Dreadful

by Caitlin Rozakis

So, this was shock. It seemed terribly inconvenient that the brain’s reaction to being placed in mortal jeopardy was to become much stupider.

How did he possibly keep the castle running if he kept executing the staff?

He felt a stab of disappointment, which he knew was irrational. He was a wizard of enough power to control his own keep, and his own little town of serfs. But it was a somewhat pathetic town. Not much to be proud of. Still, couldn’t they at least try to keep the place neater? He supposed it was too much to wish for a really dramatic lair, with craggy mountains and caves, or a proper moat, at least. If he was going to fail at “ominous,” though, it might have been nice to at least achieve “picturesque.” Maybe he could terrorize them into a beautification project.

So. He had a princess who had already been cowed into submission. He couldn’t let her realize his situation any more than he could the others. He couldn’t assume she was stupid, even if she acted stupid. If he were the captive of a Dark Wizard, he’d act stupid, too. Surely, she’d be doing her best to escape.

She glanced down involuntarily at the rather dirty froth of lace.

“Look, Your Highness. We both know you’re not going anywhere at the moment. But you can choose to starve alone in the dark in here. Or you can choose to take your chances at bedazzling or tricking or what-have-you the Dark Wizard, and getting a little fresh air while you’re at it. And while I appreciate your dignity despite the nightclothes, we both know you’d be more comfortable in something more opaque that holds heat better.”

He’d assumed, from the terror and deference he’d encountered thus far, that Dread Lord Gavrax had been an effective Dark Wizard. What if he had not been as competent as Gav had thought? What if he had not been as competent as Gavrax had thought? His peers did not seem particularly impressed. Maybe he’d pulled the wool over the eyes of the naïve. Or maybe he hadn’t. A toddler with a lightning wand would inspire fear and indulgence, without respect. Uncomfortable thought, that. So much effort—from the stupid torches to the wasteful immolations—and without even accomplishing the goal? He hadn’t needed the embarrassment added to his ambivalence, he really hadn’t.

He’d lost connection with whatever made him himself. If a human was made up of the experiences of their life, was Gav anything at all?

Before he could lose his nerve, he grabbed the small silver dagger that lay on the table. He’d cleaned it earlier, once with alcohol and once running the blade through a flame. Now, he used it to slice open his left palm. Then he tried hard not to throw up at the sight of his own blood. He was a Dark Wizard, dammit. Dark Wizards did not faint when they saw blood.

But no. That was what Gavrax would have done. It would feel good, really good, but then doing what felt good was probably why he had nothing but incompetent junior employees and a half-starved village left. Gavrax’s arrogance and insecurity was what had got him into this mess in the first place.

If it was all about controlling other people’s impression of him, he could choose a different impression to aim for regardless of what was going on inside.

Someone in the town surely knew where to find some flowers. Little girls were supposed to pick them all the time, weren’t they? Maybe little girls had something to hide. He thought of small girls armed with fireballs and wondered if it would make for a safer or more terrifying world.

“You need to understand—if a woman gets even a hint of power, the first thing everyone assumes is that she’s slept her way to it.” “So you’ve turned that into a weapon,” he said. “Women don’t have to do anything to be branded a whore in the first place,” she said flatly. “All you have to do is displease someone. So I might as well use it. It’s effective. And it turns out that if you’re bold enough about it…” “You don’t even have to do anything,” he said, suddenly understanding. A deep enough décolletage, heavy enough innuendo, and you could be a slut without sleeping with anyone at all. “But a man-eater isn’t a whore,” he said slowly, thinking it out. “If you give in, you’re contemptible. But if you’re aggressive, you’re frightening.”

“Who’s the real anyone? When does who you’re pretending to be stop being a pretense and turns into who you really are?”

Tan skin marred by teenage spots. She glared at him furiously, and he felt guilty for judging her for the spots, and for expecting her to live out his fantasy of a voluptuous assassin.

He couldn’t understand it. Whatever it was that made him able to think about such an action in the past was just… gone. He didn’t have the ruthlessness. Or the guts. Which was a major problem, because he was fairly certain that guts and ruthlessness were exactly what Gavrax had used to survive this long.

There was no magical rescue coming. And his memory, and whatever cold-bloodedness he’d had, weren’t coming back.

“If I’d been a good person,” he said slowly, “a person you’d liked, and suddenly I didn’t remember you or who I was or anything anymore, and I stopped acting like that person you knew and stopped even wanting to be that person you knew—would you say that person was still alive? If I suddenly started doing evil things, would you blame the old me, or would you say the person you loved was gone and you were free to hate this new person?” “You can’t complain about paying for his mistakes when you’re still enjoying all his advantages,” she said with a sigh. “You’re hardly out on the road without a penny to your name. You have a village, a reputation that makes people cower in fear. Even your powers. You won it all by selfishly clawing through anyone in your way. You can claim not to be evil now. But if you hadn’t been evil, you would be nothing.”

So who do you want to be? Because right now, you’re an imposter who wants credit for not actually being who you’re impersonating.”

“Can we maybe talk about the Dark Wizards with the plan that will doom us all and leave the rodent control discussion for another time?” Gav broke in. “Dark Wizards come and go,” said Terwyn. “Rodents are forever,” finished Orla. “Unless eating them. Good eating, very tasty, but no one ever listens to Orla.”

“I can get gingerbread men anywhere,” whined a little boy. Gav privately wondered what kind of parent brought a child into a lair of evil, but wasn’t about to argue with someone who had already picked up four weasels-on-a-stick. “Gingerbread like these?” Orla asked, showing one off. The lower half was partway melded with a wolf body, the frosting intestines flowing out of the seam where the mad wizard had not finished sewing them together. Gav would not have believed how realistically raisin eyes could convey fear and despair. The little boy gasped in horrified delight. His father bought three.

It was made of shadows and feathers and insatiable hunger. The eye couldn’t quite focus on it. Man-shaped, he thought, but he wasn’t entirely sure. His mind kept trying to build impressions of something solid and slipping. It had wings/claws/a fog of despair. It walked on talons/feet/jagged cracks in reality. Its face was dominated by eyes or mouthfuls of teeth, they flickered but there was always too many of both. It wasn’t all the way here.

In the end, did it really matter why he’d done what he’d done? Orla was right; Eliasha had tried to tell him. Actions mattered. The rest was just excuses.

“You may be having some crisis of conscience. It’s adorable that you think you’ve been hiding it. But I like being evil. I like bending people’s will to mine, and I love the power I can wield. Until a demon reshapes the world into one where I can rule without twisting libidos to my ends, I intend to keep right on doing exactly what I’m doing. Give me a month or two and I’ll be back in fighting form.”

“Sex is fun, sweetness. It’s almost as good as power. And I plan to continue to have as much of both as I possibly can until someone finally manages to drive a stake through my evil, conniving, very satisfied heart.”

He’d wanted a princess because he’d been told he couldn’t have one. He remembered how it felt to get the power and fear he’d craved, and how it tasted like ashes. Maybe he needed to work on some more fundamental things first before he tried for true love. With someone else, someone he could start fresh with. But Eliasha—she knew him, like no one else did, and he didn’t want to lose that. “All I was hoping for was a…” He searched for the right word. A student? A conscience? “A friend.”