by Andy Hyland
I took the pen she offered and dragged it across my palm. Only hurt for a second. The trickle of blood disappeared into the pen tip and I used it to sign my name where she indicated in the book. “You’re aware of your guilt.” she said, matter-of-factly. It wasn’t a question.
“General guilt, or were you thinking of something more specific?” I replied.
She ignored me and handed the pen to Arabella, who threw me a questioning look. I nodded, and she drew blood and signed.
The woman nodded. “You’ll be moving shortly. Don’t bother to sit down.”
I leant against the wall, while Arabella walked around, circling the room. There was nothing I could do to calm her down or give her any reassurance, so I let her get on with it. At one point she walked over and whispered into my ear. “The door’s not guarded. Can we?” I shook my head. Her shoulders sank. I reached over and pulled her into a tight hug.
We stayed like that until a suited figure walked in through the door. Blue-eyed, of course, but this guy was slick. A shaved head, with ebony skin and dazzling teeth as he looked over and smiled. “Apologies for the delay,” he said, taking my hand. “Had to pick this up before we left.” With his other hand he raised a small round-ish package, shrink-wrapped with clear plastic. Arabella jumped back as Charlie’s lifeless eyes stared out at us. “Why so nervous?” the guy asked her. “Nothing you haven’t seen before, is it? You were there for his creation and his death.”
“You are?” I asked.
“Dardariel. Of the Host.”
“I guessed that part. The name’s new to me though.”
For a second, I thought he looked slightly put out. A slight tightening of his flawless face, a touch of a pout appearing on his mouth. Maybe I imagined it, but for that moment it genuinely warmed the cockles of my stone-cold heart. “We’re still awaiting alignment,” he said, the smile suddenly back in full force. “Why don’t you come through and have a seat? We wouldn’t want to keep such a distinguished guest standing here in unnecessary discomfort.” His eyes flicked over to Arabella. “And you, of course. You can come too.” Wow. What a charmer. I wasn’t entirely sure if it was technically possible for a member of the Host to be a dick, but the possibility was certainly there.
He led us out of the main room into a side office, which was nothing special. Desk in the center, one chair on his side, and two on our side. He beckoned for us to sit, but remained standing himself. I looked around. In many ways you could find similar offices anywhere else in the city. Unremarkable in every way. Except for the lack of…anything, really. No paperwork, no computer, no clutter, no waste bin, no dust or dirt of any kind. It was entirely for show.
“Does everyone get invited in for a little chat like this?” said Arabella, who was clearly getting some fight back in her. Being dismissed as my irrelevant sidekick was bound to do that. Humans and hellkind who made that mistake often paid quite heavily, but her hands were tied in this particular situation.
If Dardariel noticed or felt the venom in her voice, he didn’t show it. He looked out of the window in a disinterested way before turning back to us. His eyes ran over every inch of me, and he took his time about it. It was intensely uncomfortable, but not in the normal way. Sometimes when the Host looked at you they stuck with the eyes, and it felt like they were truly boring into your soul. This was something else. It was like he was interested in everything else but my soul. Like that part of me, the essence of who I was, was already immaterial.
“Is there something you wanted to ask?” I said after more than a minute of this.
“Not really,” he said with a blank face. “I doubt you could give any answers if I did. I was merely wondering. For someone such as him to take an interest in a specimen like you…we are curious. We thought in his wisdom that he’d perceived a greatness, a significance. But recent events would suggest not, and now that you’re here…I confess I’m at a loss.”
“If he was mistaken, wouldn’t that suggest something was wrong with him?” I asked, genuinely interested.
Dardariel shook his head and brightened up. Clearly the question interested him in a way that my mere presence didn’t. “A common mistake,” he said, starting to pace as if he were a lecturer before a class. “One that’s been asked many times before, but your assumptions are quite incorrect. To err is not to sin. A mistake is not a moral failing. But thank you for asking. So few take an interest in such matters.”
“So you run this place?” said Arabella, who, by the way she was fidgeting, had moved from fear into boredom. “I thought Tabbris did that.”
“Good grief, no, girl. Tabbris, she…well, she would not concern herself with such mundane matters. The protection of this realm itself is her jurisdiction. The battles and stratagems that are her concern…they are far above your comprehension. And her strategies, her visions…” His eyes glazed over. I detected a bit of a crush. “But you have heard of her? Met her, even?”
“Yeah,” said Arabella, inspecting her fingernails. “We had to clear up one of her mistakes not so long ago.” I tried my best to keep the smile off my face, but it was a losing battle, and in the end I just gave up and laughed.
“I serve the border in this area,” Dardariel continued nonplussed, clearly having decided that the best way to deal with this information was to ignore it completely. I had the feeling we were dealing with a low-level bureaucrat who’d developed an overstated sense of position. It wasn’t uncommon in humans, but it was slightly unnerving to see the same thing in the Host. I was like a kid finding out that Santa and the Tooth Fairy and Jack Frost didn’t exist, one by one.
A knock came at the door. The receptionist put her head inside. “We have alignment,” she said.
Dardariel gestured to the door, and we duly stood and filed out. “Well?” the receptionist asked, her eyes following us as we walked past.
“Truly, I don’t see what the fuss is about,” he replied. Then he turned his attention back to us and pointed to a door at the far end of the room. “Shall we?”
We followed him through to another bland room. Four guards stood against the wall, two on either side. Dardariel led us to the middle, and the guards stepped in, taking an arm each.
“I’m scared,” Arabella whispered.
Dardariel looked back. “I’m afraid you will find this rather uncomfortable. Brace yourselves. Two paces forward, if you please. Now.”
I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve slid between Earth and the Fades, stepping into and through the veil, feeling the change wash over me. It’s second nature, so familiar I barely notice it anymore. Which made what happened with the Host in that room even more surprising and unpleasant.
My legs kept walking, but the room was gone. Darkness collapsed around us, heavy and unyielding. The only thing I could be sure of was the firm grip around each of my biceps, so tight that my hands were becoming numb as the blood stopped flowing. For an infinity, or a second, we were like this, and then rough stone paving appeared under my feet. The guards released my arms, and I collapsed to the ground, spewing up what was left in my stomach from the last time I’d fed, which wasn’t much by now. Mostly it was just bile that dropped to the floor as my stomach convulsed. I tried to stop the retching but it couldn’t be done, so I let it run its course. Eventually I looked over and saw Arabella over to the side, looking as bad as I felt, slumped against a wall.
“As I believe I mentioned,” said Dardariel, looking down at us and smiling, “the transition is unpleasant for your kind. You’ll acclimatize soon, and once you’ve been dealt with…well, let’s just say that being here isn’t something you’ll have to worry about ever again.”
“Here being where?” I gasped.
“The place of judgement. The intersection of Earth with the Higher Realms. The Great Library.”
“I don’t see any books,” I muttered. There wasn’t much of anything, although the room itself was massive. Flagstones ran the length of the floor, and the walls rose high to an a
rched ceiling. Two thick chains descended from huge steel gears.
“This is the holding area,” he informed me, gesturing to the guards, who moved further in and started attaching the chains to iron loops in the floor. With a creak, the gears began to turn and a section of the floor began to move, to lift. By the time it was at forty-five degrees, the gap was large enough for a man twice my height to walk through without ducking.
Dardariel motioned us forward. I hesitated and a guard started to walk towards me. That got me moving. I pulled Arabella to her feet. “Where does that go?” I asked.
“Somewhere safe. You’ll wait there until you’re called.”
“How long will that take?”
He shrugged. “I’ve not been told that. Hours, weeks, years, what does it matter? Are you in a particular hurry?”
“I want to leave,” said Arabella. “Soon.”
“And so you shall, my child, so you shall. All time is soon relative to eternity, is it not?”
“We’ll be released?” She looked hopeful.
“In a sense. Now, please”. He waved us in. “I have other things to do. You’ve created quite the mess.”
He stood there, smiling, pointing. I took a deep breath, grabbed Arabella’s hand, and started walking. Below the section of raised floor, high stone steps led down into the darkness. We took them slowly, one by one. As we moved, the walls started to give off a faint glow – barely enough to see the next step by, but I wasn’t about to start complaining. Twenty steps down, a deep metallic groan came from behind us, and the chains ground through the gears once more, letting the floor fall back into place.
We moved down in silence. I counted two hundred steps before they stopped without warning, and I tripped forward across the floor. I reached down. Wooden floorboards, dry and brittle. Ancient, by the feel of them. Behind us the stairs rose up into the gloom.
“What now?” Arabella asked softly.
I raised a hand and tried to call up a wisp-light. A simple cast, one of the first that any half-decent mage learns. As straightforward as magic gets. Yet now it came hard to me. I pulled and channelled the magic, but it was as if it was shunning me, refusing to fall into line. I persevered and finally it came together, a small ball of turning light, duller than usual but better than nothing. I sent it on ahead and, after a few seconds, it grudgingly obliged.
Arabella was trying the same thing and getting increasingly frustrated. “Breathe,” I told her gently. “Focus. Just the light, only the light.”
With a grimace she too pulled the light into being. Even duller than my own wisp, but it was something. “Damn it, that was tough. You know what this means.”
I nodded. If it was that hard to pull such a simple cast together, then our chances of doing anything more complicated, more forceful, were somewhere between slim and none. Which left us down here in the dark, defenseless. The machetes were back at the clubhouse. I had a couple of knives on me, and I was sure that Arabella did too. The Host didn’t seem too worried about them. But knives against whatever might be down here? That wasn’t much.
I walked forward, moving the wisp round to get an idea of our surroundings. Heavy grey unfinished stone ran up on either side. Curved arches formed doorways off in every direction, but the walls themselves ran up higher than we were able to see.
I threw out my senses, only to have them slammed back in my face. Great. Defenseless and very nearly operating blind as well. I looked at Arabella. “You want to pick a direction?”
She looked around, and settled on an archway to our right. “That’s as good as any of them. Let’s try it.”
For the next hour or so we walked through archway after archway. Nothing changed. At first we went in as straight a line as possible, but then as boredom set in we got more creative, switching left and right then left again. This didn’t fill me with confidence, and I suspected if we weren’t careful we could end up circling back on ourselves, and we’d never know.
“I’m thirsty,” said Arabella. “Don’t suppose you’ve got anything?”
“Nothing.” I was feeling it too. The shock and stress had suppressed our bodies’ natural needs for a while, but now we were getting hungry and thirsty and tired. Stopping wouldn’t help, however, so we pressed onwards.
“I’ve had enough,” she moaned. “Please. Let’s just sit for a bit. I can’t do this too much longer.”
“Ten more,” I urged, fighting down the urge to snap at her. That wouldn’t help – the last thing we needed right now was to be at each other’s throats. Plenty of others would be stepping up to do that soon enough. “Ten more arches, then we’ll take a break.”
As it happened, we only needed four.
The light was the first giveaway that something was changing up ahead. Our wisp-lights were yellow and constant, but now there was a reddish flicker dancing on the walls. Then a low rumble of voices. I pulled out a knife and Arabella did the same. Now we were armed, for all that was worth.
The final arch passed overhead as we walked through, leaving us standing at the very edge of the pit. It was a vast circular structure, stretching further around and across than we had any hope of making out. Immense ledges were carved into the rock, with steps moving up and down and between them. Every ledge held a shanty-town of makeshift tents gathered around fires that carved out holes in the darkness, and sent out choking clouds of smoke. It was a hive of activity, with humans and hellkind constantly on the move, a thread of animation twisting and curling all the way down as far as we could see.
“Well this is…interesting,” said Arabella. “What do we do now?”
“You can start by getting this down you,” said a voice over to our left. Zack walked out of the darkness and tossed a small package to me, then another to Arabella. I caught it and held it up for inspection. A squat little bottle fashioned of closely stitched leather, or something very similar. It would hold a pint of liquid, maybe a bit more.
Arabella squealed and pulled Zack into a hug. I gave him a quick nod, which he returned while trying to gently push her away. “Keep the noise down,” he told her. “Slow and steady here, nice and quiet.”
I took a swig out of the bottle. Not bad. Refreshing. Hint of apple. “You brought this with you?”
“Me? No. They grabbed me outside the hospital, right after I’d dropped the girl off with Alison. One nasty slide later, not to mention the traipse through that bloody labyrinth, and I ended up here. Couple of hours ago, no more than that. Figured you couldn’t be too far behind.” He looked back past us. “No Julie?”
“She’s got some kind of exemption. Tied up to that work she did for them with David, I’d guess.”
“Excellent. They know that we helped out with that as well, right?”
“I don’t think it counts. Tabbris doesn’t seem to have extended any favors.”
“Typical. Shit.”
“So where is this? And where did you get the drink from?” asked Arabella. “Tastes good.”
“Follow me and I’ll explain. I’ve staked out a claim on the second ledge down. Best get back before some lowlife decides to invade our space.” He led us along the rim and down a set of uneven and cracked steps, talking as he went. “So you’ve figured out the reason why the slide was such a pain in the ass, I take it?”
I nodded. “Reckon I have. The Fades takes you hellwards. No problem sliding there because…well, because our natural inclination is in that direction, I suppose. No white light, and all that. But if the Great Library is the reverse of that, then to get here we’d have to slide heavenwards. Not so easy for us. We had to be dragged here with our souls kicking and screaming.”
“Great minds think alike,” said Zack ducking to the right and taking us past a set of occupied tents. “So I’ve been making some gentle and polite enquiries with the residents, and it turns out that this is their holding area. Where they stick you until you’re called up to face the music. Nobody here knows how far the pit goes down. The hellkind go as deep as th
ey can, while us humans occupy the higher levels. Mostly. Every couple of days there’s a supply drop. No warning, and nobody sees them do it. You just open your eyes or turn around and hey presto, your bottles are full and there’s bread on the steps. Plenty to go around.”
“At least we don’t have to fight for it,” said Arabella. “That’s something.”
“Nobody starves, nobody dies. You wait patiently and then you’re collected.”
“How long does that take?”
He shrugged. “Varies. First guy I met, he reckons he’s been here over a year. The hellkind in the deep – who knows? Hey, stop here and look down. Remind you of anything?”
I followed his line of sight. Endless layers of the pit, heading down, down, down. “Nope, you’ve lost me.”
“Dante? Dante’s Inferno? All the layers of hell with their sins?”
“You’ve lost me.”
“But this isn’t hell, is it?” said Arabella, confused. “This is kind of the other way.”
“Oh what’s the point in even talking to you two?” Zack trudged onwards again. “I’m just saying it’s so similar that maybe Dante saw this place. Got confused, and wrote his Divine Comedy, skewing everything the wrong way.”
“Yeah, that’s a thought,” I said.
Zack snorted. “You could pretend to sound interested.”
“No, I really couldn’t.”
“Are we nearly there yet?” said Arabella.
“I hate you both,” Zack muttered.
We came to a halt half an hour later. Zack had found us some space on the brink of the ledge. We’d inherited two large tents and a few modest essentials from the previous inhabitants, who had moved on and no longer required them. We sat on the edge, swigging from our bottles and swinging our legs out into the void.
“Zack,” someone slurred from the ledge below ours. “That you?”
“These guys are okay,” said Zack to me, before calling back. “Yeah, it’s me. You coming up?”
A minute or so later an odd shuffling pair made their way slowly up the stone steps from their ledge to ours. Both were hunched figures, covered only in loose brown sacking, with rope tied around their waists. Only the heads and hands were exposed, and these were covered in festering boils. “Drag, Sklag, these are my friends Malachi and Arabella.”
