Book 3: Sound And Fury

  Chapter 33 The Bloody Handed Baby

  Gary indulged all his pent up musical desires, strolling and playing as he pleased, heedless of whatever else might be happening around him. He was absolutely engulfed in an enthusiastic crowd of true fans that didn’t resist his siren call…

  Rush was the right choice to get things into the vibe, even if he did have to play fast and loose with the arrangements…

  He was no Geddy Lee, that was certain, so some key changes happened on the fly, which led to some less than stellar vocals...

  “Hey, it’s live music!” He barked between ‘Roll The Bones’ and ‘Ghost Of A Chance’. As the show progressed, Gary became lost in the heady, drunken, giddy pleasure of his art. He kept to the more accessible, radio friendly tracks, these poor folks were not ready for long form, experimental, jazz flavored prog rock.

  The vast, swarming mass of humanity all around him became his instrument in many ways, as he closed the vocal set on Limelight, just because it felt right. The shadow band took up YYZ, running the sweet, sensitive and nostalgic instrumental in the warm, minor keys of a wanderer returning home at last to finish things out.

  When the music slowly drifted to a close, Gary hopped up on the lectern of wooden crates that the light cultist had used for her sermon, since it addressed all four camps.

  He was dressed in all white, with fanciful corals and vivid sea life embroidered at his trouser cuffs and the pockets of his coat, which was lined with brilliant aqua silk. His old acoustic guitar hung on a simple strap of shearling wormhide, thrumming with his chords like a living thing.

  The legion and conscripts had watched the doings with the suspicion and nervous energy one would expect from a weird, crowd-work performance like that. While the templar knights remained calmly patient, as they had all along.

  “All right, people…” He sighed, his voice carried by the hidden shadow musicians in every pen, hiding under tents and behind every privy hut.

  “I feel pretty weird about this whole deal… So let me be explicit. My brothers are in the city of Lightglen right now, tidying up the place.”

  “There was some occult and eldritch trash clogging up the streets, we are removing those obstacles to civic order. Those of you who understand what I mean should be very, very nervous… If you have no idea what I’m talking about: Sweet, you’re gonna be just fine!”

  He paused, as a subtle, nervous wave washed over the entire mob, including the templars. Gary cheated a little, tugging on the remnants of his gift’s influence to make himself more charismatic, more believable.

  “None of the actual, living people remaining in your city are in any danger from my brothers; just as you have been safe in my hands.” He told the gathering of more than twenty thousand; almost entirely men.

  “Any family or friends you have left behind there will not be harmed… Only the possessed, infested and those who resist our forces will be in any peril. Your city is currently ruled by my brothers, the Tarots.”

  That shook the templars’ reserved and calm facade. They broke into unruly knots of gabbling men, just as the legion and conscripts did. The slaves just accepted their fates, whatever their beloved and benevolent master decided would befall them… Which was so much worse. So very much worse indeed.

  “All right…” He declared firmly, once he’d washed his mouth out with a jug of water from his Pockets!. Gary was getting pretty sick of barfing all the time.

  “If everything your masters told you about my brothers is true, your town is a smoking crater in the land, despoiled and blighted by wicked sorcery.” He let that dangle just a moment, before continuing.

  “Yet, we worked very hard to avoid slaughtering you wholesale… Nor did I unleash my fan club on you. Which we can all agree would have been just awful for everyone involved.”

  He released a deeply unsettling and mad little chuckle at the legion and templar contingents.

  “Even though there’s an awful lot of repressed anger aimed at some of you buttholes. Were you good stewards of the power you once held over these people?” He shook his shaggy head and chuckled darkly.

  “I doubt you were… Just as I doubt you even spent a moment considering what you might face, were the roles suddenly flipped.”

  The gathered slave army rumbled like a hungry animal, incoherent and quietly eager.

  “Pretty scary, right?” His voice held no warmth or jollity when he spoke again. “I’m having to wrestle with those feelings right now. They make me feel… Just all kinds of ways.” He shuddered all over, which spread like ripples in a pond, through the huge, free roaming festival crowd that filled all the open space.

  “You must all be feeling deeply uncomfortable right now, so sorry about that.” He didn’t seem particularly apologetic, not at all.

  “You’ll be happy to know that my sources on the other side say they should be ready to re-admit you to the town in a few days… So you clowns will be headed home soon.”

  He smiled sweetly at the legion and templars. “First I have to meet with cardinal Sourport to hash out some details.”

  The madman turned back to his sea of adoring fans and sighed. “You guys are gonna be just fine, I promise… Just… please… Chill out. I have a meeting. Thanks for putting up with my antics.”

  The mad witch turned his back on the huge group and strolled off, still idly strumming his instrument, while the shadows and dim places of the encampments suddenly became a bit less shady.

  “See you again soon.” He whispered in a quiet and pleasantly intimate tone; one that was heard by everyone in the disparate crowds, as if murmured in their ear by a lover.

  Shai took him by the hand, having watched the whole show from her seat on a boulder, above the fray. “That last were unneedfully creepy, lad. I respect that commitment to the bit.” She purred warmly.

  “I see you, love…” He sighed as she pulled him closer while they walked. “You’ve been waiting for me, all this time. Waiting for the adventures I promised you… promised all of you.” He mumbled quickly, when Kree stirred fitfully in her nest behind his ear.

  “We’ll see the sights of the worlds, my dear… From our front porch, with our kids… Hopefully.”

  /

  High above the pleasantly rustic, delightfully isolated little city of Arbor Home, Countess Lianna Kines lay on a warm, moss covered mass grave, overlooking the valley she ruled.

  Her husband reclined with her, serving as a pillow for the noble ForestLady of the land, as was proper. She tried to ignore the utter silence of his body… no heartbeat, no rumbling tummy or pulsing blood… no breathing at all, save when he spoke.

  “So I’m finally to meet this family of yours?” She asked softly. “These mysterious brothers?”

  “Yes, my love… and you’ll learn things about me… Things I should have told you long ago, but could not bear to…” Gary Ward, the Chariot, the Necromancer, the shy, embarrassed, socially awkward man mumbled, as the world seemed to fall away beneath him.

  “I know you’re some kind of undead creature.” She sighed, finally ending his misery. “A vampire, I think.”

  “I spent some time as a vampire… It was an evolutionary path I needed, if I was ever to manifest a human form.” He shifted awkwardly as he spoke… The nervous twitch and shyly embarrassed mannerisms of a natural, living man.

  “I’m something much stranger than a vampire… but I was born a normal, mundane human man; on a world far from here, a very, very long time ago.”

  “How long ago?” She asked quietly.

  “I honestly have no idea.” He mumbled. “I was killed in an accident, when I was fourteen… But I couldn’t die properly, for some complicated reasons that I still don’t quite get.” He chuckled weakly, a false, feeble excuse for the real thing.

  “Anyway… I guess the man I was, managed to do something unthinkable. They say he killed a god? It’s all quite unclear… I do recall someone said ‘Sex-Bomb’ without cracking a smile.” He sighed and continued on. “There was some cataclysmic event, which hurled fragments of him all across the expanse of… well… Everything.”

  “Sex-Bomb?” Liana asked softly.

  “I’m afraid so.” He muttered, his voice ringing with something undefinable. “I’m told that I am one of those fragments of this madman… He’s quite mad indeed, though not in the way I expected.”

  “So I‘m to meet your mad brother, who killed a god and exploded you into existence some indefinite time ago.” She asked very sweetly.

  “I did lose track of that awkward, ‘how long’ question… Didn’t I?” He prevaricated in a very obvious way.

  “How old are you, man. I’d know at least that.” She grumbled gently. “I haven’t pried nor probed… because I trust you. I trust you entirely; you foolish, silly man.”

  “I’ve been able to manifest a humanoid form and speak for a little over two thousand years.” He grumbled, his embarrassment growing by the second. “It took several thousand years to get to that point… I couldn’t really keep track, as a haunt in the Endless Halls.”

  “A haunt in the Endless Halls, you say… Put a pin in that too, husband. Just what is this ‘madman’ you plan to introduce me to…? What manner of creature is he?” She demanded, her temperature rising a bit.

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  “He’s a normal rank humanoid man… Almost entirely human, anyway. And he’s only just turned fifteen years old.” He answered, which failed to improve things.

  “So, you died at fourteen, somehow raised yourself from the grave as an undead wight, in a world where there is no magic and therefore there are no undead…?” He nodded, when she paused her summation.

  “An impossibility from the very beginning, How typical of you, Gary Ward.” She sighed in exhaustion and smiled at the awkwardly nervous man she’d linked herself to.

  “Then you died again at eighteen… and re-appeared on another world entirely… not this one, some other world entirely. I’m to understand that you exploded a year after that; while being executed by the local religious authorities, for being a heretic.”

  “Spot on!” He murmured enthusiastically. “My brother, the Fool, promises to give a more fulsome explanation when we gather in his home. I’m afraid I missed some key points along the way.”.

  “I begin to see how that could happen…” She answered a little coldly. “Murdering you for a heretic, I mean. The idea is growing on me.”

  “You should begin to see just how difficult this whole thing is to just bring up!” He scoffed, sounding a little hurt. “I always feel like a total weirdo, but saying it out loud is just beyond crazy!”

  “So this human-like lad of fifteen…” She began.

  “He looks like he’s in his late twenties… but like me, he’s been kicking around in one way or another almost forever. Did I mention that at least one god screwed around with time?” The Necromancer offered with a smile that landed poorly.

  “I feel I may have fucked the story up… though, to be fair, he provided much of this information… and he is a complete madman.”

  “How… reassuring.” She answered drily. “We depart from here? On the forbidden necropolis plateau?” She asked softly, her eyes wandering over the unexpectedly verdant and beautiful cemetery park.

  Wide, spreading lawns of low cropped herbs and grasses stretched on and on, broken up by serried ranks of headstones, monoliths, monuments and crypts. Splendid statuary and grand mausoleums stood beside humble river stone cairns and simple, carved markers in a huge and mystifying city of the dead.

  Wide avenues and cobbled lanes drifted in an aimless tangle, each paver and stone, on closer examination was a grave marker. The town hall and civic buildings bore a name and dates on each face of every brick, if one were to look behind the leaves of green, lush ivy and flowering vines that climbed the structures so fetchingly.

  “This is not what I expected… not at all.” She murmured, at the sweetly macabre city of forgotten wonders and vibrant, living plants and flowers.

  “Death is just a doorway, my love. I simply happen to be stuck halfway through, which presents certain challenges, as well as some surprising advantages.” He sighed.

  “When I said death is just a door, I meant it. This place is no simple graveyard; beneath our feet lie endless miles of catacombs… literally endless. With me you can walk into a crypt on one world and emerge from a forgotten cave burial somewhere else entirely. I am the dungeon lord of the Endless Halls, my love… I am The Necromancer, for good or ill. The paths that only the dead may walk are mine to travel… and to share with those who are willing to trust in my protection.”

  “Melodramatic clod!” She swatted him gently on the shoulder and smiled. “You do prattle on like a villain from a story.”

  “Occupational hazard…” He sighed, as they clasped hands and began walking toward a mausoleum a short distance off. “Most of my brothers are kinda… Do you know what Chūnibyō means?”

  Together, they vanished into the crypt, as sunset fell.

  /

  Lianna’s golden, beautiful face was pale and drawn, as they stepped out into bright, morning sunshine on the same plateau, overlooking her familiar lands. Except for all the ways in which everything was completely different.

  The parklike splendor of the cemetery was suddenly a rampant and riotous woodland. Grand and splendid in its chaotic, tumbledown antiquity, this necropolis had returned to the wild, overtaken by nature’s bounty and beauty.

  The countess stared in wide eyed wonder at her familiar mountains and lake, populated by a whole new tribe of oddities.

  Her quaint city of wood and plaster homes behind a modest wall had been replaced by an unwalled, sprawling suburb around a small town center of timeworn, quarried stones. A rough hewn ancient and only partially restored granite castle squatted over the town on a hillside; looming high, despite only the main building being habitable.

  Oddest of all was the sprawling, verdant, colorful compound of fanciful structures on a spit of land, where two rivers entered the lake. Above the charming, merry homes, an army encamped, milling about in their legions.

  A humble bridge of ancient stones and new timbers crossed the river, they walked across that unguarded span, into a realm of madness.

  “They really all do look like you…” She gasped, her mouth gaping like a downcountry rube visiting the city for the first time.

  Dozens of large, muscular men… and a few women bustled about, each one the image of her husband’s familiar face and form… yet entirely different in so many ways. Many eyes found her, and many more landed on her husband, Gary Ward… just one among so many of them, it seemed.

  “They don’t recognize me, except for the ways in which they do recognize me…” Her husband whispered softly, when no one greeted or approached them.

  “I have been leading two double lives, my love. They have never seen my actual, physical body… all save one. But he is not here.” He sighed sadly.

  “I manifest a false body of shadow and haunts, when I travel the worlds. That allows me to leave my body safely at home, in the care of some of my old friends… How do you feel about undying spider haunts?”

  The cold, flat stare she gave in reply was not promising.

  “Noted, my love… We’ll delay introducing you to the Hermit.”

  “So who shall I meet?” She demanded, eyeballing the swarm of very similar men, who moved about on their own business with nods for Gary and smiles for the countess.

  “They all act like we’ve met before…” She muttered, as another person wearing her husband’s face smiled and waved as he passed.

  “You are going to love this, my dear.” He said with a wide smile, as he ushered her into the tallest and grandest building on the spit of land; a fine, tile-roofed inn.

  /

  “Ah, cardinal Sourport! Thanks for coming to meet me.” The mad witch enthused, as the shackled, silenced nobleman was shoved through a basement door, down two flights and into a shadowy chamber whose walls remained unseen in the dim distance. “Take a seat.”

  The burly young warrior in a masked helm pushed his social superior roughly into a hard, wooden chair that was built for durability and easy cleaning, rather than comfort. “Thanks, Larry. Did he cause any trouble?” The witch asked his minion.

  “Nah, he just sucks at following instructions, I think. He seems pretty stupid.” The warrior replied, his voice eerily similar to his master’s, just as his build and movement seemed uncannily alike.

  “All right, son… I’ll handle him. Go on upstairs with the others.” The awful creature murmured pleasantly. “I’ll let you know when to haul him back to the Chicken Ranch.”

  A few moments later, they were alone, and there was no sign of the doorway or stairs he had been so rudely thrust through not long before… The world seemed to end, beyond the warm light of the colorful paper lantern dangling above the cardinal’s hard wooden chair and the brown velvet damask sofa the witch reclined so arrogantly on.

  “You didn’t mention you were a cardinal in the cult when we met last, Sourport. Why were you hiding that?” The witch reached out and unbuckled the cardinal’s collar, from his seat, entirely too far away.

  “You will be allowed to speak.” He said with a casual and arrogantly imperial wave of his calloused, workman’s hand.

  “I am Cardinal Stourbridge, lord of Lightglen, right hand of pontiff Luce, the holy and inscrutable Divine Maiden of the Light!” The outraged lord sputtered and fumed. “My treatment and that of my clerical brothers is absolutely intolerable…!”

  “Sure, whatever, shut up.” The witch snapped sharply, cutting the man off as keenly as a blade parts skin. “Do you know these people?”

  He held up a parchment bearing the likeness of two familiar women sitting together in a garden, drawn in startling detail, despite being a few simple lines and a few shading smudges.

  “Those two are my property… They are entertaining, but if you have interest, I’ll sell them to you.” He snorted with disdain.

  “Tell me more, I’m intrigued.” The mooncalf muttered with actual interest.

  “They are a pair, mother and daughter. The daughter remains untouched and pure… If you don’t mind a few scars, it might be diverting to play with them together… The older one is, of course, nearly worthless for a pleasure slave, otherwise she remains largely intact and could be put to any purpose.” He scowled and waved his hand.

  “Let us first discuss matters of import, not slaves and those who are little better than slaves.”

  “Nah, we’re done here. I’ve heard all I need to hear.” The creature sighed, as he drew his hand from the pocket of his coat and blew a fistful of fine white dust into the startled face of the cardinal.

  Stourbridge toppled from his chair, rigid and immobile, struck with complete paralysis, while remaining entirely awake and alert.

  The witch stood and opened the door, which was suddenly right there… and called up the stairs, while he buckled the despicable silence collar back around the helpless cleric lord’s throat.

  “Hey kids, I’m done with this turd, go ahead and drag him back to his new home.”

  /

  ‘My love, call me Necro, here… We are all named Gary ward, or some variation. Our host is called the Fool, that giant over there is Strength, but if you say my name, we will all respond. It becomes troublesome if we don’t make some allowances.” He whispered gently as they entered the cool, pleasant dimness of the inn’s foyer.

  “Hey, Necro. Be right with you…” A familiar male voice called from the interior of the inn, while they were putting on slippers in the entryway. When her husband’s younger, more heavily muscled and tanned doppelganger appeared, he stopped short in surprise. “Sorry, I thought you were someone else… I’m the Fool… Have we met? How do you know… Tawny?” He looked from one face to the other, confusion and something deeper displayed on his face.

  “Who are you two?”

  /

  Gary washed his hands a few times before he was ready to face any other people, after meeting with cardinal Pickle-Butt. Looking at that guy made his eyeballs itch. He felt a familiar presence enter the house while he was soaping up for the fourth time and thinking about one more go.

  “Hey, Necro. Be right with you…”

  With a sigh, he conjured a towel from the ether and banished it away when he finished; just like he once could, before all this mess landed on his lap. It took more effort, even for simple things now, because the house was ranked higher than the rest of him currently; but that was progress…

  He stepped out into the common room and came face to face with his own face, which was still jarring. Lighter built, less tan and older by some indefinable measure, it was one of him for sure… and he was super familiar.

  “Sorry, I thought you were someone else… I’m the Fool… Have we met? How do you know… Tawny?”

  Beside the stranger stood a lady of mature and profound beauty. She was too old to be young, but too youthful and fit to be described otherwise. Her eyes were green, bright and lively, dancing above dimples that only became more pronounced and devastating, when deployed behind a shy smile.

  She wore simple travelling clothes, a simple linen shirt and pants, a leather vest, embellished only a little and very workmanlike in style, cut and material. Equally serviceable was the long, slim sabre at her hip.

  “Who are you two?”

  “I am the Chariot, the Necromancer… Necro. This is my true being, my mortal, if undying body; in the ‘flesh’ as it were.” He muttered shyly. “I present my wife… The lady Lianna Kines, countess of Arbor Home, a city not far from here, if one knows the way there.”

  “Wait… so… you’re Necro… and she’s your wife…” A smile spread over her husband’s features, a mad, crooked smile of childlike glee she had never seen before. That it was the other man, her husband’s new brother’s face, made it only slightly less disturbing to see.

  “This is going to be so good. Thanks, brother! I really needed this.” He sighed, through a smile of absolute joy.

  “You and me both, brother Fool.” The older man sighed.

  /

  In a closed, upstairs dormer room in Becky’s gingerbread fancy of a home, sir Pangbourne, Ellie and Kellie were deep in conversation with a cute, babyfaced drawing sketched in dark, ruddy ink… or perhaps blood. The smiling baby looked out, actively peering around as he conversed with the woman and her shadow haunt… from the head of a rawhide drum.

  “Yes, I feel we have the essence of it… You provided some very keen insights as well, Kellie. And I’m sure the tea and cookies were delightful.” The cherub murmured gently to the jolly, plumply robust, middle aged woman who smiled in childlike pleasure at the praise.

  “I can assure you the snacks are always top notch, lord Magician.” Pangbourne murmured weakly, still feeling odd about the whole arrangement.

  “Now now, enough of that ‘lord’ business. I’m very far from being any kind of real lord, even if I am technically the lord of my dungeon world.” The drumhead sighed, which became a soft chuckle of mirth.

  “I will rely on you to submit this report to the council of Garies… It’s official, We’re calling it that now.” He said with a wink at Kellie, whose suggestion it had been.

  “I doubt they will be as amused as you are… Some of them take themselves a bit too seriously.” Ellie muttered from a pool of shadow on the floor at Kellie’s feet, her natural state.

  “You met the Fool before any of the rest of us… That may color your judgement, my dear Ellie. Not all of us have been handled gently by the worlds on which we landed.” The drumhead murmured.

  “Kellie, take a little disco-nap please, darling. I need to chat with our friend about bad things and bad people.” Ellie whispered in her host’s ear.

  “I don’t wanna hear any of that!” She muttered a little crossly. “All right… Disco-nap… But wake me up if anything fun happens!”

  In an instant, the woman’s lights went out, leaving her slumped on the sofa, out cold.

  “We, Kelli and I… and the larger company of young people I represent, are no strangers to the darkness that can be found in the souls of all creatures. They have faced many perils, hard truths and foes. Foes mortal and… otherwise.”

  The entity of living shadow whispered into the drum.

  “I try to spare Kellie such, since she was sold to vile men for magical rituals, before she was able to speak.” She sighed deeply and went on, sounding desolate and very lonely.

  “My shame lies in possessing her body to slay those men, before I understood the utter wickedness and depravity of murdering a cabal of cultists with the soft, pudgy hands of a three year old child…”

  “That’s metal as fuck…” The Magician whispered across the ether.

  \