by Eric Nylund
Wheels turning within wheels, as Louis was fond of saying.
She then stroked the stack of three white stones that now displayed hairline cracks. That was Fiona Post. Indeed, she had plans for her as well.
Sealiah dragged her fingernail along the curve of the game board until she rested upon another white cube, whose edges had been smudged with soot.
Would this be her hero? A minor piece, to be sure, but often it was useful to let some pawns believe they were knights. . at least for a time.
A knock on the door distracted her. Sealiah’s temper flared, and then cooled as she recalled the circumstances of today.
“Come,” she commanded.
The door opened, and one of her personal maids entered and immediately fell to her knees.
“Are they ready?”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” the maid said, groveling upon the floor. “They have assembled and await your glory.”
With a flourish, Sealiah floated past the supplicant maid and up the spiral staircase. She emerged atop the tower called the Oaken Keeper of Secrets. Overhead the sky was luminous silver, the sun properly buried behind puffy layers of steaming altostratus clouds.
She strolled into the hedge maze of her tea garden, past the legion of gardeners who made sure the topiary was in tip-top shape, clip-clip-clipping the thorns and twisted branches of the agonized souls within, which had been meticulously shaped into rows of flamingos and prancing horses and elephants balanced upon turtles.69
Heirloom roses bloomed at her approach, and their colors popped along the perfumed pathway. She stepped in the center yard, where fountains sprayed champagne and a long table had been set with a hundred different teakettles, trays overflowing with pastries and sandwiches, and serving sets arranged with raw sugar and opium honey and lemons and cream and three dozen types of serving spoons and red current jam and orange marmalade and royal queen bee jelly.
All these preparations and delicacies, of course, were lost on her assembled cousins. . save, perhaps, Ashmed, the Chairman of the Infernal Board and Master Architect of Evil.
He stood at her approach, brushed his lips with a napkin, and pulled out a chair next to his at the head of the table. Ashmed was as professional and handsome as ever, in a light gray suit and silver tie, tastefully accessorized with mirror-polished gold cuff links. His hair was groomed into a dark wave, and he smiled, genuinely pleased to see her.
And why not? Sealiah and delivered for him and the others the means of their salvation.
And Sealiah-now with lands and armies to rival Ashmed’s-was his near equal in power.
It was a powerful aphrodisiac.
She bowed graciously and took her seat (first, however, looking about the table for any potential threats. . of which there were many).
Abby, The Destroyer, Handmaiden of Armageddon, and Mistress of the Palace of Abomination sat on her immediate left-a little too close for comfort. Abby had wrapped herself with black velvet ribbon, skintight over her slender curves. She played with a mouse, letting it scurry across the table-then trapping it with an upturned bone china cup-letting it go-capturing it again. . and laughing all the while at the creature squeaking its sufferings.
A giant wasp sat on Abby’s shoulder, cleaning its antennae.
Across the table sat Leviathan, the Beast, Horror of the Abyssal Depths. About him was a disaster of broken plates and cups and saucers and spilled teas-which he dabbed up with a fistful of sponge cake. With his other hand, he brushed crumbs from the ripples of his tent-sized Nike jumpsuit and smiled a mouthful of food at her.
Sitting by himself at the other end of the table was Louis.
Sealiah hide her surprise as well, but she feared she let slip a double take.
Louis looked. . delectable.
His hair had been trimmed short and neat on the sides, and the rest drawn back into a ponytail of silver and black and secured with a bloodred ribbon. His sideburns pointed to a stylish soul patch and pencil-thin mustache. He wore a black Armani tuxedo and a white shirt with diamond studs for buttons.
He smiled at her-all promises and remembrances of the passion that they had shared in the past.
This version of Louis had been copied by men throughout history: Don Juan, Clark Gable, Brad, and Johnny-all who were adored and made women’s hearts pitter-pat. None, however, did it as well as Louis. . the original seducer of them all.
Flowing off his shoulders was a cloak so rich and black, the material seemed to absorb the light. It had been stolen by Mephistopheles long ago, and recovered by Louis on the battlefield. It looked better on Louis. Truly, Lucifer was back among them, the real Prince of Darkness, now fully restored to his proper power and prowess and pride.
Gooseflesh crawled up Sealiah’s arms and over her chest and caressed her neck. She shivered and regained her composure. “Lies and salutations, Cousins.”
“That was some nice work,” Lev muttered to Sealiah, spilling half-chewed contents from his mouth. “Never thought you’d get Meph to turn his back on you!” He made a fist and shoved it into the air for emphasis (jiggling his layers of fat as he did so). “Bang-O. A classic move.”
Abby lost her concentration at Lev’s motions and accidentally slammed her cup down too hard on her rodent plaything-smashing china and fur and splintering the table. She frowned at her broken toy, then shot the Beast a cross look.
She turned to Sealiah and raised both her eyebrows. “I suppose congratulations are in order,” she grudgingly offered.
That was the first. Sealiah had never heard Abby utter a kind word before.
Indeed, things were changing.
Sealiah inclined her head, and with tremendous difficulty, she replied, “Thank you very much, Cousins.”
Ashmed cleared his throat, uncomfortable with all these pleasantries. “Perhaps before we all lose our collective heads with Sealiah’s success, we should take care of one procedural item first.”
All of them glanced at Louis as he straightened in his chair, intensified his smile, and remained uncharacteristically silent.
“We have numerous petitions and pleas to be considered for the vacancy on the Board.” Ashmed gestured to a stack of paperwork on the table, considered it, and brushed it onto the ground. He lit one of his Sancho Panza Belicoso cigars and flicked the still-flaming match onto the heap of papers. They burned and the flames reflected in his dark eyes. “I move that we instead vote for Louis. His expertise with his son and daughter has proved invaluable. . and will continue to do so.” Ashmed puffed and blew smoke rings. “Besides,” he added with mock sincerity, “we have so missed him.”
There was silence in the garden as the Board considered. Even the bees stopped their incessant buzzing, leaving only the sound of the foaming champagne fountain.
Sealiah had never recalled silence at any Board meeting. Perhaps after a scuffle when their personal retainers lay about bloody and dead, but this was something else.
Abby finally shrugged. “Fine,” she said. “Whatever.”
Lev nodded. “Yeah, sure, why not?”
Sealiah held her tongue as she considered all the possibilities swirling about her: war and peace, victory and obliteration, all deliciously tempting. But most curious to her was that her cousins seem to be agreeing and moving forward because of Eliot and Fiona. Those two were the catalysts.
Yes, it was the end of all they knew, and the beginning of something wonderfully horrid.
As Sealiah had predicted and wisely positioned herself to be in the center of. . and benefit the most from all who would suffer.
The one thing she had not predicted, however, was Louis.
He looked proud of his new potential position on the Board, yet wary, his gaze flitting from person to person. . and then lingering upon her.
Would he be her greatest adversary? An ally? Both?
Whichever outcome, she could ill afford not to keep him near, where he could be watched.
“Of course,” she said without taking her eyes
off Louis. “He would be a most welcome addition.”
Louis smiled, part shield, part gloat-which faltered but for an instant.
But in that instant, Sealiah detected something else in the Great Deceiver’s eyes: a flicker of indecision. And yes. . vulnerability.
She had seen such a look on him when he had been at his son’s side, proud and worried and so piteously feigning his indifference. She had also seen him protect Fiona on the battlefield (placing himself in danger for her sake). What else could it be but a father’s protectiveness? Even love?
Such foolishness. She envied him this love, but she also knew it would destroy him.
Sealiah settled into her chair, knowing everything was going to be all right now, her plans would remain on track, and soon she would command all.
There was, of course, one minor detail left to arrange: Fiona. But she would see to that soon enough. She smiled, thinking how pleasurable it might be.
“Very well,” Ashmed said, and stood. “By acclamation we welcome Louis Piper to the Infernal Board of Directors.”
Louis stood as if to make a speech, but Ashmed cut him off. “Alas, all ceremony and pomp must be postponed. The League of Immortals will move quickly to block our progress.”
Louis sank back into his seat, looking sullen.
Lev smashed his huge fist on the table-destroying that end of the table. “Let’s crush them before they can see it coming.”
“Precisely what I was thinking, Cousin,” Ashmed said. “Let us then discuss how to best use Eliot Post to destroy them, and how he will lead us in a glorious war.”
Sealiah’s smile intensified, knowing that war was inevitable. As was their victory.
69. Father Francis Limehouse, an associate of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) reported in his diary having related his “daft and endless” dreams to Mr. Dodgson of visiting a garden party with a less-than-mentally-stable hostess and company. In 1886, Limehouse was defrocked for alleged sexual liaisons with various socialites of the era, and soon thereafter died from a morphine overdose. Mythohistorians speculate that Lime house’s dreams may have been an opiate-induced, near-death experience-and the Mad Hatter’s tea party in Dodgson’s subsequent “Alice” books might have been a secondhand account of the Poppy Queen’s nightmarish realm in the nineteenth century. Gods of the First and Twenty-first Century, Volume 13, Infernal Forces. Zypheron Press Ltd., Eighth Edition.
84 CYCLE OF VIOLENCE
Cornelius-once called Cronos, and later Chronos; the sole surviving Titan in the Middle Realms; Ph.D. from MIT with degrees in computer science, political engineering, and theoretical physics; and Professor Emeritus of Stanford University-sat in the lotus position staring into the depths of the program running on his tablet computer. . traces of red and blue chaos that looked much like a butterfly in flight. He had missed the last Council meeting in order to implement the last lines of code. It had been worth the time and effort, though; it would give him a glimpse of their future.
Audrey would have called it “unscrambling a tangle in the weave of Fate.”
He called it meticulous programming and multivariate transcendental calculus.
He looked up, resting his old eyes, and taking in where he was (for sometimes he became so absorbed in the mathematics of the thing. . that he forgot what precisely that “thing” was).
Had he a map he could have pointed to the Aegean Sea, between modern-day Greece and Turkey. A place once called Ieiunium Aequora or “Hungry Water” by Byzantine sailors for all the ships that entered the region vanished.
Today no such thing occurred. It was just another stretch of water among a million other stretches of similar waters. . with a tiny rock of an island.
Millennia ago, however, that rock had been the high point of an archipelago upon which sat the grand city-state of Altium, grandest city of Atlantis. It had perched upon its hills like a bejeweled crown.
Under dark water, and accessible only through a submerged cavern guarded by beasts of mechanical construct, the city lay buried and sleeping.
In grottoes and forever in shadows were palaces, streets, gold-paved plazas, statues of heroes and gods and Titans and the mighty things that came before them; libraries with mountains of moldering scrolls; paintings that showed earthly paradises, battles among races that no longer lived, and portraits of the most beautiful men and women who ever existed-now all so faded, one could barely see a glimmer of their glory. It made him sad to think of how all was lost to Time.
Among this decaying splendor was the temple where Cornelius now sat, whose central domed chamber was held aloft by ivory mammoth tusks and columns of cracked crystal, and whose floors was paved with turquoise and lapis and jade.
This was the Chamber of Whispers, where Zeus had hatched his plan to overthrow the Titans.
Cornelius shifted on the uncomfortable stone bench, and rearranged the Dodger Stadium seat cushion he’d brought along with him.
Much better.
Within this chamber, holding the Council’s most precious secrets, was the Vault Eternal. The mad genius and master mechanic, Daedalus, had fashioned it to be impenetrable, with locks so intricate that even after a thousand years of study, Cornelius had only a hint of how it worked. To open it required three keys and three combinations simultaneously applied.
Proof against any thief.
One of the three keys was held by him.
Another key was held by Lucia, who had perched on the bench to his left.
She had toweled off from her recent swim through the entrance and had slipped into a set of ordinary sweats. Even in the gray cotton she looked elegant. Women had talents that eluded his scientific senses. . and he appreciated that.
Lucia was wise, but always competing with the beauty of her younger sister, the ferocity of her older sister, and with herself (never quite perfect enough to live up to her impossible standards).
“Narro, Audio, Perceptum,” Lucia said, and rang her tiny silver bell. The tinkling echoed off the dome and was swallowed by the silence of this place. “I call this meeting of the Council of Elders for the League of Immortals to order.”
Gilbert sat opposite them. He glanced at his watch as if expecting someone to show (and indeed this was a possibility), but the deep worry on his face was something Cornelius had never seen on the Once King.
Kino sat on Cornelius’s right and wore black slacks and white shirt. He and Cornelius had come here together in Gilbert’s submersible. It had been a quiet, unpleasant journey.
Aaron stood apart from them, still dripping in his EVERLAST trunks, his chest hair plastered to his muscular chest.
Henry was missing.
In absentia also was Dallas-called before the Council by special summons. Her tardiness would no doubt be an excuse for Lucia to try to punish the girl.
No surprise, really, that neither had showed. It was not in their natures to respond to authority.
Audrey, however, had also failed to arrive. . and she was never late or shirked her responsibilities once she accepted them. It was a dark omen.
“I suppose we have a quorum,” Gilbert admitted, and glanced again at his watch.
“Have we all seen Fiona’s e-mail?” Lucia asked.
They nodded. Cornelius opened the document on his computer.
Fiona’s e-mail was a pledge to help the Immortals defend themselves from “the looming threat of Infernal machinations and incursions into our world” as well as a plea to help her find new leadership to stop this threat.
“I’m enormously pleased with this development,” Lucia said. “Fiona has matured far beyond my expectations. We need to bring her onto the Council; perhaps some sort of internship?”
“She is a child still,” Gilbert protested.
“Hardly,” Aaron muttered. “She has fought and won a war in Hell! What more proof do you need for abilities?”
“Of her abilities?” Kino said. “None.” He made a sideways slash with his hand. “But she is bare
ly a woman and in desperate need of our guidance.”
“Yes, guidance,” Lucia said. “Which brings me to the other matter, one our spies in the Lower Realms have brought to our attention. Eliot.”
Kino stood. “The boy is now a landed Infernal Lord who is also half Immortal. This is a disaster! His powers will grow beyond our measure, and his mind will warp until it is evil.”
Aaron shook his head. “I don’t believe that. Not Eliot.”
Gilbert looked uncomfortable between the two men, and he stood as well. “I do not wish to discuss Audrey’s children if she is not here.”
“There is no discussion necessary,” Lucia told them. She got to her feet, and her cheeks flushed. “This has already been decided, last year-for just such a contingency. You all put your mark to the document, even you, Gilbert! Do not evade responsibility when it becomes difficult.”
They stood in silence (save Cornelius, who remained seated in silence). They knew exactly what she was talking about.
Last year when they had proclaimed Fiona a young goddess and Eliot a hero within the League, the Council had feared this very thing: one or both of the children’s Infernal sides would call to them, and they would succumb to its temptations.
Each Council member had signed a Warrant of Death so action could be taken without delay. All that remained was for Lucia to fill in the date and the document became binding. . and every one of the League’s members would be compelled to find and destroy Eliot.
Cornelius rubbed his hands to ease the arthritic ache within his bones.
In truth, his loyalties were conflicted, for he liked Eliot and Fiona. There were grandchildren to him. . at least, that was how he had begun to think of them.
His own children were lost. Zeus had met his fate. No one had seen him since Ultima Thule, and Cornelius knew in his heart he was dead. Poseidon had taken his own life in a flash of light, and his ashes were now scattered across the seas he so loved. And Kino? The Lord of Death was so far from the child Cornelius had reared, he might as well be dead to him.
