Book 3: Sound And Fury

  Chapter 37 Killer Queen

  The bug busting team rolled back into Foresthome a little bit after sunrise, exhausted, dusty and super irritated across the board. Dannyl nearly rode up to the palace to report to the count; gratefully relating the tale to his lord in the private bath, instead.

  “...And there they were, a whole platoon of big, nasty spiders! Those blowguns are a gamechanger! We should consider training some of the scouts and rangers in their use.”

  “Prinz, the squirrel clan shaman showed me how to make them, the toxins and drugs are just simple alchemy. Frankie has a gift for the craft, I’ll ask him to show you the ropes… Now tell us more about these spider dames.” Gary grumbled from a chaise lounge on the lawn nearby.

  “Where’s Hermit? This sounds like something he can deal with.”

  “He’s asleep, molting in his nest among the cliffs.” Kree offered helpfully from her perch atop a honeysuckle draped trellis. “I’ll fly over and see if he’s awake.”

  /

  In the misty, dream garden, Hermit sat beside the beautiful and charming being who had been haunting his dreams for weeks on end. Once more they were both in human form, more or less. He had seven fingers and a weirdly elongated thumb on his hands, just like Thirp… and he was trying to ignore the grasping appendage his feet had become. He wasn’t a spider at the moment and that was progress, at least.

  For long hours they talked together undisturbed, alone in that forest glade… as if they were just two normal humans. Hermit lost himself in the bizarre novelty of having a human form again…

  Especially since he was hanging out with a beautiful, funny and surprisingly observant woman… one who seemed to be interested in him. When she showed him how to create a guitar of dreamstuff with his Will, he got more than a little distracted, playing an instrument with human hands again felt irresistibly nostalgic. She joined him, playing on a very complex lever harp created by her own arts and beautifully handled by her deft, eight-fingered hands

  Deep in their shared music, he forgot for a while that she was an alien spider deity from another world, sneaking into his dreams through arcane arts and feminine guile.

  Hermit woke, back in his nest among the rocky crags, feeling gross, unrested and deeply agitated by Thirp’s pushy and aggressive insistence, yet unable to deny his own, very primal and instinctive attraction to her. The spider demigoddess never really intruded on him or violated his boundaries as such; she was just really good at pushing exactly as far as he would allow… and not a bit more. He also found himself looking forward to their next encounter… really eagerly, too.

  “Oh, Web-Tangles!” He stumbled groggily as he rose from his nest on the sun warmed cliffside.

  “Web-Tangles indeed, uncle Hermit!” Mariah scolded him from her perch on a sharp stone ledge. She fanned her wings slowly, enjoying the sunshine and morning’s warmth with a smile of absolute bliss on her tiny face. “Sister Kree tried to wake you, but you were zonked! Things have become… complex while you dreamed yourself into a new carapace. The team sent up the valley to check on the bug battle have found themselves confronting a hostile party of giant, talking spiders.” She sniffed in irritation. “You’ve been asleep for two days now!”

  “Hostile?” He asked thickly, his legs still slow and clumsy as he struggled to wake. “Is everyone alright?”

  “No one is hurt… Wake up and get moving, uncle, things are getting hectic.” The little insect gasped excitedly. “We can’t just sit here molting around all day, no matter how interesting your evolution has been.” The bug girl nodded to the back of Hermit’s little nest, where a hollow carapace sat, his own hollow carapace.

  “I already molted twice in the last few weeks…?!” He gasped, while rubbing his face with his hands in agitation and confusion. “I typically go two or three years between molts… What’s wrong with me?”

  “I dunno… but you have fingers now, uncle. That’s kinda weirding me out!” Maraiah gasped excitedly, fitting about and dancing on the morning breeze. “Come on, lazybug, we have work to do down at the house.”

  “I have… hands?!” He muttered silently, dancing a quick hornpipe as he scuttled and leapt after the fast flying little bug girl. Sure enough, his pedipalps had… Developed? Mutated? Evolved? Whatever, they were hands! Insectile, segmented, carapaced and hairy… but they were real grippy, grasping, tool-using meat-hooks of the most fiddly-fingered kind. And also awesome! His harp sang and skirled as he made his way down his long-line to the inn, all the way across the lake, chasing his flying, smouldering, magic-butterfly spirit niece. “Life is getting pretty weird.”

  /

  Dawn broke over the crowded encampments of restless prisoners… It wasn’t really a prison camp at all, just an ad-hoc collection of tents and rude shelters, packed with a multitude of increasingly anxious people. Chowlines formed up amid the nervous chatter of way too many people in enforced close contact for way too long.

  Trestle tables bearing hot bread and huge kettles of porridge started doing a brisk business, served by the slave troops, who seemed absurdly content with their new lot. They doled out the humble fare with wide smiles, as if they knew something deeply amusing, that the three thousand templars, legionaries and peasant conscripts didn’t. To a man, the slaves gasped with eager excitement, when the voice of their new master overwhelmed the chatter.

  “Good morning, friends and neighbors… We have even more visitors from out of town coming, so we are going to have to start moving up the timeline.” Gary’s voice rang out loud over the camps, an hour after dawn. “We’re moving on to the next phase in our complicated relationship. It’s not you, it’s us… We’re tired of holding you prisoner. This is the part of the program where we start sending you folks home through the veil. It’s been real having you for a visit, but the time has come to part ways.” The lunatic witch stood on a stack of crates, speaking from a square black box that blared his words out at considerable volume.

  Several thousand heads turned as he continued, cheerfully announcing their upcoming ‘fun outing through the eternal void’ through a strained smile.

  “The templars will lead the way, followed by the legion, the former conscripts, then my adoring fans will pass through. I don’t wanna make this into a whole thing, so I’m counting on you guys to follow instructions.” He let that hang for a little while, so that his unspoken ‘or else’ could bloom and bear fruit under the baleful gaze he laid on the legion and templar camps. “Follow instructions and don’t cause trouble.”

  Several iterations of the lunatic waved and called out, as the Fool began to play a soft, gentle melody on a strange guitar, amplified by the black box and carried along by more musicians, most bearing the same deranged man’s face.

  Captain Skander marched at the head of his knights, still dressed in their worn and soiled under-armor padding. They followed, mustering the battered remnants of their dignity, unconsciously stepping in time to the music.

  It was a grueling march, up the long, wide road toward the former warcamp and the scene of their bizarre battle. Flitting wasps and bees haunted the woods on one side of the road through the forest, while massive spiders scuttled and lurked on the other. More examples of the madman marched alongside the column, supervising the trek.

  Around three thousand nervous warriors and conscripts, dressed in little more than clothes and sandals trod the long, baked clay road up into the foothills for five long miles. The thunder of twenty thousand slave soldiers following a scant few yards behind, helped keep things orderly as the day grew warm.

  Their formation narrowed as the line of men turned down a long, rough mile of mining track, leading to the clearing where the lords and clerics had been staked out. Only the scattered lean-to shelters of cut boughs and a few dozen circles of trodden earth remained to show anyone had ever been tethered there.

  The Fool was already there when Skander arrived, standing beside the God-stone and smiling like an idiot. “Keep going, sir Skander… Once you are on the other side, you will be instructed where to go next.” The captain only nodded, as he stepped over the invisible threshold behind the boulder and vanished.

  /

  Beyond the unseen, soul chilling aperture through reality’s frayed edges, captain Skander found a long, level tunnel of rough, worked stone, leading off into the distance. There was no sign of the mind tearing, endless void and its unseen denizens on the other side of the veil. No hideous nightmares haunted the darkness to menace and frighten the travelers; there was only the equally disconcerting and impossible tunnel. Some kind of starlight or moonlight suffused the place, dim and golden, bearing a subtle warmth, like that of the two moons of the world Skander was joyfully leaving behind at last.

  All those endless days of captivity, helpless in the hands of the Tarots and that terrible witch had been excruciating; especially after that nightmare ‘battle’ around the God-stone. Now they were returning in ignominious defeat, to an uncertain situation back home. Skander shook those thoughts off and kept putting one foot in front of the other, at the head of his disgraced army.

  The captain nearly fell over his feet when reality reasserted itself, in the form of late afternoon sunshine and the scent of pines in summer. He staggered forward, urged on by the press of men behind him, out into that familiar clearing, in the foothills above his home, LightGlen.

  “Keep walking, gentlemen…” That almost too familiar voice called out, from the throat of a different man. One of him stood here too, perhaps even the witch himself, who could ever say for certain.

  “The new civil government and the authorities are waiting to begin sorting you guys out… There have been some political and theological upheavals over the last couple days.” He called out from the head of a troop of mounted warriors with green pennants on their lances.

  “Some of you guys are in deep doo-doo with the new secular government… Many abuses and crimes have come to light while we were busy rooting out the unnatural beings and undead infesting your town. All those lords and clerics should be very glad that they don’t get to come home; the place is a mess!”

  More than a few of the legion and templars shifted nervously, while several bolted for the woods like jackrabbits who’d spotted an eagle. Screams and cries of abject terror arose from the sundappled woodlands, as the runners sprinted back into the clearing, pale, trembling and terrified beyond reason.

  “Oh, yeah, let me introduce myself! I’m the Necromancer… yeah, that Necromancer. The uneasy dead have answered my call and these woods are fully haunted by vengeful shades and hungry zombies right now. There will be no escape for the guilty.” He drew a scroll from his sleeve and smiled at the suddenly far less orderly group of men.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “If I call your name, step forward and surrender for arrest and trial.” He smiled again, a cold and hard grin that was not even slightly comforting. “The list is surprisingly short, so it is in the best interest of the rest of you to comply peacefully. Alfred Anderson of the second legion platoon… sir Ambrose Ardman, thane of DellBrook… Anthony Bannerman…”

  The list went on for nearly one hundred names, each man shoved to the fore by his comrades and taken away by a warrior wearing a green sash. At the end, as the last, trembling man followed his guard out of sight, the Necromancer smiled coldly. “Many of you are secretly wondering when your name will be called… If that is on your mind, you should probably try to find a deep, dark hole to crawl into… This town is still a cesspit of murder, abuse, corruption and filth but we’re steadily cleaning up.”

  /

  Back on the other side, Gary watched with relief, as the last platoon of the legion vanished into the void, headed home. He eyed the thousand conscripts, most of whom seemed to be in better condition than when they arrived; unsurprising for troops that only marched when scourged on by the whips of the overseers.

  “All right, guys…” The witch sighed through his odd amplification box, addressing the gathered swarm of his adoring fans as well. “We’re sending you home too, I just wanted to thank you guys for keeping cool… and I really regret doing this to all of you.” He shuddered with some inner turmoil.

  “Come on, let’s go. My team should have cleared the way for us; keep on walking until I tell you to stop, gang.” He hopped off his noisebox and stood beside the almost invisible, eerie portal, playing his reed pipes; the smile on his face almost hidden behind the humble instrument.

  The conscripts followed the first thousand of the slaves, moving with the press of bodies and that irresistible musical compulsion to step in time to the merry tune. Somehow, the music followed through the tunnel, ringing softly from the stones that several of the marching folks rightly suspected were not really there at all.

  It took nearly an hour and a half to funnel his whole crowd through, which required a few instrument changes. His reed pipes had filled with slobber pretty quickly, followed by a bamboo recorder, a dizi, a tenor recorder and two mundane brass flutes.

  “You should have played with one of your stringed toys…” Kree sassed him from behind his ear. “You know my venom makes you dribble and drool!”

  “My fingers are still too soft. Now shush, I need to concentrate… and sting me again, I’m coming down!” He gasped, between measures of sweet harmonica blues.

  A few minutes later, Gary emerged on that familiar, flipside place, standing beside the other half of the mystic ball-sack of mysteries.

  “We still have the quest to re-unite the Bitch-Ass-Wargod’s wedding tackle…” He mumbled quietly, standing in the shade of the titanic testicle. “Big balls, bouncing big balls… He’s got the biggest… Balls of them all…”

  “Focus up, squishy human… I think I stung you too hard.” Kree patted his slack cheeks, in a vain attempt to bring him back into reality.

  “Mmm… Jello world, all the flavors too…” He mumbled cheerily, while countless technicolor butterflies flew in a rainbow of glinting jewel-tones from his shadow; heading for the sun, high above.

  “Is he alright?” Five of Coins asked from his perch on the scaffolding around the ball-bag.

  “He’s just hallucinating, cause I over-stung him a little!” Kree insisted, waving the helpful Tarot away.

  “If he’s hallucinating… Why do I see it too?” Five asked pointedly, as he watched the tornado of beautiful, whirling insect jewels fly sunward in a long, spiralling formation.

  “Ask yourself that question. Ask also why you now fear the one who you know will never do you harm, squishy human child of my master.” She chided him gently.

  “Run along, we have work to do, as do you! These humans are about to become a gaggle of former slaves… Chaos could ensue if you are inattentive!”

  While Kree berated poor Five of Coins, Gary shook off his delusion and wiped a huge hanger of viscous slobber from his chin with a hand towel he pulled from nowhere. “Gross!” He muttered, once he’d cleared his noise hole and given his runny nose a good long blow; that towel was a goner.

  “Kree, let’s get busy, I really need these guys out of my shadow!” Gary shouted at his familiar, who chirped and buzzed with glee.

  “Oh, sweet honey and nectar, please! You’re really disgusting right now, with all that running through your Ka!” She buzzed eagerly.

  “I love you too, Honeybee… Now guard me while I finish this spell, it’s gonna take all my concentration.” He muttered as he sank to the soft, scrubby herbs and grasses of the clearing. Gary’s fingers pushed through the turf, sinking into the soft, rich soil of another place where he’d made his home recently.

  The spirit Earth answered slowly, sluggishly; drawn across the veil by his call, but too massive and ponderous for the process to be considered anything but glacial, by human standards.

  \

  The short march to the city’s surrounding fields passed swiftly and without incident, as the mad witch’s doppelgangers stood here and there, directing the traffic and sorting the columns out by name.

  “Again, if your name starts with the letter L through O, follow this path…” One was calling out into the crowd, peeling off a steady stream of men to a designated section of the fields. Banners bearing the specified letters waved over each block of men, all mixed together, whether slave or conscripts in a loose formation.

  From the city gates, a steady stream of men and women began to pour, loved ones seeking their conscripted or enslaved kin in the organized chaos of a joyous celebration.

  Only a few of the slaves noticed when the collars stopped working, as spells and curses slowly unwound. More began to realize what was happening, when the collars silently crumbled to flakes of powdery rust in a spreading wave that subtly swept over the crowd.

  “Oh, wow… Did I shit my pants?” Gary gasped and rolled over onto his side, pulling his hands free of clinging roots and dirt that seemed reluctant to let him go.

  “Nope! Pants are clean!” Daisybelle sang merrily from above him. “Wake up uncle Fool! You sleep too much! Gandree has been playing blues impronvinations for too long long now! Kree is bored to tears.”

  “Hey…” Gandree complained weakly; despite his pretended outrage, he did stop his undirected noodling around and began playing actual music.

  Watching a beautiful young goblin warrior girl dance joyfully to ‘Oye Como Va’ in the evening sunshine, while her dwarf lover played for her was a fine way to wake up from a magic induced coma. “I can’t believe this is my life now…” He muttered, as Kree loomed over him, looking impatient.

  “Come along, servant… we still have much to do.” She buzzed happily. “You feel much better now! I will allow you to feed me an extra honey-candy tonight, in celebration. Lavender or rose flavor, I think.”

  “Her highness favors me too highly…” He crooned at his little bug. “Now it’s time for my reward as well, Honeybug.” He gasped and swayed a little as he stood, but a staff pulled from his storage gift sorted that out.

  Without a glance back at the party unfolding around the city of LightGlen, he marched up to the void and paused at the edge, waiting for the others.

  When the last Warg passed through and Kree was safely tucked behind his ear, Gary reached out with his shadow, drawn long and thin by the fading sun, low in the sky. With care, he tucked his shadow around the massive boulder, impossibly shading it from the last glimmers of the setting sun with an ephemeral mist of his Will and Ka.

  When the sunlight died out at last, only a deep hollow in the fertile soil lingered, filled with scaffolding, equipment and tools. Of the gigantic gray boulder, no sign remained.

  /

  “And you were doing so well…” Daisybelle muttered solemnly over her fallen uncle. “You shit your pants pretty thoroughly too.”

  “Daze! Be nice and pretend you can’t smell it!” Gandree scolded her from not too far away… not too closely, either.

  “Ignore the way he’s walking, too.”

  “You guys all suck…” Gary whined, as he staggered for a clump of bushes a few yards away. “Give me a few minutes.”

  “Ladies, don’t let your sons grow up to be witches… It’s hard on the britches…” Kree sang, off key and deeply amused by the whole thing.

  The Fool emerged a little while later, dressed in fresh clothes and looking more awake. “I lead a glamorous life, kids!” He sighed as his escorts mounted their wargs and he struggled his bike out of a storage gift that was becoming cranky and unresponsive. “Let’s get home, I’m done for.”

  “What of this rift between worlds? We leave no guard here?” The goblin lass demanded gently. “That seems foolish.”

  “There’s no rift there anymore, Daze… It’s shut, now that my magic meatballs are safely tucked back where they belong. There’s still a few other passages around, but this one is currently closed to all but the divines and their sacred beasts.” He mumbled, straddling his machine and sagging a little in the saddle.

  “Are you good to ride?” Gandree was nearly invisible, inside Jasmine’s ruff of fur, only his head poking out when he sat up in the saddle.

  “It’s fine, Freddie wants to ride my bicycle anyway… I’m taking a nap.” Gary mumbled, while putting on his helmet with some difficulty.

  Perhaps it was the warg fur in his face, but the young dwarf was almost certain that he saw a huge broom of a mustache, bristling on his clean shaven friend's upper lip, over a smile at least twice as wide as his usual, with way more teeth than any human should have.

  The yellow, featureless mask hid his face, before Gandree could look again, so it was probably just his imagination. That was when the music began, played on his bicycle bell and harmonized by the crickets, bats and owls of the night-time forest.

  He took off at a fast clip, riding down the mining track with his bike lights glowing merrily, leading the way. His voice raised in song, splitting the night, richer, deeper and fuller than usual as well. He sang with a full throated bravado and pure exuberance that was new in the Fool, as well.

  Bicycle races are coming your way,

  So forget all your duties oh yeah!

  Fat-bottomed girls they'll be riding today,

  So look out for those beauties oh yeah!

  “Bycicle race? Queen?” Gandree murmured from his speeding mount, his words carried to Daisybelle through her familiar bond. “How do I know this song?”

  “Shush, boy… King Papa loves Freddie Mercury and your uncle Fool is possessed by that shade right now.” Daisybelle snapped. “Don’t break this spell til King Papa gets to join his song! Is good good music, too!”

  “Possessed? Is that going to be a problem?” The dwarf asked weakly, as he struggled with another new thing.

  “Nub nub… is fine. Shut up now… I missed the chorus! Now we have to catch up at the bridge!”

  I want to ride my bicycle,

  I want to ride my bike,

  I want to ride my bicycle!

  Faster and faster they flew, until the wargs began to pant and heave. “Not so fast, uncle Fool! Doggies are tired and so are we!”

  Fool always jumping never happy where you land,

  Fool got my bus'ness make your living where you can!

  Hurry down the highway,

  hurry down the road!

  “I said slow down, uncle… If I tell Kree to stings you, she will!” The goblin girl shouted at her fast flying charge.

  That threat got through, as his brake lights illuminated and he fell to a more sensible pace. He changed the tune and belted out a few lyrics, sounding apologetic, as he slowed down.

  Had to make do with a worn out rock and roll scene,

  The old bop is getting tired,

  Needs a rest, well you know what I mean…

  “Pain in the ass…” Daisybelle grumbled fondly.

  /

  In the garden as the sun went down, Sally and Molly sat, chatting over tea and cakes across from the fearsome, hard faced, red haired mistress of the madhouse and her beautiful, dusky young daughter, Amy.

  “We still have a few prisoners in the castle cells… Around fifty of your overseer mages and a handful of cult warriors and necromancers remain.” Amy confided quietly. “We all appreciate your help, regardless of the circumstances.”

  “I still don’t understand… I can’t grasp why you are just letting them all go.” Molly whispered. “They will be back to their old tricks before long.”

  “Oh we aren’t letting them all go.” Amy insisted gently. “Your lords and clerics all went off to serve penance for their crimes, with a very few exceptions.”

  “Pennance? What kind of penance?” Sally asked weakly.

  “Cardinal Stourport and the others have been enslaved for the rest of their lives; bound in service to sugar wasp queens in several local realms. We find that to be the least distasteful of our bad options for bad people.” She answered with a serious look on her pretty, cherubic face. “Killing is seldom the best option and is damnably tough to take back.”

  Sally and Molly considered that for a few moments in silence, before nodding solemnly. “That’s probably for the best.” The older woman muttered, sounding just a little pleased. “He does loathe all manner of insects.”

  “Tis her Fool of a father’s influence! My soft headed and soft hearted husband is ever trying to avoid ending lives… Well, he resists ending mortal lives, anyway.” Shai insisted firmly, with a pleased smile on her lips, despite her words. “Now if only he could resist killing the undying.”

  Two paired mothers and daughters enjoyed a quiet snack and a little tranquil conversation under the late summer stars, watching sunset fade in the western mountains. They spoke of homely things and contemplated the slowly darkening sky, until a bell rang at the gate.

  Sweet strains of birdsong and the percussion of forest insects heralded the approach of the master of the house, a man’s voice raised in an unfamiliar song and in a familiar key.

  “Aww, shit, he’s possessed again.” Amy sighed. “Take it easy, mom… I’m sure he’s just tired, or something.”

  “Aye, tis Freddie, an old friend from long ago, come calling again. Tis nae a thing to worry over, daughter. Run, gather the company for dinner, I’ll get him fit for guests.”

  Shai gently chased her guests into the house, before heading for the stables to intercept the dwarf and goblin who were supposed to be minding him. Gandree and Daisybelle were supervising her Fool, as he washed his bike down and removed his riding gear.

  The big, bristle broom mustache and wide set, excited eyes above a mouth too wide and full of teeth to be completely real confirmed what her ears had told her. Her husband was asleep on his feet and letting one of his shadow friends move him around. At least she liked this one.

  “Freddie, come along… We’re waking him up now, but ye kin have a dance with me, while he bestirs himself.” The duo of giants danced away, swaying to the music of a nightlark and her singing, chiming bells.

  “I love this house…” Gandree muttered softly, into the long, warm ear of his squishy little goblin lass.