Hellblazer 2 - Subterranean

by John Shirley

  “Right,” Constantine said. “Then let’s give you your chance to bust out. And Maureen”—his voice became subtly tender when he turned to her—“the King won’t bleed your boy dry; we’re going to bleed the King dry. And we’re going to get your son out of the lockup. We’ve got to put a stopper to the King’s plans and get ourselves out from underground. I think I’ve got it worked out, but we’ve got to move fast. There’s a great big bloody job to do and not much time for it. Fallesco, can you contact Scofield for me? He’s going to have to meet with a troll.”

  “A troll! If the King finds out he’ll regard it as treason.”

  “Aye. And so it is, the best sort of treason. Treason against a bloody damned tyrant! I also need for you to find out where MacCrawley is being kept. If he’s still alive, I’m going to need him too.”

  “What!” Geoff couldn’t believe his ears. “MacCrawley! He wanted you dead, mate!”

  “Oh I know; he wanted me brought here and probably put to work right where he is now. A job that’ll kill a man, sure. But I’m going to need him if what I suspect is true—if it’s Fludd’s Spell of Dire Containment we’ve got to crack—and I’ll have to make use of him without turning me back. I’ll just wait for him to turn his.”

  “Anything to get us out of this bloody place,” Geoff declared, shrugging.

  “Now, the King’s strengths are ritual magic and alchemy, but he has a contempt for folk magic, and the bastard despises the elder spirits of the world. So I reckon we can con him when it comes to folk magic. Maureen, can you go along with the wedding night, up to a point?”

  “I can do whatever’s necessary, John,” she said simply. Implying, without stating it, that she was willing to give herself entirely to the King if she had to, if that’s what it took to save them all.

  “We’ll try to see that what’s necessary is as little as can be,” Constantine said, inwardly tensing at the thought of the King touching Maureen intimately. No one should touch her intimately, come to that. Except . . .

  “There is a certain sleeping potion I keep about me,” Fallesco said, taking a small vial from an inside pocket. “Many times it has subdued those who would have cut my throat otherwise. Take it and slip it to the King in the privacy of your wedding night, Maureen, so that he loses consciousness before he can force himself on you. But he is no fool, and when he wakes, he will know he was drugged and his vengeance will be terrible. Unless . . .”

  Fallesco broke off, then went to the door, looked out a third time, checking once more for eavesdroppers, before returning and going on, “Unless the King never wakes. I see a straight razor on yon table . . .”

  “I might be able to do it,” Maureen said, pulling a face. “But there’s the problem of that magic bed of his. The queen’s told me some creature lives in it, who watches them as they . . . watches them in bed. And the creature won’t allow any attack on the King, or anything taken from his person. The King trapped it there to protect him.”

  “Trapped it, did he?” Constantine said. “Interesting. That suggests . . .”

  “The creature might be neutralized somehow,” Fallesco said, stroking his beard. “How, I don’t know. That would be more Constantine’s purview. But if it could be done, you might well be free to dispatch the King. A blessed turn of events; I live for the day the King Underneath lives no more!”

  “But if Culley were to have his throat cut in the night, his faithful would know it was Maureen who did it,” Constantine said, thinking it through as he spoke. “Too many of the local gits regard him as a god; that evil-eyed Captain of the guards would scour the place for Maureen. And there’s summat else: it seems likely to me the King’s spell of control includes vengeance on whoever killed him—more like on the whole kingdom, if he’s done away with. He’s got to be alive and kicking when the spell’s undone. Just killing him won’t release it. We’ll use the potion; it’ll keep him asleep just long enough to do what needs to be done. I hope.”

  “And we’ll be no better than him, if we go around cutting people’s throats to get them out of the way,” Geoff said, surprising the others.

  Constantine nodded. “Got no argument, there, kid. We’ll fight the King Underneath with his own sorcery, and let karma take its course . . .”

  ~

  “Are you quite sure these preliminaries are necessary, my queen?” asked King Culley, licking his lips as he looked Maureen over, at the threshold of their honeymoon chamber.

  “Oh but my darling, it is quite necessary, if the blossom is to open willingly to the bee!” said Queen Maureen, drooping her eyelashes bashfully.

  The Royal Wedding, held in the throne room that morning, had been an abbreviated affair, swift on the heels of the annulment of the King’s previous marriage. A few words sonorously intoned by the seneschal, a quick invocation to some forgotten gods, too deeply asleep in limbo to know they’d been invoked, and the ritual kiss, and it was done, with the courtiers, summoned by gong, dutifully applauding, crying Hosanna, and trying not to yawn at this latest in the endless string of royal nuptials.

  Now the King stood just inside the door. Constantine, looking quite politely neutral, stood outside it with Maureen, who yet wore her sheer blue-white wedding gown, slit up both sides to the hips.

  Constantine had to work at it not to stare at her in the gown. It wouldn’t do to let the King know how he felt.

  “Explain again the nature of this, ah, invocation?” the King asked, taking off his crown to flip it about impatiently in his hand as he looked at her.

  Maureen, who had in fact not grown up in Ireland, had no Irish accent, but she now fell into one for psychological effect as she said, “Sure it is that in my village—throughout Ireland in fact—we had to have the local Priest of the Fields in to drive out the Little People, who will follow anywhere, even to the bowels of the Earth it is said, so as to inhabit the . . . well, the private places of the bride, waiting for the groom’s intrusion, so that they might strike his tenderest places with small pins, much to their amusement.”

  The King blinked. “Small pins . . . striking his . . .”

  “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  “Superstition, surely.”

  “No doubt, Your Majesty. But why take a chance?”

  Constantine cleared his throat. “If you’d go ahead into the bridal chamber, Maureen, I’ll just have a word with His Majesty . . .”

  She curtsied and slipped past the King, who stepped into the hallway. “Yes, Constantine? Well?”

  “It’s all the psychology of the Irish, Your Majesty. Rubbish, this Little People thing, I suppose, but they just don’t like to marry without the ritual. It happens I’m a certified Priest of the Field—”

  “What is that, some sort of Celtic shaman?”

  “Yes, sire. I’ll just enter the room, spend a few minutes alone with the queen; the two of us, according to the ancient rites of olde Eire, will set about banishing the Little People.”

  “If there were any Little People following her into the chamber, the guardian in the headboard of the bed would have warned me.”

  “No doubt, Your Majesty. It is indeed psychological. The lady will give of herself freely afterward.”

  “Constantine, are you practicing upon me?”

  “Practicing upon you, sire?”

  “Ah, it’s an old expression. It means deceiving. Often for another’s amusement.”

  “No, Your Majesty!”

  “I warn you: If you are playing a game with me, I’ll know it—if not tonight, tomorrow. I’ll consult certain magical beings, who will tell me so. As it is, I feel a certain uneasiness . . . but it might be attributable to nerves. I have never bedded a fairy before, or one with fairy blood. I am aquiver with excitement! I have always wanted to despoil one of the creatures and this is as close as I shall come until I can catch one of the few remaining fairies.”

  “Your Majesty,” Constantine said, clear-eyed, his whole mind playing the role perfectly, in case of psychic probe, �
�you may look into my heart with all your arts, if you like, to see if I am deceiving you.” It was a risky bluff, but Constantine was counting on the King’s impatience.

  “No, no, that would take preparation and I wish to be at it. Very well. You shall enter the room without me for a few minutes only. Then I must be about my wedding night.”

  Constantine bowed and entered the room, closing the door. He immediately began droning loudly in the few random Gaelic words he knew. The King, he had ascertained, spoke many languages, but Gaelic was not one of them. “Erin go Bragh!” he cried, stomping about the room. “Ní cleas é go ndéantar trí huaire í!.” Kit had taught him that one: It isn’t a trick till it’s done three times.

  It was a circular room, with a circular bed in the midst of it. The oaken headboard was a semicircle carved with images of the King, and topped with a wooden five-pointed crown. At the center of the headboard was a scowling, puffy-cheeked face, which looked carved of the wood itself, until one looked closer and saw its eyes moving, following Constantine about the room. To either side of this face were its arms, the fingers twiddling, ever so slightly, with the tedium of its life.

  The new queen, Her Majesty Maureen the First, was sitting at the mirror at the other end of the room, brushing her hair and now and then wailing in Gaelic, as if doing her part of the ritual.

  Constantine noticed a table near the bed on which stood a decanter filled with mead and two goblets.

  He crossed to Maureen, bent close to her ear, and whispered, “Set to a great caterwauling now, and then sing a song in Gaelic, any song, to cover up the talk I’ve got to make with the imp.”

  She nodded and began, so piercingly he clapped his hands over his ears and grinned at her.

  He crossed to the imp in the headboard, sitting down on the edge of the bed, leaning back on his elbow, looking it in its wooden eyes. Wooden they were but mobile, just as its face, the scowl deepening, seemed flexible, as if hard wood had softened to the constancy of flesh.

  “Look here, mate,” Constantine said, “you and me’ve got to talk.”

  “Do you speak to me?” the creature said in Latin. “I don’t understand your language.”

  Constantine repeated his opening gambit in Latin, going on in that language: “I’m John Constantine, friend of imps everywhere.”

  “I have never heard of you. What is it you wish? A boon? You shall not have it, because if I do aught but the King’s bidding, he’ll throw me into a fire. And since I am not wooden truly and yet I am, because of his magic, I will burn forever, never consumed, always suffering!”

  “Oh, the cruel irony of it!” Constantine said, clucking his tongue sympathetically. “It’s your sort who should be subjecting his kind to torments in Hell, but here you are afraid to be burned in his Hell!”

  “Too true! it is good to have a little sympathy; for centuries I’ve been here, with no freedom to move about, no diversion but watching him spasticate with his wenches . . .”

  “How difficult it must have been not to laugh at the ridiculous expressions on his face!”

  “It is as if you were there!” the imp said, sulkily. “But if I mock him, he plays a flame about on my face, for a while!”

  “It’s a wonder you can bear such cruelty,” Constantine observed, in wonder, shaking his head.

  “What choice have I?”

  “Are you willing to take a chance in the hopes you might at last be set free? If you are, I believe I can provide you with a real hope. You can be set free! You have only to do one thing for me, or more precisely, choose to do nothing for the King, for one night, and I will remove him from power! Once he is rendered null, I will be free to cast a spell and set you free from your wooden prison!”

  “What! Do you take me for a fool? You would never return to set me free!”

  “Do you know the Oath to the Depths of Hell?”

  “Do I know it? My spawn-kin helped write it!”

  “Then you know that if I speak it I am bound! I will speak the Oath and will set you free or suffer the consequences—immediate banishment to the uttermost depths of Hell!”

  “But how do I know you have the power to render the King’s power over me null?”

  Constantine sighed. Then he leaned closer and spoke for two full minutes, naming names he had encountered in his journeys to Hell, speaking names of power, extolling the secrets of the Hidden World. He had to hurry; he could sense the King growing impatient, even as Maureen, still chanting, was growing hoarse. She threw in every Gaelic phrase she’d learned from her mother: “Ná a glac pioc comhairle gan comhairle ban!” she cried. Never take advice without a woman’s guidance.

  “Only a true magician could know such things,” the imp admitted, as Constantine ended his recital of the Hidden World’s secrets. “I will take the chance; at least burning forever in his furnaces would be a change!”

  “Good. You have only to do nothing when the queen steals something from his person. Do not wake him, do not touch her . . .”

  “Hmmm . . . normally I would be required to seize her about the neck and throttle her, while alerting the King. One of the few aspects of the job I enjoy. However, I’ll hold off this time. If you give me the Oath!”

  Constantine spoke the Oath, which cannot be repeated, even in print, without he who unlawfully repeats it vanishing from the world in a jet of sulfurous flame.

  The imp in the headboard nodded. “So be it.”

  Constantine signaled Maureen; she ran to the decanter and poured the tasteless sleeping potion into the cup etched with the King’s crown, then filled both cups with mead.

  “Constantine!” the King shouted, from outside the door. “I have waited long enough! I ache for relief!”

  “Erin go Bragh!” Constantine shouted, again. “There, ’tis done!” He strode to the door and flung it triumphantly open. “Your Majesty, I take my leave! My task is done! The room is cleared of baleful influences! Your queen awaits; the blossom will open to the bee!”

  “Yes, yes, begone with you!”

  Constantine bowed and left the King alone with Maureen. The door was closed behind him. He took two steps, then stopped in the hallway, chewing a knuckle and looking back at the door, where a guard had taken up position.

  What if the King thought it suspicious that she offered him a drink the moment he arrived? Like all long-lived Kings, he was a suspicious man.

  But the die had been cast. He walked onward, around a corner, and stopped to wait.

  Within the bridal chamber, the King was approaching his new queen with a wolfish smile, his youth, so powerfully restored at this hour, burgeoning, aching to express itself in the most direct way possible.

  His new queen turned to him, smiling, her eyes shining—tears of joy!—and offered him his goblet, already brimming with mead. His smile faded as he looked at the glass. She’d been alone in here with this glass. Suppose the witch had slipped poison in it?

  He looked at the imp in the headboard. “Well?”

  The imp shook its wooden head and said, in Latin: “She put nothing in the goblet, Your Majesty. It is quite safe to drink.”

  The King nodded, grinned, and took the goblet. He drank a great deal in one draught, and then set the glass down and took a step toward her. “Now, my dear, let us have few preliminaries. I am only young for a portion of the day. I am like a steel sword under my clothing already, just looking at you . . .”

  Maureen blew him a kiss, but took a coy step back. “It excites me to gaze at Your Majesty; if I might just fill my eyes with your glory for a few moments—”

  “Come, my dear, you’re stalling! No need to be shy, you are no virgin, and so much the better. I value experience!”

  She crawled onto the bed. “Perhaps I might strike a pose for Your Majesty, to heighten your excitement!”

  “And enough of this ‘Your Majesty’ business, except when we are in public. Call me lain, my dear! I am only a King, after all, because I seized power here. And that power I would sh
ow you—when I seize you!”

  And as he said it he made a grab for her—a rather clumsy one, as the potion was beginning to affect him despite his supernatural vitality. Maureen slipped from his grasp, rolled away, but he lunged and caught her, clasped her to him, fumbling at her.

  Turning her face, she let his hands wander across her bum, up her back . . . and then his eyes crossed as the drug claimed him and he fell back onto the bed, out cold, instantly snoring. “Dochtúir na sláinte an codladh!” she muttered. Health’s doctor is sleep. And the imp in the headboard chortled in malicious delight.

  She drew the chain, with its keys, from around the King’s neck, as Constantine had instructed her, conceding it in the bosom of her dress. Then she picked up the royal goblet and went to the door, opened it, and smiled winsomely at the Fallen Roman standing guard, doing her best Marilyn Monroe imitation.

  She spoke the words in Latin, as Constantine had taught her. “The King wishes you to have a drink, to celebrate his wedding! And then, if he is of a mind . . . well, you know how free he is with his queens.”