Queen of Nothing (Marla Mason Book 9)

by T. A. Pratt

  “Mmm.” Elsie put her hand against the glass. “He was better at writing short stories, really. His novels always sort of sagged in the middle. But I say he is a god, of a particular sort. He dreamed his vast epic fantasy world into life, and the creatures who dwell there have independent consciousness and senses of self—the things Barrow dreams about even bleed through into this reality sometimes, and gold coins and monster-skins are some of the more harmless apports. I consider his dream world one of my top vacation destinations.”

  “I remember you visited him, back when you were planning to kill me, and brought the HellHorn out of his dream,” Marla said. “What did you do with that thing, anyway?”

  “Oh, who remembers? I think I put it on a shelf somewhere in a dead woman’s storage unit. Eventually the unit will get auctioned off and someone will find the horn, and if they blow it, oh, won’t that be interesting? I’ve nipped back into Barrow’s dreams once or twice since then, though, and stolen away other artifacts. There was this one spear, called Ghostreaper, I’m sure you remember it, a remarkable artifact—I brought that out of the dream and gave it to a friend of mine, to see what he’d do. It wasn’t nearly as much fun as I’d hoped, though. Oh well. But we’re going to hop into Barrow’s dream and find something to help us beat up the New Death. It’s like a quest! Won’t it be fun?”

  “Hmm. I guess going in wasn’t so bad last time. Barrow was more pathetic than anything else, dreaming himself as a kind of scholar-barbarian hero combo.”

  “Ah, but his story has moved on, I’m afraid. These days he’s no longer the wandering warrior known was Barrow of Ulthar. Now he’s the Lord of the Maggotlands, Protector of the Ravenous Dead, Dispenser of Injustice, Bestower of Maladies, Emperor of the Cinderlands and the Megalith Isles, and so on and so forth. You’re the one who turned him into a world-bestriding despot, actually.”

  “What? How is that my fault?”

  “Doctor Husch told me all about it. You went into Barrow’s dream to convince him he wasn’t a fantasy hero destined for greatness, that he was just a man, in hopes of restoring him to lucidity, and bringing him back to this reality. You did too good a job, though. After you kicked his ass and stole his prophesied victory out from under him, he became furious, and decided that, if he didn’t have a destiny, he would make his own. If he couldn’t be a hero, he would become a conqueror. Barrow then proceeded to lay waste to every little corner of the geographically implausible map he’d drawn. He’s a bit of an asshole, frankly, but he does dream up some good toys, and his artifacts work when you bring them into this world too.”

  “Unintended fucking consequences,” Marla muttered. “Story of my life. How do we go in? Last time it was a whole magical rigamarole to link my mind to his.”

  “We are the whole magical rigamarole,” Elsie said. “We go in like this.” She seized Marla’s hand, and the world changed.

  The Sundered Isles

  “Welcome to the Sundered Isles of the Lambent Sea.” Elsie twirled around on the pale-green sand, beneath a carnivorous-looking variant of a palm tree that shook its branches menacingly.

  “What the hell are you wearing?” Marla said.

  Elsie looked down at herself. “Ah. Well, enter the dreamworld, get co-opted by local norms. It happens.”

  “Sure, but is that, like... a lizard-skin body harness bikini?”

  “Mmm, basically, basically. You’re so much more modest in your attire, more’s the pity.”

  Marla was dressed in a dark cloak worn over cosplay forest ranger gear, pretty much; the knee-high boots were nice, anyway. She unhooked the cloak and let it drop to the sand, though, because the sun here was abominably hot. The cloak scuttled away across the sand and disappeared into the sea, which shone with pale yellow lights beneath the surface. “Ugh. I had enough of wearing cloaks that were secretly alive in the real world.” Marla shaded her eyes and looked around. This was a rather more pleasant part of Barrow’s fantasy world than the area she’d visited previously, with less in the way of dread citadels and bleeding clouds. This place was a glowing sea dotted with islands, including a few, off in the distance, that held impressively baroque structures, like full-sized sandcastles. “What are we doing here?”

  “This is where old dark lords retire.”

  “Is Barrow here?”

  “No, he’s ruling from a grim fortress carved from the skull of a city-sized dragon, the usual sort of thing, hundreds of leagues away. He’s not retired. He’s still fighting a war with some of the other dark lords, and I imagine he will continue doing so until the sun explodes, or someone sneaks into his hospital room and smothers him with a pillow, whichever comes first. We’re here to visit the tomb of the late dark lord Mogrash, who began his reign in blood and fire and slavery but ended up ruling over an era of peace, prosperity, and voluntary regime change, passing control to his adopted son. Mogrash’s heirs are still the main rivals to Barrow’s control, or at least, they were the last time I peeked in on the place. Who knows what’s going on now. Time is funny here.”

  “So we’re tomb-raiding. What’s in the tomb?”

  “Mogrash’s enchanted battle-axe, Trepanner.”

  “Like... trepanation? Drilling holes in the skull?”

  “Mogrash’s approach to brain surgery was a bit more informal than that, but, yes, Trepanner put holes in a great many skulls over the years. One of Mogrash’s more bloodthirsty children inherited the weapon, but when the dark lord finally shuffled off this fantasy coil many years ago, they buried the axe with his body. His tomb is on the next island, over there. Shall we?” Elsie flickered, vanishing from sight, and Marla followed, pleased that her line-of-sight teleport still worked in this place.

  Barrow’s dreamworld was a bit like the underworld, in that a presiding mind controlled its shape, but anyone with sufficient will could make alterations to the fabric of local reality, to greater or lesser degrees. As long as they didn’t draw Barrow’s attention, they could get in and out of here without much trouble.

  The dark lord’s tomb took up most of the small island, and was in the shape of an immense skull, seemingly made of the same pale green sand that covered the islands. Marla thumped her fingers against it, and then swore: the walls were hard as stone, not crumbly at all.

  “The local builders use sand magic. I gather if you don’t pay them what they’re owed in a timely fashion, they can snap their fingers and make your whole castle collapse into a heap of loose grains. But how about we use the door?” Elsie walked up to the closed mouth of the skull and made a series of mystic-looking passes. The jaws of the tomb ground open with a sound like squeaking hinges, until the mouth gaped wide enough for them to walk in without hunching over. Marla followed the chaos god down a set of stairs made of the same solidified sand, to a torchlit chamber where a giant-sized sarcophagus in the shape of a warrior in a horned helmet rested on a pedestal.

  Something rustled in a dark alcove off to one side, and a rasping voice said, “I am the sibyl. I foresaw your coming.”

  “I bet you’re just saying that,” Elsie said.

  “You have come to take the great axe Trepanner.”

  “Lucky guess,” Elsie said.

  The sibyl stepped into the light. She wore a ragged black dress and veil, but was younger and more handsome than the withered crone Marla had expected based on her voice.

  As if reading Marla’s mind, the sibyl said, “I used to have a lovely voice. I have not spoken since my husband’s burial.”

  “Wait,” Marla said. “You’re Mogrash’s widow? And you shut yourself up in his tomb? What did you do that for?”

  “I... it is my duty to protect his grave from thieves and plunderers and necromancers....”

  “What about your duty to not live in a tomb made of sand for years upon years?” Marla said.

  “Not all pulp fantasy writers were sexist, but Barrow is,” Elsie said. “It’s not the sibyl’s fault. She’s just written that way. So, we’ll just be taking the axe....�
��

  “The dark lord Barrow of Ulthar threatens the empire my husband created.” The sibyl scuttled between them and the tomb, moving as fast as a spider. “This moment is a nexus of destinies. I will allow you to take the axe, and make it your own... but only if you agree to strike Barrow down.”

  “Always with the plot coupons.” With a flick of her wrist, Elsie turned the sibyl into a pile of writhing beetles. “Who has time for all that to-ing and fro-ing?” Before Marla could react, Elsie walked to the sarcophagus and heaved the lid aside.

  Marla joined her, stepping carefully so she wouldn’t crush any of the beetles. “Was that really necessary?”

  “If you only do what’s necessary, you almost never have any fun.” Elsie looked down into the coffin, where the skeletal remains of an immense man rested in ceremonial armor. A pickaxe, brutally practical-looking apart from a fat ruby embedded at the base of the handle, rested on his chest. Elsie picked up the weapon. “Ooh, this I like.”

  “How does that help us in our battle against the New Death?”

  “Trepanner puts holes in skulls. The New Death has a skull. Assorted skulls, actually. What better weapon to hit him with?”

  “I can’t imagine that an axe from a fantasy novel is really going to hurt the god of death.”

  “Oh, it’ll hurt him. Barrow is a god, whether you want to believe it or not, and that means this is an artifact, god-forged. I’m not positive it will actually kill the New Death, but hurt him? Most definitely. Shall we go?”

  “Will you turn the sibyl back into a person?”

  “She wasn’t a person, anyway. In Barrow’s world, sibyls look like humans, but the aren’t, not quite. But, fine.” Elsie gestured... but the beetles just kept scuttling. She scowled. “Damn it. We’d better go, Marla.” Elsie took her hand... and nothing happened. “Well. Crapsicles. I think Barrow noticed us. He’s exerting his view of reality pretty hard right now.”

  “Probably because you turned one of his antagonists into beetles. Maybe you shouldn’t have done that.”

  “Telling someone they shouldn’t have lit the fire when the house has already burned down isn’t really constructive criticism, Marla. Let’s go outside.”

  The sun no longer beat down on the island, because a fleet of flying warships, brutally spiked and bristling with cannons, had arrived to blot out the sun. Elsie sighed. “Here, hold this axe.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “For just this moment we have to play by Barrow’s rules. That means we’re stuck mostly with the powers he gave us. You’re some kind of witch, I don’t know what kind, but I’m familiar enough with Barrow’s oeuvre to know exactly what he dreamed me into.”

  “What’s that?”

  She snapped one of the straps of her elaborate scaled harness. “This isn’t lizardskin, it’s dragon skin, and I’m a drake-witch.” She grinned. “Funny, huh? It’s not even my first time being a dragon.”

  “Don’t remind me,” Marla said.

  Elsie jumped into the air, and began to transform, growing in size as she went. Marla gaped as the chaos god, in her new draconic form, attacked the warships... and then various monstrous humanoids started leaping from the ships and landing on and around the island, swimming and wading and running toward Marla, roaring as they came.

  Trepanner felt good in her hands. Marla hadn’t been in an honest-to-gods melee in a long time.

  She lifted the axe. She roared back.

  •

  Elsie stepped over a heap of tusked and snouted fallen soldiers. “Don’t worry, they’re not sentient. I don’t think.”

  “I am covered in blood, and things I wish were blood,” Marla said.

  “Don’t wash off in the sea. You’ll attract all sorts of nasty creatures.” The fleet of warships was crashed, sinking, burning. Elsie flickered, teleporting a dozen yards away, then back again. “Ah, good, we overloaded Barrow’s bandwidth. I think we can leave now.”

  “You didn’t kill Barrow?” Marla said. “Like the sibyl wanted?”

  “I do not like to imagine the consequences of killing the one true god of this creation inside his creation. I think it might be like climbing into a hole and pulling the hole in after you. So, no, I didn’t. Shall we?”

  Marla looked around at the devastation, wiped not-blood from her forehead, and nodded. “Let’s.”

  Back in the hospital room, they were wearing their old clothes again, but they were still covered in blood and soot, respectively. According to the clock on the wall, only about two minutes had elapsed in real-time. Marla commented, and Elsie nodded. “How else can Barrow play out his cast-of-thousands generational rise-and-fall-of-empires epic series before the sun explodes? Besides, he’s a god there. Time is his to command.” Elsie patted the old man’s cheek. “Let’s pop back to the suite in Las Vegas and shower this nastiness off, shall we?

  The Scent of Lemons

  “Where to now?” Marla said. “What’s the last whistle-stop on this little godhood tour of yours?”

  “We can get where we’re going from anywhere, but first, let’s find a grocery store. I want some fresh organic produce.”

  “Billions of dead souls are currently suffering, Elsie. I’m not in the mood to dawdle.”

  She waved her hand airily. “Oh, don’t worry so much. Your boys aren’t even done with their mission yet.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I have a couple of, oh, magical sensors set up at likely locations along the course of their journey, and they haven’t been tripped yet. We’ve got time. Anyway, this is mission critical fresh produce I’m talking about.”

  They made their way, mostly by walking but with a bit of judicious Earth-folding, to a small upscale market in the city. Walking among the aisles of fruit and vegetables, Marla shook her head. “I thought people in Vegas subsisted entirely on shrimp cocktail and breakfast buffets and martini olives.”

  “The health nuts and vegetarians get in everywhere.” Elsie stopped by a display of citrus fruit and picked up a lemon nearly the size of a baseball. “This’ll do.”

  Lemons? Oh, no. “Elsie, what are you going to do with that lemon?”

  “What can I say? I have a zest for life.” She drew one sharp red fingernail across the fruit’s skin, releasing the essential oils with a burst of lemon scent.

  Marla felt a great magical upwelling of intention from her fellow god, and then the store around them vanished, replaced by a white marble floor, with walls of gauzy white curtains.

  “Huh, she’s never let me in here before.” Elsie dropped the lemon on the floor. “But I guess she saw I was with you, and decided to open the door.”

  “This is Genevieve’s pocket dimension.” Marla crossed her arms. “We do not need to be here, Elsie. I’m not stealing anything from Gen.”

  “Of course not. When you take a person, it’s not stealing, it’s kidnapping.”

  “What? No. We’re not taking her anywhere. She’s a reweaver. Reality is like clay for her. Along certain axes, she’s more powerful than we are.”

  “Which is why I’m classing her as an honorary god, even if she doesn’t have the conditional immortality and the spark of divinity we possess. She has the power of creation, or at least of alteration, so she’s powerful enough for the sisterhood, I think.” Elsie cupped her hands around her mouth. “Oh, Genevieve! Are you home? Of course you are, because if you weren’t here the local reality would cease to exist. Care to come out? We used to be fellow inmates at the Blackwing Institute. Funny story, I wanted to recruit you for this assassination squad I put together a while back, but I didn’t think you’d approve of the target!”

  “Elsie, please stop shouting. That is a lot of shouting. Gen doesn’t do well with noisy disruptions.”

  “Oh, but I’m an adorable disruption, everyone loves me. Genevieve!”

  A golden cube six feet on each side appeared where Elsie had been, then shrank down to something the size of an end table. One of the curtains twit
ched aside and Genevieve walked in, ducking her head shyly, caramel-colored curls falling into her face. She initially wore a loose-fitting dress, but as she walked her garb changed to a blouse and skirt, and a dark scarf wound itself around her throat. “Marla. You’ve changed. You’re more, now, aren’t you?”

  “I got an upgrade, yeah. I’m sorry to barge in on you, Genevieve. It wasn’t my idea, and I wouldn’t have let, uh, my loud friend bring me if I’d realized this was where we were going.”

  “She is very loud. She’s still yelling in there. I can tell, even if I can’t hear her.” Genevieve sat on the cube and smiled. “It is good to see you, though. What’s the latest disaster?”

  “Ha, it’s kind of a long story, but....” Marla sat on the floor and told her story, leaving almost nothing out. Genevieve wasn’t quite family, but Marla was inordinately fond of her. Gen could change the nature of reality at a whim, but her powers were difficult to control, and she’d chosen to withdraw into a pocket dimension in order to avoid accidentally hurting anyone. Here, she could change things whenever she wanted, and the alterations wouldn’t ripple into a reality shared by others. She wasn’t entirely alone here, though. She had the company of constructs she’d conjured based on the memories of a couple of her old friends, who had independent reality and consciousness in her world, though they couldn’t survive in the less compromising reality outside this dimension. Marla had always, before, kept Genevieve in the back of her mind as a potential nuclear option, a weapon of overwhelming power... but, like literal nuclear weapons, Genevieve was ultimately too dangerous to ever be deployed. Even now.