The Heart of Hell Read online

  “It has meaning now,” Eligor said, turning back to Bo-ad, “if you choose to let it. You are not the first soul to be told this. In fact, you are among the last. We wanted to make sure there would not be another war … a war of eradication … before you were freed. We needed to know that the souls would not attempt a rebellion of their own.”

  Are we always just that close to extinction here? Unconsciously, Bo-ad reached for the small pendant—her statue of the White Mistress—a talisman she had always used to comfort herself. It was gone! And then, through the miasma of recalled pain, she remembered him probing her wounded flesh just after she had been crushed, searching for and finding something. It had been the statue! Why had he wanted it? She knew she could not keep the disappointment from her face and knew, too, that Eligor had seen it.

  Without hesitation he reached into his satchel and produced a necklace—the missing necklace—letting it dangle from two curved claws for her to take. She looked with incredulity at it as it moved erratically in the wind.

  “In time, he truly regretted taking this from you.”

  She took it and slowly tied the fine new braided cord around her neck. Her mind was racing with the shock of rebirth and the newness of what she was learning of the changes to the world around her. There was too much for her to understand and too much that she knew she would never understand about these creatures and, in particular, Sargatanas. Someday she might ask this demon, but now was not the time. Not in her present state of confusion.

  A brief wave of regret passed through her. Whether it was his own idea or not, Eligor was trying to do his best to compensate her for her treatment. But centuries of punishment and oppression would not so easily erase the fear and hatred she felt for her former tormentors. As conciliatory as he was, she would make no effort to befriend him.

  “You said your lord’s instructions were quite specific regarding me. What were they?”

  “To see you walk again, to return your treasured necklace, and to give you anything that you wanted within reason.”

  She was stunned; it was an act of generosity, more than that, an act of kindness unheard of in Hell. An act unlike any she ever heard of by a demon. And yet, from what she was beginning to understand, Sargatanas had not been like any other demon.

  What do I want? For the first time in Hell, she found her normal decisiveness challenged. As she stood regarding Eligor and his companion she only knew that she wanted to be away, to be anywhere but where she was. So often when she had been toiling in the streets of Adamantinarx, she had burned to know what lay beyond the walls of the city, beyond the Acheron, far out into the Wastes. She had seen many travelers arrive through the great gates and had envied each and every one their ability to move freely about. She had stolen every opportunity to study them, their foreign garb, their strange Waste-born mannerisms, the goods they had brought with them, and she had formed a thousand questions about them. Now, with this offer from a demon she had never known, she felt it was all within her grasp.

  Eligor looked at her expectantly. The wind had died down somewhat and she could hear the shouts of workers and the sounds of their chisels upon rock some ways off.

  “Do you know who I am … was?”

  “Yes,” the demon said. “Lord Sargatanas knew even while he spoke with you. It was his Art, his special skill, to know. When he gave me my instructions he told me that I could, at my discretion, give you your self back. He gave me a glyph for this purpose, Boudica.”

  As she heard that name, she saw the demon raise his hand and from it a simple three-character glyph flared from his palm. This he gently pushed forward and, moments after it vanished against her skin, she felt as if a slight breeze brushed through her chest.

  The soul stood transfixed, unable to speak as, for a fleeting moment, she smelled something forgotten, something so sweet and aromatic that it overpowered the acrid pungency of brimstone and set every fiber of her soul alight. It was the unmistakable earthy scent of the forest, and with it, like countless leaves falling in seamless layers, her memories came back to her. She closed her eyes and for a time the faintest smile played upon her mouth and then, quite suddenly, her face grew grim.

  When she opened her eyes, she saw that Eligor was watching her very attentively and that even Abbeladdur was peering at her from some distance.

  “I want to know about my daughters.” The words came out so plainly that they seemed flat, unemotional.

  “This is not something I can tell you about,” Eligor said.

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “When Lord Sargatanas concluded that he wanted you brought back it was already too late to discover the truth about their whereabouts,” Eligor said patiently. “While he could understand your life, it would not have been in his power to shed light upon the lives of your kin. The Books of Gamigin—the Books of the Souls—were no longer in Adamantinarx.”

  “This means nothing to me,” the soul once known as Bo-ad said.

  “These are the soul books that speak of every soul who was ever consigned to this place. If your daughters were here those Books would speak of them. When the city was threatened by the tyrant Beelzebub’s legions, Lord Sargatanas had them as well as what was left of the Library spirited away for safekeeping, fearing that the Fly would, in his rage against the rebellious souls, either have the Books destroyed or, worse, use them in some way unforeseen.”

  The soul took a deep breath and slowly turned away from the demon. She could almost taste the newly born frustration in her dry mouth. Though she had only just recovered her lost life, she could feel the upwelling of her maternal imperative to know her daughters’ fate, the urgency to help them in any way she could. Trying to keep her voice steady, she said, “I see the broken bones of a city, demon. When will these Books be returned?”

  “The city is being mended,” Eligor said stiffly. The flames of his head grew briefly in intensity and the soul was quick to perceive a more formal edge to his voice. “Three centuries of Zoray’s Archers under the command of my lieutenant, Metaphrax Argastos, are to set forth shortly for the Wastes to recover them. They will be guarding the retrieval caravan. You may join them, if you choose. And, after the Library is brought back and installed and you have learned what you will, you may go where you please.”

  Boudica saw the winged demon turn and nod to his companion in the direction of the palace—a sure sign the conversation was at an end—and realized she had pushed him perhaps harder than was prudent, that a potential ally was on the verge of casting her aside. He began to move away.

  “Eligor … I will do as you suggest,” she said, allowing a tone of contrition to shade her words. “I’ll accompany them out to the Wastes because I have always wanted to venture out and see them for myself. And when I return I hope you will help me to find out what I seek.”

  The demon stopped in mid-stride and turned to her.

  “I know it is hard for you, Boudica, without having been in the Rebellion yourself, to understand that not all of us are your enemy, but it is true. Many of us no more want to be here than you. But, with his departure, my lord, the Ascended Sargatanas, showed us that we have choices in Hell … free will, if you like. It was his gift to us. Let him look upon you from Above, as surely he will, and see that you used it well.”

  “I will try, Eligor.”

  But even as she acknowledged Eligor’s words and understood the sense of them she could not help but be surprised with the fervor he showed regarding his departed lord. It bordered on a reverence that went well past the lord and subject relationships of Hell. She would have to remember this and be more careful. If for no other reason than to simply survive.

  Eligor hesitated, stroking the beard-like bones of his chin, looking at the soul as if reconsidering her, and said abruptly, “Come, we will go to a place where you can stay until the expedition leaves.”

  The blood that flowed anew in Boudica rose and, while her daughters’ plight never left her mind, she felt a sense o
f exhilaration. It was a new world and she was free.

  2

  THE FROZEN WASTES

  Hail pelted him like the drumming of a thousand clawed fingers as the ice squall roared across the ash-black ice with little to check its furious progress. Only the polished, fang-like karsts that reached into the deep slate-blue sky, stubborn in their resistance to erode away, stood as obvious impediments, and these clearly bore the smoothed scars and hollow pits of the wind’s primacy.

  He remembered it all—the endless ice, the unpredictable winds, the sudden storms, the mind-numbing emptiness. Most of all the chill air, cold and free of ash, reminded him of the azure firmament of the Above, insulting him with its similarity.

  He hated it all.

  The renegade Chancellor to the deposed Prince Regent of Hell, former Grand Master of the Priory of the Fly, Adramalik had been past the Margins, and now the Frozen Wastes, but once before to pay respects to Abaddon. He had never set eyes on the fearsome Lord of the Underworld and that was fine with him, but the fact that he had undertaken the journey spoke for itself. And he had never mentioned his motives for contemplating approaching Abaddon to the ofttimes paranoid Beelzebub. His pilgrimage had been at a time before he had sworn allegiance to the throne in Dis, a time when he thought he might have served either master. In the balance, even with the Prince’s defeat, he felt he had made the right choice. In all the millennia of his life in the First City and its embattled environs he had, through ingratiating obeisance and blind obedience, insulated himself against the need to venture back to the icy Wastes. To anyone who had asked, he had vowed never to return. And yet here he was, the thoughts of his life of excess and comfort a bitter and distant memory.

  Swathed in tattered skins and crouched against the furious wind, he watched as the black beads of hail and small bones, made round and unrecognizable by the wind, clattered and slid across the dark, shiny surface of the ice. Who knew where the bits of bone had come from, or from what, or, for that matter, how old they were? He imagined that someday they would simply vanish after breaking apart into finer and finer pieces.

  Adramalik’s gaze penetrated deep into the ice below his feet. Dimly seen, beneath the shadowed, translucent veil of ice, was another world, a world that glowed from the channels of brilliant blue fire that lit it from below. It was a realm of mystery that made the demon shudder from more than its terrible radiance. Those low fires, warm enough only to melt the ice a hundred feet above them, created a vast network of channels and caverns throughout the ice sheet, a frigid parallel landscape that lay many hundreds of feet below the surface world. No demon had ever been there or, if they had, had ever returned to tell of it. With all the fiery horrors of Hell around them, it was this cold unseen world that spawned the most horrific tales that fleshed out the nightmares of the Fallen.

  Adramalik shifted so that he could part the folds of his cloak just enough to peer out into the windstorm. The ice pellets obscured his vision somewhat, but he could distinguish the half-dozen huddled shapes of his fellow refugees, their scarlet skins molded by the wind and ice around their bodies. Both Brigadiers Melphagor and Salabrus, his trusted lieutenants, had succumbed to their wounds along with five lesser Knights. Their fiery swords would be missed. The six surviving Order Knights were all that remained of his life in the former capital of Hell, all that had survived the great, final battle in the dome and the equally great privations and threats of their journey. No longer a functionary of the Prince, Adramalik was now their leader simply by rank—known to them as Grand Master—and he was all they had to cling to. Now, without question, they had followed him into the most remote and unknown reaches of the world. If ever he had doubted the courage of any of them, after what they had endured to this point, he could no longer.

  He could have flown to Pygon Az as he had done in the distant past, but to do that would have meant leaving his Knights behind to follow on foot, their battle-damaged wings having rendered them incapable of flight. They would never have made it this far without him.

  Even as he reflected on his companions, he saw a large shadow occlude the fires below and then skim away, lost to the gradual opacity of the ice. He shook his head ruefully. This was no place for a demon. He pitied those who had had the misfortune to Fall here. And doubted they had survived for long.

  With a final, spiteful gust of wind the ice storm abated and Adramalik rose, shaking away the loose pellets and newly melted water from the creases in his skins. The heat from his smoldering body had created a foot-deep concavity in the black ice and his clawed feet, ankle high in steaming meltwater, had to grip the ice firmly to keep from slipping. The Knights were rising around him, gathering their few precious possessions—relics of their lost existence—and patting away the small, obsidian-like beads of ice.

  Adramalik searched the horizon. He knew the boundary marker was somewhere nearby. His bearings were not what they could have been. The streams of magnetism that wound invisibly throughout Hell were tamed and bent near the cities but were notoriously unreliable in the adjacent Wastes and nearly unfathomable in the far-flung Frozen Wastes. With no significant landmarks the traces of those streams, the strange new, fixed blue star and Algol’s vaguely seen eye, were all with which the refugees had to navigate.

  As he was the only demon among them who had actually walked the streets of Pygon Az, the Knights looked upon him in a very real way as their compass. He would take them to their salvation, so far from the wrath of Sargatanas’ demons that they could finally stop looking over their shoulders. But their ties to Adramalik went deeper than that of a guide. He alone had been responsible for their induction into their Order as well as their behavior as Knights. And he alone was responsible for the final decision to vacate Dis. The Knights’ hasty departure had been born of a mixture of self-preservation, obedience, and loyalty to him. With little left to him besides their companionship, Adramalik was acutely aware of the codependence that had grown so strong among them. Even so he had to maintain his leadership role and bolster his image in their eyes. As with any group of powerful and potentially threatening demons, he was aware of their conceivable opportunism and did not want to provide them any small sign of weakness. Weakness on his part would lead to disloyalty and disloyalty would inevitably lead to his destruction.

  “We are not far now,” Adramalik said over the dying wind with little conviction.

  One by one they joined him: Chammon, Rahab, Vulryx, Demospurcus, Beleneth, and Lucifex. Each of them bore the clear signs of recent combat. All had been wounded in the Rotunda battle and bore ugly, untended, and unhealed scars that were visible beneath their frayed cloaks and sheared armor. Serious as they were, none had cut deep enough to destroy them. Most apparent were Beleneth’s hacked-off forearm, Rahab’s cleft forehead, and Lucifex’s broken lance head, a prize from some vanquished Flying Guards demon that protruded from his upper chest. With his characteristic mixture of bravado and studied indifference Lucifex—spawn of a succubus courtesan and a Knight—refused to have it pulled free, a decision the other Knights secretly mocked. Layered upon these obvious wounds were the unmistakable traces of their subsequent escape through the Wastes, the Margins, and now the Frozen Wastes. Adramalik, too, bore obvious battle wounds. He had been pierced in three places—one an ugly puncture in his cheek—but he had hardly noticed the superficial wounds in his haste to retreat. Only now, in the cold, did their tightened and crusted suppurations annoy him. In hindsight, he knew he had been fortunate, that with these wounds he and his fellow demons had gotten off lightly. Had any of that lord’s captains captured him after the battle his and his Knights’ fate would have been certain.

  As Adramalik looked at each of them the Knights made weary eye contact with him, wordlessly nodding their readiness. They were stretched to their limit but not to their breaking point. A fire to survive still burned deep within them, pushing them toward their goal. Adramalik was proud of them, proud of their fortitude, proud that they had endured so much. But as
much as he admired their strength, his anger and disappointment were equally profound. When they had fled Dis their number had been double what it was now and he was uncertain whether he could leverage any amount of power with so small a company wherever he settled. And for potentially losing that advantage he blamed the forsaken Frozen Wastes.

  Adjusting their weapons and belongings, the small party set off. Adramalik, as always, led the way, casting a simple glyph of light a few yards ahead more to give them something to follow than for its weak effulgence.

  Like a weight sinking upon him, Adramalik felt the dulling burden of monotony return. Of all of the tortured regions of Hell, the Frozen Wastes were, in his mind, the most relentlessly mind numbing in their stark absence of variation. Only the few wind-blasted karsts that pierced the thick ice from deep below afforded any real visual relief. At least, he thought, they were not being pursued, for, clearly, there would have been nowhere to hide.

  With steam pouring from their heated bodies, the demons resumed the strange, sliding gait that had taken them slowly across the ebony ice flats. They had quickly learned that the heat of their ember-flecked soles was so intense that it formed a slick beneath their feet that never allowed them the solid purchase they so craved. Standing in place was risky and falls were frequent and when the wind grew in intensity, despite the demons’ efforts to dig their claws into the hard ice, their progress degenerated to a deadening trudge.