Heraclix and Pomp: A Novel of the Fabricated and the Fey (25 page)

“So Mehmet is a good mentor for the boy,” Heraclix said.

Jabal smiled. “Why do you think I have them ride together?”

That night, in the mountains, they hitched their horses up to the point of a long line of trees that outlined the spur of one of the ridges over which they had trekked. Clouds had formed as the evening progressed, and Heraclix, who rested outside while the
merchants and their kin slept inside the covered wagons, worried that he might have to sit in the rain. His concerns were realized as a gentle mist began to blanket the place with a damp film.

The weather rumbled into a gentle storm, the sort of atmosphere that soothes those somnolescents lucky enough to be indoors as it gains a little strength. Not a tempest, but a soft, if wet, quilt falling over the land.

Heraclix sat up against one of the wagons, pulling the hood of his cloak over his head and wrapping its collar tight around his neck. Distant rolling thunder muffled the other sounds around him, except where a trill of water spilled and splashed off the roof of one of the other wagons.

But it didn’t completely mask the sound of one of the carriage doors opening, specifically that of the wagon that Al’ghul and Mehmet had steered earlier that day. Heraclix leaned forward, trying to see who exited, but the rain-veiled gloom was almost impenetrable. He stood and slowly made his way over to the wagon to investigate. He listened at the door, but could not discern a sound with the rain plip-plopping on the puddles that had collected outside. He looked to the ground and thought he spied muddy footprints, but there was no way to be absolutely sure. The rain fell more quickly in larger drops, melting away any evidence of footfalls.

Suddenly, the wind picked up, as if blown into a fury by the gods, Zeus himself awakening to first lazily toss a few thunderbolts down, then becoming more and more adamant until mad with the spirit of destruction. Again Heraclix searched by lightning light, but was unable to see footprints. He had heard no unusual sounds in the wagon, so he judged all to be well, if rather noisy, in the tempest. He pushed against the ever-increasing wind and returned to his soggy seat beside his own wagon to wait out the storm, fearful of being separated from the others by the confusion of the gale.

The few trees within eyesight were struck and splintered by lightning, a separate bolt for each trunk. In the smoking afterimage that burnt into Heraclix’s eyes, he thought he beheld the sharp silhouette of a man, head reared back in laughter or ecstasy, with both hands raised to the sky. But the image vanished when he blinked, wiped away, as if it had never existed.

Heraclix stood up and slowly began walking to the rise on which the phantom may or may not have been standing. Lightning continued to fall all around him, cascading down on the veritable waterfall of rain that poured down from the sky. His body tingled. What hair he had stood on end. The air was full of crackling electricity.

Or was it? He soon came to the sickening realization that the crunching sound he heard hadn’t come from above, in the air, but from underfoot. As a bolt of lightning again revealed his location, he saw that the ground around him was completely covered with large earthworms, each a full six inches long and as big around as a man’s finger. The worms stretched as far as he could see. They each pointed toward and converged at his feet, as if he was a magnet inexorably drawing the glistening carpet directly to him, a fleshly shrine to the megadriles before which the things had come to worship. With every step he took, the worms corrected their direction, always aiming for him, the involuntary God of Wormkind.

The lightning continued flashing all about him. He noticed that the worms were hauntingly familiar and peculiarly abnormal—not your normal annelids. They were, he realized, Hellspawn larvae,
Lumbricus Hades
, the souls of the damned beginning their migration through eternal torment. He saw their visages, millions of them bearing the face of their former selves, though the condemned wouldn’t recognize themselves if held to a mirror, not at this stage. And even after they had grown back into an understanding of their past lives and sins, they would be unable to recognize their own reflections, having been so twisted and mangled by the mutations and excruciating torture inflicted on them by other souls further along in their “progression” that their appearance and voices would only remain as a pathetic mockery, a caricature of the person they had chosen to become in mortality.

He picked up one of the larvae to examine it more closely and recognized the face almost immediately. The high-cheekbones, carefully waxed mustache, stiletto beard, and smoldering eyes that, with a simple squint, had commanded whole armies and condemned man, demon, and (almost) flesh golem, to death. The face, which seemed to recognize Heraclix and snarled with rage,
gnashing its teeth in an effort to bite the giant’s hand, was that of Graf Von Helmutter!

The giant dropped the worm, startled into a fear that soaked into his skin as a paralyzing dread. Was Mowler nearby? Who had summoned these quasi-demons? And why did they continue to surround and harangue Heraclix? What were the implications of this weird pilgrimage?

Questions stopped instantly as the lightning, which had been cast all around the giant, finally found its mark in Heraclix’s head. There would be no more answers that night, only a brilliant flash of light, followed by sudden darkness.

C
HAPTER
16

P
omp flies with haste. The air is turning cold. Autumn is coming on. The leaves are starting to change color. Good. Mowler won’t want to travel so much when winter sets in, if he’s like most people she has seen. Then again, Mowler is not like most people. Not at all.

Szentendre is small, compared to Prague or Vienna, and it doesn’t take long to realize that Heraclix is no longer there. She searches the burned-out church and graveyard, though the smell of burnt wood has become distasteful to her. He is not there, either, so she traces their steps back to the glade where they fought the Hell-spawned pig-demons.

Pomp can see no better than a man, but, as one of the Fey, she can sense a magical aura. And here she finds her first clue as to where the pig-demons have gone. It’s not much, but it might be worth pursuing. The path leads her toward Prague. If the demons followed Heraclix and Pomp here, might the trails of their magic not lead to Heraclix now? She must try to find him, though her instinct, like that of most faeries, is to return home and ignore the world, and the problems, of mankind.

But she is not like most fairies. Not now. She knows the value of patience, the value of life. Pomp lives and thinks at a different pace than Gloranda, Doribell, Ilsie, or even Cimbri. She flies to Prague with great haste. She will find Heraclix, then, together, they will have vengeance on Mowler. Along the way, she will be the golem’s eyes and ears, his scout.

Even with this newfound patience, she is amazed that while so much is at stake, Prague’s citizens go about their daily duties without a care for the danger that threatens society. Mowler is a hawk, and anyone who comes in contact with him, king or beggar, is in danger of losing not only their life, but their very soul. He could be anywhere, anyone, disguised as a friend, neighbor, family member. Pomp doesn’t know how she will find him. But she must start somewhere.

She starts at Caspar’s apartment. Not the clean, well-ordered family flat near the castle, but the derelict, squalor-ridden hole somewhere in the maze of the Jewish quarter. The home of the entrance to Hell.

She is wary as she enters. The door isn’t where Heraclix left it after it fell off its one good hinge. It is propped up against the wall that was once adorned by a shattered mirror and an old man’s dead body. Someone, obviously, has been here since they pursued Georg into Hell.

This thought makes her approach the door very cautiously. There is a scrap of sky blue cloth hanging from a nail, as if someone had snagged their clothing in a hurried effort to leave. It might be a shred of a soldier’s coat. She approaches the door from the side, sliding along the wall, fearful to see the tunnel behind it, but knowing that she might just have to go back down to
that
place in order to find Mowler. Her bow is strung and drawn, ready to fire a sleep arrow into whatever might peek around the corner. Hopefully, it will have some effect. Can the dead, sleeping already, be put to sleep again?

She probes into the darkness behind the door with an arrow, then swings around, still aiming the arrow at the shadow behind the door, ready to contend with whatever Hell throws at her, whatever rushes up that tunnel.

But there is no tunnel. Only a brick wall and a floor littered with broken glass. Dried blood trails across some of the shards and another tatter of blue cloth lays nearby. Pomp sidles in between the door and the wall for a closer look. A sliver of sunlight peeps into the apartment, allowing her to see a little better.

The bricks are of a different color than the wall around them, and the mortar looks fresh. There is little of the dust that smothers
the rest of the room. This wall was built where the tunnel once was, and built recently. But who . . . ?

The door behind her is buffeted. The air in the room goes suddenly cold. The hairs on Pomp’s neck stand on end, and she shivers, whether from fear or the change in temperature, she cannot tell. She turns around, back against the wall, and draws her bowstring back again, this time sliding out from behind the door to see what caused the noise. Then another, more insistent bang shakes the door, causing the bottom to slip out away from the wall.

Pomp flies out just in time to avoid it as it slides down the wall where she stood and crashes to the floor, sending up tidal waves of dust that fill the chamber to the rafters, where she takes refuge.

She waits for the dust to settle, hoping to see whatever it is that is causing such a ruckus in this forsaken place. But the dust hasn’t cleared before she hears grunts of effort and an unbridled scream of combined frustration and malice.

“Yeeargh!” screams the voice, the last syllable drug out like an angry brogue.

Then, with a clarity that she thought she wanted, but now no longer desires, she sees it. A ghost, by the milky glow, hammers its head and fists against the wall, backs up, rushes the wall, is repelled by it, backs up, repeats, repeats, repeats, screaming the same perturbed battle cry as it slams into the wall and bounces back, time after time.

Pomp cannot help but chuckle at the ridiculousness of it all. At least her sense of humor is returning, she thinks.

Her laughter is cut short when the ghost stops, momentarily, and looks straight up at her.

“Aaah!” the ghost screams, flying up to shove his face into hers.

Pomp recoils, recalls her ineffective attempts to go invisible in the land of the dead. She knows the ghost sees her.

She knows the ghost, too.

“Von Helmutter!” she says, then shoots him squarely between the eyes.

The arrow passes through him, shattering on the brick wall behind him.

“Stupid fairy,” he says, in a voice dripping with disdain. “I’m already dead. You can’t kill me again.”

“Again?” Pomp says, confused at his inference.

“And now I can’t even go to the place where I belong because of this damned . . . I mean, undamned . . . wall!”

Von Helmutter’s ghost again throws itself against the brick wall, unsuccessfully trying to smash the physical barrier with spiritual substance.

“Who put the wall there?” Pomp asks.

“I did!” It howls. “Oh, stupid, stupid, stupid. Our so-called intelligence indicated that there was something going on here, maybe even a breach of security, a tunnel dug by the Ottomans.”

“And now you are—”

“Dead!”

“How?”

“Don’t know, now, do I? Maybe that last meal I had was bad. It did taste a little funny. Though I’d been feeling sick for a while. I suppose I may have been killed. Yes, that’s it. I was murdered! But . . . Oh, does it even matter?”

“I’m sorry.” She almost believes that she’s telling the truth.

“And now I can’t even get to the place of my eternal torment, where I so deserve to dwell.” He starts to cry ectoplasmic tears. “I can’t even die and go to Hell right. What is wrong with me?”

Again, with the slamming against the wall. She is getting tired of his tantrums.

“There are other places—” she starts.

“Of course!” it says, elated. “How could I have forgotten? My books! I shall go consult my books to find the quickest route. Surely the new minister of defense hasn’t gotten rid of them yet.”

Its eyes narrow, and it gives a mumbled, begrudging “thank you” to Pomp. Then the ghost’s eyes widen in something akin to, but far removed from the innocence of glee. “Now I can get a head start on my suffering, building up all the more regret and spite waiting for the time when my murderer goes down, and he will go down. Oh, what perverse pleasure of agony shall be mine!”