A Natural History of Hell: Stories

by Jeffrey Ford

  He paid handsomely for the use of a barn at the edge of the village with a fireplace and a loft to sleep in, and paid extra for the owner to keep his mouth shut. Then once the great wooden doors were secured, he unwrapped the Coral Heart, which he’d hidden beneath an extra cloak, and began a regimen of daily practice. His diary attests that every hour he felt his ability with the sword growing. As he wrote, “The weapon has a personality, and if I’m not mistaken a will, which I am learning to merge with mine.”

  At night, after a full day of training, Toler would go to the Sackful, the town’s one inn, sit in a dark corner, drinking honeycomb rye, and contemplate what he would tell -I-’s mysterious servant when it materialized. Only days earlier, he’d planned to renounce the sword, but now he meant to tell her through her messenger of the nature of the enchanted weapon and how it was changing him. He wanted to tell her that it took the art of the blade to a new level, one he wished to explore. He’d beg her for a reply in which she would tell him her thoughts about his decision.

  The days passed in Twyse, overcast but with no visits from the royal guard or news of local manhunts. Toler continued his exercises and imaginary battles and now had begun to move around the entire expanse of the barn in a lunatic dance that made even him doubt his sanity at times. Still, it was exciting and he’d burst out laughing when the sword would show him something new. Now when he held the coral heart of the grip, he felt a pulsing in his palm that matched the beating of his heart. As Toler reminds us in a diary entry, all he wrote for that particular day—“This sword has slain monsters.”

  As his confidence grew through his daily practice, he became bolder at night as well, conversing and drinking with the people of the village at the Sackful. They told him of their hunting and he recounted some of his exploits as a mercenary, failing, of course, to mention his name. The moment that marked a monumental transition in the life of Ismet Toler was the night, before leaving for the inn, that he removed his old sword from its sheath and replaced it with the Coral Heart. From the moment it hung at his side, he felt a great sense of calm and a new shrewd reserve, an intuitive calculation.

  That night he drank more than his fill and revealed too much about himself. Halfway into the evening, while the inn crowd was listening to a young girl sing a hunter’s hymn, he realized that all his newfound energy and personality, his reserve, was as a result of his yearning to use the sword again in a battle. The charm of practice had just about reached its limits and he was eager for the fray. To build the energy, he decided to hold off using the Coral Heart for another two weeks, and then, if the occasion arose, or he were to coax one into happening, he would draw the weapon and turn the world red.

  That night, soon after he’d made his decision to continue to lay low, the chatter of the Sackful died down for an instant and the patrons were able to hear a horse approaching on the frozen road. All eyes glanced at the door, including Toler’s. A moment passed and then a hooded figure strode in dressed warmly against the winter night—gloves and leggings, a thick cloak. The swordsman noticed first, of course, the stranger’s sword hilt, which appeared to be made of clear crystal. The man strode to the bar, and the inn crowd, out of a sense of rural politeness, tried to avert their glances. They were soon drawn back to the figure, though, when the innkeeper, after inquiring if the stranger would have a cup of holly beer, gasped aloud.

  What he alone was seeing, all beheld a moment later, when the man who’d just arrived, drew back his hood—a face and neck and even hair of a deep red hue. Toler went weak where he sat, realizing from the smooth, shiny consistency of that face, that the fellow was made of red coral. He wondered if this was one of his recent victims having chased him down for revenge. But there was nothing in the legend of the Coral Heart to suggest that its prey returned to life as breathing statues.

  “I want whiskey,” said the stranger, and although he looked to be made of polished coral his mouth moved pliantly and his lips slipped into a smile without cracking his face. He pulled off his gloves, and yes, his fingers and palms too were red coral and flexed easily, although when he set one down upon the bar there was a sound as if he’d dropped a rock. He lifted off his cloak and set it on a chair. None were prepared for a statue come to life.

  Toler, like the rest of his Sackful compatriots, couldn’t move, so stunned was he at the sight. “What manner of creature are you?” asked the innkeeper, backing away.

  “My name is Thybault, and I, like you, am a man, of course.”

  “How’d you come by that color?” asked one of the more brazen patrons, lifting the hatchet from a loop in his belt. “That’s the color of the devil.”

  “The devil? You’re an idiot,” said Thybault.

  The hunter with the axe stood, his weapon now firmly in his grip. “An idiot I may be,” he said, “but at least I know God never made a man out of red stone.” This said, two of his fellow hunters rose behind him.

  “Coral,” said the red man.

  Toler would later recount in his diary that it was at this moment that he realized the stranger had come for him. He cautiously moved his cloak up to cover the hilt of the Coral Heart. A tightness in his chest told him not to get involved in what was about to happen. The anticipation of battle in the room was palpable. The hunters slowly advanced toward Thybault, who turned to the innkeeper and said, “Where’s my drink?”

  While he was looking away, they lunged. When they saw the speed with which he drew his sword, it was visible in their faces that they knew they’d made a mistake. The lead hunter raised the hatchet high, but the crystal sword had already punctured his throat, and in an eyeblink later he disintegrated into salt that showered down into a pile on the wooden floor. There were screams of fear and wonder from the patrons. The two other hunters’ eyes were wide. The shock made them living statues as Thybault became a statue alive, spinning into a crouch and running one through, exploding him into salt. Then an upward motion and the crystal blade buried itself in the underside of the third man’s chin. Again, it rained salt onto which fell the empty garments.

  The innkeeper put Thybault’s drink on the bar. There was silence as the coral man returned his glistening sword to its sheath and lifted his whiskey. The only one to move was a young woman who, getting to her knees, gathered in her apron the salt that had been the hunters. Toler was frightened, and he hated the feeling. He’d trained for weeks to reach the condition he was in, and the first instance where he might have tried out the Coral Heart, fate threw at him an enemy who was a superior swordsman and made of red coral. He knew it could only be magic.

  Thybault finished his drink and smashed the clay cup on the floor. He turned and stared out at the patrons cowered into the corners of the inn. The candles’ glow against his polished complexion set him in a bright red haze. He put on his left glove. “If anyone knows of a man, Ismet Toler, tell him I challenge him to a duel out in this latrine of a street tomorrow morning when the church bell chimes. Every day he doesn’t meet me, I’ll turn another three of you to salt. We’ll start with the children.” He put on his other gloves, wrapped his cloak around him, lifted his hood, and was gone. In the silence that followed, they heard his horse, which must have been massive from the percussion of its hoofbeats, moving away into the sound of the winter wind.

  Someone cursed, and then the inn erupted into a den of chatter. Toler was so scared he could barely move. Still, he managed to stand and slowly make his way to the door. He didn’t want to run, which would, although they didn’t know his name, identify him as Ismet Toler. When he neared the entrance, he turned around and shuffled backward, a little at a time, until he was free of the place. The cold air helped him to think, and he realized that it wouldn’t be long before the people of Thyse gave him up to the crystal sword. As he ran toward the barn, he made the decision to ride out that night, take to the forest, and escape.

  In his diary entry that wa
s made apparently just before setting out on horseback, he wrote, “Something powerful is after me. I’m running away.” Then he fled into the night forest, stopping and listening every now and then to make sure Thybault and his giant horse weren’t following. There was no moon, and the sky was overcast. Toler stayed off the trails, and that made the journey slow and difficult. The temperature dropped well below freezing and before he was even an hour into his escape, it began to snow. Still, he kept moving forward, but for every few yards he’d cover the white wind pushed harder against him. By the end of another hour, he was sure he’d freeze—a statue in a saddle. An hour farther on and the snow was so blinding, he was sure they’d been traveling in circles for the last five miles. His hands were so cold, he was losing his grip on the reins; his face was all but numb. The incessant pummeling of his eyes by the small hard flakes made him ride with them closed, and what he saw behind the lids was more snow driving down within his mind. In his confusion he mistook the sound of the wind for that of a children’s choir, and it made him recall Thybault threatening, “We’ll start with the children.” The only thought that stayed fixed in his mind was that he was a coward.

  It came to him at one point in the storm that the horse was no longer moving. He looked up into the squall to see what had happened and felt a pair of hands grasp his arm. Their touch was so wonderfully warm. He squinted against the snow and saw a small form in a black cloak standing beside his horse, reaching up to him. “Come with me,” said a female voice. Ice cracked off him as he climbed down. He turned back to the animal to see if it was still alive. “Don’t worry, your mount will be fine.” Somehow he heard her voice clearly beneath the howl of the wind. She pulled him gently by the arm, and he followed.

  A few minutes later they entered a cottage built beneath giant pines whose boughs blocked some of the blizzard. He groaned slightly when he heard the door close behind him and felt the warmth of a fire. “You saved me,” he said finally, turning to his host. The young woman had already removed her cloak and was hanging it on a peg near the door. When she looked up and smiled, he knew he’d seen her before. “Where do I know you from?” he asked, his hand dropping to the coral hilt.

  “I was at the inn tonight when the red man came,” she said.

  “Ahh,” said Toler. “I saw you gather up the remains of the hunters he, what would you call it, killed?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you find me in the storm? How did you know I was out there?”

  “Do you know who I am?” she said.

  Toler began to sweat. He shook his head and gripped his sword. “Are you my mother’s servant?”

  The young woman laughed. “Perish the thought. I’m the crone of Aer.”

  “The crone of Aer?” said Toler, knowing he’d heard the title before. “Where’s Aer?”

  “At the end of the valley of the known world,” she said.

  “You don’t look like a crone,” he told her.

  “To each her crone,” she said.

  “And so I’m to assume you sent this hellish swordsman after me? Made him of coral so as to cancel the magic of my weapon?”

  “That monstrosity isn’t mine,” she said. “I want to help you defeat it.”

  “There’s not going to be a battle,” said Toler. “I’m fleeing for my life. I’m not prepared to meet such an opponent.”

  “Because he has an advantage like the one your sword, in any other duel, would give to you?”

  “Precisely,” he said.

  “You will fight him,” she said.

  “I can’t.”

  “I’ve made you something that will help.” She walked past him and the glow of the fireplace into the shadows of the cottage.

  Toler sweated profusely; the so recently welcomed warmth was now oppressive. He didn’t trust anything. A sword that turns opponents to coral, a red coral man with a crystal sword that turns opponents to salt, and a witch in a cottage in the middle of a blizzard. “Wake up,” he whispered to himself, and then the crone of Aer returned, holding a large goose egg out toward him. He took a step back from this new strangeness.

  “This egg holds your salvation in a duel with Thybault. Do you remember the salt I gathered at the inn?”

  “Yes.”

  “I mixed it with green vitriol and derived the spirits of salt. They’re here in the egg. Merely crack this in the face of Thybault and you will have gained back the advantage.”

  “What will happen?”

  “The spirits will be released.”

  “I’m going back into the storm,” he told her. “I don’t trust you. I remember the story my mother told me about you.”

  “Your mother, who was sent to assassinate me? That demon we saw at the inn tonight, that wasn’t my doing.”

  Toler moved toward the door. His hand touched the knob and he felt a sudden sting at the back of his neck. He tottered for a spell and then fell into the heat of the cottage. The crone spoke directly into his ear. “It’s your mother’s servant.” He woke in the street, the Coral Heart drawn and in his hand, a crowd surrounding him. He heard the church bells and in a second realized he was back in Thyse. He pulled himself up off the frozen mud, and the crowd retreated a few steps. Freezing to the point of shivering and totally confused, he turned to look for an escape from the people, and saw Thybault charging, the crystal blade above his head. He wore no shirt or shoes; the cold meant nothing to him.

  Toler crouched and brought his weapon up to block the downward chop of the crystal blade. The crystal clanged off the metal of his weapon, hard as blade steel. He absorbed the blow and rolled away, two somersaults backward and then into a standing position. As he lifted the Coral Heart in defense, he felt the beat of the pulse in his palm. His heart regulated it and regulated the sword. The training he’d done was paying off. Thybault came after him, swinging wildly, massively, as if to cut Toler in half. The red man’s blade caught a bystander on the earlobe and made her a cloud of salt. The sight of it distracted the Coral Heart and it was everything he could do to gather in his wonder and counter a thrust of the crystal death.

  The duel became fierce, a crazy clash of swords amid the thronging crowd. The pair moved around the street, attacking and defending. At one point, Toler could have sworn that he’d been cut by Thybault. In fact he stopped to look along his side where his shirt was ripped. “Don’t you get it,” said the red man. “You’ll know when I cut you because you’ll be a pile of salt.” With this, Toler’s opponent punched him in the mouth, those polished coral knuckles like a hammer, and sent him stumbling backward into the crowd. Afraid to be caught by an errant blade from the red man, the crowd retreated and let their defender fall on his back in the street.

  Again, Thybault advanced, this time more deliberately, as if confident he could finish the duel at will. Someone behind Toler helped him to his feet. As he regained his stance, he felt something smooth slip into his free hand. It could have been a stone by its size, but it lacked the weight. He cantered to the left and began circling Thybault. The red man swung, every time just a second behind the moving target. When Toler stopped abruptly, Thybault kept turning and swinging, and this gave the Coral Heart a chance to look down at the object he held; the crone’s goose egg.

  He got in two good slashes to the red man’s neck, but his blade had little effect upon the coral. Tiny slivers chipped away, leaving barely visible creases. One thing he was sure of was that the longer he could stay alive the better his chances were.

  The red man, carrying and swinging the crushing weight of red coral arms, was growing winded. He redoubled his efforts to finish off Toler and came with a barrage of lunges and half fades that pressed the youth back nearly to the wall of the inn. Thybault then executed an empty fade and instead of retreating lunged with his foot drawn up. He caught Toler in the chest with a kick and slammed him
against the wall, knocking the air out of him. He slid down to a sitting position. The Coral Heart had sprung free from Toler’s grasp, and the crystal sword advanced, slashing the air.

  Thybault stood now above his prey, leering down. The crowd cheered, shifting allegiance upon seeing that Toler was doomed and fearing reprisals from the apparent victor for having initially cheered against him. The red man lifted the gleaming blade into the air for the final blow, and it was here that Toler threw the egg that was still in his hand. It hit his opponent in the face and cracked. Something wet inside spilled across the coral man’s visage. He laughed at Toler’s desperate attempt at defense, and the crowd joined him.

  Then Thybault’s face began to smoke and fizz, and a chunk of his chin slid off. The coral man’s laughter turned to screams, and the crowd, not knowing how to react, screamed as well. Toler gathered his wits and rolled to where the Coral Heart lay. As he sprang up with his weapon in his grip, Thybault dropped the crystal sword and clawed at his face, more slivers and chunks bubbling pink and fizzing away, coming loose. The Coral Heart didn’t rely on the magical properties of his sword but just its strong steel blade, and with a mighty arcing swing, the air singing against the blood groove, he took off his opponents already rotted head. It fell on the ground smoking. A moment later the massive weight of the coral body tipped over and smashed to pieces in the frozen street. The crowd cheered for Toler.

  Toler stared at the smoldering face and, in awe, noticed the lips moving. He got down on his knees and put his ear to them. To his astonishment, the sound that came forth was his mother’s, -I-’s, voice. “You have now ascended to the third level,” she said. “I thought I was to renounce the sword,” whispered Toler. “Don’t be a fool,” were her last words. Then the crowd swarmed him and took him on their shoulders into the inn to celebrate his victory.