They were heading to the Carrion.
“Move,” Martin said, his victory suddenly stale. “Back to Harpsborough.”
Chelsea grabbed his arm. “Martin.”
“Yes, Citizen?”
“We’ve got some questions to ask Klein.”
Martin nodded. “Yeah. Yeah we do.”
The march of the dead continued unabated as the Hunters left the room. One thousand. Two thousand. Three. There was no end in sight.
Aaron was right. He was always right. The famine was the calm before the storm.
The doors to Father Klein’s church burst open, slamming against the stone walls of the church. Father Klein himself was seated in a pew, head bowed, praying with three women.
Martin and Chelsea strode in. Father Klein slowly raised his head. For some reason his calm demeanor bothered Martin.
We’ll see how long he keeps that up.
“I need to speak with Father Klein alone,” Martin demanded.
“You’re alive!” one woman exclaimed.
Another stood. “Is Ben okay?”
“I said get out!” Martin shouted.
The women hurried out. Chelsea watched them go and then closed the doors behind them.
Martin and Chelsea advanced on Father Klein. The Father stood up and moved to the pulpit. He picked up a cross and some hellstone rosary beads.
Martin sneered.
That won’t protect you.
Chelsea and Martin walked to the front of the church, looking up at Klein who stood before the pulpit.
Chelsea stepped up onto the raised stage. She was a full head shorter than Klein, but her anger made her seem the fiercer of the two. Martin also mounted the stage.
“Let me see your left arm, Klein.” Chelsea’s voice was cold.
“No sister, I will not.” Klein said. “This is my church, and I—”
“She said to show her your God damned arm!” Martin yelled, his blasphemy echoing out through the church.
Klein drew himself up. “This is a house of God. I will not have you—”
Chelsea’s slap caught him full in the face.
Klein’s hands clenched around the cross, crunching it together with the beads.
Chelsea raised her hand again. “Right now, Father, this isn’t God’s house. At this exact moment, it’s my house. Chelsea’s house. Are we clear?”
Father Klein stared at her, his calm façade broken, his nostrils flaring with his anger.
“Now, Father,” Martin said, dropping a hand to his pistol. “I think you ought to show the lady your arm.”
Father Klein unbuttoned his black shirt. He removed the white piece of cloth from around his collar. He was wearing a dirty wife beater underneath, but it didn’t hide the scarification on his arm. There it was, just like Chelsea had said, a man half encased in rock with his arms pointed upwards.
“We’ve all got things we’re not proud of,” Klein said. “Before the exodus from the Carrion, we were evil. It’s not right for you new people, who haven’t walked those miles, to pass judgment on those of us who did. We all agreed, Charlie, Michael, everyone, that what happened back there was to be forgotten. It’s not to be spoken of in this town. That’s not God’s law, that’s not Klein’s law, that’s Michael’s law.”
What is he talking about?
“No offence, Father,” Chelsea said. “But we’re all in Hell. We already knew you weren’t a priest worth a damn. We’re here to find out what that tattoo means.”
“Maab favored me, okay? She watched me . . . do things. Things that I’m not proud of. But they weren’t our fault. You can’t go blaming us for what we did to the children . . .”
Chelsea’s face screwed up into a mask of horror. “The tattoo, Klein,” she spat. “It’s about the tattoo. The leader of the corpse eaters had it. What does it mean?”
The cross in Klein’s hand, along with the beads, fell to the floor. The string holding the beads together snapped, and the little hellstone marbles scattered all over. A few rolled off of the stage and bounced across the stones.
When the last of the beads had stopped, Father Klein regained enough of his wits to speak. “What did you say?”
“The leader of the corpse eaters. He had that tattoo. What does it mean?”
Father Klein turned his back on Chelsea and Martin, looking up to the huge woodstone cross that adorned the back wall. “It means Maab’s not content to stay in the Carrion, anymore.”
“We defeated the corpse eaters easily, Father,” Martin told him.
“Fool!” Klein shouted, turning around and facing him straight on. “Fool! Maab, if she calls in all her tribes, can field a tribal army of over ten thousand men. And it’s worse than that. She has resources we can’t begin to match. Her soldiers are tougher, strengthened by some dark ritual. She has a general, Gilgamesh, who makes hounds do his bidding. One of her lovers, Nephysis, can control corpses! Her priestesses can make wounds which Hell can’t heal. That’s why we ran. That’s why when we revolted, we fled the Carrion and built up walls behind us. Because if Maab’s coming, we can’t stop her.”
The subjective nature of Hell crackled with the power of Arturus’ will. He had never felt so singular a purpose. The swirling mists surrounding him obeyed his whims, parting to create a straight path towards his destiny. He could almost feel the rock on his mind as he pushed at it with his ideas. The rocks glittered with energy where his thoughts touched them. The hellsong heeded his wishes, becoming a distant operatic voice.
The blue light was brighter and more constant the farther he walked.
His heart beat fiercely, a steady rhythm in his chest.
The tunnel ahead opened up into a chasm. There was a ledge, extending ten paces out into the emptiness.
He perceived the Erebus.
They were right to call it a river, but it was not made of water. Nor did it flow along the ground like water did. It was a darkness, or a dimness. A transparent taint that clung to the air of the chasm, hanging amidst the mists. Streaking through it were miles long streams of blue energy. Arturus had never seen lightning, but he’d heard it described. Perhaps this was something similar, a pulsing power that gave off an intense blue light. He had always been told that lightning was fleeting, however, this energy was not so. It hung in sheets, twisting up, around and into other strands. Each sheet wavered, following some rippling pattern that affected the tangled strings of this otherworldly web.
There were at least three sheets that hung along this chasm between himself and the far wall.
He walked up to the edge of the stone and took in the hellscape. The chasm in the dark natural rock extended as high above him as he could see, as if it went up infinitely. He realized with a sudden moment of clarity that it very well might. The sheets of lightning-like energy soared up into that space, filling it with their intensity, pushing their brilliant light out against the dimness of the River of Darkness.
He looked below. The sheets of light continued down there as well, as far down as he could see. They illuminated juts and twists in the natural rock that descended below him at a sheer angle. Arturus did not know how far down that chasm went, if indeed it ever ended. Nor did he know, if he chose to fall down into it and wait three hundred years before landing on another ledge so far below, what type of creatures he might find roaming those halls.
It was the same to his left and his right. The River Erebus was unending—but there was something about a quarter of a mile to his right.
Arturus gasped.
There was a bridge, only partially built, half spanning the distance between his Hell and the one beyond. Half spanning the distance between Gehenna and Sheol. This bridge was supported from the cliff below. Arturus could see the whetstone beams jutting out from the worked rock, reaching up like a skeleton to help support the stones that would be placed upon it. Moving like ants along it were corpses. They were carrying bricks, and no Fury was coming to bother them. As Arturus watched, two toppled uselessly
over the edge, falling down through the sheets of preternatural energy, disappearing and reappearing as they descended through the waves of darkness.
A third put his rock down in its correct place.
In the distance, Arturus heard a howl. It was long and low. It was more resonant that even the call of a hound. The ripples of the sound sent shockwaves through the darkness and the sheets of blue oscillating energy.
A Fury. It has sensed me.
“Galen!” Arturus called.
Arturus’ father came running. Galen stopped when he made it to the ledge. Slowly, he walked the ten paces to stand next to his son.
“Look,” Arturus said, pointing to the bridge. “You said that corpses would be detected, at least if there were a Minotaur’s will upon them.”
Galen nodded. “But these corpses have no devil’s will controlling them.”
“But if they’re undirected, how could they build a bridge?”
“If you raised a man from birth, and you had him do the same task from dawn till dusk for his entire life, and then you killed him—he just might complete that same task after death.”
And that, Arturus realized, was how the bridge was being built. That was how the leaders of the City of Blood and Stone were going to cross the Erebus.
The howling was getting louder.
“We should leave, son,” Galen said. “We don’t have much time before the Fury gets here.”
But it would have been enough time for someone to cross. Particularly if you were a cruel people, and willing to sacrifice many slaves to distract the Furies.
But what could they want from Sheol?
Arturus looked towards the rocks on the far side. It was difficult to see through the Erebus, but in places he was able to. The blue sheets of energy cut through the darkness so that right around them was an area of transparency. When the three different sheets of energy matched up, Arturus could see the far wall.
Sheol was more real than Arturus had expected. Perhaps he was projecting his own unconscious expectations on it, or perhaps, even as Sheol left an imprint of subjectivity on the closer edges of Gehenna, then so too might Gehenna leave an imprint of objectivity on the closer edges of Sheol.
The howling of the Fury was getting even louder. The river trembled, rippling with her approach. Arturus saw her, almost a mile away, a brilliant shining devil of white energy.
Then he saw something through the waves of Erebus. He saw a pocket of ruddy and orange light. It was as if that portion on the far shore was lit by a torch.
Standing in that bubble of light, in a cave on the other side of the river Erebus, Arturus saw three figures. The center one was the strongest, a broad man dressed in a black cloak. At this distance Arturus could not tell if the small silver pendant around his neck was indeed an upside down cross, but he guessed that it was. The man had a beard, like Galen’s, but much darker. Even from across the river, the man seemed cruel.
To the man’s right was a shadowy figure, a devil that appeared to be made out of the same stuff as the Erebus itself. It had two red eyes, glowing, seeking, staring.
On the man’s left was another person, slightly shorter, and much more slender. He wore the clothes of a serf. There was a large puddle of blood at the man’s feet, dripping down off of the edge of the cliff.
It seemed that the central figure, the one dressed all in black robes, was staring at him. Arturus could feel the man’s malevolence traveling across the great river.
Arturus turned to point out the figures to his father, but Galen was already looking at them.
“Saint Wretch,” Arturus said.
Galen nodded. Arturus remembered what Galen had said about Saint Wretch. Nothing of either Earth or of Hell could harm the man.
But I might be able to hurt him. My mother was of Heaven. If I have children, my seed might spread through all of Hell. Saint Wretch has to come now or he’ll not know which men carry the blood of angels in their veins. He’ll not know which men can hurt him.
“Dakota was wrong,” Arturus said. “I’m not the one who can get the weapon. I am the weapon.”
My existence forces Saint Wretch’s hand. He has to try and return to Gehenna now. And when he does, the Infidel will come to me, like Malkravyan said, with an argument and an offer.
Arturus felt his father’s arm circle around his shoulder.
“Now do you understand, son?” Galen asked. “Now do you know the fate the Infidel wishes for you?”
“Yes,” Arturus said, his voice shaking. “Yes I do.”
My love makes this place real. In the room with the cool stream where the herrings swim, there is an arch with an orange keystone. Beyond that are silver floors and walls of golden daggers. And then there is the path of broken bones. Finally, the tent. And in the tent is my love, the maid with braids of auburn hair.
Benson sat by the cool stream where the herrings swam. He’d had a dream where his old friend Martin had been made a leader and that all the people of Harpsborough had cheered for him. Benson was afraid of dreams. Dreams made a man travel. He’d have to remember those dreams if he was to make it back to these rooms. Make it back to the woman he’d learned to love.
Together they’d imagined this place. They’d fought to keep it the same. Each day they went over their mantra together, assuring themselves that this place existed, this place with the cool river and fish.
The fish that he would catch.
Benson sighed, as content as a damned man could be, and waded out into the cool water. It was cooler than he remembered. That was the way he liked it. His love wanted it different. She wanted it slightly warmer. The fish were more his style too. She imagined them bigger.
Benson knew it was a bad sign when his reality won out too much over hers. It meant she was sad.
Don’t feel sad, my love. We live in a pleasant tent. In a place where there is a cool stream where the herrings swim. And in that room there is an arch with an orange keystone. Beyond that, the silver floors and walls of golden daggers. And then the path of broken bones. Finally, the room with the tent. And in the tent is my love, the maid with braids of auburn hair.
But he understood her sadness. He’d felt it himself. The Hell here, on this second level, had emotions woven into its fabric. They had tried to stay in anger once, but they’d had no defense against it. They’d fought with each other tirelessly. No, melancholy was a much better emotion. It could even be sweet.
As sweet as it was, it was a constant reminder of all the people he’d lost. Of all the tortured souls who had not found such a sanctuary. Of all the things he should have done and never did. Of all the people he should have told that he loved. Of all the petty sins he’d never forgiven or been forgiven for.
That sadness could get very heavy.
He heard footsteps behind him.
My love!
Benson turned.
A man was standing on the shore, blood pouring out of a wound in his side. The man held something in his hand. It was a scalp. Hanging from the scalp were auburn braids.
“Hello, Benson,” Carlisle said. “Good to see you again. Tell me, do you still dream of Harpsborough?”
Hellsong continues in Book III: March till Death
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Knight of Gehenna (Hellsong Book 2) Page 39
