King of Hell (The Shadow Saga)

by Christopher Golden

  Squire led the way, almost totally lost in the black fog ahead. Only he knew how to navigate the Shadowpaths, or so she'd been told. Octavian and Allison followed, with the paralyzed body of Lazarus floating in the air between them, sword jutting from his chest and a sheath of magic hissing and glowing around him. Then came Charlotte, with Phoenix bringing up the rear and Alexandra Nueva covering them all from behind. "Guarding our flank," Octavian had called it. Several glowing orbs floated along the path beside them. They reminded Phoenix of the ball that dropped in Times Square on New Year's Eve.

  "Hey," Charlotte said, dropping back to link arms with her. "You all right?"

  Phoenix raised an eyebrow, realized Charlotte probably couldn't make out her expression, and shook her head. "Are you kidding?"

  "No. Just hopeful."

  "I feel like I'm dreaming," Phoenix said.

  "Me, too," Charlotte said. "I've never been on the Shadowpaths before, but it does have a very dreamlike feel."

  "Or a nightmare."

  Charlotte matched her stride with Phoenix's. "I'm not going to talk just to make noise, Phoenix, so let me say this. When you're ready, I'll tell you my story. It's pretty ugly, but the one thing it has in common with yours is that when I became a vampire —"

  "I thought we were supposed to be Shadows."

  "That's what Octavian calls us. It's a philosophical difference."

  "Philosophical . . ." Phoenix said. "So it's nothing but semantics? We really are monsters?"

  Still arm in arm with her, Charlotte slowed them down and turned to her, face close enough that even in the black fog Phoenix could see her eyes.

  "I've been a monster. Trust me, it's more than semantics. It's a choice."

  Phoenix felt a hand on her back, a none-too-gentle shove, and she and Charlotte stumbled forward.

  "Move, you two," Alex said, coming up behind them. "You get lost in here, you could be lost forever."

  "That's a cheery thought," Charlotte said.

  Phoenix said nothing, only quickened her pace and caught up to Octavian, Allison, and Squire. Alexandra Nueva scared her and she had no interest in idle chat with the woman. A thousand years in Hell had made Octavian into some kind of master sorcerer and driven Lazarus totally batshit crazy. Phoenix didn't want to be around if Alex ever snapped.

  "I know what you're thinking," Alex said, coming up behind her again.

  Charlotte had dropped back a few feet, leaving Phoenix on her own with the hardcase. Alex's dark skin gleamed with the illumination from the spheres of magic Octavian had summoned to light their way, otherwise she would have been almost impossible to see in the shifting fog. She was beautiful, but the glint in her eye was intimidating.

  "I'm not thinking anything," Phoenix said. "I lost my father today. I lost friends and since I was too scared to stay behind and be . . . whatever I am now . . . without anyone who could understand, I came along with you people. That means I lost my whole damn world. I've got nowhere else to go. So, really, I'm doing my best not to think at all."

  "I just want you to know that you have nothing to fear from me," Alex said.

  Phoenix shivered. Maybe the hardcase did know what she was thinking.

  Alex spoke again, but lower this time. "I've got my own problems."

  Well, yeah, Phoenix thought. She looked back at Charlotte, who followed only a few steps behind, not wanting to get lost but also — Phoenix was sure — intimidated by Alex.

  "Octavian was a Shadow. So was Lazarus," Alex said. "Octavian was the first to discover that if we live long enough, we go through a kind of metamorphosis. Cocoon."

  Phoenix snapped her head around to stare and almost collided with Squire, who couldn't keep pace with Octavian and Allison.

  "Cocoon?" Phoenix said. She glanced back at Charlotte, couldn't make out her face but saw her nodding in the fog. Confirmation.

  "When we emerge, the three parts of our essence are separated. Divine. Demonic. Human," Alex said. Her voice seemed haunted and she hung her head. "It's going to happen to me soon. I can feel it."

  "But you'll be human again!" Phoenix said, the idea giving her a spark of hope.

  "I know," Alex said. "The thought terrifies me. I don't know how to be human anymore."

  Hell

  Orias, son of Oriax, sat on the throne of Hell and wondered who would look after Mr. Doyle's house now that he had gone. Someday, Mr. Doyle would return, and then he would gather the Menagerie again . . . perhaps with new allies amongst them. Orias believed this with all of his heart. It was his faith.

  But he would not be there.

  He would be here, on the throne. His Infernal Majesty, Orias the First. Lord of Lords. Duke of Dukes. He would sit, as he sat now, looking out over the fires and the legions of imps and devils who served him, who implemented the punishments that the Suffering demanded by their mere presence. Orias understood that, now — understood Hell, or at least he had begun to.

  He reached into his pocket, but somewhere along the way, he had lost his mother's emerald ring.

  It would be all right, he told himself. He would be here on his throne and the Demon Lords and Archdukes and the Great Old Ones would be in their Deep Halls and Screaming Chambers. Everything would be perfectly all right.

  Until the moment that enough of them decided that perhaps his bloodline wasn't a good enough reason for him to be King of Hell. At which point he would die.

  But until then, everything would be just fine.

  On the Shadowpaths

  The noise of the Black Well made Octavian think of the labored breathing of a sleeping giant. It drew the dark mist in, sucking at the very substance of the Shadowpaths, and every so often it seemed to exhale, a release that caused a bellow like that of an industrial furnace.

  "This worries me," Octavian said, turning toward Squire.

  The hobgoblin stood a few feet away, further from the gaping, sucking maw of the Black Well. The mist around their legs no longer swirled — it flowed like water, and the Black Well was a whirlpool. Octavian had set his legs wide apart, fighting the gravitational drag of the well, and Lazarus floated above the ground beside him. Trapped inside the spell Octavian had woven around him, with the double-edged sword leeching his own magic away, Lazarus could only stare at them with eyes full of hate.

  Allison, Charlotte, and Alex had kept back twenty yards or so from the rim, where Octavian had asked them to wait, just for safety. But Phoenix's curiosity had gotten the better of her. Despite her fear and the horror of the unknown that Octavian could see written on her features, the young woman could not help coming nearer to get a better look at the man she blamed for the abominable things that had been done to her father's corpse. Octavian admired her courage, but he wished she had stayed back.

  "What are you worried about?" Squire asked.

  Octavian stared at the hobgoblin's gleaming yellow eyes — at the anger in them. No profanity. No humor. No Pete. Danny Ferrick had been given a choice and had done the noble thing, the right thing, and Squire hated it. Hated Octavian. Maybe even hated himself.

  "It keeps breathing like this. A black hole is constant gravity, inescapable, but if there's an inhale-exhale, that concerns me. There's always some chance he could —"

  "No," Squire said, eyes narrowed.

  "No?"

  Squire turned to look at Lazarus. For the first time, Octavian noticed that the magic sheathing the sorcerer rippled at the bottom, stretching in places where the drag of the Black Well pulled at it.

  "I don't know how many wells there are," Squire said grimly. "Dozens, that I've seen, and a hell of a lot more that I haven't. Maybe a little air drawn into one vents from another, but look at the darkness around us . . ."

  Octavian glanced at his feet, where the flow of shadows into the sucking maw of the Black Well continued unabated.

  "I've been on these paths for a very long time," Squire said. "And the oral history of hobgoblins is long. In all that time I've never heard of anyone escaping the
Black Wells. You put him down there, weakened like this, he'll have to use what little magic he has to keep himself alive. He'll die eventually, but it's going to take a very long time."

  Octavian hesitated. If he freed Lazarus, let him draw out the sword, he couldn't be certain of the outcome.

  He glanced over at Phoenix, and then beyond her at the others, his friends. They were all homeless now, with no world to call their own, but if Lazarus had been allowed to succeed, world after world would have been claimed by Hell. The living would have been damned to eternal suffering. Yet Octavian would have preferred to kill Lazarus in open combat, like a proper warrior. This felt like an execution, and that did not sit well with him.

  Until he thought of Nikki's laugh, and the way she had reached out so often just to touch his hand, as if to reassure him that she was still there. Still with him. He thought of the expression on her face when she played the guitar, and the way her whole soul seemed to show itself when she sang. And then he thought of how many people had died horribly at Lazarus's command, and the parents and lovers and children who carried the same grief and pain that weighed on Octavian's heart.

  With the merest turn of his wrist, he released the spell that had held Lazarus aloft. Still paralyzed by Octavian's magic, his mouth open in a silent scream within that sheath of bright energy, Lazarus fell into the swift current of darkness that flowed around them and was swept over the rim and into the Black Well. The last Octavian saw of him the sorcerer was his back, where the point of that double-edged sword traced its own path through the black fog.

  And he was gone, drawn down into the Hollow.

  For a full minute or more, Octavian and Squire stood there. Despite the hobgoblin's assurances, Octavian almost expected Lazarus to emerge in a black of dark magic, ready for battle. But the seconds ticked by and the darkness kept flowing over the rim without interruption.

  Squire tapped his arm. "Let's go."

  Octavian stared into the abyss a moment longer and then blinked and looked around. It felt as if he were waking from a terrible dream only to find himself in the grip of another. The illumination from the spheres he'd summoned cast strange shapes all through the darkness that swirled around them. He looked at Squire and Phoenix, and then he joined them, moving away from the Black Well.

  "So what now, Peter?" Allison asked, as Octavian, Squire and Phoenix joined her, Charlotte, Kuromaku, and Alex. "I mean . . . Squire could get you back to our world, but with the barriers Gaea has put in place, the rest of us are shut out."

  Octavian studied her face, saw the concern in Charlotte's eyes and Kuromaku's furrowed brow. "There's nothing back there for me, now. Wherever we go, we go together."

  Phoenix stood hugging herself, set off slightly from the others. "Yeah, but where? I can't go back — nobody would understand what I am now — but I'm not one of you, either —"

  "Yes, you are," Kuromaku said, nodding.

  Octavian went to Phoenix and took her hand, gazing into her eyes. "You are," he said, guiding her closer to the others before releasing her hand.

  "Thank you," Phoenix said softly, with a sweeping glance. "All of you. But still . . . what now? You can call us Shadows all you like, but we can't stay here in the dark forever." Squire scratched his head and gave a small shrug. "You don't have to stay here. There are endless worlds out there, and plenty of them have magic in them."

  "I don't want to have to hide what I am," Allison said. "I'm tired of being a Shadow. I want to live out in the light without being hunted, somewhere ordinary people aren't afraid of things they don't understand."

  Alex scoffed. "You're talking about a fantasy, now. You can search a thousand worlds and you're not going to find what you're looking for. It doesn't exist."

  "Maybe it does," said a voice from the shadows.

  Octavian spun, magic surging from his heart and igniting at the tips of his fingers, ready to fight. Lazarus, he thought. The sorcerer must have found a way to defeat the dark gravity of the Black Well.

  But the figure that emerged from the shifting darkness, though familiar, was not that of Lazarus.

  Allison shifted into a bear and Alex into a towering devil. Kuromaku drew his katana while Charlotte and Phoenix stood back to back, fangs bared.

  Squire took a step toward the interloper and cocked his head. "What the fuck do you want?"

  "You know this guy?" Charlotte asked.

  Octavian nodded. "His name is Wayland Smith."

  "The Traveler?" Kuromaku asked.

  In response, the thin old man widened his ice blue eyes and made a small bow.

  "The same," Smith replied. "And it's a pleasure to make your acquaintance. All of you."

  Allison and Alex shifted back to human form.

  "I don't understand," Phoenix said. "Who is he?"

  "A walker between worlds," Squire said. "Sometimes they stray onto the Shadowpaths, but the Smiths usually stick to the Gray Corridors."

  "That doesn't help me," Phoenix said.

  "What are you saying?" Octavian interrupted, staring at Smith. "You were following us the last time we were on the Shadowpaths — Squire, Danny and I. And now here you are. What's your game, Traveler?"

  Wayland Smith tugged at the iron ring in his beard, a sadness in those blue eyes. "No game, Peter. If you've met one of my brothers or sisters before, perhaps you know enough about us to realize that we are more than just smiths or travelers. We are pathfinders. We are patrons of the lost. And it has been a very long time since I have encountered anyone as lost as you have become."

  He extended a hand to include the rest of them. "You have all become wanderers."

  "And you have someplace in mind for us?" Allison asked.

  Smith inclined his head. "Since the last time I saw Peter, I have consulted with a council of other Wayfarers — my siblings — and we are all in agreement."

  The Traveler locked eyes with Octavian. "There is a world where a unique set of circumstances has unfolded. All things supernatural were once walled away from the more ordinary regions and peoples of that world, but they have been reunited in spectacular fashion. I will not lie and tell you that it is devoid of violence and ignorance, but the ordinary world has been merged with so much wonder that you and your friends would barely be considered unusual. Amongst so many other extraordinary individuals, I daresay it might even come to feel like home."

  It sounded almost too good to be true. Smith hadn't promised them utopia, but . . . a place where they no longer had to fight to survive or to drive back unimaginable evils that threatened the very fabric of existence . . . that was about as close to paradise as he could imagine.

  He glanced at the others, his gaze lingering on Kuromaku. These people were his family now, but Kuromaku was his oldest and wisest friend.

  "Can we trust him?" Allison asked.

  They all looked at Squire, who wore a deep frown.

  "The Wayland Smiths always have their own agenda," the hobgoblin said. "But they're not malevolent."

  "Yeah?" Alex said, moving toward Smith. "What is your agenda, then?"

  "Guiding the lost is my only interest here," Smith replied, tugging the iron ring in his gray beard again. "Though I will be relieved to have you all off of the Shadowpaths. The interdimensional fabric is delicate, and it's unsettling to have you tromping about in here. Anything could happen."

  Octavian arched an eyebrow. Whatever other purpose Wayland Smith might serve, he felt sure that, just then, the Traveler had been telling the truth.

  He glanced at his friends again, this time focused on Allison.

  "What do we have to lose?" he asked. "We have nowhere else to go."

  For a moment, no one replied, and then Allison nodded. Kuromaku sheathed his sword and the magic crackling around Octavian's hands abated.

  "Excellent," Wayland Smith said. With a sage nod, he began to turn from them. "Follow me, then, to the place beyond the Veil."

  Octavian felt as if a dreadful burden had been taken from him. One
by one, they fell into step behind Wayland Smith. As they did, the fog swirling around them turned from pure darkness to gray mist, laced with an autumn chill.

  In moments, only Octavian and Squire remained, and he looked at the hobgoblin in sudden understanding.

  "You're not coming."

  "Of course not," Squire replied. "I've never belonged to just one world. Besides, someone has to look in on Conan Doyle's house from time to time. Just in case he comes back one of these days."

  Octavian tilted his head. "I thought you said he was gone forever."

  A wry grin touched Squire's lips. "Shit, Pete, are any of us ever really gone forever?"

  With that, he stepped into the shadows and vanished from sight.

  Octavian frowned, certain that the hobgoblin had been trying to tell him something he hadn't quite understood. Then he heard his name being called from far ahead in the mist, along the Gray Corridors, and knew he had to hurry.

  The orbs he had summoned winked out as he contorted his right hand, and blue fire ignited around his fingers as he went in pursuit of the family he had chosen for himself, and the home for which they had wished.

  A little magic to light the way, he thought. Without that, we'd all be lost.

  - THE END -

  A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  Something strange happened while I was writing this, the last Peter Octavian novel. While plotting it, I spent some time thinking about how Octavian could get into Hell without Gaea or Keomany stopping him from doing so. I thought — well, Squire could do it, not actually intending that Squire . . . you know, do it. But then I thought, why not?

  That started the ball rolling.

  Tom Sniegoski and I created Squire — and Danny Ferrick, for that matter — some years back for our Menagerie novel series. There are four of those: The Nimble Man, Tears of the Furies, Stones Unturned, and Crashing Paradise. We had always intended to do one more but have never had the opportunity. King of Hell takes place, strangely enough, after that unwritten novel, which we still hope to get around to writing one of these days.