Lawyers in Hell (5 page)

“Godly Erra, how do you fly on invisible wings?” the Kigali boy wanted to know when they reached the burning mountain of his ancestral home and wings were folded.  “And what will happen to that first man, Lysicles, who was so brave?  And to the others:  so many blinded and made dumb, with no hearts in their chests to beat.”

“Do you question my judgment, son of Ki-gal?  Why do you care about the fate of one damned soldier out of millions?  Like my wings, my judgments come from on high, perfect and without peer, whenever I need them.  Like my wings and my Seven, my judgment is unerring, every time, for every crime – past and future.”
  Go carefully with this Kigali and all the children of Ki-gal under Kur’s protection.
  It has been long since Erra felt need to tread softly; so long, he’d nearly forgotten how.  But war with Ki-gal was not his mandate right now, and this Kur had shown his fangs and a rage bright as the stars in heaven when Erra tested him.

“But I want to know what will happen to him.  He was so brave –” said Eshi.

Kur put a hand on his eromenos’s shoulder:  “Eshi, Erra is fatigued.  It is time to rest.”

“No, Almighty Kur, let him ask his questions.  As you say:  the young question everything.  It is their nature.  I have not been young for eons.  But you are right, as well, great Kur:  the day’s labors were strenuous.  I will rest.  The second of my Sibitti will answer all, to your boy’s satisfaction.  Take me to my cavern and let the boy stay here.”

So Kur took Erra up the slope with six of his Seven, and the molten-eyed one stayed behind with Eshi.  When Kur stopped at the mouth of the tunnel leading to the cavern where Erra and the Seven would sleep, Kur said to him, “Eshi will keep asking until he’s satisfied, so tell me:  What will happen to that first soul you judged:  was he innocent?  You ate his eyes, his tongue, his heart.  What did they say to you?”

“Lysicles the Athenian?  He thinks himself just.”  Erra shrugged.  “But he is full of hate and regret.  When he awakes in Hades, his heart will beat again; he will learn to see again; he will learn to speak again.  Then he will begin a different journey, full of the pain he has earned.  For a soul to make its way out of hell is not easy, but that one has a chance now.  He will remake his own fate.  It’s what the best of humanity always does.”  Erra looked past Kur, at his six Sibitti waiting patiently in the blazing green and gold billows of the Kigali night.  “I see why you cherish this place, Kur.  But the night is short and we must rest.  Be you well.  And thank you and the tribe for sharing your joy in Ki-gal with us who see so little of joy.”

The Kigali lord bowed his regal head and backed away with risen wings.  So things were not healed between them, only controlled.  Sometimes, control is enough.

So be it.  Eternity was long and Erra could have great patience when it was warranted.  He signaled his Sibitti and the six of his Seven surrounded him.  Safe from all harm, even from the Kigali, in the arms of his peerless weapons, he made his way into the sulphurous cavern of this deepest underworld, and from there, to sleep.  And Erra dreamed there, in the stench of hell:  he dreamed of his bright, sweet-smelling home in Emeslam, where the sky was blue and the stars his protectors and the will of the gods ennobled heavens and earth.

*

“Eshi,” said Kur.  “Come to sleep.  Your new friend will be here in the morning.” 
Come away.  That warrior is not to be trusted.

Eshi left the molten-eyed weapon of heaven and came running to him, all aflutter, then jumped into his waiting arms.  “Almighty Kur, that one says the soldier, Lysicles, will have a new chance, that Erra is always fair and his judgments are the will of the gods.”

“Eshi, I must ask you:  why do you care?  Is that soldier Kigali?  Is he even alive?  No.  He had his life.  He pays for it in his death.”

“But he loves his family, as I love you.  I understand him.  He is lonely.”

“Eshi, he is dead.  You are alive.”  His boy squirmed in his arms.  Eshi wrapped both legs around Kur’s waist, both arms around Kur’s neck, and held on tight.  Not until then did Kur realize that the boy was shivering.

“Time for bed, Eshi.  Long past time for bed.  We will sleep in my cavern tonight, close to the heart of the mountain, as you love to do.”  The mountain would soothe him, bring the boy warmth and comfort with its thrumming.  Sometimes, in the bowels of the mountain that bore his name, in the darkest night, Kur could hear the heartbeat of creation.  Someday, Eshi would hear it too.

“What happens when Kigali die, Almighty Kur?” came a small voice from the boy in his arms.  “Where do we go?  We won’t be tortured like these human damned, reborn into torment – will we?”

“What happens to the snow when it falls and melts, Eshi?  What happens to the wind when it doesn’t blow?  We are Kigali:  we are part of Nature.  We go back to Nature and become one again with the sea and land and sky.  We live on in the tribe of Ki-gal who remember us and share our blood.  We are the wind; we are the earth; we are the fire in the mountain.  Don’t worry, Eshi:  you will have your fill of life before you leave it.  Kigali live a very long time.  And when we die, we are still part of the world we love.  We sleep content.  Do you understand?”

“Yes, great Kur.”

As Eshi trembled against his chest, Kur carried the boy up the slope and into the cavern, while the boy asked him questions no one could answer about the cruelty that men and gods visited upon one another – cruelty Eshi had seen repeatedly since Erra and the Seven had come.

Kur did his best to answer every question, knowing full well that these moments were critical now that Eshi’s innocence was besieged from within and without.  And Eshi’s innocence was more important to Kur than the fate of every soul in hell.

When Eshi’s body relaxed, and not before, Kur put him down and lay down by his side, stroking his downy skin until the boy began to cry softly.  When at last Eshi started humming even more softly, Kur promised him that all would be well with them and with the tribe in Ki-gal, forever and ever.

Kur had expected Eshi’s questions.  Kur had told Erra the truth:  the young question all.  He had not expected Eshi’s tears, but he was glad for them.

Eshi would be everything Kur had hoped, someday, if Kur could keep him safe until he was red and strong.

The Rapture Elevator

by

Michael Armstrong

What is there that a man will not dare?

–  Scott of Buccleuch, to Queen Elizabeth I, when

asked how he had broken into Carlisle Castle in

the Raid of Kinmont Willie

In the center of New Hell, in the misgovernment district, a tall marble building stood out among the squat concrete buildings, walls pocked with shell holes.  Some said Stalin’s architects had designed the buildings, but Kinmont Willie did not know this Stalin, did not know or really give a Sassenach’s fart about anything beyond the 17
^th
century, not that he ever worried about English emissions

The marble building might once have been a splendor, clean and shiny in another world, but not this one.  Nothing could be clean or shiny in hell, as Kinmont Willie had learned long ago.  Still, compared to the rest of New Hell, the building almost glowed – almost.  Things could never be pure, but they could be less dirty.  You took what you could get.

Willie sat on his horse, Jamey, a squat Border breed, a hobbler, low and stout but not light, its hair shaggy, its hooves heavy and thick, all the better for riding over mossy fields, rough roads, and the good-intentioned streets of hell.  On a hill overlooking the rebuilt, destroyed, and being rebuilt again, capital, Willie watched the marble building.

A golden beam rose from it, a column no wider than a knight in full armor.  The beam soared into oblivion above, ending as a prick of light in the charcoal-gray ceiling of hell.  Nay, not a ceiling, thought Willie, but a barrier, like rising into a thick cloud that could be entered but never broken through.  He’d known a pilot, that’s what they were called, a rider of an airship, who had flown to that awful height and seen it, that’s what he’d said.

But that golden beam broke through, went beyond, because its essence was of the Divine.  The truly evil could not look upon that beam, those cursed by Satan for the most heinous crimes.  Lesser evil like Willie could gaze upon it and feel that grace, because in seeing it they would be tormented – they would be reminded of their sins and why they could see that grace but not be with it.

They would know that on that beam some came into hell and some left hell, the impossible made true, although no one had ever actually seen this.  Some said if a damned could enter that beam, he could get out of hell.  Board the Rapture Elevator, they said, and you would go straight to Paradise.

Back in his life, one fine spring day in 1596, when he’d been a struggling reiver trying to feed his family the best way he knew how – pillaging and robbing, but only English – Willie had been taken by a zealous English deputy, Salkeld, may his soul rot in hell, as he probably did.  Minding his own business on the Scottish side of the Liddel Water, Willie had been shocked to see Salkeld and two hundred Sassenach scum cross the stream and give chase.

Aye, he gave them a good chase, Willie thought, and had he a hobbler as fine as Jamey and five hundred lances at his back, they never would have caught him.  But they did, hauling him to Carlisle Castle and the hospitality of the queen.  Through stratagem and subterfuge, not to mention a bit of bribery and bravery, Scott, the Bold Buccleuch, and eighty good reivers against England’s might broke Willie from Carlisle Castle.

Ah, that had been a great escape, Willie thought as he looked at the rapture elevator.  He had done the impossible once, with a little help from his friends.  Could he do it again?  Down below from the Hall of Injustice some essence rode the beam of the elevator up, the column collapsing below it, until the beam shut off.  A shaft of clean sky, cleansed by god’s grace, remained behind until bats and dust and wasps filled the shaft with their corruption.

*

Jamey picked his way down from the hills above New Hell into the harbor district.  Willie had wondered what a horse could possibly have done to land in Hell.  Betrayed its rider?  Not marched unto death?  Not taken a command?  Thrown a king?  Did horses even have souls?  Perhaps it wasn’t even a horse, but a soul in a horse’s body.

In matters of theology Willie didn’t know the truth of anything, the why and because.  He only knew that he was there, Jamey was there, and they had met.  He’d rescued the poor thing as a foal, dirty and stinking and caked with mud, halfway to another death – or another transformation on the Undertaker’s table.  Willie had saved the thing, if saving could be done at all, but even Satan in his cruelty now and then allowed small acts of kindness – at least toward animals.  If it was an animal.  Willie had raised the horse, broken it and trained it.  He felt guilty for naming it after King James, the bastard, but couldn’t resist always being on the back – if only in name – of that wretched monarch who had condemned the clans to Ulster.

Willie rode Jamey down the North Road from the mountains and toward the three-story dark gray cube that was the Oasis.  Boats burned in the harbor and the Titanic had its sundown sinking.  Ships came and went, offloading cargo, taking on passengers, heading out to the far flung corners of hell.  Wait long enough at the Oasis, some said, and you could see every damned soul in hell, because sooner or later everyone came to the Oasis.  Might be a long wait, Willie thought, for the damned were so many and eternity endless.

A gate on the harbor side of the Oasis led into a small courtyard at the entryway.  Willie got off Jamey, led the horse to a stable.  The hay only somewhat stank, the mud didn’t rise more than a few inches, and the grain had not yet gone to rot.  A stable hand took the horse into a stall.

“Feed and water him, aye, my lad,” Willie said, flipping a diablo at the boy.  A Scotsman might be cheap with many things, but never with his horse’s care.

A long dark hallway led into the Oasis, demons and hellions lining the way.  Willie kept a hand on the hilt of his dirk, staring straight ahead and not at anyone lest a wrong glance lead to a fight.  On any other day he would challenge all who dared glance at him, but not this night.

A squat Neandertal blocked the entryway, good ol’ Shanidar.  Dumb but smarter than an Englishman – not that this was hard – no one dared pass without his blessing.  Willie held out his arms, spread his legs.  Once he’d dared to wear a Highlander’s kilt, not that a horseman would ride in such shite, just to mess with Shanidar.  The brute had smiled and ran his big hands up Willie’s legs, under the kilt, and squeezed his balls.  Willie got the message.  Trews, me lad, always trousers in the Oasis.

Shanidar patted Willie down.  He’d seen the dirk, of course, but any who entered the Oasis was allowed one weapon.  Shanidar ran a finger around the top of Willie’s boot, pulled out a small knife with a red deer handle.  He glared at Willie.

“Ye call that a knife, Shanidar?” Willie asked.  “Tis nothin’ but a
sgian dhu
 – a little bone picker, that’s all.”

Shanidar shook his head, palmed the
sgian dhu,
and waved Willie in.

It didn’t seem fair, Willie thought.  A dirk and a
sgian dhu
were no possible match against the rifles and handguns and other modern weapons some wore in the Oasis, but rules were rules.  One weapon, that was it.  Not that he came into the Oasis looking for battle, but still, violence had a way of finding you on its own, and it didn’t hurt to have a knife in your boot, just in case.

Across the bar, on the opposite wall, Ringan’s Tam waved at him.

“Willie,” he said as Kinmont came up to him.

“Tam, me boy.”  Willie slid next to him on the booth, their backs against the wall, looking out at the Oasis.  You always sat with your back against the wall at the Oasis.

“So how’d it go at the trial?” Willie asked Tam.

“Convicted,” Tam said.  “Poor Johnny lost his case.  He’s gone back to the Undertaker.  The hanging was quick, though.”

“And the angel?” Willie asked.

“It sighed, shook its head, stepped back into the elevator, and was gone.”

“How many seconds?” Willie asked.  “How long before the door shut?”

“Fifteen,” Tam said.  “It was a long sigh.”

“Long enough,” Willie said.  “Long enough.”

A bar-maid came up to them, a tall brunette in desert cammo fatigues, wearing an olive drab undershirt stretched tight across her breasts.  She wore her hair cut in short bangs and a bob, the ends just touching her lips, bright green streaks framing her face.

“Gentlemen, a drink?”

“Bellhaven’s Best,” Tam said, his own little joke.  You could ask for any beer you wanted and you got Oasis’s Own, a foamy bottle of piss that tasted like it had been brewed in sulfur water.

“A tall glass of iced water for me,” Willie said, also a joke.  It would be water, and tall, but not iced.  And it would taste like sulfur, too.

“No beer for ye, Willie?” Tam asked.

Willie shook his head.  “Why torment meself?  No beer, no wine, no whiskey.”  You could get drunk in the Oasis if you tried, but you paid for it.  Once, just once, that’s all he asked, he would like a sip of real whiskey.

“I set it up for you,” Tam said.  “The appointment with the Ombudsman.  Got you a lawyer, too, a mighty fine one.”

“A lawyer?” Willie asked.

“The best.  He comes highly recommended.  A Liddesdale man, too…  Ah, here he is.”

Willie turned as a stout man came down the aisle toward them.  He had the long face of a Borderer, with a hawk nose, dark black hair swept back from his forehead and curling at his shoulders.  He kept his beard trimmed short, long enough to count as a beard and not an unshaven mess, short enough a fighter couldn’t get a grip on it.  A boil the size of a dime oozed pus on his forehead, and another seemed ready to explode on the tip of his nose.

The Liddesdale man wore a leather jack, aye, but unlike the gaily quilted affair of Willie’s, his jack had little pieces of metal that seemed to ripple around the man’s chest.  As he came closer, Willie could see names and numbers stamped in them.

“Kinmont Willie?” the man asked.  “Dick of the Side.  Nixon, that is.”

“A Nixon?”  Willie stood.  “Ye’re no Nixon I know.”

“He’s of a different era,” Tam said.  “Centuries past us.  This Nixon led a nation, led great armies.”

“Well, not that great,” Dick said.  “May I?”

Dick took Willie’s glass of water and poured it on his jack.  The metal steamed and, for a moment, quit flowing.

“Aye, that’s better,” Dick said.

“Your jack,” Willie said.  “That metal – what is it?”

“Dog tags,” Dick said.  “Soldier’s identification of my era.  They’re the names of the dead killed on my watch.  Killed without cause; it’s supposed to be my sin.”

“All of them?” Willie asked.

“Most of them.”  Dick shrugged.  “You get used to it after a while.”  He winced as the dog tags heated up again, as if to show the lie of his statement.

Watching Dick of the Side, Willie felt his own torment – not that the pain ever went away, but sometimes you could push it back.  Satan liked to make hellions suffer with every breath, and had devised an entire cruel couture.  Sharp bones in Willie’s jack poked through the quilted leather, scratching his skin, exotic staph infecting every cut.  Like Nixon’s face, his skin oozed pus.

The bar-maid came to them again, took their orders, and came back moments later with new drinks.  Willie pulled his glass of tepid water toward him.  Dick sipped at a yellow brew that looked like horse piss – was horse piss, Willie realized, smelling it from across the table.

“Well,” Dick said, putting his hands flat on the table, “I hear you need a lawyer.”

“Want, more exactly.”

“On what crime?”

“All of them,” Willie said.  “Well, one in particular.  On February 19, 1596, I am alleged to have burned down a peel tower near Annandale with the widow Bell inside.”

“Well, did you?” Dick asked.

“Aye, I burned the peel tower, from the top down after scaling it.  But my men held back to allow escape.”

“Was the widow Bell inside?”

“There was a body, true, and some said it was her.  But the bones had cuts in them, including her skull.  Someone killed her, a son or daughter-in-law.  She was known as being especially vicious to her daughter-in-law, Darcy.  A Musgrave, I think.”

“Did you answer for justice?” Dick asked.  “Mortal justice?”

“Aye, at Kershopefoot, at a Border meeting.  Salkeld, the English deputy brought it up, but he had such a pathetic case even his own men laughed.  Ye can’t take blame for burning a body found hacked to death.  If it’s a crime, that would be, what, tampering with evidence?”

“Well, that’s all well and good, but Divine justice has its own rules.  Are you held accountable for it here?”

“Aye,” Willie said, and he pointed to his own jack.  A spot of blood oozed through the fabric, hellion blood, sickly yellow and bubbling.

“But I seek Evil justice here, by our own laws,” Willie said.  “If I can be relieved of such an injustice, my torment will be lessened a bit, you see?”

“I see,” Dick said, looking down at his own jack, and perhaps hoping that one of those dead could be taken away – a death laid not at his hand but to a wretched general.

“So are you up for it?” Willie asked.

“Do you have witnesses?”

“Aye.  Tam and I, my men, we have prowled the plains of hell seeking them out.  If you serve subpoenas backed by the court, they will be compelled to appear.”

“And has the court agreed to take on your case?”

“Aye,” Willie said, turning toward a man coming toward them.  “The Ombudsman himself has agreed.”

A thin, stooped middle-aged man came toward them, a robe turned pale gray after many washings hanging on his body.  He’d pushed the hood of his robe back, showing his dark eyes, dark hair speckled with gray, his gray beard.  Small white scars pocked his darker skin, but his face was otherwise unblemished.

“A Moor?” Willie asked.

“Nay, a Jew,” Dick said.  He pointed at a gold Star of David on a necklace around the man’s neck.