The Kingdoms of Evil

by Daniel Bensen

  "Will you?"

  "Of course, Fiend. I will teach everyone I can how to write prayers to the God of Words."

  "Good," said Freetrick, tapping his fingers on his desk, "and I've got Skystarke on blindsiding the…what do I call it? The law enforcement in Clouds-Gather? The monsters who would kill you if they saw you reading or writing the True Words. And I'll do what I can to make sure none of the humans know what's going on until you monsters have enough magic to defend yourselves."

  "It is truly a great plan, Fiend. Momentous."

  "Oh yes." Freetrick looked down at his hands.

  "Fiend?"

  "Yes, Kaimeera?"

  "Fiend, the other monsters want to know, but they could never ask this question."

  "What question?"

  The Kaimeera shifted on its paws. "The question of why, Fiend."

  Freetrick looked up. "I thought it was death to question the intentions of the Ultimate Fiend."

  The catlike body of the Kaimeera was crouched, ears flattened, but the voice from its mouth was confident. "Monsters learn quickly to never to question our masters, but…well, I have memories of not being a monster. And," it chuckled, "based on what I know about you, Fiend, I think you need someone to talk to."

  Freetrick raised an eyebrow. "How many Rationalists did you have to eat to get that bit of insight?"

  "One was enough." The Kaimeera grinned. "You're a dialogue-loving people."

  The Despot of Skrea nodded, closed his eyes, massaged his temples. "Well, because I want to survive. I'm not willing to play games until someone assassinates me."

  The Kaimeera slunk forward, "But why not just hide in your rooms and let your servants arrange things for you?"

  Freetrick snorted. "That might work for a whole afternoon before someone bribes one of my guards to kill me." He looked down at his empty desk, then back up to the monster, suddenly unsure what to do next.

  "Fiend?" The Kaimeera straightened from its bow. "I wonder if might make a suggestion?"

  Freetrick smiled. "It's very refreshing to talk to someone who isn't afraid of giving me advice. Go ahead."

  "Malevolence..." the Kaimeera paused, "I am very glad you told me I shouldn't be afraid, to give you advice you don't want to hear, Fiend."

  "Why?"

  "Because, Fiend, I think you need to talk to Bloodbyrn about this."

  Chapter the Eighteenth

  In which the Ultimate Fiend discusses Cats and Sexual Fetishes

  Deep in an unused corner of Castle Clouds-Gather, a single black candle flickered and dribbled on a table in a dark room. It cast a trembling circle of light onto a slickly-shining diagram drawn on the table's surface in what was probably blood, and illuminated heaps what seemed to be a lot of old junk—suits of armor, broken bits of statuary, furniture under sheets, a few disarticulated skeletons and moth-eaten stuffed monsters. Freetrick could not see Bloodbyrn at all.

  Fear began to rise again in Freetrick's chest. His eyes drifted to the blood diagram. What could Bloodbyrn have been doing in here?

  "Bloodbyrn?" He murmured, "Bloodbyrn, are you—" Freetrick's foot connected with something metallic and lacy. He looked down, and saw a cage like the ones his morning rats came in.

  In the darkness on the far side of the table, lace rustled.

  Freetrick squinted through his pince-nez into the darkness. Was that the glint of candlelight on barbed silver jewelry?

  "I was looking for you," Freetrick said into the darkness. "The Kaimeera---I mean I thought I should talk with you about…" about what? Freetrick wondered if telling the daughter of the most powerful man in Skrea about the rebellion he was fomenting. "…Last night," he finished. Thank the God of Words for a life full of insanity; he would always have an alternate topic of conversation. "I wanted to make sure you were all right."

  For a moment, Freetrick wondered if he was talking to an empty room, but then her voice spoke from the darkness. "I am."

  "Oh," said Freetrick. "Good." He stared in what he thought was her general direction. "What are you, uh—"

  "I must fulfill certain hungers," Bloodbyrn interrupted him. "Rituals. Female rites of the Sangboise. You would find them distasteful in the extreme." She took a breath, "So my lord might recognize the benefits of his withdrawal to another place at this time. I shall complete my rites forthwith, and then join my lord in his chambers, where I should, with pleasure, submit to any plans my lord has in store for me."

  "Uh," Freetrick shook his head, "okay. Maybe I should…"

  "Go? Yes!" Bloodbyrn half leaned out of the shadow, then retreated again, "Yes, I am glad our minds are of one accord on this…that is to say…"

  "Meow!"

  Bloodbyrn swore in Sangboise.

  Freetrick squinted. "What was that?"

  "What was what, my lord?"

  Freetrick took a step forward, around the side of the table so the glare from the candle was no longer in his eyes. "Bloodbyrn, are you holding a cat?"

  "No!" There was a rustle of lace and thump as Bloodbyrn's retreat into the shadows was blocked by a huge glass jar with a skeleton in it. "Yes. That is to say, I have a cat in my hands, but…of course, it is a subject of my ritual."

  The small, furry lump in her hands said "meow" again. Bloodbyrn's throat constricted.

  Freetrick took another step toward her. "What are you going to do to that cat, Bloodbyrn?"

  "Oh," her eyes widened, "such terrible things, my lord."

  Freetrick felt sick, "I thought so."

  "Oh yes!" She grinned at him crazily. "So…you must go now—ooh!" the cat batted at her throat. "No! You naughty…" her eyes darted up to his, "…repulsive symbol of virtue! With your soft, tiny paws, each a padded pink mockery of all that is villainous." She lifted the cat away from her chest, "yes, I will destroy it, my lord!" Her eyes focused on the cat again. "I must destroy it! The insidious temptation of it! Yes!" She let go of the cat with one hand and fumbled in the folds of cloth around her waist. "I am getting my athame. My lord, look, I am beginning the Dark Ritual!"

  At one time, Freetrick might have turned around and fled. But too much had happened since his arrival at Clouds-Gather. Freetrick knew something more about the people of the Kingdoms of Evil now, and he had a supposition he thought he ought to test.

  "Okay, Bloodbyrn," he said, "go ahead."

  "What?" Bloodbyrn's eyes widened.

  "You heard me." Freetrick settled himself against a stuffed ogre and raised his chin. "I want to see whatever horrible thing you have planned for that cat."

  "My…my lord," her voice was an agonized whisper, "you do not want to see this."

  "I disagree," he said.

  Bloodbyrn looked down at the cat. Her pierced brows drew together, and her maroon-painted upper lip curled. Her fingers clenched around the cat's body.

  Several seconds of chaos followed.

  An orange streak shot away between Freetrick's legs and Bloodbyrn' hand slapped against her face. A high-pitched yowl dopplered away down the corridor.

  Bloodbyrn rubbed her slashed lip, then pressed her face into her hands and spun away from Freetrick. Her shoulders shook.

  True words, was she crying? Freetrick hauled himself off the ogre, "Bloodbyrn, what the hell just happened?"

  "Nothing!" Came Bloodbyrn's voice as her shoulder's tightened. "You have scared my…sacrifice away is all! You distracted me and…the filthy beast…it scratched me. And now she is fled and I shall have to find her before she gets lost and someone…someone…" her voice broke, "hurts her." She sniffed hard and her voice grew harder. "Go, my lord! Away from here! Your presence sickens me!"

  Instead, Freetrick closed the storeroom's door on them. "You weren't going to kill that cat, were you?"

  "I was!" She spun back around, black hair a whirling storm. "You could not be more mistaken!"

  "Hey…" Freetrick thought of Bloodbyrn's odd reaction to Wrothgrinn's reverse-engineered kittens. She had been trying to hide this from him. Whatever this was. "
You weren't going to kill it," he said, "you were playing with it. Like a pet."

  "No!" Bloodbyrn said, wiping her nose, "My lord, I was about to disembowel it, I swear! The foul, cuddly thing!" she beat her clenched fists against the billows of material around her hips. "It has no place in the capital of the Kingdoms of Evil, with the first concubine of the Ultimate Fiend."

  Freetrick recognized the tone of internal dialogue spoken out loud. Bloodbyrn was yelling at herself.

  "Bloodbyrn." Without thinking, Freetrick rounded the corner of the table and placed a hand on her shoulder. "It's all right. I like cats. As pets, I mean. They're nice."

  "You like…" her face twisted up at him in disgust, and she jerked away from him. "No! Keeping pets is wrong!" she shouted at him, "A foul habit! Unseemly for a Dark Lady."

  "I like cats," Freetrick repeated, "and," as he realized it was true, "I like that you like cats, Bloodbyrn."

  Bloodbyrn looked at him. "Oh." She sniffed again, turned her face down. "Do not," she whispered to the cluttered floor "that is to say, I would be obliged if my lord were not to tell anyone of my indiscretion."

  "I won't, Bloodbyrn." Freetrick leaned on the table beside her, careful not to touch the blood design.

  "You must swear."

  "Fine," Freetrick smiled, "I swear that I won't tell anyone you have a secret addiction to petting kitties."

  "Ohhh," Bloodbyrn moaned "to hear it put to words so…"

  Freetrick looked down at her, still half-convinced this was some elaborate act. More Skrea weirdness. "You're really worried about this, aren't you?"

  "Of course," lace poofed out in all direction as she pulled her knees to her chest. "I must hide my addiction. At all costs I must hide it."

  "Why?"

  "Why!?" Bloodbyrn glared up at him. "Because cats are not…not," she sighed, and rested her forehead on her knees, "I am the very archetype of foolishness for thinking I could explain these things to you of all people."

  "You mean because keeping pets isn't evil," Freetrick guessed.

  "Astute, my lord," Bloodbyrn said to her knees.

  Well, it made a sort of backwards sense.

  Freetrick chewed his lip. Almost as surprising at this revelation about her was Freetrick's own desire to comfort his…concubine? Un-wife? Whatever. But Freetrick knew he wanted to make her laugh again. He wanted to straighten that inwardly-curled, miserable form. "Sure cats are evil, " he said.

  "What?" Bloodbyrn sniffed.

  "Sure they are," Freetrick repeated, thinking furiously, "what about the cruel overlord sitting on his throne, stroking a cat as he orders the hero to be torn apart by crocodiles? Huh?"

  Bloodbyrn sniffed again, but raised her head from her knees, "I have never seen such a thing."

  "Then you can start a new fashion." Freetrick settled down on the floor next to her. "You're basically the queen, right? You could make cats the new…uh…" he ran an eye over her ensemble, "bat wings. Accessories for the modern Dark Lady."

  Bloodbyrn shook her head by violently, and Freetrick struggled to soothe her. "No, no, it would work. Listen. The cat… um… shows your contempt for humanity. I mean," Freetrick spread his hands out before them, framing a picture against the candle-lit evil bric-a-brac. "Here you are, ordering the hero to be boiled in acid, and all the time you're being nice to this animal." He tried to recall his film analysis courses. "It would throw your villainy into higher contrast, see?"

  Bloodbyrn was silent a moment, thinking. Then she looked back at her lace-covered knees. "I hadn't thought my persona needed another prop. I mean…" she stretched back and her hands described circles up her black corset. She was indicating her entire wardrobe, Freetrick, was sure, although now he mostly noticed the two skulls of this particular part of it.

  Bloodbyrn was looking at him again. Freetrick flinched. Strike it, had he been staring? "Well," said Freetrick, "maybe the cat can replace your…um…that is, your current…"

  "Sexual violence? No, my lord," Bloodbyrn's eyes narrowed over her familiar edged smile, "I would be a poor student of tactics indeed to discard such a tool. But perhaps…" her expression became speculative, "perhaps a cat, a familiar, if you will, could be a useful prop for establishing my persona after all." She was silent a moment, then shook her head. "No! I cannot trust myself to think clearly about this matter." She glared at him. "Indeed, here I sit taking advice from you."

  "Thanks, Bloodbyrn."

  Candle-light glinted off her piercings as his un-wife cocked an eyebrow. "You must admit, my lord, that you lack completely the malevolent instincts of a Skrean."

  "Yeah," said Freetrick, "and I'm actually kind of proud of that."

  "No, my lord!" She slapped a many-ringed hand on her knee and glared at him."Perverse instincts must be quashed! Must be hidden. We are the Kingdoms of Evil!" Her eyes suddenly blazed, "and such things as kindness and softness have no place here!"

  "Clearly they do," said Freetrick putting a hand over hers. "Bloodbyrn, we're in charge here. We can do…" Bloodbyrn's eyes had gone suddenly glassy. "What?"

  "Your…your hand, Feerborg."

  Freetrick jerked his hand back. His body clenched, ready for another skull-vibrating slap, but it didn't come. Instead, Bloodbyrn reached over, and took his hand back.

  She looked at him, darted a glance at the candle in its diagram on the table, then looked back at him a new strength in her eyes.

  "I like it," she whispered, "Blood help me, but I enjoy the…the tenderness of it. Feerborg, my lord, please do not take it away."

  Freetrick nodded, and swallowed. He could think of nothing to say.

  Eventually, Bloodbyrn leaned against him.

  ***

  "So everyone in Skrea is acting out a persona?"

  They had been sitting on the floor of the store-room for what must have been half an hour, but Freetrick found he had no desire to get up. The warm, soft girl cuddled into his shoulder, he found, more than made up for a cold, hard floor pressing up against his ass.

  "Indeed, my lord," Bloodbyrn said, "we must all strive to live according to the precepts of the First God. 'All your virtues we shall oppose.' Some, a few, truly possess the instincts for evil, and enjoy causing pain and chaos." She looked up at him. "My lord remembers Dark Princess Ashwing's rumors about your Half Brother Dark Prince Feerix. However, as for the rest of us…" She sighed, pressing her head back into the angle between his arm and chest, "We must perform." Bloodbyrn's eyes stared into the gloom of the storeroom. "We perform from the day we enter dark society, every moment of every day, until either villainy and wickedness become second-nature, or we are lucky enough to be driven mad and the persona becomes reality."

  That certainly explained a lot about DeMacabre, but Freetrick didn't think their relationship was advanced enough for him to say so.

  "My mother provides an edifying illustration," said Bloodbyrn.

  Or maybe not. Out loud, Freetrick encouraged, "Your mother?" Part of him still expected all of this to be some elaborate mind-game. Another part wanted the sad girl in his arms to smile at him. The rest of him…well it would be useful to know more about a potential enemy, wouldn't it? Two out of three votes carried the motion. "Tell me about her."

  "She was an average Sangboise noble, I suppose," Bloodbyrn stared into the cluttered darkness past Freetrick's shoulder, "from a good family, well-educated, adept at accounting, seduction, the womanly martial arts…only she loved my father."

  "Oh, I see," said Freetrick. "That was a bad thing?"

  "Of course."

  Of course. Affection between spouses would disrupt the whole evil atmosphere.

  "No," said Bloodbyrn, as if Freetrick had disagreed, "I truly believe she loved him, and he loved her in his turn." She sighed. "Oh, they hid it well enough. I remember we would make a game of battling before company. This was all before I was old enough to leave the Sarcophagus, our chateau in Macabre."

  Freetrick tried to imagine that childhood. To have a family, but not
be able to publicly enjoy the fact? It sounded diabolical, a mockery of everything he had wished for. And yet Bloodbyrn's expression showed that her childhood had not been a bad one. "And then?"

  "Then I went to school," Bloodbyrn said, "and while I was away…well…the details would only confuse you, my lord. Suffice to say, my father had his political enemies. They called down the dark priests down upon my household to enforce the Covenant. To make seeming into being, you understand."

  "Sweet true words." Freetrick imagined the knock on the door, the husband and wife holding each other as the agents of the Covenant descended on them. Had they drawn their blood and tried to fight? Or had they simply submitted to the law, and stepped away from each other?

  "They went on under the eye of judgment, you would say, on probation, for nearly a year," Bloodbyrn's voice intruded into Freetrick's dark fantasy, "but then, clearly they could not any longer maintain the enforced charade." The candlelight washed the color from Bloodbyrn's eyes, so they appeared nearly gray. "I know what happened next only from gossip and hints from my father. It is said…the public story puts it that my mother went mad—took on the role of dominatrix so completely that she ignored my father's cries of safe word. He was forced to battle for his life, and he won."

  Freetrick nodded. That story would certainly resonate with the Dark Nobility. Hell, Freetrick still half-believed Bloodbyrn would do exactly the same thing to him.

  "My father once told me that public story was untrue, however." She looked back down. "For a while I believed she might have escaped. Perhaps to !Quatl, or across the River Moat to Chyshia. Now I think it more likely she simply committed suicide in despair. Whatever the case, whether the death was carried out by her own hand, or my father when she attacked him before witnesses, her intent was no doubt the same." Bloodbyrn stopped speaking.