Qualia

by Marie Browne

  Zephaniah took a sobbing deep breath and nodded, running a gentle finger down the new vessel. ‘Congratulations, Sarah,’ she whispered.

  Walking among the silent women, he touched each lightly on the forehead and smiled. Eventually, when standing before us, his smile dropped away as I helped Belial to his feet.

  ‘I really don’t know what to do with you two.’ The deep voice surprised me. I’d been under the impression that he couldn’t or didn’t talk.

  The dark being reached up and scratched at the base of one of his antlers. ‘You’re trouble.’ He glared at us. ‘You brought them here. You started all this.’ Rolling his shoulders he grumbled slightly. ‘You’re no better than them – you don’t think about what you do, or you don’t care.’

  He didn’t seem to move or change in any way but the room became darker, colder. Shadows chattered in the rooftree and the women gathered closer together, an air of readiness about them.

  There was nothing I wanted to do so much at that moment than run. Running seemed the best option – preferably running and screaming. There was no doubt that this being had more power than anything I’d ever encountered; it rolled off him in waves. I don’t usually offer obeisance to anything but, like Belial and Raphael before him, I bowed my head and waited.

  ‘Lord?’ Zephaniah stood beside Belial and faced the god, drawing his gaze. ‘I would like them to carry on.’ She smiled. ‘If it’s time for a change then just maybe these two can stir things up enough to start the ball rolling.’

  He reached forward with a smile and cupped her chin in his huge hand. ‘Possibly.’ He shrugged. ‘If that’s what you wish, then I’ll let them chart their own course. However, have no doubt, I’m just as happy to stop them if I have to.’ Folding his arms he stared at Belial for a long moment, his dour expression changing slowly to compassion. ‘You can’t be two things at once.’ He ducked his head to look into the fallen angel’s face. ‘This is something you have to choose to do. For far too long you’ve been pulled two ways: one side of you has dreams, the other’s in chains.’ The deity ran a heavy hand over his face. ‘You fell because Lucifer talked you into it; you took on Hell because Lucifer left you to it. You let everyone go because it stopped them being your responsibility, then you built a city and hid in it and now you’re here because, if you succeed, you can hand all this to someone else and wash your hands of everything. If you fail, nothing will matter anyway. This has to stop, Belial. Until you find something to commit to you will always be half of what you could be.’

  The odd golden eyes, with their horizontal slit pupil, regarded me next. Even though I tried very hard, I couldn’t stop myself swallowing convulsively.

  ‘You.’ The silence after that single word stretched on for what seemed like for ever. Eventually the huge being threw back his head and laughed. ‘You, we’re all watching very closely. You’re like a mad viper – no one knows which way you’ll strike.’ He clapped me on the shoulder. I felt something crack and staggered into Belial. ‘I’m glad I don’t have to kill you just yet; you’re quite entertaining for a little man.’

  He gave a huge yawn and turned toward the witch. ‘I’m tired, Zephaniah. Being here is wearing in the extreme and I have a new host to get to know.’ He glanced over at the woman-shaped urn then, with a last smile, began to shrink again. ‘Sorry about the mess but it was fun.’ Within seconds he was gone and the black statue on the altar once more became the only representation of his presence.

  Zephaniah stared at the twin statues for a moment before giving them a deep bow. Turning toward us she ran a tired hand through her hair and then looked around at the bricks, rubble and piles of shattered glass. ‘You’d better go.’ There were feathers everywhere; it looked as though a group of eight-year-olds had had an extreme pillow fight. ‘We have some clearing up to do.’

  Belial nodded then staggered with a gasp.

  ‘You’re hurt?’ Zephaniah caught his arm.

  He shrugged. Moving his hand, he looked surprised as, lacking that pressure, the wound in his leg began to bleed once again. Within seconds Belial was standing with one foot in a bright red puddle. ‘I’ll be all right,’ he said. ‘It’ll heal soon.’

  ‘No, it won’t.’ Zephaniah began undoing the tiny bone toggles at her cuff. ‘Michael’s blade can hurt you, I know that. Any of the angelic weapons can hurt you.’ She rolled her sleeves up then, closing her eyes, placed her hands on Belial’s leg and began to chant. Like my knife, her hands began to smoke and glow. I watched as the deep wound slowly knitted, becoming soft, pink skin again. Only a small white scar half hidden within his ripped trousers indicated that there had ever been any damage at all.

  ‘There.’ Zephaniah surveyed the healed wound then stood back with an air of satisfaction. ‘You’re OK now.’

  Belial looked a bit sick.

  ‘You.’ Zephaniah turned to me. ‘Have you finally chosen a side then?’

  I nodded and wished people would stop referring to me as “you”.

  ‘Good. One small and genuine step toward redemption has been achieved.’ She moved away to begin marshalling her women then stopped. Turning she looked at Belial. ‘Don’t come back unless you have good news.’ Leaning forward, she gave him a lingering kiss and then walked away.

  Belial watched her leave, his expression slightly haunted. ‘Come on.’ He headed toward the door. ‘We’d better catch up with the others. They’ll be wondering what’s happened.’

  ‘No, they won’t.’ I fell into step beside him. ‘Parity’s giving them a moment-by-moment monologue.’

  ‘Ah.’ Belial blushed. ‘Well, that’s just great.’

  For a while we walked in silence. Eventually, I couldn’t stand it any more and turned to the expressionless fallen angel. ‘What did he mean?’ I knew I was grubbing around in some very personal stuff here. ‘The Forest Lord said, “You’ll only be half of what you could be.” What does that actually mean?’

  Belial stopped walking and turned slowly to face me. ‘It means that I’m cursed.’ He spoke through gritted teeth. ‘When we were kicked out of Heaven, we had a lot of our abilities dampened when God’s grace was taken from us.’ He carried on walking. ‘We were told that as we obviously no longer wanted to be part of the Host we would always be inferior.’ He fell silent.

  I couldn’t let it go. ‘So that means that even though you were an angel, you’re not like them any more?’

  Belial nodded slowly. ‘We still have our wings, we can still travel and some other bits and pieces, but compared to them, we’re mud. We’re really only one step up from humans.’

  I ignored the insult. ‘What about Lucifer?’ I was confused; faced with something like this I would have at least been a little bitter but Belial sounded as though he was commenting on the weather.

  ‘Lucifer is all he ever was.’ Belial coughed out a short laugh. ‘Or, at least, he would be if we could get him back. No one, not even the Morning Star himself, was ever quite sure what he was or how much he could do, but he certainly didn’t lose much when he fell.’

  I nodded, still not entirely sure what was right and what was not. ‘I have one last question.’ I glanced over at Belial who was rolling his eyes.

  ‘What a surprise.’

  ‘That was a god, right?’ I asked.

  Belial nodded. ‘Yes, both of those were gods.’

  ‘How?’ I’d been turning this over in my mind and just couldn’t grasp it. ‘God is God – how can there be other gods? What are they – demigods or undergods? How does this work?’

  Belial stopped walking again and, leaning on a wall, he stared down at his boots. ‘Have you ever seen a man do something almost impossible?’ he asked.

  I thought back to some of the Iron Man television shows that I’d watched and nodded.

  ‘Did that man have supporters?’ he said.

  I nodded again.

  ‘Do you think, if he had just been standing in a field, on his own, that he would have been able to do all that
he did?’ Belial looked up from the floor and stared at me.

  ‘No, probably not.’

  ‘Well, that’s how it works.’ Belial turned and began walking again. ‘The god and his goddess have risen here because a whole population believe in them. They believe in them because they can see them and see what they do; because they can deal with them directly, the belief becomes absolute. That god and goddess hold all the power here. Even Lucifer himself might have a problem if he pitted himself against the Horned Lord. It’s possible that only God himself has that power.’ He paused for breath. As he moved away from me he spoke quietly. ‘Then again, it’s quite possible that he doesn’t.’

  We walked in silence through the passages until we came to where I’d left the party behind. Opening a door he ushered me down some stone steps into what appeared to be a cellar. It was clean, dry and empty except for some large stone blocks that seemed to have been dropped haphazardly around the room.

  ‘Where are we?’ I stared around the huge basement.

  ‘The room of sleeping angels.’ Belial kept walking. ‘We’ll come out farther down the hill away from the orphanage. I’m not welcome there so it’s better if we just move along a bit.’

  Sleeping angels? I looked around. I couldn’t see anyone sleeping anywhere. There were a couple of words in that sentence that didn’t make sense. ‘Orphanage?’

  Belial stopped walking with a frown and stared around the huge room. ‘That’s what Zephaniah does.’ Belial ran a finger along one of the huge stone blocks. The heavy lid had broken and the stone box was empty; it looked as though the lid had been exploded outward. He sighed. ‘She looks after children.’ Taking hold of the stone with both hands he pulled himself up onto the side then peered into the darkness of the dusty box.

  ‘Well, I haven’t seen many of them around.’

  Belial frowned ‘Would you consider it normal then to keep kids in a church?’

  I shook my head. ‘Well, no, but …’

  ‘There are hundreds of them.’ Belial navigated his way around two blocks that were leaning together; he seemed distracted. ‘There’s a school, a working farm and housing just on the top of the hill.’ He shrugged. ‘Only those that have the ability to become acolytes come here – most of them are looked after at the orphanage.’

  ‘Why?’ I hurried to catch up with him.

  Belial sighed. ‘Zephaniah had two children – both were killed. Since then, she looks after any child who turns up at her door and she guards the boundaries of Limbo.’ He stared unseeing at the walls. ‘I can’t imagine how many children have come and gone through those halls.’

  ‘How did her kids die?’

  Belial stopped so suddenly that I almost ran into his back. ‘I killed them.’ He walked away from me, without looking back.

  I was full of questions but, staring at his bowed back, uncharacteristically I swallowed them all and changed the subject. ‘So are these what I think they are?’ I tapped one of the stone coffins.

  ‘If you think they’re tombs, then yes.’ Belial answered shortly. He was concentrating on forging a path between them; I noticed that he seemed reluctant to touch any that were still whole.

  There were no carvings, no names and no thoughtful little messages.

  ‘These are the tombs of some of the other angels that fell with Lucifer. They couldn’t stand the thought of being separated from God. They couldn’t go back to Heaven and all other options just didn’t seem right to them. They willed themselves still and there they’ve stayed.’ Belial stopped for a moment and looked around at the hundreds, possibly thousands, of blocks that littered the great cavernous cellars. ‘They’re not really dead, but it seemed better than just having piles of bodies all over the place.’ He looked around the room. ‘Some of these are now empty …’ He shrugged and carried on walking again. ‘I wonder where they went?’

  Up another flight of steps and we emerged blinking into the daylight. Carly and Melusine were there to greet us. Both looked hurt and confused when Belial ignored them and stalked off down the hill.

  CHAPTER 9

  AS WE WALKED, I tried desperately to work out why this place seemed so familiar. The hills were toothed with sharp rocks that pierced the short, yellow-green grass. Una seemed happy trotting along in the herb-scented sunlight and, apart from the pall of dust that hung above the stricken cathedral, it was difficult to believe that we were somewhere else. If the hills had been supporting stunted olive trees we could easily have been on a Greek island. Scrubby, potbellied, goat-like creatures grazed on the tough grass. With floppy ears, tinkling bells, scruffy brown and white coats and little tails they looked exactly like the goats that had eaten my packed lunch on a holiday I’d once taken in Kos. If it hadn’t been for the blue human eyes that crinkled when they smiled, I would have had trouble believing they weren’t entirely natural. One trotted past and grinned at me. I shuddered. Carly, having finished an obviously unsatisfactory conversation with her father, dropped back toward me and linked her arm in mine. It seemed as though we were just a simple couple enjoying a walk in the sunshine – idyllic.

  Melusine seemed to be looking for something. She had positioned herself on a rock and was squatting down with a piece of meat in her hand.

  I looked askance at Carly who shrugged.

  A tall cream and brown spotted goat sidled up the track and stood in front of the motionless dragon. She stared unblinking into its eyes. The two of them stayed like that for a moment. Eventually, the goat stepped delicately forward and gently took the meat from her hand.

  As it trotted off into the trees Melusine sauntered over to walk beside us.

  ‘What was all that about?’ Carly asked.

  ‘The goats are omnivores.’ Melusine shuddered. ‘Zephaniah uses them as dogs. They attack anything that doesn’t belong here – it’s a form of protection.’

  I glanced nervously around. There seemed to be suddenly hundreds of the scruffy little things browsing among the bushes.

  She noticed my worried looks. ‘I think we’ll be all right. They have a sort of rudimentary telepathy system and I think I’ve managed to explain to them what we’re doing here.’ She looked over my head and winked at Carly who laughed. ‘It helped that Zephaniah has a word that she uses so they leave travellers alone.’

  ‘Carnivorous, telepathic goats.’ Now I didn’t have any trouble believing them supernatural. I stepped away from one that was standing in the shade of a short tree. It sniggered.

  ‘Carnivorous, telepathic attack goats.’ Melusine corrected me with a certain amount of glee. ‘Zephaniah had the Forest Lord “change” them slightly. So they really are quite an abomination now.’

  ‘Great,’ I called after her as she wandered down the track. ‘What would have happened if you hadn’t explained to them what we’re doing here?’

  ‘They’d have eaten you.’ Melusine laughed. ‘Oh, and don’t bleed.’ Her voice echoed up the hill. ‘Blood sends them into a feeding frenzy and no amount of safe words or explanations will stop them. They’ll keep attacking until there’s nothing left – they’re really fuzzy little piranhas.’

  ‘What’s the word?’ I shouted after her.

  ‘It’s a secret.’

  I could hear her laughing all the way down the track.

  ‘Don’t worry.’ Carly sniggered at my horror. ‘I think we’ll be safe. Father was telling me that it takes quite a lot of blood to set them off.’ She waved at a goat that fluttered its eyelashes at her then smiled happily as it minced down for a scratch behind the ears. She happily complied. ‘They smell a bit but I think they’re quite gorgeous. If we ever get home I might take one with me as a pet.’ She paused for a moment. ‘It might just convince that bloody postman to stop opening my letters.’

  ‘Hmm, well, I’m happier knowing that I’m not going to get swarmed if I cut my finger.’ I dragged my arm across my forehead; the day seemed to be heating up.

  ‘Why is there a sun?’ I stared up into the blue-grey
sky. The sun wasn’t quite the right colour and looked as though it was sporting a sort of haze but it was close enough.

  ‘Is this some sort of existential question?’ Carly frowned and squinted up into the sky.

  I shook my head. ‘No.’ I tried to put my thoughts into words as I navigated the rough stone track. ‘People always say, “down into Hell” – surely we should be somewhere in the bowels of the Earth by now. Isn’t that where Hell is?’

  Carly looked at me as though I were some sort of child. ‘You still don’t get it, do you?’ She paused and tried to think of a way to explain the obviously unexplainable. ‘Think of a bubble.’

  I nodded.

  ‘Now attach another bubble to it.’ She looked up at me to make sure I was still following her.

  ‘Right, two bubbles.’ I could see them shining pink and blue like clear glass in my mind.

  ‘Now attach another, and another and another all over the first bubble until the first bubble can no longer be seen.’

  I nodded.

  ‘That’s how these planes, or dimensions – or whatever you want to call them – work.’ She stared up into the sky. There were no birds, no clouds and the sun seemed to be slightly redder than I was entirely happy with. ‘At each point the bubbles touch, there is a flat spot and that’s where we can cross – that’s where the gates are.’ She looked around at the goats and grinned; a couple of them grinned back at her. ‘This is a very tiny bubble – one of a group of seven that didn’t so much join up as cluster, like Russian nesting dolls. So each one is a world in its own right but getting smaller and smaller and we’re heading for the very centre – the tiniest of all. God gave Lucifer exactly what he wanted: an entire world to himself.

  ‘That’s why you can only get in and out of Hell through Limbo – the first bubble – because that’s the one that contains all the others. It’s an odd place really.’ Carly looked around. ‘Earth is similar. It’s a bubble on the very outside of the cluster, so it only touches three places: Limbo, Heaven and one other.’