Tithe to Tartarus

by John C. Wright

  Crookshank laughed, a sound like that of jackals yapping. “What now, serving wench? You have lost all, and I have won! All! All, I have won!”

  “Not all,” she said, “Not what you want most from me.”

  “Eh? What’s that?”

  Yumiko opened her hand and unzipped her suit front, showing her cleavage. She said, “You have conquered me and won my heart! Take your reward!”

  Crookshank was taken by surprise. He clung to her wrist, eyes goggling. “Wait. Is this some trick you ply on a poor old house hob?”

  She pouted as alluringly as she could and began to tug the fastening back up. “Well, if you don’t want me… and after I saved myself for you!”

  The little man leaped with great alacrity toward her décolletage, but she was quick enough to get the fastener shut. He clung like a miniature monkey to the bosom of her suit, trying to find the hidden fastener. She turned the ring on her finger four times widdershins. She turned weightless, invisible, and insubstantial, and found herself in a realm of utter darkness. The black shadows of the dead, twittering like bats, began to rise up from below. But at her elbow was a blue shadow.

  4. The Rule of Deaths

  Yumiko said, “Jack, is that you? Help me.”

  “In whose name do you ask?”

  “Saint Barbara! In the name of Saint Barbara. You and I both died unforgiven. We are in her keeping.”

  The blue shadow reached out with a hand and plucked the little figure of Crookshank off her bosom. Crookshank screamed until black shadows gathered and hardened around him. Then the little man’s screaming, wailing, and cursing grew dim and faint, as if they came from far off, but he never ceased nor paused to breathe.

  The ghost said, “I will help you.”

  He pointed with the two javelins in his hand at the fluttering, shrieking shapes of hungry shadows rising up from below. They flew in jerky, ungainly motions to reach them, but they could not grow closer, for adverse winds drove them back.

  The ghost asked, “Does any memory of my kingdom remain on Earth? Is any word spoken of fair Dal Riata? Do the druids yet revere the kingly names recorded on the Drosten Stone?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is Iach son of Uradech, Iach the Strong, remembered only for the carved gourd his foes propped atop his headless corpse to mock it? I won the hand of the Queen of the Shee of Cornwell in nine great wars, answering the nine riddles of the salmon, and wrestling the nine runes of the wind gods from the nine worlds. Ere Brutus, ere Eochaid, ere Gann, or Sengann, I ruled and reigned. Are none of my deeds recalled?

  She said, “I don’t know. My memory is lost.”

  “It is in the land of the dead.”

  “May I have it back?”

  The ghost said, “The dead have no art to raise the dead.”

  “Who can?”

  “You know better than I, Daughter of Dandrenor. Nor may I keep this imp of evil here with us if you cannot name his crime.”

  “Well… I am not sure how exactly he did it, but he put me in his debt. He told me the rule. In magic, if you owe someone, he will find you again. And I saw later how fairies and elfs are so quick to repay a good turn with a boon. But the boon I thought I was giving him—I thought I was freeing him from Wilcolac—did not exist because he was no slave, no serf. He was the senior partner. He was the one who runs the house. Wilcolac only lives there. Did someone follow me? Did I betray Winged Vengeance? Will my debt to him continue and let him find me later?”

  “That ring you bear was given to you that you may lead those who are called to come into the land of ghosts. But your time is not yet. Dark powers are hunting you. Each time you use the ring to enter the darkness, you grow clearer to their dark sight.”

  “You did not answer my question!”

  “Nor you mine. What is his crime?”

  Then, she remembered what she had been told of the purpose of the Cobbler’s Club. “Lust. It that enough to condemn him?”

  “It is enough, for now.”

  “I am not innocent. I mean, I helped him. I dressed up and danced and… I did not think there was any harm in it. What is wrong with a girl attracting the eyes of men?”

  “Whose eyes?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “For whose eyes did Heaven shape your charms? For yourself? For a crowd? For pay? Or for the one other for whom you are intended?”

  “Crookshank’s crime was not against me, was it? It was against Tom.”

  “This imp is larger here than in your world, for here he is a mighty spirit, but it is given me to exact from the living a term of service sevenfold as harsh and long as I served. I was his watchdog and spy. Now the hounds of Hell will take him for their sport, and I shall take his eyes. He will await the judgment here.”

  “Await? Isn’t this Hell?”

  “This is Earth!” The cold voice of the ghost held, for once, a note of surprise.

  “How can this be Earth?”

  “It is a dark part of Earth, deep in the Mists. Here we shadows who have not yet crossed the dark river linger for a season. Do not return to this dark place without the Father Dominic. Next time, I cannot be at hand to protect you.”

  And he reached and took her hand and twisted the ring clockwise until it turned white.

  “But I do not know any Father Dominic!” She said. But there was no one there but a dark room, filled with smoke, and the wash of bright searchlights illuminating the broken window.

  Yumiko remembered the final boast of Crookshank. His curse that she would never find the cloak had been strangely worded. As long as I am here.

  He was not here now.

  She brought up the last known position of the tracer. The cloak had not been moving. The red dot floated on the mirrored panels of the wall to her left. Or, rather, it floated behind them.

  Yumiko found the mock orange bloom decorating the mirrored panes four and a half feet above a decorative acacia bloom on the floor and touched both.

  A mirrored pane slid back and then whined and jammed. She took out the hacksaw she had so recently acquired and made short work of cutting through the sliding hinges holding the panel in place. The panel fell with a crash and broke. Beyond was the secret passage she had seen before. On a hook right at hand was the tenebrous and supernal Cloak of Mists.

  5. Elfine, at Last!

  One moment later, Yumiko was swooping through the night air weightlessly to where Sir Garlot stood next to a dazed and blank-eyed police captain. This captain was shooing others away with stiff gestures and stiff words. “Mounted police business! Move along!”

  Two moments later, she had the bottle with Elfine in her hand, and Sir Garlot was trotting away. Whatever words of cold farewell he spoke, she did not hear. Yumiko touched the blue glass to one of her red iron arrowheads, and the substance, which was not glass after all, popped like a bubble rather than shattered like glass. Elfine grew up to normal size as fast as she fell out of the bottle, so her wondering eyes, bright with joy, were the same level above the ground before and after she resumed her full size. Her wings vanished. She was wearing her green bodice and short shirt with her pom-pom slippers.

  And then in the next moment, the two girls were crying and hugging. Yumiko had her mask raised. Both were talking at once, and when Yumiko fell silent, Elfine spoke enough for two.

  But once Sir Garlot had left, whatever influence he had over the eyes and minds of mortal men left also, and so now firemen were pulling the two girls back from the scene, medical technicians were handing them bottles of salty juice and telling them to drink up to stave off dehydration, and a bewildered police captain demanded to know what was going on.

  “I have got three corpses, one of them a nurse, hanging from lampposts at the intersection. They have little notes on their chests. Notes written in blood! And they are pinned there by arrows in their hearts. Even weirder, there are two large dogs hanged by the neck and dangling out of upper-story windows of the building. Who the heck hang
s a dog? We cannot get in because of the fire, and all the evidence is burning away! What can you tell me about this?”

  Yumiko said, “I do not think I can tell you anything about it, officer!” and then, to her horror, a giggle rose in her throat and erupted from her giddy, happy face, and there was nothing she could do about it but cover her mouth with both hands.

  6. You Remind Me of the Babe

  The police officer said, “Everyone here saw you fly up to the window and fly back down. You shoved one of the survivors out the window. She says you are the one who lit off the explosions in the basement. And what about all this gardening? Yards and yards of lavender flowers spread all over all the doors, and garlic and onions are on the windows.”

  Elfine said helpfully, “That is wolfsbane, Mr. Copper Flatfoot Man!”

  The officer glowered at Elfine and then glowered even more forcefully at Yumiko. “What kind of outfit is that? What is with the cape? Why did you bring a bunch of dogs up on the roof? What about all those people you shot? I have two witnesses who say it was you!”

  Yumiko said, “Not I! It was my master.”

  “Your what now? People saw you! Up there! A moment ago!

  “I am a fox,” said Yumiko. “He is a crow!”

  Elfine said, “Let me explain it to him.”

  Yumiko, bubbling with laughter, could not speak, but gestured to Elfine, inviting her to explain it.

  “Officer, I am a fairy detective from fairyland. But sometime I do crimes here, too. I come from across a sea that you cannot see, but I was seized by ne’er-do-wells, and I was held in a well by ruffians who roughed me up and made me unwell because, well, I well knew where their new base was. I got shipped around and around in a crate until I ended up in Willy’s basement… It was a basement base. But I do not mean the elf knight who nicked me! He netted me with a net! His base is base under a baseball diamond. All these things are all around you, yet you are blind to them. Blind as a blind cop who cannot see! See?”

  The officer said, “See what?”

  “See you! You cannot see anything, practically, because your brain is stupid because it is covered in mist. You must have missed seeing whatever the mystical mist is misting, mustn’t you? It musses your eyes. You men are as helpless as babies! You remind me of the babe!”

  He said, “What babe?”

  Elfine clapped her hands and cheered. “The babe with the power! What power? The power of hoodoo! Who do? You do! Do what? You remind me of the babe!” She leaned close and whispered to the police officer. “That is something human beings say. Shirley Temple said it to Jareth the Goblin King. It is from a movie about Bobby Socks. And bachelors. One of them did not have a mate. Either it was the sock or the bachelor. I learned about it from human school when I was studying humans. You are an endangered species.”

  Yumiko, by that time, was laughing too hard, too elated by joy, to care or to warn Elfine.

  And so a few moments after that, both girls were locked in the back of a police cruiser with their hands cuffed behind their backs.

  7. Moths in Chains

  Elfine was still talking. “Yumiko Moth? What kind of name is that? You solved the mystery without me! The Case of the Confused Crimefightress is over and done! You should have waited! I wrote down notes and everything!”

  Yumiko said, “I still have to find the City of Corpses. Unfortunately, that man that the police are shooting at is my old master, and I think he just burned up all my leads. And I have to find the Tithing Ground, but no one knows where it is, except someone who has been there before or walked through the Devil’s door, whatever that is.”

  “My nose itches.” Elfine said, “I know where the City of Corpses is. It is a necropolis, a graveyard. That is just a fancy word for it.”

  “They are hiding werewolves in a graveyard? Nine hundred of them?”

  “Where else?”

  “Which graveyard?”

  “Cavalry Cemetery in Queens. There are stairs that lead down. The entrance is hidden beneath a mausoleum. It had a dome with a statue of Saint Joseph on the top. I think a man buried his son there. I saw them go in with their crates. I would have to show you.”

  “Then we have to go.”

  Elfine said, “I’d love to, but look!” She turned her back to Yumiko and wiggled and jerked her hands in her handcuffs, so that the links tinkled. “These are made of iron. I cannot shrink. I mean, I can a little bit by ducking my head and hunching up, but that does not really count.”

  “I will handle it.”

  “And I don’t have any magic for escaping. I could not get away from Sir Garlot either. The world won’t bend the rules for me for escapes and things like that. It is not my genre.”

  Yumiko said, “I said I will handle it. Thank you.”

  “Do you have magic now? You seem more sure of yourself that you did three weeks ago.”

  “This is my genre.”

  Yumiko waited until the police cruiser was stopped at a stoplight. She leaned back and tapped with the toe of her boot on the glass separating the front seat from the back. “Pardon me, officer. May I?”

  The officer who was not behind the wheel turned and slid open a small clear slot. “What is it, miss? I am not taking you for ice cream shakes, so stop asking.”

  Yumiko said, “Thank you for the hospitality. We enjoyed ourselves, but it is time to go.”

  But the officer did not answer. The slot was narrow, but it was large enough for one of the hypodermic arrowheads from her utility belt, fitted with an ampoule of tranquilizer, to be shot from the magnetic accelerator in her derringer and to pass neatly through to strike the officer in his neck. It was a difficult shot, with her gun hand pinned behind her back, but she was flexible enough to twist and bring her hand around her hip. The other officer turned, startled, and so was at a bad angle, therefore Yumiko had to ricochet the second dart, this one blown from her helmet snorkel as if from a blowpipe, off the rear-view mirror to strike him at an exposed part of his neck.

  She left both pairs of handcuffs lying neatly on the back seat of the cruiser but took her hypodermic darts and made sure the rear doors were once more locked from the outside before departing. The light turned green, and the shouting and honking behind the motionless police cruiser began. The two girls skipped across the crowded sidewalk in the confusion and hurried away from the scene.

  Yumiko was surprised to hear birds twittering and to see the pink light of dawn striking the eastern faces of the gray towers high above. What had seemed at most an hour spent in the elf-mound of Is-Elfydd had been twelve hours or more. Yumiko felt grateful it had not been longer.

  Chapter Ten: The Lass from Elfland

  1. Tailors and Giants

  The two girls walked, or rode the train or bus, for fifty-eight minutes all told. They spoke as they went.

  During the first leg on the train, Yumiko told of the events since Elfine’s kidnapping: how Yumiko had been drawn into a trap by Lucien Cobweb the Wolflord at Catoblepas warehouse but had been saved by two boys named Gilberec and Matthias Moth; how Yumiko had taken a job as a dancer for Wilcolac Cobweb at the Cobbler’s Club, but this was yet another trap, one intended to discover the hiding place of Winged Vengeance; how she had put a bugging device on the collie dog of Gilberec Moth, now revealed to be a servant of King Arthur and acting in his name. Tracing that bug had led her into a trap the dog set; how she had interfered in the duel between Gil and Garlot so that Garlot would lead her back to his treasure vault, unsuspecting. But her footsteps had betrayed her, and once again she had been detected and trapped.

  Yumiko was quite glum by the end of this recitation, and she rested her head wearily against the window of the train, watching the light of the streets underfoot go by.

  Elfine put an arm about her and gave her a hug. “Don’t worry! Just because you are a failure at everything you try does not necessarily mean you will fail!”

  Without moving her head, Yumiko slid her eyes toward the other girl’s cheer
ful face. “Technically, I think it does mean that.”

  “No!” insisted Elfine, squeezing her tightly. “You don’t understand how these things works.”

  “How do they work?”

  “When the giant fights the little tailor, the giant trusts in his own strength. But the little tailor always wins in the end. He does not trust himself. He knows he is not strong enough. He asks for help.”

  “From his friends?”

  “What friends can help against a giant? Don’t be silly. From angels!”

  “What?”

  “Terrible angels shaped like wheels within wheels, and storms and staring eyes and swords of fire turning in each direction! And when the little tailor wins, he gives thanks because he is not all puffed up with pride like a giant. Giants do not know how to be thankful.”

  Yumiko murmured, “Thanksgiving is a source of joy unknown to melancholy elfs.”

  “Don’t fret! All your horrible, embarrassing, clumsy failures are in the past!” Elfine bounced up and down on the seat. “You saved me! You’ll save What’s-his-name!”

  “Tomorrow Moth.”

  Elfine tilted her head and stopped bouncing. “Wait. I know him. The son of Dr. Rocket. He is my third cousin four times removed. He ignited the Mount Sinabung eruption in Sumatra. Are you sure you want to save him? He is kind of dangerous.”

  “Dangerous or not, I know he was going to ask me to marry him. But I do not know if he actually did or not. I cannot remember!”

  Elfine put her hands to her mouth and bit her nails. “I cannot stand the suspense! When do we find out if he did? Can I be your maid of honor?”

  Yumiko smiled and patted her on the knee. “Yes.”

  “Oh! What colors should we have? If the bridesmaids have winter complexions like yours, they should wear icy tones rather than pastels. Are you going to invite any elfin relations to the wedding? It had better be a Unitarian ceremony because they cannot go into churchyards. Also, don’t serve ham at the reception.”

  “Ham?” asked Yumiko, wondering if she had missed a comment.