“There are clouds in the underworld?” Lucia asked herself quietly.
“No.” Caio somehow heard her. “This is the plane between the surface and Lord Danato’s underworld.”
Their voices rang thin and hollow, as if there were no souls behind them. Their speech was nearly drowned out by moaning whispers carried on the winds.
Tall, craggy mountains surrounded the royal daughter and son as they stood in the center of a great basin. Their bare feet chafed against the cracked floor and those winds—hot, biting, full of steam—forced them to keep their cream robes wrapped closely around their sensitive spiritual bodies.
“Danato’s Lighthouse.” Lucia pointed to the structure beneath the clouds.
Just ahead of them, the harsh ground became a polished natural floor. Close to the distant mountains ahead, Danato’s fabled lighthouse literally glided around the smooth surface while the dark clouds followed it.
“It is winding across this plain like a snake,” Lucia said.
“We must speak respectfully of him.”
A surprising wave of static raised the hairs on their bodies. Lucia looked to her brother and he mirrored her look of indecision. Their eyes looked uncharacteristically tiny, as if squinting at some distant mirage.
Caio reached out to hold his sister’s hand and they set off toward the mythologized portal. She slipped on the strange surface first; his balance supported her. He slipped next; her steadiness grounded him. They shuffled onward with their arms wrapped around each other’s backs and approached the sliding structure. Its means of entrance: a swinging, dilapidated, black wooden door.
“We’ll have to run to catch it,” she said.
“I’m ready.” Caio sounded certain. He pulled her forward.
Caio and Lucia stumbled ahead together, holding each other upright. He leapt over the few crumbling steps, through the door, and Lucia followed him as they squeezed into the dark vestibule.
Dim rays of light from outside revealed a much heavier door in front of them, one reinforced by tall bands of steel and decorated with round obsidian gems. It blocked the only way forward. Carved into it were the following words in the ancient script:
Truth is the only therapy.
“Shall we?” Caio asked.
Her eyes darted downward and sideways before she nodded.
Caio pressed the lever atop the rusty handle and pushed. The metallic hinges produced an echoing screech and another tiny room opened in front of them, this one crowded by musty texts lining shelves along the side walls. Lucia coughed painfully, a sound almost like vomiting.
“Don’t touch,” she paused to hack up rancid air, “even one book.”
Caio nodded and pulled her behind him. “I remember.” His Truth can only be found through direct experience.
Two paces ahead, an open archway framed their view of the main room in Danato’s Lighthouse. They stepped forward into the tall space. Spiraling, moss-coated stone steps led up to the lookout. Pale green limestone tiles covered most of the curving walls. The eerie wind whispered from the windows of the level above. On the opposite side of the room, almost behind the stairs, lay a man-sized circular hatch in the floor.
“The myths tell us we should go directly downward,” Caio said. Without hesitation, he stepped around the stairwell and pulled up the rotting wood by its metallic curved handle. The nether world exhaled from below, hot air like a pent-up cry.
“We must go, with open spirits, willing to meet whatever he presents to us,” Caio said.
Lucia crouched at the edge of the hole and held her brother’s gaze. “I’ll go first. Please stay close to me.”
With no wall or ladder to grasp under the hatch, Lucia lowered her legs into the circular maw and fell in. Her body disappeared in the darkness and Caio followed.
Down.
Chapter 38: The Curse of Memory
LUCIA PLUMMETED, swinging her arms around, hoping to grab onto something to break her fall. She found only darkness.
Panic.
“Caio!” she screamed. The sound became muffled in the suffocating black. It felt as if her stomach might fly through her throat.
“Someone help me!” she cried with long syllables as hot air rushed through her hair.
Ignored.
Lucia plunged and spun faster. The force overwhelmed her muscles. She couldn’t control her arms.
Her shaking lips managed to mouth, “No,” but only produced a squeak.
Breakdown.
Tears flew from her face.
With only a small part of her spirit intact, she waited for it to end.
Impact. Submersion.
Water!
A flesh-like weight pushed her down. She felt suffocated.
I will not surrender! You’ll kill me first.
The water surged beneath her and pushed her straight up. She began hitting objects as she rose—bodies?—and threw her arms over her face in disgust. Her head emerged above the surface with a howling gasp, sucking in the putrid, sulfuric air. More impenetrable darkness met her eyes, though her wits began to return.
“Do you wish to see, Lucia?” Lord Danato’s voice rumbled from above and to her left, calm and patient.
You want conversation?
“Let me know when you wish to begin.”
Lucia swam instead, away from the sound of his voice. Almost immediately, she had to push a lifeless body away from her now naked flesh.
“Haven’t you come to see me, my dear Lucia?”
Damn you! “Where is my brother?”
“What if dead? And floating near you?”
Her jaw clenched and she glared upward in his direction, her mind thinking of the goddess Ysa and the prayers she could make to her.
“Ysa will not help you here. My sister would not invade my realm, nor act against me. You do not yet understand that the gods are one.”
“Where is he?”
“Caio’s body is here.” The Black One paused. “You will have to find him.”
“I can’t see anything!”
“Do you wish to see, Lucia? After all this time?”
A long silence followed, save for drops of water dripping onto the dark sea. Judging by the sounds, the body of water extended out a great distance, all around her.
“What I want is to find my brother. Then we will ask what can be done to save our people from this war and plague. I am talking about your people, we who honor you, the people of Rezzia.”
“Do you honor me, Lucia? Then tell me how.” Lord Danato’s voice still bellowed from a towering height.
“When have you ever honored me?” she asked.
“I have always honored you.”
You are vile.
“Do you wish to see, Lucia?”
“Fine! If that is the only way. Yes.”
Hundreds of torches lit the air like fireflies and floated high and low, animated by an unseen force. A sea of corpses floated in the black ocean. Lucia spun about, her legs ready to give out and her skin still throbbing from the impact. She looked into so many pale, empty faces. Thousands of corpses, once Rezzian soldiers, surrounded her—women and children, too.
A sheer cliff loomed before her, stretching into the darkness. At the ledge of a cave high up the rocky surface, massive Lord Danato knelt on one knee and looked down upon her with eyes highlighted by the orange teardrop on his cheek.
“Where is Caio?” Her hysteria began to return.
“Why don’t you find him?”
“There are too many bodies! Where is he?”
“If he is dead, does his body matter? What will you do next? What will you feel?”
I’d bloody kill you if I could.
“Can you raise him from the dead?”
Curse you! You know the answer to that.
“I gave you the markings. You bear the power.”
“I want nothing to do with your gifts!”
“Could you be a Haizzema?”
“No!”
�
�Could you heal the children?”
Lucia almost punched herself as her hands flew to the sides of her head in frustration.
“Could you end the war?”
Shut your mouth!
“What lies beneath your rage, Lucia?”
“More!”
“And beneath that?”
“More!”
And beneath that?”
“Bloody more and more! Bloody gods damn more!”
“And that is why you suffer.”
“Do you know how much I despise you?”
“Any emotion toward me is better than none, my daughter. It brings us closer together. I have long watched over you for my sister. Before your mother died, Ysa asked me to take care of you.”
Lucia wrapped her arms around her head and tried to exhale her insanity.
“You do not see. You do not know how I have loved you.”
“You are a liar,” she mumbled.
“And now Caio is gone. Haven’t you always been afraid he would die, just as your mother left you?”
“Do not. Speak again. About my mother.”
“She was your everything, Lucia.”
“Shut your mouth!”
“What did you feel when you saw me standing over her? Do you remember?”
I loathe you.
“What did you feel? Was it like your feeling now that Caio is gone?”
“You’d better kill me before you take Caio,” her voice became weak and pleading. “He is not tired of this life. He has not yet begun to heal this world.”
“Why don’t you heal this world?”
Curse you, you vile bastard!
“You could do it.”
“Bring Caio back.”
“For once, you should consider my words, Lucia.”
“What can I do to appease you?”
“Lucia, this is the way. The way is in your heart.”
“Then tell me.”
“Openness. Honoring me.”
“Tell me what I need to do.”
“You are doing it.”
“What?”
“It is in your heart now.”
“I only know that I need to find my brother and we need your help to end this war.”
“Good.”
“What else can I do?”
“Come to me, Lucia. Your subservience pleases me.”
Chapter 39: Heat
CAIO PUSHED HIMSELF off the edge and dropped through the hole into the darkness. After falling a short distance he crashed onto a moist, clay floor, falling forward onto his hands and knees. The pitch black felt like some kind of oven. He felt a sizzling steam wash over his body, bringing with it the scent of mugwort. The environment was, at best, a sauna. At worst, inhospitable.
“Lucia?” Caio’s lungs burned as the hot air entered them. He crawled, extending his hands looking for her body. “Lucia?” The silence lingered as it would in a vast cavern. “Are you all right?”
His intuition told him she was somewhere else, even though she had jumped into the same pit a moment before him.
I am praying for you, Lucia.
Caio dropped onto his stomach and stretched out his legs, pressing every available part of his body against the cooler floor to escape from the heat. Even this low to the ground, the air burned so much it hurt to breathe.
I could die here.
I could pass out and die.
The war would go on without me. The plague would continue to spread.
And I wouldn’t have to kill another man or watch another person die from disease …
No.
Please help me, Lord Danato.
A thin beam of light shone from far away and with it came strange sounds. Caio crawled toward the light with sweat streaming into his eyes. He tried wiping his forehead with his arms, but they too were drenched. The scalding heat and burning in his lungs lessened as he pushed on. A brief look backward still revealed no other light and no way back up to the lighthouse.
The sound eventually became clearer. Some kind of raucous gypsy tune played near the light, which looked increasingly like the outline of a door. Behind it, stringed instruments and drums were being played at a frantic pace, unlike any music Caio had ever heard.
Caio stopped crawling and turned an ear toward the tiny door. Voices. Hollering. Eruptions of joy. Noises like animals would make—but these are men and women.
Please be here, Lucia.
Caio hesitated in front of the door. The temperature was still uncomfortably hot, though more manageable now.
Behind the door, a fiddle screeched to a crowd with hands clapping in rhythm. Women shouted, but with ecstasy. A deep sound boomed over and over behind the frenzied music, the passionate thumping of a long, thick string.
Bright light streamed from the edges of the door. Bodies seemed to be dancing on the other side. Caio felt the door and discovered wet, coarse stone. He nudged it slightly open and the overpowering scent and taste of alcohol overwhelmed him, like a cloth soaked in red wine and dragged across his nose and lips.
His feet, he found, were tapping to the beat. The music—sultry, bouncing, pounding—grew louder. On the other side of the door, he anticipated finding an unchaste celebration. The door opened after a firm shove from his shoulder, revealing thousands dancing to the band of musicians playing on a tall wooden stage.
The instruments stopped all at once and a tan woman with long, curling blond-brown hair began humming a deep, seductive melody. Her red lace dress barely covered her supple breasts and no part of her shoulders. Tattoos of branches and leaves wrapped around her biceps in a narrow band.
The singer looked directly at Caio as she sang, though no one else seemed to notice him. The crowd kept dancing, acting crazed. The women wore scanty dresses and low-cut shirts. Their chests and thighs bounced and flexed. The men wore no shirts at all.
These denizens of the underworld won’t know me, will they?
The warm air reeked of alcoholic spirits and human sweat. Caio drifted through the crowd looking for Lucia, but the farther he went in, the harder it became to get through. He wanted to go past the musicians, but as he approached the stage the bodies were more densely packed.
Without warning, a hairy man put his hands against Caio’s face and shoved him sideways. Caio tripped and began to fall, but two full-bosomed women held him up by pressing their bodies against him. Before he could pull away, the darker of the two women put her mouth around his ear and pushed her tongue into it. As he turned to tell her to stop, the fair-skinned woman grabbed his cheeks and kissed his lips.
“You’re such a beautiful boy!” the lighter woman said in a thick accent Caio didn’t recognize. She pressed her heavy body against him and rested her hands on his hips.
“Get away!” he cried.
The olive woman’s arm slipped around him from behind, and her firm hand rubbed his chest. Her breasts pressed against his back. She made as much contact as she could against his back and pressed against his buttocks.
The drums began popping and pounding, faster and faster.
Caio tried to remove himself from her strong grip, but other bodies pressed against them, leaving him no room to get away. Both women had him wrapped up and were holding him with surprising strength. The darker woman lowered her arms, dug her elbows into his stomach, and moved her hands up and down his inner thighs.
Caio found himself passive, unable to say no. The bass-stringed instrument slid up and down from higher to lower notes while two mandolin players picked their instruments with expert speed.
They’d managed to pull his cremos off his shoulders and the darker woman somehow yanked it off his arms, leaving him in his undergarments with his robe around his feet.
The women spun him around. He marveled at the glistening skin of the darker-skinned woman as she disrobed. Before Caio could move, she pressed her nude body against him. He pushed against her, trying to break free, but the other woman grabbed his waist from behind and the women kept him upr
ight between them.
He continued to struggle. The larger, darker woman tickled his neck with her snakelike tongue. Shivers ran across his skin. His muscles felt teased and weak. Her mouth jumped to his nipples and bit him. Caio looked away, to the stage, and saw the vocalist staring at him as she wailed.
This is offensive and wrong. It’s madness!
The women squeezed his body between theirs, massaging him along his thighs, chest, and back with their four hands, sliding their bodies against him erotically.
The olive woman turned around again, bent at her waist and leaned forward, and thrust herself back against his pelvis as the first woman undressed him completely. The light-skinned woman held the sides of his chest in her strong hands and restricted his movement from behind.
No one else around them seemed to notice what was happening to him. The bodies in the crowd pressed close to each other as they celebrated the music. Many of them danced passionately, rubbing against each other.
Caio put his hands on the buttocks of the woman in front of him and pulled her against him, rotating his hips.
My gods, forgive me.
Chapter 40: Trust in the Darkness
AN INVISIBLE POWER, one that felt like two large hands, groped at Lucia’s body as it lifted her. Her limbs flailed as she floated, helpless and filled with revulsion. She flew past hovering torches that afforded her a view of the water below. The boundaries of the dark sea could not be seen, but an uncountable number of bodies floated beneath her. Despite an incredible urge to vomit, nothing came up her throat.
Lord Danato’s shadowy form appeared larger and larger as she approached his lair. He stood and stared with unrepentant eyes, his face like coal. Danato’s body was a tower of muscle and black leather. He appeared even larger than he had when she was a child.
Lucia was lowered softly onto the clammy cave floor, one pace away from the black god. She stood and trembled, coming up not even to his knees. His body dripped with either steam or sweat.
“I need Caio.” Her body felt defiled. “How could you even think of harming—”
“Dear Lucia, how will you honor your Lord?” His voice was deeper and more miserable than she remembered.
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