If I Were An Evil Overlord Martin H Greenberg

Rusty led the intervention on me. When I get out of Rehab, I’m going to spend some quality time with his head. I don’t care what happens to the rest of his body.

The rest of my top staff participated, though some of them wore masks. Masks could not hide their visages from my awful wrath. I know the name of everyone who conspired to humiliate me. At night, when I am strapped to the bed, I use the point of a loose screw to inscribe their names, one by one, into the patina. My bed stinks of fresh paint because the minions here are efficient and desire that everything remain pristine, so they paint over my list every day. I don’t care that my list disappears. I am really scribing the names in my memory while I try to erase the things my inferiors said to me. The things they said to me!

“We caught you being nice to a random dog.”

“Your personal assistant used sarcasm on you, and you didn’t have him flogged.”

“You smiled in public, and it wasn’t the smile that sends small children screaming into the night.”

“You’re letting the intervention proceed without ordering us all killed immediately,” said Rusty. “Boss, you’re losing your edge. Trust me. You need help. You’re not our ruthless Master anymore.”

—from “Art Therapy” by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

Also Available from DAW Books:

Hags, Harpies, and Other Bad Girls of Fantasy, edited by Denise Little From hags and harpies to sorceresses and sirens, this volume features twenty all-new tales that prove women are far from the weaker sex—in all their alluring, magical, and monstrous roles. With stories by C.S Friedman, Rosemary Edghill, Lisa Silverthorne, Jean Rabe, and Laura Resnick.

Under Cover of Darkness, edited by Julie E. Czerneda and Jana Paniccia In our modern-day world, where rumors of conspiracies and covert organizations can spread with the speed of the Internet, it’s often hard to separate truth from fiction. Down through the centuries there have been groups sworn to protect important artifacts and secrets, perhaps even exercising their power, both wordly and mystical, to guide the world’s future. In this daring volume, authors such as Larry Niven, Janny Wurtz, Esther Friesner, Tanya Huff, and Russell Davis offer up fourteen stories of those unseen powers operating for their own purposes. From an unexpected ally who aids Lawrence in Arabia, to an assassin hired to target the one person he’d never want to kill, to a young woman who stumbles into an elfin war in the heart of London, to a man who steals time itself . . .

Army of the Fantastic, edited by John Marco and John Helfers How might the course of WWII have changed if sentient dragons ran bombing missions for the Gemans?

This is just one of the stories gathered in this all-original volume that will take you to magical place in our own world and to fantasy realms where the armies of the fantasic are on the march, waging wars both vast and personal. With stories by Rick Hautala, Alan Dean Foster, Tanya Huff, Tim Waggoner, Bill Fawcett, and Fiona Patton.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

Russell Davis

In the movie The Return of the Jedi, at the climax of the film (WARNING: SPOILER ALERT—IF

YOU ARE ONE OF THE TWELVE PEOPLE ON EARTH WHO HASN’T SEEN THIS MOVIE, THE FOLLOWING MAY WRECK IT FOR YOU), with Luke Skywalker is on his back, the Emperor standing over him and shooting cool bolts of Force lightning into his body. Darth Vader stands nearby watching his son die. It’s over for the Jedi and the Rebel Alliance. Evil has won. Then Vader allows sentimentality to get the better of him and he picks up the Emperor and throws him down a bottomless pit to his death.

I have to admit that when Vader grabbed the Emperor, one of the first thoughts that ran through my mind was, Don’t do it, you fool! You see, the sad truth is that I kind of like rooting for the bad guy. I have a strong background in role-playing games, particularly fantasy role-playing games, and as a player character, I’ve crossed paths with innumerable bad guys, often in the guise of an Evil Overlord. They’re always doing the same kinds of things: crushing the peasant population; ravaging a beautiful, young princess; stealing and taxing and in general making life as miserable as possible. It’s hard not to enjoy their antics. (Fortunately, I’ve also played Evil Overlords, so I have some sense of how to face them. And have yet to have been bested by one, though I suspect that they didn’t have the advantage of reading this anthology.)

The concept of a list of things one might consider doing should one, in fact, become an Evil Overlord has been around a long time. It’s been one of the longest running jokes on the Internet, forwarded via e-mail and found on numerous Web sites. Many of these lists touch on fantasy, science fiction, even mystery and thriller tropes and cliche’s that speak directly and humorously to those who enjoy role-playing games and novels in these genres.

It’s worth noting that the “Evil Overlord List” by Peter Anspach is certainly the most popular and widely known of these lists, though by no means the only one, nor even the first one. In the dim, dark year of 1984, a group of friends and I developed a very similar list called “The Rules of Oblivion,” which took to heart such statements as, “Take nothing for granted. That rabbit may be armed.”

For this anthology, we challenged fourteen of today’s best authors to come up with a story about an Evil Overlord and what he or she (not all Evil Overlords are men) should consider doing to protect themselves and their dark realms. Many writers, such as Esther Friesner and David Bischoff, came through with enjoyable tales featuring familiar characters and offering plenty of laughs. Others, like David Niall Wilson and Steve Roman, took a more serious approach—which has, I admit, left me wondering what they might be plotting next.

But no matter how a writer approached the subject, as the editor (the ultimate Evil Overlord in this anthology, one might say), I got the pleasure of reading and reviewing them all . . . and now I get the added pleasure of sharing them with you. In short, the pleasure is all mine, but I hope it will be yours, too. Funny how being an Evil Overlord in the publishing field has these little perks, isn’t it?

Enjoy!

—Russell Davis

Sierra Vista, Arizona

IF LOOKS COULD KILL

Esther Friesner

“Oh, shut up,” said Prince Lorimel, tossing his long, golden hair in a peevish manner. It was a bad idea, under the circumstances. The manacles holding his slender-yet-powerful arms were ancient oxidized relics of the previous owner of Castle Bonecrack. (In fact, up until the moment of Prince Lorimel’s incarceration, they had held the last few skeletal remnants of the previous owner of Castle Bonecrack, per orders of the current management of said premises.) They did their job well enough, but the wear and tear of centuries—to say nothing of the corrosive teardrops of a succession of luckless prisoners—had roughened the iron with colonies of thorny rust that snared any soft and silky thing unfortunate enough to brush against them.

Case in soft-and-silky point: A handsome elf prince’s glorious, gossamer hair. Result: “OW! This is all your fault, Gudge.”

“Aw, now, Master m’lud Lorimel, don’t ’ee be takin’ on so, naow.” The coarse yet good-natured voice of Prince Lorimel’s companion-in-shackles (though not comrade-in-arms) echoed through the foul dungeon. It was this same voice, nattering about how stone walls did not a prison make, that had provoked the prince’s outburst, with concomitant hair-tossing, in the first place. “I di’n’t do nowt t’ yer Worship’s purty hair, nay. See, ’tis as I told yer Reverence’s noble pa, lo these many turns agone, ‘The best thing a wise elf prince can do fer hisself when it so happens as he’s misstepped matters and ended up in some evil overlord’s dungeon is bide his time all still an’ quiet-like, waiting fer what must come.’

Yer Eminence’ll notice that still part, as means yer not to move more’n needful, ’cos squirmin’ about’ll only—Well, I expect yer Highness has found that out fer yerself already, what with yer purty goldy hair all of a tangle and—”

“Gudge?” Prince Lorimel interrupted.

“Aye, m’lud?”

“Shut up.”

Sweet silence descended upon the drear and dreadful dungeon once more. It was not to last, of course. Prince Lorimel was an elf, right enough, and as such, immortal. The long lines of the years spilling into centuries and even eons gave the elves the rare ability to wrap the glowing silence of their own deep thoughts around them like the comforting warmth of a well-loved blanket. Also, most elves ran out of really interesting conversation before they hit their three hundredth birthday. But the prince’s retainer and fellow captive, the being known as Gudge of Willowstone-Thickly, was not an elf at all. What he was, was open to some debate among those wizards who found fascination in such blood-and-breeding puzzles. Evidence pointed to the short, fubsy, somewhat swarthy fellow having a mix of troll and brownie ancestry, seasoned lightly with a bit of pixie (on account of his ill-governed tongue), and perhaps a soupc¸on of goblin. All of this, however, was strictly on his unknown father’s side. His mother was a full-blooded human girl who really should have been a bit more circumspect in her choice of Midsummer’s Eve companions. From a midnight frolic between the rows of barley, Gudge of Willowstone-Thickly took his life’s beginning, and from a subsequent amorous alliance of his mother’s with a slumming elf lord came his introduction into the court of the Lofty Elves. The Lofty Elves were, of all the elf tribes ever to skim the surface of Intermediate Earth, the fairest, the oldest, the wisest, and the most jaded. They had seen it all and been it all and after they were through, they complained about it all at some length, in verse, accompanied by the tinkle-ploing-dingle that passed for elfin music. (That effete doodle-oodle-hey-lally-lally-moo was what came from an orchestrative tradition relying on altogether too many harps and not enough bagpipes.) And so, when His Awesome and Devastating Unspeakableness, Lord Belg of Castle Bonecrack, decided to stop torturing puppies and start conquering as much of Intermediate Earth’s prime real estate as he could get his scaly paws on, it was an occurrence greeted with a loud shout of outrage but also with covert mutterings of delighted anticipation by the bored-out-of-their-pretty-skulls-till-now Lofty Elves. Prince Lorimel had one such pretty skull, but at the moment the odds did not favor his continued ownership thereof. No sooner had word of Lord Belg’s evil schemes reached him in his father’s forest palace, than he had sworn a mighty oath to sally forth and defeat the Evil One single-handed. He then promptly conscripted Gudge to accompany him as his squire, valet, dogsbody, and drudge-of-all-work, because single-handed was a romantic concept in theory, but in practice it meant wash your own socks

There was a delectable irony behind the fact that Prince Lorimel and Gudge had been captured by one of Lord Belg’s troll patrols while the prince was excoriating his servant for doing such a piss-poor job of washing said socks.

Now, socks were the fourth furthest thing from the elf prince’s mind. His thoughts had turned to matters of far graver import, matters that well might determine the fate of worlds!

“My hair,” he whined. “My beautiful, beautiful hair!”

The dungeon door screeched and groaned on its hinges as the troll who served as Lord Belg’s chief turnkey entered. He chuckled with foul glee when he saw the mare’s nest that Prince Lorimel’s struggles had made of his gorgeous tresses.

“Awwww, diddums elfy-welfy gettums purty hair all snarly-warlied?” he asked in a voice like treacle and carpet tacks. (His penchant for taunting Lord Belg’s prisoners with baby talk was why the Evil One had not needed to employ a full-time torture-master nor, in some cases, an executioner.) “Izzums elfy-poo gonna cwy now his hair’s gotta go all snippy-snip bye-bye?”

“Here, now!” Shackled as he was, Gudge lunged at the troll. “Doan’ ’ee be sayin’ such vicious cruel things t’ me Master, nay! We been through worse’n this, him ’n’ me, an’ let me tell ’ee, just gimme a bucket o’ water, a fistful o’ soapwort, an’ a light cream-rinse afore ye goes talkin’ ’bout cuttin’ off his Worship’s hair, aye!”

The troll guard blinked, taken aback by his first confrontation with someone who had a more annoying speech pattern than himself.

“Hunh!” he snorted. “Save yer breath; ’tain’t up t’ me if yer precious master gets shorn or not. Lord Belg’s daughter’s heard tell that there’s a pointy-eared princeling locked up in Daddy’s dungeon and now ’tis but a matter o’ time before she comes down here to . . . take care of him. Heh, heh, heh.”

Up until this point, Prince Lorimel had been doing his best to ignore the cumbersomely picturesque conversation between Gudge and the guard. Now, however, he perked up the aforementioned pointy ears and took a keen and sudden interest it what had just been said.

“A daughter?” He tensed like a well-bred bird dog in an aviary. “Did I hear you say that Lord Belg has a daughter?”

The troll turnkey smirked and gave the elf prince the once-over before replying, “An’ what’s it to ye if’n he do, Snoogums? Or do the very thought o’ His Aweseome an’ Appalling Vileness doin’ the Goblin Twist-an’-Tickle put ye off yer feed?”

“Doin’ the what?” Gudge wanted to know.

Prince Lorimel made an impatient sound. “The carnal act of which yon odious troll speaks is that which we Lofty Elves more delicately refer to as ‘making the bogle with two backs.’ ”

“Nah, thass not what I mean.” The troll shook his head. “ ’Cos Lord Belg did make a bogle wi’ two backs once, only the poor thing di’n’t know was he comin’ or goin’ an’ so we had to—”

“Ohhhh!” Light dawned on Gudge of Willowstone-Thickly, albeit a foggy, heavily overcast light. “I gets it now. You mean Lord Belg was doin’ the Haystack Ramble; the Weasel Bounce; the Three Apples in a Gunnysack Shimmy; the Naked Morris Dancers—”

“Gudge, shut up!” Prince Lorimel shouted so loudly that pale green veins stood out in high relief from his alabaster skin. “Or do we have to have another little talk about oversharing?”

“Scoop me hollow fer a pun’kin pie, nay, ” Gudge replied in haste. “I ain’t got th’ bruises healed up from th’ last ‘little talk’ we had, bless yer gracious Grace’s strong right arm.”

“Y’know, if ye two blatherboxes don’t care no more ’bout Lord Belg’s daughter, why don’ I just be on me way?” The troll guard was miffed at being ignored by his prisoners.

“Nay, good lump of loathsomeness, stay!” Prince Lorimel exclaimed. “Speak more to me of Lord Belg’s daughter. We of the Lofty Elves had no idea that the Evil One was a father as well as the slaughterer of untold thousands of our kin. It gives him an unexpected air of domesticity.”

“Oh, he’s a father, right enough,” the troll replied, licking his lips in a lascivious manner. “An’ no wonder, as many times as he’s taken purty young wenches as captives t’ slake his unnatural appetites. I’m only s’prised as His Direness don’t have more kids’n what he’s got.”

“I ain’t,” Gudge piped up. “A feller spends as much time as that’n does in th’ saddle, ridin’ all over th’

land on evil conquest bent, that’ll be causin’ a certain amount o’ damage to his—”

“Gudge!” This time the elf lord yelled at his attendant so loudly that the sound waves rived the rust from the manacles securing them both. Prince Lorimel’s entangled hair was freed and immediately fell back into place in a gleaming flaxen flood.

Gudge gave his master a sidelong, sulky look. “I’m only sayin’ what yer thinkin’,” he grumped.

“Trust me, Gudge, the day I spend one wink of time thinking about Lord Belg’s, er, connubial apparatus will be the day I eat a badger sandwich. A live badger sandwich,” Prince Lorimel clarified.

“Ahuh,” said the guard. He took a grimy pad of paper and a pencil stub out of his belt pouch and made a note. “So I takes it ye’ll be wantin’ the vegetarian option fer yer dinner t’night instead?”

The elf prince rolled his eyes expressively. “Are you sure you two aren’t related?” he asked Gudge. Gudge declined to comment.

“Listen, my good troll,” Prince Lorimel said to the turnkey. “Forget about my dinner—”

“Oh, I intend to.” The troll grinned affably.

“—and tell me more about Lord Belg’s daughter. You said that she knows I’m here and wishes to, as you put it, take care of me herself, is that right?”

The troll’s ugly head bobbed like a cabbage in a boiling stewpot. “Aye, that’s true. She’s allus the one as takes care o’ our prisoners. She’d’ve been here sooner, ’cept she just heard ’bout you bein’ here over breakfas’. That’d be ’cos Himself’s a selfish ol’ bastard as likes t’ keep his playthings fer his own use, exclusive. But now that the lass knows . . .” The troll’s voice trailed off suggestively.

“Oh, me poor master!” Gudge wailed. “An’ him so young! A mere slip o’ a lad what ain’t seen more’n two thousand eight hunnert an’ fifteen summers, aye. An’ what’s t’ become o’ poor loyal ol’ Gudge after that evil hussy’s gone an’ killed ’im deader’n dog droppin’s? Oh, woe’s me an’ alack the day, wurra-wurra, lawks an’—”

“Shut up, Gudge!” This time the troll joined sentiment with the elf prince. It was a pretty impressive display of interspecies cooperation. Clearly Gudge had missed his calling in the Diplomatic Corps.

“Aye, shut yer toad-pie-hole, ye big baby,” the troll continued. “Izzums scared t’ be left all alone after Lord Belg’s daughter sees t’ yer fluffy-haired elfikin master? No worries: She’ll be sure t’ take care o’

ye, too!”

Somewhere in Castle Bonecrack, a great iron-tongued bell cleaved the air with a doleful knell. The troll snapped his pad shut and stuffed it back into his pouch. “Noseweed break time! See you folks later, an’

by ’later’ I mean ’dead.’ Mwahaha!” With that, he swaggered off up the dungeon stairs and slammed the heavy door behind him. His exit was immediately followed by a litany of locks, bolts, and chains securing said portal, then by the sound of his flabby feet retreating in the distance, and last of all a deep and funereal silence.

It did not last. In less time than it would take a man to draw two breaths, the tomb-worthy stillness was shattered by the sound of loud, exultant laughter.

“M’lud?” Gudge cocked his shaggy head in Prince Lorimel’s direction. The maniacal hilarity was tumbling from the elf prince’s rosy lips. “M’lud, are ye feelin’ quite, y’know, that thing what’s th’

opposite o’ slap-assed crazy?”

Prince Lorimel shook his head and regained his self-control, gasping for air between slowly abating gusts of chortles. “I am not insane, Gudge. I am merely mad with joy. Did you not hear what that troll said? A daughter! Lord Belg of Castle Bonecrack, scourge of a thousand kingdoms, menace of a thousand more, and evil overlord for all seasons, has got a daughter. And she is coming here, to this very dungeon, to take care of me. Do you realize what that means?”

Gudge thought about this long and hard. At last his brows unknit and he replied, “No.”

The elf prince uttered a heartfelt cry of utter exasperation, then drew himself up to as full a height as his manacles permitted and looked down his nose at his companion with supreme scorn. The tales men tell by firelight of the elves recount how some tribes possess certain powers that mortals cannot hope to master. Some cause plants to thrive and fruits to mature out of season. Some can make such lovely music that fish of the sea and birds of the air are ensorcelled by the sound and whole deer leap into the waiting frying pan if the song so bids them. Still others have the gift of healing wounds at a touch, which is a talent frequently called for after one of those ill-thought-out whole-deer-in-the-frying-pan incidents.

As for the Lofty Elves, their talent was neither song nor growth nor healing. Their talent was contempt. Indeed, in all the realms that might claim elf infestation, the Lofty Elves’ powers of condescension were famed in song and story. They could break treaties between nations with a simple lift of the lip. A raised eyebrow had toppled empires. It was even claimed that once upon a time, one of their kings rode forth alone to face an army, gave it a cool glance, clicked his tongue in derision and remarked, “Bitch, please.”

And while his faithful hunting bitch, Lady Liza, looked on, the entire army went into spasms and died of mortification.

This was all very well and good, but either the talent had grown wobbly with the ages, or else Prince Lorimel’s condescending gaze didn’t have quite enough oomph, or—most likely—it just didn’t work on Gudge.

“Beggin’ yer Gracious Glory’s pardon, but why ’ee be starin’ at me like a cat what’s got bowel troubles?” he asked.

Prince Lorimel sighed and sagged in his chains. “Gudge, if we can ever find a wizard capable of analyzing and reproducing the stuff your skull-bone’s made of, we’ll be able to create armor that nothing can pierce; not even common sense. Listen to me: Even the densest dunce knows that there are certain rules that govern the lives and behavior of all evil overlords ever spawned. You may have the same faith in these rules as you might put into universal truths such as Elves are always beautiful, The sun always rises in the east, Elves are always graceful beyond the power of speech to convey, Water always flows downhill, Elves are always sexually irresistible to young women who are still living with their parents, The South always votes for—”

“Aye, m’lud, aye, ’tis just as ’ee says, elves allus flows downhill, right enough,” Gudge interrupted. “But what’s that got t’ do wi’ our predictament?”

“Merely this, my fine bean-brain: An evil overlord’s daughter will always be as wicked as she is beautiful, but she will also invariably fall passionately in love with her father’s handsome, heroic captive. The girl can’t help it. In fact, given how handsome I am, I’m rather surprised that she hasn’t fallen in love with me already.”

“She ain’t even seen ’ee yet, m’lud,” Gudge pointed out.

Prince Lorimel dismissed this quibble with a wave of his dainty fingertips. “Bah. You know nothing about these matters. It is now only a matter of time before the foredoomed damsel comes into this dungeon, sees me, and betrays her own father before you can say snap. She’ll free me from my shackles, fetch me a sword, lead me straight to Lord Belg’s chambers via a secret passageway known only to herself, stand by cheering my name while I skewer her father like a bunny on a roasting spit, and provide me with a high-spirited steed, a casket filled with priceless jewels, and a picnic lunch before I go galloping back to the lands of the Lofty Elves, mission accomplished.”

Prince Lorimel smiled blissfully over his own words. Gudge, however, drew his bushy brows together and chewed over his master’s lesson like a dog with a mouthful of nougat.

“ ’Tain’t me place t’ be pointin’ out things ’ee says as are misspoke, m’lud, nay, but hasn’t ’ee made a boner er two wi’ yer Exaltation’s pronouns?”

“My pronouns?” Up until now, Prince Lorimel hadn’t suspected that Gudge would know a pronoun if it bit him on the dangling participle.

Gudge nodded. “Aye: I. Instead o’ we, y’know? Now th’ way ’ee tells things, ’tis only yer Altitude as’ll be gallopin’ away from Castle Bonecrack, back t’ th’ fair elfin kingdom what yer pa rules. ’Struth, ’tis only yer Superiorness as’ll be freed from these here chains, leavin’ me behind t’ rot in durance vile. I don’t so much mind that, seein’ as it come wi’ th’ job description, but after all that the evil overlord’s beauteous daughter’s gonna do for ’ee, like ’ee says, shouldn’t ’ee at least be ridin’ back t’ yer pa’s kingdom wi’ her along fer th’ ride?”

The elf prince chuckled and shook his head slowly. “Oh, Gudge,” he said. “Gudge, Gudge, Gudge, will your gentle and good-hearted stupidity never cease to astonish me? Me, run off with the evil overlord’s beautiful daughter? Me, bring her home to meet my parents, just as if she were worthy of that inexpressibly high honor? As if she were worthy of me? Please. ”

“Then what’s t’ be th’ poor lass’s fate after ’ee’ve gone off an’ left her wi’ nowt but her pa’s body t’

bury an’ a dirty great castle t’ run all by her lonesome?”

“As for the castle, she’ll have no worries: As soon the Lofty Elves hear that Lord Belg is dead, we’ll overrun his realm, take back what is rightfully ours, and occupy those other lands which might not be rightfully ours but which will surely welcome our presence until such time as we decide they are ready to govern themselves democratically. We’ll evict Lord Belg’s daughter from Castle Bonecrack in the process, of course. She’ll be entirely free of her nasty past, and won’t that be a blessing? And wherever her vagabond’s life may take her after that, she’ll have the priceless memory of me to keep her warm. I might even kiss her, as a more than generous reward for her services.” He smiled complacently over his own boundless goodness.

Before Gudge could summon up the proper way to frame his reply, a loud rattle of chains came from the dungeon door, followed by the sound of at least three heavy wooden bars being slid aside and a good half a dozen locks clicking open.

“Ah, right on time,” Prince Lorimel said with a smug smile. He tossed his head ever so slightly, sending his lovely tresses into modest disarray. “How do I look? It’s very important to present the properly rumpled aspect, you know. For some reason, it drives the ladies wild. Of course for the full effect, it would be nice if I had a small bruise on my cheek, just beside my left eye—left’s my good side. Gudge, I don’t suppose you could reach over and give me one?”

To his credit, Gudge lunged forward in his chains most eagerly, but came up short as to fist-swinging range. “Sorry, m’lud,” he said, subsiding. “I can’t be reachin’ ’ee ’thout strainin’ me arm summat fierce, nay. It’d have t’ be comin’ outa th’ socket fer me t’ do yer biddin’.”

Prince Lorimel snorted. “Isn’t that just like you, Gudge: Self, self, self. I ask you to do one teensy favor for me and—”

“Oh, b’lieve me, m’lud, if’n I could get loose o’ these here chains, I’d be givin’ yer fine face a bruisin’

that’d be th’ talk o’ Intermeejit Earth, aye.”

The elf prince’s aspect softened. “Why, Gudge, you do give a rat’s ass. How sweet. Consider yourself forgiven.”

“Oh, good,” said Gudge.

He dropped his head onto his chest and muttered something further which the elf prince did not quite catch but which he presumed must be a sequence of well-deserved thanks and praise from his devoted lackey. Prince Lorimel might have asked Gudge to repeat some of the better compliments had the last lock upon the dungeon door not opened precisely then and the door itself swung wide.

“By the four hundred and twenty-eight rings of ultimate power!” Prince Lorimel gasped. “What vision of loveliness is this?”

Gudge cast a dour eye at the doorway where stood a tall, svelte figure draped in a bloodred spill of silk from shoulders to ankles, the skirt thereof slit all the way up to both hips. This sensual confection was tightly cinched at the waist with a gold belt studded with rubies the size of rat skulls as well as a few actual rat skulls for luck. Glossy raven hair artfully obscured half of a piquantly shaped, violet-eyed face before pouring down over creamy white arms, nor did it cease to pour until it reached a rump of such enticing curves and proportions as to make strong men weep.

“ ’Ee k’n stop weepin’ naow, m’lud,” Gudge said gruffly. “ ’Tis nowt but Lord Belg’s daughter, what’s as wicked as she’s beautiful, aye.”

The glorious apparition in the doorway turned back and spoke to someone as yet hidden from sight.

“Are you sure this is the right dungeon, Turnkey? There’s no one in here but a man and his really ugly dog.”

The troll’s gravelly voice was loud enough for Prince Lorimel and Gudge to hear his reply: “Nah, that’s the elf prince, right enough. He’ll look better if ye take ’im out in daylight.” Here he laughed.

“Did I give you permission to laugh?” Something just outside the door went FOOM! Acrid smoke drifted into the dungeon, smoke that reeked of incinerated troll.

“So you’re the elf prince.” A dainty, sandaled foot crossed the dungeon threshold. “I’m Beverel. So pleased to make your soon-to-be-brief acquaintance.” A laugh dripping with malice and unplumbed depths of cruelty bubbled from those full, red, delectable lips as the evil overlord’s offspring closed in on the helpless captives.

“Ah, sweet Beverel, if I must die, so be it.” Prince Lorimel lifted his head at an angle contrived to drop a come-hither veil of golden hair across one eye. “Only swear that it will be your fair hand that rips the breath from my body, for it has already taken my heart.”

“Oh, gyarkh!” said Gudge, who had a low tolerance for artificial sweets.

“I think your dog’s sick,” Beverel observed.

“That is not my dog,” Prince Lorimel replied, glaring icy daggers at his companion. “If he were, he would be better bred and more useful. That is my servant, Gudge of Willowstone-Thickly. You can slit his throat if he bothers you. I won’t mind.”

“I’m not touching that thing.” Beveral drew back in distaste. “Still, I can’t say as I care to have . . . that staring at me so intently while I parley with you. It’s one thing to tell my victims exactly what sort of gruesome torments I’m going to put them through before death’s sweet release, but I’ve never done it in front of an audience before, and I can’t say I like it.” A faint blush tinged those alabaster cheeks. “I’m just the eensy-beensy-teensiest bit scared of public speaking.”

“Lovely idol of my soul, the only gruesome torment that I fear is losing sight of you.” Prince Lorimel opened his luminous blue eyes as wide as they would go, which had the incongruous effect of making him look dead sexy and very much like a lemur at the same time. “Can’t you get one of the servants to kill him for you?”

Beverel’s succulent lips pooched out in an adorable pout. “If Daddy finds out I got one of the servants to lend a paw, he’ll never let me hear the end of it. He thinks I’m soft.”

“And so you are, in all the most scrumptious places,” Prince Lorimel drawled. “But you know, you could always kill the servant, afterward.”

“Oooh, aren’t you the sweetie to think of that. But no, no, Daddy would figure it out. He keeps very detailed household accounts.” Abruptly, Beverel’s face brightened. “I know! I’ll get Vug.”

“Vug?” Gudge echoed. “Wossat, some manner o’ foul an’ lethal venom as yer Evility’ll try’n make me drink, aye?”

“Well, you got the foul part right. Vug’s my sister.” Beverel raised one elegant hand for amplification’s sake and shouted, “Hey, Vug! Get your fat butt down to Dungeon Seventeen now!”

A fresh magical FOOM! sounded from the corridor, followed almost immediately by the entrance of a short, plump young woman whose mousy hair was confined to a pair of untidy braids. Her round, plain face was distorted with distress and revulsion as she picked her way down the dungeon steps. “Beverel, what did you do to poor old Thungil? He’s nothing but a puddle of troll fat, and him with just one more day to go before retirement, too!”

Beverel shrugged. “It saves Daddy money on pensions.”

“Yes, but you even liquefied his keys! Daddy’s not going to be happy if we can’t lock and unlock the dungeon doors.”

“Shut up, Vug,” Beverel said casually. “It’s not as if we’re going to need to lock or unlock anything once I see to it that our prisoners are . . . taken care of. Mwahaha!”

“Taken care of? But Daddy said—”

“What Daddy doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” Beverel replied suavely. “And what Daddy doesn’t find out from a certain tattletale little sister I could mention, won’t hurt you.”

Vug’s eyes brimmed with tears. “You always ruin everything.”

“Stop your namby-pamby whining, you puny excuse for an evil overlord’s daughter!” Beverel snapped, slapping Vug smartly across the face for emphasis. “I’m your elder and your better; you’ll do as I command you. Now take this wretched object—”

“That’d be me,” Gudge said stolidly.

“Shut up, Gudge,” Prince Lorimel put in for no better reason than to keep in practice.

“—put an iron collar and a pair of cuffs on him, take him out of here, and get rid of him,” Beverel went on. “I don’t much care how you do it as long as you have the castle limner make detailed sketches of the really juicy bits, afterward.”

Vug’s shoulders slumped. “Yes, Beverel,” she said. “As you command.” She went about freeing Gudge from his fetters and saddling him with the prescribed iron collar, leading chain, and traveling manacles, according to her received orders, then gave him a shy look. “Er, shall we go?” she asked timidly. Beverel uttered a loud growl of impatience and demanded of Prince Lorimel, “Do you see what I have to put up with?”

“My poor, suffering darling,” the elf prince replied, batting his eyelashes madly. “Tell me all your troubles. Let me share your pain.” He turned a glowering visage to Gudge and in a voice of fiery wrath bellowed,

“Don’t just stand there, you moron! Help that stupid girl get you out of our sight before she upsets my beautiful Beverel any further. Go!”

Gudge eyed his master with a look of cool disdain worthy of a Lofty Elf. So perfectly belittling was that glance that it gave Prince Lorimel the optic equivalent of being smacked right in the chops with a sizeable halibut. Even the lovely-but-cruel Beverel was shocked to see an expression of so much authority upon the countenance of such a previously underestimated supporting character. But all Gudge said was, “Well, we’ll just be off then, m’lud,” and he headed up the dungeon steps with a bemused and doubtful Vug in tow.

Once they were beyond the dungeon door and had stepped gingerly over the puddled troll in the corridor, Gudge turned to Vug and said, “Beggin’ yer Depravity’s pardon, but this be as far as I can go

’thout ’ee gives me some d’rections, seein’ as how I be a stranger to Castle Bonecrack.”

Vug blushed a becoming shade of rosy pink. “Of course; how silly of me. This way, if you please.” She gave Gudge’s leash a tug, but it was really more of a gentle waggle that didn’t even make the links clank together.

By way of fetid passageways, dimly lit and vermin-haunted stairwells, musty rooms rank with the stench of ageless evil, and the back door to the kitchen, Vug at last brought Gudge out into the light of day. The elf prince’s castoff servant blinked to accustom his eyes to the long-missed brightness and filled his lungs with the sweet air of the little herb garden whither Vug had conducted him.

“Ah, ’tis true as they say,” Gudge opined, a look of beatific calm and resignation on his face. “A garden’s a lovesome thing, th’ gods wot, where t’ be cruelly done t’ death by an evil overlord’s daughter what’s as wicked as she’s beautiful. All right then, young lady: I be as ready naow as ever t’ perish, aye. Just say t’ word as to where ’ee’d find it most cornveenent fer me t’ stand whilst ’ee rends me limb from limb, if that’s yer pleasure.”

“Rend you limb from—? Oh my, no!” Vug dropped Gudge’s lead chain and clapped both hands to her face in an access of dismay.

“Nay?” Gudge gave her a speculative look. “Then I’m t’ die by murd’rous sorcery, aye?”

Vug shook her head in the negative so hard that she whapped herself across the mouth several times with both braids. “Not that. I couldn’t stand doing that to anyone.”

By now Gudge was truly flummoxed. “Not death by steel nor death by sorcery? What’s left, then? Ah, wait, I knows th’ answer! ’Tis poison as must send me into th’ shadows.” He slapped his forehead as best he could without breaking his own nose with the manacles binding his wrists. “How could I’ve forgot summat that simple? An’ this here garden where ’ee’ve brang me, m’lady, no doubt’s the source fer the venom as’ll be my doom, aye?” He bent over and plucked a large tuft of leaves from the nearest plant.

“Well, as me old slut of a Mum used t’ say, don’t be shy, no one’s gettin’ any younger, no time like the present, and bottoms up!”

He stuffed the leaves into his mouth, chewed lustily, and swallowed, then stood by with a look of uncomplaining anticipation.

“Er, sir?” Vug tapped her captive lightly on the shoulder. “That was basil.”

“Oh, aye?” Gudge ran his tongue over his teeth, dislodging a few clingy green shreds. “An’ what’d poor ol’ Basil do wrong fer ’ee t’ be turnin’ ’im inter a poisonous shrub?”

Vug patiently corrected Gudge’s misapprehension. He listened attentively, then said, “I see. Well now, in that case, I’d be obleeged if ’ee’d point me at th’ nearest properly lethal veggie. Meanin’ no offense t’

yer Dread Badness, fer ’tis not yer comp’ny as I’m findin’ teedjus, but on th’ other hand, there’s no sense puttin’ off th’ inevitable, nay. Th’ sooner I’m dead an’ gone, th’ sooner I can stop bein’ scairt a mere halfway t’ death o’ dyin’, as is me present state o’ mind. So . . . got any henbane?”

Vug began to weep. “Oh, please stop being so nice about this!” she wailed. “It’s bad enough my having to kill you without your being helpful about it. Really, it’s too cruel!”

At this point, Gudge’s bewilderment had reached that level where the bewilderee begins to question his own sanity. In such cases, matters have come to such a cognitively dissonant head that the only two possible explanations are:

1. That the whole world has gone mad or:

2. That the witness to such alleged madness is himself irredeemably ’round the twist.

Most people placed in such a lose-lose situation tend to get rather testy about it. Gudge was no exception.

“Naow look’ee here, Missy!” he exclaimed, rattling his manacles in a monitory manner. “What’s all this blubberin’ about? Ain’t ’ee heerd th’ rules what governs dark an’ evil overlords an’ th’ fruit o’ their dark an’ evil loins? Yer th’ daughter o’ Lord Belg, aye?”

“Aye. I mean, yes,” Vug said in a miserable voice not much above a whisper.

“An’ ’ee knows yon rules of which I speak?”

This time Vug merely nodded.

“Then what’s holdin’ ’ee back from slaughterin’ me, seein’ as how th’ rules says ’ee’ve got t’ be as wicked as yer beautiful? Fer if that’s so, ’ee must needs be th’ wickedest creetur as ever breathed.”

It was now Vug’s turn to put sanity on the witness stand to determine when it had left the premises.

“You . . . you think I’m that evil—I mean, that beautiful?” she asked Gudge.

“Aye, m’lady.” Gudge’s face broke into a rapturous smile. “ ’Ee be th’ fairest thing as I’ve ever seen, an’

’tis me one consolement, here on th’ brink o’ death hisself, t’ have been able t’ get me an eyeful o’ such pulchritude as yer own. Now let me die, fer ’tis me sad and sorrowful fate that—”

“Shut up, Gudge,” said Vug, and she threw him down and had him in the basil. Some time later, Gudge sat up and scraped impromptu pesto out of his hair. “You know, if this is the way you’re going to kill me, my lady, I feel honor bound to tell you that it’s not working,” he said. “Not that I’m complaining, you understand.”

Vug sat bolt upright and stared at him as though he’d sprouted radishes. “You can talk?” she exclaimed.

“I mean, you can talk like that? Did I just break some kind of evil enchantment on you? Usually it only takes a kiss. Daddy always did say I was an overachiever.”

Gudge shrugged. “This is the way I speak. It’s not much help in the job market, though. Outside of their house-and-palace domestics, the Lofty Elves only hire servants who speak fluent Bumpkinshire, for some reason. Ooo, arrh, aye,” he added for effect, and tugged his forelock is the approved Rustic Underling manner.

“Then the Lofty Elves are all a bunch of smug, affected, bullying twits,” Vug said grimly. “Just like Beverel. That mean, greedy thing knows that I’m the one who’s supposed to take care of all our prisoners, but did that stop h—”

Gudge stemmed the flow of her complaints against Beverel with a kiss. “My sweet Vug, I’m beginning to realize that your definition of taking care of prisoners is not one to be followed by ‘Mwahaha,’ true?”

Vug smiled and kissed him back. “I should hope not! The only proper way to take care of prisoners is seeing that they’ve got enough to eat and drink, that their cells aren’t too dank or too warm, that all the dungeon rats have had their rabies shots, that their manacles aren’t too tight or too—Wait, let me get that for you.”

She spoke a word of power and Gudge’s irons dropped away from neck and wrists. “That’s better.”

She favored him with a smile. “Anyway, that’s how I take care of prisoners. Beverel makes fun of me, but it can’t be helped. There’s no getting around the rules: the evil overlord’s daughter must always be as wicked as she is beautiful, and just look at me! Once I put on a little bit of lipstick and kicked Daddy’s favorite hellhound, but I felt terrible about it afterward.”

Gudge took her in his newly freed arms. “Bother the rules,” he said. “I say you are beautiful, even if you’re nowhere near wicked. Your father’s minions can recapture me, drag me back down into that dungeon, torture me, and I’ll still say so.”

“Oh, you’re not going back to any nasty old dungeon, dearest Gudge,” Vug said, kissing the tip of his nose. “I’m not finished taking care of you yet, and the best way to do that is to make sure that you escape from Castle Bonecrack safely. We don’t want Daddy getting his paws on you. He’s a lamb, once you get to know him, but he’s just not a people person. Or an elf person. Or a troll person. Or a whatever-the-blazes-you-are person. Now just say the word and I’ll fix you up with a spirited horse swifter than the wind, a casket of jewels beyond price, a nice picnic lunch with extra pickles, and a map showing the fastest way out of Daddy’s realm.”

Gudge kissed her again. It was getting to be a very pleasant habit. “Can I make a request about the lunch?” he asked.

“You don’t want pickles?”

“Pack enough for two.”

“You . . . you want me to come with you?” Vug couldn’t believe her ears. “None of the other prisoners I’ve freed ever—” She blinked away tears. “Beverel always said that was because I was far too ugly for any of them to—”

“Darling Vug, do you think I give a fig for what your spiteful sister says?” Gudge demanded. “My fool of an ex-master’s in the middle of seducing that vile wench as we speak, and I hope he succeeds because those two deserve each other.”

“Sister?” Vug’s brows rose in perplexity. “I don’t have any sisters. Beverel’s my bro—”

The shriek that blasted from the dungeon depths to the topmost pinnacle of Castle Bonecrack interrupted Vug’s revelation. It embodied equal degrees of discovery, shock, incredulity, and despair, together with a string of impressive curses in the tongue of the Lofty Elves. (These were rather specific curses, usually reserved for merchants who sold gilt for gold, nutmegs carved from wood, or beef potpies that had once answered to the name Fido.)

It ended with a different voice cackling “Mwahaha!” just before the final FOOM!

Gudge turned to his beloved. “So . . . about that horse?”

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE OVERLORD

David Bischoff

The time has come in these memoirs to discuss the nadir of my career. I, Vincemole Whiteviper, have had my ups and downs, my ins and outs, my evenings before and my mornings after. However, say what you will of me, I am intelligent enough still to appreciate the bitter wormwood-flavored irony of the fact that I fell to my deepest under from my biggest over.

Pah! To think! I stood then on a vasty plateau of grandeur, master of men, elf, fairie, and other ilk, up to my earlobes in delightful atrocities and fiendish plots, in my physical prime and indulgent in decadence and debauchery beyond mere pleasure. To think that at such a zenith of my star’s rise I should suffer the lowest blow of a life battered and torn by fate.

Need I tell you, Rotvole, that there was a woman involved in this indignity?

I’m drunk as a vat-worm, so the transcription will be difficult. Why do I hold this different sword from my collection? Why do I swing it around so? This was the weapon with which I have judged in the past. This was the weapon that lopped off the head of a god. I clutch it, and the memories gush forth. Bring that dictation-gem closer, for my mournful words will sometimes be low and mumbled. Please, and pour yourself a brandy, and avail yourself of these fresh handkerchiefs for weeping. It is time to tell sad stories of the death of . . . things.

I wish I could say I achieved my high position, my power over so many lands, so many lives, and so many riches through cunning, intelligence, machinations, or even a backstab or three. Alas I came by my good fortune in the same manner I came into so much in my picaresque career—I blundered into it.

Readers of these memoirs will remember that for the portion of my life that I was not apprentice to a master hooligan or lying low in some godforsaken inn somewhere, drunk, I was a soldier. Call me a mercenary if you like, call me a multiple patriot, but there being many kingdoms in this vast world, I have served many kings—and served them well, I might add.

However, after an unfortunate incident involving a princess, a chastity belt, a file, and the vengeful fury of one of these selfsame kings, I thought it best to retreat to the nether regions of this world, the far, undisciplined reaches to seek something that military service had not yet given me: a vast amount of loot. Yes, I became a soldier of fortune, and it was in the weird and mysterious land of Worpesh that I found myself as far from that aforementioned king’s wrath as geography would allow. Now as my speedy flight had prevented me from taking much in the way of revenue, I had to pick up what I could along the way, through odd jobs and dark alleys. Not a glorious life, but there’s no place like the streets to pick up skills and sharpen one’s survival mechanisms. Once I’d made it to Worpesh, though, on ship and camel, on coach and steed, I was disappointed to discover that while the pickings were actually less (dark alleys were inhabitated by nothing but the poor and other cutpurses) the dangers were more. Oh, it was a dreadful place!

Yes, supposedly there were lost cities piled with treasure—plenty of farthing maps to them for sure. But you had to traipse through steaming jungles full of quicksand, giant prickle-snakes, and saber-toothed werecats to achieve them. I fully suspected that perhaps it was the snakes and cats who made the maps to lure supper into their jaws, so I was not terribly tempted. Moreover in the humid and foul land, half the populace was leprous or diseased in some fashion, and in truth where it did not stink to high heaven it stank to low hell.

One night, I took my disappointment and depression to a bar, and there drank the sole alcoholic offering: some kind of fermented milk. Nasty, but with enough nutrition that some of the natives lived on it, I think. I was half in my cups, plotting some method of returning to lands of proper dank shivers and warm soothing beers, when a voice called out to me from the depths of a large booth.

“Ahoy there, matey. Be you from more northern climes?”

“Aye,” I said.

“From the cut of your jib, I’d take you to be a soldier. And a strong, fine one at that.”

“That I am,” I said. “Fought in many a battle, skirmish, and war, with scars enough I suppose.”

“And you’re here in Worpesh to seek a better life.”

I hiccuped and laughed. “Is that written on my forehead?”

A rueful chuckle. “No, I see myself hunkered at that bar. Come and join me, and drink something a bit better than that swill in front of you.”

Well, I had a dagger in my belt and a knife in my boot, so even though that booth was dim, I had protection. And as I felt that I was growing cheese in my gut now, I longed for anything better than what I was drinking. So I abandoned my swill and approached, albeit warily.

“Come, come, my friend, I won’t bite!” called a hearty voice. A candle flickered within and by its light I saw a man in a hood sitting back nonchalantly. One of his hands was on a lifted knee and one was around a bottle. “Come and have a drink with one of your countrymen from the land of swords and honor.”

He lifted the bottle and poured out an amber liquid.

“Whiskey?” I said, astonished.

“Aye, sir. And good whiskey at that. Won’t you have a glass?”

He threw back his hood, and I saw blue eyes, pearly teeth, dimples, and a jolly smile. He pushed the glass over to the other side of the bench.

I sat down, lifted the glass, sipped it. I tasted poison. However, a fine and beautiful poison. I drank it down in a gulp, and was rewarded with feeling good for the first time in months.

“Thank you stranger. The name’s Whiteviper.”

“And mine is Divort. Dinny Divort. Would you care for a cigarillo?” This selfsame Dinny Divort produced a humidor from the darkness. The aroma drifted over, a gentle and perfect complement to the whiskey. I availed myself. Ah, the rasp of crinkling leaves between thumb and forefinger. “Thank ’ee.”

He selected one for himself, stuck it in his mouth. He snapped his fingers, and his thumb came alight. I jumped back a bit, then grinned. “Again, thank ’ee,” I said, leaning into the flame. The plumes of smoke that arose twirled with subtle shades of alabaster, cerulean, and cinnabar. The taste of the smoke was wonderfully superb.

“A magician, then,” I said.

“A know a few things about the arcane arts, yes.” And when he brought the flame up to light his cigarillo, I saw that he had a star tatooed upon one pale cheek. “But I too am a soldier.”

“Of fortune?”

“Of fate. Of destiny.” He blew out a flume: it twirled into shapes of spangly coins, glittery gems. “Rich fate, rich destiny. This is why I have called upon you, Sir Whiteviper. I sense we are two of a kind. You have need of me and, without a doubt, I have need of you.”

I raised an eyebrow. “I may look naï¨ve, sirrah, but I may tell you, I have not had good luck in my dealing with beings who know magic.”

He shrugged. “I know not magic. I am no true magician. I served, Whiteviper, as a carny in a traveling bazaar. Aye, I know a little bit of the true arts, but in truth most of what I do are show tricks.” He blew out his thumb. “I keep myself well away from the deeper magic that would steal men’s souls.”

“Sorcerors are often liars.”

Again a shrug. “Why don’t we talk a bit, drink some drink, smoke some smoke. I would like to work with you, sir. But don’t you think if I were a true sorceror, dark or white, I would seek to enchant you rather than persuade you?”

“You flatter my intelligence, Dinny Divort.”

“There is much to flatter, Whiteviper.”

I allowed that I would stay and listen for a couple more drinks, knowing full well that I was captured by the mere promise of the jingle of coins in my pocket. Clearly this fellow could avail me that much. If I chose not to go along with his plan, I could just follow him to a back alley and take his money in return for a lump on his noggin.

If he knew of my plans, he made no sign of it.

I listened.

Three or four drinks later, I agreed to his plan.

The next day, we were on our way to the outmost of the Outer Territories, in the tippy-toppy reaches of Just Beyond Beyond, to take our destined positions of High and Rightful Overlords.

“You see, Sir Whiteviper,” Dinny Divort had said, leaning forward into the miasma of smoke back at that tavern of our meeting. “All my life I have sought money. I inherited the want from my carny background. But in fact, during my days slogging and grogging about on the borders of things, it started to occur to me that what I really was in want of was power, for power can create riches and more. And in my heart of hearts, I realized that since I am no ordinary man—no, nor are you, Sir Whiteviper—I need no ordinary power.”

Divort diddled his fingers. A rainbow extended from hand to hand, imbued with tinkling musics. Insense seemed to writhe from the emerald, perfume from the crimson. Herein was an intimation of the Fantastic, the Wholly Marvelous that I had witnessed before in my checkered career, and in truth yearned for above all else.

In a breath, it was gone.

I felt a grave sadness, for these glimpses of something Wonderful Beyond always seemed to thus disappear. I felt empty, and was made aware of my abject poverty.

Again, as though reading my mind, Divort reached up into the dimness above his head. He seemed to pluck something from thin air. Drawing it down, he displayed his catch: a pouch. It banged and jingled metallically upon the wooden table between us.

“Half of all the money I have, Whiteviper. We share and we share alike in this venture, sir. Take your half and join me.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Naturally I wonder if I can trust your purposes here. Why me?”

“Take the money, Whiteviper. Easier than stealing it, don’t you think? Don’t you truly wonder, why does this fool think he can trust me?”

By turning the tables he caught me by surprise. I laughed heartily. “You’re calling me a rogue, sir. Aye, that will cost you!”

I snatched the pouch before he could take it away. Inside were nine gold pieces, just enough to make my way back to healthier climes.

“Ah, but the rogue I see has dreams. I see myself in you, Whiteviper. Come and find your heart’s desire. Come and find the power you crave. Power and glory shall be ours. You see, where I take us, there is a prophecy of brother gods—a duo—that will come and inherit a vast prize. I have magic, but I cannot create a brother, Whiteviper.”

Another drink of whiskey was enough to convince me and we drank the bottle down. The exact details of our talk escape me from that point onward, and I must have passed out, for I found myself in a delirium later, lying in a pool of my own sick, daylight creeping through the cracks in the window. I gasped and reached to make sure there was no knife in my back. I was alive, and still in possession of all nine pieces of gold. Above me, eating breakfast and drinking a steaming cup of the local tea, was Divort.

“Oh, two more details, Whiteviper. For the magic to work, sir, for the duration of our power and glory, you must swear off alcohol and women.”

The very notion of either made me retch. My only comfort were those pieces of gold my new friend had bestowed upon me.

My first decree, to my own self, was that during the rule of Vincemore Whiteviper, there were to be no hangovers!

And in truth, a few days into our journey up toward Beyondastan, I woke up with the taste of fresh mountain air in my lungs and nary a pain between my temples. Dinny Divort had proven to be a fine partner, full of jolly stories and good cheer. Away from the damp and warm and stink below, I felt my own self once more.

In fact, I felt very well indeed!

“You look good, Whiteviper. Your foreswearance of strong drink does your constitution well, I think.”

“Perhaps,” I said, stretching. “But even now I’m thinking of the pleasures of lying in furs with a naked and nubile female.”

“Ah, nothing wrong with desire for either drink or women in our promise. Just in the taking. Besides, consider: perhaps a time without women will make you feel even better than a time without strong drink. Indeed, there are philosophies that state that when a man evacuates his seed into a woman, he loses his power. Properly controlled, that power, still inside the man, builds up keen perception, control—power. It is a gnosis—an inner light that burns from the essense of his being!”

After some nice tea and bacon and hardbread, I forgot about women, lost in the scenery. For glorious indeed were the mountains upon which we were stumpy, snowy legs of gods lifting up to majestic peaks, or sometimes, just peaks.

Divort had an old map he said was drawn up upon human skin. And a good thing too, for there were many forks and intersections of paths in this mountains.

We had a couple of pack mules to carry supplies, fortunately—and me as well at times, for in truth I was never a traveler with much stamina, usually traveling only from one tavern to another while between soldiering bouts. However, by the third day in the mountains, when I was accustomed to the rarefied air, without the drink, I found I had more strength and preferred to walk instead of suffer donkey stench. It did not take long to see why no one made this trip often. In the nooks and crannies of this trail lived not just brigands and thieves, but creatures of marvelous horror. Furry snakes slithered and abominable stick folk hobbled, fully half their bodies claws and fangs, the rest hunger. However, here too Divort’s bag of tricks broke the way for us: He flashed fires of intense strength at them, burning some to piles of ash, singeing others. By night the most awful sounds gurgled and spat around our campfire—but nothing seemed to dare venture beyond the sparkle of the protective spell that surrounded us.

“You well may wonder from which power is drawn this source of this magic—and I tell you,” said Divort one morning, after smoting a weregoat with lightning blast. “It is you.”

“Me?” I said, looking down with distaste at the scorpion tail that writhed poisonously from the beast.

“Aye! Your puissance grows! Unmanacled from the drink that sapped you, and with your chi stoppered up and not serving women, you are a factory of power. I salute you, sir.”

In truth, for all of that, I still felt a want, and wondered aloud if I might try drinking women and rogering ale. Divort’s laugh was so hearty, and he slapped my back in comradeship, I hadn’t the heart to tell him I was not jesting.

Oh, I could bog down this tale for a space with tales of the cat-dragons, the gnarl-critters, the brouga-brougas we fought. Alas, our donkeys were caputured and eaten alive by a cyclops, whom we managed to prevent from eating us by dint of a vast expenditure of Divort’s magic fire. Two weeks of travel! Two whole weeks, and our supplies were gone, so we lived on any creatures Divort could cook and on melted snow.

And when I saw that we had to scale a snowy mount for the last leg, I nearly lost faith. But it was Divort’s jokes and good cheer that goaded me onward despite myself. That, and my own dreams and fantasies, considering what I would do with this vast power that awaited me. To think, no longer to take orders, but to give them! To think, no longer to be forced to work for my keep, but to rest if I liked, wander if I liked—to kick the behinds of vassals, if I liked.

At the crest of the hill, there in afternoon glow, at an elevation higher above sea level than I had ever yet attained, I saw the turrets and towers of a diamond city, awash in gold and sapphire. Divort grinned and chuckled.

“Aye, Whiteviper. Our goal is near. There, my new brother, is our goal, finally—The OverEye.”

Ah, yes, and a beauteous city it was too, OverEye.

A dazzling sheen arose from its stone walls to its lofty spires, coruscating with glinting color. Prisms echoed spectra of ocher, brilliantine, and topaz in a most aesthetic manner. All in all, it seemed indeed a city of glass. And yet, with the feeling of both magnification and dimunition in this city, the impression that most swept over me as we gazed upon this wondrous places was that it was a collection of lenses. I said as much to Divort.

“Aye, that is the reputation of OverEye,” he said beneath his breath, also caught up in the majesty and the grandeur of the place. “It is said to be caught at a juncture of worlds, like the central sphere of an infinite bubble cluster—and through its walls seep images of those worlds.” He nodded. “Aye, and portals there be.” He sighed and grinned. “And puppet strings as well.”

The implication of his words sank in, underscored by the otherworldly nature of that which I beheld.

“The power that can be ours,” I whispered. “I believe I had limitations on it before now.”

“Indeed,” said Divort. “I advise you, this place will outstrip imagination!” He clamped a hand on my shoulder. He winked. “But come, brother. It’s time for acts of gods!”

We made our way down to the city, pausing at a gaily babbling brook to wash and primp, that our visages might not be so ragged and dirty.

From his pack, Divort took out fresh clothing, which he bade me wear. After shedding my rags for these fine, fresh breeches, and a starched white jerkin and tunic, I indeed felt like a king, or overlord, and my haughty spirits rose up accordingly.

There were no guards as such at the gates of OverEye, but rather a sign in a language hat I could not decipher.

“What does it say?” I asked.

“Why, I do believe it says, ‘Gods Needed’ Whiteviper!” said Divort, chortling. “In truth, I cannot read it myself. But there’s nothing barring our entrance. So let’s make haste and assume our rightful place.”

There were peoples of various sorts moving through the clean and orderly cobblestoned streets of the city, but in the main the men of OverEye seemed much shorter than ourselves, runty little fellows, uniform and bland of feature. The women, though, oddly were taller than I’d generally observed women to be before, and beautiful beyond measure, each in her own unique manner. And on every corner of the neat blocks of this city, there was a tavern, outside of which laughing people drank sudsy beer, perfumed with heaven’s own hops.

My mouth began to salivate. Over the beer or over the women I did not know. At first we were roundly ignored. It was almost as though the citizens did not see us. Divort did not seem to be bothered at all by this. From his pack, he drew out a stool and he sat on it, paging through an old, musty tome. I sat down on the curb beside him after tethering my mule, feeling entirely too sober and entirely too celibate.

Divort clamped the book shut with finality.

“Just sit there and do not move, Whiteviper. No matter what happens, do not move, and soon we will be Overlords.”

“Perhaps,” I suggested, “I should sit over there at yon tavern, beside those tankards.”

“Temptation does not suit you,” he admonished. “No no, you’ve had patience yea these weeks, have patience for a few more minutes.”

Thus saying, he set up a stand, from which he performed feats of magic. By this time I, of course, was wondering how Divort expected these people of OverEye to be diverted by a bit of fire and thaumaturgy when they had but to peer through the multitude of lenses into other worlds to see far more wondrous marvels.

Yet, from the outset of the performance, I saw that these tricks were different. Divort began by pulling off his cap and extolling the people to observe; from the hat, he pulled out a rabbit. It scampered off beneath their legs. Then Divort produced a pitcher filled with milk and poured this milk into a rolled up bit of paper. He then crumbled the paper, which was as dry as the desert.

By then, a large crowd of the OverEye folk had gathered, all agog, and from the fire in Divort’s eye, I saw he was about to produce his piece de resistance. From his back pocket came a pack of playing cards.

Ah! I thought. Cards, and wished he had produced them by our campfires, so that I might have fleeced him of some more of his gold.

The people of OverEye surrounding us gasped. These cards struck some sort of resonance with them. All eyes were on Divort, who proceeded to perform all kinds of tricks with these cards, acquiring help from members of the audience. By the end of half an hour of simple card tricks and bout of applause after bout of applause, Divort bowed, and bade me stand up and take a spot beside him.

“This is my dear brother, Whiteviper. I am Divort. We have come to fill the positions of prophecy. We are the new Overlords!”

A moment of awed silence swept over the audience. Then a man cheered, and a woman swooned for joy. Soon the approval was unanimous. A man wearing a velvet cape and mauve pantaloons stepped out and bowed, to us, “My Lord, I am Artmus Pedercaster. I am provost of this sector and thus have the supreme honor of ushering you to our mayor. Will you accompany me, O Great Gods, Long Foretold?”

“That was easy as falling off a log,” I said from the corner of my mouth during the celebratory parade to the mayoral mansion.

“Thank you, Whiteviper. Your visage was the most vital part. And your chi imbued my magic with its glamour.”

Well, I wasn’t going to argue with him. The promise of becoming Overlord, after all, promised also a hot dinner, a warm bath, and a safe place to snore. We were taken to a large building replete with marble steps and marble pillars. Beyond the doors, we found ourself ushered into a superb room with high ceilings and festooned with magnificent draperies and huge murals of scenes of a fantastic and heroic nature from different worlds. Our footsteps echoed in the greatness. The scent of snuffed candles and insense sanctified the sensations.

Through another door, we found ourselves in another magnificent, if smaller, room occupied by a golden desk and a high-backed silver chair behind it. Upon this chair, wearing a pair of bejeweled spectacles, was the most stunning female of her uniformly luscious breed. As tall as I was then—and Rotvole, believe that I have shrunk indeed—she had a halo of golden hair, a figure an hourglass might envy, and a perfect oval face, with huge azure eyes.

She gazed upon us rapaciously, and I would like to say lustfully, save for her first words:

“Gentlemen. I am Cordinia, Continuum-Governance Administrator. What has kept you? We have been waiting for you, yea, these last few millennia!”

“Odd are the ways of the gods,” said Divort. “My brother and I were detained by small, niggling matters.”

“And you have indeed come to serve as our Overlords?” she continued, looking at us with what can only be called awe.

“We have come to claim our due!” I announced arrogantly, getting into the spirit.

“Well, then, oh lords, you look weary from your trip. I will summon servants. You may bathe and eat and rest, and afterward you may take up your duties.”

I need not tell you that I accepted all that pampering as though I was born to it! I bathed in silky bubbles, I ate a delicious stew and sweetmeats, forsaking the wine and joking with Divort as we feasted. In feathers and softness I slept. After a breakfast of brisk tea and fresh-baked bread slathered with honey, we were again ushered forth to Cordinia.

“Now then,” she said. “There is a small matter. Who is to be the Light and who the Dark?”

“Pardon?” I said

“That is why there needs to be two.”

“Oh. Of course,” I said. “Well—Divort is always one with the ready joke. So I suppose he shall be Light.”

“Such was my intention,” said Divort.

My brows furrowed a bit. “But the Dark . . . what different duties does that entail?”

“Trifles!” said Cordinia. “Trifles, I assure you. Come this way, gentlegods.”

We were led up a spiraling stairway to the largest, highest tower in the city, the top level of which sat like a huge saucer upon a needle. I expected from this summit to witness a view of the panorama of the city and the mountains without. Instead, the walls were dark.

“Here are your command thrones, O great Overlords. We are in the cycle of the Dark now, so you, Lord Whiteviper, have command.” She smiled at Divort, and took his arm. “Come, Lord Divort, I have some other duties for you.”

“Pardon me,” I said, confused. “What am I to do here?”

“Oh, Ygor will be very happy to tell you!” She clapped her hands. “Ygor! Excellent news! Your long-promised Dark Overlord has arrived to give you aid!”

A grating giggle of joy arose among the dim rafters. A creature unwound itself down on a thread. At first it seemed to be a spider, but a closer look showed it to be a man with several legs, several arms, and a bulbous head. His entire body was twisted unnaturally—no symmetry here!—and blisters and buboes rose up from its pasty skin. It mumbled gleefully through crooked fangs: “Agack! Agay! My dear lord. You have arrived not a decade too soon!” I found my hand suddenly drawn up— the thing drooled a kiss upon my hand. I hastily withdrew, shuddering.

“We will leave you to your destined duties, Dark Overlord,” said Cordinia. “As there is much to deal with, your meals will be delivered to your quarters here.” She pointed to a corner, where on a mat, a chair and a table sat. Upon the table was a large leather-bound tome with gilt edges and a candle. When I turned my attention back to Divort and Cordinia, they were gone, leaving me alone with Ygor.

“My lord!” said Ygor. “Here is the dilemma. The world of Obscuse in the galaxy of Narvar wobbles out of balance, overpopulated and oversecularized. They no longer pray to the Ubergods, and are puffed up with great hubris. Should their number be stricken with plague, pestilence, alien invasion, tornadoes, cankers, infernal explosions, or do these haughty beings deserve protracted and exacerbated individual torture? I have randomly selected the Spell of the Bee Swarm as a possible measure.”

My attention was immediately thus achieved. “Hmmmm,” I said. “To bee or not to bee! That is the question!”

And thus did the best days of my life begin!

Ygor ushered me up to the command barge, from which we commanded purviews of the many worlds intersecting herein, within reach of our control.

“You see, my lord,” said Ygor, hobbling up the crooked stairs. “Lo, these many centuries I was only intended as temporary help. I have done the best as I could, but alas, the universe has fallen out of balance.”

“Oh?”

“Witness our present case! Because of my huge caseload there are hundreds and hundreds—perhaps thousands—of worlds and peoples out of balance. In existence, there is light and dark, there is good and evil, there is fortune and misfortune, order and chaos. But for one to exist, the other must also exist.” He shook his head sadly. “I should be whipped! Now there is too much good, light, and order. The universes hobble and cavort toward certain doom.”

“You seem to dwell on doom.”

“Oh, my Overlord. Balanced doom, not bad doom, which is nothingness! Obliteration!”

“Ah. I see!”

From the perch of craggy thrones, I looked down upon a plethora of lenses. Ygor danced and swung upon levers and cranks. An iris opened, and I was able to peer upon a series of friezes representing the people of a world. They seemed smiling and content people. My stomach churned.

“Some cataclysm perhaps, my lord? An earthquake?” quavered Ygor indecisively. “That is always what I fall back upon.”

I shook my head. “I see two moons in their skies. The moons shall fall upon the world.”

Ygor’s eyes lit. “Yes! What a splendid spectacle!”

I pointed decisively. “Make it so!”

The sounds composing the wrenching desmise of this previously happy planet were most satisfying, to say nothing of the screams of the people. They’d been rather elfin looking, and as I have made it known before, I despise elves.

And thus began my too-short career as god. I am happy to say I was more than up to the task. Wholesale destruction was seldom needed. Small calamities upon planets and peoples sufficed. As the backlog of worlds deserving evil luck dwindled, I was able to focus more on smaller, even more satisfying matters. Battles. Wars. Rape and pillage were great fun, and I soon found favorite ogre and troll races to do my bidding in a veritable poetry of violence.

Such was the entertainment aspect of my new job, that for a while I slept and ate little, absorbed in the intricacies of the tasks at hand. Ygor noticiably relaxed, and was able to take time for himself in his little warren of cubbyholes, relaxing with his hobby of spider-wrangling.

One day, however, after a particularly satisfying guillotining of a beautiful princess, I felt odd. Stir-rings of old hankerings flickered inside of me, and I realized that I’d been cooped up in this tower for weeks on end. I felt the need to receive some sort of praise for my hard work, or at the very least some mild acknowledgment. The music of the spheres was again in harmony, with evil’s song properly placed, and I was responsible.

Letting Ygor have the conn, I managed to find my way back down the winding staircase to the lower parts of the city. The first person I saw was an attractive young woman. I went to her to announce my presence, and offered my hand. “You may kiss the hand of a new god,” I said. For while I’d forsaken women’s more erotic charms, I saw no harm in their lips worshipping me in substitution. The young woman gasped, gave me a look of horror, and fled. There was a mirror nearby and I looked in it. My handsome features now were gnarled, twisted, and blackened with the evil of my duties. I snarled and hissed at myself, and covered my face with fingers that had become claws. To reject women is difficult enough, but to have women reject me was too much. I felt for the first time a dreadful need for strong drink. However, I took a deep breath inside me, and thought for a moment: should I drink of alcohol, I might lose my Overlordship. No more would I be able to lord over puny beings lost in their own selfish stupidities.

Then again, I thought, what if I spoke with Dinny Divort! Surely some kind of arrangement might be made to allow a god a little sport with wine and women. A small thing surely for one with Divine Powers. I went to the desk where first we saw Cordinia. It was empty. I explored associated chambers again. I felt as though Cordinia might indeed know where Dinny was, and so inquired after her personal quarters. Fortunately, the evil upon my face was growing less ugly as time passed, and my questions were met with answers: upstairs, I was told.

Would I had not ascended those steps!

However, I did, and upon the topmost I heard Divort’s rolling tones, singing some silly song.

“Divort!” I cried, bursting into a room. “We must have words!”

Well, upon viewing that scene before me, I indeed needed words, because words were stolen from my throat.

There, lying upon a vast bed of amber pillows and ivory sheets lay naked none other than Dinny Divort and Cordinia. The scent of after-coupling hovered in the air like spring, and both sported huge crystal tumblers of wine, from which they were drinking.

“Zounds, Whiteviper! Have you insufficent courtesy to knock first?”

I stood there for a moment, aghast at what lay before me. For her part, Cordinia looked no less upset.

“Please, if you insist on staying, do close the door.”

I ignored her. “You blackguard! You bounder! What about our pledge?”

“Your pledge, dear boy! Never said I would have to swear off the fun bits of life! I say though, you are looking a bit piqued. Perhaps you should go back and have a nap.”

I reached down and grabbed him by the neck and started shaking him. “I am the Dark Overlord!” I shrieked. “No one goes unpunished who betrays me!”

“Trifle melodramatic, don’t you think, old boy?” choked out Divort.

I tossed him back into his bed of sin and stepped back, overwhelmed by vexation. Seized by an apoplexy, I could not speak. However, events proved I did not have to speak, for who should enter the room through the door I’d opened but Ygor. He carried this very sword I wave now.

“Cordinia? My love. Why?” He turned on Dinny Divort. “Bastard! I strike thee for this adultery!”

Thus saying, he struck at Divort, thusly—and with such force lopped off his head! Oh, the look upon that bouncing head! The body itself geysered blood messily onto the sheets and then tilted forward. Both Ygor and Cordinia looked aghast upon this occurrence.

“This was no god!” said Cordinia “I wondered as much.”

She turned to me. “And you are no god either, but a partner in this trickery. Ygor—the sword!”

In truth, that was almost the end of me. Fortunately I finally found words, and Ygor remembered that for all my humanity, I’d been the best damned Dark Overlord they could have wanted. However, with my lack of godhood, I was now considered unfit. And so I was banished, with two mementos of my time there in OverEye.

You see the first now, the sword I have been waving, given to me only because it had been tainted with Dinny Divort’s human blood.

And look now, Rotvole—here’s the other memento at my feet. I lift it up by its scraggly hair. A bodiless head. The head of Dinny Divort and—

Oops! Dear Rotvole! Hah hah. The Evil Overlord strikes one more time for posterity! Dinny’s still in the basket under the chair. My swinging, drunken sword lost its way.

I’m holding you!

ENSURING THE SUCCESSION

Jody Lynn Nye

The tropical island was a bright green and tan dot in the middle of an endless aqua sea under an equally endless vivid blue sky. Rainbow-colored birds emitted their raucous cries and were answered by the shrieks and honks of the tree-dwelling wildlife. All was still, but for a gentle rustling in the bushes caused by a body perceptible only to the watcher viewing the scene through a remote infrared camera. The pristine vista was suddenly marred a tiny black, elongated dot that approached rapidly from the eastern horizon, accompanied by the loud humming of engines that quickly swallowed up the natural sounds. The rocket-copter steadily descended until the wash from its steering rotors stirred up a miniature maelstrom in the waters of the peaceful cove. It landed inside a twelve-foot circle marked out by basketball-sized stones above the high-tide line.

Two men climbed out of the chopper, one from either side. They wore dark glasses and black boiler suits with red cuffs and collars, with the insignia of a knife piercing a tilted ring on each shoulder. The first man, a tall, hefty individual with very dark skin, flipped up the latch on the hold behind the passenger compartment. The pair began to unload the cargo: large, gray-painted crates stamped with the same blood-colored dagger-and-ring logo.

The moment they turned their backs, a young man burst out of the undergrowth. His long, light brown hair was wild, and his bright blue eyes burned in a tanned face. He moved with such silent deliberation that he was upon the large, dark-skinned man before the man could turn around. The youth pulled the gun out of the pilot’s holster and shot him in the throat with it. The man fell. The youth leaped into the pilot’s seat, entered a code in the keypad on the navigational computer, and strapped in as the rotors began turning. He hauled back hard on the stick and lofted the copter up out of the reach of the other man, who jumped up and tried to hang onto the landing gear. He missed. The aircraft was out of reach in seconds, and, as the jets kicked in barely ten feet above the treetops, out of sight over the horizon in minutes.

The watcher, a thousand miles away in an underground bunker, the communications center for Alkirin Empires, Inc., turned from the first screen to a second and touched a red button beneath it. The image of a man’s craggy face with bright blue eyes and bushy black eyebrows in vivid contrast to his shock of white hair appeared.

“He did it. He’s on his way, sir.”

“Thank you,” the older man said. “Out.”

Vaslov Alkirin closed the connection and swung away from the console. How satisfying to know that years of planning were about to come to fruition. He had hoped, but hope was less than one percent of how things came to be.

He looked up at the map that adorned the far marble wall of his “office.” Others had referred to the thirty-meter-square chamber as a throne room. If his employees suspected that he could hear them at all times and in all places they never let on. Alkirin assumed that they did not. They believed he trusted them. He did, and didn’t. Only a fool trusts all of the time, he thought, surveying the boundaries of his empire. Or never.

His was not a country as the historians thought of one; rather, it consisted of large parts of several traditional nations that he had conquered through economic ploys and other means, plus other nonadjacent territories that belonged to him as outright purchases or gifts from the former owners. The continents in the sea of slate-blue marble were of silver. The lands that he controlled were covered in a layer of gold. Ashoki, for example, there on the eastern continent, was almost totally under his domination—except for two flipperlike provinces at the eastern edge of the oval country, and those two were dependent upon his holdings for vital resources. Soon they must fall under his command for mere survival’s sake. He was ready to accept their capitulation. Only the stupidly proud premier was holding back on giving consent. Alkirin was content to wait. That consent could not be long in coming, not with the drought that had dessicated the country for the last five years, and Alkirin’s water reservoirs the only nearby source, the only reasonably priced source.

He had similar plans under way everywhere. He had taken a world under threat of war and was gradually joining it together under one flag: his. One day all the nations of Ployaka would be gold. Ah, but he wouldn’t live to see it. That was the purpose of the test today. If it succeeded, he had no fears for the future of his empire. If it failed . . . was he too old to begin again?

Alkirin was not immortal. The presence of the clinical white tray full of bottles and vials at his elbow was testament to that as was the gray-uniformed nurse, a middle-aged woman who brooked no nonsense from him, no matter how many countries he controlled. She shook out three pills and handed them to him with a crystal goblet full of 90 percent water and 10 percent brandy. He took his medicines when and as she said. He liked Mlada Brubchek. Young, attractive nurses with firm breasts and tiny waists had been tried and found wanting. They were either too afraid of him to make him take his treatments, or gossiped about him and the workings of his personal estate when he allowed them leave to go home. Brubchek considered everything about her work to be confidential. Alkirin had planted listening devices in her home and her possessions, but in twelve years, not one word about him had ever passed her lips to anyone else not directly concerned in his care. He didn’t worry about her, but occasionally he still checked. Trust, but verify, as a wise old man of Earth had once said. Brubchek had seen to it that the illness that consumed him was as pain-free as possible. For that she was amply rewarded, and would continue to be. Brubchek nodded sharply to him, and retired to her quarters, through the door in the wall behind his

“throne.” Alkirin watched her go, and listened for the snap of the automatic door as it slid into the wall and locked behind her.

He poured himself more brandy. He had been fortunate over the years to acquire a few employees such as Brubchek, but on the whole, people were sheep. Steeped in blatant self-interest, they saw nothing beyond their next mouthful of grass. He preferred to let them live their lives, with only the occasional reminder that he was their master. They were happier that way, and he did not have to devote a moment’s worth of concern to them. Once in a while a youngster would rise up from the peasant or merchant class and declare that his or her people must not be ruled by an unelected dictator. Alkirin enjoyed listening to them. They all said the same things. It must be hardwired into human DNA that when certain recessive genes combined, a bad, bombastic speech resulted. His response, therefore, was hardwired as well: the youngster was brought to him or one of his few lieutenants. If that energy could be converted to the service of the Alkirin empire, then he had a new and energetic employee for life. If not, then the rebel would vanish at once, leaving the other sheep to return hastily to their grass. Presidents, kings, emirs, lordships all made attempts to deter or destroy him.

They had a saying in Birreshalov, on the western continent, where he had been born: you nod and nod your head, and all is well. One day you shake your head, and it falls off. He had made that come true many times. Between threats and friendly persuasion, subtle poisons and very public murders, he had enforced his grip upon his holdings. Worldwide domination was in his grasp, if he lived long enough, but since he would not, other preparations had had to be made. A child, one born of Alkirin’s design and brought up to have all the necessary skills would be the one to carry on Alkirin’s legacy. Or would he?

His enemies had accused him of having a God complex, enjoying holding the power of life and death over his minions. Perhaps he did; at the moment he was reveling in having created life. He would only be disappointed if this Adam did not bite the fruit offered to him.

The desperate flight from the island far out in the Msovich Ocean had been years in the planning. Alkirin had laid down the steps with great care. It had taken time to establish a random pattern of visits of the supply vehicle, a jet-copter capable of flying over one hundred kilometers per hour, then slowly regularize it to a monthly pattern: first, flights on the same day each month, then at the same time, until only a fool would fail to realize their schedule was more regular than old Earth’s celebrated Swiss trains. Months to drop the contingent of heavily-armed guards on delivery detail down to two whose habits were easily observed and learned. Alkirin had chosen the final two deliberately because one of them was night-blind and the other had poor peripheral vision in his left eye. They’d been well paid. They knew they could be killed while in his service, and now one of them had been. The second would retire, if he was smart, and never tell a living soul what he had done. That would be backed up by computer surveillance for the rest of his life.

“Sir.” Colebridge’s voice interrupted his thoughts. Alkirin checked his verification program in the console at his side and waved a hand. A door in the wall to the right opened up, admitting his majordomo. Colebridge, a lanky, sallow-skinned man whose thin limbs belied their strength, had started out in Alkirin’s employ at the age of twenty as a hired gun, but the way in which he handled his assignments, while obeying every stricture laid down by Alkirin’s captain, still managed to show such a spark of creativity and economy of movement that Alkirin himself was moved to take a closer look. Colebridge was fantastically intelligent and inclined to give his total loyalty to his new employer. He had been repaid with bonuses and promotions commeasurate with his growing skills, and now was second in command worldwide to Alkirin himself. He was a good number-two man. His character was such that he never could command, as Alkirin did, but he carried out orders and got the best out of those who worked for him. He would do that no matter who he worked for. For that alone, Alkirin would have paid well. For the whole man, price was no object.

While he was waiting for the black craft to arrive, he dealt with other matters demanding his attention. The stock market in Illisov City in the southern nation of Blen was bullish on a stock that Alkirin felt had not yet lived up to its potential. He had his chief accounting officer leak an announcement to a financial reporter (that the corporation had bought and paid for) that they were about to sell a majority holding—a catastrophically large majority. Within minutes of the release the stock fell to a satisfactory level. Alkirin permitted the executive to purchase another large percentage of the remaining shares at a substantial savings. So what if it bankrupted countless other buyers? Had no one ever told them that the market lost as many fortunes as it made?

Alkirin also ordered the summary execution of a member of his security force. Colebridge had brought him proof that Estarina Tolokombe had been prepared to embezzle a portion of the output of the diamond mines her staff protected. At least a dozen others were in on the scheme, but the sudden and violent death of their leader would certainly cause them to give up their plans and be good little soldiers again. If not, Alkirin reasoned, switching off the screen after watching his hand-picked guard carry the body away from the pock-marked wall, bullets were cheap.

He hoped the boy could be ruthless; no one respected a weak leader.

At last, five hours after the communications center sent him video of the takeoff, his console beeped again. Alkirin waved a hand over the controls just in time to see the black jet-copter hovering over the mountain ridge that surrounded the valley in which Alkirin Headquarters was located. It landed safely and almost silently just beyond the top of the ridge. Little detail was available at that range, but sensors indicated that the craft was intact. Alkirin waited.

Whoosh! Snow sprayed out in a circular pattern when the emergency jet-assist escape pack lifted the youth a hundred meters into the air. The fuel cell was only large enough to get him over the mountain to the edge of the estate. Alkirin’s scientists had calculated the quantity exactly; not another erg was left in the tanks by the time the boy landed just inside the six-meter high electronic barrier, less than two meters from the nearest security camera.

For the first time he saw the boy’s face clearly. Sergi! At once he could see the similarities between him and his son, and the differences. Alkirin had been too busy in recent years to pay close attention to him. At twenty-three, he was slimmer than his father had been at that age, and his hair was the honey-brown of his mother, but the eyes were the Alkirin eyes, blue as a clear sky, with a bright fire and intelligence behind them and that went into turbo drive whenever the body was under attack. Now he would see whether the long grooming had produced the results that the father wished. The old man leaned over his opulent chair’s arm and touched a lighted patch.

“Intruder alert,” he said.

Sirens began to blare and security lights blazed into life. All over the compound, dogs and soldiers with guns burst out of their guardhouses. They would give Sergi, as the Earth saying had it, a run for his money. Trained serpents with maws as wide as a man’s chest slithered up and out of their subterranean cages and undulated around the enclosure, hunting for helpless prey. Occasionally one of the dogs, and very occasionally one of the men, had gone missing, but that was the price of keeping valuable guardian animals, imported at great difficulty from another planet.

Sergi heard the frenzied barking and the clanging of metal doors flung open, and scanned around him for an escape route. There was none. Alkirin leaned back in his chair to see what he would do once he realized it.

The boy had lived with his mother for the first seventeen years of his life. Alkirin’s wife, Tamica, was a biologist. Alkirin had not seen her in six years. He doubted that she devoted many hours of thought a year to him. She was consumed with her research. Those were two of the things that had interested him in her: her dazzling intelligence and her single-mindedness. Twenty-five years before, his staff had prepared for him lists of likely women whose brains and character suited his purposes. Tamica was far and away the best prospect. He had proposed marriage to her, talked of children, and offered her unlimited research funding. He would have threatened her or kidnapped her to impregnate her if necessary, but it simply wasn’t. She was not entirely unworldly for a scholar; the third offer had definitely made the other two more interesting.

Tamica visited him once in a while, but she was not highly sexed. Alkirin did not care; he had doxies to serve his sexual whims. Nor was she smotheringly maternal. Her offspring was interesting to her, but not quite as engrossing as her latest study of synapses or brain chemicals. She saw Sergi as more an undereducated colleague whom she enlightened when he proved curious. What she had in abundance were traits that Alkirin wanted to make use of in the next generation. He had made sure the child had nannies and tutors, every one a genius who was also an expert at child psychology, but he never maintained contact himself. That would never have done for his purposes. He did not want to establish himself as a cosy presence.

When the boy was seventeen, Alkirin had him kidnapped and taken to the lonely desert island. Alkirin had watched him through monitors planted in his house and school. He believed him to have too trusting and friendly a nature. That needed to be adjusted. Men in black hoods had broken into his room that autumn while his mother was away at a seminar.

The mother believed that Sergi had decided not to wait for her and hitchhiked his way to the college he had chosen for his higher education. Alkirin’s staff had sent messages purporting to be from the boy, even occasionally throwing in the photo of a girlfriend or a blatant plea for money, all judged to be dismissed as a bore by his mother, who was more interested in her current biomedical research, dedicated to ridding humankind of the scourge of brain decay.

On the island, Sergi’s life was an unpredictable medley of peaceful education and terrors. He had tutors to give him lessons on statecraft, science, psychology, finance, and many other topics that he needed. Every one of the tutors was well-compensated, intelligent, at the top of his or her field, and every one with a terminal illness who had been promised that they could spend their remaining days on a tropical island with one highly-motivated pupil. Alkirin kept that promise. Some were so ill that they were able to last only a few months, and were buried there, but died happy. He did not, as the local media had it, always kill his employees out of hand. Some of them died on their own. None of them knew precisely where they were. The astronomy professor was the one risk, since he could work out the island’s location by the stars, but he kept his promise not to reveal it to the boy. The servants on the island were poor, uneducated men and women from villages that had no electricity or clean water and were located in undeveloped nations that the overlord had not yet taken over. In exchange for generous wages paid directly to their families, they were happy to serve the “young master,”

and kept the island mansion perfectly clean, cooked wonderful meals from local and imported ingredients, and did all the menial tasks with which no self-respecting despot need concern himself directly. As far as he knew the boy had never made his own bed or swept a floor in his life. That was appropriate. Even more appropriate, Sergi knew exactly how one should do a task properly, and could point out errors in execution, whether it be making a delicate sauce, repairing a drain, or assembling a complicated weapon.

At other times, Alkirin made the boy the target of live hunts. Sergi never knew when he would wake up from a drugged sleep, stark naked in the middle of the jungle, with or without a weapon, and the shouts of hired beaters and skilled hunters pursuing him. It was to make him ruthless, as he learned woodscraft and survival and how to fight. Alkirin believed Sergi came to love the thrill of the chase. He had killed five hunters in the past two years, and had become an expert in reading terrain. Alkirin watched with avid interest as Sergi laid a false trail. The boy tested the ground and judged, quite rightly, that it was too firm to take footprints, but the hounds hunted by scent. He ran for several hundred yards in one direction, looping in between trees and up over blind ridges. Suddenly, he doubled back and hurried the other way, careful to plant his feet in the same flattened grass that he had just passed over, then hoisted himself effortlessly into a tree to wait.

The hounds came baying over the hills, with their handlers behind them in nimble, four-wheeled cars. Sergi withdrew into the canopy of leaves. There were sensors in every tree. The security overseers would have spotted the infrared signature by now. Ah, he was tearing them out! Sergi leaped from tree to tree, finding the hidden monitors and wrenching them out of the circuit. Soon there was a dead spot in the zone. Without seeing him alight in the last tree of his choice, Alkirin would not have a clear picture of where he had gone. In a fair battle of wits, Sergi would have made the first score. The dogs found the discarded rocket pack and began baying. They ran down the scent. The dogs quickly came to the end of the trail and dashed around in circles, howling their frustration in the middle of the field. The handlers herded them back, insisting they try again.

They drove back again to the beginning, keeping the dogs at a slower pace. While they were questing to and fro, Sergi leaped out of the farthest treetop, landing on all fours, then ran over the nearest blind ridge to where the lizards were waiting.

He’d met them before. Alkirin had sent them to the island twice . . . no, three times. The first time Alkirin had used toothless, old animals, just to frighten the boy and teach him about the creatures. They had very poor sense of smell, but unusually keen eyesight. They would chase down and eat anything that moved. As soon as they saw him, the three lizards, each twice the length of a man, swarmed toward him. Sergi’s face tightened when he saw how big they were. He had only the gun he had taken from the jet-copter pilot. He looked around for a hiding place that they could not fit into. Ventilation ducts for the underground facility poked up through the earth at intervals, surrounded by a haze of electrical filaments as fine as hair. There was always a dead animal or two lying by the intake, electrocuted when it tried to land on the spongy mass. It was the gardeners’ responsibility to move them before the stench suffused the lower levels of the castle. Alkirin had had four of the ducts widened enough for a human body to fit through, but one, and only one, gave passage into the castle. Sergi kept running, dodging back and forth. The lizards’ ungainly waddle was deceptive. They moved far faster than one thought they could, but Sergi knew exactly what they were capable of. He led them toward the first of the protruding ducts. With a mighty leap, he dove over the first mass of wires, landing on top of the duct. The lizards came after him. The leader piled into the invisible filaments. A loud crack! and a blaze of blue light, and the lead lizard fell dead, twitching. Its companions, smelling cooked meat, began to tear into it with their dagger-sharp teeth. In the meantime, Sergi, his face shiny with sweat, swung down over the top of the duct. It was wide enough for him, but this one, alas, terminated in a dead end. Alkirin clicked his tongue as Sergi, using very juvenile bad language, backed out and went looking for another one. The dogs came yelping over the crest. They made straight for Sergi. The youth went on guard with the stolen sidearm in one hand and a belt wound around the others. The dogs surrounded him as the men poured out of their little vehicles, shouting. Sergi spun and snapped out a foot, kicking in the throats of the nearest two dogs. They collapsed, coughing blood. A guard leveled his weapon. Sergi was quicker. He shot the man in the forehead. The guard fell. Sergi ducked as the others responded, filling the air with bullets.

Alkirin watched with pleasure as Sergi destroyed the guard squad and its animals. With only thirteen bullets left in the magazine of his gun, he had to make every shot count. When they were gone, he waded into unarmed combat using the martial arts techniques of the best of the Skonzi-ka masters. All nine men fell, dead or wounded, and the lead hound died from a shot between the eyes. The others lay on the ground, wounded and whining. His opponents vanquished, Sergi discarded his useless gun in favor of one of the guards’ weapons, then went looking for another way in. Alkirin nodded with approval. After two more false leads, Sergi found the air passage that led into the castle cellar. He crawled on elbows and knees through the ventilation system. He emerged into the darkness of a dusty storeroom. Alkirin continued to watch Sergi’s progress on infrared. More guards were being dispatched. Sergi must know he had little time to accomplish his goal. As if he were inside the youth’s mind, Alkirin followed every step of his progress.

Tamica had brought the boy to meet Alkirin for the first time when Sergi was eight years old. The old man sensed the keen, inquisitive nature Sergi got from his mother, and permitted himself to answer any questions the boy had. Once engaged upon a topic, Sergi could not be deterred from eliciting every fact, and got impatient when those facts were slow in forthcoming. Alkirin admired the single-mindedness, and a ruthlessness that reminded him of himself. Sergi had a facility for memorization, and retained every fact he was given, even correcting the old man when he made deliberate errors to test Sergi. Alkirin almost felt sentimental, as he answered unflinching questions from a small, bloody-minded boy about torture, murder, and conquest, assuring the boy his reputation for terrible reprisal was true. He told Sergi all about building his empire from a single village, how he now controlled the fate of nations, the very lives of all its citizens, and kept the rest of the world guessing how, and all from the humble origins of a mercenary soldier younger than Sergi was now.

He had gone further, showing the boy his headquarters, describing in detail all the places where enemies had perished, the archives where information on government finances were kept, and most especially, he led Sergi past a short hallway on the second basement level that featured a dead-drop door that he claimed was meant to trap invaders. The room was a dead end from which there was no possibility of escape. An intruder locked within would surely die there of starvation, hunger, and madness within days. He took Sergi past that hallway every time he visited, making certain that it was impressed in his memory. It was. The first thing the boy did on entering was to ensure that the hallway was still where he remembered it to be. At the risk of being discovered by a security patrol, Sergi felt all the walls and examined the switch on the panel outside. Alkirin approved. The military scholar who had educated the boy in strategy and tactics was worth every credit he had been paid. Alkirin had also made certain that the boy had overseen a guard captain opening one of the armories on the same level and memorized the locking codes. Those had been changed a thousand times since Sergi’s last visit, but carefully reset to that set of numbers and symbols as the black jet-copter was landing. Nothing must be left to chance.

The new guard patrols combed the levels one by one, trying to discover the invader who had come in through the vent. Alkirin had told none but his “trusted” few who it was. He didn’t want Sergi to feel that he was being manipulated, even if he was.

The youth’s jungle training had served him well. He managed to squeeze into unbelievably tight niches or cling to the ceilings of corridors as patrols jogged through in search of him. He broke into a laboratory and stole a handful of chemicals, which he mixed up and spread on the floor. The first dog handlers to lead their animals through the corridor were astonished as their charges howled and broke loose, their brown eyes tearing. Alkirin hoped the chemicals’ effect was temporary. Those dogs were highly trained. Besides, he was fond of dogs. It was one of his soft spots.

Sergi moved from place to place, picking up an item here, breaking into computers and changing settings there. He must have planned his incursion to the very last letter over the course of the years. It cost the lives of seven scientists, two computer programmers, an innocent file clerk who was in the wrong office, and a dozen lower-level guards.

Alkirin allowed the hide-and-seek to go on for five or six hours, then called for his personal body-guard. The seven men and one woman who answered the summons were the best-trained, most deadly fighters that he had ever had work for him.

“I wish to visit the financial center in the third basement,” he said. None of their faces changed, but he knew their minds must be racing. All of them must have been thinking that there was something wrong; he must know that the invader had not yet been captured. But they did not question Alkirin. No one did. All of them drew weapons. He took his place in their midst. The first two guards scouted outside the room, then gave the signal to the others to escort Alkirin out. He allowed himself to look sedate and calm, but his mind raced, ensuring that his calculations were all correct, and all preparations were made.

Now, for the confrontation that Sergi must devoutly be praying for.

For the first time since he had been a foot soldier, Alkirin felt the frisson of physical terror crawl coldly down his back as they marched. The youth was following them. Alkirin knew Sergi had shorted out the security monitors in this section, and had looped a file showing the passage empty. The boy did not know about the secondary cameras that fed into Alkirin’s personal console and Colebridge’s computer. He did not realize his every move was still being watched.

Here. It must be here, Alkirin thought as the guards escorted him onto the private elevator. It was what he would do under similar circumstances.

He was not wrong. The elevator moved downward smoothly, then jerked to a halt. The chief escort barked orders. One guard spoke into his communications link, trying to raise the engineering department. The others pried open the doors to discover that they were nearly level with the second basement floor. The guards decorously assisted Alkirin out and up to the floor when the explosion came. Head ringing, Alkirin found himself on the floor, covered by the bodies of four of his bodyguards. The others were dead, blown to pieces. Those remaining alive tried to cover him, but they were shot dead by the powerful hunting rifle Sergi held.

Alkirin was not unprepared. From his sleeve he flipped a flash grenade at Sergi. Shielding his eyes from the glare, he ran up the corridor.

The exploding light cast a long shadow before Alkirin. He wondered if Sergi had ducked or if he had been blinded. Ah, footsteps! The boy had protected himself.

The pain came almost at once. The doctors had warned him that his heart was growing steadily weaker. A transplant, they suggested, or perhaps a cloned graft. He had turned them all down. If only his tortured organ would hold out long enough to finish this matter correctly!

He could not stay ahead of Sergi for long. The boy overtook him swiftly. A hand grabbed his shoulder and turned him around, shoved him against a wall.

“Unhand me, boy!” Alkirin shouted. Sergi leaped back. The authority in the old man’s voice made him obey automatically. His handsome face screwed up with petulance. He was still a child in so many ways.

“You!” Sergi burst out. “You were responsible! Why? Why did you make me a prisoner on that island?

Why? You tortured me! My physics tutor told me it was you that took me to that island! Why? Why?”

Alkirin remained calm. “Allow me to introduce myself.”

“I know who you are,” Sergi interrupted.

Alkirin held up an imperious forefinger. “You know who I am, but not what I am. Sergi, I am your father.”

The boy let out a snort of disbelief. Alkirin merely smiled.

“Oh, I can give you proof. Your mother could. She is a biologist, but you are also trained in the sciences. You can examine our DNA signatures. We are close flesh and blood, you and I. You are my son and heir.”

It was a lot to absorb. Sergi’s face showed the struggle to understand, to accept, but his mind refused to release the question until it was answered. “But why? Why did you do all that to me?”

“To test you. To make you the strongest man you could be.” Alkirin held up his hands in admiration.

“And look at you!”

Sergi gaped for a moment, then pulled himself together. His expression became scornful. “I overcame all your tests, old man. You are not so formidable.”

“Ah, you still think you are the architect of your own rescue. Oh, no. Everything you did, I set up for you. I engineered your opportunities. True, you took them. That was the test: whether you could see and take advantage of situations. I made the pilot leave the departure point in the jet-copter’s memory. I changed the schedules so that you would know when to take advantage of the craft. I left the way in here open so you could take it, made all the rooms and safes the same as you recalled them from when you were a boy. If you had thought about it, you would have realized things do not remain frozen in time. They change. You will learn.”

Sergi could no longer conceal his astonishment. Akirin’s point was made. “Why? Why all this?”

“Because you are my heir, Sergi, but I have no intention of allowing you to live if you are unworthy. I wanted to see for myself. And now, I,” he added, allowing his eyebrows to droop sadly, “I have decided that you are not worth the trouble I have gone to.”

From the sleeve of his tunic Alkirin whipped a slender gun and fired it. Sergi saw the movement of his hand. He dropped and rolled. He was remarkably fast. The explosive charge Alkirin fired blew a huge hole in the wall behind him exactly where his head would have been. The boy sprang up. Looking alarmed, Alkirin took to his heels and ran. Slugs winged past him with a noise like angry hornets. He was running. Brubchek would be furious.

He was being steered, Alkirin realized, as he fled down the hallway. Every time he tried to duck into a side corridor, the bullets on that side would increase in number.

Alkirin, too, tried to kill his son, triggering traps that had been set in the ceiling and walls of every room of the fortress. The youth was superbly trained, and his memory of his previous visits was clear. He eluded the weapons that sprang from hidden emplacements where he had not already disabled them. A lone soldier sprang out of the safe room he had been guarding. Fearing for the life of his master, he drew a knife and rushed at the boy, shoving him face-first into the opposite door. Sergi leaped up, wall-walked upward over the man’s head, dropped down behind him, and shot him before the guard could turn around. Alkirin took the opportunity to flee around a corner. Sergi followed. Alkirin saw his eyes light up with manic pleasure as he saw which corridor the old man had run into. He had not forgotten. He rushed for the controls.

The door slammed downward as Alkirin lunged for freedom. It snapped shut so fast it took the tip off his boot.

“Let me out of here, you brat!” Alkirin pounded furiously on the door with both fists. The steel boomed, but all his blows were in vain. “Let me out! Unlock this door!”

Through the solid wall he heard footsteps retreating hastily down the corridor. Silence. Alkirin turned and collapsed with his back against the wall, gasping at the effort. The pain returned, sending daggers of agony stabbing in his limbs and chest. Without his medicine he did not have long to live. In a moment, he got his breath back. He rose slowly on hands and knees, then gradually attained his feet. His back proudly erect, he paced to the center of the northern wall and waved a hand across a concealed section the same texture as the wall. Sensors beeped as they recognized his palm print, and a panel slid back to reveal a small comm screen.

His majordomo’s anxious face appeared on it. Alkirin nodded at him.

“He’s done it, Colebridge. He’s on his way up now. You had better intercept him before he tries to leave the estate.”

“I will, sir,” the man said. There was a long pause, as Colebridge’s usually iron jaw quivered slightly. “Sir, good-bye.”

Alkirin smiled. “Good-bye, Colebridge. He’ll do well. Just do for him what you did for me.”

“I will, sir. I promise.”

“Yes, you will. Ah, yes.” Alkirin waved his hand to close the link. He pressed his hand to the square of wall beside the screen.

This time an enormous panel opened. A couch-like easy chair rolled out and opened up. A padded footrest rose. Alkirin sank into it. Comfort, a luxury he rarely allowed himself to indulge in. Very restful for his old bones.

Outside the locked chamber, the staff, led by Colebridge, would be swearing fealty to the new young master, and educating him as to his new place in the world. Sergi would be overwhelmed, but Colebridge would guide him until he had his feet under him. Sergi had proven to be just as intelligent and ruthless as he needed to be, and would make a good master. Once he had calmed down the staff would help him locate his mother. Whether he would believe it when Tamica told him that she had no idea how Sergi had really spent the last seven years or forgive her Alkirin did not know, but that was of no moment. She had no defenses against him, and was no threat to his newly-won empire.

Another small panel opened up. From it Alkirin took a cup and a blue pill, both of which had been replaced regularly for the last six years for just this moment. The pill contained an untraceable, flavor-less, and above all, painless poison. Alkirin put the pill on his tongue and washed it down with the excellent brandy in the glass. A fitting end, he thought, sensing the torpor beginning to creep slowly from his extremities inward. He was no longer afraid to go. Allow the boy to think he had disposed of the old man. Only Colebridge and a few trusted associates would know the truth. Having killed the previous master would give the boy a reputation to fear. Such a defeat couldn’t hurt Alkirin, not now. He got what he wanted. His empire would endure.

“And on the final day, I created Man in my own image, and I saw that it was good. And then,” Alkirin murmured, as the darkness began to gather in his vision, “I rested.”

THE LIFE & DEATH OF FORTUNE COOKIE TYRANT

Dean Wesley Smith

You will live your life by direct instructions.

—Chinese fortune cookie

The origin of a tyrant is often a mixture of common sense, wild strangeness, and a lot of luck. Those three factors led to the creation of one of the world’s most feared and misunderstood dictators, Fortune Cookie Tyrant, or just FC among his minions when speaking of him in private. Every great ruler’s story usually starts with a single event. Seven-month-old Fortune Cookie Tyrant, then named Steven, had just soiled his diaper while strapped into his high chair near his mother, Betty, at the end of the table at Fon Wong’s Emporium and Lounge. The smell of Steven’s little event mixed well with the smell of the last few bites of fried rice and overcooked chow mein, so, for a while, no one noticed. Steven’s dad, Frank, burped, pushed his plate aside, and leaned back, patting his growing beer gut.

“Good food.”

Every Wednesday night he said the same thing after eating the same dinner at Fo Wong’s, so Betty just nodded and kept eating. He always finished ahead of her and then wanted to leave, so her only hope now of enjoying the last few bites of food was to work fast.

Steven, being somewhat uncomfortable with the nature call, started to “fuss,” as his mother called it. Sensing that Steven was going to be a problem, and wanting to just finish the last few mouthfuls of her dinner, Betty reached over and gave Steven a fortune cookie that had been left on top of the bill. It had been her cookie, but at this point it didn’t matter.

Distracted for the moment from the loaded diaper, Steven played with the cookie, finally managing to crack it open before putting it in his mouth, fortune and all.

“Whoa there, big fella,” his dad said, reaching over and pulling the paper and most of the cookie from Steven’s mouth. “You gotta read the fortune before eating it.”

Betty laughed and just kept eating, glad for the few extra moments, as Frank opened the fortune and read it aloud. “Big fella, it says you will live your life by direct instructions.”

Steven’s father grunted and glanced at Betty before tossing the slip of paper on the table between the dirty plates. “What kinda stupid fortune is that?”

Actually, unknown to either Frank or Betty or the growingly more uncomfortable Fortune Cookie Tyrant, it was a charmed fortune, cursed by the magic of an angry Chinese man whose brother had slept with his wife.

The cookie had been specially made for the man’s brother, with the curse on the fortune intended to let the angry man push his brother around and pay him back for his deed by giving him fortune cookies with really nasty instructions inside. But as luck would have it, the charmed cookie that was to set the entire process in motion was lost in the packing process. Instead of being sent to the angry man who could then give it to his brother, it was added to a shipment headed for the United States, where it ended up in Steven’s hands at Fo Wong’s Emporium and Lounge.

Common sense, wild luck, and a strange curse had come together to change Steven into Fortune Cookie Tyrant, a man whose entire life and therefore the future of the entire world was to be steered by the fortunes included in small desserts.

As life would have it, Steven’s parents were killed the following weekend in a tragic deer hunting accident. Steven was sent to live with his wicked and uncaring aunt who hated Chinese food. Thus it was twenty years and five months before Steven got his next “fortune” and came to realize his true powers for evil.

The date with Amy wasn’t going well. They had met in a freshman United States history class at the university and smiled at each other for a few classes before Steven had had the courage to talk to her, and eventually ask her for a date. Steven, at this point in his life, was not an attractive man. He looked like a bad cross between a nerdy scientist in a movie and Ichabod Crane. He had just finished into his last growth spurt and had the social skills of a stumbling tenth grader, even though he was in college. Amy was no real catch, either, but for Steven, any woman who agreed to go out with him was someone special. He had fantasized for days about making love to her.

Now, sitting in Amy’s favorite Chinese restaurant, the conversation had lagged and become strained toward the end of dinner, and all Steven could think about was how he was going to get her back to his dorm room and into bed. He had no idea what she was thinking about, and had no idea how to ask her. In fact, he had no idea at all what to even talk about next. It was that sort of uncomfortable moment. She picked up the tray holding the two fortune cookies, smiled at him from behind her thick glasses, and said, “You first.”

He took the small cookie, she handed him the tray, then she took the second. He was about to pop the entire thing into his mouth when she broke hers open and took out the little slip of paper. He did the same, puzzling at the strange feeling that came over him when he read the words, “Intuition will help you solve puzzling problems.”

He glanced up at her as she shook her head at her fortune and then flipped it toward him. “Dumb, really dumb. I’m supposed to come into money shortly. Yeah, that’s going to happen. Why can’t they ever do anything original with these cookies?”

Steven wasn’t listening. He knew instantly how to solve his problem, how to get her back to his dorm room, and into a position they might both enjoy. He didn’t know how he knew, but with one look at her, he just knew.

Not allowing himself to stop and think about what he was doing, he reached his hand past the half-eaten plate of pork fried rice and touched her hand, looking into her startled eyes.

“I’ve got a confession to make,” he said, letting himself smile just a little to not make his words seem threatening, “I’ve been sitting here this entire dinner trying not to stare at you. You’re the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, and I just had to tell you that.”

His words were smooth, smoother than he had ever spoken in his life, his voice deeper, his tone perfect, his eyes focused and caring. Steven marveled at himself as this new power took over his body, smoothly talking to Amy, making her laugh, making her squeeze his hand with the promise of the night. From that moment on, he said the exact right thing at every exact right moment. And considering that he had never been with a woman his entire life, and had only watched a few porn films, he was a perfect lover as well. It seemed that the power to know how to solve her needs, as well as his own, stuck with him long after the dinner was gone.

The next morning, after she had left with a long kiss and a hope for more time with him, the power didn’t go with her. He just sort of knew how to solve problems, how to deal with things that just the day before would have left him puzzled and lost.

And from that day forward his classes, once challenging, were insanely easy. He knew how to get extra money when he needed it, how to make himself look better, and how to talk a woman into bed. Within a few months, he had a new wardrobe, had moved into an apartment, had bought a nice car, and had a perfect grade point average.

Fortune Cookie Tyrant had taken his first step toward world domination and control, and not once did he link it to the fortune in the cookie; thus it was over a year before he took his second step toward his true destiny.

The football game had been awful, and the team had lost badly, making Steven’s mood at the Chinese dinner more somber than excited. He had never played football because he had always been too skinny and uncoordinated and his aunt had hated the game. But that didn’t matter. He loved watching football, and over the last year had become one of the university team’s biggest fans. Across the table from Steven was his date, Jane, a woman with few brains, long legs, and a sexual appetite that needed to be fed often. At first the combination had attracted him, along with the fact that she was way out of his class in looks. But now, after dating for almost three weeks, he had to admit she was starting to wear him out.

Besides that, the conversation with her when they weren’t making love was deadly dull.

“Oh, I love fortune cookies,” Jane said, clapping her hands like she was kid and reaching for one as the waiter set the bill down on the table.

Steven just shook his head, took the leftover cookie and broke it apart. Then he read the fortune. “Your natural ability with words will make you a leader that many will follow.”

“Yeah, right,” he said, flipping the fortune back onto the table. But he could feel that something around the table, around the entire restaurant had suddenly changed. Everyone was looking at him. It creeped him out.

He checked to make sure he didn’t have a big hunk of pork hanging off his nose or a noodle caught in his hair. Nothing. Even his zipper was up and tight.

“What shall we do next?” Jane asked, her eyes peering into his like his every word suddenly mattered. She was leaning forward, showing him a nice view of one of her best assets. Steven glanced around at everyone watching him as the silence in the restaurant settled in. Creepy.

He glanced back down at the table and the fortune caught his eye. “. . . a leader that many will follow.”

His intuition sense told him that he had gained something special tonight. But for the first time in a long time, he wanted to test that sense. He looked directly at Jane. He’d had a great dream the other night about watching her dance naked. Why not try that? “I’m up for some dancing naked in the street.”

He said it just loud enough for most of the patrons in the small restaurant to hear. He wanted to just shock those staring at him, make them look away. But actually, more than anything, he wanted to see Jane dancing naked in the street. That would be a lot of fun.

“Great idea!” Jane said, again clapping her hands together like she was ten. “I wish I had thought of that. I’m ready when you are.”

He swallowed and glanced at the slip of paper on the table, then up at Jane. Maybe this fantasy was about to come true.

Then he noticed that instead of snickers from the other patrons around the restaurant, they were nodding, laughing, putting their napkins on unfinished meals, talking to each other about how wonderful it would be to dance naked in the street.

Steven sat there, stunned. The entire restaurant was getting ready to follow him out the front door. He picked up the little piece of paper with the fortune, stared at it, one word coming clearly to focus. “. .

. many . . .”

Which meant not all. He glanced around at all the excited people getting ready to follow him. There were two people out of the thirty or so who weren’t getting ready to do anything. They were just sitting, looking stunned at what was being suggested around them. One was a young woman with long black hair, and the other a blond-haired jocklike man with a chiseled jaw. Not everyone would follow his lead.

But most would.

A good lesson to learn.

He shrugged. He had to see where this would lead, but his intuition told him that it would lead anywhere he wanted it to lead.

Ten minutes later, fully clothed, he stood on the sidewalk watching as the entire customer base of the restaurant, minus two, danced naked in the street. Cars had stopped and many inhabitants of the nearby buildings were staring. Luckily, it wasn’t a bad sight, considering it was a restaurant full of college students. Steven told Jane, loud enough for everyone close by to hear, to keep dancing and that he would be back.

Jane nodded and everyone kept dancing to some silent music, all stark naked. With his words, a number of pedestrians and drivers who had been watching nodded, took their clothes off, and joined in. The two that hadn’t followed him were standing in the restaurant door, staring at him. He waved at them, then with a laugh that didn’t sound anywhere near as evil as he wanted it to, he walked off down the street, thinking about what had just happened and what it meant to his future. Fortune Cookie Tyrant had taken his second step to world domination. He was coming to understand some of his powers and he knew he was going to enjoy using them. He just didn’t know what exactly to do with them just yet.

The next morning, Steven stared at the headlines in the morning paper as he sipped his morning coffee while sitting at the long counter in Larry’s Diner and Deli.

NUDE PARTY BREAKS OUT IN CHINESE RESTAURANT.

The article said that no one really knew what happened, only that dancing nude in the street had sounded like fun and so they did it. Thirty-two people. Public indecency charges were pending. Steven laughed and tossed the paper onto the counter. Being from a broken home and having been raised by his evil and uncaring aunt, Steven had very few morals. Normally, a nerd like Steven would have had few chances to push against what morals he did have. He had just assumed he would end up working some dead-end job, marry some woman who would go to fat after two kids, and die mostly broke with a bunch of grandkids arguing over his comic book collection. But now it seemed he had a more promising future. He could run a big company, he could become a senator or even the president. Or he could just get very, very rich and live an easy life surrounded by beautiful woman.

Or maybe he could do all those things.

“Why not?” Steven said out loud.

The guy two seats away down the counter said, “I agree. Why not?”

Steven glanced at him, then around at the diner. The cook, the waitress, and the five other customers were all staring at him, waiting for him to say something, like what he might say might be important. Creepy. Having this kind of power over everyone around him might just get old. Then Steven laughed and said out loud, “That’s not going to happen.”

Everyone in the restaurant nodded. “You’re right,” the guy said beside him. “That’s not going to happen.”

He glanced at the waitress. “You sure you don’t mind paying for my breakfast?”

She blinked, surprised, then smiled and said, “Not a problem.”

“Thanks,” he said, laughing and heading for the door.

This new power was going to be a lot of fun. But first, he had a lot of planning to do. That afternoon, Steven went back to his apartment and started to do some research on the Web. He needed to know how others had gained vast wealth and power if he was going to follow in their footsteps. He needed to know their history, and the steps they took to keep the power. And most of all, he needed to know what they did wrong. If he was going to get as much power as he was hoping to get, he needed to know how others lost theirs.

While running computer searches on different references to power, presidents, Caesars, dictators, and other tyrants throughout history, he came across a Web site that was titled “Checklist for the Aspiring Evil Overlord.”

The site was supposed to be a joke, aimed at all the bad cliche’s Evil Overlords had in fiction, but Steven knew better. The site was a great reference guide to stop those who wouldn’t follow him. Those two in that restaurant clearly haunted him, worried him more than he wanted to let on. And the checklist was filled with rules aimed at stopping those kinds of people.

Steven printed off checklist and studied it carefully over the next few days. Most of the suggestions were things that would matter later in his climb to riches, power, and maybe even world control. He was starting to really think big.

But many of the suggestions in that list would help him on his rise to power. For example,

#28: A bullet to the head shall never be too good for my enemies. Steven would always keep that firmly in mind, along with #92: I will never fail to keep in mind my strengths and my weaknesses.

Then, after posting the list on the bulletin board in his kitchen, he took out the little slip of paper he had gotten from the fortune cookie and read it one more time.

He needed to see if what he was thinking was right, that he had somehow gotten his powers from these fortune cookies. So he headed back to the Chinese restaurant he and Jane had eaten at the night before. The employees were amazingly happy to see him as he came through the door, considering that most of them were facing charges for dancing nude and the restaurant was being investigated for spiking the food in some manner. Even with all that, there were still twenty people eating in the place and the moment he spoke to the man behind the front counter, they all stopped and turned to listen.

“I’d love to buy a large bag of your fortune cookies,” Steven said.

“Here, take ours,” one man at a table close by said, offering Steven their cookies. His wife was nodding, looking like a puppy trying to please a master.

“No, thanks,” Steven said, waving the man off. “You two enjoy them.”

Immediately the man and woman dug into the cookies, acting as if they were having small orgasms while crunching on the cookie, paper and all.

The man behind the counter grabbed a large bag that had to have three hundred fortune cookies in it.

“This good?”

“That’s perfect,” Steven said. “And it’s very kind of you to give them to me.”

“The honor is ours,” the man said.

Steven laughed as he left. It was getting easier and easier to get everything for free. Whatever was happening with him, he sure loved it. He could get used to everyone waiting for him to talk. After all, that’s what everyone did around those in power.

Back in his apartment, Steven opened the bag, got a glass of milk from the fridge, and cracked into the first cookie. It was the same basic fortune that Jane had gotten the night before.

“You will come into a vast sum of money.”

Steven laughed. “Yeah, that’s going to happen.”

A moment later, before he could even wash down the cookie with a sip of milk, the phone rang. He never did get back to the fortunes that day because his evil old aunt had had a stroke and was in the hospital. He didn’t much like her, but he was the only thing she had. She died before he got there, which didn’t actually upset him. The last thing he would have needed was the old bag hanging on and building up hospital bills.

He spent most of the night dealing with all the details of his aunt’s death, then the rest of the night at Jane’s, making her do things naked that no woman outside of porn films ever really did. He sure loved his new power.

It was the next morning, after making funeral arrangements and talking to his aunt’s attorney that he came to understand what had happened. His aunt had left him everything, and the old broad had been rich. Millions rich, or so the attorney thought. It was still too early to tell just how much it might be. Steven laughed all the way back to his apartment. Now he had his stake to get him started toward his plan of world domination. The cookie had been right again.

There was no telling what the next cookie would bring him. He could just keep opening cookies and gaining power.

Today, he would become a truly powerful being.

The bag of fortune cookies and the half-empty glass of old milk were right where he had left them. He dumped out the milk, got himself a fresh glass, then took the first cookie off the top of the bag. He cracked it open, tossed half into his mouth, then read the fortune as he ate, as excited as a kid opening a present on Christmas morning.

But this fortune didn’t seem right and he had to read it twice:

“All special powers that you have been given by fortune cookies will be forever lost.”

Steven tossed the slip away like it was on fire, but it was too late. The feelings of being in control drained away from him like someone had pulled a plug in his shoe.

“No!” he screamed. “That’s not a fortune!”

He slammed the rest of the uneaten cookie into the wall and grabbed another one from the bag, opening it and putting half in his mouth before reading the fortune.

It said the same thing.

And so did the next one and the next one.

He opened a hundred before giving up and sitting down on a stool in disgust. Someone had planted the entire bag with the same fortune. But who? And why? And who would have known he was going to come back here and open all these?

A moment later the phone rang. It was his aunt’s attorney again, talking some sort of gibberish about taxes and problems with the government and how there wasn’t as much money as there had seemed to be earlier, maybe none at all after all the lawyer fees and hospital costs. Steven just listened in shock, said nothing, then hung up.

The money was gone as well, right along with his powers.

He stared at the kitchen counter covered in half-opened fortune cookies. He knew, without a doubt, he had lost everything, all his dreams of ruling the world.

But how? Why had someone done this to him, taken his specialness?

Then the faces of those two sitting in the Chinese restaurant came back clearly to mind. Not everyone would follow him. Someone had known what was happening, somehow, and had changed out his real cookies with these special ones.

He needed to find out who. And why.

He dumped the entire sack of cookies out on the counter. At the bottom was a note.

Dear Fortune Cookie Tyrant,

Steven stopped reading and sat down on the stool. That was a name he had only been thinking about using after he gained world domination. No one would know it now. Something wasn’t right here. Steven went back to reading the note.

You forgot rule #85. And sorry about the slow-acting and very painful poison in the cookies, but after what you did to the world over the last forty years, after all the people you killed and enslaved, we figured it was the least we could do.

Signed,

The Anti-Cookie Alliance.

Steven could feel the pain in his stomach starting to grow.

He swept all the cookies from the countertop, then doubled over in pain. He had been poisoned. He got to the phone and dialed 911, begged for them to hurry, told the operator that the poison was in the cookies, then hung up as another wave of pain hit him.

As it eased, his mind went back to the note. Rule 85? What did the note mean by that? And forty years?

He was only twenty. He hadn’t been alive yet for forty years.

In the distance, a siren was growing louder. Help was on the way.

Then he saw the list on his bulletin board, the list of things he would do if he became an Evil Overlord. The list that he promised himself he would follow carefully.

With the pain in his gut causing him to stumble, he went to the board, pulled off the list, and slumped to the kitchen floor, his back against the wall. Outside his apartment, the sound of the siren stopped. He could see the flashing lights through the window.

Help would be here in a moment. He forced himself to take a deep breath to hold back the pain and flip the list to the right place.

Rule 85. Once I have securely established myself, all time travel devices in my realm shall be utterly destroyed.

“No!” Steven shouted as the pain shot through his body. “I didn’t get to become an evil overlord! I didn’t get to be Fortune Cookie Tyrant!”

There was a banging on the door and his name was called out.

He tried to get up, but instead fell facedown onto the tile floor.

The last words the great Fortune Cookie Tyrant muttered were, “Not fair.”

DADDY’S LITTLE GIRL

Jim C. Hines

At first, I didn’t recognize the land around me. Blackened ash and burned stumps covered the earth as far as I could see. Saplings and weeds proved at least a year or two had passed since the devastation, but it was a far cry from the thick wilderness I remembered.

“I think he’s waking up.”

I started to turn around, then froze when I spotted the ruins. Crumbled bricks lay scattered to one side of a broken, six-sided foundation. In the remains of the doorway, I could see huge iron hinges bolted to the floor. The trick entrance was only one of the traps I had designed for Tarzog the Black while he tormented me with false promises to free my wife and son. I had barely eaten or slept for almost seven years as I worked to perfect his temple to Rhynoth, the Serpent God. This was my masterpiece, broken and scattered.

I rubbed grit from my eyes, then stared at my hands. The skin was pale, pulled tight around the bones like dried leather. My nails were cracked and yellow. When I poked my palm with one finger, the indentation remained for almost a minute.

I was bare-chested, dressed in rough-spun trousers and my old sandals, though the straps had been replaced with thin ropes. I pressed a sickly yellow hand against my chest. My heart was still as stone. I had always wondered why Tarzog’s dead slaves took their resurrections so calmly. Now I understood. Whether it was a side effect of the magic or my mind’s way of rebelling against what had been done to me, I felt nothing but a strange sense of detachment. Looking at my dead body, I felt like a puppeteer staring down at a particularly gruesome marionette.

“I told you I could do it.”

The speaker was a young girl, no more than seven or eight years old. She wore a dirty blue gown and a purple half-cape with a bronze clasp in the shape of a snake. Behind her stood a slender, dark-haired woman, the sight of whom made my dead balls want to squirm up inside me and hide until she went away.

“Zariel,” I said. Tarzog’s necromancer looked far more ragged than I remembered. Gone were the night-black cloak of velvet, the silver claw rings decorating her left hand, and the low-cut leather vest. Her skin was rougher, her hair grayer, and she wore a simple traveling cloak lined with dirty rabbit fur. To tell the truth, she smelled rather ripe, and that was coming from a corpse.

“What happened?” I asked. My memories were blurred, full of gaps. Another side effect of being dead. To my surprise, it was the little girl who answered. “This wasn’t the real temple. Daddy built the real temple about half a day’s walk from here, in the jungle.”

I stared, trying to understand. “Why would he . . . ?”

“Prince Armand knew about Daddy’s plans to summon Rhynoth. So Daddy built this place as a trap. When Armand and his men finally got to the heart of the temple, Daddy was going to collapse the whole thing on their heads. But Armand and his men showed up early. They burned Daddy in his own temple, along with anyone they found wearing his crest.” She touched the bronze snake at her throat. Was that how I had died? No, I would have remembered fire. Death had been quick, but quiet. I clutched my stomach, recalling the pain of my insides twisting into knots. I had a vague memory of stale raisin pudding, even worse than our usual fare. I remembered dropping my spoon . . . “He poisoned me!”

“Of course he did. Daddy poisoned everyone who worked on his temple. That way only he knew all the secrets.”

If he had killed me . . . Tarzog was too smart to let my wife or son go after that. He wouldn’t risk them coming back to avenge me. I closed my eyes and fought despair. Gradually, the rest of the girl’s words penetrated my grief.

Daddy. I stared. “You’re Tarzog’s daughter. Genevieve.”

“Jenny.” She smiled and nodded so hard her blond hair fell into her face. I remembered her smaller and pudgier, a wobbly child with a miniature whip she used on trapped animals, imitating Tarzog’s overseers. According to rumor, her mother was a slave girl who had abandoned the newborn baby and tried to flee. She had been caught, executed, resurrected, and gone right back to working on the temple.

“We should go,” said Zariel. “This place isn’t safe.”

Jenny stuck out her tongue. Had anyone else done it, Zariel would have had their eyes for a necklace and their tongue for a snack. But Zariel simply turned and began walking.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“To the other temple,” Jenny said, rolling her eyes at my stupidity. “I’m going to summon Rhynoth, and then we’re going to destroy Armand and his people. They all helped kill my daddy, so they can all rot in Rhynoth’s belly.”

I stood, barely hearing her words. I kept seeing my family, dead and forgotten beneath the rubble. No doubt by Tarzog’s own hand. He was never one to delegate that sort of chore. Without thinking, I lunged forward and wrapped my withered gray fingers around Jenny’s fragile throat. The next thing I knew, I was flat on the ground, a good fifteen feet from Jenny and Zariel. Jenny folded her arms.

“I should kill you for that, but I worked hard to resurrect you. Zariel’s been teaching me.” She flashed a gap-toothed smile. “Do it again, and I’ll make you rip out your own innards with your bare hands.”

I wiped ash and dirt from my palms. Jenny’s magic had shattered several ribs, and the bones ground against one another as I stood. Fortunately, death seemed to have minimized my ability to feel pain. One thing was clear: Jenny was definitely Tarzog’s daughter.

We had walked more than an hour before I worked up the nerve to speak to Zariel. This was a woman who had eviscerated children and sacrificed whole families to maintain her power. But I had to understand what was happening if I was to have any chance of stopping them.

“Why did she resurrect me?” I asked.

“You designed the first temple,” Zariel said. “Tarzog followed the same plans for the real one, including all of your traps. If you get us in, Jenny and I can conserve our power for more important things.”

Jenny’s power. I touched my ribs. “I didn’t realize she had that kind of magic.”

“I’m still a beginner at death magic, but I got all of Daddy’s serpent powers when he died,” Jenny said, running back to join us. “I’ve even got the birthmark of Rhynoth. A snakehead, just like Daddy’s, with fangs and everything. I’d show you, but it’s not in a place you’re supposed to show to boys. Not even dead boys. The prophesies of Anhak Ghudir say only one with the mark of Rhynoth can awaken him from his endless sleep.” She tugged Zariel’s robe. “Did you remember the blood?”

Zariel sighed and drew a small, glass tube from an inside pocket.

Jenny turned to me and made a face. “I have to drink the heart blood of a virgin to control Rhynoth. Zaniel has to use magic to keep it from getting clotty and clumpy.”

I nodded, remembering how Tarzog had scoured the countryside for virgins in preparation. At first he planned to drain the blood of a few babies, but further reading ruined that plan. The spell required an adult virgin, and those were harder to find than you might expect. Especially once word got out that Tarzog needed virgins. I imagine the midwives were plenty busy the next year. “So which one of you found a girl to—”

“No girls, silly,” Jenny said, chewing a hangnail on her thumb. “They always have lovesick boys who try to rescue them. I had Zariel kill a priest. They’re celebrate—”

“Celibate,” Zariel said, her voice pained.

“Yeah, celibate. All we had to do was find one who had taken his vows before he got old enough to mess around.”

Zariel slapped Jenny’s head, hard enough to make her stumble. “How many times have I told you to stop biting your nails?”

I glanced around. We had left the scorched remains of Tarzog’s land behind and entered the rocky wilds that surrounded Frelan Gorge. Tall pine trees cooled the air, while tangled roots fought to cling to the uneven stone. The insects were thick here, and they seemed especially attracted to my dead flesh, though none were daring enough to bite me. Instead, they orbited my body, buzzing in my ears and darting past my eyes. I began to wonder if Jenny had raised me simply to draw the bugs away from her.

“How did the prince destroy Tarzog?” I asked.

Zariel scowled. “Tarzog was a fool. As Armand’s men fought their way into the temple, Tarzog ordered me to take Jenny and flee. Together, we might have destroyed them all. Instead, he stripped himself of my power and wasted precious time on his whelp.”

I glanced at Jenny, half afraid to see how she would react, but she only shrugged. “Zariel’s right. Daddy was stupid, so he failed. I won’t.” She skipped ahead, then turned around. “Do you think Rhynoth will like me?”

I didn’t know how to answer, so I looked to Zariel.

“The prophecies say the god’s gratitude will be like a ne’erending fountain upon the one who calls him from the earth.”

“I hope he’ll let me ride him,” Jenny said. “I’ve never had a pet before. Daddy had a cat, but he burned up when Armand attacked. He was a nice cat. Daddy carried him everywhere.”

I remembered the beast, a black, long-haired ball of fur and claws. He used to sneak into the dungeons and piss in the straw.

“I tried to raise him,” Jenny went on, “but he bit me. So I crushed his skull and scattered his remains.”

Movement to the side saved me from thinking up a response to that. Two men in the green and silver livery of Prince Armand leaped from the cover of the trees. Both had longbows drawn. One kept his arrow pointed toward Zariel, while the other aimed at me. Not that a regular arrow would do much against my dead flesh, but perhaps Armand was smart enough to outfit his men with blessed weaponry. He had fought Tarzog’s dead warriors before, after all.

“Speak one word, and it shall be your last,” warned the man watching Zariel.

“No!” Before anyone else could move, Jenny ran in front of Zariel and threw her arms around the old sorceress. “Please don’t hurt her.”

“Get away from her, kid,” said the second soldier. “That’s Zariel. The black-hearted bitch murdered more innocent—”

“Bitch is a bad word,” Jenny said, her dark eyes wide. She held up her arms, and Zariel picked her up, smiling.

Both soldiers now aimed their bows at Zariel. “Put her down, bi—witch.”

I opened my mouth to warn them. To beg them to fire. A single shot would pierce both Jenny and Zariel. Jenny’s magic might be able to destroy me, but she couldn’t stop an arrow in flight.

“Stay back, zombie!” The nearest man fired, sending an arrow through my throat. Pain shot down my spine, and I flopped onto my back. Armand was indeed smart enough to prepare his men. I wondered how long it would take the power in that arrow to penetrate my dead bones, dissolving Jenny’s spell. Strange to feel both terror and longing for true death.

Then both soldiers began to scream. I managed to turn my head enough to see that their bows were gone, transformed into writhing, hissing serpents. Already one had sunk its fangs into the man’s forearm. As I watched, the other soldier flung the snake away and turned to flee. The snake was faster, darting forward to bite him just above the boot. He hobbled away, and the snakes slithered back toward Jenny.

“Follow him,” Jenny shouted, squirming out of Zariel’s grasp. The necromancer disappeared after the soldier.

Jenny walked over and wrapped her small hands around the arrow in my throat. Flesh and muscle tore as she yanked it free. She brushed her fingers over my wounds, and I could feel the skin begin to seal. By the time I sat up, the holes were closed. My ribs felt whole again, too.

“Pretty good, huh?” she asked. “I like snake magic better, though.” She reached down, and one of the snakes coiled around her arm. The scales were purple, with a stripe of bright pink down the underbelly.

“They’re not real, though,” Jenny said sadly. She wrapped her little fingers around the snake’s neck and squeezed. The snake crumbled away like chunks of burned wood.

A panicked shriek told me Zariel had caught up with her own prey. Jenny’s face brightened. “Make sure you cut off the heads,” she yelled. She glanced at me. “Daddy always taught me to cut off their heads or burn the bodies. You have to be sure they’re dead. If you just push them over a cliff or poison them and leave them to die, they always find a way to come back.” She tucked a stray lock of hair back behind her ear. “It’s in all the stories.”

She grabbed my hand and tugged me onward. “Come on,” she said. “Zariel can catch up once she finishes playing.”

Hand in hand we continued through the woods, followed only by gurgling screams.

We stopped near sundown to rest and eat, though my body didn’t seem to need either. Zariel used her magic to lure a pair of rabbits from the woods, then Jenny conjured tiny snakes to bite them. The snakes might have been magic, but the poison was real, and the rabbits spasmed and died before they could hop more than a few feet.

A part of me expected these two to simply rip into the rabbits with their teeth, feasting on the raw and bloody meat. Instead, Zariel swiftly and efficiently gutted the two rabbits, then impaled them on spits over a small fire.

“We have little time,” Zariel said. “When Armand’s men fail to return, he’ll know where we are.”

“Good,” said Jenny. She wiped her face on the sleeve of her gown, then turned to spit out a bone. Zariel tilted her head. “Good?”

“I summon the Serpent God. Armand and his army arrive. The god eats them.” She took another bite of rabbit. Still chewing, she said, “I won’t make the same mistakes my daddy did.”

“You want him to find you,” I said. I had designed traps for years. I knew how to recognize them. Jenny nodded. “He killed my daddy. So I’m going to kill him, his family, and his army, and then I’m going to destroy what’s left of his land.”

I didn’t know what bothered me more: the calm, total conviction in her voice, or the fact that when I thought about my wife and son, I knew precisely how she felt.

Frelan Gorge was a beautiful sight. Rather, it would have been beautiful, had I been here for any other purpose. The river far below was a ribbon of darkness, sparkling in the light of the moon. Trees and bushes covered the cliffs, transforming them into walls of lushness and life. To the north, a cloud of mist rose from the base of a small waterfall.

Jenny pointed to the fall. “That’s where we’re going.”

“You’re certain?” asked Zariel.

“I can feel it.”

I followed behind, biding my time. It would have been so easy to grab Jenny and fling her down the cliff, but I remembered how easily she had smashed me to the ground the last time I attacked her. She had dragged me from the grave, and she could send me back as quick as thought. I frowned as I thought about that. “Why me?”

“What?” Jenny asked.

“Your father knew the traps as well or better than me. Why not resurrect him?”

“Yes, Jenny,” said Zariel, a nasty edge to her voice. “Why him?”

Jenny looked away, and I sensed I had stumbled into an old argument. “You were nice to me. He wasn’t.”

“I was what?”

“When the slaves were working on the first temple. I wanted to watch them laying the foundation and mixing the blood into the mortar. I wasn’t tall enough, so you lifted me onto your shoulders.”

I couldn’t remember. Either death had rotted the memory from my brain, or else Jenny had confused me with another worker.

Up ahead, Zariel used her magic to burn a tangle of thorn-covered vines out of the way. There was no path, so we were making our own. As I watched the vegetation smolder, it occurred to me that the burned plants would make it easy for Armand’s trackers to follow.

“Besides, if Daddy were here, he’d want to summon the Serpent God.” She wiped her nose on her sleeve. “He had his chance, and he failed. So now I get to be the God Rider.”

I kept my face still and prayed she couldn’t read my thoughts. I might not be able to destroy her myself, but there were plenty of traps in Tarzog’s temple that should do the trick. Thorns tore my skin as I followed them toward the falls. I could hear the water crashing, and the vegetation was thicker here, forcing Zariel to expend more of her magic. With her smaller size, Jenny seemed able to slip through the thinnest gaps like . . . well, like a serpent. Finally, the trees thinned, and we found ourselves on a rocky shore. Water trickled over my feet, and I could see how the riverbank fell away a few steps in. So long as we stayed by the edge, we should be safe. Any farther, and the current would toss us down the falls.

“Where’s the temple?” Zariel asked, glancing around. My dead eyes seemed to handle the darkness better than theirs, but even I couldn’t see any sign of the temple. And Tarzog hadn’t built small. His temple had been the size of a modest palace.

Jenny was kneeling near the falls, craning her head. I stepped toward her. A single push, and she would plummet to her death. Jenny glanced up, and I froze.

“I can see something behind the water,” Jenny said. “A door.”

“How do we get down?” Zariel asked.

“We don’t.” Jenny smiled at me. “Right?”

Grudgingly, I nodded. “That would be a decoy, something to delay Armand and his ilk. If Tarzog patterned this temple on the one I designed, that door is nothing but a fac¸ade. But with the water pounding down, most heroes will slip and fall to their deaths before they reach it. If not, the door at the other temple had hinges concealed on the bottom, so it would fall open to crush anyone who tried the knob. This one probably does something similar.”

“Which means the back door should be back this way,” Jenny said, wading upstream. I watched a branch float over the lip of the falls, and wondered how many workers had died building Tarzog’s decoy trap. “It wouldn’t be in the water,” I said.

They both stared at me.

“Tarzog needed men to dig and build.” I pointed to the river. “The riverbed is stone, and the current is too strong.”

“So where is the door?” Zariel asked.

If Tarzog had followed the same plans . . . I glanced back toward the falls. Sixty paces from the front door, and another twenty paces to the right. I hurried along the shore, then turned back into the woods, ripping through the foliage until I reached a lightning-struck tree. Half of the trunk had rotted away. Splinters of blackened wood hung down like fangs. Grubs and worse squirmed within the blackened interior.

“Go on,” Jenny said. “Open it.”

I nodded. It would have been too much to hope for her to go first. Reaching past the fangs, I felt about until I found a small metal lever. A quick push disarmed the trap. On the original temple, rusted nails had protruded through the doorframe. Those nails were designed to shoot down, pinning an intruder in place. An instant later, two steel blades would spring out from either side to decapitate the poor fellow. I had been quite proud of that one, actually. I doubted this tree could house such oversized blades, but I didn’t want to take my chances on whatever Tarzog had substituted.

I stepped into the bug-infested rot, and my feet began to sink.

Seconds later, I was in darkness.

I brushed dirt and rotted wood from my clothes and, without thinking, grabbed the torch from the left wall. Tarzog had been left-handed, and wanted to know he could roam his temple without having to carry detailed notes about various traps. The right torch would work too, but its removal from the sconce would prime a trap eleven feet down the hall, which would spray oil down on the head of whoever passed. The oil itself wouldn’t hurt anyone, but if he carried a lit torch . . . The flint and steel hung from the sconce, good as new. I half expected the moisture in the air to have rendered the torches useless, but Tarzog hadn’t skimped when it came to his temple. The black, tarry goo coating the end of the torch caught on the first spark.

I toyed with grabbing the torch that would trigger the trap, but decided against it. Even assuming dust and insects hadn’t clogged the nozzles, the oil spray had only a six foot radius. There was a good chance one or both of my companions would survive.

And if truth be told, I didn’t want to see Jenny burn. Tarzog had tested the trap on his tailor, who had been caught spying. I could still hear his screams, as clear as the sound of my own footsteps, and the smell would follow me to my grave. Beyond my grave, actually. Why couldn’t death have taken that memory? I didn’t think I could inflict such an end on this little girl. Besides, there was a better way. A quicker way that would not only take Jenny and Zariel with me, but would destroy this accursed temple as well.

So I did as I had been commanded. I led them on hands and knees through the hall of gods, as the stone statues of long-forgotten deities fired poisoned darts from their eyes, mouths, and in one particularly disturbing case, from his penis. I tiptoed around the edge of the spiked pit with the crushing walls, though not without a moment of regret. I had worked hard to design the system of weights and wheels that forced the walls inward, and I would have liked to know if it still worked after so much time in the humidity of the jungle.

The plan was identical to the temple I had designed, all except that rotted tree at the entrance. I wondered if Tarzog had used a bit of necromancy to keep it decaying yet strong all these years.

“How much farther?” Jenny asked. She was chewing her thumbnail again. I pushed open a door, ignoring the trapped knob on the right. This had been one of Tarzog’s favorites. The hinges were hidden on the same side as the knob, and the door didn’t even latch. Friction and a tight frame held it in place. Anyone who bumped the knob would take a poisoned needle to the hand. Actually turning the thing would trigger a spray of acid from the floor.

“We’re here,” I said, stepping inside.

One advantage to being dead: my body didn’t react with the same throat-constricting terror I remembered from my last time in this room, back in the other temple. Or maybe my time with Jenny and Zariel had numbed me to fear. The walls bulged inward, carved to resemble barbed scales on the coils of an enormous snake. Arcane symbols spiraled around the floor and ceiling both.

“It’s beautiful,” Jenny said. She took my torch and ran to the closest wall to study the carvings worked into the snake’s body. In one, dead warriors lay scattered before a giant serpent who had reared back with a horse and rider in its jaws.

The Serpent God was one ugly snake. Curved horns like scimitars grew in twin rows behind the eyes. In addition to the huge fangs, smaller teeth lined the jaws, each one dripping with venom.

“Look at this, Zariel,” Jenny said, moving farther along the wall. “Here he’s collecting his sacrifice.” The snake’s coils circled a pit of terrified old men, women, and children.

“Forget the pictures,” Zariel snapped. “Armand’s trackers are probably making their way through the jungle even now.”

Jenny stuck out her tongue, then squatted down, holding her torch close to the floor to read the symbols. I turned my attention to the back of the room, where a thick book lay open on a raised dais. This was perhaps Tarzog’s most brilliant idea. If his enemies had penetrated this far, it would mean Tarzog himself had fallen. Vindictive bastard that he was, Tarzog planted the book here to destroy those enemies. The pages were blank, but in order to discover that, you had to set foot on that dais. Any weight of more than ten pounds would trigger a collapse of the entire temple.

I stepped soundlessly toward the book. No amount of magic or power could save them. With Jenny dead, I would be back with my wife and my children. Perhaps we would all rest a bit easier, knowing—

“Stop that,” Jenny said without looking up.

My body froze in mid-step. Unable to move, I toppled forward. My wrist hit the floor first, hard enough that I could hear bone snap. I ended up on my side, staring helplessly at Jenny as she turned around.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know what Daddy did to trap this room, but I can’t let you get to it.”

“How?” It was all I could do to force the word past my dead lips.

Jenny shrugged. “Daddy killed you. He killed your family. I knew you’d try to get me in the end. That’s what I’d do.”

“Clever, isn’t she?” asked Zariel. Something in her voice warned me an instant before she struck, but I couldn’t have stopped her even if I wanted to. She waved her hand, and Jenny began to scream. Black fire danced over Jenny’s skin. She flopped on the floor like a dying trout.

“Such a clever girl,” Zariel repeated as she circled Jenny’s body. “Marked by the Serpent God, heir to the power of Tarzog the Black.”

Zariel snapped her fingers, and Jenny went still. She wasn’t dead. She couldn’t be, or else the magic keeping me in this pseudo living state would have failed. Shadowy flames continued to burn, though Jenny’s clothes and skin were unharmed. Zariel’s fire fed on something deeper than flesh.

“For two years I’ve dragged this whelp from one refuge to another,” Zariel said, her voice growing louder with each word. “Two years of living like a common thief. Two years of her whining and arguing, her stubborn refusal to follow even the simplest instructions.”

She turned to me, her eyes wide. For a moment, I thought she was going to destroy me, but she clasped her hands and said, “That little brat pissed her bedroll every night for six months after her father died. Six months! ”

Zariel pulled the vial of blood from her pocket. “Well, little godling, Anhak Ghudir said you would be the one to lure Rhynoth from his rest, but the prophecies never said who would command him.” She bit the stopper from the vial, spat it to one side, and swallowed the contents. Grabbing Jenny by the hair, she dragged the motionless girl to the center of the room. Jenny’s eyes were open and alert. She could see everything that was happening, just like me. A part of me took some perverse joy at seeing her own torments turned back upon her. I might have failed, but Tarzog’s line would still end.

Zariel began to chant. “She is here, great one. Descendant of your own children, heir to the powers of the first serpent.” The rest was in another tongue, full of hacking, angry syllables. At first, I didn’t realize when Zariel’s chanting changed to genuine coughs. Only when she staggered back a step did I realize something was wrong. One hand clawed her throat. Blood dripped from her left nostril.

The shadowy flames on Jenny’s body flickered and died. Jenny’s arms were shaky as she struggled to sit up. Hugging her knees to her chest, she whispered, “That hurt.”

Zariel dropped to her knees. Her expression changed from panic to anger, and she raised one hand, but when she tried to speak, only a pained croak emerged.

Jenny crawled over and kicked her in the stomach.

“How?” Zariel asked, her voice hoarse.

Jenny rolled her eyes. “I swiped the blood a week ago. Daddy always told me the only henchman you could ever really trust was one who was already dead.” She pulled a heavily padded tube from inside her dress. “This is the virgin blood. You drank a blend of four different sea snake venoms, mixed in bat blood.”

She stood up, her knees still shaking slightly. With her free hand, she took the torch from Zariel, then kicked her again. The effort nearly made her fall back.

“You wanted to know why him?” Jenny whispered, pointing to me. “Because he went to stay with his family in the dungeons every night. My daddy would have let him stay in the huts with the other workers, but he refused. He never complained about the smell. He didn’t tell his son to stop whining. When his boy fouled himself during the night, he didn’t force him to sleep in his own stink!”

She ended her tirade with one last kick, then turned to me. “I used to sneak down to the dungeons to watch Daddy torture traitors. One night I saw you coming, so I followed you.”

She unwrapped the vial of blood as she talked. “I’ll let you die, if that’s what you want. Or you can come with me.” She swallowed the blood, then smiled. “I’ll even let you ride the Serpent God with me. But I am going to summon Rhynoth. Armand and his men are going to die. I’m going to conquer this land, whether you come with me or not.”

She glanced back at Zariel, who had stopped moving. “Who knows,” she said. “Maybe you’ll help me mend my evil ways.” The wicked grin on her face told me how likely that was. “You might even get a chance to kill me.”

I doubted it. Look at how efficiently she had outsmarted and disposed of Zariel. Jenny was truly her father’s daughter. Even more dangerous than Tarzog the Black. After all, Tarzog had failed. On the other hand, what purpose would my second death serve? I couldn’t bring my family back. I couldn’t stop Jenny. The only possible blessing I would gain from death was my own peace. The floor began to shake as Jenny chanted the same words Zariel had. Rhynoth had awakened from his millennial slumber, and he would be here soon.

Jenny’s shoulders slumped as she finished the incantation. She began to chew her thumbnail again, wincing as the nail tore free and began to bleed.

“I’ll understand if you don’t want to come,” she said, never looking at me. I closed my eyes and made my choice.

Prince Armand brought an army. Perhaps he knew what he was about to face. I doubted it would save him, but who knew?

All I knew was that when Jenny rode the Serpent God, her hands clinging to the horns as her half-cape flapped behind her, she didn’t look like an evil sorceress. She looked like a little girl, smiling and laughing as she prepared to wipe out an entire land. And seeing that almost made me feel alive again. GORDIE CULLIGAN VS. DR. LONGBEACH & THE HVAC OF DOOM

J. Steven York

I tell you, when I answered that ad in the back of Popular Mechanics long ago, I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. Sure, I expected steady work, good pay, excellent benefits, and the respect and admiration of my friends and family. That goes without saying.

But I never expected the intrigue, the danger, the adventure!

My name is Gordie Culligan, and I’m the man from HVAC. That’s Heating, Ventilation and Air-C

onditioning to you. God, I love the smell of a fried starter-capacitor in morning!

It was a day like any other day in the Los Angeles basin, but I felt something in the air. Possibly it was the unusual number of ominous, glowing, saucer-shaped clouds moving against the wind, or the swarms of atomic robot bats flapping their way east over Burbank, or the unusual number of electric dirigibles, blue arcs of lighting crackling between their protruding electrodes, that circled over the San Diego freeway. Maybe it was just the greenish tinge to the smog. But I knew something was up. Now sure, I know if you don’t live in L.A., you’d consider any one of those things cause for alarm, but that’s why you live where you live, and I live in the greatest city in the world. Sure, it was a little startling at first, but this is L.A., baby! You live here for a while, you see things like this every day, and nothing ever, ever comes of it, you just start to take it for granted. Sure, there are giant robots in Tarzana and giant beetles in Griffith Park, but when you’ve had Conan for a governor, nothing is that strange anymore.

By now, you’re probably saying, “Gordie, this is all very interesting and all, but what about the air-conditioning?” See it all ties in, and until recently, I didn’t know that. You see all those crazy things, and you take it for granted that nothing ever happens . By you know why nothing ever happens?

Because of guys like me, that’s why. HVAC saves the world, baby! That’s what this town is about!

So anyway, it was a routine call, a 318: “unexplained noise from blower.” I checked out the van and picked up Rudy, the apprentice the union had sent over. He was standing on the curb outside the break-room door, two coffee cups in his hands and a bagel bag under his arm. He hopped in and put the cups in the holders, then pulled out a bagel for me. I looked at it skeptically through the plastic wrap.

Rudy stared at me, eyes wide, a look of concern on his squarish, freckled, face. “Sprouts and cream cheese, like you asked.”

I held it back toward him. “What are those seeds on the bagel, Rudy?”

“They’re seeds,” he said. “All seeds look alike to me, dude.”

“Your seed-blindness is probably why they kicked you out of Fresno, Rudy. Those are sesame seeds. I specifically asked for poppy.”

He kind of cringed back toward the door of the van and looked like a whipped puppy. I immediately felt bad. They hadn’t kicked Rudy out of Fresno, but that was where he was from. I think maybe he literally fell off a turnip truck. But somebody at the union must have felt sorry for him, or more likely, he had a uncle with seniority and a small wad of cash. In any case, he’d been taken in as an HVAC apprentice (service/install) junior grade with the Brotherhood of Subsystem Service Employees, and ended up with me.

Unlike a lot of guys, I don’t mind an apprentice. An extra set of hands comes in useful sometimes, you can send them into those dirty ducts and crawl-spaces, and they give the customer someone to yell at while you sneak off and get the job done uninterrupted. Based on our two weeks together, I’d decided that Rudy wasn’t a bad kid, if a little green. That didn’t keep me from riding his butt though. I peeled back the plastic, took a bite of the bagel, turned up a Barenaked Ladies CD, and put the van into drive. Rudy seemed to relax, and I had to admit that, despite my black sense of foreboding, I was in a generally good mood too. The dispatch was to Long Beach, and that meant at least forty minutes on the freeway, which, since I was paid from the moment I left the shop, was free money. The traffic was bad (hey, it’s L.A.!) and it took closer to an hour. Fine by me. I consulted the GPS

screen and we threaded our way into an industrial section. As I drove, Rudy’s attention was drawn to something off in the distance. As we got nearer to the blinking red dot on the computer map, Rudy’s head tilted farther and farther back. I was too busy driving to figure out what he was looking at. Finally, he asked, “Has there always been a volcano down here?”

I blinked in surprise and looked up from the SUV in front of me long enough to see the huge, smoking crater rising above the warehouses to our right, then glanced down at the map. “Nah,” I said, “can’t be.”

But it sure looked like our air-conditioning service call was to an active volcano. “This is your lucky day,”

I said. “I have the feeling this is going to be some heavy-BTU machinery we’re working on today.”

We zigged and zagged past small factories, warehouses, refineries, and auto-wrecking yards, and the cone just kept getting bigger and bigger.

“Did you ever see that movie,” said Rudy, “with Tommy Lee Jones?”

I nodded. “Volcano, costarring Anne Heche,” I said. I’m kind of a movie buff, but then everyone in L.A. is. “Around 1997 or so. Sucked, but Tommy Lee is terrific in everything. Except Batman Forever, of course.” I saw where he was going though. “Don’t worry, kid. I’ve got the feeling this is a whole different scenario.”

We drove up to the base of the volcano, which on closer inspection seemed to be made out of painted concrete sprayed over chicken wire. A big gas meter inside a chain-link enclosure suggested the source of the pyrotechnics at the top. I spotted a sign marked SERVICE ENTRANCE, with an arrow, and followed it around the base of the volcano to a kind of cave.

We drove inside to find a fairly standard looking loading dock with two roll-up delivery doors and a small man door to the right. I noticed a Lotus Elise, going 120 sitting still, parked incongruously in front of the loading dock. I shook my head. “Doesn’t that fool know this is Long Beach? It’s a wonder that thing isn’t stripped down to the frame already.” I shrugged again and parked the truck. I sent Rudy up to the man-door on recon, and unloaded our gear from the back of the truck. Rudy came back a minute later with a pink Post-it note in his hand. It read: Dear AC People,

Gone to Radio Shack for some diodes. Gave minions the day off. Back in an hour. Please let yourself in through the crater (outside, trail to left).

Dr. Longbeach

I glanced at the work order. Sure enough, Dr. M. D. Longbeach was the customer name. It looked like a long hike from the truck, so we went loaded for bear: toolbox, filter masks, a tank of R134a refrigerant (ozone friendly, if used as directed), a roll of trim-to-fit filter material, and two rolls of duct tape.

We quickly found the path, which was really more of a series of switchback ramps, disguised from view below by Styrofoam rocks and plastic plants. I work out three times a week, but I was still out of breath by the time we lugged all our gear to the top.

When we reached the lip of the crater we dropped our stuff and took a breather. There was a breeze off the harbor to the west. It had a taint of refinery stink, but it was at least cool. I took the time to size up what was waiting for us below, while Rudy admired the view.

“You can see the Queen Mary from here,” he said. Then he squinted and frowned. “Dude! Is that a giant octopus climbing the smokestacks?”

“Ignore the giant octopus, kid. That’s somebody else’s problem. We’ve got a volcano with a broken AC

to fix.”

From this angle, looking past the ring of burners and smoke generators, it was obvious that the volcano was both fake and hollow. A translucent fiberglass roof covered the opening, and a large panel in the center of the roof was rolled back to reveal a huge silo in the middle. Rudy tore himself away from the view and turned to look down into the open hatchway, which was probably big enough to fly a small helicopter through. Or launch a missile, which, judging from the rounded nose cone visible just below, was more likely its purpose.

Rudy’s eyes widened. “Dude, is that a—”

I nodded. “Yeah, kid, it is.”

“A water heater!”

I cringed. “No, doofus, it is not a water heater. Don’t you know a missile when you see one?”

“Not really.”

“Nor a water heater either, I guess. You’ve got a lot to learn, apprentice.”

“Yeah, I guess.” He stared at the missile with growing concern. “Dude, I was happier when it was a water heater. Should we be worried about this?”

“About what?”

“It’s a missile, dude!”

I looked up. “Is it aimed at you? Looks like it’s aimed at the sky to me. Probably another evil plot to destroy the moon. We had three last year in L.A. County that I know of.”

“The moon? Seriously? What happened?”

I shrugged. “Moon’s still there, isn’t it? Somebody stopped them, I guess.”

“Who?”

I shrugged. “You’re not an apprentice to NASA, Rudy, you’re an apprentice to BOSSE.” I was careful to pronounce it “boss,” the e is silent. Rudy kept calling the union “Bossy,” and the shop stewards didn’t take kindly to that.

I spotted a roof stair and a line of heavy-duty compressor units twenty yards around the crater to our right. “Come on, we’ve got a noisy blower to fix.” We reached the stairs and I tried the knob. I’d been secretly hoping it was locked, as we’d then have to wait, with the meter running, for the customer to return. But it turned freely, and as I opened the door, I noticed that, strangely enough, the lock had been neatly melted out of the middle. “Something’s not quite right here, kid. Keep an eye open.”

He looked at me. “Dude, we’re going into a fake volcano with a missile in the middle, and you say it’s not quite right? Are you like having a Homer moment or something?”

“Homer moment?”

“You know: D’oh! ”

I frowned at him as I headed down the stairwell. “Do not ever say ‘D’oh’ to your designated union journeyperson. There’s almost certainly a regulation against it, and if not, I just made one up.”

I turned my attention to a series of heavily insulated coolant pipes running down the wall from the compressors above. Following them would lead us to the evaporator coils and the blower. We went down three floors to find a giant octopus of another kind, a huge central air-conditioning unit from which large metal ducts snaked off in all directions. As we stepped closer, we could hear the fan rumbling with an unhealthy, scraping noise just audible under the rumble.

I located the access hatch on the side, but found it padlocked. I held the lock in my hand and sighed. Unlike a locked roof door, this was no real excuse on this kind of system. “We’ll go in through the ducts,” I said.

Rudy looked surprised. “Dude?”

I nodded up toward the metal tentacles spreading out in all directions. “The ducts. Look at the size of them. We’ll find a grate, climb in, and walk back to the central unit. Look at the size of those things!

We’ll hardly have to duck.”

By now, it was becoming clear to me that we were in some kind of lair. Though I hadn’t done much myself, mechanicals guys—HVAC, plumbing, electricians—they love lair work. Lots of mechanicals on a big scale, and price is usually no object. Where these guys get their money, I’ll never know, but they aren’t afraid to spend it. And for HVAC guys, a special treat: big ducts. Really big ducts. With great big registers over every secret filing cabinet, master strategy table, supercomputer, and self-destruct console. Or so I’m told. Me, mostly I do industrial parks, big-box retail, and office buildings, so this was kind of new to me. Mostly I was going on union-picnic shop talk and secondhand info. But I couldn’t let on to the apprentice. I kept my chin up and acted like I did this every day. We walked down a stark corridor lined with numbered doors. Maybe it was an evil lair of some kind, but except for some roof support girders and other architectural details seemingly borrowed from Forbidden Planet (1965, Walter Pidgeon, Anne Francis, and pre- Naked Gun Leslie Neilsen) it could have been a ministorage based on appearances.

Never mind that. I quickly found what I was looking for—a large, conveniently accessible air register. I hooked my fingers around the edge, and it easily popped open without the need to remove any screws. From what I’d heard around the union hall, conveniently opening registers were popular lair-specific features. I tossed my tools inside and climbed up, noticing as I did that it was far easier to see out through the register than in from the outside.

Rudy climbed in behind me, dragging the heavy tank of refrigerant, and closed the register after us. I considered unclipping the flashlight that I carried on my belt, but it was surprisingly well lit inside the ducts. I stuck my index finger in my mouth to wet it, and held it up into the air flow. “This way,” I said, heading “upstream.” I noticed, as we walked, that these were top-quality ducts, heavy metal. We were able to move silently. None of that thin, galvanized sheet metal that thumps like a kid’s tin drum every time you shift your weight. “Quality all the way,” I said.

We followed a series of twists and turns past many other registers. Occasionally I would stop to look out into empty control rooms bristling with blinking lights, workshops equipped with menacing looking industrial robots, labs filled with colorful, bubbling beakers, and a room with the biggest damned hot tub I’ve ever seen (and when you’re from L.A., that’s saying something).

“Dude!” Rudy was really impressed with the hot tub.

Finally the rumbling of the blower started to get louder, and it felt as though we were walking into a stiff wind. Ahead, I could see the filter housing. We were quite close to the condenser coils and the blower, but we needed to get past the filter first.

I found the latches and opened the housing. As I did, a number of oddly shaped white objects clattered out onto the heavy metal floor of the duct.

Rudy bent down and picked up what looked to be a long, white bone. He grinned and waved it above his head. “Did you see that space-monkey movie?”

I frowned at him. “Planet of the Apes was a ‘space-monkey’ movie. You’re thinking of 2001: A Space Odyssey. I liked Dr. Strangelove better.” I frowned again, and leaned closer to examine the bone, nearly getting my head conked in the process. “I think that’s a human femur,” I said. Rudy went white as the bone, and dropped it like it had suddenly burned his hand. “Dude!”

I bent down and picked up the bone. The surface was bleached white and slightly pitted, but it didn’t look old. “I’ve seen this before,” I said. “Back in ’99, some guy in North Hollywood tried to soup up his window AC, and accidentally turned it into a death ray.”

“Dude, a death ray?”

“There are some things non-union man was not meant to meddle with.”

“So, you’re saying this air conditioner is a death ray?” The implications suddenly hit him, and he quickly backed away from the filter housing.

“That’s not what I’m saying at all. Just that a death ray could be involved.” I kneeled down and examined the other bones: scattered vertebra, a shoulder blade, several ribs, a disarticulated jaw, and a wristwatch. I reached down and picked it up. Rolex. Top of the line. As I examined it, I accidentally pressed a stud on the side of the case and a needle-fine red beam shot out and heated a spot on the metal wall to incandescence before I could turn it off. Seeing the beam, Rudy screamed like a school-girl and threw himself into a wall so hard that I thought he’d knock himself unconscious.

“Calm down,” I said. “Don’t you know the difference between a death ray and a laser?”

Rudy blinked in confusion. “No.”

“Well, this watch has some kind of cutting laser in it. I think this is what melted the lock outside.” I thought of the abandoned Lotus downstairs, and it all started to make some kind of sense. I opened the filter housing all the way, and the rest of the skeleton appeared to be there, stuck in the fuzzy filter material.

Rudy stared at the bones, panic growing in his eyes. “Dude, there’s a dead guy in the HEPA filter! We should get out of here!”

“Technically,” I said, “this isn’t a HEPA filter at all.” I was starting to feel intrigued. “Anyway, I want to find out what happened here, and we’ve still got a blower to fix.” I pulled out the filter frame to reveal a plenum chamber behind. Ahead, I could see the condenser coils, curled like intestines, dripping condensation.

I started to climb through the opening. I looked to see Rudy just standing there, shivering, but from fear or proximity to the condenser, I couldn’t be sure. “Buck up! This is what you signed up for. Be a man!”

Rudy looked at me and nodded weakly. Slowly, he climbed through after me, still lugging the tank. We slipped past the condenser coils and I could see the huge fan spinning ahead. The scraping noise was very loud now. On the wall of the chamber to our right, I could see an electrical box with a handle on the side. I pulled it down.

There was a loud clack of relays opening, and the motor fell silent, the fan spinning down, and with it, the scraping noise quieted. The big fan slowed until the cruciform shape of the individual blades resolved out of the shimmering disk, and it slowed to a halt. I stepped up and examined one of the blades, its sharp, leading edge buried in the top of a skull.

With some effort, I pulled the skull free of the blade and held it up to Rudy. He was turning white again.

“Well,” I said, “there’s our noise.”

“Good,” said Rudy. “Dude, can we go back to the shop now?”

I looked past the fan, where a long return air duct stretched off into the distance. “Not yet,” I said. “I want to know what happened here.”

“Do we have to?”

“Dude,” I said, “we do.”

I stepped carefully past the blades of the fan and into the duct beyond. In doing so, I must have triggered some kind of motion detector. The air in front of me shimmered and glowed, forming the life-size translucent image of a short, slope-shouldered, bald man with a goatee and sci-fi looking wraparound sunglasses. The glowing image began to speak.

“Greetings, my British friend. I’m sure you think yourself quite clever, sneaking in this way, but I’ve prepared for any eventuality. You are about to become the first test subject for my—” He paused for dramatic effect, a bit too long in my opinion. “—death ray!”

Then he began to laugh maniacally. As he did, I saw a panel in the side of the duct begin to slide up. Something inside began to move.

I dropped my toolbox and reached back to snatch the tank from Rudy. I pulled out the filler hose and twisted the valve just as the ugly black muzzle of the death ray began to emerge from its hidden recess behind the door. Clouds of refrigerant shot out, enveloping the sinister device. I kept the stream concentrated on the muzzle as it locked into position and began to swivel toward us. The flow sputtered and died as the tank emptied.

The apprentice yelped in fear.

I quickly hoisted the tank over my head and slammed it down on the death ray. The super cooled metal shattered like glass.

I dropped the empty tank and turned back to Rudy, a smug smile on my lips. “You see! If you learn nothing else today, learn this: This is a central air-conditioning system. We are HVAC men! This is our turf, and we have advantage here. You shouldn’t be afraid. Doctor what’s-his-face should be afraid of us! Fear our skills! ”

Rudy slowly drew himself up straight, the fear draining from his features. I patted him on the shoulder. “We can do this!”

Rudy nodded. “Yeah. We can do this.” Then a moment of doubt. “Uh, what is it we’re doing?”

“Whatever Mr. Rolex back in the filer was looking for, it’s at the end of this return duct. I say we go check it out.”

More hesitation. “But— why?”

I gestured at the shattered death ray. “Look at this! It’s an unauthorized modification. This Longbeach character, he’s voided his warranty, and that’s not something we take sitting down. Are you with me?”

Rudy nodded weakly. “But what if there are more death traps?”

I grinned, drunk on my own adrenaline. “Oh,” I said, “there will be!”

I was right, too. We’d traveled maybe twenty yards when I spotted a small vent inside of the duct (looking out onto nothing) and a bunch of dead cockroaches littering the floor. “Breather masks,” I said with alarm, grabbing my mask from the pouch on my belt even as I heard a hissing sound. I slid the mask over my face, pulled the straps tight to form a seal, and then helped Rudy, who was still fumbling with his.

I had just pulled the last strap tight when the air before us shimmered. The phantom doctor grinned at an empty spot in space to my left, confirming what I’d already suspected, that the holograms were recorded. “Well, my British friend, you’ve cheated death once, but you won’t a second time! Is it getting hard to breathe? Well, by now, you’ve already sucked in a fatal dose of my—” Again with the pregnant pause. “—nerve mist! Now you can spend your last moments contemplating your failure to stop my world-destroying missile from launching!” More maniacal laughter.

“Man,” I said, my voice muffled by my mask, “that gets old quick.” I signaled Rudy to follow me. After we’d traveled a few yards, there was a relay click somewhere behind us, and the big fan began to spin again, sucking away the clouds of poison mist.

I turned to watch them go. “Probably a good thing he gave the minions the day off,” I said, “or he’d be gassing them right about now.” I pulled off my mask and gave Rudy a knowing look. “Just goes to show, you shouldn’t tamper with things you don’t understand.”

I turned and looked up the duct. It dead-ended twenty yards ahead at a single, man-size air register. That, undoubtedly, was our goal. “Destroying the world,” I said, “is bad for business. We’ve got to stop this guy’s plan, and oh, yes, we are going to bill him for the time!”

I stepped boldly forward, but as I did, I noticed yet another grating in the duct wall, from which, even over the sound of the fan, an ominous buzzing could be heard.

Hesitating not at all, I reached for the roll of filter material and slapped it over the grating, holding it in place with my outspread hands. The buzzing within grew loud and angry, and I heard the thumping of something hitting the back of the filter material, like popcorn in a popper. There was a glow just visible at the corner of my eye, and I knew our holographic friend was back.

“Well, my friend, I’m very impressed, but now taste the bitter sting of my—”

I growled. “Oh, get the hell on with it, will ya?”

“—mutant killer bees!”

I looked at the filter material just in front of my face, and saw many small somethings poking through. It took me a moment to realize that I was seeing hundreds of stingers poking through the material.

“Duct tape,” I yelled to Rudy. “Give me duct tape! It’s the only thing that can save us now!”

It was in that moment that Rudy seemed to come into his own. All fear, all hesitation vanished from his face. He pulled a roll of duct tape free of his belt and pulled out a long strip in the same motion, ripping it off with his teeth.

He slapped the strip along the top of the filter material, then went back for more tape. Behind the filter, the bees were buzzing, but it was Dr. Longbeach who droned on. “As you writhe in venom-induced agony, eyes swollen shut, airway tightening down until you choke, know that you’ve failed, and that my missile will soon disperse its cloud of self-replicating nanobots, converting the entire crust of the planet into—”

Rudy slapped more tape across the bottom of the filter. I was able to pull my hands free and reach for my own roll of tape. But I took a moment to glare at the hologram. “Get on with it!”

“—peanut butter! Oh, yes! All shall know the deadly, sticky-sweet touch of—”

I kept slapping tap over the filter, entombing the deadly insects. “Dr. Scholl’s? Dr. Pepper? Dr. Spock?”

“—Dr. Longbeach!”

“Never would have guessed.” I slapped the last strip of tape in place, and ran for the vent, Rudy hot on my heels.

I popped open the grate and stepped into a glass-walled control room overlooking the missile silo. Far below us, clouds of rocket propellant vented from its tanks, eerily like the refrigerant I’d used earlier. Above us, a fluorescent light flickered and buzzed, adding a disturbing surreality to the scene. I looked quickly around the room. There were the usual consoles, covered with banks of unmarked, ever-flashing, and incomprehensible lights. But in the center of it all, there was one thing that I could understand, a big, red digital readout counting down toward zero.

59 . . . 58 . . . 57 . . .

And it was then, in one moment of horrible realization, I understood the gravity of our situation. Like Alice Through the Looking Glass (the 1974 TV version, with Phyllis Diller as the White Queen and Mr. T as the voice of the Jabberwock, was surreal even by the standards of Wonderland) we had stepped out of the ductwork. We were out of our element, and suddenly I felt lost.

“We’ve got to stop it,” said Rudy.

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

“Do something!”

“Do what? I don’t know anything about rocket control systems.”

44 . . . 43 . . . 42 . . . 41 . . .

Rudy stepped toward the console, his hands hovering over the timer mechanism. Impulsively he reached down and pried open a panel below it, exposing a rat’s nest of colored wire. He stared at it desperately.

“Do something.”

“I can’t,” I answered miserably. “I don’t know how.”

31 . . . 30 . . . 29 . . .

Rudy gazed at the wires. “Look, just—Just think of it as a big thermostat! A thermostat that counts seconds instead of degrees!”

I looked a him, incredulous. “That’s stupid!”

“So to stop the furnace—the rocket—from going off, we need to make the temperature go down instead of up!”

“You’re saying we need to reverse time?”

Rudy frowned. “That doesn’t work, does it?”

“We’re doomed.”

23 . . . 22 . . . 21 . . .

“Look,” he said, “what do they do in the movies?”

I reached for my tool belt and took out a pair of diagonal cutters. “They cut a wire. But which wire?” I sighed, thinking of all the countless red, digital timers I had seen in various movies. “It’s usually the red wire or the blue wire.”

“Unless,” said Rudy, “it’s the white wire or the black wire.”

I groaned. He was right. The timer-readout was always standard, but the wires were always different. 15 . . . 14 . . . 13 . . .

Behind me, I heard a door creak open, but there was no time to wonder who it was.

“Just cut one,” begged Rudy, “any one!”

The timer flashed. Sweat ran down into my eyes. That flickering light made my head hurt. Cut a wire! But which one?

4 . . . 3 . . . 2 . . .

I felt someone lean over my shoulder.

A hand sheathed in a black rubber glove slipped past me, holding something. A knife blade glittered in the flickering light.

The blade slipped into the nest of wires and smoothly plucked one out, pulling it tight and cutting it with a snap . . .

1 . . .

I sagged against the console, the diagonal cutters slipping from my cramped fingers. Rudy jumped into the air, letting out a victory whoop. “Dudes!”

Dudes? I turned to look at our mysterious rescuer.

He stood, a titan in gray coveralls and a baseball cap. He hoisted up his tool belt, sniffed, and rubbed his bushy mustache with his index finger.

“Who,” I said, “are you?”

He folded his pocketknife and slipped it back into a holster on his belt. “I’m the electrician,” he said.

“Somebody called about a busted fluorescent.”

Dr. Longbeach appeared at the door, a black plastic Radio Shack bag clutched in his hand, and surveyed the scene. “Oh, thank God you’re here. I was afraid this time I was actually going to get away with it.” He shuddered. “Peanut butter. Eeew.”

Okay, so the men from HVAC didn’t save the world.

Not that time, anyway.

But we helped.

“Dude,” said Rudy, looking at the electrician in admiration.

“Hey,” I said to the kid, “you’re my apprentice!” I turned to address the stranger as an equal. “You have skills, my friend, as do we. We should team up.”

And that, as you’ve surely guessed by now, is how the Justice League of Contractors was born. THE SINS OF THE SONS

Fiona Patton

The city of Riamo was neither so large nor so grand as the five other city-states that graced the Ardechi River. Its marble palazzos were small and compact as were its cathedral and its single monastery. Its market piazzas were neat and well laid out and its harbor sturdily constructed. It was known for the skill of its weavers and its dyers and the guilds that oversaw these industries were both prosperous and progressive. While not large enough to boast a necropolis like its great neighbor Cerchicava, it nonetheless housed five cemeteries within its ancient walls, one each for the nobility, the merchant class, the military, the Church, the trades, and the poor. Even its heretics’ graveyard, built outside the western wall, was tidy, well-organized, and decently protected by a complement of city guards who took their duty seriously. The necromantic trade, so rife along the Ardechi, had never gained much of a foothold in westernmost Riamo. A fact that both the Church and the governing council were justly proud of. Standing on the ducal Palazzo de Gagio’s fine marble terrace, Luca Orcicci stared out across the river, his cold, blue eyes carefully hooded. Known as Luca Preto, a reserved foreign aristocrat with a modest fortune, he had lived in Riamo for nearly twenty years, ever since his master, Lord Montefero de Sepori, the premier Death Mage in Cerchicava, had sent him here to gain a very substantial foothold for the necromantic trade. Whatever the Church and the governing council might like to believe, far more of its citizens were damned then they would ever have imagined.

Turning his head slightly, he listened as the cream of Riamo’s nobility fluttered about the palazzo’s main audience hall like so many agitated geese. The Duc Johanni Gagio had been murdered in neighboring Pisario, the second largest and singlemost aggressive city-state to the east. The duc of Pisario, Cosimo Talicozzo, had immediately closed the harbors, arresting anyone even remotely suspicious while denouncing the act as loudly as possible. The public belief was that the deed had been committed by the fabled Huntsman, a mysterious crossbow-wielding assassin of consummate skill who had terrorized both Cerchicava and Pisario in the last year. But the older members of Riamo’s court held to a more insidious conviction, that Talicozzo himself had been behind the murder. It was not so long ago that Pisario had cast a covetous eye along the entire length of the Ardechi River, going so far as to wage full-out war against Cerchicava itself. Riamo could easily be next.

That no one had even whispered the suspicion that the necromantic trade might be involved struck Luca as both amusing and irritating. But such was the way in Riamo; egotistical, political squabbling with no clear understanding of the real clandestine powers that flowed beneath their lives like an underground river. It was a belief that Luca did his best to promote but lately he was beginning to wish that the complacent nobility and wealthy merchants of Riamo might, just for once, come face-to-face with reality. The tedium of security was beginning to make him restless. No doubt that was why the Huntsman had chosen Gagio in the first place. He always did have the uncanny ability to read Luca’s mind. The thought transformed his expression from one of contempt to consideration as he made his way inside. He was not fond of crowds, palazzos, or the nobility; the first clouded your thinking, the second hampered your vision and the third . . . He caught sight of Piero Bruni, his manservant, standing patiently in the wings by the great double doors and nodded his head to indicate that they would be leaving shortly. The third would betray you faster than your heart could stop beating beneath a cutter’s knife. But unfortunately all were necessary evils at the moment. He would have to remember to thank the Huntsman when he finally returned home. Schooling his expression, he headed for the knot of people standing beside the ducal throne.

The Bishop of San Salvadore had a firm grip on Johanni’s son, Eugene’s, attention—no doubt lecturing the new duc to do nothing either rash or impolitic regarding Pisario—when Luca approached. Resisting the urge to bare his teeth at the bishop, Luca gave the young potentate a sympathetic bow before moving on with a modicum of satisfaction. Condolences having been given, he was now free to retire before the desire to see the churchman laid out on his dissection table got the better of him. At the door, he paused a moment to speak with Dante Corsini, a long-distance trader of powerful influence in legitimate as well as illegitimate affairs. Although untainted by the necromantic trade, he was nonetheless deeply involved in all other aspects of the city’s unlawful activities. The two men treated each other with a guarded respect, so when Luca gave the other man a formal nod of greeting, Dante caught up a glass of wine from a passing servant and raised it in response.

“A bad business this, Preto,” he stated before the man had moved out of earshot. “Terrible for trade with Pisario.”

Luca frowned at him. Most of the wealthy merchants in Riamo treated their servants as if they were blind, deaf, and mute, but generally Corsini was not so careless; such thinking had led too many men of both their acquaintances to the gallows. All of Luca’s servants were members of the trade and carried binding spells so strong that their very skulls would explode if they even considered betraying him, but Corsini did not have that luxury. No matter how powerful a Court Mage he was reputed to be, only the Death Mages were capable of such precautions. The servant who had brought him his drink also carried Luca’s binding spell, but Corsini could not have known that when he spoke. Outraged grief or stunned disbelief were the only safe reactions at this time and Luca said as much with a dark glance at the other man. Corsini dismissed his concern with a wave of his hand. As he lifted the glass to his lips, Luca saw the tiny flash of a discreet, blue purity spell scatter throughout the wine and nodded inwardly. At least Corsini wasn’t completely stupid. It paid to be careful, even in pedantic, law-abiding Riamo.

“I wonder if they’ll linger over the funeral arrangements now that the cold weather’s here,” he mused, steering the conversation to a slightly less dangerous topic.

“I heard the bishop dispatched his own people to Pisario straightaway to prepare the body,” Corsini answered. “And that old fart, First Minister Poggeso, sent messages out to the five cities just as swiftly. Ducal parties mean ducal security but it also means increased business opportunities.” He sipped his wine thoughtfully. “I wonder if Eugene will be replacing Poggeso now,” he added with a speculative expression.

Luca shrugged. “I shouldn’t think he’d make any changes until after the funeral, but if you have a candidate in mind you should bring it to his attention as soon as possible—before too many other people offer their own choices.”

As one, they both glanced over to where the bishop was still monopolizing the duc’s company.

“He’ll be expected to take a wife now, too,” Corsini noted sourly. “And you can be certain her family will be swift to exert their own influence.”

“The bishop will likely come to that subject soon enough. He has a niece of marriageable age.”

Corsini grunted. “So have I, but my sister married a scheming little viper and I’ve no intention of increasing his power base. Pity you and I didn’t think to have daughters. That might have been our influence.”

“It was an oversight, yes,” Luca agreed dryly.

Corsini gave him a sly glance. “How are your sons, by the way?”

“They’re well. Alesandro’s finally taken over his late father’s business now that the Goldsmith’s Guild has accepted his membership.”

“He cast the communion goblets for Santa Lucia’s, did he not?”

“He did.”

“He’s a fine craftsman. No doubt that little shop of his will do well for him. There are plenty of opportunities in Riamo for a young man with ambition, if he knows where to look for them. His mother would be proud.”

“I agree.”

“And Domito?”

“In Cerchicava negotiating a new trade agreement with the Vintner’s Guild.”

“How old is he now?”

“Twenty-one.”

“Who would credit it? Why it seems like only yesterday that you took him in. What was it, fourteen years ago?”

“Yes. His youth and vigor make me feel old.”

“Bollocks. Get yourself a new wife and sire one of your own blood if you want to feel young again, or better yet, marry him off; that’ll take the wind out of his sails.”

Luca smiled tightly. “I understand your son, Vincent, is to be married this spring.”

“To the daughter of a long-distance trader from Calegro. In point of fact, her father and I are outfitting a ship bound for the far east. It could turn a pretty profit for anyone with shares in the venture; if you’re interested.”

“I might be.”

“Mention it to Alesandro and Domito as well. It’s time they began making decisions as men. They can’t hide behind their father’s purse strings forever, you know.”

“I’ll keep it in mind.”

Later, standing in the center of his workshop beneath the Palazzo della Rona, a compact riverside manor house he’d inherited from his late wife, Luca lifted a delicate glass vial containing a sliver of brain matter from Corsini’s late father. The old man had died of strangulation, leaving everything to Dante. So much for not hiding behind a father’s purse strings, he sneered.

Luca’s own father had been terrified of the trade and had exhausted the family fortune trying to buy enough protection for the family mausoleum to keep the Death Mages at bay. A decade after his death, Luca had harvested necromantic components from every single corpse inside, including his father’s. It paid to be careful in Cerchicava even more than it did in Riamo.

The crimson preserving fluid within the vial sparkled seductively in the lamplight and Luca savored the many offensive possibilities it afforded before exchanging it for a plain ceramic urn with an expression of real regret. Then, tying a leather apron about his waist, he popped the seal on the urn and poured the contents onto his dissecting table before selecting a fine bone-handled knife from the wall.

“Find out what the cargo on Corsini’s new ship is and who his backers are, Piero,” he said without turning. “Then make sure we have at least one sailor aboard sworn to the trade.”

Hovering off to one side, the manservant bowed respectfully. “Yes, sir.”

“Has there been any word from Drey?”

“No, sir. I’ve people waiting on the docks for him but he’s well skilled at avoiding detection when he wants to.”

Luca frowned. “Has there been any word to suggest that he might want to?”

“None as of yet. The mission was a success and word is that the Huntsman evaded all attempts to capture him, both magical and otherwise.” Piero brows drew down. “He made an interesting choice marking Johanni Gagio,” he noted.

“A curious choice,” Luca amended. “Obviously the duc of Cerchicava was the most attractive candidate, but Drey may not have had the opportunity to mark him properly. Gagio’s death creates political ramifications a little closer to home than one of the other ducs might have done, but nothing that can’t be dealt with.” He carefully slit the piece of human intestine on the table before staring pensively down at its interior. “There’s a reasoning at work here, but whether it’s the Huntsman’s, Drey Orcicci’s, or Domito Preto’s is still unclear; he always was a complex child.” He turned, his eyes burning a deep, dark red.

“But regardless, I want an answer, Piero. Find him before I lose patience with the question.”

“Yes, sir.”

The manservant bowed and withdrew, his tone of voice conveying his opinion of Drey’s reasoning as plainly as if he’d spoken it aloud. He’d always believed that Drey was too complex to be trusted. Trading on their years together to deflect his master’s displeasure, he’d said as much when Luca had taken the half-starved Cerchicavan orphan into his employ and later into his family; then again when he’d set a crossbow into his hands and sent him out to act as the trade’s clandestine enforcer and executioner. He was brilliant but rash, ruthless but sentimental, too ambitious to act in secret and too young to act independently. No good would come of giving him so much power so soon. Luca had told Piero to be patient, that the boy would season. He was a calculated risk that would pay high dividends in the future, and in the meantime, he wore one of the strongest binding spells possible. They were secure. Period.

This had mollified the manservant for a time. Piero had held one of the first binding spells on Luca himself in the early days of Luca’s apprenticeship. At Montefero de Sepori’s command, Piero had taught him everything he knew of the necromantic arts, changing him from a defrocked and condemned churchman to a highly skilled Death Mage in under seven years. When Sepori was finally taken down by the duc of Cerchicava and a young ex-cutter named Coll Svedali, Piero had escaped and fled to Riamo. Now he wore Luca’s binding spell and was perhaps the only living man the Death Mage trusted, besides his son Drey.

But there were limits to both.

Eyes flashing a brilliant crimson, Luca spoke the words of a dual questing spell, then straightened with a nod as the piece of intestine turned first black and then gray before crumbling into ash. Drey was alive and Piero had not conspired to waylay him. So why hadn’t he returned home?

The next day the city was abuzz with the news that the Huntsman had struck again, this time in Riamo itself. The body of Anthony Spoleto, a wool merchant and owner of several warehouses in the harbor district, had been found wedged under a dock just before dawn with the assassin’s signature crossbow quarrel buried between his shoulder blades. An hour later another body, that of Ciuto Farnese, owner of one of Riamo’s midsize mills, was pulled from the Ardechi River, again pierced from behind with a crossbow quarrel. By the time the Huntsman’s third victim, Ferrante Ascanio, a banker for the city’s Spice Merchants’ Guild, was discovered stuffed into a packing crate not a hundred yards from where Ciuto had lain, the quarrel so deeply embedded in his back that it could hardly be seen, the city was in hysterics.

Bowing to the pressure of his council, the duc closed the harbors and sent his own Court Mages in to try and discern the Huntsman’s identity through any trace magics on the quarrels. Despite their best efforts, they failed to discover anything about him. Rumors began to fly that he was protected by a deeper, darker magic than the Court Mages had access to and, for the first time, the word necromancy began to be heard in taverns and alehouses across the city.

His face set in a grim line, Luca sent Piero to obtain components from each corpse, and standing over the three carefully collected squares of organ meat on his table, he threw a handful of dried belladonna over them and shouted out a single word. The accompanying flash of fire told Luca all he needed to know.

“It’s Drey. And he’s blocking me.”

Piero knew better than to ask why.

* * *

They received a less than satisfactory answer that afternoon. A grubby child, wearing a simple coercion spell activated by the coin in his fist that had passed through three others before coming to him, brought a message shortly before dinner. Luca read the missive silently, then handed it to Piero, who peered down at it suspiciously.

Dear Father. Negotiations in Cerchicava have become somewhat more complicated than I had anticipated but I expect to be home in time for His Grace’s funeral. Your loving son, Domito. The manservant gave an unimpressed sniff. “He cocked up the duc’s death somehow and now he’s afraid to come home.”

“Possibly.” Retrieving the missive, Luca’s eyes flashed red for an instant and a series of fine, scarlet lines appeared scrawled across the paper before disappearing once again.

It’s nothing, I’ll fix it, he read. “You’re right, something’s happened.” Crossing to the window, he stared out at the sky, watching as the sun slowly disappeared behind the turreted roofline of the ducal palazzo. “Nothing too serious apparently and fixable before Johanni Gagio’s funeral.”

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