"Aha!" said Mack, though he wasn't sure where this was leading.
"That man," Mephistopheles said, "is Thomas Walsingham, an old friend of Marlowe's. Thomas' father, Sir Francis, is secretary of state to Elizabeth, queen of England, and he also commands her secret service, by means of which the intentions of the various factions in this war-torn year of Europe's woe will be known."
"No, no," Mephistopheles said, "you are not to touch Walsingham. Just listen."
"All right, I'm listening," Mack said.
"Walsingham will ask Marlowe to serve once again in his father's Secret Service, as he did in bygone years. Marlowe will agree. That's the fact of it. It leads to Marlowe's premature death. But in this case, immediately after Marlowe and Walsingham talk, you will seek out Marlowe and convince him to do no such thing."
"I'll convince him, all right," Mack said. "Is this Marlowe skilled at arms? I guess I'd better have some weapons for this. Do you know where I can pick up a good cudgel?"
"Forget the cudgel," Mephistopheles said. "No man ever convinced Christopher Marlowe by force, and not much by persuasion, either. No, you will demonstrate to him what the consequences of his spying for Walsingham will be."
"And what will those consequences be?"
"Five years from now, on May 30, 1593, Marlowe will go to an inn with Ingram Frizer, Robert Poley, and Nicholas Skeres. He will remonstrate with them concerning evidence he has as to their traitorous actions on behalf of Henry the Third of France, asking them to turn King's evidence and throw themselves on the mercy of the Privy Council. Scorning such a course of action, these men will seize Marlowe and stab him to death, and then bruit it about that Marlowe irrationally attacked one of them, Frizer, who, hard-pressed, killed him accidentally and in self-defense. Thus England and the world will lose its foremost poet, dead at the age of twenty-nine, whereas, had he lived, he might have been expected to write many more fine plays exposing the pretensions of standard piety."
"I get it," Mack said. "You want this Marlowe to live, is that it?"
"Oh, I wouldn't go so far as to say I want it," Mephistopheles said. "It is but a suggestion, a choice for you."
"But you have laid out the course I am to follow."
"Certainly. But only if you want to. You could also steal the magic mirror of Dr. Dee. You have heard of the famous Dr. Dee, no doubt?"
"Of course," Mack said. "But just at this moment the name 'scapes my ken."
"Dr. Dee is the foremost necromancer and magician in England, a name to be spoken in hushed tones along with those of Albertus Magnus and Cornelius Agrippa. He has been asked by no less a personage than Elizabeth of England to cast her horoscope, and the queen is noted for her hardheadedness. Dee leaves presently to take up residence at the court of Rudolph the Second of Bohemia. And he will take his magic mirror with him. You must somehow get that mirror."
"What do I need this magic mirror for?"
"Oh, you might use it to convince Marlowe to avoid working as a spy for Walsingham. When he gazes into it, the mirror will show the bloody result if he should persist in that course. Seeing his death before his very eyes should change his mind. Do you understand all that I have told you?"
"My dear fellow," Mephistopheles said, "I can't be expected to do all your work for you. Ask him.
Should he prove obdurate, give him this." Mephistopheles took a small object out of an inside pocket in his cloak, wrapped it in a scarlet silk handkerchief, and handed it to Mack. Then he arose and gathered his long black cloak closely about him. "Farewell, then, Faust, I'll await your results."
He made as if to go. But Mack plucked him by the sleeve.
"What is it?"
"If you would be so kind as to settle the bill, if it please Your Demonship."
"Have you no money of your own?"
"I may need it. You can't tell what might come up on an assignment like this."
Mephistopheles contemptuously threw a handful of coins on the table and made as if to disappear. Then, remembering appearances, he stalked out of the tavern and found nearby a little cul-de-sac where his vanishment would not be remarked.
Mack put the handkerchief-wrapped object into his pouch without looking at it, then counted out the exact change from what Mephistopheles had left, pocketed the rest, made enquiry as to the location of Dr. Dee's house, and departed.
In the next booth, concealed from Mack and Mephistopheles by its high back, a muffled figure stirred.
He was a fox-faced fellow dressed in crimson and green finery, complete with large starched ruff. Azzie, for such it was, tapped his fingers thoughtfully on the oak table, and his long upper lip lifted in a humorless grin.
He had followed Mephistopheles here in a surreptitious manner, eager to get to the bottom of the mystery of the demon's behavior. So that was what Mephistopheles was up to! Cheating! And there had to be a way that Azzie could make use of that knowledge. He considered for a moment, then thought he found a way to go about it.
He conjured himself out of the tavern upon the instant, before the astonished publican could present the bill. Let the superstitious lout blame it on Marlowe's Faust. Azzie had devilish work to do. Swiftly he mounted to the starry firmament, bound for the spiritual regions, where he had something of interest to say to a certain former witch of his acquaintance.
CHAPTER 2
We shouldn't be meeting this way," Ylith said, looking around with worried glance. But it seemed she had nothing to worry about. This cocktail lounge, The Mixed Spirit, just inside the blue-black walls of Babylon, and just around the corner from the temple to Baal, was well known as a neutral place where the operatives from Good and Bad got together from time to time, exchanged information, and tried to suborn each other. Since each side thought it had the advantage in the suborning business, neither had gotten around to proscribing meetings. Babylon in those days, before the Hittites moved in and trashed the neighborhood, and before Alexander ruined the place for good as he did Thebes, was a fun place to spend some time. The city was famous for its musical revues, its great zoo where animals of all varieties wandered in a paradisaical setting, its hanging gardens, which were like a frozen Niagaras of vegetation tumbling down from the heights of the upper city. Although this information was later suppressed by the jealous Athenians, Babylon was the intellectual capital of the world in those days, a place where Phoenician and Jew, Bedouin and Egyptian, Persian and Indian, could meet in cheerful confab in one of the city's many coffee houses—for Babylon had learned the great secret of coffee, espresso style, the steamed water pushed through the fragrant brew by great bellows operated by the Nubians and Ethiopians who had a monopoly on the trade. Babylon was also a food capital, whose shish kebabs were second to none, and whose baby buns were famous as far as Asmara and beyond. And above all, Babylon was splendid with color and pageantry, a place given to public festivals and to kingly revels.
Ylith looked at him fondly but with dubiety in her gaze. Azzie was a handsome demon, there could be no doubt about that. His orange-red fur was close-cropped and lustrous, his long, thin-bladed nose had a great elegance about it, and his lips, twisted and smiling, had touched hers too often for her to be able to gaze upon them with complete indifference. Yes, she still cared for him. But that was not the reason she had accepted his invitation. She knew that resisting him was good for her soul; and besides, it gave her a frisson to feel the pangs of a love that never could be, a love that she had transferred recently to the angel Babriel. Yes, Babriel was very good indeed, and that was good, as far as goodness went. But of late Ylith had begun to feel immortal yearnings, which she hoped were not also immoral.
Snap out of it, girl, she admonished herself. And then, to Azzie: "So what's new?"
"Nothing much," Azzie said with an elaborate shrug. "Just the same old skulduggery and double-dealing.
You know what a demon's life is like."
"Who have you been double-crossing recently?" Ylith asked.
"Me? No one. It's been
a quiet time for me, since the Powers That Be in all their wisdom decided not to employ me on the current Millennial contest."
"Mephistopheles is a competent demon, so I hear," Ylith said. "No doubt he'll do a good job for Your Side."
"No doubt. Especially since he improves on chance with guile."
"That's to be expected. He's a demon, after all."
"I know. Guile's fine. But outright cheating is not, according to the agreement."
"Cheating?" she echoed. "I'm sure Mephistopheles wouldn't cheat. He's an upright devil, from all I've heard."
"Perhaps it wasn't cheating, then," Azzie said. "Perhaps I misunderstood."
She sat up, her back stiffening. "What did you misunderstand?" "It was the merest nothing," Azzie said, breathing on his fingernails and buffing them on his flaring red velvet jacket.
"Azzie, stop teasing me! What did you see?"
"Nothing at all. But I overheard…"
"What?"
"I overheard the redoubtable Mephistopheles giving instructions to Johann Faust, the contestant in our game of Light and Dark."
"Well, of course he gave him instructions! Otherwise Faust wouldn't know what to do."
"Now he knows all too well," Azzie said.
"Stop these vague presentimentalistic mutterings! Tell me what you are hinting at."
"Mephistopheles is supposed to offer Faust a choice, correct?"
"That is well known."
"I heard him tell Faust exactly what choice he should make, and how he should go about accomplishing it."
"You mean he coached the contestant?"
"That's exactly what I mean. Forget about free will in this contest, my dear. It is Mephistopheles' will that is being served."
She stared at him openmouthed. And Azzie told her of the conversation he had overheard between Mephistopheles and Mack in the inn in London, and how Mephistopheles had directed the famous magician to save Marlowe, and had even suggested to him how to go about it.
"Azzie, if you're just trying to stir up trouble…"
"I'm always ready for that," Azzie said. "But what I have told you is absolute stone truth, without elaboration or embellishment."
Ylith was silent for a time, taking it in. She took two sips of her nectar frappe, an ambrosial beverage that disappeared from the world when Alexander the Great leveled the walls of Babylon and destroyed the frappe parlors in an act of misplaced Macedonian piety. Then she said, "If you say true, this is very serious."
"I never thought otherwise," Azzie said. "But you see, I am at a disadvantage here. Mephistopheles is on my side, and it wouldn't look right for me to go to the High Council with word of his misdoings. And yet, within me, Ylith, there beats a heart dedicated to truth and justice, just as your own does."
"How can you say that?" Ylith demanded. "You and your kind willingly serve lies and Badness!"
"Yes. But we do so in the cause of truth," Azzie said, employing paradox when the simple truth would never do. "We Darksiders just have our own way of going about it."
She shook her head at him, but her smile was fond. "You always were a silver-tongued devil!"
Ylith didn't understand Mephistopheles' motives.
"If he rescues Marlowe," she asked, "won't that be a Good Thing, since it will give the world more of his plays?"
"That's one way of looking at it," Azzie said. "But since Marlowe is a mighty blasphemer against all things good, his unwritten plays are more likely to subvert the cause of piousness than to promote it."
"Azzie," Ylith said, "you have given me much to think about here. I shall have to consider what to do with this information."
"Use it as you please," Azzie said. "My conscience at least is clear. Now, shall we drink up and be about our divers pursuits?"
Ylith nodded, and finished her frappe. The two of them left.
In the next booth, a small figure stirred. He was clad in thigh-high boots, a stout leather jerkin, and he wore a long yellow beard.
"Ha, ha, my fine fox-faced demon," said Rognir—for such it was. "So that's how the land lies, eh? I see through your little scheme, though, and I see through the damnable self-interest that brings you to forswear your own side in order to gain temporary advantage."
Since his stint of cleaning up at the Witches' Sabbat under the foremanship of Azzie, nothing had gone well for Rognir. He had hurried along to Montpellier. He had arrived too late for the jamboree. The various dwarverias had been there and gone. There were many empty kegs of beer lying around, that was all. He had gone home, tough burrowing all the way, and found when he got there that someone had broken into his buried treasure, stealing it all. It was not Rognir's only trove, of course. No self-respecting dwarf keeps all his loot in one trove. But still, the loss was not inconsiderable, and the bad luck rankled.
Rognir was still angry at the way Azzie had treated him at the Witches' Sabbat. He had been harboring a grudge against the demon ever since, hoping to And something to use against him; for dwarves have long memories and can hold a grudge longer than mountains can hold their shapes. Now he rubbed his chubby hands together, thinking how best to use this knowledge so recently come upon. And then a course of action occurred to him, and he left the tavern and went to the outskirts of Babylon, there finding one of the underground dwarf tunnels that leads to anywhere and anywhen. A ready-made dwarf hole was just what he needed. Suddenly he was in a hurry.
CHAPTER 3
Charon had quite an interesting load of dead that day. He had picked up three fishermen drowned off the coast of Sparta, brought to the underworld in a sudden squall that had blown up from the north. The fishermen were penniless but had promised payment through a cousin, one Adelphius of Corinth, who maintained a fund in the Dead Souls' Ferrying Society Relief Scheme. They explained that an obol for each of them had been deposited into a bank account in the Greater Hellenic Savings & Loan with offices in upper Corinth. All Charon had to do was call at any time, or send his representative with proper documentation, and he could collect his money for their passage.
Charon couldn't find an argument to use against it but he still didn't like it. Of course, even he had to stay up with the times. In strange ports that he called at when he needed repairs for his boat, the people didn't take obols. Funny money, they called it.
In any event, it was all academic now. Here he was, wrecked on a reef in the Styx, at a place where there shouldn't have been any rocks at all.
It was a noisome spot, dark and marshy, with lowering skies and a constant little wind that smelled of dead fish. Small, scum-covered waves lapped at the lapstraked sides of the boat. There were low misshapen trees near the bank, and from several of them hung dead men. The dead men waved their arms and begged to be taken down. Coals to Newcastle, Charon had all the dead he could handle. He had twenty or thirty of them packed onto his little boat. They sat on the forecastle and played cards with a tattered Tarot deck. They lounged on the deck, their loathy shirts open to their scabrous waists, paddling their feet in the water under a gibbous moon. Leaving the becalmed vessel they splashed around in the marsh, playing water polo with a moldy old head that had floated by.
Charon walked up to Faust and said, "This is your fault, you know. What are you going to do about it?"
"There's nothing I can do," Faust said. "It's the fault of that damned demon, Azzie. He doctored my good luck charm."
"Why don't you throw it overboard, then?" Charon asked.
. Faust shook his head. "That's the worst thing you can do. No, we simply must ride it out."
"That's what you keep on telling us," Charon said. "But time goes by and we're still sitting here. You better do something pretty quick or it's over the side you go."
Faust looked at the noisome waters. It would almost be a relief. Down below he could see vast shapes swimming sluggishly. He knew that beneath the Styx there was a vast kingdom that men know nothing of.
It almost tempted him. Why not give up this ceaseless travail which availeth naught?
Let them throw him over—what did he care? What a pleasure it might be to drown forever, and to join the slimy swimmers of these dark waters!
But he roused himself. He was Faust! And Faust would not give way to despair! That was for lesser men, not him. He would find a way out of this situation.
And then there was a faint brightening in the air. Could there be lightness even on the Styx? He looked into the distance. Yes, there was something moving on the waters. As it came out of the mists he saw that it was a little rowboat. And there was a little man rowing, bending to the oars with a lusty stroke.
Charon looked and said, "Who in hell could that be?"
The rowboat came up to the side of Charon's bark. Aboard was Rognir, dressed in a yellow sou'wester, with a big flappy rubber raincap on his large shaggy head. "What ho!" he cried. "Do you happen to have Faust aboard?"
"Why, yes, as a matter of fact we do," Charon said. "But who are you?"
"I'm Rognir," said Rognir. "I come from an entirely different realm of discourse. But I know who you are.
Hail, Charon! Why are you parked here in the doldrums? On my way I passed docks and loading stages packed with dead souls. They were crying out for you, Charon, and they had coins in their hands."
"Damn it," Charon said, "I knew I was missing out on business. I am here, Rognir, because some baleful person has put a curse on my boat, a rudder curse I believe it is called, and my goodly little ship will only go in circles, and so has run itself on a sandbar, the only sandbar within a hundred miles of here, and here my boat hangs and refuses to get off. And what are you doing here?"
Rognir explained that he had come to speak to Faust, because he had important news for him.
"I have been listening in to the demons," Rognir said. "You are acquainted perhaps with one Azzie Elbub, demon, and a bad lot even by the standards of Hell?"
"I have met him," Faust said. "He sought to turn me aside from my purpose, which is to take my place in the contest of Dark and Light and so win redemption for mankind and undying glory for myself. Not only that, he gave me a defective Motive Spell, one infected with Jinx, as I see now, which has brought Charon's boat to a standstill."
If at Faust You Don't Succeed Page 18
