Tithe to Tartarus: The Dark Avenger's Sidekick Book Three (Moth & Cobweb 6)

by John C. Wright

  Yumiko also did not like the taste of the soda pop. It was so sweet it almost tasted metallic.

  Tom leaned close to her to explain some plot point or to say why the alien first officer could not fall in love with the pretty ship’s nurse. He put his arm across her shoulder as he did, and his breath was in her ear. When he straightened up again, he left his arm in place. Under her lashes, Yumiko looked sidelong at his profile. In the gloom, the flickering light from the screen played across his face.

  She took another sip of the metallic soda, relaxed, snuggled back into her chair, and put her head on the young man’s shoulder. She did not like science-fiction films. But she decided she really liked going to see science-fiction films.

  Chapter Fourteen: Who Speaks Words in Elfinland

  1. Shock

  The horned rider said, “Do not permit her to die in this place.” Nimue raised her hand again, and the fiery pain of the venom in Yumiko’s blood flooded her arms and legs but avoided her chest and heart. Still Yumiko clung.

  The twelve hooded giants had gathered, six to one side of the final threshold and six to the other. Empousa stood midmost, one step beyond the dolmen. Ten of the riders reined their nervous steeds. Five were to Empousa’s right and five to her left, with the tall dukes and counts of Hell looming over the elfin lords and ladies. The wolves that had come with the elfin cavalcade were still on this side of the threshold, glaring down at Yumiko with yellow eyes.

  Yumiko could hear Wilcolac’s teeth chattering. “My lord, if you would be so kind…”

  But the horned rider said, “Am I less than Brian? Maeve. Do this work. Time is short. Something swift.”

  One of the figures riding sidesaddle wore the mask of Aethon, one of the horses of the chariot of the sun, and an arabesque of curling flames surrounded the eyeholes and nostrils of her mask. Her cloak was the leaf of the ivy. She now spoke. “Thrall! Be thou an eel, and sting her with shocks. When she lets you go, go over the threshold and be damned.”

  The creature was larger than any eel on Earth. These pains, if anything, were even worse. She felt her heart stop and start again. Her lungs could not inflate. Yumiko was forced to hold the slippery body with hands and feet and grip it with her teeth, lest it escape her.

  Her vision faded in and out. But she saw the gem of memory winking.

  2. The Lakeshore

  The two of them sat by the shore of Lake Carlopa in upstate New York, far from any eyes to see. Yumiko was feeding the ducks by throwing them breadcrumbs. Tom was feeding the ducks by throwing a slice of bread in the air and using an energy instrument to blast it into freshly toasted crumbs that rained down like fluffy brown snow. The instrument was a wand with stops or keys something like those on a flute. He did this one-handed since the instrument could also emit a suction ray to pick up the next slice of bread and a pressure ray to hurl it high. For once, she could see his eyes, which were the most remarkable shade of blue.

  His other arm was preoccupied by being wound around her shoulders. Beneath a light robe, she was wearing the skintight supersuit he had designed and redesigned.

  Allegedly, they were here to test the latest improvements to the breathing gear and the automatic air quality sensor.

  But for now, they fed the ducks.

  She admitted how hard her life had been after her father’s death, when she was taken up into the clouds. “Mine was the only bow in the city, the only weapon of any kind. I knew it grieved my mother that I practiced every day and neglected all she wished to teach me. I thought I was honoring my father. And yet would he have wanted me to vex her so? He still loved her.”

  Yumiko spoke of her mother’s passing. “…She did not abandon her post for him. For me. For death. How angry I was when she died! She left me! Again! And now I am ashamed. Where is the respect and obedience I owe her? To hunt down her killers is all I can do.”

  Tom had a similar story. His parents were still alive, but only in a way. “When I returned to the cabin, everything Winged Vengeance told me in the dream had now come to pass in the real world. They were both simply sitting in their chairs at the kitchen table, mouths open, staring at a lantern that had gone out. They could speak, and react, and everything seemed normal.

  “But it was not. The spark of genius was gone from my mother, the zeal and drive from my father. They could no longer hear music except as sound vibrations. They could not change their habits or make complex decisions.

  “They had no memory of me.

  “They had no love for me, a little boy they regarded as an intruder. They threw me out of the house and electrified the door. Every day for a month, I tried to break in. Through the windows, at night, I could see them going through the routines of their former lives like clockwork.

  “I kept myself alive by doing odd jobs for the neighbors, repairing lawnmowers and electronics. I used the money to buy rice. I did not have a pot to cook it in, so I folded a leaf into a crude cup, filled it with water, and used that to cook. I used the plastic bag and the water to make a magnifying glass to start a cooking fire, but this only worked on sunny days.

  “Eventually, relatives found me. Halloway and Lightningrod Moth were brothers who ran a traveling carnival. They would follow the Cobweb & Dark Pandaemonium Shadow Show around the country, trying to undo the aftermath of Mr. Dark’s eccentric pranks and cruelties and disfigurations. So at age seven, I ran off to join the circus. I would be there to this day if I had not set the circus train on fire. A lurch of the caboose where they let me keep my chemistry set broke my bottle of yellow phosphorous and exposed it to air.

  “I vowed to find a way to restore my parents.”

  She did not weep when she told her story, but she did when he told his. Afterward, as if it were the most natural and right thing in the world, he pulled her close, and leaned over, and kissed her.

  Perhaps it was the most natural and right thing in the world. It certainly felt like it.

  3. Fire

  The voice of Empousa echoed in the minds of all present. “The time is come. Present the tithe, or be forfeit.”

  The horned rider said, “Wilcolac Cobweb, I hereby in law and solemn oath take and adopt you as my firstborn son. Step over the threshold and be damned.”

  Wilcolac fell to his knees. “My lord, Erlkoenig, I beg you…”

  Erlkoenig nodded his horned head. “Call me father, dear son. Mine own father once worked my salvation by substitutionary atonement. I accept you as my personal savior, little magician. You wanted to have magic arts akin to ours. Now pay the price. Do your legs fail you? Your father can amend them.”

  Erlkoenig raised his hand, and an unseen force pulled Wilcolac upright. His legs moved like stiff boards, unbending, and marched him toward the threshold. Wilcolac still had control of his arms and hands, however, and so he bent and slashed at the muscles and sinews of his legs, trying desperately to cease their mechanical motion. The elfin lords and ladies laughed and applauded this display.

  Wilcolac stumbled and fell to the black mirrored surface, which clanged under him. Blood flowed down both legs. Hurriedly, he scooped up his blood with his fingers and drew some angular marks on the black glass with it. “Thrall! Become a fiery salamander! I call upon Chaos, and Old Night, older than any created thing, older then the Devil, to hear my words and aid my work!”

  And words in a language Yumiko did not know, which her ears seemed not to be able properly to hear, gushed from the throat of Wilcolac. Red phlegm also gushed out, for to utter these words tore his tongue and his lungs.

  Wilcolac’s magic made a deeper change to the form she clutched, for now the creature went beyond nature and was worse than all that had come before.

  The eel in her hands grew longer, became covered in red diamond-sharp scales, and then burst into flame. This was not the small lizard creature called salamander but the otherworldly monster of fire for whom it was named. The flames were blue hot at its scales and yellow and red in concentric blankets around it. Yumiko was cli
nging fiercely to the hottest part of the creature.

  Wilcolac screamed, “Cross the threshold before me! Crush that Sorry girl, and cast her aside, but you must cross the threshold first!”

  The fiery and sinuous body of the monster also had all the strength of a constricting snake. It felt like red-hot chains wrapping her bare flesh. The flames hurt worse than any electric shock. The scales were hard and barbed like the skin of a shark. Many scales darted out thin jets of blue-white fire more painful than quills. The venom of the jaws ignited once inside her bloodstream, burning along her veins the cord of a fuse.

  The wounds were shocking, terrible. She felt bones break and ligaments tear.

  The burning ate her flesh. The venom ate her bloodstream. If she lived, she would be maimed for life, unable to walk, unable to move. She knew she was not dead only because of some magic charm or force of will from Erlkoenig, who wished her to die elsewhere, not here. Every fiber of her being screamed that she should let go.

  But Yumiko, in the midst of the flames, could still see the glint of light at the salamander’s throat.

  4. The Dark Sanctum

  It was Nyctalope’s habit to speak with her in pitch blackness. His eyes allowed him still to see her. She had taken to the habit of keeping her mask on during these interviews. It amused her that the lens system Tom had built into the Noh mask allowed her to mimic her brother’s power of sight.

  His real name was Yakanshiryoku Peaseblossom. He was the son of Sarutahiko Peaseblossom, Dandrenor’s first husband. But in Western lands, he called himself Nyctalope. He was the Eyes of the Night.

  This time, she was almost sorry she could see him. The sinister crow-mask with its long, metallic beak and headdress of sharp feathers had been pushed back, and his eyes were weary, his handsome face careworn. He leaned on the staff of his bow, staring down at where she knelt. His shoulders sagged. The black-fletched arrow reaching over his shoulders seemed somehow less ominous. She imagined he might fall to the floor if she kicked the bowstaff out of his grasp.

  He said, “I worry that I can trust you. Is not your oath an oath of iron? I have forbidden you to see this boy! He is not to be trusted! He is apprentice and intern to the mad inventor, Rotwang Cobweb. I have received messages from two of my agents. Henry Arnaud has traced Anarchist money into Rotwang’s coffers, and Fritz the Janitor sends me a report from the Nineteenth Precinct. Officer Don Damiano traced the disappearance of a blind hobo from the local shelter to an abandoned mine owned by one of Rotwang’s dummy corporations.”

  Yumiko said, “There are four dozen abducted blind men working in the mine. They are given an electrical apparatus that allows them to see some objects and not others, and they work on Rotwang’s construction project. He is building an Iron Mole to dig underneath the barrier to arrive in the Third Hemisphere in an unprotected spot.”

  The look on his face, when he thought she could not see his face, was very rewarding to her. He said slowly, “So you knew the boy was a spy, and you are practicing counterespionage on him?”

  “I know he is good and kind… if quite annoying. And brilliant! He is deceiving Rotwang, letting the inventor complete the machine. He has already made spare keys and vacuum tubes needed to regulate and guide the atomic engine.”

  Nyctalope Peaseblossom shook his head sadly, wearily. But no weariness was betrayed in his voice. Had she been unable to see, his mood would have remained hidden.

  “There was once a man in a dark room whom I served loyally. For his sake I joined what he called the Last Crusade, the final effort needed to overthrow the reign and realm of darkness on this Earth. I never saw that man, never learned his true name, but I loved him then. Now I curse him in my heart each day. I and all my brothers in arms in that crusade were ordered where an ambuscade waited. We were wiped out….”

  Yumiko said, “What did the man in the dark room do wrong?”

  “He did then what you do now. He trusted too easily. Rotwang Cobweb was a member of the crusade. I objected to the others that he could not be trusted. I was ignored. He betrayed us, and the enemy was waiting. I alone was taken alive and brought to the Tithing Ground. By the sheerest mischance I escaped: I had a gem Mother gave me they could not remove, and it spoiled their ritual. I turned my back to the world and donned my wings, though they had turned dark from all my dark deeds. Back to Sarras I flew, but there was no comfort there. Do you see the error of trusting?”

  Yumiko said, “But he trusted me!”

  “Who? Rotwang?”

  “No. Tom. He told me his real name is Sylvester. Tomorrow Moth is a name he uses for publicity, for his engineering company, and the children’s books written by Appleton Moth about his adventures. You see, he did not want to be called Sly Moth.”

  5. Substitution

  Yumiko was burned and wounded inside and out, bones broken, limbs swollen, blood poisoned. Her arms and legs had no more power to move and could grip nothing. The salamander was writhing free. Her voice made a gargling, scratchy, horrid sound. “Sylvester! Sylvester Moth! Sly Moth!”

  She shouted it. Despite the pain in every part of her lungs, throat, tongue, and lips, she shouted the name.

  He heard. Somehow, somewhere, he heard. As quickly as in a dream, the salamander changed into the redheaded young man. He cried out in grief and horror at the condition of the girl he held in his arms.

  She stared in wonder. He whispered, “Don’t worry, darling. I know what is going on. I won’t let them hurt you anymore.” Tom’s eyes glinted dangerously as he crouched over the wounded girl, glaring at their enemies all around.

  The pain had not made Yumiko cry. But her relief at those words, her feminine joy at hearing a male voice, a confident and dangerous male voice, assuring her that he knew what to do, was overwhelming. She could hear the love in his voice. And so, despite the danger all around her, she suddenly felt safe.

  Empousa raised her hand, glaring at Erlkoenig imperiously. No word need be said. Time was up.

  Erlkoenig gestured to the huge arctic wolf. “Lucien! Drag that sad magician over the threshold and be done with this charade.”

  The werewolf grinned. “Gladly!” And he stepped, and lowered his terrible jaws, and gripped Wilcolac by the neck, and backed up across the threshold, pulling the chubby magician after him across the broken glass.

  Once the white wolf had his rear paws over the threshold but before his head or the burden he dragged crossed it, Wilcolac twisted sharply in the monster’s jaws and drove the snake-shaped dagger he had never released up and into the back of the neck of the wolf.

  The wolf howled in wrath and staggered back. All four paws were over the threshold. Lucien turned and turned again, snapping, but the knife was impaled into his mane too near his skull for him to turn and grip it. Red blood spread over the white fur.

  Yumiko saw that the playing card, the joker, was not in Wilcolac’s hand. It was pinned by the knife blade to the wolf’s neck and coated with blood.

  And then Lucien turned into Wilcolac Cobweb. There he was, romping on all fours, dressed in a military coat and fur hat like what Lucien was wont to wear. And his voice did not sound very much like that of Wilcolac, but it did match his pitch and accent a bit.

  The Wilcolac who was face down on the last few bits of silver sand, on this side of the threshold, bloody in both legs and bleeding from hand and neck, spoke without looking up. “Lady Empousa. I present the tithe. There is Wilcolac son of Erlkoenig, the king’s firstborn son.”

  “It is not acceptable.” Empousa said, “We cannot touch him.”

  “Damn it!” screamed Lucien. He looked like a man, but he was still on hands and knees, turning and twisting like an animal, trying to bite at the protruding knife hilt. “Someone pull this damn thing out of my damned neck! God damn it! Damn me, but that hurts!”

  “Now, it is acceptable.” Empousa said, “With his own mouth, he has said it.”

  Yumiko saw Erlkoenig and the other masked riders turn their hoods away. The D
ukes of Hell drew themselves up and cast their cloaks aside. Vast beings, winged and many-limbed and many-headed with many staring eyes, began to rise in their places. But these were scarred and maimed, faces and limbs burned by lightning bolts and hellfire, the magnificent and majestic glory which once had been theirs was turned to horror. Their scarred and scabrous wings were larger than thunderclouds. In some impossible way the eye could not see or the mind not comprehend, the dread living beings were larger than the landscape on which they stood and seemed ever to grow larger. Their fingers elongated dreadfully, reaching down to where Lucien cursed and kicked, for he had not yet noticed his peril.

  The yawning mouth in the glassy ground behind them now gave forth a peal of horrific noise. Yells, screams, laughter roared out of the underground places. The ground shook. Cracks formed in the glass surface, and fires burst like bombs, sending jets of flame leaping into the sky.

  Yumiko closed her eyes, unwilling to see more. She heard the sound of Lucien struggling and cursing, screaming in earnest now. It grew shrill, panicky, hopeless. The sound traveled a little ways away and then downward, echoing off the sides of the well as he was dragged below. It mingled with the laughing and shrieking and sobbing from underground and the roar of the fires. His voice turned into a long, thin, endless wail. It was the scream of a being who is not allowed the moment of rest a creature that must pause to breathe can find between sobs.

  She heard crackling noises, as if glass slabs were moving. The heat and roar of the flames was cut off abruptly. The horrid clamor from underfoot fell silent. She heard the grinding of immense teeth breaking through the glass well which held the giant throat open. The mouth shut. Then came earthquakes, clamors, vibrations, and crashes. Still Yumiko did not look, but, from the sound, she knew the face of the giant whose esophagus was being used as the door to Tartarus was being pulled farther down underground, and the strange black mirrored substance of the surface was being piled in the wake of that subsidence into the pit thus formed.