Prospero in Hell (53 page)

“That’s just the way it is,” said Mephisto with a shrug. “Come on.”

“What if the demons try to take over our staffs, as Baelor did during the party?” Logistilla balked.

Titus gave a grim smile and held the
Staff of Silence
aloft. “Silence is golden. Demons can’t command our staves if the staves cannot hear them. Shall we go?”

Logistilla, Titus, Caliban, and Ulysses followed Erasmus and Mephisto through the gate, disappearing into the mist.

“This bodes ill,” Gregor said huskily, “to find in Hell a garden of Earthly delights. It is a testament to my great love for our Pater that I walk through this gate. God in Heaven, forgive me.” And he passed into the mist as well.

“I don’t like it, Ma’am, not one bit,” said Mab.

Beside him, Cornelius stretched out his hand. “Spiritling, guide me. I have no eyes to lead my way.”

Mab took his arm. “Sure thing, Mr. Cornelius. Just follow me.”

Theo and I were now alone in the swirling mist, his face shaded by the glorious Urim of his helmet. He looked up at the words on the gate and sighed.

“How ironic,” he said. Despite his regret, his voice sounded younger and hardier than it had in years. “Over the last fifty years, I have suffered such agony, solely to avoid entering this very gate. And now, I choose to walk in with my own two feet. Are we doing the wrong thing, Miranda? Are there some paths one should not take, even for one’s family?”

I thought about this, remembering, for once, not to turn to my Lady for wisdom. The angel had counseled me to rescue Father. Surely, she would not ask me to damn my immortal soul?

Finally, I said slowly, “I think this gate is a trick, Theo, a deception.
True Hell is not a place we can walk into, it is something in our hearts. Why should we fear any words written on something called the ‘Gate of False Dreams’?”

Theo chuckled and offered me his arm. Together, we walked through the gate into the land of Living Nightmares.

I cannot say what I had been expecting. Perhaps, after hearing Erasmus’s praise, I thought to see a garden or a pleasant forested way. Upon stepping through the gate, however, I was immediately assailed by the most putrid and rotten of stenches, as rank as any battlefield. Corpses, swollen and half disjointed, floated all around me upon the surface of a dismal swamp. Only these bodies were not dead. Their eyes swiveled to focus on me, and they babbled and moaned, unable to make themselves understood with their broken mouths.

Farther away, on what seemed to be an island, a great black demon stood over five emaciated men who bowed and cowered before him, licking his legs and nether parts with their withered purple tongues. I threw my hand before my face, shying away from this lurid scene, only to have my sight fall upon seven naked women tied into a circle. Throbbing, black sinews violated their bodies, passing in and out of each orifice, even their nostrils and ears. The women, bloated and deathly pale, shivered and trembled as if in the grip of ecstatic pleasure or perhaps suffering some terrible torture.

And I was sinking.

The small hillock upon which I stood sank into the vile swamp. Already, I could feel the fatty slime slithering against the skin of my legs and then my stomach. I flailed about until my feet found purchase, only to discover I was perched upon the corpse of a half-dead whale. Beneath the waters, within its disemboweled belly, an orgy took place. The rotting mangled corpses uttered inarticulate exclamations that might have been pleasure or pain. As I drew back in dismay, I lost my footing and fell into the stinking muck.

Emerging again, I gagged and spat, but the slime was everywhere. A smell like rotting corpses and feces stewed in rancid lard filled my nostrils and mouth. Horrified, I vomited. My vomit hung before me, sinking slowly through the gook and adding to the stink.

It was too much. I screamed, thrashing about until I managed to throw myself through the gate back to Limbo.

“Miranda! What’s wrong?”

Theo came crashing through the gate and ran to where I knelt among the swirling mists, retching out my innards. The others followed him, and soon the whole family was gathered about me. I felt unsteady and weak, ashamed to lift my head or look at them.

“It’s horrible!” I cried, when I was able to speak. Tears ran down my cheeks. “What was that… stuff we were swimming in? How could you call that place beautiful or mistake it for a garden?”

“Slowly now, Sister.” Erasmus squatted down beside me. “Tell us what you saw.”

I described the bare bones of it, skimming over the obscenities. My brethren listened silently. Ulysses’s face gained a pale green tinge, and Mephisto gagged.

“But it was so beautiful,” cried Logistilla. “Why should we believe that she is seeing the truth?”

“Don’t be such a dope, Logistilla,” Mephisto replied weakly, waving a hand. “When you’re in Hell, and someone tells you the pretty stuff is a deception, believe them!”

“I shoulda known something was wrong when I couldn’t smell the stink of corruption,” Mab said.

“It makes perfect sense,” Erasmus said. “Of course, Hell could not be a pleasure garden. But why is Big Sister Miranda the only one not taken in?”

“Maybe all her years as Eurynome’s handmaiden are protecting her,” said Cornelius. When he spoke Eurynome’s name, there was a distant crash of thunder. A blue-white light flickered through the swirling mists. For just an instant, in the far distance, I thought I could make out a black armored figure seated on the left-hand throne.

“Maybe it’s because her mother was a witch,” sneered Erasmus.

Caliban shook his head. “If that were the case, I would see it, too, seeing as we share a mother. Perhaps the angel whom she spoke with gave her a blessing.”

“Could be Ophion,” said Mab. “Miranda’s staff carries my—well, you’d call him an ancestor—the Serpent of the Wind. Maybe, he’s protecting her… or maybe the rest of you have been seeped in demon magic from your own staffs for so long that Hell has some kind of power over you.”

“Maybe a million things,” snapped Logistilla. “I fail to see how this speculation gets us any closer to Father!”

Mab turned to Mephisto who was peering into the crystal ball. “So,
how ya coming with the oversized paperweight? Can you instruct it to lead us by the safest path? I hear that thing’s near omniscient.”

“You mean like sneak through the crevices instead of marching up to the front gates of Dis, like that dopey Ferdinand?” asked Mephisto.

“Mephisto, there is no Ferdinand,” I said impatiently. “Seir made that story up.”

“Oh. Yeah.” He shrugged. “Sure, I’ll do it. Ball, show us the best path from the Gate of False Dreams to Father… Eeeeewwwww!” Mephisto nearly threw the ball away from himself. “It’s disgusting!”

The others peered into the crystal ball. It showed my version of the far side of the gate. Mab and Theo turned away disgusted, but Mephisto, Ulysses, Logistilla, Erasmus, and Caliban all stared in horrified fascination. Gregor, though disgusted, also kept his eyes fixed on the ball, as if determined to view the truth, however unpleasant. Titus kept watch, peering suspiciously into the swirling mists.

Merely seeing it again made me queasy. The memory of that horrible taste filled my mouth. I spat, hoping to rid myself of it, and was sick again, though there was little left to bring up. Theo patted my back supportively.

I could not go back there, not even if I wished to. I could not force my limbs to move toward the gate, knowing what was on the other side. I was too sick and too terrified of returning to the Tower of Pain. The family would have to rescue Father without me.

“Look, a path. If we go this way, we can get through the Swamps of Lust to the Bridge across the River Styx.” Mephisto was showing the others something in the ball. “Beyond that is the Wall of Flame, the Burning Plain, the Mountains of Misery, some glaciers, and then the Tower of Pain. All we have to do is follow this path, blast any demons that get in our way, and avoid the Hellwinds.”

“What are Hellwinds?” asked Cornelius.

“Black winds that howl,” explained Mephisto. “They blow stray souls back to their proper place of punishment.”

“What happens if we get caught in them?” asked Erasmus. “Do we get sent back beyond the Gate of False Dreams to the land of the living?”

“No such luck,” Mephisto shook his head sagely. “It’s straight to punishment. Do not pass Go. Do not collect two hundred dollars. Whatever part of your soul is heaviest, that’s where you’ll be dropped.”

“Remind me to avoid the Hellwinds,” Erasmus shuddered. Then, he
frowned down at the crystal ball again. “How are we going to follow this path when the landscape looks completely different from what we saw?”

“Miranda, you’re going to have to lead us,” said Gregor. “The rest of us cannot see the truth.”

I cried, “I-I can’t!”

“Would you prefer that Father die?” Theo growled sternly.

As I knelt there, a pathetic wreck, Theo’s words touched something deep within me. What was the point of bearing the Pride of Angels, if it did not sustain one when pride was called for? Staggering to my feet, I silently swore that nothing would deter me. I would do what it took to save Father—even if it meant my last breath would be of putrid undead gook.

“Very well. Follow me.”

It was worse, even, than I had anticipated. The others walked easily over the swamp, as if they trod on a petal-strewn footpath, but I, who could see the truth, had to frog paddle through the gelatinous slime. Mournful cries and moans of anguished ecstasy came from all sides. By looking only directly before me, I could avoid most of the lurid sights, but the putrid stenches were impossible to ignore. More than once, I stopped to retch out my empty innards. Yet, somehow, I went forward.

“You look really weird, Miranda,” Mephisto chimed happily as he strolled alongside me. “Like you’re lying on your stomach on the path pretending to be a fish, only you’re actually moving forward. And there are all these flower petals all over you. There’s one on your nose,” He pointed to where a bit of slime clung to my face. “I think you look cute that way.”

“I think she looks ridiculous,” murmured Erasmus.

“It’s hardly sporting to mock her if there’s nothing she can do about it, especially as she’s the one having a hard time,” Ulysses joined in. “We’re taking a stroll in a park where girls in bikinis are sunbathing.” His eyes tracked a particularly hideous spider-creature admiringly. “While she’s swimming through sewage. Hardly fair, really.”

Mephisto’s orb directed us as to where to go. I tried to avoid the worst of the corpses and rotting fleshy parts, but even this was difficult. Once, I turned quickly to avoid a black-winged demon and found I had swum into an eddy filled with meaty bits and bodily fluids. The stink of rotten flesh and the taste of bile and mucus assaulted upon my senses. I flailed, trying to
push the contaminants away from me. My brothers came to my rescue, dragging me backward, but Logistilla and Mephisto, who were watching my progress through the crystal ball, both became ill. The odor of their vomit contributed to the general vileness.

Worst of all was that, in the midst of this horror, I kept, out of habit, turning to my Lady for guidance, only to find an empty area that seemed to ache and throb, like a recently pulled tooth. Eager for distraction, my mind wandered back to my last conversation with Astreus, replaying it at least a hundred times, recalling how we quarreled and how he was now lost to me. I regretted his loss, regretted bringing up the subject of Aerie Ones but, most of all, I regretted—to my shame—that he had passed into darkness without ever having truly kissed me.

The bowels of Hell, amidst victims of the sins of lust, was hardly the most appropriate place to come face-to-face with the realization that I had become seriously enamored of an elf.

A great, bloated monster—half-demon and half-spider—provided a momentary distraction. It shot black webs at us, hoping to ensnare us and pull us into its pulsing womb, where other victims moaned and writhed. I shouted and pointed, and all my brothers leapt forward to parry the webs, waving their staffs blindly. The spider’s webs stuck to Mephisto’s sword, and one nearly robbed him of it. They parted instantly, however, when even in the vicinity of the
Staff of Decay
.

After that, Erasmus took the lead. Smiling grimly, he walked beside me as I swam.