and dragged her after him. She'd probably shouted, but if so, her voice had gotten lost in the screeching of the wind.

  His Shadow's laughter echoed through his mind.

  "Thank you!" he shouted. Louise nodded. They turned their mounts in the direction of the Great Bear Road, and then the loudest peal of thunder yet reverberated around them.

  Except that as it boomed and rumbled on and on, and the ground began to shudder, he realized it wasn't thunder after all, but the opening spasm of an earthquake. An instant later, a fissure yawned directly in front of the paint's hooves. The Phantasy reared.

  Though reluctant to abandon the mounts, Montrose doubted their ability to make it back to the highway under theseieonditions. He snatched out his knife and severed the rope binding them, so that if one stumbled into: a chasm, he wouldn't drag the other down as Well. Then he seized the Lantern of Truth, hung it over his arm, invoked his Harbinger Arcanos, and levitated out of the saddle.

  Something about this particular Maelstrom made flight more arduous than it should have been. Now that he'd severed all contact with the heaving earth, the wind seemed to claw at him twice as fiercely as before. He could feel his energy level dropping at an alarming rate. Ignoring the sensations as best he could, he lifted Louise: off her steed, and, still holding on to her rifle, she wrapped her other arm around him.

  As he soared toward the road, fighting the gale which had evidently abandoned its erratic ways to blow: steadily in opposition to his progress, a patch of land directly beneath him crumbled. The pieces tumbled down and down into darkness, as if the landscape was only a shell suspended over a bottomless abyss.

  Another piece of ground shattered and fell in on itself, and then another. By the time he touched down on the highway, the shuddering landscape was riddled with craters.

  The road was shaking also, though not quite as hard as the ground around it. Louise set her feet on the paving stones, then immediately had to shift them to keep the earthquake from throwing her down. "I hate to sound lazy," she said, "but can't you keep flying?"

  "I need to conserve my strength." He clipped the lantern to his belt with his rapier, knife, and Bren Ten automatic pistol. "That is, if you can walk at all."

  She took a few cautious steps across the bucking surface of the roadway, her martial-arts training evident as she gracefully swayed and shifted to maintain her balance. "I can do it," she said.

  "Then keep making for the stela. With any luck, it will provide an exit out of here."

  They staggered on. To either side, the: wasteland continued to disintegrate, until the highway became a bridge spanning a lightless gulf. When they were about fifty yards away from the marker, a portion of the road itself collapsed, cutting the path to their objective.

  "Now we fly," said Montrose. Turning, he extended his hand to Louise. Her eyes widened, her mouth opened, and then something slammed into his back. Dropping the CAR-15, he staggered forward. Off the road and into space.

  Snarlin
g words in a sibilant tongue Montrose didn't recognize, the creature clinging to him clapped one cold, scaly member across his eyes, wrapped two limbs tightly around him, and clawed at his ribs. Struggling to reach his knife, Montrose wondered fleetingly where the Spectre had come from, and then an impact jolted pain through his body.

  Half stunned, he realized he must have hit the side of the spine of rock supporting the highway. If he didn't arrest his fall, he might well keep striking it until he dashed himself to pieces. Doing his best to ignore the creature ripping at him, he called on his Arcanos, and felt the power rise inside him. His eyes still covered, trusting his Harbinger's intuition to lead him in the right direction, he tried to fly upward and away from the wall.

  Evidently his instincts were functioning adequately, because he didn't crash into the stone. Jabbing backward with his elbow, he managed to connect with what, if the Spectre's anatomy was remotely like an Earthly creature's, should have been its midsection. The doomshade grunted, and its grip loosened just enough for the Scot to grab his knife and stab at its arms.

  The member clinging to his face jerked away. He saw that he'd blindly flown some distance away from the ridge, and realized now that that was just as well. The whole thing was collapsing in sections now, masses of rock and earth tumbling into the pit. The remaining segments looked like pillars. From his vantage point, it was impossible to tell if Louise was still atop one of them or not.

  Montrose went on stabbing savagely and pummeling his attacker with his elbow until the Spectre's hold loosened further. Gripping one of its cold, rubbery limbs for leverage, the Cavalier managed to wrench himself around to face it.

  The doomshade had a round, pulpy, featureless head, like a piece of rotten fruit. Montrose rammed his knife deep into its belly, then shoved it hard. The five-armed thing fell away from him, into the pit.

  Montrose flew upward through the stinging gale as fast as he could. Still, it seemed to take forever. Another pillar disintegrated before he rose above the level of the road.

  As he'd expected, the stela still stood. Blessed with special enchantments, that section of highway would be the last to fall. And to his relief, Louise was kneeling atop another swaying shaft of rock. An assailant had gouged claw marks in the soft gold of her visor, but she seemed to be uninjured. All Montrose had to do was pick her up before her perch collapsed, He swooped toward her. The icy wind screeched, tearing at him, and the world went momentarily black. When the flickering light from the thunderheads returned, there were four Louises stretching their arms out to him, each seemingly unaware of the others. Evidently the illusion was for his eyes alone.

  It shouldn't have hindered him. He'd been heading directly for the true Louise, and so should still know which one she was. But somehow, suddenly, he didn't.

  He hovered above the foursome, and the pillar roared and lurched. The paving stones cracked and ground together. Montrose realized he had no time to think.

  He'd simply have to trust his instincts.

  The shaft fell, and the women fell with it. Terrified that he'd made the wrong choice, Montrose dove. Snatching for his target's wrist, his fingers closed on solid flesh. The illusory Louises vanished.

  Montrose flew to the stela. As he landed, the column supporting it began to crumble. With his Harbinger senses, he readily discerned the dimensional portal immediately to the right of the marker. Unfortunately, it was rippling, dilating, and contracting as dangerously as the distortions he'd noticed back down the road.

  But unlike those, at least this one was large enough to work with. As the pillar shook more violently, he focused his power on the gate, willing it to stabilize. When he discerned that it had, if only for a moment, he grabbed Louise and carried her through.

  He smelled the musky scent of mortal sex, then felt a sensation across his skin which was neither pleasant nor painful, neither pressure, heat, nor cold, but something altogether alien to normal human experience. An instant later he and Louise were standing beside another stela, this one carved with Charon's mask and a stylized fountain of flame. The portal through which they'd traveled blinked out of existence.

  Montrose took a wary look around, up and down this new highway and at the blighted forest of twisted, leafless trees through which it ran. Nothing stirred. After the scream of the Maelstrom and the roar of the disintegrating landscape, the quiet here seemed almost preternatural.

  Satisfied that they were out of danger, Montrose drew Louise into a long embrace. The pressure of her arms hurt the gashes above his ribs, but he didn't care. "I thought I'd lost you," he murmured.

  "I knew you could catch me," she said.

  "Yes, but which you?" He explained the illusion with which the storm—or his Shadow—had bedeviled him. "I don't know how I picked you out among the doubles. It wasn't my Harbinger's perceptions. They didn't help."

  "It was your lover's perceptions," she said smugly.

  "I imagine that's as good an explanation as any." They kissed.

  After a time she said, "Quiet as it seems at the moment, I don't suppose this is truly the safest place to make love. Perhaps we should press on and continue this at the next outpost."

  He sighed. "Probably so. That particular Maelstrom just razed a length of the Great Bear Road, a Byway that's endured since the time of Tuberous Caesar. A storm that strong could conceivably bleed down into this level of the Tempest. If it does, I'd rather it found us ensconced in a secure refuge. Assuming that such a place truly exists."

  A hot, greasy feeling hung in the air, searing Valentine's skin. A breeze whispered—he had the unpleasant feeling that if he strained, he'd be able to make out words in the mournful sound—but failed to stir the sparse grass growing beside the two-lane asphalt road. Unless he missed his guess, another Maelstrom was on its Hand in hand, they started down the road.

  way. Alexander tossed his luminous head as if he sensed the same thing.

  It would be safer to ride out the storm indoors. Actually, it would be best to seek shelter in a genuine Haunt, with the fellowship of other Restless to anchor him and keep the gale from snuffing him out. But since fleeing Natchez, he'd been deliberately avoiding the other Necropoli of Mississippi.

  Partly that was because he was afraid that Fink or even Gayoso had posted a reward for the apprehension of a runaway dwarf. Partly it was because he was afraid someone would steal Alexander. But he knew he had a deeper reason as well. He was ashamed to face his fellow wraiths, even though no stranger on the outskirts of Lorman could possibly know that he'd abandoned a grieving mother to lay a trap for her daughter's murderer by herself.

  Scowling, he struggled to quash his guilt. He was doing the only sensible thing, and he'd tried his best to convince Belinda to do the same. If she still insisted on committing suicide, it was out of his hands. Legs aching, perched precariously on Alexander's saddle—he hadn't been able to shorten the stirrups enough to fit him— he peered about, looking for shelter.

  Behind him stood the forest of longleaf pine from which he'd emerged twenty minutes before. Ahead and to either side were rolling cotton and soybean fields enclosed by fences. To his eyes, the fences looked rotten and dilapidated in the extreme, but maybe that was a trick ot the Shroud. A few miles down the road, the lights of Lorman, shining behind a rise, stained a patch of the night sky gray.

  He didn't like to ride Alexander at any speed faster than a walk. He was too afraid of falling off. That being the case, it seemed unlikely that he could reach the town in advance of the Maelstrom. But maybe he could hole up in some farmer's barn. He rode on, peering from side to side. The wind grew hotter and gusted harder, its voice swelling from a murmur to a snarl.

  Finally he came upon a row of faded, nearly illegible signs tacked to the fence on his left. Fresh plums. Peaches. Sweet corn. Papershell pecans. Behind a gate secured with a padlock and a rusty loop of chain stood the tumbledown remains of what had been a produce stand. Spider webs of hairline Nihil cracks seethed in the walls.

 
Not exactly the Ritz, but it would keep out the worst of the wind, and hide him from any Spectres prowling the countryside. He tugged on the reins to turn Alexander in the proper direction. The Phantasy snorted, possibly an expression of contempt for his clumsy horsemanship, and headed for the shack, flowing through the substance of the fence as easily as water running through a sieve.

  Up close, the stand smelled faintly of rotting fruit and vegetables. Crates and bushel baskets, some with a layer of filth in the bottom, sat on the ground before the door. Valentine nudged Alexander with his heels, urging him on into the interior. The stallion seemed to hesitate, then glided through the wall.

  Inside the shack, the sweetish smell of decay was stronger. Beams of moonlight leaked through the grimy windows and the chinks in the roof. Against the far wall was a counter with a cigar box on it, perhaps the container the proprietor had used to hold his profits. More baskets and boxes rested atop long tables. Valentine was glad to see the furniture. He could use it to climb off and onto Alexander.

  He guided the spirit horse up beside a table, then, clinging to the saddlehorn, his legs and lower back throbbing, dismounted. Intending to make himself as comfortable as possible, he felt badly that he couldn't do the same for the animal. He was sure Alexander would rest more easily if he took off his saddle and bridle. But he was worried that he wouldn't be able to put them back on again.

  He gave the stallion an apologetic pat on the neck, then hopped down onto the grimy floor. A faint shuffling sound came from behind the counter. Startled, Valentine whirled. "Is someone here?" he asked.

  No one answered.

  It was probably mice, or some other animal. There were round black droppings the size of peas on the floor. Still, caution demanded that Valentine find out for sure. As he crept toward the counter, he shivered, his mouth grew dry, and he hated himself for his cowardice.

  He peeked around the barrier.