Dark Kingdoms

by Richard Lee Byers

  For one final desperate moment, Gayoso had no idea which of them Would destroy the other first. Perhaps they'd plummet into the Void together. Then, at last, several possessed soldiers penetrated the near edge of the time dilation. Suddenly charging at full speed, they surged over Mrs. Duquesne 'ike a wave breaking on a shore. They howled and snarled like beasts as they dragged her down.

  The old woman lost her grip on the bowl. The cords of ectoplasm, and Gayoso's pain and weakness, vanished. Giggling, he danced about the knot of struggling figures, driving his rapier into the tangle, not caring if he stabbed his own minions as long as he hurt Mrs. Duquesne as well.

  A few seconds later, she melted away.

  Gayoso peered about. Shellabarger was nowhere in sight. Presumably he'd perished. Across the parade ground, the corrupted soldiers were prevailing against their former comrades. Many of the loyal Hierarchs had fallen. Others were attempting a fighting withdrawal from the field.

  He'd done it. He was the King of Natchez. Sword held high, exulting, he whirled around and around. With a noiseless crackle, the magick of the hourglass ended. Suddenly every combatant was moving at normal speed.

  Reminded of the precious weapon's existence, the Spaniard pivoted this way and that, scanning the ground. "Looking for this?" asked a merry female voice.

  He turned and saw Prudence in her purple gown decorated with its motley collection of religious symbols. Smiling, the plump, freckle-faced woman clasped the hourglass in one black-stained hand.

  "I thought you'd be with the others, weaving the magick," he said.

  "Are you worried that your troops will revert to their normal selves? Rest assured, they won't. To the contrary, they'll all be full-fledged Spectres in another hour or two. The spell is well and truly cast, and it doesn't require all of us to maintain it. So I thought I'd toddle down and see how you were getting along."

  He grinned. "I'm getting along very well indeed. I destroyed Shellabarger and Mrs. Duquesne. Their few surviving soldiers are falling back in disarray. The province—excuse me, the kingdom—is minel But I suppose it isn't quite time to celebrate yet. I need to secure the Citadel, and then the entire Necropolis. May I?" He held out his hand for the hourglass.

  Her dimples deepening, Prudence held onto the weapon, as if she meant to tease him. "I know precisely how to secure them, Your Majesty. We'll simply have these splendid warriors of ours slaughter everyone they meet."

  Gayoso wondered if she was joking. "That's a tempting notion. But I can't be a king without subjects."

  "Alas, my sweet, foolish Manuel, I'm afraid that you aren't going to be a king at all."

  A chill oozed up his spine. "What are you talking about?"

  She sighed as if disappointed by his lack of perception. "Did you honestly believe that my martyred, vengeful people would be willing to share their land with the very race that cast them down? If so, think again. This brave new realm is going to be the domain of Spectres and Spectres alone."

  "But we made a compact, and I'm a Spectre now, too. You called me your brother in darkness."

  "And so you are. But in life, you served the King of Spain, whose army crushed the Quick Aztec nation, and so paved the way for your Heretics to annihilate the Dark Kingdom of Obsidian. You still proudly sport the armor of a conquistador. Did you never wonder why we'd agree to make you a monarch, you of all people?" She shrugged. "Apparently not, just as it never struck you as a curious coincidence that we worship the god of the Smoking Mirror, and you found your damnation in a looking glass."

  Gayoso pivoted toward a mass of possessed soldiers, who, their eyes mad and feral, stood watching the exchange. "Slay this woman!" he cried.

  They leered at him.

  Stammering slightly, he rattled off the incantation that had initially bound them to his will. "Destroy her!"

  "Did you really think we'd program them in such a way that you could turn them against us?" Prudence asked. "That would have been very sloppy planning on our part."

  In the blink of an eye, the fat woman became a hulking, black-scaled thing with two crocodilian faces mounted on a single deformed head. Hissing, she raised her sword, a length of wood lined with bits of razor-sharp obsidian, and started forward. Lifting his own blade, coming en garde, the King of Natchez retreated a step. Then guns barked and crossbows twanged as a dozen soldiers shot him in the back.

  The city bus swerved this way and that, veering around disturbances when possible, plowing right through them when not. Montrose wondered if any of the people they were passing even noticed that no one was in the driver's seat. He suspected not. The ones who'd gone mad were too busy wreaking havoc, and the rest were too busy running for their lives.

  The Scot and his companions were lucky to have found the vehicle sitting abandoned, one fender crumpled from a collision with a telephone pole, but still serviceable. Now that Titus had fused himself with it, it should carry them to the Citadel considerably faster than they could make it on foot, and its body blunted the force of the abrasive wind.

  But at the speed the passengers were traveling, they were bombarded with a nonstop barrage of grisly scene, flashing past the windows at a dizzying pace. Six barghests, escaped from their handlers, melting a woman with the terrible power of their baying. Other wraiths perishing at the hands of roving Spectres, or evaporating into wisps of vapor. A mob of black mortals spiking an elderly Asian shopkeeper to the wall of his grocery. A teenager setting a tenement on fire, then pouring gasoline over his own head and walking into the blaze. Revolted but perversely fascinated, Montrose finally managed to wrench his:gaze away from the carnage.

  "Ugly, isn't it?" said Bellamy.

  "To say the least," the Cavalier replied.

  Bellamy looked at Astarte, who was seated one row up. Her pretty face grim and drawn, she was dividing her attention between her own window and Marilyn Sebastian, who; appeared to be nodding off beside her.

  "You're worried about her, aren't yOu?" said Louise, maskless for the moment, her scarred golden visor nesting in her lap.

  Bellamy hesitated—Montrose had the impression that the FBI agent w;as the sort of man who preferred to hide his emotions—and then said, "Yeah. We ghosts are getting rattled watching what's happening on the street, but at least each of us can also see that he hts twenty friends here on the bus with him. From Astarte's viewpoint, she's alone except for Marilyn, who's half delirious. Sure, intellectually, she knows we're here, but I wish I could appear to her and give her moral support."

  "Perhaps you should," said Louise.

  Grimacing, Bellamy shook his head. "I'm not that good a Proctor yet. I need to conserve my power for later, when I might absolutely have to jump the Shroud. Don't get me wrong, Astarte's tough, she won't fall apart. But I know it's hard on her to be shut off from us, and I'd spare her that if I could."

  "Because you love her," said Louise.

  Bellamy smiled wryly, almost boyishly, affording Montrose a glimpse of the pleasant young man he'd been before his death and the desperate quest to foil the Atheist Conspiracy had become the dominant facts; of his existence- "Is ;it that obvious?"

  Louise took Montrose's hand and gave it a squeeze. "It is to me. I'm attuned to that sort of thing right now."

  The Scot felt a glow of happiness, or at least a relaxation of the apprehension clawing at his nerves. Then, above his head, something hissed, and he sensed space fragmenting.

  He looked up. Black, glittering Nihils were swelling across the roof of the bus, including one directly above Louise and himself. "Watch out!" he shouted, scrambling up from the seat. He grabbed for the Sister of Athena to haul her out from under the Segmented tentacles like insect antennae erupted from the Nihil, snaking around Louise's head and forearms. Montrose discovered he wasn't strong enough to drag her free. Then, shrieking kiais, she battered her assailant's limbs with the edges of her hands. The arms loosened their grip, and he yanked her clear.

  Gunfire and cries of alarm rang out as other Spectres att
acked. The bus began to swerve crazily. Montrose realized that Titus must be in considerable distress. While he was inhabiting the vehicle, it was his body, and the Maelstrom had just stabbed multiple holes in it.

  A pair of doomshades leaped down onto the seat he and Louise had just vacated. The creature with the tentacles was a spiderish thing with the severed, crimson- eyed head of an infant for a body. Cooing like any ordinary baby, it lashed its arms at Louise. Its companion, a raw, bloody thing like a flayed wildcat, pounced at Montrose's face.

  He jerked up his hands, caught it, and flung it away. It landed lightly a few feet down the aisle and instantly charged him again. Hindered by the close quarters and rocked by the swerving of the bus, he only barely managed to snatch out his rapier in time for a stop thrust to the Spectre's head.

  The monster dissolved in waves of black fire. Montrose spun just in time to see Louise dispatch the spider-baby with her saber. Her bandaged features taut with concentration, Marilyn made mystic gestures at other doomshades. As far as the Scot could discern, they weren't having any effect. Blind to the frenzied combat raging all around her, her face a study in frustration, Astarte peered this way and that.

  A twisted figure whose body seemed to be covered with one continuous scab leaped into the bus. It was carrying a flame-thrower. Desperate to slay it before it could start spraying barrow-fire around, Montrose and Bellamy sprang at it.

  The Scot stabbed it in the throat, and Bellamy's shortsword split its skull. The corpse dissolved instantly. Montrose looked around once more.

  His side had won. The other Spectres were gone, the Nihils in the roof were shrinking, and the bus had stopped swerving. The Cavalier counted the survivors and found that they'd only lost two men. Not bad, considering. Though the drugged, wounded mage seemed to be as useless as he'd feared, the Restless from New Orleans were clearly seasoned fighters. Perhaps they were even formidable enough to cope with what lay ahead.

  Bellamy projected his voice across the Shroud, whispering a few words of love and reassurance to Astarte. The girl with the piercings seemed about to grimace and say something unpleasant, but then she smiled and answered in kind instead.

  The FBI agent dropped back onto his seat. "The fun never stops, does it?" he said glumly.

  "Not during a Maelstrom," Montrose replied.

  "You know, it seems like I've been chasing the Atheist for a hundred years. When I was alive and closing in on §Ome criminal, I used to get excited. I wish I could feel that way now, but I'm too stressed out. Too worried. You people know a lot more about the Underworld than I do. Do yon think we can still stop the Conspiracy?"

  "Katrina the Ferryman told James that it was his destiny to oppose the Spectres," said Louise, "as well as foreseeing that he and I would meet again. Marilyn said Katrina also appeared to her, to encourage her to remain in the struggle. You dreamed of the destruction of the Isle of Sorrows, the disaster James, and I prevented. That suggests that your fate is linked to this menace, also. We're all meant to fight this fight together."

  Bellamy gave her a skeptical smile.: "Are you saying we're God's hand-picked team? That we can't lose?"

  "Unfortunately, no," said the Heretic. "I have no doubt we can lose. But I do think it means we have a chance."

  The wraiths had agreed they'd be less conspicuous approaching the Citadel on foot. Thus, the bus rolled to a stop at the base of the hill on which the fortress sat. The doors opened to permit Astarte and Marilyn to exit. Most of the ghosts simply glided through the sides of the carriage and hopped to the ground.

  Titus flowed from beneath the bus's hood. His hide looking more raw than ever, Antoine scuttled up to him. "You.. .okay?" he rasped.

  The shaman grimaced. "I'll have to be, won't I? Valentine?"

  The dwarf crept from the darkness with Belinda following close behind. Montrose had made the. working assumption that the false Pardoners were weaving their sorcery in the same sanctum where they'd been laboring to corrupt the Hierarch soldiers all along. Since; Valentine was the only member of the expedition who knew where that place was, it was his job to guide his comrades there. He swallowed, then said, "I'm here."

  "Then lead on," Titus said.

  They started up the hill. Louise and Montrose made a point of sticking close to Valentine, to bolster his courage. Belinda clutched the jester's hand. Bellamy stalked along beside Astarte and the dazed, limping Marilyn, while Antoine crawled next to him. Some subtle difference in the way the alligator moved made him seem less like a rational, sentient being than a loyal hound guarding its master.

  No one was on the street, though when the wailing of the searing, stinging wind momentarily abated, Montrose could hear whimpering, demented cackling, and stealthy footfalls in the dilapidated buildings to either side. The merchants' open-air stalls stood abandoned and in some cases vandalized, the bounty which the crusade against the Heretics had brought to Natchez lying trampled on the ground. Nihils seethed, swelled, and extended jagged new cracks through the surfaces around them. From the Citadel itself echoed screams, gunfire, and the clash of blades.

  Halfway up the hill, one of the zebra-caped warriors sobbed and shredded into ribbons of ectoplasm. Louise murmured a prayer that the poor fellow's soul would somehow escape Oblivion and Transcend. Montrose picked up his AK-47.

  The ring of flesh-sculpted, hideously elongated human torches still burned around the perimeter of the fortress complex. Montrose had imagined that when he reached this point, he might detect some indication of coherent military activity. Some sign that a decisive battle was even now occurring, or else that either Gayoso or his rivals had already gained the upper hand and were moving systematically to establish control of the Citadel. But from the sound of things, countless small skirmishes were being fought and incidental atrocities being committed all around the complex. He glanced at Louise, who shrugged to indicate that she didn't understand it, either.

  "Keep moving?" Valentine whispered. Montrose nodded. They stalked on through the circle of torches. The frigid greenish flames lashed wildly about in the gale.

  The dwarf led them down the narrow alley between two massive buildings with boarded windows. A tattered set of fringed buckskin clothing, rippling in the wind, marked the spot where someone had hacked the wearer to pieces. A few feet farther on, the passage debouched into what had once been a brickyard. Fragments of fired red clay lay among the weeds.

  Valentine pointed to the structure on the other side of the yard. Below the roof line shone stylized representations of a smiling face and a fountain of fire, rendered in a luminous paint which ordinary mortals couldn't see. "The confessors work on the second floor. If you go straight across the yard, through the wall, and on out into the hall, there's a stairway on your right."

  Bellamy turned to Marilyn. "Did you catch that?" he asked.

  "Yes," panted the mage, leaning heavily on her malacca walking stick. "I can still see and hear you perfectly well. It's just all the rest of my magick that's falling apart. But don't worry, I'll get myself back on track." She turned her head to inform Astarte of their destination.

  "Well, this would appear to be it," said Montrose to the company at large. "I'm going to fly in on the Spectres, and, with a modicum of luck, surprise and distract them. Anyone else who can fly should accompany me. The rest of you, charge to the battleground as quickly as you can."

  "The same tactics you used against me at Grand Gulf," said Louise wryly.

  "Let's hope they work as well in a better cause."

  She put her arm around him. "I trust you won't mind carrying a passenger."

  "I believe I can manage." He turned to his other companions. "You know what's at stake, lads. Show the enemy what the fighting men of New Orleans are made of. We'll go on three. One, two, three!"

  Clasping Louise, he soared toward the spot Valentine had indicated, and Titus flew up beside him. Beneath them, the other ghosts raced across the brickyard, with the swaying, stumbling Marilyn, supported by Astarte, instan
tly falling behind. Montrose suspected that the battle would be over before the two mortals even found a way into the building.

  He and Louise plunged into the crumbling brownstone wall. For a split second, he felt a jolt of the repulsive yet invigorating echo of misery resonating through the structure. Then the two wraiths hurtled out into a large room reeking of bitter incense.

  The bluish glow of several barrow-fire lamps illuminated a pair of confessional booths, a couch, a desk on which reposed a stack of Rorschach cards, a whipping post and a cat-o'-nine-tails, and various other appurtenances of the Pardoner's trade.

  Someone had shifted all such items into the far corner to make room for the ritual unfolding in the center of the floor. There the false confessors, a dozen in all, inky stains mottling their fingers, stood swaying and chanting around a spherical cage whose hars were made of darkness. Inside the orb floated hundreds of points of light, like a star field. Additional strands of blackness coiled among them, dimming their light and occasionally snuffing one out altogether. Montrose inferred that this was the sorcerous construct which had enslaved the soldiers of Natchez, and that whenever a star guttered out, it signified that some poor soul's Shadow had extinguished his better nature altogether. A number of guards, the majority members of the Scot's own irregulars, loitered about the chamber.

  Montrose set Louise down, then they both opened fire on the Spectres. Titus melted through a grimy window, his Tommy gun clattering.

  Three of the Pardoners dissolved into waves of murk. Montrose had hoped the black cage would wink out of existence as soon as one of its conjurers perished, but it didn't. Their guns blazing, the possessed soldiers charged the attackers.

  Montrose didn't want to hurt them, but he knew that for the moment at least, he had no choice but to fight back. Shooting at the onrushing men, he simultaneously dodged to his left and on through a wall, then veiled himself in darkness. As cool shadow oozed across his skin, he slipped back into the Spectres' chamber. With luck, the irregulars would have trouble targeting an invisible foe, and therefore he wouldn't have to defend himself so fiercely against them.