The Heart of Hell

by Wayne Barlowe

  Lilith saw the mounds and knew them for what they were—the pitiable possessions taken from souls in the wake of the marauding mobs that now roamed the Vale. It was a terrible, silent statement of the terror that had befallen those souls who had merely tried to build some kind of life in the infernal realm. There would be no peace for them.

  Without warning a great din arose from the collected souls. Screams and barks and the clattering of weapons upon shields broke the stillness and continued unabated as Lilith moved farther into the building. It was an attempt to unnerve her and Ardat, undoubtedly the same tactic that these raiders had used to instill fear into the unnumbered souls they had conquered. Lilith remained unshaken by the sound and, as she finally cleared the mounds, saw them arrayed in two ragged lines leading to an elevated throne.

  For souls with little ability to manufacture true and uniform armor, they had exercised an incredible amount of ingenuity in their fearsome panoplies. All wore some striking element of Abyssal remains such as claws or bones or armor or teeth. Many of these were deliberately broken to create jagged and sharpened edges that were thrust deep into their already-malformed bodies, while others were tied on in lapping layers to create grotesque, intimidating silhouettes. From her own Waste journeys, Lilith recognized the nasal spines of Skin-skippers, the elbow-claws of Lesser Gougers, the keeled, luminous plates of Peelers, the heavy eye sheaths of Lava-swimmers, the splayed dorsals of flying Cinder-chasers. Nearly ever creature that walked, crawled, or flew was represented in the makeshift armor that covered the raiders and Lilith had to admit to herself that they did, indeed, present a spectacle of raw ferocity. But the attempt at intimidation was lost upon her.

  Undeterred, she and Ardat walked the shifting corridor between the armored souls. Each soul they passed tried all the harder to goad them into action with frenzied cry or leveled spear, but neither she nor Ardat raised her weapon. As they drew closer to the foot of the throne, the pair could plainly see the massive dark figure that sat upon the skin-covered seat. It was, as they had come to be known among the souls, a Manifold—a conglomerate of more than one soul created by demons for specialized tasks. While most were comprised of eight or ten souls and used in the legions, some whom she had seen had been composed of dozens of hapless humans, strung together for the most arduous of building tasks. This one, Lilith thought, had probably been some demonic mason’s helper—his melded limbs were thick and powerful. The liberation of the souls had not enabled the countless Manifolds to separate themselves—that would have required a demonic Art and vast amounts of time. This one clearly had been impatient to venture into the Wastes and wreak havoc. She could hear his wheezing breath and smell his unclean body. He raised a heavy fifteen-fingered hand and the crowd quieted.

  “We are Koh-Gul-Yut the First, King Undisputed of the Vale.”

  The King sat back, self-satisfied, in a posture of confident power.

  “I am—” Lilith began.

  “We know who you are. Your reputation is great. Why have you come all this way to my peaceful kingdom, White Mistress?” The voice was strangely high pitched and strained.

  “My companion and I cross the Wastes on a mission. Yours is but one of many kingdoms we would pass through on our way.” Lilith kept her voice steady, controlled. None could miss the firmness in it.

  “And pass through it you shall. I have no interest in detaining you. However, I’m sure you can see that our kingdom suffers from many privations … privations that came as a result of your prolonged civil war. I see that you both carry packs—”

  “Do not go any further. We will not be paying any tribute to you or paying you any obeisance.”

  The room filled with sibilant murmurings.

  Again, the King raised his hand and the marauders fell silent.

  “You would insult us before our own people?”

  “I would tell you that I am revolted by you, your actions, and your so-called kingdom built on misery and blood. I would tell you, too, that my design for you, for all souls, was for your liberation and peaceful coexistence in our shared exiles. Not for the mindless atrocities I have seen throughout this vale. I have let loose a scourge.”

  “What business is it of yours how we choose to exist? We have our free will back, White Mistress. Just as you hoped for,” Koh-Gul-Yut hissed. “Was that not part of your design when you spread these about Hell?”

  The Manifold clutched a pendant around his thick neck, yanked it free, and threw it at her feet. Lilith eyed with disgust the small self-portrait she had carved. With eyes fixed upon Koh-Gul-Yut, she slowly placed her clawed foot upon it and crushed it.

  “No. Never.”

  In one fluid, practiced motion Lilith pulled free the sword Lukiftias-pe-Ripesol, and, for a moment, all was still. She grasped its hilt with both hands and leveled the long blade steadily at the King seated above her. She heard Ardat unsheathing her own blade.

  The Manifold clenched his fist. And Lilith wheeled and sliced the two closest souls in half. Springing up the few steps to the throne where the huge King was getting to his feet, she chopped his leg out from under him, her blade cleanly severing the thick calf from its knee. With a shriek, he toppled forward and would have fallen onto her had she not deftly sidestepped the flailing Manifold. Even before he landed, her blade bit into his necks, separating heads from multiple spines.

  A few steps below, Ardat was fending off the sudden surge of attacking marauders, swinging her two angled blades in long, almost rhythmic arcs. With each slice a limb fell, but the number of assailants seemed to grow rather than diminish. Lilith looked toward the doorway and could just see shadows flickering across it. The clamor was drawing all of the marauders from outside within the palace confines.

  With a roar, Lilith leaped into the fray, sword slashing downward cleaving a soul from neck to groin, clawed feet bringing down another where she landed. Ardat ducked low as Lilith’s monstrous, demon-killing sword swung in dangerous circles overhead, easily chopping three of the souls’ armored heads from their shoulders.

  Ardat slowly backed up the stairs, eyes wide and mouth agape at the whirlwind of destruction that was her mistress. Lilith was a being transformed. All of the pent-up rage at what they had been witness to as they made their way from village to village—all of the horrors of the souls’ failed self-rule—was coming out with each swing of the terrible sword.

  Lilith, a calm settling over her, reached inward and found that place in her heart that she had visited many times before. It was the empty place she had discovered so long ago when she had stalked the swamps, the place to which she had retreated when the Fly’s torments had proved too much for her. There she had watched herself, marveling bleakly at her ability to simply shut everything out and survive. Then it had been a place of salvation. Now it was a place of cold retribution, disconnected and hollow of feeling. These souls were lawless, ungovernable, and as devoid of conscience as the worst of the demons. And they were all the more disappointing to her for it.

  She had been instrumental in seeing them freed, had nurtured what she thought would be what little was good in them. Now, without a shred of remorse, she would undo some of what she had accomplished.

  Wave after wave of marauder came for her, weapons brandished, shrieks upon their lips. They all fell.

  She took no pleasure from her skill with the sword, from the seemingly limitless stamina she showed, from the perfect executions of the souls. No blow was half-delivered, no soul left wounded only. The dismembered bodies at her feet rolled down the growing mound by the dozens, spattering her white robes until she was reddened and dripping.

  When the souls began to thin out, Lilith found herself the predator of humans, once again. She pursued those who remained throughout the darkened interior, stalking them through the debris, pushing some into tumbling mounds of looted possessions only to chop them apart, knocking others down to rend them apart with her feet. The last of the marauders fled out into the relative brilliance of the ope
n, infernal air with Lilith close behind. One by one, snarling, she overtook them, her sword held out before her red with the sticky blood of their brethren. And one by one they were struck down until only streaks of crimson gave evidence of their frantic flight, the bloody signatures of their demise.

  Ardat emerged, tentatively at first. When she saw her mistress hunched over upon a rock near the village gate, surrounded by the impaled souls, she ran to her, fearful that Lilith was vulnerable to more assaults.

  “Lilith! Are you hurt?”

  The White Mistress was completely stained a grisly red and it was impossible for the handmaiden to discern whether the blood was that of the souls or mixed with that of some grievous wounds they had inflicted.

  Lilith lifted her chin and Ardat could plainly see the tears that ran from her scarlet eyes.

  “It is over, Ardat. My love of them. It was never realistic,” she whispered hoarsely. “I was a fool.”

  Ardat put her hand on Lilith’s trembling shoulder.

  “I thought I could make a difference here. I thought that they could be lifted up from the blood and the shit and the ashes. But it turns out that is where they belong.”

  Ardat watched her mistress grimly. She had been there through all of the eons during which Lilith had secretly championed the souls, working to covertly elevate them, hoping for them. Ardat remembered well how she had been the instrument of the almost legendary White Mistress, disseminating the small statues throughout Dis and Adamantinarx. Bringing hope to the hopeless. It was all over now.

  Lilith rose unsteadily, propping herself up with the great sword. Her exhaustion was clearly more than physical. Avoiding Ardat’s gaze, she walked silently to the gate.

  Ardat followed and when they both reached the many impaled souls the handmaiden dropped to one knee and began to cut loose the nearest soul. Lilith could plainly hear the gurgling words of gratitude and saw, too, the hope in his eyes.

  “Leave him. Leave them all to rot. They are in Hell for a reason. There are no innocents here.”

  Ardat hesitated and then, sheathing her blade, rose to follow her dark mistress beyond the gate and out into the Wastes.

  10

  THE WASTES

  The small encampment to which the Salamandrines took her was, in many ways, reminiscent of movable encampments to which Boudica had been accustomed all her Life. Light frameworks arranged in rough defensive circles with beasts of burden and war tethered nearby, weaker family members in the center. But those were the only real, superficial similarities. Everything else about the nomads’ camp was like something conjured in that fearful state between wakefulness and sleep that passed for rest in Hell.

  Boudica waited as the Salamandrine chieftain who had marked her with the design dismounted. He had shown great skill in the way he had piloted the hovering creature using verbal commands or taps on its carapace. Only after he reached up and took her hand did she jump down. The hover creature barely moved as it floated in place, its siphons hissing as it distended three legs. The Salamandrine nodded to follow, and without hesitating she obliged.

  The first thing that struck her was how, save for a bone-framed lookout post, the entire circular camp was sunken, nearly to the height of a Salamandrine male, almost twice her own height. It had been hewn into the ground, the backfill being placed in a circular wall around the camp’s periphery. Raised a foot above the ground line, but covering most of the opening, were vane-like tent works of stretched Abyssal skin mounted on pivoting bone bases. She realized this eye-level slit allowed them the protection of the ground but also enabled them to see anything or anyone approaching. She imagined that the flexibility of these structures deflected some of the infernal winds as they whipped across the featureless expanses and also served to shed away the embers and ash that would inevitably fill such a pit.

  As she descended the chopped-out steps into the camp, she could easily see how the fibrous layers of ground-skin gave way to the base matrix. The resilient black substrate that underlay most of Hell was the texture of almost-hardened pitch, and when she ran a finger against it she felt a strange tingling, a sensation that did not go away when her unshod feet touched the camp’s floor. After a few moments she grew used to it and to the odd sense of well-being it brought her.

  Boudica was led toward the camp’s center by the chieftain. Flanked by four additional Salamandrine warriors, she saw every head in the camp turn as she passed. The looks she got were impossible to interpret. The Salamandrines’ beaked faces gave up no clue to her untrained eyes. But the silence that descended upon the camp was unequivocal. She was a stranger here. And that was something to engender suspicion among an already-wary people.

  They passed partitions of hanging skins, and as she glanced inside she saw meager possessions arrayed around sleeping skins. The Salamandrines traveled lightly—their possessions seemed to number fewer than ten per partition. At the camp’s center were cooking pits and, around them, the elders sat while the young played and mounted mock battles. A zoomorphic idol, half her size, carved from a jet boulder stood at the exact center of camp and seated next to it was an old, nearly blind Salamandrine, robed and adorned with a profusion of jet ornaments. When he looked up, one of his four yellowed eyes fixing her, the stone jewelry rattled against his chest like small bones.

  Her captor spoke to the elder chief and then, without warning, grabbed Boudica’s arm and twisted it around to display his handiwork. The elder nodded, clacking his beak-like jaws together quietly. He spoke, then, at some length to the chieftain who stood attentively, silently. When the elder finished, the chieftain knelt and the old Salamandrine gently grasped his head with both ancient hands and pecked the crown of the warrior’s head once. The chieftain stood and turned Boudica away by the elbow.

  While the camp was small, it was subdivided by hanging skins into many small chambers and Boudica found herself completely disoriented by the time her guide left her at her own tiny, empty stall. She curled up on the floor and, as barren of possessions as she was, she felt contentment in her surroundings. It was a strange thing, her sudden identification with the Salamandrines. It was not hard to transpose her own past with their present and see what their grievances were. She would do what she could to understand these people, to fit into their society. What else could she do? She needed them and, perhaps, she could convince them that they needed her.

  * * *

  Algol rose and sank—a span of what she thought would have been three or four moons in her Life—before Boudica felt in relative command of the Salamandrines’ difficult tongue. She was a quick learner and devoted herself fully to the task. The beak clicking had been physically impossible to emulate and so she had resorted to snapping her fingers at just the right moment to make them understand her. Not an easy thing when one was engaged in physical activity. She was sure some of them found this comical or even insulting, but no one said a word to her. She imagined it all came across like a human with a lisp or a stutter or both and tried as hard as she could to compensate by being agreeable. The Salamandrines, as a whole, seemed to appreciate her efforts, carefully pointing out her small errors but not chiding her. For such a grim race, their deference seemed puzzling. Puzzling until she was told that she had a good enough mastery of the language to understand why she was being treated so deferentially. She was essentially a curio.

  K’ah-aka-tuk, her captor and now, unpredictably, her sponsor, made all of the introductions to his clan. There was, first and foremost, M’ak-aka-tua, the clan chieftain and K’ah’s uncle, who had approved Boudica’s adoption into the clan.

  “He was a once-feared warrior,” K’ah told her as they walked past the elder’s larger stalls, “a master tactician who had harried the demons for over a thousand full cycles of Algol, bringing much glory to our people and garnering much hatred from the demons. Once,” he told her, “our camp-frames had been decorated with over five hundred heads we skillfully liberated from slain demon captains. An uncommonly ferocious fi
restorm had destroyed these proud and hard-won trophies, but we still remember. Now Elder M’ak holds the most honored position on the plains surrounding K’oba K’ul, the Rising Falls. He has earned it.”

  “The demons call it Yalpur Nazh. Why is this region so important, K’ah?”

  The Salamandrine flicked his head in one of the many subtle head gestures that Boudica was struggling not only to learn but also to interpret. The pair sat upon a pile of Abyssal skins near the edge of camp. The pyroclastic pillar rose in the distance, its slow turbulence angry and glowing.

  “K’oba K’ul rises and falls in an unending cycle, its fiery beginning linked to its fiery end. We see that as a symbol of the Eternal State, of Life and its endless pattern of birth, death, and renewal. We invoke that idea when we engage in t’lakka, the ritual eating of our enemies.”

  Until that moment, Boudica had no idea that the Salamandrines were in any way cannibalistic. She had seen a steady flow of killed Abyssals being brought in by the hunters and assumed that that was the clans’ only food source. In her Life, she had heard of tribes that had indulged in similar activities but had not seen it performed. She knew, in a flash of intuition, what she would have to do to fit into this society and knew, too, that she would put a good face on it. It was good to be warned, but the anticipation could work against her, make her seem weak. Weakness was clearly not a state she wanted to convey to these hardened people.

  “M’ak must be held in great respect to be the chief of this region, yes?” she said, moving past the unpleasantness she had just discovered.

  “Indeed. Other chieftains come from far away to consult him on matters ranging from tribal problems to the more important raids on demon outposts. All of this he wears with dignity and wisdom.”