The Night Parade

Twenty-One

“That you are my son disgusts me.”

Alden McGregor tried to keep his own revulsion at bay as he stared at the red-skinned man who had spoken. The man’s flesh appeared to have been flayed, leaving only bare muscle and tissue. Alden could tell that the man before him in the darkened chamber once had been a beautiful physical specimen that had literally been turned inside out and stitched back together. He wore a black leather tunic, stitched up the front, his arms and legs exposed. Rubies adorned his waist sash and the bands around his arms and thighs. His eyes were sky blue.

He was Magistrate Dymas, he explained, Lord of the Dance. When he performed, his motions could cause even the casual observer to experience vertigo and lose all motor functions. The nightmares he could provoke began with the fulfillment of fantasies and ended with the most humiliating of disappointments. The feeling of loss after even one such dream could drive a person to suicide. The elegance of his movements were balanced by the crudeness of his appearance, speech, and manner. Although he was intelligent and educated, his speech often lapsed into the gutter slang of his youth. He was like an animal who fiercely labored to maintain a civilized appearance. Alden loathed him.

“These is my powers,” Dymas said. “What’s yours? You’re a dog. You hunt and sniff and follow the scent of blood. You ain’t one of us. You’re fodder. I weren’t happy when your mother died, but at least she didn’t see the wretch you are!”

Holding back his tears, Alden looked away from the man who claimed to be his father. Dymas moved with unbelievable speed and agility, leaping to his son’s side and kneeling beside the boy as Alden recovered from the slight dizziness he felt after watching Dymas in motion.

“I want to see Pieraccinni,” Alden said firmly.

“That old woman has hawked you enough. Don’t you mention his name.”

Furiously whirling on the flayed man, Alden shouted, “Pieraccinni was there for me. Where were you?”

Dymas laughed. “You call yourself his, but you ratted on the pig when you knew he was one of us. I bet you weren’t pleased none to learn you wasn’t exactly much better.” He frowned. “Come on now, boy. Admit it. Ain’t you happier knowing your blood ain’t tainted with humanity?”

To the night people, humans were monsters, Alden knew.

Dymas’s features softened. “Ah. You never seen the lands of your people. Our kingdoms make this world look like nothing. If I could take you there, you wouldn’t act like this at the thought of your true sire. You’d be happy with what you are. You would, you know.”

Raising his misshapen hands before him, Alden found he no longer could hold back his tears. His gentle hands, which had caressed the soft flanks of a dozen women, now would tear bloody gashes in their skin. He was becoming more of an animal with every hour.

“If it was such a paradise, why leave?” Alden asked.

“We didn’t have no choice,” Dymas said ruefully. “The prey we had ate for as long as we could remember was dying off. All we could do was eat off each other or find new worlds with new prey. There was somethin’ of a war. All this energy was released. The sages said our reality was torn. Doors opened, gateways to other realms, like this one. Most of us fought the new order. I mean, it would’ve bred the hunter from us, would’ve made us less than we are. We left our homes for these new worlds. We’ve been quiet, secret like, you know, but we’ve grown. Don’t fool yourself, we’ve—”

“What is the apparatus?” Alden said, interrupting.

Dymas smiled. “That you’ll know tonight.”

Alden thought of the scene he had witnessed at the cavernous retreat, the plans Tamara and Zeal had made to betray Lord Sixx. He had kept his silence. Staring into the flayed man’s deceptively soft eyes, Alden said, “I look forward to that, father. I do.”

“Maybe there’s hope for you,” Dymas said as he took the young man in an embrace that startled Alden.

“Yes,” Alden said as he looked out over his father’s shoulder, his red eyes blazing, his sharp teeth grinding. “Perhaps there is, after all.”

From outside he heard the sound of thunder and the siren’s call of Bellophat’s music, which raised a longing in his heart that sickened him. A familiar scent came to him suddenly, one that he had not expected to breathe ever again.

Krystin was nearby.

The proximity of her blood made him tremble. Overwhelmed by new and terrible desires, he clutched at his father, praying that he would be able to keep his inhuman needs under control long enough for Krystin to escape.

Myrmeen, Krystin, and Ord could tell they were getting close. They had taken shelter beneath an overhang of a warehouse overlooking the docks. The music overpowered the thunder and the driving, insistent strumming of the rain. They had passed dozens of men and women who wandered about entranced, and Myrmeen wondered if Calimport would become a city of sleepwalkers; even the dour men of the city guard had succumbed to Bellophat’s sweet music, their eyes squeezed shut, smiles of transcendence on their faces. In the harbor, ships had floated toward the docks and crashed, the men on board falling over like dolls on an unsteady surface. The survivors calmly drifted into the water, many approaching shore, where they were drawn by the music.

Myrmeen could feel the intoxicating lure of Bellophat’s call. She took Krystin’s hand and said, “I’m betting there will be no guards with Bellophat. No one is expecting a fight. I want you to stay here.”

“That’s suicide,” Krystin said.

“No,” Myrmeen said, Tamara’s blood causing a swelling of confidence within her breast. “I can do this alone.”

“If there’s no risk, why not let us come with you?” Ord said as he felt his own need for action rise.

Krystin touched Myrmeen’s arm. “You said you would never doubt my abilities in a fight again. You said—”

“Just shut up and wait, all right?” Myrmeen screamed, her rage bringing her to the verge of embracing an all-too-familiar sensation: The last time she had experienced such a killing frenzy, such a taste of ecstasy, of blind animal release with no human guilt and no human feelings to bar her from her pleasure, had been the time she had slipped on Shandower’s gauntlet and felt the apparatus’s magic surge through her.

Myrmeen bit her lip hard enough to draw blood. She shuddered as she fought the impulse to run screaming through the streets, killing anything that moved in her way.

“It’s not just Tamara’s blood,” she said softly. “Bellophat’s music affects the night people, too. It helps release what’s in their hearts.”

And what’s in ours, Krystin thought, frightened by what she saw in Myrmeen’s eyes.

“Please,” Myrmeen begged, “I don’t want you to see me like this. Let me go alone.”

Krystin backed away.

“Protect her, Ord!” Myrmeen cried. He nodded. Unable to contain her murderous desire any longer, Myrmeen bolted from them, her boots splashing through rapidly forming puddles as she hurtled through the streets and vanished.

Ord touched Krystin’s shoulder. She looked up and saw that not all the moisture on his face had come from the steady flow of the rain.

“They’re gone,” he said, “all of them.”

Krystin knew that Ord finally was allowing himself to feel the grief he had been denying over his parents’ deaths. She wondered if perhaps Tamara’s blood and the call of Bellophat’s music had pried loose his buried emotions. For whatever reason, he had begun to cry.

Krystin felt a strength and compassion in her heart that was bold and true. She reached up and smoothed away the tear that was drifting past his cheek, then took Ord in her arms. They held each other, Ord whispering that he was sorry, so very sorry, for the things he had said and done, and Krystin’s words echoed his. The rain lessened slightly and they became aware that they were no longer alone.

“A Harper and his slut,” a voice called.

Krystin whirled to see a horribly wounded man standing before her on the street. The glow of lanterns created pools of light on the cobbled street where rainwater had gathered. The maze of buildings surrounding them suddenly felt tight and claustrophobic. Staring at the man who was lighted from behind by an overhead lantern, Krystin saw that he was not wounded, but had been burned or flayed.

“Time to come out and play, my son,” Dymas called.

Ord spun and stared straight up as he heard the scrape of claws on the fragile roof beneath which they had taken shelter. Krystin clutched at his arm as the roof was torn in half. Above, the creature that had been Alden McGregor looked down at them and licked its lips.

Krystin had time only to scream as Alden leapt.

Several blocks away, Myrmeen crouched in an alley, where she had forced her berserker’s rage under control. These are not the thoughts of a rational woman, she had repeated in her mind until she was able to think clearly. The irony of the statement that brought her under control was not lost on her; these were hardly normal, rational circumstances. At the end of the alley she saw people gathering and realized that she had come close to one of the many outdoor shopping pavilions. Naturally, this is where the greatest concentration of people would be found in the city at night.

From her vantage she saw the crowd grow thick, obscuring her view of the street. A couple walked past her in the alley, another pair of somnambulists, and Myrmeen cursed her dulled senses; she had not even heard their approach. Falling in behind them, walking slowly and sluggishly so as not to attract attention, Myrmeen reached the mouth of the alley. The sight before her registered with a dull, aching shock. People lined both sides of the street. Lines of human spectators stretched as far as she could see in either direction. Others went about the business of destroying the many stands and shops in the street. They swung hammers and axes with a fervor that was a marked contrast to the glazed stares of the other humans. Details of men and woman cleared away the wreckage.

“The Parade is coming,” a small boy whispered, “the parade of spectacle and wonder.”

“The beautiful ones are coming,” a man said in a wistful voice, as if he were reliving his happiest memory.

Beside the man, a woman said, “The men will be so handsome. They are brave and strong.”

“The women lovely, lovelier than words can say.”

“I cannot wait,” the woman said, and she sighed wickedly. “Bring them on. Bring them on now.”

“Yes, let us admire them. Let us love them. Let us bathe in their splendor. Bring them on.”

“Bring them on,” another man added, and soon the chant was taken up by the entire crowd. The human voices blocked out the steady drizzle that soaked them. Many had left their homes wearing the thinnest of night dresses or nothing at all. By morning, they would be left with pneumonia or worse. Myrmeen stripped off her cloak and covered a naked, shivering girl with the soft fur.

When the woman rose, she was surprised to see movement from the end of the street. Even from a distance she could tell she was looking at a vast cavalcade of monstrosities. The Night Parade was about to fulfill the promise of its name. Myrmeen was entirely certain that if she stood rooted to where she stood, she would see Lord Sixx leading the procession, the box containing the apparatus held in his hands. Already she could make out various members of the group breaking off and surging into the appreciative audience that greeted them with whoops and cheers, laughter and applause, love and acceptance.

Myrmeen turned and ran down the alley. She had to find Bellophat. She had to stop the music and force the people to wake up before the parade reached its conclusion and the monsters began their night of destruction and murder, a night they had waited years to enjoy. Letting the music guide her, she traveled through a maze of streets until she finally came across a deserted plaza lined with trees at the far end and marked by a closed wrought iron gate. She stood before the Plaza of Divine Truth, an open-air temple erected to the glory of Bhaelros, the god of storms and destruction known in Arabel and elsewhere in the realms as Talos. The temple’s fortified walls were four feet thick and, traditionally, guards were posted at every corner and gate. Tonight, however, the temple was deserted.

Myrmeen had been here as a youth and knew that the plaza was divided into three interlocking courtyards. If she could have seen the plaza from the air, she would have seen three hollow squares with doorways in the north walls of the middle and bottom courtyards and a gate at the plaza’s base.

The storm grew worse as Myrmeen scaled the first gate and leapt into the spacious, open area of the Inner Plaza, as the first court was known. She landed in a roll. A handful of human corpses had been propped in the far corner of the open space—the missing guardsmen, Myrmeen concluded. Before her, the middle gate and the far gate beyond it had been left wide open. Myrmeen drew the sword that the night people had given her and entered the second court, the Initiates’ Plaza. Carefully checking her blind areas to either side and behind her, Myrmeen slipped around the wall and saw the beautifully sculpted shrines, eight in all, to her far left and right flanks. She glanced upward to check the walls, concerned that Bellophat might have guards or followers such as those she had glimpsed in the black ship. She feared that his worshipers might leap down at her, tearing her to pieces that would comfortably fit in the massive jaws lining Bellophat’s stomach. Lightning struck a nearby tree, adding much needed illumination.

The second court was deserted, the walls secure.

Slowly she approached the final gate, which led into the Chosen Plaza, the third and last court, where those willing to make the proper donation could kneel at the altar built before Bhaelros’s idol. A wall set twenty-five feet inside the Chosen Plaza blocked her view of the statue, as it would for all nonpaying callers. She peeked around the edge of the gateway, saw nothing unusual, and chose to go right. She stayed close to the stone wall and followed it another twenty feet before she reached the end and peered around its side. Sitting upon the space that once had contained the idol to Bhaelros—a god that would have been pleased with the strength and intensity of the storm wrapped around Calimport this night—was Vizier Bellophat’s sprawling mass.

The monster did not look up. Bellophat’s eyes were shut as it concentrated solely on its craft. It was as enraptured by its own music as the entire populace of the city had been. Myrmeen surrendered to the call of blood, allowing the berserker’s rage she had been repressing to take control of her. She raced toward the seemingly helpless monstrosity. Suddenly, a dozen smaller creatures left their waiting shadows and converged on her. She was ten feet from Bellophat when they brought her down without any apparent exertion. Myrmeen screamed as she was overcome by the pack of abominations. Before her, Vizier Bellophat opened one lazy red eye, smiled, then closed it again.

Moments after Myrmeen had left Krystin and the young Harper, Magistrate Dymas and his son, Alden McGregor, had revealed themselves. They knew that by attacking the humans they would forfeit their chance to be a part of the grand procession, but Dymas was convinced that bringing his master the beating heart of a Harper would help cement his recent return to favor with Lord Sixx. He had thought of his years of exile, and the memories had spurred him on.

Alden crouched above Krystin’s and Ord’s heads. He was more monstrous than either of them had ever seen him. He leapt down and landed a few feet ahead of the humans, raising his claws in his father’s direction. Despite his inhuman appearance, Alden was recognizable as having been the young, charming, flaxen-haired youth who had helped the humans inflict destruction on the night people.

“Father, please, no,” he said in a guttural voice. “These are my friends. Don’t make me.”

“Don’t make you what?” Dymas asked, indignant. “Harm them? Taste their blood. You know you want to.”

“Please,” Alden begged.

“Make your decision,” the flayed man said as he started to dance, his movements deliciously slow at first, then gaining in speed and complexity. “It’s them or us.”

The dance Magistrate Dymas performed held surprising beauty for the humans who suddenly found themselves unable to stay on their feet. Ord’s head lolled back as he fell to the ground, trying to ward off the intense vertigo that gripped him. Krystin had looked away, catching Dymas’s movements with only her peripheral vision. The sight had dropped her to her knees, but she regained her balance.

Alden was barely affected by his father’s display, though his anger was causing his body to vibrate so quickly that he appeared to be in several places at once. Ghost images, blurs, remained in the spots he had vacated.

“You’re no faster than I am,” Alden said.

“I’m not, am I?” Dymas said as he raced forward.

Krystin was barely able to glance to her left, where Ord lay, before it was over. From the corner of her eye, however, she saw everything. The flayed man moved in a blur, crossing the distance between Ord and himself, dancing past his son in the process. He took Ord’s grasping hand and yanked the nineteen-year-old into the air, hoisting him above his head as if he were a rag doll. With blinding speed, Dymas snatched the Harper’s short sword from his scabbard and impaled the young man. Ord choked and flailed, a cloud of blood exiting his mouth as Dymas held him high. Suddenly, the Harper stiffened and went limp.

The sound of steel piercing flesh came to Dymas from somewhere close and suddenly he did not have the strength to hold the Harper’s body aloft. He registered the slight shove he had felt and looked down to see the hilt of a weapon jutting from his own chest. As he crumpled to his knees, Ord’s dead weight collapsed upon him. The Harper’s body snagged on the weapon in the flayed man’s chest, inadvertently yanking the blade downward to slice again at his delicate organs. Dymas felt a cold, cruel delirium wash over him, and he caught sight of his killer: Krystin.

Dymas sank to the ground, his body tangled with the Harper’s. The girl screamed and Alden helped to extricate Ord from his father’s twitching form. Krystin shoved Alden out of the way and pressed her head against Ord’s chest. There was no heartbeat. He was dead. Tears fell from her eyes as she wailed in grief and clutched at him.

Behind her, Alden’s animal senses had been inflamed by the nearness of the blood, but his cherished humanity forced his growing feral nature to remain under control.

Finally, Krystin sat up. The part of her that had been a frustrated schoolgirl felt light-headed with shock. Ord’s face was relaxed in death. Struggling to force away the emotions that crowded in on her, Krystin realized that the last of the Harpers to journey to Calimport was either dead or gone. By the time Reisz came back, provided he was not killed or grounded ashore by the storm, the morning would have come, and the Night Parade’s Festival of Renewal would be at an end. The word renewal thundered in her mind.

“Have to find her,” Krystin murmured. “The children, I understand about the children!”

Alden reached out, his claws coming inches from her flesh before he said, “Before you go, there is something you must know, something about Tamara and Zeal.”

Krystin listened intently as Alden relayed what he had learned when he had spied on them in Shandower’s lair. She looked away from him and glanced down at Ord’s body. Krystin touched Ord’s dead lips, then leaned down and kissed him. Then she whispered, “Alden—”

“I won’t leave him in the open,” Alden promised. “I’ll take care of it, then join you. Go!”

Krystin took one last look at Ord, then ran off, her boots splashing through deep puddles as the storm grew more intense, a wall of rain quickly obscuring her retreating form. Alden looked back to Ord’s body, then froze as he saw that Dymas’s no longer lay beside it.

“Good-bye,” a voice whispered from behind.

Alden tried to run, but he was too slow. A pair of hands gripped his wrists from behind and thrust Alden’s claws deep into his own chest.

“Thank you, my son,” Dymas whispered. “For what you’ve revealed, I’ll make your death quick.”

Crying out with pain, Alden shuddered as his claws were ripped to either side of his body, tearing the cavity of his chest to pieces as blood sprayed upward, mixing with the rain. He fell facedown in a puddle that soon turned crimson. Ord’s body was beside him. For a moment he thought he saw Ord move. The boy couldn’t have survived a wound such as that, Alden thought. Or could he?

Alden was about to train his animal senses on the Harper when death came for him. He did not hear the slap of his father’s bare feet on the pavement as the wounded man left to seek his master.

In the courtyard of the Chosen Plaza, Myrmeen shook off two of the creatures that had overwhelmed her. One had stalks rising from its flesh, with either tiny, piranhalike jaws protruding from the stalks or rapidly blinking eyes. The other had been a snake-woman she first had seen at Shandower’s retreat. Myrmeen’s grip on her sword had been tested, but she had not released the weapon. With a grunt, Myrmeen sliced off the top of the snake-woman’s head. Then she turned and ran her blade through the monster with more eyes and teeth than it ever would need again. She screamed as she hacked away at another monster, a bony, balding man with a closed knot of flesh for a face, who was gripping her thigh. Whirling, she gutted an old man with pulsating gaps of flesh throughout his head.

The creatures that had brought her down had acted as a cohesive whole at first, exercising their great strength of numbers. After Myrmeen had dispatched several of them, the creatures stumbled over one another in their attempts to escape Myrmeen’s wrath. They were not protectors, she realized, merely adoring worshipers of the globular monstrosity behind her. She killed two more, then let the others flee. Myrmeen turned after she watched the last of the creatures escape and saw that both of Vizier Bellophat’s egg-shaped crimson eyes were open and following her.

“You ugly bastard,” she said as she raised her blood-drenched sword and tripped over one of her victims’ bodies. Her own body trembled as she giggled and rose once again, stepping onto the first tier of the massive altar where Bellophat had been deposited. “How did they haul your fat, disgusting bloat of a body in here, anyway?”

Bellophat’s music became more chaotic, the rhythm suddenly frantic, the notes off-key. Myrmeen thought of the god whose temple had been violated, and she prayed fervently that Bhaelros would help her destroy this monstrosity. They blamed it all on you, she thought. The great storm, the deaths and devastation, everything!

But even as the thunder rolled and the lightning crackled, striking dose enough to light up the plaza, Myrmeen knew she was on her own. Bhaelros was ignoring the affront.

Myrmeen raised her sword as Bellophat swatted at her with the harp it had formed from its pink, sweaty mass. The fighter was swept from her feet, her head striking the marble altar when she fell. As she tried to ward off the lancing pain she felt behind her eyes, Myrmeen heard Bellophat’s music resume its original patterns, the lovely composition a stark contrast to the disgusting mass that was performing the piece. Then she heard flesh tearing, bones cracking, and looked down to see Bellophat altering his body once again, this time creating hands that clamped down on her legs and arms and hauled her into the air as the creature’s jaws snapped in accompaniment to the music it was creating.

Swinging blindly with her sword arm, Myrmeen was stunned to hear a scream that appeared to have been torn from a howling whirlwind. Her body was unceremoniously dumped at the foot of the altar. The music had stopped.

Myrmeen saw that she had severed the fleshy strands that made up the harp’s strings.

Even as Bellophat roared in pain, its pink, rolling skin turning red with anger, she registered that the strands were reaching back and soon would meld together once more. Trying to stand, Myrmeen felt a coldness on her ankle and tried to pull away. She was too late. One of Bellophat’s hands still gripped her. It yanked her forward, tipping her from her feet once again. A jolt of pain raced up through her back as she struck the edge of the altar’s first step. She pulled herself to a sitting position and hacked the limb from the creature.

For the first time she truly paid attention to the number of instruments Bellophat had created from its elastic body. There were more than a dozen in all. The music suddenly resumed and Myrmeen darted out of the way as a thin, rapierlike bow shot out toward her face. She felt the breeze as it passed her. With a hollow scream, Myrmeen leapt at Bellophat, her boot catching in the triangle it held. She used it as she would the first step in a ladder. She kicked herself higher, her blade whipping around to thrust directly toward Bellophat’s right eye.

Myrmeen drove the sword through the creature’s head. Her body slammed against the monster with a soft, sickening noise, then she lost her grip on the borrowed weapon and fell back into Bellophat’s huge lap, stopping inches from his wildly snapping jaws, which slowed, then stopped. The music died with its creator.

Then there was no more time to think. Bellophat’s body began to dissolve, changing into a dripping mass. Myrmeen felt as if she were being sucked into a mountain of gelatinous flesh, about to be drowned in an ocean of muck and gore. Her flesh sizzled as the heat of the monster’s body rose substantially and turned acidic.

“Take my hand!” a familiar voice called.

The fighter looked up and saw Krystin standing on the remains of Bhaelros’s idol, which had been hidden behind and beneath Bellophat’s immense form. Myrmeen snatched Krystin’s hand and allowed the child to yank her out of the boiling mass that had been the creature’s body. In seconds they crouched on the storm god’s chest and clutched at each other as the rain washed the blood and gore from them.

Around them, the storm raged on, indifferent to their suffering.