by Anne Perry
He lifted his face to the sky and shouted till his lungs were bursting. “Let it end! It is too much—let it end!”
And the voice of God replied in his soul. “Go to each of the Lords of the Undead and persuade them to come to the ravine below Mount Sorah. There I will break their bodies and free their souls from each other so they may choose again.”
“I can’t!” Ishrafeli cried, everything in him recoiling from the horror of it.
“Yes, you can,” the voice of God replied. “With My help you can do anything I ask of you ... and you know that.”
Ishrafeli crouched low on the ground. “I can’t! To look into the hearts of the Undead would be to see hell through the eyes of those who have chosen it for ever!”
“I know, but I have looked on them ... and loved them. So can you.”
Ulciber heard Ishrafeli’s cry, and willed himself to appear and stand on the earth in the ashes of Pera on his tireless and beautiful feet that had no sensation of the ground, and envied the corpses that lay rotting in the sun. He envied even the flies that clustered on them. They did not rise in buzzing clouds as he passed, as they would have for a man of flesh and blood.
He knew how hot it was, but the sun did not burn him, nor did he smell the acrid fumes of the smoke and the reek of death.
“You don’t have to suffer it all,” he said quietly. “I have power over the Lords of the Undead. I am greater than they, and I can make them go to Mount Sorah without your having to face them.”
Ishrafeli rose to his feet and stared at him, recognition coming slowly to his eyes. “Ulciber ...”
Ulciber smiled, a warm, radiant gesture with a flash of white teeth. He saw the exhaustion in Ishrafeli, the loneliness and the vulnerability, the capacity for pain.
“You don’t have to do it,” he said again. “There is an easier way which is just as good. You don’t need to suffer any more.”
A flash of hope shone in Ishrafeli’s eyes. Ulciber understood it perfectly. He too was tortured by that brightest of all the stars of heaven, the guiding fire in the darkness. He dared to hope for a mortal body, even though he had chosen Asmodeus’ path and denied the steeper path of God. It was not too late; this was a final chance. What did it matter if it foiled the plan of Asmodeus? That was irrelevant now. What if it cost this man in front of him the glory he had sought all his life, and which was now almost in his hand? If he broke this bright spirit, darkened its light for ever and sent it crashing from heaven to hell, like Asmodeus before him—or only to some grey, middle mist of eternal chances lost—that did not matter either ... if Ulciber won a body of flesh to keep, capable of immortality!
“It isn’t fair,” Ulciber said softly. “You are being asked to pay more than anyone else. You don’t need to. It will all be just the same in the end.”
“No it won’t!” Ishrafeli said fiercely. “God does not ask anyone to suffer needlessly.”
Ulciber laughed. It was a soft sound like the slithering of scales over stone. “You have no idea what it will be like for you, no conception at all. You can imagine only one man’s pain at a time, one man’s guilt, a shuddering nightmare, horror at his own deeds. You will see a score at once, and it will break you!” He said that with pleasure. He would like to see that inner beauty broken and stained, spoiled for ever ... but only after he had given Ulciber his power, his body!
“They might not be released if they didn’t go of their own will,” Ishrafeli said.
Ulciber felt triumph soar inside him! Ishrafeli was wavering. He was considering it, turning it over in his mind.
Ishrafeli stared at the beautiful, ageless face in front of him. Was there an easier way to get the Lords of the Undead to Mount Sorah? Could he not use one evil force to destroy another? Would it not be an exquisite irony for Ulciber to serve God’s purpose?
And the voice of God whispered, “They are not two evils. The Undead are still My children. They must choose, not be coerced, and you know that just as I do.”
Ishrafeli closed his eyes, shutting out Ulciber’s face. “No. It cannot be done your way. God’s way is the only one. Now leave me.”
“Yes, it can—” Ulciber started again.
“Leave me!” Ishrafeli said with absolute certainty; it was rock hard in the set of his shoulders, blazing in his eyes.
Then Ulciber knew that he had lost. He let out a howl of fury that cracked the burned beams of a house a mile away and sent them crashing down, charred wood and ash flying in the air. He had been so close, so very close ... and it had still eluded him. He wanted to lash out, to break Ishrafeli now, to beat his living flesh until it was bloody. And the scalding fact that God could resurrect him, never again to be injured or hurt, was like a knife paralysing his hands, and tearing his mind apart.
“You will wish you had accepted me,” he hissed between clenched teeth. “I will make you pay for this so dearly you will beg me to offer you the choice again—beg me on your knees! And I will refuse you!”
Ishrafeli gave a wry, sad little smile. “If I’ve already been through the torment you describe, I can’t think it will matter so very much.”
Ulciber clenched his fists till the nails gouged into the spongy flesh of his palms, cutting and drawing no blood. “Oh, it will!” he promised. “I swear by the pains of hell, it will!”
Ishrafeli turned very slowly on the road west, leaving Ulciber alone in the dust, a shimmering figure to appear and disappear at will, but never to feel the ground under his feet or the air on his face or in his lungs.
Ishrafeli kept on walking on the hard, arid roads until they petered out and he was on grassy tracks churned up by the passing of massed feet. The few trees were dead, shorn of leaves, and the rolling land was unbroken by outcrops or streams, only a few dry gullies bleached pale with some chemical showed where once there had been water.
Gradually he became aware that there was noise ahead as if a distant flock of geese were milling on the ground. Then as he looked up he realised that of course it was men. He had come to within a mile of one of the main camps of the central army. Here he should find Mabeluz, the first of the Lords of the Undead, and begin his task.
He stopped in the road for a moment, gathering his strength. He thought of Tathea. She was always in his mind and heart, and the loneliness of being without her was his heaviest burden. Yet he would not have wished her to share this, even though he knew she would have taken it all for him were it possible. Better he think of the task ahead, and face it, no matter though it should carry him to the last boundaries of hell. There was no other way forward. He remembered what Sadokhar had said about Ozmander and the power of hope, and he knew what he was going to say to the Lords of the Undead.
The outer edges of the camp were only yards away now in the broken dunes and tussocks, and any moment he would encounter sentries. They must already be aware of him. He thought of the creature who had led the armies to do this. Whoever it was was not a madman, a creature with no notion of what he did. This was conscious and deliberate hatred of an order outside humanity.
How would he find the strength to meet this, and not turn away? What if he could not bear it? What would his loss cost? He had not even thought of that before, because neither he nor Tathea had allowed themselves to think of anything but victory. Would his defeat alone be enough to make this beloved earth a dark star for Asmodeus? Did all of them have to win? Or did God have some other plan which He could use were any of them to prove not strong enough, not brave enough, were any one of them to find his own survival more precious to him than the task he had chosen?
The battle was terrible and final, and Asmodeus must also believe he would win!
Ishrafeli stood in the dust with the noise of the camp ahead and saw a sentry turn and stare at him. The man’s face was burned by sun and wind and scarred by battle. His expression was one of arrogance, as if he were so sure of his own superiority he had no need even to put his hand to his sword. But his look demanded answer.
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�I have a message for General Mabeluz,” Ishrafeli accounted for himself, trusting Mabeluz was here. If not, he would look foolish and have to make excuses. He raised his arms. “I have no weapon.”
The sentry regarded him with little interest. “From whom?” he asked sceptically.
“Regarding the other lands,” Ishrafeli replied.
The sentry raised his voice and called a soldier over. “Take him to the general,” he said wearily. “Watch him. He’s probably telling the truth but you never know. Some of these people are desperate, and they don’t care any more. They’ll try anything. Kill him if he’s lying.”
Obediently Ishrafeli followed the soldier up a slight incline, passing surprisingly few men. They were ragged and dirty, many of them wounded. They stood and sat around meagre campfires cooking what little food they could scavenge from a ruined country. Their enemies and most of their friends were dead, and there was nothing left to win or lose. The flower of them lay darkening a thousand miles of battlefields between here and Thoth-Moara.
Ishrafeli passed among them in safety only because he was with an armed soldier. They reached the heart of the camp. Mabeluz was in a magnificent dark red tent, large enough to accommodate a bed and a table with several chairs. The Undead had no physical sensation of hunger or weariness like mortal men. These were merely the trappings of leadership to impress the army. The sentry and visitor passed through the open flap and Ishrafeli stopped as his escort explained who he was.
Mabeluz was certain enough of his power he felt no fear. He turned slowly in his woven leather chair to look at the newcomer with curiosity. His head was huge, almost bald, and his skin was coarse and dark as if suffused with blood, purplish-grey and covered with old scabs where ancient pustules had broken. His features were cruel, his eyes so small only the pupils showed, like an animal’s, but there was sharp, human intelligence in them, probing already for weakness, the point of vulnerability, the wound or the need he could use.
“Well?” he said with a grating voice as if his throat were constricted. “What is your message?” Then as he stared at Ishrafeli the dark blood drained from his skin. His hands clenched and his breath caught in his throat. “You!” he said hoarsely. He half rose in his chair, then fell back again, sweating. The smell of his terror and hatred filled the air.
Ishrafeli looked into his face and saw beyond the revulsion of the surface to the souls within. For a moment time ceased to exist. He saw overwhelming, drowning misery, an anger that lashed in every direction, wounding, hurting wherever it could. He saw the self-hatred which needs to tear down and devour anything strong or clean, the hunger to destroy anything it does not own, to ridicule and shatter dreams and break belief. The accumulated pain washed over him, filling his flesh and his bones until he was so weakened he swayed and almost fell. It was blinding, endless. Every instinct in him was to pull away, to wrench himself from it.
And yet he felt a pity also, an agony of lost light, of chance after chance denied, of selfishness and cruelty that at last crept into every corner and drove out even the imagination of love.
He saw the legion of souls who had spent life crushing the hopes of others now imprisoned in the same body, filled by hatred, locked together in eternal violence.
But he knew what to say.
There was a sneer on Mabeluz’ thick lips. He had already decided to have some amusement by humiliating Ishrafeli in front of the soldier who had conducted him here. He drew in his breath to begin.
Ishrafeli spoke first. “I came to offer you freedom from each other,” he said quietly, but his voice was as steady as the earth itself.
Mabeluz froze. “What?” Then before Ishrafeli could speak he glared at the soldier. “Get out!” he screamed. “Get out!” Then when the man was gone, he looked again at Ishrafeli.
“Freedom from each other,” Ishrafeli repeated softly, meeting Mabeluz’ small, dark eyes until he could not look away. “Is that not what you want ... all of you?”
A maze of expressions crossed Mabeluz’ face: disbelief; hope; fear because Ishrafeli knew who he was; and even greater fear that he might offer such a thing, and give birth to such a fire of hope that would burst the soul, only to quench it again.
Ishrafeli waited. The grief inside him was twisting harder with every second that passed. He saw the individual souls within Mabeluz, each tiny step towards the darkness they had taken: a mockery of someone weak whose dreams were precious, the manipulation of someone whose need was too great to bear alone, the cruelties, the scalding shame, the degrading of those without the guile or the courage to read him and withstand. Each choice was small, but made knowingly. There had been no pity given, no burden shared, no mercy and no forgiveness.
“I can give it to you!” Ishrafeli repeated with an urgency that surprised him. He wanted to free these souls from each other. Maybe some of them might change, take even a single spark of light. Even one would matter.
“You can’t!” Mabeluz said with a sneer, but he could not keep the hope out of his eyes. “It’s not possible.” His voice was rough. He was used to domination. No one had challenged him in centuries. His pain was his own secret. Now here was this man who had conquered the darkness and was creating in him a terror greater than anything he had ever known, because suddenly he offered him light as well. He hated with a white-hot fury, the deeper burned into his being because he was helpless against it. He did hope! Damn the man to everlasting agony—he did hope!
“There is a price—” Ishrafeli began.
Mabeluz threw back his huge head and bellowed with laughter, a harsh, ugly, grating sound. The men standing duty outside cowered away from it.
“Of course there is!” he spat. “What do you want?”
Ishrafeli remained perfectly still. “If you are freed from each other, I will have at least part of what I want. But the price is not paid to me; it is the natural cost of casting away the bond that holds you.”
Mabeluz was watching him as a beast watches its prey, head motionless, eyes unblinking. Ishrafeli could feel his need like a miasma in the air, rank and sour. It knotted his stomach.
“What do we have to do?” Mabeluz asked, his breath rasping in his throat, his neck bulging.
Ishrafeli hesitated. He was walking the blade’s edge. If he slipped now he lost everything. He must make Mabeluz go to the ravine below Mount Sorah, but no matter the temptation, he must not stoop to lying.
But how close was a misunderstanding to a lie? If he willingly allowed Mabeluz to be misled, was that not at heart the same thing?
“Tell us!” Mabeluz demanded, the veins in his face and neck protruding, pulsing with dark blood.
“You must go to the ravine below Mount Sarah,” Ishrafeli answered. “And wait there until all the Lords of the Undead come to you.” That was the exact truth.
Anger, confusion, the desire to believe and the rage against mockery followed each other across Mabeluz’ hideous face. “Do you take us for fools?” he shouted suddenly, clenching his huge shoulders and half rising in his seat. “What can going to Mount Sorah do for me, or for anyone? You think I can’t see through you? You don’t care about me. You want glory for yourself, so you can say to your God that you destroyed me!”
Ishrafeli stared at Mabeluz, steeling himself to go deep into the souls inside him, to smell and taste the individual misery of loss, the need to torment in order not to drown in a sea of self-loathing. He searched for any light, any mercy or honour that still lingered, and found nothing. Every act was soiled by selfishness as if a tide of filth had risen over them all.
Mabeluz stared back. The only movement in the slime of his mind was hatred, and the knowledge of pain.
Ishrafeli prayed for strength, clinging to the thought of God, to the word of life, the light and the breath of Him in the soul. He had said it was possible and Ishrafeli could do it—therefore he could.
“You know what this war is for,” he said steadily. “It has nothing to do with death, or the ruin of the la
nd. They are only means. The end is the last confrontation between the forces of God and of Asmodeus. Neither of them will undo what you have chosen.” It was brutal, and he felt as if he had kicked a broken animal as he said it. The words burned his tongue. “You have tortured the earth, and done it knowingly, but if you go to the ravine, the earth will break the shell that holds you together. Like every other creature of God, you are immortal, but your souls will be separate again. Perhaps some of you will choose the light at last.”
“We can’t be released,” Mabeluz said after a moment or two. “The undead can’t die!” But there was hope in his voice in spite of his denial. He hungered, starved to be contradicted. The plea for it filled his eyes.
He told Mabeluz what he wanted to hear, and it was the truth. “The earth can break your body, the fire of its heart is strong enough.”
Mabeluz was afraid. “Then what? What happens to our souls?” he whispered.
Ishrafeli knew that the answer must be the truth, whole and clean. One slightest stain of deceit on it and it would all slip away.
“Judgement is not mine,” he replied. “You will go to the kingdom whose laws you will keep. But alone, you are free to make your own choice; together you are bound by the lowest of you.”
Mabeluz was going through some kind of turmoil inside himself as the spirits attacked each other with a violence which distorted his features; his body writhed and the sweat broke out on his skin.
Ishrafeli stood by helplessly. He could neither ease Mabeluz’ pain nor make it shorter. The tent grew dark as if the light outside had faded, and the stench almost overpowered Ishrafeli. He had to exercise all the self-control he possessed to stop himself from retching. To watch the creature in front of him drowning in darkness was worse than anything he had begun to imagine. And he knew that if he looked away, tore himself apart from knowing it, then Mabeluz would not believe him, and he would have lost.
Suddenly the silence was split by a scream. “Help me!” Mabeluz foamed at the mouth and all the skin on his face and head twitched. His eyes rolled and the blood oozed and dribbled between his lips.
