by Tad Williams
I did my best to smile, but felt a little as if I was betraying Caz—not that I’d done anything or planned to, but this sudden emergence into a life of parties and fancy dress didn’t seem exactly in line with my mission, either. Still, it made a welcome change.
I just need to get the lay of the land, I told myself. I’m a spy, after all—an enemy agent. Nobody blames a spy for trying to blend in.
We were driven in a chauffeured car—Vera called it “the motor”—which was my first chance to see the vehicle that had run over me in front of the Terminus. It was long and low, but the front grille was armored like a train’s cowcatcher, so it was something of a miracle (if those were available here) that I’d survived the collision. The chauffeur was a thickset, nondescript man named Henri, silent as he opened the door for me and ushered me into the luxurious interior. He had a distinct, sickly odor to him, like formaldehyde. Also, I had stopped noticing the deformities in even the most ordinary looking citizens, but I couldn’t help noticing that Henri’s wide-set eyes were filmed over with milky cataracts. Not the most inspiring thing to see on your driver. Still, we zipped across town quickly and without incident. I was getting my first proper look at the Red City, and although we seemed to be traveling mostly through the richer neighborhoods, where wide streets were hemmed in by the tall walls of rich tower houses, there was still plenty of horror on display, a carnival sideshow of freaks and monsters staggering along the muddy streets. When we slowed at intersections clogged by heavy traffic—there are, of course, no traffic lights or stop signs in Hell—some of these street-folk looked as though they were considering approaching the car, perhaps to beg, perhaps with something more sinister in mind, but none of them ever did. A couple of times I actually saw someone pull a companion back, as if warning them that we were a bad target for whatever they planned.
“Sometimes when the fires are hot, the streets are simply unbearable,” said Vera, almost dreamily. “We are lucky, darling man, that the weather is mild tonight.”
“Mild” meant the heat and stench were manageable, but only because I was wearing a body made for Hell. Pandaemonium’s air felt so thick that I wanted to wave my arms as I walked to cut a path through it, and I never completely learned to ignore the acid stink. It was like standing over a boiling pot of urine.
Things were a little better once we were inside Vera’s friends’ house, a magnificent, shambling series of castle towers connected by horizontal branches like a coral formation. The angular rooms had been decorated in extreme rococo, gold leaf everywhere, fabulous wealth on display in every corner, but just in case I was tempted to forget where I was, the sculpture and paintings all portrayed brutal suffering, contorted figures and famous scenes of terror, including a detailed series of engravings of Joan of Arc being burned at the stake, which showed her body being eaten by flames even as she prayed and wept.
Other than the creepy taste in art, I couldn’t immediately spot anything hellish about Vera’s friend Elizabeth, another pretty young brunette, slenderer than my savior, who wore her hair piled high above her pale forehead. Her husband (or boyfriend—it wasn’t quite clear) Francis, did show signs of his citizenship: his bearded face and all visible skin were covered with bumps and pustules. It didn’t seem to matter to Elizabeth, who referred to him several times as “my great love” and “my only man.” They both wore Renaissance fashions that made my Victorian gear look quite modern, and their guests were dressed in clothes from at least a dozen eras, including styles I had never seen. If it hadn’t been for the obvious physical deformities of many of the guests, the whole thing would have looked like any old costume party. It was hard to reconcile the ungodly misery I knew lay all around us, and especially underneath us, with this cheerful happy hour gathering. In fact, for these rich demons it seemed more like an entire happy eternity of partying while the damned slaved for them. I should have been outraged, but I confess I was too worn out for outrage, and it was nice not to be running for my life.
What can one angel do, anyway? I thought. It’s been like this for thousands upon thousands of years. Blame God, not me.
One of the most disturbing guests was a man named Al, who had the look of a months-buried corpse, his eyes sunken and filmy, nose black with rot, and his suit covered in grave mold. Despite the unfestive appearance, he seemed quite at home, and at one point he leaned over to me and said in a confidential whisper, “You’ve fallen in with the best, lad. Couldn’t have struck better. Our sweet Lady Zinc is a wonderful woman.”
I smiled and nodded, but Al didn’t just look like a corpse, he smelled like one too, so I moved on.
I took a drink from a servant. It wasn’t all that much better than Riprash’s demon rum, but the glass was clean, and I could feel my demon body repairing the damage to my throat and stomach after each sip. The guests talked about many things, and as I moved restlessly from room to room I listened in on dozens of conversations, but I didn’t hear a single one mention anything about the past or their lives on Earth. Instead the talk was the sort of things rich people chatted about everywhere—the problem of finding good servants, gossip about their social set, and discussions of the best places to go on holiday. It was like hanging around with a bunch of rich fascists; after a while, I just stopped listening to the cruelty underneath the words and let it all wash over me. I did begin to feel a bit better about my chances of passing undetected, since they seemed like a pretty incurious lot. Nobody asked me a single question about my background or seemed to need any more information than that I was “Vera’s guest.” I was one of the crowd now, it seemed. The in crowd.
I found Vera and Elizabeth again in the main parlor, a candlelit room whose high ceilings were decorated with golden cobwebs. As we chatted, a young man who had been introduced to me earlier as “Fritz,” a handsome fellow in a military uniform, hurried up to us. Other than a ridiculously puffed-up chest under his military tunic, he was perhaps the most ordinary looking person in the room, at least by earthly standards, but there were a surprising number of demons there who looked nearly as human.
“Elizabeth!” he squealed to our hostess, “you’ll never guess who’s arrived!”
“Fritzi, my chicken, do you have to be so common?” Vera asked. “We’re gossiping.”
“Then I have something you’ll really like to gossip about,” he said, grinning. “The president himself is here.”
I turned, half-expecting to see Richard Nixon with a party box of wine coolers or something, but the figure coming through the door with a small entourage of lesser demons was unfamiliar to me, or so I thought, a tall, spare figure in a black tailcoat whose elongated face and sharp, curved nose made him look like a humanoid crow. Then I realized who he was. Even worse, he had actually met me in my Bobby Dollar body and might recognize me.
“Caym, the Grand President of the Council of Hell,” a servant announced loudly. This was the bastard who had run interference for Eligor at the big Heaven/Hell conference in San Jude, just before the grand duke tried to roast me like a marshmallow.
I couldn’t do anything but watch as that infernal raven, black eyes bright as blobs of oil, came toward us. Worst of all, he was looking right at me and beginning to smile.
I didn’t think it was a very nice smile at all.
twenty-three
a long night at the opera
CAYM APPROACHED with a grin on his beaked face like the cat that ate the canary—except in his case it would have been the canary who ate the cat. My heart was pounding, and if hell-creature bodies could sweat I would have been dripping like a melting popsicle. I had only a couple of seconds to decide whether to run or stand my ground. If the grand president and his entourage hadn’t been between me and the front door I probably would have bolted, but I had already discovered that the rest of the sprawling house was a maze that I couldn’t navigate even with a compass, so I took a deep breath and waited.
Caym took his eyes off me long enough to bend his long, skinny body and kiss
Elizabeth’s hands, then he did the same for Vera.
“It’s so kind of you to grace us with your presence, your Honor,” Elizabeth said. She sounded like she meant it, breathless and pleased.
“It’s always a pleasure to visit your splendid residence, Countess,” he said, which was the first time I’d heard any of the guests give Elizabeth that title, and it reminded me of Caz, my own Countess, captive somewhere in this mad city. “And Lady Zinc, what a sublime thrill it is to see you again as well.”
Vera colored quite charmingly. She seemed more impressed by the president even than Elizabeth had been. “I’m flattered you remember me, my lord.”
“Caym, please. These are my leisure hours.” And then he straightened and turned to me, his wet, bright eyes flicking up and down as if I were a tasty bit of roadkill he was examining from a convenient height. “And you must be Vera’s guest. Snakestaff, is it not? When last we met she could speak of nothing else.”
“Oh! You have such a good memory, Grand President!” She turned to me. “It was the night we found you in the road.”
“Knocked him down is what you told me.” The grand president made a merry, flirtatious face, particularly horrible on his bony, exaggerated features, like some kind of exotic tribal mask. “And please, Lady Zinc, I do not wish to keep correcting you, but you must call me Caym.”
As Vera made fluttering little sounds of agreement, the president turned back to me. I was just beginning to relax. Apparently he had been looking at me only because Vera had mentioned me.
“But now that I see you up close, sir,” he said, “I find that there is something familiar about you.” He might as well have reached into my chest and squeezed my heart. “Is it possible we have met before?”
“Ah! Ah, I mean, no, no—I don’t think so.” I felt as if everyone within twenty yards was staring at me. “I come to the Red City so seldom. The most of my business is . . . is in Perdition Valley, several levels down.”
“A lovely little province,” said Caym in a pleasant tone that suggested he’d never heard of the place. “Well, there are several of your guests that I would like to greet, Countess, including your husband who I see over there plotting some mischief with that old villain Pope Sergius, so I hope you will forgive me if I drag myself away from your far more charming company. This may be my evening for recreation, but I still cannot ignore my duties.” As Elizabeth and Vera gushed, the crowlike figure turned away, then stopped and turned back. “You know, Countess, I am sponsoring an evening at the Dionysus two nights from now, that grand bit of Monteverdi we all love. It should be quite an event—Himself is going to take the leading role in the opera, of course.” You could practically hear the capital “H.”
Himself? For a moment I had an absurd vision of Satan all decked out in a Valkyrie outfit, singing an aria. That seemed unlikely, but both Elizabeth and Vera gave out muffled shrieks of glee, as though Caym had said something deliciously naughty. “Is he really?” Vera asked. “What fun!”
“Yes, and I would be honored if you ladies would be my guests. And bring your gentlemen, of course.” He sketched a little bow toward me. “I humbly suspect the evening’s entertainment will be the talk of the Red City.”
On the way home Vera was as happy as a teenager who’d just found out she was going to be on some MTV reality show, bubbling about what an honor it was that Caym should remember her, and how astonishing it was that the grand president had asked us to be his theater guests.
“What did he mean, ‘Himself’? Who’s going to be playing the lead?”
“Never mind.” She was being coquettish. “You’ll see. It will be delicious. But let’s talk about you, you lovely, darling man. You impressed the president so! He’s not like us, of course. Most of the old ones don’t have our . . . urges. But he clearly thought a great deal of you. Wondering if you’d met! But you haven’t ever met him before, have you, darling? You’d tell me if you truly knew him, wouldn’t you? A president!”
By the way, there’s not just one president at a time in Hell like in the U.S. It’s merely a title, but it’s a pretty oomphy one. I’ve only heard of about three or four other demons, all original Fallen, who have that in their resume, so in a way it’s actually a lot more exclusive than being the guy in the White House.
Anyway, Vera was in a very cheerful mood. Once I’d gotten undressed for bed and had donned that Dickensian nightdress, she came into my room, still dressed in her party finery, and insisted on going over all the exciting events of the night, the people she’d seen and the astonishing things she’d heard. Of course, Caym’s invitation was the crown jewel and thus required lots of consideration. She sat on the bed beside me, her on top of the covers, me under them. The servant Belle was in the room too, waiting to help her mistress get ready for bed. As Vera talked and gently stroked my hair I felt a strong fondness for her, the last thing I had expected to feel for anyone or anything here. It was sexy, too, in a weird way, the old-fashioned clothes and the old-fashioned manners. Vera was pretty as a porcelain doll, girlish in her enthusiasms, and like Caz, could have passed for human (and a very attractive human at that) anywhere on Earth. She seemed to like me very much, and I couldn’t ignore that either. Just the feeling of her fingers trailing through my hair made me sleepy and content, comfortable in a way I rarely felt on Earth or even in Heaven. But there was nothing more in it for me than that, I swear. I admired her, I was grateful to her, and I couldn’t help but acknowledge that she was very, very attractive, but I already had one demon-girlfriend, and look where that had gotten me. More than that, Caz had grown so big inside of me since our first night together that there truly wasn’t much room for anyone else.
But Vera had been good to me. I reached up to squeeze her hand. For a moment I thought I felt something strange when I touched her, something hard and sharp, and we both jumped a little, but by the time we had recovered, laughing, I realized that it must have been the tips of her fingernails, which she kept long and perfectly trimmed and polished.
“Oh, but here I have gone on and on!” she said. “You must be exhausted, my dear. Belle, come and help me out of these clothes. I shall not bathe tonight; I am too tired and too excited. I think I shall just crawl into bed naked.”
She and the tall servant went out, leaving me alone to think about that interesting image, but I was suddenly so exhausted that I fell asleep within moments after the door closed behind them.
The strange days of my official citizenship in the Red City slipped by. Snakestaff might be an unimportant minor demon of the Liars Sect, a sort of small town lawyer compared to the sharpies I had faced as Doloriel, Heavenly Advocate, but now, Snakestaff and I had been whirled into the heart of society, or at least the damned version of the idle rich.
It wasn’t easy to make sense of the way Hell worked, because everything here seemed as bizarre and chaotic as Heaven was ordered and seemingly unchanging. It was clear to me at least that Vera was not exactly at the heart of things. Her friends Elizabeth and Francis were much bigger players than she was, but she was an enthusiastic participant, an infernal social butterfly with a love for the trappings and protocols of her lost earthly life. She took me to various gatherings, and although I met some truly hideous people (and I’m using the term “people” very loosely here) I met others who, except for their appearance, wouldn’t have been out of place at any smart gathering. Many of the damned and demonic were funny, colorful, even charming (in a don’t-turn-your-back-on-them sort of way).
I was often referred to as “Vera’s new man,” although nothing definitively romantic had passed between us. Sometimes I was “Vera’s discovery,” as though my clodhopping, lower-level ways revealed Lady Zinc’s cleverness, or at least her open-mindedness. A few in her social set were openly hostile to me, mostly the kind of young (or young-appearing) males who probably would have liked to be in my place, but that was just another interesting facet of what was a truly rich and complex society. In fact, I was beginning to find
myself almost comfortable in Hell, which terrifies me now and should have terrified me then, but a weird kind of contentment had gripped me. There were times, especially as Vera sat on my bed at night stroking my hair and murmuring to me, that I could scarcely remember the earlier part of my journey, let alone my angel life on Earth.
Only thoughts of Caz kept me grounded at all. Every time I found myself relaxing into the comfortable companionship of those I knew must be murderers and thieves of the worst kind, I remembered her pale face and a chill of guilt brought me back to myself, at least for a moment. Eligor was out there—I heard him mentioned occasionally in breathless tones, as if he was a rock star who lived nearby—which meant Caz had to be out there too, somewhere, even though I would probably never meet her by accident in a city this big. But there were other times when I could hardly feel her at all, could hardly feel anything except the warm contentment of being safe and being admired. Things were looking up, after all. My hand was growing back; new finger bones had sprouted, growing out of my wrist stump like early cornstalks. But mostly I just liked being safe. I had been hunted and haunted for a long time now, and not just in Hell.
The night of the opera came. After I got dressed in my Prince Albert finery I waited a long time for Vera who, unsurprisingly, wanted her appearance to be perfect. She settled at last on a sumptuous red velvet dress with a low neckline that showed off her full, almost exuberant figure. After I had complimented her as extravagantly as I knew how (I still wasn’t quite comfortable with what felt to me like intentionally old-fashioned ways of talking and acting) Henri brought the car and we were off to the theater.
