Lawyers in Hell

by Morris, Janet

  He was lying on his back, this he knew for certain. He kept blinking, trying to clear his vision, struggling to see something beyond the blazing light. Then the moaning and groaning began again, guttural and wordless. His eyes hurt. His mouth hurt. His whole face hurt. His chest hurt. He touched his hand to his breast and felt a gaping wound. Then the light streamed even brighter.

  Someone said, “Lysicles the Athenian. Put him with his kind, in Erebos,” just before knowingness left him, scourged away by the bright white light until something huge and dark ate up all the brightness – until all that was left was pain and dark.

  Erebos?

  Then he wakes once again. His eyes, his mouth, his chest hurt. He is wounded. Now he can see blurred shapes, a crossroads. So is this Erebos on the shores of the Styx? He blinks and blinks again.

  Is this Erebos, in the realm of Hades, amid the shadows between the world of the living and the world of the dead? Is this the crossroads where three roads meet: the road to Tartaros; the road to Asphodel; and the road to Elysion? If it is, souls are sent here to be judged and set on their deserved paths: to Tartaros, whence there is no return and no relief; to Asphodel’s meadows, where stricken heroes wander who remember name and fame only by drinking blood; or to the fields of honor on the isle of Elysion, where bliss and loved ones wait.

  But he remembers. Lysicles has already been judged, in New Hell: the fearsome Erra and his Seven, peerless champions, have eaten his damned eyes, his tongue, and his heart and sent him here to Hades, half blind, half dumb and too weak to stand, with a hole where his heart should be.

  He remembers more. For many days he languished, healing from his wounds. How long? He doesn’t know. His eyes came back (slowly, so slowly) and he could see ever more clearly the shadows of Erebos in which he now dwelt. His tongue came back, itching and burning, hard to control as it grew anew, until he could drink better and eat; then mumble, then mutter, then speak. His heart came back, thumping and thrumming in his chest, though his pulse still bumped and blood rushed in his ears whenever he tried to stand.

  So he bided there, time uncounted, between the pool of Lethe, where common souls drink to erase all memory, and the pool of Mnemosyne, where initiates of the Mysteries drink their memories back into their heads. Sad souls came to tend him, blank-faced and shrouded.

  Then someone brought him water from the pool of Memory.

  “Drink this, brave Athenian,” she said. Her gaze spun him breathless when she met his eyes.

  Should he know her? Did he know her? She held out a bowl.

  He drank, though it was hard with his tongue yet a stump. She resembled Hecate, goddess of the crossroads and magic, but why would mystic-eyed Hecate, far-darting genius of the underworld, take notice of Lysicles among all these dead – only one more burnt-out wraith of a mortal?

  Still, he thinks it is she.

  “Thank you, Blessed One,” he mumbles with his stump of a tongue, carefully humble before this spirit of the dead who stoops to tend him.

  And having drunk, Lysicles recollects himself completely, all that he had been, all that he had done while alive: he had kept to his oaths; he had kept his soul clean and pure, as Homer advised, and never let his heart be defiled by the taint of evil and venality. Never. Before his eyes flashes all that had happened to him in life, and why: how he had been tried in Athens and executed for the treason of rashness while his commanding general, Chares, went free.

  When he looked up, the spirit with the bowl was gone. He was alone, sitting among those souls who staggered where Homer said the dead would go, “down the dank moldering paths and past Ocean’s streams, past the White Rock and the Sun’s Western Gates and past the Land of Dreams….”

  Fury flooded him, bringing him strength. His heart pounded harder and he got to his knees, then to his feet, and stood wavering there. Nevertheless he stood: naked and ravaged but upright. He was a soul in Hades, not a war casualty, not a corpse. He had a second chance to win salvation and be reunited with his beloveds in Elysion. Forever.

  Erra and the Seven had audited his appeal and sent him here. Lysicles would never forget Erra, the god of pestilence and mayhem, appraising him. He would never forget Erra’s personified weapon, pitiless warrior with that molten gaze, who carved out his eyes, his tongue, his heart, killing him yet again. Nor would he ever forget the guilty looks of his counsels, Hammurabi and Draco, when sentence was passed. Or Alexander of Macedon, holding Lysicles while he was being mutilated, or old Aristotle, averting his face; or the new-dead soldier, Lawrence, muttering a prayer in Arabic and calling on a god that would not, or could not, help a Greek general having his eyes put out by one of Erra’s seven Sibitti, terrifying sons of heaven and earth.

  All that was his past. From it, he would make his future. If he passed whatever tests lay before him, he might return to the arms of his beloved wife, his sons, his eromenoi.

  But first Lysicles will find Chares, rapacious betrayer, and exact his due. And then he will find Alexander of Macedon, and cut out the eyes and tongue and heart of his enemy. And then he will find Hammurabi and Draco and discuss this pound of flesh he’d paid to the auditors from Above. His counsels had failed in their roles as Lysicles’ advocates: the Babylonian had done him no good, no matter how much Akkadian and Sumerian claptrap he understood; Draco was little better, full of himself and the iron taste of logic run amok. If those two lawmakers had succeeded, Lysicles would be with his loved ones now, not staggering around Erebos, trying to see, trying to speak, trying to heal.

  Hell is different for each soul, he well knows. Few escape eternal torment. But here, in the brightest part of Hades’ dim and shadowy day, he can glimpse redemption: the isle of Elysion beckons, green and gleaming on the horizon, close enough that it seems to Lysicles he could swim for it, strike out across the mouth of the Styx, across Ocean … when he was a little stronger. Between him and Elysion and his loved ones remains only the repair of his soul’s flesh, and eluding or convincing those who tend the dead here in Erebos.

  But first, he is hungry for revenge. Wrath consumes him. Somewhere in Hell, Chares and the others who have wronged him are hiding. Somewhere here, Chares waits, with his unbridled lusts and his dishonest heart. Somewhere….

  *

  Erra and the Seven, peerless champions, have brought pestilence and mayhem to the Ten Courts of Hell in Diyu laying low all ten Yama Kings who rule Diyu’s endless dark mazes, spreading incessant torture and confusion as the Chinese gods prescribe. They have brought an unquenchable conflagration to Jahannam, where Allah sends the unfaithful to suffer their due, boiling in water and roasting in flames. They have visited upon bleak Helheim a deadly cold, spreading faster than Norsemen can run, freezing souls in their tracks as they flee. In each of these realms, the torture of the damned follows the mandate from Above: they suffer, they die; they are resurrected, only to suffer more and die again and be resurrected again. Wails of misery rise up to the heavens. Erra and his Seven are made glad.

  It is good to be Erra, bringing punishment to the deserving. He and his seven Sibitti, terrifying weapons, sons of heaven and earth, are justly pleased. Hell’s mandate is made fierce and shining like the sun, wherever they bring the righteous wrath of the heavens to the unrighteous.

  All this time, red-winged Kur, lord of Ki-gal, and his Kigali boy have guided them unerringly from one region of the netherworld to the next. Wherever they have gone, Almighty Kur has kept his promise: Hell’s every door has opened unto them; no underworld has escaped their withering glances, their fire, their ice, their torrents, their lightning, their yawning chasms, their pestilential breath. And all this time, Kur’s eromenos, Eshi, watches wide-eyed but never says a word, while his black Kigali skin blooms red with angry blotches and he holds tight to his mentor’s long-nailed hand, his spiky tail lashing, wings unfurled.

  Now the fear of heaven pervades the manifold settlements of hell, and loosens the bowels of those rulers of underworlds become too pleasant, and haunts t
he nights of the too-complacent damned. All in hell quake in their places and in their beds.

  So when they have finished their audit in the city of Pandemonium, when no stone remains unturned, no smile upon any face, Erra and the fearsome Seven are ready to quit the chastised city and return to Ki-gal for the night, satisfied, their bellies full of the flesh of tortured souls.

  Then a tremor not of Erra’s making shakes the ground. Snow begins to fall from the fiery vault overhead. Clouds of white snow and yellow snow and black snow and brown snow obscure the light from Above.

  Erra’s Seven draw their swords and crane their necks, seeking out a target, shaking back their cowls. These are his personified weapons, unrivaled and eager: battle alone brings life to them; they are grinning.

  Out of the blowing snow comes a cold that rivals any cold that might issue from the swords of his Seven, a cold that could freeze a doomed soul to ice. And out of that cold comes a howling to curdle blood.

  Aloft, a winged shadow soars, then dives from the snowy sky, whirling and churning and beating the air. Now feathered wings tuck tight. Down hurtles a huge and monstrous creature, with a tail and fangs and breath of fire. It is flanked by others of its kind, descending on its right and on its left: a dozen more winged serpents, falling fast. All these land on the snow beside the greatest of their number, whose eyes are huge and fierier than the eyes of the second of the Seven.

  The Seven surround Erra and Kur and his Kigali boy in a circle, protective and threatening, their teeth bared, their swords sparkling and sparking and slitting the air, promising doom to whoever comes close.

  The Kigali boy whispers, “Almighty Kur, what are they? They are like us but not like us….” Kur says, “Hush, Eshi. Be you still.” And the Kigali boy wraps his tail around Kur’s strong left arm.

  Then the greatest of the feather-winged serpents gnashes its fangs and closes eyes that burn like stars in the night. Its huge wings bate.

  Within the circle of the seven terrifying weapons from heaven, Kigali wings bate as well.

  Snow swirls round the thirteen winged serpents with their flaming breath. When the blizzard clears, one feather-winged man and twelve winged serpents confront them. The man’s arms are crossed, his face like doom.

  “It’s a cold day in hell, Erra, and here I am. What do you think you’re doing here? We’ve asked no help from such as you.”

  Behind this first man, the other serpents now change form, into naked and wide-winged men, godlike but rent, with bloody wounds and blisters on their skin.

  “Who are you, to question me, who have come from Above with my Seven on a mission from the elder gods?” Erra asked, though he knew full well who faced him – and hoped to face him down – on this snowy day in hell, on the plain between Pandemonium and Arali, where Irkalla, Babylonian goddess of the dead, rules her underworld.

  “I am Satan, and your audits have so terrified the damned that they destroyed New Hell’s Hall of Injustice, where I made my home. Now what have you to say? What compensation am I due?”

  “Compensation? None. This inconvenience is your due. Be thankful it’s not worse. My audit finds you full of blame; as a lord of hell, you’re sorely lacking. If you are Satan, and these your pets among the fallen angels, then get thee back, all of you abominations, before I loose my weapons. As for your home: in six days, six hours, and six minutes from the moment of its destruction, you made that building rise anew – or so we heard – entombing all the tortured souls lamenting their lost brethren there. So I say again: get thee back, Satan, before we add you and yours to those trapped within the foundations of that diabolic hall, to reign from there forever. And I can do it: I am Erra, and you know I will make good my word.”

  It worked. The abominations gave back one step, then two: all but Satan, who held his ground. He reached down and made a snowball with his hands, and cupped it, and straightened up again. Now was Satan beautiful, as beautiful as a man can be, almost angelic with his white-feathered wings. And the snowball between his palms was white and black and yellow and brown and did not melt.

  Erra’s Seven stepped back as well, while the swords in their hands made arabesques in the chilly air.

  The Kigali boy sneezed.

  Satan turned his blazing gaze on the two Kigali: “You mix in this, you natives from the tribe of hell, you sons of Ki-gal? Why?”

  “It is my honor to serve the higher heavens,” said Kur. “We guide the auditors whither they goeth, from one hell to the next. Not simply your realm, but all realms here are being visited by auditors from Above. This, Satanic Majesty, you well know. So take up your displeasure not with me and mine, but with these, and the gods who sent them here – and sent you here.”

  Satan cast his icy-crusted snowball then, hard and fast, toward the circle of the Seven, toward the Almighty Kur and his Kigali boy. But the second of Erra’s Seven sliced upward with his arcing sword and split the snowball in half. Then blue-white lightning crawled over the halves before they could hit the ground, melting them.

  Satan raised a perfect eyebrow and said: “Keep out of my realm, Erra. And you Seven: be warned. I am supreme here in hell. I have the most souls of all. During only a single century on earth, one-hundred sixty million souls who died in new-dead wars have come to me. I have power rivaling all of heaven: my souls believe in damnation. How many souls believe in salvation anymore?”

  Erra puffed himself up, discarding his aspect of a man, and nearly scraped the snowy vault with his conical crown. And he said, “Enough souls to fill heaven with joy and celebration from end to end, despised one, and all of them deplore you. Get you back to your realm, and stay there, lest we decide that you and your horde of outcasts deserve more personal attention.” Oh, do defy me, lord of the latter-day hells. Give me cause to eat your eyes and eat your forked tongue and eat your blackened heart. Your stench repels me….

  “So say you, Erra. We shall see whose word reigns supreme.” But Satan did not make himself great to meet Erra on the field of spirit battle. Rather he shriveled back into his serpentine form and flapped his feathered wings wordlessly, taking flight. And all his fallen angels rose and followed him into the snowy clouds above.

  The snow clouds disappeared. The cold retreated. The fiery vault flared bright, then dimmed. Distant howls split the air, receding. Erra resumed his manly form and looked around.

  The eyes of Erra’s weapons were streaming tears as the Seven scanned overhead for treachery from Satan’s retreating band of devils. Almighty Kur held his Kigali youth tightly under one wing.

  “Sheathe your swords, Sibitti,” said Erra. His weapons obeyed his command. “Turn loose your eromenos, Almighty Kur. The danger now is past.”

  Kur did not release the Kigali boy forthwith, but said, “Erra, we are here to serve. But Eshi has had a long day and seen many wonders, your glory not least of those. Will you return to Ki-gal with us now, you and your brave Sibitti, and leave the remaining nether regions unchastened till the morrow?”

  “We shall, of course, Almighty Kur – but only because your Kigali boy is tired.”

  Kur had given Erra a graceful exit, and Erra was pleased to take it. Otherwise, he and the Seven might have felt the need to labor in the underworlds all night long – to prove to Satan that Erra and his weapons from on high were not afraid of any fallen angels, no matter how high in the heavens they once dwelt.

  *

  “I need to know something, godly Erra. Who judges you?” Eshi’s voice is bold and strong.

  Kur almost shudders, wishing Eshi had not spoken, then chides himself: Eshi is here to learn. So Kur says nothing to forefend what must come next, but continues walking among the Seven with Eshi close beside him, lashing his spiky tail.

  “My judge is God alone.”

  “But which god? God of what?” Eshi’s black wings rustle; he rubs his arms with his hands as they march along, two by two, toward the crossroads at Erebos. In front is Erra, god of pestilence and mayhem, with the first of his S
even by his side; then Kur and Eshi; then the second of the Sibitti and the rest of Erra’s champions, on the dusty road to yet another judgment.

  “God of what? God of all gods. God the highest.” Erra’s voice rumbles up from deep in his chest. The first of the Seven, walking beside Erra, looks around at Kur and his Kigali boy, catches Kur’s eyes, and shakes his head.

  Kur must intercede. Eshi has seen so much, so fast, he is taut as a bowstring. His downy black skin is blotched with red, aprickle with new quills sprouting – more every day. This youth’s blood is quickening too fast.

  “Quiet, Eshi. Enough. We fear neither gods nor men. We assist godly Erra, but we do not pry into the affairs of the damned and their keepers.”

  “But Almighty Kur, I need to understand what we’re doing here and why –”

  Kur can still glimpse the shimmer of Eshi’s innocence out of the corner of his eye, but he knows it is fading. And not just because the second of the Sibitti hunts red-tails with Eshi every evening in the glow of the mountain’s restive peak and gives him warm carcasses to rend and tear with his sharp white teeth. “No, Eshi,” Kur says very softly, “you don’t need to understand the affairs of men and gods. Whatever Erra and his Seven decree is what will be.” He reaches for Eshi and once again takes the boy under his strong left wing. He can feel Eshi’s body trembling: the war of child against adult is raging inside him. At this time, Eshi should be meditating, hunting, gaining surety about who and what he is; finding his place in Ki-gal, taking up the life that Kur has made for him. Not wandering among dead souls struggling against their fates like lizards in traps.

  “But great Kur, you have taught me to question. You have taught me this is how Kigali learn. Now I must learn about Hades and about Erebos: we will soon be there. Will I see Lysicles the Athenian? Erra sent him there. Will we see him again? Will we?”