As we trudged after the wounded creature through the dew-wet undergrowth of the forest, I knew that Anna would be dead before we returned. I had seen it in Dr. von Stane’s eyes as we left. We were too late to save her, and now we were simply executioners, carrying out a sentence.
We found the cave among the moss-grown ruins of a monastery that had long since fallen to scattered stones. “Good Lord,” Sir Godfrey said as we stood in a semicircle around the dark opening, scarcely larger than a pantry door. “I used to play near here when I was a boy. There were stories, but none of us believed … ” His words died with a sigh.
One by one we crept into the dank, dripping tunnel, which seemed half-natural, though here and there hewn stones showed old carvings of monks with their heads bowed in prayer. We kept our spears before us, and our guns near at hand, moving like men hunting a bear, though what we found was something already half-dead, collapsed upon some ancient crypt, its moist skin heaving as it struggled to breathe. For all its inhumanity, it looked less a hideous supernatural creature, and more just a dying animal, but our disgust and pity were worse than our fear, and it was only a moment before one of the stablehands drove in his spear once, and then again. Sir Godfrey followed suit, and I stood and held the lantern aloft so they could see to do their grisly work.
As the thing died, it reached up and its spidery fingers found my wrist. I trembled, as if in forbidden pleasure, and saw not the ghastly creature I had seen before, but a youth, pale and frightened, his eyes shining with unshed tears. “Please,” he said, his voice cracking, “please help me.” Then Sir Godfrey brought down the hatchet, and severed his head.
I didn’t speak to the others of what I had seen, but I urged them to carry the body impaled on their spears and not to touch it. We burned the remains on a pyre in the back garden, but only after Dr. von Stane had examined them carefully. He suggested that the creature must have exuded a toxin from its beslimed skin, perhaps a hallucinogen, like certain mushrooms. I thought of the boy I had seen, and remembered the fairy tale that we were all told as children, of the princess who kisses the frog and finds him transformed into a handsome prince. I watched the fire burn, and I shuddered.
Pira
Brad Strickland
The two oddly matched travelers had left the last furrowed field behind and were well under the canopy of Greenhallow Wood when Pira’s ears were assaulted—and not for the first time—by Festo’s broken, croaking tenor.
Come hither, Love, and lie with me
Beneath the merry greenwood tree;
Bring a loaf of bread and a jug of wine—
Then show me yours, I’ll show you mine!
“Hush, Fool,” Pira said.
Twisting in his saddle, Festo smiled back, as though acknowledging a compliment. “My lady enjoys music?”
“I’d sooner listen to your jackass braying.”
“Say not so, Lady. The matter offends you, not the sound. The words are too taffeta and treacle for such serious business as ours. The second verse I’ve made much grimmer. Hear:
If you, my Love, can’t come to me
Beneath the merry greenwood tree,
At least send the loaf and jug of wine,
For my belly cleaves fast unto my spine!
Pira did not smile. “Peace, Festo!”
“Peas?” the little man asked ruminatively. “I am not partial to legumes, Lady, but if we have no better provender—”
Pira silenced his prattle with a look dark as building thunder. Then, in a milder voice than before, she said, “I’m sorry, Jester. While my lord lies suffering, I will not take my ease.”
“But Athon’s not your lord. Not yet, anyway, you are only his betrothed. Do you love the king so much already?”
“Love has nothing to do with it, Crookleg. Our fathers arranged the match years ago. Athon was twelve, I was ten.”
“Yes, I recall your first visit to the castle. You were fair even as a child.”
Pira studied the dwarf in motley who rode before her, his arms and legs like child-sized, twisted parts, stuck badly onto a grown man’s torso. “Were you there? I don’t remember you at all, Festo.”
“No? Ah, well, I was only a palace brat a year younger than Prince Athon then. I was not yet famous; not a fool yet, you see. Oops!” The jester’s mount had momentarily balked. The little man leaned against the animal’s neck to urge the beast into renewed motion. “Old John thinks it’s time to eat, too,” the fool announced.
“Our animals will eat as soon as we reach the tunnel.”
“Faith, by then I’ll be hungry enough to eat them, hide, harness, and shoes,” Festo muttered. After a moment he added, “Lady, will you want me to lead you into Hell?”
“You will stay with the horse and ass.”
Festo sighed. “Left behind with my brothers.” He clucked comfortably to John. He and Pira rode for a while in the cool, fresh air of deep forest, the smell of black earth and green trees rich in their nostrils. At length, Festo once more broke the silence: “No one tells a fool anything. I saw the king’s army return, flying the pennons of victory. I saw Athon, pale and grim, borne inside on a littler. Yet no one would say what wound he suffered.”
Pira looked past the fool, into green distance. “If you must know, Athon was struck in the breast by an arrow of black ice. The leeches tell me no remedy in this world can halt his slow death—and so I must seek balm from the next. The hermit spoke of an artifact of Hell, a wondrous gem called the Heart of Healing.”
“You visited the hermit on the Mount of Pines,” Festo said. “And the old man told you that years ago I was one of the hunting party that discovered this passageway. And since you are so much stronger than a poor crippled fool—”
“You gallantly consented to be my guide,” Pira finished for him. “The land rises. How far, now, to these hills?”
The leaf covering had become lighter, and here and there sunlight shafted slanting to the forest floor. Festo squinted at its angle. “If I do not drop from starvation, Lady, we should be at the tunnel somewhat after sunset.”
“So we shall be.”
And so they were. The tunnel opening was a tall, narrow crevice in the face of a limestone bluff, an opening so narrow that it left barely enough room for a full-grown warrior to squeeze through, though Pira, in her boy’s mail and helmet, and armed only with a short sword, could pass easily enough, as, for that matter, might Festo, had the dwarf wanted to enter. But if he did, he showed no sign. Bustling about with his waddling gait, he took care of the mounts while Pira braced one hand on the rough stone lip of the crevice and leaned to gaze into the deepening dark. She stood like that a long while. Finally, Festo’s call roused her.
Full night had come, and the sky was strewn with stars of late summer. The jester had started a campfire, and over it simmered a savory stew. “Come,” he urged. “Never go to Hell on an empty stomach.”
Drawing close to the fire, Pira accepted a mug of stew, cradled it in her hands, absorbing the warmth. “How far is it—through the tunnel?”
Festo poked at the fire with a long stick, sending sparks whirling up like rising stars, gone to join their sisters in the Hay-Wain or to become part of the Hunter’s bright belt. The fool looked up, his face unusually grim in the underlight of the fire. “I did not journey that way, Lady. Of the dozen who did, only one returned.”
Pira nodded. “The bishop.”
“Bishop he was then. Your precious babbling mad hermit now.” Festo hunched closer to the fire. “Who knows what lies inside the cavern, or how far it goes before leaving our world for the next?”
“A fool should know. I’m only a woman, yet I know well how far one can go in a tunnel.”
Festo grinned, suddenly boyish. “There are two answers to that, Lady. The usual is this: ‘How far can you go in a tunnel? Halfway; then you’re coming out.’ ”
“What is the second answer?
“My own: ‘How far can you go in a tunnel? Depends on whom yo
u’re with.’ ”
Pira chuckled and set aside the untasted stew. “I like your ‘whom,’ Fool.” She stared into the heart of the fire. She felt her shadow behind her, stretched long and thin, a black arrow pointing at the blacker slash of the tunnel mouth. After a few moments, she shook herself. “If I’m not here again in three days, return to Athon’s castle and tell of the last of me. Be sure they burn Athon’s body, with all due rites. None of this burial. Tell them only burning will set the king’s soul free. And have them put something in Athon’s death-song to tell folk of my failed attempt.”
“You will wait for morning?”
“Why? No sun will rise underground.”
Pira took water for four days and food enough, at starvation ration, for only three. She kindled a torch, strode to the cavern, entered, and paused only once, to look back at the dwarf’s outline, grotesque against the glow of the campfire. Then she lifted the torch and moved into the deeper darkness.
The path beneath her sandals sloped downward. She held the torch in her left hand, stretched herself against the cool, rough wall of stone. At times the ceiling rock pressed almost against her head, and she left behind a stinking, smoke-black trail where her torch fire licked it; again, the overhead rock soared away, with only echoes to tell her of the cathedral vaults above. Now she walked in near-silence, the grinding of sand beneath her feet and the pumped blood singing in her veins loud in her ears. Now came the thip-thip-thip of eternally dripping water, beating slow march time for her. Thrice she halted to draw a new torch from the supply strapped to her back; and each time, the newly kindled light flickered only on rock walls and the path, sloping always down, down, down.
So long she walked that at last she walked almost asleep. At first she mistook the red glow ahead for the ruddy reflection of her torch off a wet wall, but then air gusted in her face, dry, hot, and perfumed with brimstone. The glow took shape, became a sharp, high archway opening to—Pira stepped through. She stood in the open, under an empty black sky. No, not quite empty.
One star shone.
A solitary star, the color of blood, stood halfway up the sky on her right hand, a baleful crimson beacon more brilliant than any other star she had seen. Its ruddy light was nearly as bright as that of a full moon, and it illuminated a dreary country. Pira took more steps forward, raising her torch. The tunnel-arch opened amid a jumble of boulders, and behind her reared sheer rock cliffs. A doleful hissing filled the air. Pira let the torch drop, snuffed it against the ground, and waited to accustom her eyes to the vaster gloom. Now she saw to her left a great chasm in the rock, from which dimly glowing vapors steamed. The cleft cut a huge incurving sickle; near its point was a ridge of stone, on which stood a statue—or a human. Pira moved toward it.
“That is Lumiel, mortal!” boomed a stony voice behind her.
Pira spun, drew her sword, dropped to a crouch—and realized her puny weapon was useless. Close against the cliffside reclined a naked giant, ten times man-sized, his bent left leg framing the tunnel mouth, his knee braced to support the top of the arch—she had stepped out under it. In the red glare of the star, she had an impression of massiveness, of weight beyond that of flesh: of living stone.
The giant’s face was obscure in the gloom, but Pira felt eyes on her. The voice rumbled again: “I am Sha’bbat, Keeper of the Way.” The figure stirred slightly, grating and grinding. “Rarely these days does a living mortal travel this path. You are in the Land Beneath the Crimson Star, O mortal.”
“Demon Sha’bbat,” Pira replied, tightening her grip on the sword hilt. “I come to seek the Heart of Healing. Where may I find it?”
“I know the bait whereof you speak, mortal. A ruby amulet, whose power is that it can, once in a generation of men, heal a mortal wound.” The giant chuckled with a sound like pebbles rattling over a boulder. “Come, that is a puny thing to seek. There are so many others, woman, more … tempting. Pleasure outside your mate’s bed, all delicious and undetected; a fountain of riches wherewith to indulge your whims; or there is revenge, a sweet intoxicant drunk from a steel chalice; or—”
“I seek the Heart of Healing.”
The giant sighed, a desert wind fingering loose sand. “That only? That toy you may find at the Citadel of Satur—if you can travel so far. Our paths are treacherous to living feet.”
“Tell me the way.”
“I keep the Way; I don’t tell it. Find it yourself, mortal. Or you might ask Lumiel. I, you see, do only my office: I keep the Way open. Lumiel, though, is more like you. She sometimes … concerns herself with mortal undertakings. Yes, ask the Taker of Tolls; ask Lumiel.”
Warily, Pira looked behind her. Her eyes, used to the strange light, saw more clearly the standing figure atop the hillock—the hillock she could now recognize as Sha’bbat’s bent right knee, resting on the ground. Pira took a great breath and sheathed her weapon before venturing toward Lumiel.
When she had come near enough to see the figure’s features, Pira stopped short, the air knotted in her chest. Lumiel was a naked woman, her skin a deep midnight blue. Armed with a bow and a quiver of arrows, she stood with her left foot slightly outthrust, her hips cocked as though she had held that position for eons. She wore an unearthly beauty and perfection of form, with breasts high and well shaped, waist narrow, hips full. Her hair gleamed silver in the light of the single star, and her face, filled though it was with loveliness mingled with grief, was monstrous. She had wept, this archer; over her cheeks the tears had spread and frozen, welding her eyelids shut, dripping in fanglike icicles on either side of her chin.
“Come, mortal,” she said in a voice like low string music.
“You—you are no demon.”
“Once, long ago, I was like you, a human woman. That which I now am, I am forever.”
“I—you heard me speak of my quest?”
“Yes. It is fruitless. Return now. Do not pass me, and you will not have to pay in the coin of our world.”
“But I come to save my betrothed from death.”
“Others have come on similar journeys. Few have returned. None have wholly succeeded.”
Pira fingered her sword hilt. “Still, I must try. What is the way, Lumiel?”
The standing figure inclined her head, a weary gesture. “You must traverse the Mire of Regret; cross the Dark River; and then keep to the path through the Forest of Possibility. At the end of the path, in a clearing, you will see the Scarlet Citadel. But it would be better if you never saw it.”
“How far, in what direction?”
“Do you see the Star?”
“Yes. It is at my right hand, midway up the sky.”
“That is our east. Your way lies north and west. You may reach the Citadel in the time it takes the Star to reach zenith, and return well before it sets, if you are firm of purpose. But beware! Do not let the Star set while you are still in our country.”
“Why?”
The fanged face turned in blind pity toward Pira. “I had reached just this spot—nearly free, nearly free!—when the Star sank on my own quest. When the light goes, so goes your freedom. Darkness took me here and made me what you see.”
Pira shuddered. Then, with another deep breath, she stepped past the archer. The crack in the ground that she had noticed scythed to within a pace of Sha’bbat’s knee, and she trod carefully the narrow passage between chasm and demon, her eyes streaming against the acrid fumes. Deep within the crevice, she saw a roiling floor of molten rock, glowing white-hot, belching and hissing. In a moment she had left it behind and viewed the countryside more clearly.
The hillside dipped down in an easy slope, losing itself finally in distance and darkness. The far horizon was merely a more solid blackness than the sky, suggestive of sharp-peaked barren mountains. In the middle distance were humped forms—trees, she supposed—and at their feet wound a black snake, reflecting the red light of the Star here and there. That must be the river she had to cross. Pira glanced once more at the Star to orient
herself and began to descend the slope, heading north and west.
She walked through ankle-high grass and felt sudden stinging pain. Dismayed, she stepped back, against five or six hungry tugs. The grass waved, its blades yearning for her flesh. She saw the tiny sucker-mouths at the end of each blade, some of them wet with drops of blood. She drew her sword and slashed, and the blades of grass flew. Pira sheathed the sword. The grass grew in tussocks, and she could, with care, thread her way around them. Intent on the path, Pira paused after a few yards, shivering. She had a strong feeling, for an instant, of being followed; but behind her the slope climbed empty toward the cliffs. The only eye visible was that of the Star, and that she defied. Avoiding the thirsty grass, Pira resumed her journey.
This underworld was not an utterly silent place, but its sounds seemed always on the edge of hearing: thin groans, as though from many yards under the ground, vibrated against the soles of her sandals; black flying things wheeled high, sending down long keening cries like the memory of an echo; and all around her, the whole land seemed to breathe ponderously.
The ground underfoot became springy, then marshy, and the hummocks of grass gave way to scattered knee-high shrubs, their branches sprouting from squat, thick stumps. Pira mistrusted these, too, and took care to move between them without touching, for it seemed to her that as she passed, the leaves stirred faintly in her direction, in no breeze. The wet path sucked at her feet, trying to tug off her sandals, and let her go on only reluctantly.
“Pira … ”
She stopped, certain for a moment that she had only imagined the call. Or dreamed it—she was weary enough.
“Pira!”
A breathy but somehow familiar voice, coming from somewhere to her left. “Who calls me? Who is there?”
“Aleppa.” A woman’s voice, no doubt this time. “Aleppa the Sword. You knew me in life … ”
Handsome Devil: Stories of Sin and Seduction Page 6
