The Heart of Hell

by Wayne Barlowe

  Eventually, the party reached a series of ice-slickened streets arranged neatly at the base of the hexagonal array of towers. As they were set into the sloping hill at the palace’s base, the streets were canted, something that would have been no problem had the flagstones not been sheathed in ice. A short distance from the main avenue they traversed, Adramalik saw a blue glyph hovering over a one-story domicile and the Bearer nodded toward the first demon in line. Vulryx nodded back, not a little resentfully, and, accompanied by one of the Bearer’s headless functionaries, made his difficult way to the domicile’s entrance, within which both vanished.

  This process was repeated until each of the Knights was dispatched to his own domicile. It was all very efficient, and yet something about it troubled him. When the Bearer finally nodded to him, indicating the low, dark, elaborately ornamented building, Adramalik gave the demon a long look. The Bearer turned to confront him, his ornaments swinging and clattering.

  “You will be summoned when my lord wishes it. Do not attempt to enter the palace before then.”

  Adramalik did nothing to acknowledge that he heard the warning. Instead, he turned and followed his guide, who, despite his obvious deficit, found his way to the domicile’s entrance with complete ease. There was no door. Adramalik could not reason through why one wasn’t needed.

  As he crossed the darkened threshold, a dozen strong hands grasped him roughly and pulled him within.

  6

  THE VALE OF THE FREED

  The scent of countless souls hung heavily in the air as the two travelers gazed out over a vast, bowl-like depression in the dark and folded landscape.

  They had followed a steadily rising trail that eventually cut its way through some low karsts until finally, just as they both wondered if they could negotiate any steeper a grade, the trail opened on to a flat mesa with the panorama of the Vale spread before them.

  After Sargatanas had Ascended and the souls had found themselves emancipated there had been a general and predictable exodus from the cities. Lilith had seen the steady flow of souls, liberated from their terrible existences, twisted and bent but quietly jubilant that they were no longer forced to be in proximity to their fearsome jailors. Standing on what remained of the palace parapets, she had wished she could talk with each and every one of them, hear their stories, understand their relief. She had felt, in some ways, responsible for their release. Had she not, even before Sargatanas’ encouragement, seeded the souls with her many statues, hoping against hope that one would rise and challenge the demons? And had not Hannibal been that one, her greatest soul champion? She sighed with the thought of him, even now as she gazed into the smoky distance.

  “Are those soul roads, my lady? There … and there?” Ardat was pointing at parallel scratches that crisscrossed the plain.

  “Yes, Ardat, the lighter ones. The others are trackways made by Abyssals.” Lilith turned to look at her handmaiden. “How long have we been away from Dis?”

  Ardat looked inward, trying to calculate the time. “At least…”

  “At least long enough for you to call me Lilith, yes?”

  “Yes.” Ardat smiled. It was a small concession to one who had given so much.

  “We will have to be careful, down there among the souls, Ardat. While some have tried to lead them, none, from what I have heard, has been able to govern them. Each town is a separate entity and rivalries have been growing.” She paused to peer into the distance. A thin bolt of red sigil-lightning flashed for an instant. “I truly do not know what we will find down there.”

  With a deep breath, Lilith headed toward a rough cut in the mesa’s side and swung herself down, beginning the descent to the valley floor. Ardat gathered her robes and followed, tentatively at first and then more confidently.

  Lilith moved easily down the cliffside, her strong hands and bird feet grasping the crusty wrinkles, folds, and bloated organs that covered its surface. More than once she put her hand on a ridge only to have it split apart to reveal yellowed and slimy teeth. And each time she pointed silently to Ardat, who carefully sidestepped the fetid maw.

  Sword practice, Lilith reflected, had honed both of them physically, sharpening their reflexes and toughening them. It was, in Lilith’s mind, inevitable that in the course of their long journey they would be set upon, if not by renegade souls or demons then certainly by some Abyssal.

  Lilith kept a watchful eye on Ardat, who had more difficulty negotiating the irregularities, but despite the occasional brief misstep, there was never any need for her to assist her handmaiden. Nearing the mesa’s base, she saw the wall beneath her feet end, leaving a farther than comfortable drop for the pair.

  Ardat climbed down beside her and the two dangled their feet for a few moments before letting go. Lilith landed easily, but Ardat fell and rolled amidst a clattering slide of scree. When they stood, Lilith saw, to her relief, that Ardat had only a few scrapes to show for the descent and fall. She turned to look at the cliff’s base and saw a vast network of large, gnawed hollows reaching far into the darkness of the mesa’s belly—clear evidence of Abyssals. From within she smelled a rank odor and shuddered, glad down to her soul that she didn’t have to enter the caves.

  She stood for a moment, unsure of why the dark, descending recesses stirred something deep and unpleasant within her. And then a sound from Ardat swept away her gathering thoughts and made her turn and she slowly walked from the troubling caves.

  Stretching before them, enclosed by the low mountains, was a largely featureless, undulating plain dotted with the occasional steaming fumarole and low hillocks. There were no lava flows to ford or fissures to leap across, no sharp-rocked pumice fields or yielding pock-pans that might indicate sub-infernal Abyssal colonies. It was, in all of Hell, a valley most conducive to the habitation of souls. And, Lilith knew, it explained why they had flocked here by the countless thousands.

  “That way?” Ardat said, pointing into the distance to a low rise surmounted with what seemed to be a walled enclosure. Small curls of dark smoke coiled up from it.

  Lilith nodded and the two set off.

  The image of the caves’ mouths did not leave her and, together with the arid landscape, vague and ancient recollections long suppressed began to coalesce. Memories of a time and place so remote that she shook her head, astonished she could call them up with such clarity.

  Anger was her constant companion in those distant days. Anger and wrathfulness. She had been betrayed, cast away, and transformed and, for all that, she had vowed she would become something the human race would whisper fearfully in the dark about for millennia. She owed them nothing but terror.

  “What is it, Lilith?”

  Lilith set her jaw. “Memories. Very old memories. From a time before I first met you.”

  She could feel Ardat’s eyes upon her.

  “This landscape, this heat … it seems cooler here. It reminds me of the Land Between the Two Rivers. You remember. When I arrived there it was little more than a swamp, a place of fishermen and reed weavers. Who could have foreseen what was to rise there? That souls … humans … would have begun their journey toward civilization in such a place?”

  “At the time, I could not have cared less. I hated them all with all that I had become. And that was a far cry from what I had been. When life was breathed into me I was beautiful, joyful, a creature of the sunlight, a being who reveled in her independence and freedom but who could have been happy with someone to love. But I wanted to look my love in the eyes as an equal, not as chattel, and that was to be denied me. Wrathfully. After my fall, I was changed. I was made to be inferior, and then to feel inferior.” She nodded toward her feet. I was made to be ashamed of who I had been. And made to be ashamed, too, of what I had become. I feared being seen and, so, I walked in the cool shadows of the night.”

  Lilith did not glance up to meet Ardat’s eyes but instead focused on her scaled feet and their every deliberate step. She had walked through so many generations of human
s that she had stopped counting them. And only when she had arrived in Hell had she stopped hating them.

  “I had kept to myself for millennia, wandering through the desert of my soul. I was so lonely and disappointed. And that turned to bitterness, then hatred.

  “The first village was the hardest and the one I can still remember the most vividly. It was a peaceful place, a swamp-side collection of a dozen reed huts. The villagers were harmless fishermen who laughed with their children and wove mats during the sweltering days, fished in the violet evenings, and made babies in the night. I watched them from the reeds for quite a long time, still and unblinking as one of the tall, predatory birds that waited at the water’s edge. And I knew what I would do to them.

  “I waited until a terrific storm descended upon the swamps and then, at night, I made my way to the first hut, a simple dwelling that I knew contained a man, a woman, and their baby. They lay naked only feet apart and I went to him and, with a hand across his mouth, I slowly roused him. I remember his eyes, wide in the darkness as I climbed atop him, the sweat on his skin, his hands on my thighs and buttocks, his manhood deep within me. I was something he would never forget. We moved together in the darkness for hours. His woman stirred but did not awaken and the baby woke, saw me, and stared. The look that man gave me was a mixture of sudden fear and primal lust. When he came deep within me, that look almost instantly turned to remorse, pain. And my heart leaped. I savored the conflict within him and the conflict to come with his woman. I left him with scratches he could never explain away.

  “That night I visited two more men. And while they planted their seed inside my body, I planted mine within their souls. Both gave rise to their own demons. I was a sower of discord, of a yearning that could never be fulfilled. But that was not enough. I was not finished with that once-happy village.

  “I waited until the winds and the rains stopped and then until the storm of angers and accusations that rent the villagers asunder abated. I waited and watched and counted their babies. There were ten. I took them, one by one, making it look like the women’s jealousies were the reason. And the swamp embraced every one of those babies, taking them each to its watery bosom.”

  Lilith looked up from her feet. Avoiding Ardat’s gaze and noting her silence, she stared straight ahead at the village. Something seemed odd about the walls surrounding it. Was the heat making them look as if they were moving?

  “I left them with the sounds of their keening and screaming ringing in my ears, left them to wallow in their anger and grief, left them to finally realize that it was not their doing but mine. This I did, happily, to countless villages along the two rivers. And it was not long before I came to relish what I had become. A creature of the stormy nights. A predator. A feared legend.

  “That is how I began to punish them, not for what they did but for what the Throne did to me. I could not think of a better way to strike out at the Throne than to prey upon its favorite children. And that is why I am here. My terrorizing them was one thing and that alone would have been enough to put me here. But my anger toward the Throne … that was something else. Lucifer understood that, Sargatanas less so.

  “You know the rest. When you and I found each other in Kish, I had already made my way into the king, Etana’s, royal bed. He was so filled with pride, so angry that he had no offspring. You and I kept him childless for what must have felt to him like centuries—”

  Ardat stopped her with a hand on her arm and pointed at the wall. And Lilith’s breath caught in her throat. Countless arms were reaching out to them and, as one, the souls tightly lashed to the fleshy walls cried out for release.

  Lilith, one hand hovering over the handle of her sword, gently pushed Ardat behind her and moved ahead. The path leading to the enclosure—she could now see it was a small soul village—would take them through a narrow gateway and she was concerned that the souls, arms outstretched, hands grasping, might make ingress difficult. As they got closer, the souls began to cry out and claw at the air, grabbing the passing traveling skins of the two wanderers. With grim faces and some effort they managed to wrench themselves free of the dozens of hands. They tried not to inflict wounds on the souls, but it was nearly impossible to not bend or twist the strong fingers, causing shrieks from the souls.

  The village was a shambles. Like most soul settlements, the low buildings were made of the very ground itself. The massive, fleshy bricks were nothing like the soul bricks of the cities. These were mindless lumps, featureless and without spirit but organic nonetheless. They lay one atop another, oozing their dark ichors in long rivulets that pooled at the walls’ footing. They had been flensed in great quantities from the ground, leaving only the black substrate to walk upon.

  Large carpets of thinner tissues surmounted the buildings, veins dangling in clumps and streamers from their cut sides, and these twitched with the oncoming of Lilith and Ardat.

  It was readily apparent that there had been a fierce struggle within the walls of the settlement. Before them, strewn atop the black matrix, lay a confusing, writhing assemblage of torn and mangled limbs, torsos, and heads that were striving to reconnect themselves. Even had the pieces managed to claw their way next to one another it would have been to no avail. As far as Lilith was aware, once dismembered a soul could not be made whole again without an Art.

  Had the Salamandrines done this? She had heard about the negative effect the soul exodus had had upon the Men of Wrath. How their territories had been compromised and, too, how the nomads had moved farther and farther away from settlements, embittered. But had they come back to vengefully reclaim their lands? She knew what they were capable of doing to souls and demons alike. Had their rage finally grown too much to bear now that the souls had been released? She could not see any obvious telltale signs.

  Without a word, Ardat and she separated and ducked into the dozen squalid buildings that had served as newfound homes to the souls. The small rooms contained only Abyssal-bone furnishing, broken and in disarray—neither found anyone intact within. The interiors were dark, foul smelling, and humid and they were both relieved to exit them and walk back toward the gate with the hope of talking with some of the bound souls.

  Tied to the flesh wall with nets of their own newly dried tendons, the mangled souls were able only to move their arms. When they were not reaching out toward the two travelers, they were ineffectually clawing at their bonds. Most were gagged by the tightened netting and it was only after moving down the line some hundred paces that Lilith found a soul—a male—able to speak coherently. And when the souls were questioned as to who was responsible for this atrocity, a single word was uttered from a dozen mouths.

  “Souls.”

  7

  THE PYROCLASTIC FALLS

  She felt the dull rumbling through her saddle long before she heard it. Gradually, the intermittent vibrations had gathered in strength and intensity until they had blended into a low and continuous shivering. Slight tremors had been passing beneath the bul-ata’s pointed feet for some time as the caravan had made their way toward the great volcanic dome that so massively deformed the horizon.

  The plains that lay just before the massive distant volcano were unusual in their conformation. In a world filled with the most appalling geographies, Boudica had never seen a skin field dotted, as this one was, with what looked to her eyes like low, familiar tumuli. Chieftains had been buried in her land under such mounds but never in such numbers or so close to one another. The demons passed them with uneasy glances, shaking their heads as if even they were confounded by Hell’s endless, dark revelations. Apparently, these hummocks were new to them, as well. Boudica stared at the nearest mound, as she passed it, and she saw it trembling. But as common as movement upon the fleshy surface of the ground was, she felt there was something more to this shivering, almost as if something from within was trying to come free. As if to punctuate that thought, a sudden thin spout of liquid burst from the mound into the air, covering its rounded upper surface
in slick fluids. Metaphrax, she could see, paid it no heed, and this she found reassuring enough to shift her gaze to the looming mountain.

  It was named in the demons’ tongue Yalpur Nazh—the Pillar of Flame—and it was clear how the by-product of this massive mountain had gained that name. Towering into the liverish sky was an unsettling plume of smoke and fire that emanated from this, Hell’s largest, ceaselessly erupting volcano. Crisscrossed by flickering red lightning, the glowing plume was, she had been told, held perpetually in place by the constant superheated infernal updrafts—an unnatural wonder unlike any other in Hell. No demon dared fly too near the roiling clouds for fear of getting caught up in those updrafts.

  A wide field of hardened lava pierced the ground-flesh, gradually growing indistinct in the ashy gloom, between the caravan and Yalpur Nazh. The folds of the intervening hills looked sharp and difficult to traverse and the demons eyed them with an apparent degree of reticence. Sooner than she would have liked, the caravan reached the mountain’s foothills and Boudica watched Styjimar, on the lead bul-ata, slowly make his way atop the first of the narrow hillcrests. Soon his form was only visible by the stalk-light of his mount. This region would be a challenge to both demon and beast and she was, once again, grateful for the plodding surefootedness of her steed. Despite that she was breathing heavily.

  Metaphrax turned to look at her and then dropped back to her side. Above the roaring of the volcano he shouted, “Do not despair. We will stay a safe distance and ride upon the flank of Yalpur Nazh. It will be three days’ hard march, but on its other side we will find much calmer land!”