Tears of the Furies (A Novel of the Menagerie)

by Thomas E. Sniegoski Christopher Golden

  When Conan Doyle spun to face Ceridwen again, Danny seemed about to argue, but then fell silent once more. The sorceress did not blame him. Arthur was correct. In truth, she was relieved that he had chosen their purpose over her comfort.

  "Can you do this?" he asked.

  And how could she deny him?

  They walked upon a surface of bones.

  From a perilous mountain path, they had descended into a broad expanse of what Eve at first believed to be limestone. But as they grew closer, she had begun to see pieces of dry, yellow bone scattered on the dirt. In matter of minutes, no matter where her foot fell, the soles of her Italian leather boots landed atop the remains of something that had once been alive. Some of the bones were human, yes. She recognized those readily enough. But from what she could see there were bones there belonging to just about everything in creation.

  "Am I the only one who’s a little freaked out by this?" Eve asked, turning to face her captors.

  "It’s the bloody Underworld," Hawkins snarled. "What do you expect, a field of poppies?" He reached out, placed the flat of his hand against her back, and shoved. "Keep moving."

  Eve stumbled, still under the sway of Nigel Gull’s magick, then turned to look into Hawkins’s eyes. She prided herself on the way she evolved with the world, but in her were all the women she had ever been, all the ages she had lived, and now in her fury she fell back on the Eve of another era.

  "Mark me," she said. "You may do your best to forget who it is you trifle with, but I shall not forget. I have bred legions of monsters, and slain even more. Your bones will join these others beneath my feet before long. One way, Mr. Hawkins, or another."

  Hawkins tried to smile to show her that he was not bothered by her words, but he could not quite manage it. Instead he gestured as if to push her again, but she was already turning to forge ahead. The path gradually angled upward as they approached a hill. Eve wondered what new thrills the Underworld had in store for them on the other side.

  Calmer, now, she shook off the remnants of the past, summoning the sardonic swagger that had become so much a part of her survival as an immortal. Eve glanced over her shoulder at Gull.

  "So, are we there yet? I’m bored."

  Gull was walking with Jezebel, a protective arm around her waist. There was something untoward about the intimacy between them. The mage was not her father, but regardless Jezebel was still only a girl. Even if there was nothing sexual there, still it was troubling. Jezebel was powerful, and with her red hair and green eyes, and her sensuality, stunning. But she was so obviously broken inside, clamoring for Gull’s approval. And he twisted her around with his words just the same way he wrought magick with his contorted fingers.

  Throughout their trek, Jezebel had grown quieter and now she appeared to be a little shaky — not really digging the whole bone carpet thing.

  "Damn, the girl doesn’t look well. Maybe she’s just realizing what I figured out the second we arrived. This is a place the wandering souls go. The damned, right? I figure we all belong here. It’s like coming home. Can’t be easy on the kid."

  Jezebel shuddered at her words.

  "Shut your mouth," Hawkins barked, but he did not touch her. "D’we need this, Nigel? Think I liked her better when she couldn’t talk."

  "That will be enough of that, Hawkins," Gull said casually, as though they were all just taking a pleasant Sunday stroll through the park.

  They reached the base of the hill, the bone path leading upward, and Eve again considered what awaited them on the other side. Jezebel stopped to rest for a moment, taking a seat on an enormous skull that could only have belonged to something monstrous.

  "In answer to your question, Eve, I would wager that we are close," the hideous sorcerer said. He stroked Jezebel’s hair as if he were calming a nervous house pet.

  She leaned into him, closing her eyes, lost in his attentions. "I think I would like to go home now," she whispered in a tiny, little girl’s voice that trembled on the brink of tears.

  "There, there, pretty Jez," Gull comforted, continuing to stroke her fiery red hair. "It won’t be long now."

  Eve didn’t like the sound of that and wondered where she fit into the mage’s plans. Throughout her time as his prisoner she had fought against the enchantments placed upon her, but she was still incapable of directing her own actions. Eve would be free. Of that, she had no doubt. A moment would come when she would have the opportunity to free herself, and then she would kill them all. She would need patience, however, but Eve had lived almost forever and had learned patience very well indeed.

  "Won’t be long until what?" she asked Nigel, as she squatted to the bone floor and retrieved the skull of what could have been a crow. She used its beak to clean away some of the grime that had collected beneath her fingernails — a manicure was definitely in her foreseeable future. She looked up into the sorcerer’s eyes, the only part of his body that hadn’t been twisted by magick. "C’mon, Gull, the suspense is killing me."

  "We’d best hurry, then. You’ll need to survive at least until we can deliver you." Gull smiled, and it was wretched to see. The mage hauled a dozy Jezebel from her seat. "On your feet now, girl," he commanded, no longer sounding quite so fatherly. "We have places to be."

  Jezebel did as she was told, hugging her body as if cold.

  "Hawkins, see to her," Gull instructed, and the man moved to stand beside the girl, ushering her gently along.

  The sorcerer moved toward Eve, gesturing for her to begin the climb up over the rise. She didn’t care for the implications of his words, but they came as no surprise. He had kidnapped her for some reason, and she doubted that her scintillating conversational skills had anything to do with it.

  Eve had difficulty maintaining her footing on the shifting slope, and she used her hands to pull herself along. The pieces of bone were sharp, but the pain kept her focused.

  Gull had begun to climb as well, eagerly matching her progress, his breathing becoming labored as they neared the top, perhaps more from anticipation than exertion. Eve found herself increasing her pace, eager to reach the summit before her captor.

  "Last one to the top is a deformed fucking freak," she snarled. "Aw, too late." She went up over the rise . . .

  And froze. After all she had seen in her excruciatingly long lifetime, she had never seen anything quite like the sight that greeted them over the top of that hill.

  Gull joined her, fury twisting his features all the more horribly. "There were times when I actually felt a sense of guilt over what I was going to do with you. But now I believe . . ." Then he, too, stopped and gasped.

  "Just when you think you’ve seen it all," Eve said, eyes riveted to the valley below her.

  The body of a giant lay splayed upon the valley floor, so enormous that it covered much of the valley. The corpse was larger than an aircraft carrier, large enough that a small town could have been built atop it. And corpse was the word. The giant was quite dead, of that she had no doubt, and had been dead for some time by the look of him. Desiccated skin hung loose and leathery from its monstrous skeleton. A wispy fog floated above the enormous cadaver, the smell blowing up from the valley on a breeze ripe with the stench of rot.

  Jezebel started to cough and gag, the stink of the decaying giant nearly making her sick.

  "It all seems to have a certain logic now," Gull said wistfully, the overwhelming stench seeming to have no effect on him. "The disorder and degeneration — the chaos."

  "Someone you know?" Eve asked, bringing a hand to her nose. As the mist above the great corpse shifted in the breeze, she began to notice the details of its attire. The giant wore pitted bronze armor, tarnished green with the passage of time.

  "In a sense. Think about it, temptress. One of your experience ought to be able to put the pieces together. Who can this be, a god so large that the Underworld itself is almost too small for him?" Gull asked, a hint of awe in his voice.

  Eve couldn’t wrap her brain around the c
oncept. How is it even possible? How is it possible for a god to end up this way?

  "Hades," Gull said in a reverent whisper. "What sad fate has befallen you?"

  When Eve began to descend the steep hill toward that extraordinary sight it was not only the voice of Orpheus and Gull’s command that drove her. She had to see it, this magnificent panorama of death, so enormous that she could barely contain the fact of it in her mind.

  "So, if the Lord of the Underworld is dead," she rasped, "then who’s running the show down here?"

  Gull did not look at her as he spoke, his eyes fixed upon the dead god before them. "Turning and turning in the widening gyre," he muttered. "The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world."

  "When you start quoting Yeats, I’m guessing that’s code for you don’t have a fucking clue," she said, careful not to lose her footing on the slippery slope.

  The closer they got, the more details she took in. The craftsmanship of the god’s armor was some of the most beautiful and intricate ornamentation she had ever seen. But what would one expect for a lord of the abyss? Hades’ face was a shrieking death mask, the withered flesh pulled tight against his skull. Strange birds whose feathers seemed to glint like metal in the faint light of the Underworld flew out of the god’s gaping maw in a shrieking flock as they approached, but her eyes were drawn to something else.

  "Look at his throat," Eve said, staring at the dry, curling slash that had been cut across the leathery skin of Hades’ neck.

  The ground in that valley was a black, fine soil, but on the acreage around the desiccated head of the dead god the earth was stained a deep burgundy. Though there were trees and other plant life familiar to the Underworld growing about the vastness of the deceased, Eve could see that nothing grew where the dead lord’s blood had flowed.

  "All of the detritus of Greek myth had retreated here when their era came to a close. It was their only hope at survival," Gull explained, glancing at an awestruck Hawkins and a giddily grinning Jezebel. "They ought to have built a paradise down here to rival Olympus. Instead, they died, and the place fell to ruin. Entropy. The center could not hold. I wondered what could have happened to cause such chaos here." Gull spoke slowly, mesmerized by the sight before him. "I never imagined that it could have begun with the murder of Hades himself."

  Who has the power to murder a god? Again Eve struggled with the inconceivable.

  Hawkins trotted several steps ahead of them, trying to get a closer look at the wound, himself now a tiny figure dwarfed by the sprawling, rotting cadaver.

  "Not murder," Hawkins said, and they all stared at him. Soldier, spy, and assassin, he was well schooled in murder. "Look in his hand. He’s holding a knife. I don’t think he was murdered at all, I think the poor bugger offed himself."

  Eve looked at the dead god Hades, really looked at him; how he lay prostrate upon the floor of the valley, his mouth agape as if attempting to call to his brethren in Olympus above, and she knew that Hawkins’s words were true. Hades had taken his own life.

  The closer they progressed, the more foul the stench of decay was becoming, almost palpable in its intensity. Eve found that even she was becoming affected, hacking and coughing with the others. And since she really had no need to, she made a conscious effort to halt her breathing.

  That’s better.

  Gull was gasping, a twisted hand placed flat against his chest. He had stopped his descent and was trying to catch his breath. Hawkins tied a handkerchief behind his head, covering his face and Jezebel appeared to be fighting the urge to vomit. Despite the revelation that loomed ahead of them, the sublime nature of the thing and the thoughts of divinity and history that it demanded, the two hovered around Gull protectively.

  There they were, perfectly helpless. Eve could have killed them all with ease, if not for the voice of Orpheus. Trapped by Gull’s magick, she could do nothing but wait for them to get their shit together.

  The sorcerer finally caught his breath and pulled Jezebel to him. "Wind," he said, between gasps of the tainted air. "We need wind to take this foul odor away."

  Her eyes were watering badly, trailing black mascara down her flushed cheeks like war paint. "I don’t know if I can."

  "You must, sweet Jezebel." And despite his use of that endearment, his tone was clear. It was a command, with consequences if she disobeyed.

  She nodded slowly, and took a deep breath punctuated by a cough.

  Hawkins sidled up beside her. "Sometime today," he snarled, his voice muffled by the cloth about his face.

  The two normally seemed so solicitous of one another — particularly Hawkins of the girl — but it was clear now that their camaraderie was a shallow thing. Scratch it deeply enough, and there was nothing underneath. Jezebel looked at Hawkins with teary, hate-filled eyes as he walked away.

  "Proceed," Gull commanded, his breathing becoming more labored.

  Eve wondered if the power of Orpheus would still hold should Gull be rendered unconscious. But it was too much to hope for. Jezebel closed her eyes, reaching down deep to call upon whatever mojo she commanded. Her hair whipped around her face in a wind that was not natural, and she winced. The process looked painful and for a minute it seemed she wasn’t going to pull it off, but the girl hung tough. Whatever it was that she was summoning was fighting her, and her body began to twitch and spasm, beads of perspiration breaking out on her brow.

  Eve almost felt sorry for the little witch, but then thought better of it.

  The girl fell to her knees with a gasp, and raising her arms, she turned her face to ceiling of the Underworld. Lightning snaked from her fingertips and eyes, erupting into the oppressive atmosphere. The wind swirled around them, growing in intensity, and then shifted in a single direction, a gale that swept the noxious fumes of the god’s decay away from them.

  Jezebel slumped to the ground, curling up in a tight little ball. "I did it," she said over and over again in that little girl’s voice.

  Hawkins yanked down the mask from his face and gave the girl a round of applause. "Now that didn’t hurt too bad, did it?" he asked as he bent down to help her up from the ground. "About time you earned your keep."

  The man was begging to die, and as soon as she was able, Eve would oblige him.

  Gull took a large gulp of purified air into his lungs. "Much better."

  They descended farther into the valley in silence, the body of the fallen god looming larger and larger. They passed through small patches of skeletal wood and scrub brush. Jezebel’s manipulation of the wind had done the job for the most part, but the closer they got the harder the wind had to work to keep the stench from overwhelming them again. The rot had left gaping holes in the flesh, exposing muscle, sinew, and bone.

  At last, they stood before it, marveling at its enormity.

  "So is this it? Have we arrived?" Eve asked, interrupting their reverie. "Or are we going to have to go around this rotting carcass to get to where we’re supposed to be?"

  Gull fixed her in a steely gaze. "I think I’ve had just about enough of you."

  She was about to reply but he stopped her with a word. "Silence."

  Eve had no choice but to obey.

  "Now drop to your knees."

  Once more she was forced to comply, and Eve found herself kneeling upon the damp earth before the body of the fallen Hades. Gull looked her over, then licked his thumb, reaching out to her face to rub away some blemish of grime that had stained her cheek. With his long, twisted fingers he combed the hair from her face, then stepped back and again studied her appearance.

  "I guess that will have to suffice," he said. Gull looked to the god’s corpse. "The misery of the dead calls out from here. I can feel it. This is their place. It is no wonder Hades chose this valley in which to spill his blood."

  Gull walked away from Eve then, toward Hawkins and Jezebel. "I would advise you to step back, my friends. I’ve no idea how they will react to o
ur presence."

  How who will react?

  The Wicked did as they were told, leaving Gull to stand before the rotting corpse alone. The dark mage raised his arms, and in the booming voice of Orpheus, sang out. Although the song was sung in an ancient language that she had never known, Eve understood the words perfectly. It was a song of summoning, a song that called for the attentions of three sisters — Tisiphone, Alekto, and Megaera. They were the Erinyes — the Furies of legend. He sang of an offering, something to satisfy their unquenchable desire to see the guilty suffer for their sins.

  In a sweeping motion he gestured toward Eve and the suspicion she had been nursing was revealed to be truth. She was his offering. Gull finished his beckoning song, hanging his head and resting his voice as he waited for their response.

  He didn’t wait very long.

  From one of the rotting wounds in the side of the corpse, a decaying hole perhaps fifty feet up the side of Hades’ rib cage, Eve saw the first hint of movement.

  "What have you brought to us?" came a voice that issued from within that corpse, a voice that made the hair at the back of Eve’s neck stand on end. It was a voice devoid of warmth or emotion, a voice that promised only cruelty.

  "Come out, dear sisters, and see," Gull sang, the enticing nature of his borrowed voice certain to draw them from hiding.

  Eve’s eyes grew wide as the Erinyes emerged from the ragged hole in the side of the dead god, three sisters clad in robes of darkness. They eagerly clambered down the side of the great corpse to claim their prize.

  As Ceridwen calmed the normally torrential currents of the Styx, Conan Doyle and Danny rowed the magickally-crafted raft through the dark water. Conan Doyle kept an eye on Ceridwen, who sat at the edge of the raft with one hand trailing in the fearsome waters. He watched as her mouth moved, words softer than a whisper escaping, as she attempted to bond with the elemental force of the river. The fact that they were actually making progress across the Styx was evidence that Ceridwen was succeeding.