Hellblazer 2 - Subterranean

by John Shirley

  “Here, ‘greedy slugs’? That’s rather an unfair generality,” said Constantine, coming in down below with Maureen and the boys behind him.

  “You dare to come here!” Culley shouted, gazing down at him, amazed. “I should have listened to MacCrawley!”

  “I reckon MacCrawley could be right, once in a while,” Constantine said, lighting the last cigarette in his pack as he sauntered closer to the scaffold. “Not that I’ve checked to see if the moon’s blue lately.” He crumpled up the empty pack and tossed it nonchalantly in the sump.

  “Is it done?” asked Fallesco eagerly, as he hurried into the room beside Geoff and Bosky. “There was pandemonium outside. The palace is dimming; surely his power is diminished?”

  “You!” Culley roared. “Fallesco! You have betrayed me too! Another backstabbing conspirator against me!”

  Fallesco gave his courtliest bow. “Your Majesty flatters me.”

  The King turned to his guards. “Kill Constantine first!” he ordered. A Fallen Roman leveled his weapon.

  “John, they’re aiming a crossbow at you!” Maureen warned him. “Get back!”

  Constantine smiled and held out the magical dagger he’d used in setting the Lord of Stone free. “Advolo flagro!” he shouted, and a spear of flame shot from the blade to consume the crossbow in the soldier’s hand. The soldier yelped and flung the burning crossbow away.

  Maureen was dragging Scofield out of the way, with Bosky and Geoff helping her. The hooded magician groaned. Fallesco helped him to stand. “Lean on me, Magus. We’ll see the surface world yet! How I long to see the sky!”

  “You notice anything, Gloomlord?” Constantine said, blowing a smoke ring, keeping the King’s attention turned toward him. “Your spell suppressing other people’s magic ends with the release of the Lord of Stone! And with the machine down, you’re weak, far weaker than ever before! Don’t you feel it?”

  “You—you have sabotaged my machine!”

  “Me and Balf! You won’t rejuvenate, Culley, and your magic is limper than a eunuch’s John Thomas!”

  “Is it? We’ll see!” Culley began to make magical passes in the air, muttering names of power. His power was ebbing, but he was still a master of ritual magic.

  Constantine turned to Fallesco. “Get them out of here! Wait down that corridor for me, but not if it gets dodgy!”

  Fallesco nodded and took Scofield, Maureen, and the boys out with him as Constantine collected his prana within himself. He felt the King’s enchantment building up in the room, more feebly than it would have before this day, but perhaps strong enough.

  Constantine projected a psychic image at the guard standing closest to Culley; the man began to shriek, seeing a harpy flapping at him, clawing at his face, though none was truly there. He flailed about, knocking into the King. Weakened and off balance, the King lost control of his spell. It went awry, and it was Lord Blung, not Constantine, who was caught up in the enchantment, sucked up into a compressing ball of energy, and then flung shrieking into the cauldron where he vanished in a red gush of steam.

  “No!” Culley shouted, turning to stare into the cauldron. “Blung!” Then he remembered the vial in his hand; he popped the cork from its top and poured the final ingredient into the cauldron.

  The solution reacted instantly. It spouted, geysering up, then commenced roiling furiously within itself . . .

  And the cauldron began to show cracks. It quivered, clearly about to fall apart.

  Constantine looked desperately up at the ceiling and saw that he had delayed the King long enough: Balf had gotten into position. Through the mists Constantine could just make out the troll’s arm reaching down through the hole in the ceiling to the pulley holding the chains attached to the cauldron. With an engineer’s precision he tugged at a cable and swung the pulley around so that it moved away from the sump, toward the stone floor on the side opposite Constantine, and as the cauldron disintegrated, the Universal Solvent fell not on the sump of toxins, but on the shelf of stone beside it. Instantly the solution began to eat through the stone, close to the wall and away from the sump, making an oblong hole that deepened, deepened, the alchemical Solvent sizzling granite away faster than boiling water consuming ice . . .

  “Who has done this thing!” Culley asked, looking at the ceiling.

  Balf’s face showed in the hole, grinning down at him. “Greetings, O ‘King’!” Balf cried, sneering the word King. “Now you will know punishment for enslaving your betters! You shall behold the stampede of Vulcan’s horses!”

  Constantine didn’t care to hang about and find out exactly what Balf meant by Vulcan’s horses. He ran from the room, into the corridor, where Fallesco had been having difficulty keeping Maureen and the boys from going to look for him. “Get out of here!” Constantine shouted at them. “Go!”

  ~

  Balf watched with deepening satisfaction, and Culley watched in enthralled dread, as the Solvent ate its way toward the underlying lava that the troll knew to be only one hundred eighty-five feet under the chamber, beneath the level of the underground river. The shaft cut by the Universal Solvent passed the underground river with eight feet to spare and continued down, down, to the cyst of lava. The magma’s heat neutralized the Universal Solvent, but not before it had opened the way for the molten rock.

  The King was chanting a spell of summoning as a vast rumbling noise, like thousands of horses riding down on them, racketed through the room, and then the magma erupted upward along the shaft cut by the Solvent to burst up in spurts of red and yellow, only to fall back and ooze over the sump, capping it forever. It began to seep out toward the door that Constantine had gone through, on its way engulfing the base of the scaffold, which began to dissolve, collapsing, the soldiers on it tumbling, wailing as they fell to be consumed by the molten rock.

  But the King, concentrating the last of his energy, had levitated and was hovering unsteadily over the lava. Almost panicking, he cried out a series of commands, summoning his harpies, who flew in through the door and lifted him into the air, carrying him out through the tunnel, just above the magma.

  Their claws dug rather forcefully into his shoulders. “Careful you oafs!” he cried to no avail as they went.

  Balf retreated up through the hidden chamber over the sump, down the tunnel that led to the gigantic main cavern containing the darkening palace. Here he found Constantine and friends on a stone balcony, Fallesco, Bosky, and Geoff carrying Scofield between them. Scofield groaned and twitched, still living.

  ~

  Arriving on the parapet, Constantine glanced at the Palace of Phosphor and saw the surviving courtiers lined up on its ramparts, looking at the destruction wrought by the Lord of Stone on the Fallen Romans.

  Fallesco had plucked the arrow from Scofield’s back and leaned him on the stone wall. He muttered inaudibly to himself.

  “Where now, John?” Maureen asked.

  “Uhhh . . . right . . .” He hadn’t quite thought as far as that.

  “What’s to happen to the village?” Geoff asked.

  “It’ll be raised back up already,” Constantine said. “The Lord of Stone gave his word. You can count on him to do as he says. But as for the ones who were taken . . .”

  He turned to Scofield. “What about those the King had working at the cauldron? The people from the village?”

  “They . . .” Scofield licked his lips. He took a deep breath and managed to say, “. . . when they were of no more use, they were—slaughtered. Food for . . . those below . . .”

  “Oh God,” Maureen said, squeezing her eyes shut.

  Bosky put his arm around his mum’s shoulder. “Right. Then we’ve got to get back to the surface.”

  Constantine looked inquiringly at Balf, who nodded. “The tr . . . that is, our Azki-Hak friend will show us the way!”

  But they hesitated upon the parapet, the very one where Bosky had fought, and from which Garth had fallen, gazing in fascination at the palace and the colony of the Fallen
Romans.

  There was little left of the colony. The Lord of Stone was still ravaging through it, up to his knees in rubble and brick and blood and body parts, flinging screaming Fallen Romans through the air, stepping on those who tried to creep away, roaring his hatred.

  “Look!” Geoff shouted, pointing at two harpies flying out through the tunnel opening, carrying the King Underneath between them. “He’s getting away!”

  They could just hear Iain Culley shouting orders at the harpies. They seemed uncertain as to whether to obey him, Constantine thought.

  The Lord of Stone stopped his ravaging and gazed up at the King flying by. And the elemental called out an order to the harpies.

  No longer enslaved to the King except by habit, they responded, doing as the Lord of Stone told them. They flew in opposite directions, one taking Culley’s right arm with it, the other taking his left.

  Spouting blood, Culley fell, his body turning end over end—to be caught by the Lord of Stone. Broken and armless but alive, the King lay groaning in the Lord of Stone’s big granite hands. The giant used his powerful stone fingers to pinch the King’s torn arteries shut. Culley let loose a scream that echoed across the cavern.

  Now, said the Lord of Stone, let us preserve your miserable life . . .

  Constantine thought he knew what the elemental meant by that, and he shuddered as he watched the Lord of Stone carry Culley away, toward the Palace of Phosphor. The great elemental strode to the palace and, as the courtiers scattered before him, he gestured, opening a new fissure in the walls.

  Then the Lord of Stone stepped into the fissure, carrying the King Underneath with him. And they were gone from sight.

  Constantine glanced upward in time to catch the harpies flapping for the higher tunnel entrances, vanishing into them, seeking some covert roosting place where they could resume their ancient sleep.

  “Constantine . . .” Scofield called, weakly.

  Constantine knelt beside him. “Not much I can do, mate; you’re pretty far gone. I’ll try to slow it down.” He stretched out a hand, and emanating a restorative energy into Scofield, muttered a magical spell that might preserve him a while.

  “Just . . . long enough to . . .” Scofield whispered huskily, his eyes seeming to look beyond the stone ceiling, “to . . .”

  “We can linger no more!” Balf declared, picking Scofield up in his arms. He led the way down the stairs and into a tunnel that sloped upward. Constantine paused after Balf, Fallesco, and the others had gone up the tunnel, and looked back to see the magma coursing from the tunnel he’d come through to get to the cavern, spewing and sizzling out over the ruins of the Fallen Romans’ colony. The palace quivered in place and began to fall to pieces, tumbling in on itself. The courtiers on its ramparts howled in a mixture of terror and perverse delight, and died in its wreckage as the lava flowed over their bodies. Then a new fissure opened, deep and wide, the lava pouring down into it to fall all the way, Constantine knew, down to the cavern of the crankers. Their long degradation would be blessedly ended in a quick death.

  “John, come on!” Maureen called back to him.

  Feeling sick, Constantine turned away and hurried up the tunnel.

  16

  . . . AND SUICIDE IS CONFESSION

  In the rejuvenation chamber, Smithson was talking to the mold that had invaded his brain, was telling the mold a story about the time his nanny stuck her finger up his arse, and warned him not to tell his mum, and how . . .

  But who’s this? Visitors?

  The Lord of Stone carried the former King Underneath into the chamber, cradled in his massive left arm like a baby. Nearly as white-faced as his Fallen Romans, now aged the equivalent of about seventy-five, Iain Culley ogled frantically about, looking for egress where there would never be any.

  The room was only dimly lit by crystals in the corners; the purple rays had ceased when the great machine had ceased functioning, and in the dimness the King numbly watched as the Lord of Stone reached to the man trapped in a socket of metal and invasive mold beside Smithson and plucked him out whole, killing him in the process, to the man’s infinite relief. But the growth, like a giant artichoke stuffed with dirty cotton, was still alive around the edges of the vessel, and the Lord of Stone dropped the King into this. Having no arms, he fit quite neatly. The mold instantly sealed up around him, closing off his wounds and penetrating his pores, working its way toward his brain . . .

  The King, realizing what the Lord of Stone was about, screamed and screamed, to no avail.

  The Lord of Stone considered the other men trapped in their vessels, and took pity on all but one of them. He killed them with casual flicks of his fingers.

  Then he went to the contiguous room, where he released MacCrawley from his trap. Go now . . . I have opened a channel for you to reach the surface, there! Enter that fissure, find a tunnel, enter and climb! These rooms I have preserved from the flowing stone, but there will be no other way to escape! Go!

  MacCrawley bowed deeply, taking the opportunity to reach to the floor to grab the little triangle of Constantine’s coat he had cut away, and then rushed hastily to the exit the Lord of Stone had opened for him. He began to climb doggedly toward the surface through a narrow tunnel lit by flecks of phosphorescence on the wall. As he climbed, he had but two thoughts, alternating: Get to the surface. Destroy John Constantine. He thought nothing else.

  The Lord of Stone returned to the rejuvenation chamber, and here he spoke to Iain Culley, the erstwhile Gloomlord, the King no more. This room will by degrees grow darker and darker. You will be Gloomlord indeed!

  “Don’t leave me here!” Culley begged. “Kill me, I beg you!”

  Perhaps if I grow bored, I’ll check on you—in five or six centuries, said the Lord of Stone.

  Then the kingly elemental made a gesture, opening a fissure in the floor, and dropped into it. The fissure closed up behind him. He was gone.

  “No!” screamed the King. “Don’t leave me here!”

  But it was done. The other surviving man gaped at him in idiotic delight. “Hullo, hullo old King old boy! Hullo! I know some songs! I’ll sing you one my Uncle Clive taught me!”

  “Shut up! Shut up, you!” Culley bellowed.

  But Smithson ignored him, as he always would, and began to sing, “It’s a long road, to Tipperary . . .”

  “No no no no! Shut up!”

  But the former Lord Smithson sang to the former King Culley; sang the same song, over and over and over again. And then he sang it some more, and some more after that, and after that some more too, and rather more after that and . . .

  And then he sang it again.

  ~

  “Can it be?” Fallesco asked. “At last I’m to see the sun, the sky! We’re nearly there, I can feel it!”

  “Are we . . . almost to the surface?” Scofield asked weakly as Balf set him down just inside the doorway to the barrow. Sunlight was streaming into the tunnel from outside, and with it came the smell of woods and water and the sounds of birds singing . . .

  “You are there,” Balf said. “Your friends must take you outside. I will return to the realms of my people now, under the mountain range you call the Himalayas. I may yet find another living Azki-Hak. I bid you all farewell.”

  Constantine wanted to shake Balf’s hand, but he was afraid the troll might accidentally crush his fingers. He compromised by nodding. “Ta, mate! Cheers, and good luck finding your kind! They’re out there somewhere!”

  The others thanked the troll and then, hunched over, Balf slipped away down the tunnel, moving with astonishing grace and facility, vanishing into the subterranean darkness.

  “The sun . . . the sky . . .” Scofield groaned. “Please . . . take me outside . . .”

  “Is that you, sor?” came a rusty old voice from without. It was Old Duff.

  He entered the tunnel and helped them carry his master out into the sunlight. He laid him down on a patch of grass, in the shade of a standing stone. “Duff. .
. good old . . . Duff . . .” Scofield said feebly. “Knew you’d be here . . .”

  “Threw the bones, sor! Divined it was here I’d wait and here I am!”

  “Stand aside,” Scofield said croakingly. “Let me see . . .” They moved out of the way, and Scofield gazed up at the blue sky, the clouds. A hawk flew past. “At last, after all these years . . . to see it again . . . to become a part of it . . .” And then his eyelids fluttered and he died.

  Constantine was aware of a moaning near the entrance to the tunnel, and turned to see Fallesco on his knees, face hidden in his hands. “What is it! What is that dreadful thing!”

  Constantine walked over to him. “What dreadful thing?”

  “That burning face above, that ball of fury in the endless blue! It sends arrows into my eyes!”

  “Oh. That’s the sun, mate. You’ve read about it.”

  “But how can you bear it? It’s so fierce, so harsh! It stabs the eyes! It burns the skin!”

  “Well, you’re not to look right at it. Takes some adjusting. That blue there, you take a skeg at that? That’s the sky you wanted to see!”

  “I looked . . . it goes on and on and on! Who could bear it? You might be sucked up into it! And what a color! That giddy blue—a color for infants! And the riot of growths out here, the smells! The shrieking, shrieking of animals!”

  “I don’t hear any screaming—you mean the birds? Just a little singing is all. You’ll get used to it.”

  “No, no!” And shading his eyes with his arm he got up and lurched back toward the entrance to the cave. “I’m going home to the Underlands! I’ll find one of the other kingdoms! Balf! Wait for me! I cannot bear this place! It has no top to it! Balf, wait!”

  There came an answering call, grumpily reluctant, from deep in the tunnel. “Very well, but hurry up, if you must come!”