by Tad Williams
“There!” Heartspider told me as we rounded a corner. At the end of the passage a ladder of ancient wood led upward into a vertical tunnel. “That passage leads up to the gardens. From there you can find a way off Niloch’s land and burn my bones. Then I’ll be free to begin again.”
Heartspider’s words had given me an idea. I searched the floor until I found a piece of loose stone, then stretched up as high as I could and smashed the shining globe at the end of the corridor. I ran back up the passage and quickly smashed a dozen more.
“What are you doing?” Heartspider demanded. “Niloch will be out with his hunting birds in a moment. They’ll shred you with their iron beaks. You can’t wait. You must get me off his land, or I will never be free!”
I could hear the gas hissing out of the broken lights as I ran back. This wouldn’t be the fancy kind of gas that had a smell, but I was pretty sure it could damage me, so I hurried to the ladder and started climbing. At the top I found my way blocked by a rusted iron hatch, but the thing hadn’t been all the way closed and I was able to force it open, although not without doing more damage to my already torn and bloodied demon body. When I climbed out into the relative brightness of the lit garden, I pushed the lid down again and sat on it. I could hear excited noises from Gravejaw House a short distance away, so I knew I didn’t have long, but despite Heartspider hissing and snarling in my ear, I waited.
“He’ll come! He’ll find you! His dogs will chew your bones—and mine!”
I ignored her. She raged at me, but I wouldn’t move.
“You fool! What are you doing? Do you have any idea . . . ?”
Somewhere just out of my sight I heard the great front doors creak as someone began to draw the bolt, which probably meant Niloch had finished searching the house, or at least had decided it was unlikely I was still inside. Any moment now he would come riding out with slaves and soldiers and his iron-mouthed birds, whatever kind of horror those were.
“You traitor! You are dooming yourself, too!”
Even as Heartspider’s voice rose to a pitch of despair I felt sure the commissar would be able to hear, I turned and yanked the hatch back open. It screeched as rusty metal rubbed on metal, resisting me, but I only had to get it up just a little way. I pushed the torch through and forced the hatch closed again, then started to run across the stony garden, heading for the shelter of a copse of petrified trees.
The ground shook. For a moment, the grounds in front of me were illuminated by a gust of fiery light as the burning gas forced its way out of the hatch, blowing the metal lid through the air like a communion wafer in a tornado. It almost hit me as it came down, digging deep into the ground, then a roll of thunder shook the ground again, and Gravejaw House vomited fire from half its windows.
Heartspider had been too stunned to speak, but as I crept back toward the hatch she began to beg me not to waste this chance. I’m not even sure she knew that I had caused the explosion. The flames were licking up from the tunnel as though the whole of the catacombs were on fire. The ground boomed and shook beneath me. When I steadied myself again I saw that one of the walls of Gravejaw House was toppling in an avalanche of old stone. I could hear a few screams from the part of the house still standing. Heartspider was right: I really didn’t want to hang out there very long.
I took the bundle of her bones from my shoulder and tossed it into the hatch. Heartspider’s voice shrieked in my ears. “Traitor! Traitor! I put my curse on—” And then she fell silent as the bones ticked down the hatchway tunnel into the inferno below, and she realized what was happening.
“Ah!” she gasped, like a drowning woman who had finally broken the surface. And then, as baking heat scorched her last remains to ash, she was gone.
“Yes, I did it,” I said, although I was talking only to myself now. “After all, a deal is a deal.”
As I made my way across the grounds curious bystanders flocked into the gardens and toward the commissar’s castle, staring in awe at the pillar of fire currently towering above Gravejaw House, demon spectators mostly. Tellingly, not a single one seemed to be there to help, but stood watching as Niloch’s slaves struggled against the hungry blaze. Of the slaves’ owner there was no sign, and I wasn’t going to wait around to see if the commissar had survived. I sort of doubted you could kill one of Hell’s nobles with fire, anyway. The problem was, so many damned and demons were milling around that someone was bound to remember me when Niloch came thundering out after revenge.
One of the spectators, a creature with the discolored head of a pig set on the long body of an NBA shooting guard, followed me as I tried to make my way discreetly through the outskirts of the crowd.
“You there!” he said. “Slave! Stop or I’ll have you skinned.” My dirty, scorched, bloody nakedness was disguise enough, it seemed, at least with this idiot. But seeing him standing there in his long black robe gave me another idea. “How is our beloved commissar?” he demanded. “Is he safe? You must tell him that his loyal tradesman, Trotter, asked after his health.”
I nodded eagerly and beckoned for him to follow me. He fell in behind, perhaps hoping to be led to the commissar himself so he could get in a little timely ass-kissing. When we were out of sight of the rest of the onlookers I hurried through the winding gardens. The skeletonized shrubs were weeping, trying helplessly to shake falling embers off their leaves. When we reached the hatch I did my best to ignore the hot metal against my torn skin as I got close. The flames had retreated, but not far, and the hot air that rushed up from the pipe felt like it blistered my skin.
“See,” I said. “See, Master, see!”
Trotter stepped forward, curiosity fighting caution, and stood a little way back from the pipe, craning his piggy head forward on the end of his long neck in an attempt to see. I leaned out over the hatch as if the agonizing heat wasn’t hurting me, and beckoned again. “Look!”
When he had leaned far enough, I shoved him down with enough force to crush his windpipe against the rim of the pipe. As he fought for breath, I slammed his head over and over against the edge of the hatch until he stopped struggling, then peeled off his robe with bloody, ragged fingers. Trotter’s body was as gray and knobby and unpleasant as I would have expected. I suppose I should have felt sorry for him or bad about myself, since I had just murdered him in cold blood and everything (well, horribly crippled him, since no one died in Hell) but I didn’t. I didn’t have enough me left. All I knew was that I had to get out of Gravejaw and up the great lifter. I no longer had only to reach Pandaemonium and accomplish my business without being caught, although it would be a hundred times harder now that Hell would be looking for an outsider on the loose. No, it was crystal-clear that I had to find Caz and get out of this place of unending horrors before I went truly and finally mad.
nineteen
going down
THE GOOD thing was that I could see the gigantic lifter shaft from pretty much anywhere in the city of Gravejaw. The bad thing was that even after I had scrambled across the endless scorched wasteland of Niloch’s gardens and climbed the outer wall, I still had to get across the entire wretched slum to reach it. Apparently the Commissar of Wings and Claws had seen the immense structure as an insult to his own awesomeness, so he had set up housekeeping on the highest piece of land, which happened to be a couple of miles away from the lifter.
Now that his house was going up in flames, the reddish light made it seem like Hell’s midday had come early, and I could see a great throng of hellfolk hurrying up the hill toward me from the surrounding city. I was just looking around for something to use as a weapon when the first of them reached me and sprinted past, hurrying toward the disaster. They just kept coming, more and more, shouting, honking, making noises I don’t have words for. Some hopped and some flew (although not well enough to write home about) and others teeter-tottered along on mismatched legs, but none of them gave me much more than a glance. The stolen robe helped, and I guess I wasn’t burned enough to be worth staring
at.
I fought my way against the throng like a queer salmon in spawning season, trying as hard as you’d guess to avoid body contact, but still getting speared, smeared, or dusted every few steps. Very few of the creatures pushing past me seemed upset or frightened by what was happening. In fact, to judge by the hundreds of deformed faces I saw, most seemed downright thrilled, and the rest were at least interested. I don’t think the commissar had a lot of fans.
I pushed free of the worst of the mob at last and hurried down to the base of the hill. There were still residents in the narrow streets of Gravejaw, demons and damned who couldn’t just drop their business to go watch something fun. Many were blind, and some had sensory organs so alien they might not even have realized what was going on. Others clearly just couldn’t move fast enough. I passed a thin man hopping slowly along the road waving his right hand as I passed him. Only when I turned to look back did I realize that he only had a right: he had been bisected from head to crotch like a medical cadaver being prepared for one of those see-through views, and was hopping on one foot, trying to balance that thin half body and half head with his single arm. As I looked back, I could see his exposed organs and brain flash wetly as he wobbled.
Creatures like salted slugs, like toads with bone disease, or broken-winged birds, many with heads too big for the bodies or bodies too big for the heads, I hurried past them all, trying not to see too much but still seeing more than I wanted. The lower part of Gravejaw was built on a series of small hills, and following the tiny streets up and down was like being on the world’s only human-powered roller coaster. I ran through half the city, it seemed, out of the center and into outer districts where trading and torture went on side by side, as if it were any other night. Even this far away, the ones with eyes must have been able to see the burning castle on the hilltop but none of them seemed to care very much. The only comment I heard was from a mostly skeletal, three-eyed giant with a hammer who was carefully crushing the shinbones of a chained prisoner in front of what must have been a very strange shop: He looked up to the hilltop as I hurried by and said to his companion, who was digging at the same prisoner’s eye with a spoon, “It’s burning good. Burning real good.”
His companion looked up for a moment, nodded, then accidentally dropped his spoon into the muck at his feet. He picked it up, carefully licked it clean, and then went back to work.
I passed buildings that looked like factories, the sort of hellish mills that even William Blake probably couldn’t have imagined. Some streamed blood-colored sewage, and the doorways were littered with burned and mangled bodies of what were probably accident-prone employees, many of them scraping at the iron factory doors to get back in, despite their horrible wounds. I heard the clang of huge machines and watched smoke and steam belching from furnace chimneys. I couldn’t help noticing that things on this level had advanced from the medieval tech of Abaddon to something a bit more eighteenth century, steam and infernal machines dwelling happily alongside plague and utter poverty.
The closer I got to the lifter shaft, the more awesome the structure became. Like a skyscraper, the stone cylinder was nearly as big around as a city block, but that was nothing compared to how high it stretched upward before its length vanished in the upper darkness. I couldn’t imagine how something so tall supported its own weight without guy wires or buttresses. It was an engineering feat that would have made any pharaoh proud.
The lifter stood in the middle of a busy town square, an open plaza like the kind you sometimes see around the big cathedrals in Europe. As I approached, more cautiously now, a few people wandered out of the archways at the bottom of the shaft. The crowds in the square here seemed all but oblivious to Niloch’s burning citadel, going on with their public business of theft, gambling, fornication, and various other pastimes. I was in an area where someone in a hurry drew no attention at all, except for the usual swarm of pickpockets, rapists, and knife-wielding psychopaths that hang around anywhere people arrive and depart. If I had slowed down I’m sure they would have begun to move in on me, but as it was I must have looked like too much work.
I entered the lifter tower through the nearest arch and saw there were actually several individual lifter cars traveling up and down narrower shafts that ran through the big building like nerves in their sheaths. I stayed back for a bit, watching, but in most ways it looked pretty straightforward, not much different than an elevator bank in a modern office building: One of the lifter doors would open, and those waiting would push their way on while others forced their way out. The passengers looked more prosperous than the wretches lolling outside in the plaza. Many of these travelers were dressed in impressive outfits, and some were so physically imposing that no one else would get into the lifter with them for fear of being smashed or spiked. That made sense, though: the wealthy were more likely to be using the lifters than the pathetic groundlings. I knew from Lameh’s implanted memories that Hell’s inhabitants were strongly discouraged from going above their designated levels, and who was going to go any farther down voluntarily?
After watching for what felt like ten minutes or so, I waited until the most recent group of passengers had dispersed, then gathered my courage to walk to the nearest lifter door. Another fellow shuffled up beside me, probably the demon equivalent of a Japanese salaryman at the end of a long night’s work, and we entered the lifter together.
We were the only passengers, but the interior of the rusty iron box was full of trash and spattered fluids, some still wet. My fellow passenger had a head like a buzzard, but his eyes were multifaceted like a fly’s. He was dressed in shabby but fairly clean gray robes that exposed only his clawed feet. He gave me a cold look and an even colder nod, then lifted his hand—instead of being feathered it looked like another bird’s foot—and placed it on the wall of the lifter. He mumbled something I couldn’t quite hear, but I was already scrambling to imitate him. I put my hand against the gritty iron wall and quietly said, “Pandaemonium.” I was half ready to be quizzed about my bona fides, but instead the door slid creakily shut and the lifter started to shudder. The shuddering went on and on for what seemed like a full minute, then at last the lifter groaned, a noise like a giant metal cow giving birth, and to my silent joy and relief the box began to move upward.
Slowly at first, then faster and faster, we rattled up the great pipe. The lifter car, which was built more like a bank safe than a flimsy human elevator, nevertheless shook and screeched so much as it was tugged or pushed upward that at first I was certain we were going to derail, or whatever the hell elevators do when they go wrong. Instead we just kept going faster and faster, so that my ears began popping like popcorn. Then a flat, uncaring voice said, “Sour Milk Park, Hateful, Lower Childskull,” and the elevator slowed to a banging halt. The fly-buzzard man waited until the door squeaked open, then stepped out without a backward glance, as if in a hurry to get away from me. Just like folks back home.
I waited as the steam built up again (or whatever), everything hissing and vibrating. The door began to slide closed. It was amazing to consider that after all I’d gone through, I was now only a short elevator ride from my destination. If I had been a regular angel I would have felt confirmed that God really was watching over me after all, and was going to reward me for all my years of good behavior. Of course, if I had been a regular angel I would already have banked a few years of good behavior just in case. Sadly, though, that is one of the many accounts with my name on it that’s come up a bit short.
But just before the door finished closing, something dark poked through and stopped it. The appendage gripping the door looked less like a hand and more like something you might find buried in a cat’s litter box. The force of the door being restrained seemed to make the whole lifter strain, as if it was determined to break the deadlock or destroy itself trying. The mechanism whined, the shuddering increased. Then the door slid back open.
The thing that stepped in was a bulky man-shape made entirely of mud. It was nak
ed and nearly without features except for a popped bubble of a mouth and a blob of wet clay that I guessed was a nose, mostly because it was somewhere near the two glowing yellow smears it wore for eyes. If I tell you those eyes looked like some kind of irradiated slugs emerging from a seabed, you’ll maybe begin to grasp how much I didn’t like looking at them. But it wasn’t just the eyes. I could feel this new thing, feel its age and its inhumanity. I don’t know what it was, but it was no ordinary demon.
The passenger-blob stopped inside the door, and its weight actually made the massive car tilt. The shapeless face swiveled toward me for a moment but then slowly kept turning, examining the entire empty lifter, as though I was so insignificant that before it acknowledged me it had to establish what someone not being there looked like. Being alone in a confined space with the thing made me feel trapped and queasy. This was no mere infernal salaryman. This was something old and powerful.
The door closed. The thing stretched its flat, muddy paw to the wall. When it spoke its destination, I was so disturbed by the squelchy, inhuman voice that I only registered some moments later that it had said, “Tartarus Station.”
Something was seriously wrong. I knew a bit of Hell’s geography, both from Lameh and my travels, and I was pretty fucking sure that the direction to Tartarus Station wasn’t up, where I was going, but down. Way down.
Then the hissing and the trembling crested and the lifter started to drop. I stared in dismay. The mud thing looked back at me, as disinterested as a statue.
“We’re . . . going down,” I said finally.
