Hellblazer 2 - Subterranean (29 page)

He spoke to Constantine with his mind:

Who comes now to mock me in my imprisonment? Another puny sorcerer? Someday I will make it my business to seek out sorcerers and dismember them, taking my time about it.

The walls of the cavern seemed to rumble inwardly with the reverberation of his words, though they were expressed only in thought.

“I have come to relieve you of your imprisonment, if I can, squire,” Constantine said, bowing. “I perceive you to be royalty amongst elementals, a lord of the stones! It isn’t right you should be cooped up, and I assure you, your enemies are mine, great king of the earth!”

You speak with unctuous flattery but not without truth. I have foreseen your coming. Water drips here, sometimes, and one with whom I mated of old, whom you know as the Lady of Waters, has spoken to me here, drip by drip, telling me you would come if you could. But you cannot open Fludd’s trap alone.

“So that is what Iain Culley used to jug you here, squire? ‘Fludd’s Spell of Dire Containment’?”

That is the spell that was used, but the wretch Culley was not the invoker of it. Fludd himself entrapped me, saying he wished only to hold me a single day and night so that he might question me in safety. I did not honor him for the entrapment, but he did me no harm, and since he was a servant of the Overgod, I would have gone my way without punishing him for his impudence. But the wretch Culley informed on Fludd to the little minds who held the reins of the worldly church, and they took him away to demand answers from him for what they supposed was heresy, though it was they who were the heretics. With Fludd gone, Culley took command of me, tormenting me with corrosive acids until I did his bidding. I may send certain emanations from this containment—only such as he stipulates, and with one of these I caused the earth to open up and swallow the magical cage, and Culley, so that we were lowered together into this cave. He said that he would release me once we were here. But it soon became evident that he intends to keep me in the cage forever. My elemental emanation is the source of his control over his kingdom, suppressing all sorcery but his, shackling the harpies and gray demons to his will. Woe to you if you do not release me and he learns of your enmity! For my power, so long as I am trapped, is his power!

Constantine approached the cage—the sphere of containment—and put out his hand, feeling its power . . . and drew his hand back quickly. It felt as if the energy bubble was conscious, aware of him, warning him spitefully to stay away.

He closed his eyes and extended his psychic prescience, instantly perceiving that the spell drew on the elemental’s own power, against the Lord of Stone’s will, and turned it against him; a thorny problem in spell-busting.

Do you now perceive the difficulty?
the elemental asked.
The spell was created by two men, Fludd and Culley, incanting together. It must incorporate both light and dark energies from two magicians at once to be complete, even as a cage of steel must contain yielding space as well as unyielding metal. Fludd provided the light energies, Culley the dark—for Fludd knew Iain Culley to be formed for the Left-Hand Path. He hoped to convert him to see the wisdom of the Overgod through the intervention of the Crucified One, but Culley would not have it. He betrayed Fludd and hid me away from him.

Constantine nodded. “I get you, squire. I suspected it was Fludd’s Dire Containment, and I know the spell. But I can’t see how to end the spell without magic.” He rubbed his jaw in puzzlement, gazing at the pulsing sphere of power trapping the elemental. “And I can’t use ritual magic because Culley’s using your power to control magic around his kingdom. No other magic but his works, so we’re buggered, far as I can see.”

Some of your terminology is puzzling to me, but I comprehend the meaning. There is a way to circumvent his restraint on magic. If you can bring another magician, I will tell you then how it might be done.

“Right, then. I think I know another who’ll help me dispel it in exchange for a release from his own prison. I’d better see to it.”

Hurry! I go mad in confinement!

“You’ve been patient for hundreds of years, Lord of Stone! Be patient an hour further! And listen, there’s something else we have to clear up. There’s one thing more I need to arrange with you if I’m to let you go . . .”

~

One of the King’s grimoires tucked under his arm, Constantine pushed the door open into the throne room, expecting to be arrested . . . but no one was waiting for them but two dead men.

Outside the door, behind the throne, they found the two guards Constantine had tricked into fighting collapsed in a pool of blood, the smaller atop the larger, having bled to death from multiple sword cuts. They’d killed each other.

“Oh, how awful,” Maureen said.

“They’re all assholes, those skull-faced bastards,” Geoff muttered, remembering his capture.

“They couldn’t all be,” Maureen said, as they hurried past the dead men. “Anyway they’ll be found soon. There’ll be an alarm raised . . .”

“Come down this way,” Constantine said. “Down at the end of this hall there’s a cell. In the back, the wall’s been knocked down just today, thanks to our Balf. The tunnel back of the cell is one of Balf’s secret ways, and it’ll lead us to that bastard MacCrawley.”

They were relieved when they got into the cell, found the new entrance to the cave at the back, and, using a crystal of illumination, made their way through a half mile of tunnel to the corridor outside the cell where Bosky had been kept in chains.

“God I hate coming back here,” Bosky muttered.

On the threshold of the slave cavern they found another Fallen Roman; Scofield had killed this one, Constantine supposed, stabbed him in the back.

Comes more naturally to Scofield than me,
Constantine thought.

The door was unlocked, and inside he found MacCrawley sprawled in chains, alone in the room, looking old and weary and sullenly angry.

When Constantine came in, MacCrawley leaped to his feet and lunged for him, stopping just short of being able to reach him when he came to the end of his chains. His outstretched arms, the fingers clutching, clawlike, swiped the air just an inch from Constantine’s nose.

“Kill you!” MacCrawley snarled, spittle running from between his clenched teeth. “Kill . . .
you!”

Constantine blithely lit a cigarette. “Hello, MacCrawley! Comfortable little gaff you have here.”

“When I get out of here, Constantine, I’m going to kill that bastard King, end his magical suppression, and then I’ll call up the nastiest, lowest, foulest-smelling, ugliest, cruelest demons from Hell and I’m going to give you to them! And I’m going to see that they’re the laziest too, so that they take at least a century tearing you into bits! But I’ll see to it, Constantine, that once they’ve torn you to bits those bits will live, will suffer, each bloody shred still invested with your mind! And after a decade or so of that I’ll see you’re reconstituted so you can be torn slowly apart again and then, once again, I’ll see to it that—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Constantine said, blowing smoke in MacCrawley’s face, “brilliant, mate, lovely, looking forward to it. But in the meantime, how’d you like to get out of them chains and come up with me to set the elemental free, eh? What do you say? Seems I can’t do it myself.”

MacCrawley gaped at him. “What’s that you say?”

“You heard me. Haven’t you wondered why you’re here alone today, and not out there humping barrels? I’ve got this place wired, mate. We’re going to overthrow the King; you just said you wanted to do it yourself. And I don’t think he’s told you he’s planning to poison most of Britain. Might throw a spanner into the works for your SOT boys—I’m guessing London is your home base, yeah? Shortly destined to be un-livable if the King has his way.”

“What are you babbling about?”

“The Universal Solvent; the King’s going to use it to spread toxins through the seas, destroy the air around Britain. Survivors come down here and he enslaves them.”

“Why that’s utter . . .” But then MacCrawley, broke off, frowning. “Then again . . . it would explain certain things . . .”

Constantine nodded. “You’ve seen he’s been keeping something from you, I reckon, and now you know what it was. King’s power comes from keeping the Lord of Stone in lockup: the king of Britain’s earth elementals. But I can’t release the Lord of Stone myself. Fludd’s Spell of Dire Containment needs two opposite types to do the job. I reckon I’ve got just enough light in me to do the trick, and we bloody well know you’ve got enough dark. Well? What do you say? But you can’t be strangling me after I’ve let you go, nor turning me over to demons to tear apart—disappointing as it’ll be for you to do without it—as the King won’t stand for you to be running about free. So you need to take him down, and you need me alive and in one piece to do that, as much as I need you. Right: What do you say, old cock?”

MacCrawley’s hands clenched and unclenched. He glared. He breathed hard, in and out, staring. But at last he grunted and said, “Very well. I give you my word, I will cooperate with you to free the Lord of Stone.”

Constantine chuckled, reaching for the King’s keys, to unlock the chains.

“What’s so funny, Constantine?” MacCrawley growled. “Your sense of humor makes me bloody nervous.”

“Just thinking of something Oscar Wilde wrote,” Constantine told him, turning the key in the lock. “ ‘A man cannot be too careful in his choice of enemies . . .’ ”

15

THE STAMPEDE OF VULCAN’S HORSES

T
he hourglass was trickling the last of its sand from higher to lower when Lord Blung, the King’s seneschal, arrived with the final ingredient for the Universal Solvent. He turned the big hourglass on its shelf himself; when the sand ran out, after an hour, it would be time to introduce the final ingredient into the solution.

Face wrapped in water-soaked cloths against the fumes, Scofield stood on the top of the rusty iron scaffolding that rose up to overlook the cauldron. He was alarmed, seeing the seneschal arrive. The time for the troll to act was near and there had been no word.

And he could see the Il-Sorg—transparent but maleficent demons like the ones guarding the alchemical transfusor of the great machine—watching him from their balconies of stone on the walls near the scaffolding. They kept a close scrutiny on him as if they suspected he might be about to betray their master. He could do nothing to advance Constantine’s scheme with the Il-Sorg there.

Constantine wanted him to delay the final step in the transmutation of the Universal Solvent until “everything is in place.” Perhaps he should not do as Constantine asked, even if the chance came. After all, it was all likely to fail. The King’s scheme would take its inexorable course, the country above would be destroyed in all probability, no matter what he did. Why destroy himself as well by becoming involved in useless conspiracies? If he played along with the King he might become seneschal himself one day, if he could contrive to get rid of Blung.

The present seneschal climbed the stairs to the top of the scaffolding, reaching the railed-off top where Scofield waited. The old man coughed as he looked into the enormous cauldron: a seething stone pot, banded with iron, forty feet across. Blung nodded, satisfied with the progress of the transmutation, but his expression was troubled.

“Is there something amiss, Seneschal Blung?” Scofield asked with all the innocence he could muster.

Blung tugged thoughtfully on his sweeping mustaches. “The King is still sequestered with his new wench. He should have finished his sport with her long ago. He should be here! I am loathe to interrupt his honeymoon . . . but suppose something has gone awry? Suppose the wench is treacherous?”

“Impossible; his imp protects him.”

“Yes . . . true . . . But if he does not come soon, I must investigate . . .”

Scofield nodded, looking at the vial containing the final ingredient, held in Blung’s hand. He glanced at the vial, and at the Il-Sorg. Who continued their baleful observation of him.

Perhaps, indeed, he should not play Constantine’s game.

~

Fallesco was glad he’d decided to turn the tables on Spurlick by following the underhanded courtier. Now he watched from the shadows of a nearby doorway as Spurlick shouted for the guards at the door to the rooms Bosky had been in. The Captain of the guards himself, leading a six-man patrol passing by, stalked up at the outcry. “Well? What is it?”

“Can you not see?” Spurlick demanded. “Look, the door is open! Your guard is gone! And the boy with the fairy blood is not here! Something is afoot! We must go to the King; these interlopers are interfering with his plans!”

“Just so!” Fallesco declared, striding up, his manner all authority and confidence. “Let us go to the King’s apartments!”

Spurlick glared at Fallesco. “Who are you to take charge here? I’ve long suspected your loyalty . . .”

“What’s that? I am the King’s librarian! I am the court poet! What role do you play, pray tell? Court Buggerer?”

The guards laughed and elbowed one another.

Before the sputtering Spurlick could continue, Fallesco said, “Come, let us go together to see about the King’s well-being! He shall decide what to do! Your keen observation here will not go unrewarded!”

“Very well!” Spurlick said sullenly.

Fallesco led the deputation through the corridors to the King’s apartments at the other side of the palace.

“No guard is in place here!” observed the Captain, nonplussed, as they arrived at the royal bedroom. “Something must be afoot indeed! Why haven’t I been informed?”

He rapped on the door. “Your Majesty! Forgive the intrusion, but mysteries abound! Is all well within?”

There was no response from within. “Why does he not respond, if only to tell us to be on our way?” Spurlick asked. “Captain—you have a key!”

“Only for use in emergencies . . .”

“This is emergency enough! Open the door!”

The guard shrugged and unlocked the door, as Fallesco toyed with his braided beard. “Hmmm . . . as King’s librarian and court poet, I am the highest dignitary here. I shall go in to see that all is well. Wait here!”