Then Wodan realized he felt nothing.
He pulled away from her. The storm of ash had ended and they stood under the blinding white sun of the wasteland. Wodan was numb with shock. He realized that, deep down inside, he'd thought he was in love with Dove Langley for years. When they kissed, he felt warm lips, but nothing more. She looked at him now with openness and warmth and he knew that any man would die to take his place for one moment.
"Langley, I..." he shook his head, then stopped.
He saw Setsassanar when they were in the depths of the Tower, his body crushed, blood running freely from his mouth as he spoke his last words. Manipulate feelings. Wodan, you need her. Make her love... can’t stop demons... without her. I took her for you. Wodan. I took her for you.
He felt frozen in place. Motion caught his eye. Turning, he saw a group of Ktari soldiers standing at the edge of fallen ash. They wore black armor, faces covered by black helmets, and they carried heavy rifles. Before them stood a tall, pale figure in a black trench coat, his face marred by bloodless lips and a thin mustache. Wodan recalled seeing the man briefly when he'd visited Won Po, and recalled that he was Colonel Sin, and had power in the Empire's capital.
He could feel Langley withdraw at the sight of him.
"Great goddess, lady without peer," Colonel Sin said, his voice dimmed by distance, but still clipped and demanding. "Grand Lady and commander of all living things, it is time to go. Now."
Wodan was enraged, and his hands formed involuntary fists. He could almost feel an aura of darkness surrounding the man, a hungry emptiness mixed with a childish, imperious attitude. Wodan felt as if he’d met the same person over and again, the sort of developmentally retarded and uninteresting creature who was drawn to power and felt no remorse in walking over others. Wodan was not intimidated by Colonel Sin’s puffed out chest and hard glare, but felt only despair that the man could not see how ridiculous he appeared.
He looked down and saw Langley's small shoulders hunched up in fear. She had changed from a powerful Cognati into a scared child. Even as Setsassanar's demand echoed in his mind, the need to protect her also vied for attention.
We are family, he thought. One way or another.
"I'll come for you," he said. "Someday, I'll come for you. Be ready."
She exhaled. "Don't. He's right. I have to go back to my husband."
Chapter Forty-Four
The Master
Temporary President Mallery woke from a nightmare. He was in his bed in the mansion, his drunkenness already giving way to a hangover. The crushing dread of worry hit him again. He remembered his nightmare, men shooting one another on the Pontius oil fields, the gunshots and screaming drawn out to exaggerated lengths. The attack could be happening right now, for all he knew.
Gunshots roared through the mansion and his blood froze in his veins. It wasn't a dream! he shouted in his skull. This is really happening!
His mind raced to piece it together. Who was attacking them? It was hard to say. The people had become so barbaric, so animalistic, that the six core members of the Golden Calf Party had taken to staying at the same mansion so they could be more easily guarded. The mansion had been acquired from an outspoken critic through entirely legal means, and was considered quite nice by many. Mallery wondered how base, how utterly crude, any rebels would have to be in order to damage such a place.
Guttural shouting and a ringing silence put an end to his thoughts. Slowly he turned about in the darkness, feeling for a lamp. Then, by the light of the moon, he saw a white face staring down at him. A scream lurched in his throat, then ground to a halt. “Wodan!” he whispered.
The King of the Black Valley sat on Mallery’s bed, staring down at him.
“Do not be afraid,” said Wodan. “I’ve come to save you.”
“From... what?”
“Yourself.” Wodan rose and opened the door, gesturing for Mallery to follow him into the crack of light. Mallery rose unsteadily and entered the warmly lit hallway, realized that he was not wearing his slippers, then tripped over something and fell. He looked down and saw his friend Almus on the floor. The newspaper printer had his face turned toward Mallery, and while his usual quiet reserve was intact, his face now bore an expression of relaxed detachment. There was a small hole in the middle of his back, and a red circle was around the hole.
“So this is a dream, then,” said Mallery. Seeing Almus in such an odd position was a dead giveaway that this was not real. It was simply too strange to be real.
Mallery looked up at Wodan, who did not bend to help him up. The King’s hair was shorter than he remembered. And while his face was free of expression, his eyes were too intense to look at for very long. Of course this was a dream; the person standing over him looked like a mythological character, a living legend. Mallery looked away and saw a line of Rangers marching toward them. They did not look like any of the guards he knew.
“Sir!” said a Ranger. “Most of those asshole have run into the woods. Townsfolk are going on a killing spree. Guess they’re taking out anyone who joined up with this crew.”
Wodan and Mallery both spoke at once, then cut each other off. Wodan turned to him.
“Of course,” said Wodan, “you’re in charge here, aren’t you?” He bent and hoisted Mallery up by the back of his pajamas, dropping him on his feet like a child. He nodded to the Rangers, who turned and went down another hall with weapons held ready.
“Wodan, listen,” said Mallery, “there’s been a lot of-”
“You don’t have to explain anything,” said Wodan, gesturing for him to follow once again.
“No, no, I need to tell you something. Now, Wodan, there’s going to be… well, I don’t know how to say this exactly, but some of the boys around here got some funny ideas, and now there’s a boatload of Rangers en route to-”
“The boat ran aground before they could attack,” said Wodan. “The only reason I didn’t kill everyone on board is because I’m going to need fighters when the demons attack.”
Mallery sighed as a thousand pounds of worry lifted from his chest. No war with Pontius! He couldn’t believe it. All that trouble – gone, in an instant! Still, he was perturbed by the other strange things Wodan had said.
“Fighters… uh, when… when what?”
“I’ll need fighters,” Wodan said simply. “For the demon war.” Wodan did not look at him, but only continued down the hall. Mallery crinkled his brow, trying to understand. Fight a war against demons? thought Mallery. He may as well be talking about controlling the weather!
As they walked the halls of the mansion, the nightmare became worse. The sound of gunfire in the distance sounded like a tiny goblin hammering away at an evil forge somewhere in the night, and was made all the more disturbing by celebratory guffaws and congratulations he heard in the mansion. As they passed by various bedrooms he saw dead Enforcers laid out, one on top of the other, some still twitching. He recognized some of them as guards who were supposed to be watching over the mansion. Other Enforcers and Rangers nodded as Wodan passed by, and it was annoying to see the look of deference they gave him. His own guards had never done that. Why was it so hard to find good, loyal workers?
Wodan stepped through pools of blood, unmindful of the red tracks he left or the sickening sticky sound of his passing. They passed through the library where Enforcer Bobram sat, staring ahead with a hole in his chest and a massive stain discoloring his entire outfit. Mallery stopped, in shock, and his expression was mirrored by the dead man’s eternal look of surprise.
Mallery heard shouting from the garden below. Going to the window, he saw the Ranger, Representative Chumsen, stumbling in the darkness. A line of Rangers walked behind him. Just as Chumsen turned around and bellowed something between a whine and a shout, the Rangers unloaded their guns into him.
“What is this?” said Wodan.
Turning, he saw Wodan pointing at their new flag with the symbol of the golden calf and his jug of water. “Oh, that,” Mal
lery said, feeling a little self-conscious. “It’s, ah, something we had commissioned. A symbol. For our Party. Well, for the nation, really. We thought it would be a good idea if we had an official national flag.”
“Didn’t the people already come up with their own flag?” Wodan’s face still betrayed no emotion, but Mallery felt as if his eyes were boring into him. He felt a rush of defensiveness, multiple arguments all crowding for attention, and an insistent feeling that he did not deserve this sort of scrutiny.
“Just because some hick paints a V on a piece of cloth, it doesn’t mean anything,” said Mallery, feeling proud for standing up to this character in his dream. “It has to be uniform, and designed by a legitimate person. If the flag isn’t uniform, then it sends the message that we’re not all on the same page.”
“And if somebody doesn’t like the flag? What happens if they protest against it? What if they burn it, piss on it, something like that, what do you do then?”
“We’ve had to modify the laws a little… I mean, we’re not a police-state or anything. We want to keep that same spirit of freedom that you’ve always… but we’ve had to make a few changes. Anyone can file for a legal protest registration license, you know, because we want to keep… free speech, and all that, but…”
“But?”
“Well. We’ve had to build a few… I mean, you have to have detainment and reeducation facilities if you want to keep any order, so…”
Gunshots rang out in the distance, interrupting his train of thought. Mallery turned aside for a moment, wondering if they were truly safe, then he saw Wodan examining the flag. He was quiet for a long time.
“Have you ever been in love, Mister President?” said Wodan. His voice sounded distant, flat, empty of emotion.
“What?”
“I said, have you ever felt that you were in love. And then realized, perhaps, that you were wrong.”
“Well, I… I suppose I am in love, if you want to talk in that manner. I’m in love with this nation. Yes! That flag there – that’s what I love.”
Wodan started to walk away before Mallery had finished. “Love is for people, not for abstractions,” he said, sounding a little bored. “Come along, Mister President.”
They came to a wide staircase that led down into the grand foyer. There was a terrible, deafening series of thunderclaps, then Reverend Representative Dorcas entered from the next room. Stately and severe, the preacher walked with his eyes fixed ahead. He opened his mouth as if to speak, then an incredible torrent of blood spewed from his mouth and splashed across the black-and-white tiled floor. He toppled over. Blood soaked through the back of his shirt. A handful of Rangers entered, nodded to Wodan, then left.
A terrible idea seized Mallery. “Oh, no!” he screamed. “This isn’t a dream, is it? This isn’t a dream at all!”
Wodan reached back and took Mallery’s arm. Mallery involuntarily clung to the stair’s handrails. Unable to move, he slid along the rail as Wodan gently pulled him along.
They came to the front door. When Wodan opened it, Mallery saw the banker Elmyr, representative and last of Mallery’s allies in the Party. He crouched in the yard before a team of Rangers. General Yarek Clash stood over him with a gun to his head. Elmyr turned toward Mallery and his face twisted into a mask of demonic rage. “Mallery!” he shouted. “You betrayed us! You talked to him, didn’t you?! You sold us out!”
“No, Elmyr! I didn’t! It wasn’t like that!” He could plainly see that Elmyr was lost in a narrative of betrayal, a story where he had done everything right but was sold out by a false ally. Elmyr prepared to scream a volley of accusations when Yarek fired his heavy handgun. Elmyr’s head exploded and both eyeballs popped out like wet hardboiled eggs, then Mallery fell back into the arms of the King.
***
In the pale light of the morning star and with the edge of the sun's halo climbing over the mountains, they lowered Mallery from the zeppelin by a rope, then dumped a heavy bag of supplies beside him. Mallery scurried away from the bag to avoid being crushed, then scurried back up to it. As he brushed sand from his hands, he realized, in the back of his mind, that he had never been in the wasteland before.
"Mallery!"
Mallery looked up, blinking against the lanterns in the zeppelin, and saw King Wodan gazing down on him. In the pale light it almost looked as if King Wodan was wearing a heavy cloak covered in scales and topped with bristling fur that shook in the breeze. In the crook of his arm he held his cat, a misshapen little monstrosity that, even with its twisted face, still gave the impression of lording his favorable status over Mallery.
"I know life seems difficult and unfair," said Wodan, "but I'm doing you a favor. You've always envied my position, so I'm going to give you the same opportunity I had. I started out as an exile. I had to learn how to survive. So can you, Mallery. So can you."
“Bullshit!” cried Mallery, emboldened by the realization that he would not be killed outright. “You’re so full of shit, Wodan! Leaving me in the wasteland is the same as killing me, and you know it! You’re just too afraid to get a little blood on your hands!”
Wodan ignored him. "The river is a day's walk that way. Follow it to Pontius. If you set your will on surviving, then I promise you something amazing will happen. You will learn something about yourself. I know it's hard to believe, but if you give up all your baggage and all the stories you tell yourself and forget everything you think you know, then you can become like me."
“Wodan, Wodan, listen now. You’ve made your point. I get it. I’m sorry, okay? I get it. I’ll... I’ll go on trial, I’ll go to prison. What I did was... it was wrong. I got carried away... but those others, you have to understand, it was all I could to keep them in check!”
“Go to prison in Pontius, if you like. There are no prisons in the Black Valley.” Wodan stood at the edge of the deck and looked down on him for a long time. As the sun rose, it seemed to Mallery that it cast a halo around Wodan and the workers dousing the lamps. Mallery wondered if perhaps he really was dreaming, and had been dreaming the entire time, because the scene was so beautiful and so unbelievably harsh.
“But then again,” Wodan continued, “maybe you’ve already been in prison this whole time. You want so very much, Mallery. I’ve taken a look at the records, and I can hardly believe how much money you and the others took from the people. It’s incredible, really. But don’t waste time feeling guilty. You’ve done some good, Mallery. I’m not going to give the money back. Instead, I’ll spend it on preparing our defenses for demonic invasion. We’re going to fight them, Mallery, and you’ll have done your part. What do you think of that?”
Mallery felt his lips peel back, stretching his face. “Oh… oh, to hell with you, Wodan! You’re delusional! Completely delusional! Burn you! Burn you!”
“You did this to yourself. You wanted to control others, and you told yourself you wanted to do it because it was good and right. But controlling others is impossible. You can force them and trick them for a while, but control them?” Wodan shook his head slowly. “The only thing you can try to control is yourself, but you haven’t mastered that. You’re controlled by a bundle of anxieties and childhood traumas and mind viruses passed to you from others. You have to give all that up, Mallery. You have to give up everything before you can become something admirable. Goodbye.”
Wodan gave a signal and the zeppelin rose.
Mallery felt his lips pull back still further, his face feeling as if it would peel itself free from his skull so that pure, absolute hatred could gush from his mouth, shattering teeth and melting tongue. He could not believe what an easy life Wodan had been given. He said a few words and made a few gestures and everyone gave him anything he asked for. If Mallery had been given the crown and absolute power, then he too could have shown the world his hidden greatness. But the world was sick and unfair and he knew that he would soon be dead, and the frustration was so overwhelming that he wanted to scream, but only a dry, thin whine passed h
is lips. He watched the zeppelin rise and to him it looked like the throne of God rising into pale blue heaven. The only thing he could do with death coming to claim him was arrange his own corpse in such a way that others who found him would see the arrangement of limbs and know that he had been wronged.
Only a tyrant would do this, he thought. Only a delusional monster would spread a sick fantasy about fighting the demons. Then Mallery's hatred folded over on itself like metal on a forge, because a part of him wondered if Wodan might be right. He knew if there was one man irrational enough to throw himself against the demon-god who twisted the human spirit around its thousand writhing limbs, one man who could face such an omnipotent force without crumbling in a fit of existential horror, one man who could move the stars into the alignment of his own choosing and rewrite the bleak fate allotted to mankind…
It was the tyrant Wodan.
To be continued in
Demonworld Book Seven:
The Demon War
Appendix
Information Gleaned from Smith Archives
At the end of the Smith War, the Smith’s vast archives of written material, once kept hidden at any cost, were mostly sold for pulp just to pay a fraction of their incredible debt. The following is a fragment of a longer piece concerning the Ancients, and was written long ago by an unknown Smith. It made its way through several hands before finally settling in an Entertainer library in the Black Valley town of Plumwater.
The Ancients in their day produced all manner of machines, including clockwork automatons that were compelled to do the bidding of their creators to the best of their ability. They served their masters in war and manufacturing and even sexually, which is unthinkable and no doubt led to the destruction of the Ancients.
One of the greatest weapons devised by the Ancients was the sun-bomb, a weapon so powerful that it went up like a star and then turned into a small sun. One of these bombs could decimate a battlefield and turn a city into a graveyard. The force of the bomb was like a thousand storms, the sight of it blinding, the sound alone enough to topple buildings. Worse still was the ghost of the bomb, which lingered long after the blast, poisoning the water and devouring flesh, as insatiable as death itself. But some reports acknowledge that this effect has been greatly exaggerated.
[Demonworld #6] The Love of Tyrants Page 66
