"Second verse, same as the first, hm, Rationalist?" The wendigo smiled. "But what does he intend to do with his hostage, hm? Does he have any sort of plan?"
"Yes," said Phinneas. "Let us go."
The wendigo's chest rose with its amused snort. It glanced at the second wendigo, who had crumpled back into a sobbing ball on the ground. "Why should I? Because you'll shoot me? Rationalist, I am not a wendigo because I have no allegiance to any but myself. I am a wendigo because I enjoy hurting people." Again the black eyes slid to regard Kendrick. The lips smiled. "My mission is more important than my life. Just as yours is to you."
"I never doubted it," said Phinneas, his gun moved, "which is why I will shoot the boy."
The gun moved to point at Kendrick.
"She needs him, doesn't she?" said Phinneas. "Queen Tinesmurk?"
Phinneas smiled at the wendigo's look of shock. "The Skrean queen in exile. Yes, she came to us, too. She won't be happy if you go back without her son's friend."
"We could make a revenant of his corpse," said the wendigo.
Phinneas snorted, "and walk the zombie all the way to Castle Clouds-Gather? I doubt it."
The wendigo's smile vanished. "How do you know that, Rationalist?" Then re-appeared, "are you looking for more reasons I should kill you?"
"Let us go," said Phinneas again. "Me, the boy, and that poor fellow there." He nodded toward the damaged wendigo.
"And I ask again," said the wendigo, "why should I do this?"
"Two reasons," said Phinneas. "One because I will shoot the boy and wreck your plans. And second because you will enjoy hunting us. Won't you?"
The wendigo tilted its head back and barked a laugh. "A good point!" It looked down at its damaged partner, then at the two ogres, then at the bodies of the monsters, and the Paladin. Abruptly it nodded. "Very well. I shall wait a day, I think. And then, ah, the fun will begin." Its eyes narrowed, "Go now."
"Come." Said Phinneas.
Kendrick stared down at his hands. Then at the Paladin, dead in his blood. Then at Phinneas.
"Come I said," said the Rationalist.
And Kendrick went, damning himself.
***
Coronation begins
Freetrick knew they were getting close to the top of the tower when the crowd in front of them began to compress, turning from procession into crowd. As people in terrible and ridiculous ornamentation backed away to give him and his entourage room, Freetrick was struck by memories of concerts and clubs in Byblos. Now, at the front of the crowd, would be a line of bouncers---ogres most likely. And beyond the ogres...
"Horrible morrow, young Feerborg."
The guys in charge of the show. There were three of them.
"The Corrupted Ones of the Deep Synod," murmured DeMacabre. "On the left," with a blood-red top-hat and a sticky slug-trail on the floor behind him, "is DeSammdie, bloodless priest of Chesain. On the right," cloaked in the pelt of an enormous wolf, and probably seven feet tall, "B'glafn, fearless priest of St'tdrakhorod. And---"
"Young Feerborg…" Said the one in the middle. The one in the long black cloak with its crown of obsidian tentacles, and what seemed to have a pet bat hanging from his shoulder. "Yes?"
The figure thrust its head toward him. Gray jowls flopped from a face sick with age and evil, a husk of damp flesh hanging from brittle and ancient bones. A cleft amid the wrinkles opened to reveal a black toothless pit of mouth and an eye, huge and white as a boiled egg, winked from the shadows under the cloak. "You will die, young Feerborg."
"Uh…"
The black mouth opened again. "You will die, your memory will fade, you will become the dust, then less than dust."
"My lord," DeMacabre said while Freetrick tried to work out whether the dust thing was a real threat or just another Skrean ritual, "may I present His Fiendishness the Dark Prince Hafdern Teirgog the Deathless, Heirophant and Chief Corrupted of the Dark Synod. He is...oh let me see...brother to Teirborg, which would make him your great-uncle, my lord. Such sweet suffering does family bring."
The pale eye hove back into view. "My lord, may your death be an inspiration and a warning to all future generations."
"Thank you?"
"And now allow me to pronounce the malediction." Hands jerked up from the folds of the dire gray depths of the ancient man's robe.
"Oh, I'm---" said Freetrick, "---gurk!"
And Teirgog proceeded to clamp his hands around Freetrick's neck, lift him, armor and all, off the ground, and with great ceremony to strangle him
How was the old man doing it? Freetrick kicked feebly as the priest chanted atonally. Could necromancy give a crazy old man the strength of ten crazy old men? Only as Freetrick's vision began to dim did the unholy priest release him to fall, gasping, to the floor. Perforce, Freetrick knelt there, while his horrible uncle finished the chant and made a mystic pass that seemed to move the fingers of one hand right through the palm of the other. "Rise now, my lord," he said, "and prepare to take your place at the apex of Clouds-Gather, the Eye of the Maelstrom."
"And now we get up," said DeMacabre, as Freetrick rubbed at his throat and glared at the priest, "and move through these doors and out onto the Triskaidekagram. Excellent, my lord. Now we wait here."
They emerged from the winding corridor onto a huge open platform. It was round, or rather, Freetrick saw, donut-shaped, with an orange-glowing hole at the center he was sure extended all the way down to the volcanic caldera the castle was built on. Radiating out from that central shaft, Freetrick could see gray patterns inscribed in the black rock of the platform; cruelly hooked lines and jagged curves, converging at the circumference into thirteen points. And from each of these points there rose a black tower, covered in stone barbs and what Freetrick hoped were gargoyles, jabbing at the Maelstrom above.
The storm hung over them like a corpse's shroud, purple and writhing with slow evil. In its center, precisely aligned with the outlet of the volcanic shaft, the storm's eye flashed with lightning.
"Ah," said DeMacabre, "mm we have arrived at the top, the very tip, my lord, of Castle Clouds-Gather. From there, one can look out to the Necropolis and Skrea beyond, up into the Eye of the Maelstrom, or down, my lord, into the molten heart of the volcano."
Freetrick, who wanted to do none of these things, shivered, and turned around to look at the potentates filing through the door behind them. He saw Bloodbyrn, walking with her goblin to a spot on the platform opposite himself and DeMacabre. She and the goblin both glared at him.
"So..." Freetrick whispered to DeMacabre, "Bloodbyrn still seems pretty pissed at me."
"Indeed it was so, my lord," said DeMacabre, "and may I complement my lord on bringing his intended to such a state of emotion. If an old man can be forgiven the presumption, I might express my happiness to see demonstrated my lord's capacity to… arouse such passions in my daughter."
Freetrick tried to keep his expression blank. "DeMacabre," he said, "you are an inexpressibly creepy human being."
The Duke smiled greasily, "Flatterer."
And here came prince Feerix, with his habitual expression of constipated rage, following Teirchoke in his crablike chair.
"Uh," said Freetrick finally, "what was that Bloodbyrn meant about marriage and children customs?"
"Oh the un-marriage?" DeMacabre made poo-pooing gestures with a hand that would have looked at home breaking out from the clotted earth of a grave-yard. "My lord, my daughter is a credit to her upbringing, and an eminently suitable bride of darkness, if I may say so myself, but she lacks the…what would be the proper way to express it…the patience or perhaps the serenity, yes, the serenity that maturity brings. If she had lived as long and had drunk as much blood as her humble father," the pads of his long, pale fingers flattened against DeMacabre's ruffled chest, "she would not have worked herself into such a state, my lord."
"She seemed...pretty anxious."
Lava light reflected in crazy orange sparks in DeMacabre's eyes. "I believe, my
lord, that my daughter was concerned about the matter of what we call Primacy in Flagrante Delecto."
There was some milling around the door now. A big box or something being man-handled---or monster-handled as the case me be---up, onto the platform.
"What does that mean?"
DeMacabre flapped his hand, "Only that my daughter is impatient, my lord, as are all young ladies, to demonstrate their skills. On the stage, as it were, for the first time."
The dark princes, ignobles, lords, and ladies continued to file out of the door, taking up positions around the edge of the platform at the top of the tower. There were people from the Vile Halls, an uncle of some description with the tall metal hat, and the other ignoble nobles.
"On...on stage?"
"Indeed, my lord. Mm, but now, I sense the ceremony will soon commence. If my lord wishes, we can tour the Ceremonial Seraglio at a later time, where he can get a feeling for the...I believe the actors call it blocking."
"Wait a second, what exactly does the marriage ceremony entail?"
"Un-marriage, my lord. Marriage is a disgusting Do-Gooder institution, and we of the kingdoms of evil shall have none of it!"
The three priests were the last to come through the doors onto the platform. They walked, oozed, or stalked to the central hole, where they stopped with a triple-thud of staffs on stone, and turned in place, capes and cloaks billowing in the hot wind rising from the volcano below. Over their heads, the Maelstrom churned, and dry lightning cracked between the clouds and metal spines that stretched up above their heads. The priests then began to chant in ancient and profane tongues.
"Of course you have grown up west of the mountains, and must have seen all sorts of foolish rituals" whispered DeMacabre, leaning in close to Freetrick, "but rest assured we do things right here in the Kingdoms of Evil. To think," he chuckled, "of binding the civil contract without actually witnessing the consummation. How droll."
"What?" Freetrick felt as if all of his body's fluids had drained down to his feet. "What do you expect to witness?"
"Best focus on the present, now, my lord," said the Duke. "Let the un-wedding be something to which my lord can look forward. If my lord survives the coronation, of course." DeMacabre looked at Freetrick's expression and chortled, "my lord, I joke! Ah ha! What a face my lord has on his skull. Survive indeed. Aha." He wiped a tear from one eye.
"Uhh..." Freetrick was still grappling with translating DeMacabre's offhanded comments. They weren't going to make him have sex in front of an audience, were they?
"In all seriousness, my lord," continued DeMacabre, "If my lord has any trouble, simply call to my daughter for help. Aha. As in the un-wedding, come to think on it. Eh?"
"Wait," Freetrick shook his head, "help?"
But the priests had stopped chanting. Everyone was looking at him expectantly.
"Alright, my lord. Now to recite the Covenant."
"Huh?" Freetrick looked at DeMacabre, "I don't know the Covenant."
"Just the central verses, my lord," the Duke whispered from between the stretched lips of his smile, "and it does not have to be in Ancient Skrean."
"I don't know the struck-out thing in any striking language," Freetrick whispered, fighting not to tremble under the massed gaze of his murderous family. "Why didn't anybody tell me about this?"
"Surely the guilty party will be slaughtered," said DeMacabre, "but worry not, my lord, for a solution to your predicament is at hand."
"Huh?"
"Simply repeat after me. Ahem." DeMacabre cleared his voice, "minions, the time of reckoning as arrived."
"Minions, the time of reckoning has arrived."
"Try to sound like you mean it, my lord. Doers of Good, prepare now to meet your most implacable nemeses."
"...implacable nemesis...ees."
"Louder, my lord. Your dark reflections, embodying of all you hold most in revilement."
"...revilement!" Freetrick tried to shout.
"We really must work on your evil voice, my lord. Now, here for the important part." DeMacabre cleared his throat. "All you create, We shall destroy."
"All you create, We shall destroy." As Freetrick repeated them, the words seemed to take on their own life.
"All you shape, We shall distort."
Freetrick's voice rose, taking on disturbing vibrations that seemed to echo in the thunder of the clouds above them."All your virtues, We shall oppose!" He continued, only a fraction of a second after DeMacabre's prompt, "All your hopes, We shall shatter!"
Lightning cracked the air, grounding itself in one of the thirteen towers that ringed them.
"Into that which you breathe life, we shall bring death!"
Thunder rolled over them, drowning out DeMacabre's voice, but somehow Freetrick's words were still easy to hear. "For we are the Kingdoms of Evil. Kneel before our might, and weep bitter tears into the dust and ashes! For your eternal opponent is come!"
Light, a column of it, red and brooding, shot from the hole at the center of the platform. Clouds shuddered and spun as the beacon pierced the Maelstrom's eye.
"The time has come..." DeMacabre prompted the gasping and sweating Freetrick.
"The time has come to uphold the dark half of the Covenant for the glory of the First God. We are become Ultimate Fiend of the Kingdoms of Evil, Tempest above and First God Below."
"No!" Shouted DeMacabre.
"No…?" Freetrick jumped in his armor. "What? DeMacabre---"
"I, the highest ranking of the Crimson Sangboise Court, do not accept this despot to rule over us!"
"Nor I!" Shouted someone in wolf furs from the other side of the platform. "The Fear Barons of St'tdrakh will never bow to an oppressor, even one so mighty in his Evil as the Despot of Skrea!"
"A test!" DeMacabre said, or more likely, recited. He flung his hands out, cackling theatrically. "A test to prove that he, who would be Ultimate Fiend, is mighty enough to crush all enemies!"
There was a sepulchral cheer from the gathered people.
"What the hell was all that about?" Whispered Freetrick, not daring to look at DeMacabre. "A test? You never told me about a test!"
"You are in luck, my lord," DeMacabre failed to answer, "I hear it is not always possible to bring in a real foreign king for the ceremony."
"What? What are you---"
"Hurrrrah!"
Freetrick jerked, "What the hell was---" he turned, but DeMacabre wasn't beside him any more. The Duke was moving at a slightly-faster-than-polite ooze away from him. Everyone else in the crowd was backing away too. Everyone but one.
"Hurrah!"
A man was striding out of the crowd, away from the iron box that now stood open on the platform. He was big, broad-shouldered in a strange tattered garment that might once have been a white and gold uniform. His hair and beard were long and matted, a single mass of fuzz the color of old snow. He also carried a battle-axe in one hand. And now he was running, very fast, toward Freetrick.
Freetrick dodged. Or tried to. His armor was so heavy he could manage nothing more than a sort of sideways lurch. The ax, when it slammed into his side, imparted its own momentum, and Freetrick skidded across the platform, like a kicked tin can.
He put out his arms and legs, and all the various spines on his armor exploded into sparks as she slowed, then stopped with his boots hanging over the edge of the gaping hole at the center of the platform.
Of course.
Freetrick could feel the barbarian's footsteps as the man lumbered toward him. "I don't want to fight you!" He shouted, as he scrabbled furiously to pull himself upright.
"Fiend!" The barbarian bellowed, "I shall wipe your slime off the skin of this world!"
Freetrick got to his feet in time to see the man swing his axe back, and ducked just in time to avoid having his head knocked off.
His attacker grunted.
"Hold on a second!" Freetrick pleaded. "I don't even know who you are."
"Don't know who I am?" The barbarian hefted his huge
axe again. "Then learn well, evil one. I am Yorinhart, son of Thorinhart, and I would be king of the lost nation of Vaingloria!"
"I've never even heard of Vaingloria!" Freetrick heaved his armored bulk around and tried again to duck as the axe swung around.
He didn't duck fast enough. There was another impact that rattled Freetrick's bones. He felt something pop in his back, and the ground came up to smack him in the side of the head.
Freetrick blinked his eyes open to see the bearded face of Yorinhart son of Thorinhart.
"This is a game," Freetrick croaked desperately. "A ceremony. You know they're going to kill you."
"I know that, you monster," The barbarian leaned down. His eyes were a bizarre, oddly arresting blue color. "You think that matters?"
"Help," said Freetrick.
"Stop toying with him!" Someone yelled from the audience.
"Go for the jugular! The jugular!" Screamed another.
Yorinhart rose, swinging his axe around. "Let this blow be for all those whose homes you destroyed." His voice was rising. "Who's people you slaughtered, or made into foul beasts."
"Help me!" Freetrick called out again.
"Let this be for the mothers, eaten by their own children!" The exiled king went on, his voice cracking, "the brothers, tortured to death by their brothers! Let this blow of the mystic axe Wraithcleaver..."
"Help! Why did you give him his axe?!"
"...be my greatest cut against the demons that rise against Goodness and Light."
"Help me!" Said Freetrick again as the ax began its downward swing.
In the crowd, DeMacabre sighed, accepted a wry look from Bloodbyrn, and tossed the goblin she gave him at Freetrick.
The furry monster arced through the air like lawn bowling ball, and neatly skewered itself on the blades of Freetrick's outstretched, armored fingers.
There was a blinding flash of lightning from the Maelstrom above.
The axe did not connect.
Freetrick was on his feet. More than on his feet. He was flying. The armor suddenly seemed to weigh nothing. Nor, for that matter, did Yorinhart son of Thorinhart. Freetrick darted inside the king's reach and shoved his attacker backwards.
"Monster!" The axe came up again.
The Kingdoms of Evil Page 20
