The door cracks explosively and splinters strike us both. Dust fills the room-serious dust, the dust of the dead, and it's heady stuff.
Mr. D's grinning and then he coughs. "Take a deep breath, Steven. I'm sending you to the place beneath the Underworld, the Deepest Dark. It's a short cut to the One Tree. You'll feel it drawing you. There will be a bicycle there. I like bicycles. Just keep riding until that breath gives out."
The mention of the bike startles me. I hope this one isn't going to fall on me. Mr. D sighs. "There's much about the nature of a Schism that Morrigan doesn't understand. That's about the only advantage you have. Once you find Lissa, you're not going to be able to run anymore." His shifting gaze settles on me, his face swims in the dust. "Things are going to get very nasty before the end, de Selby. And you're going to have to approach them head on. I'm sorry, but you've not seen anything yet."
I don't know what to say to that. I try to say something, but my lungs fill with dust, and all I manage to do is cough.
Mr. D pats my hand, and smiles. "Finally, lad, for what's ahead it's best not to think about it too much. We all die in the end."
And then I'm gone again.
29
The Deepest Dark is loud with the creaking of the limbs of the One Tree, but the sounds are carried to me through an air more viscous than air has any right to be. The vibrations of the One Tree judder through me. I am in the underbelly of the Underworld.
I'm crouching on ground knotted and ridged with questing root tips. Dripping from them like a luminous fluid are the souls of the dead, their time in Hell done. They slide into the air, first just as balls of light, but soon they take a roughly human shape-a life's habit, a life's form, is hard to undo.
Here, down is up and up is down. Above my head is the great abyss that all souls rise/fall into. What happens after, I'm not sure. Souls coruscate across the dark like stars, heading to places our words cannot encompass, because no stories come back from there. Nothing comes back from there.
For a while, despite my urgency, I am held by that sight. Captivated. The time will come when I'll know it intimately-maybe soon-but not now.
The air crackles with the whispers of those long dead, coming down through the roots of the tree.
"It was only a cold. A passing that became passing."
"Miss her."
"Miss her."
"Sorry, never finished before I finished."
"And… And… And…"
"Sometimes it rains, and all I am is the rain. Can you feel me?"
"Here… Here…"
It is a tumbling cacophony of bad poetry. Maybe that's what people are, ultimately. These chattering final thoughts, crowded and messy.
I lower my gaze and try and shut out the sound.
Here in the dark, I reach out, and my questing fingers find the bicycle that Death has somehow left me. "Yes."
Yes, yes, the bicycle echoes. Ride. Ride.
I clamber onto the seat. I haven't ridden a bike since I was twelve, but you never forget. OK, maybe you do. The bike shakes beneath me and I wrestle with the handlebars.
Care. Care, it whispers.
Once I start pedaling, I'm in the groove. Easy. Sort of.
I ride in the darkness, the bicycle wobbling between my legs. The dark is a deep cold liquid pressure around me. My ribs complain, everything feels like it's going to implode. My breath grows stale in my lungs. Suffocation looms.
I make the mistake of looking up into the dark again and see the souls there, drifting slowly, spinning and orbiting one another. Some are twitching but most are still, and they extend into the weightless abyss above.
I get the sense that, if I look too long, my flesh, or whatever this is that inhabits this space, will hollow and lighten, and I will lift and rise into that dark. It's already starting to happen, and it's not altogether unpleasant. I've stopped riding. The bike tips, and I fall on my side. It doesn't hurt. I get to my feet, and I realize that my grip is tenuous. I've also noticed that the urge to breathe has disappeared. I'm starting to get awfully casual about the whole thing.
A crack has opened up before me, and I peer down. Light spills from it and I'm gazing into my own stupid mug. It's a bemused face, a little sleepy, an I-just-had-sex face. Then I remember why I'm doing this: Lissa. I don't know what future we have together, but I want to create the possibility of one.
I wink at myself, clamber back on my bike and keep riding. There's a long way to go.
I follow my instincts, taking one narrow road, then another, rising up one hillock then down the next. I pick up speed as my confidence returns, and I start to accept my surroundings rather than gawking at them. This isn't so hard.
Slowly the darkness becomes something else. A green glow reveals the streets of some under-under city. And it's the first time I start to have any serious doubts. There's a familiar wrongness about the place. It shouldn't be here. The root tips that extend over this part of the Deepest Dark are dying-curling up and blackening. The air is foul and choking. But it's where I need to ride.
There's a hall in the middle of the city and a door is open. Something vaguely humanoid slips through it. Its eyes are huge, its face narrow, and its long mouth opens to reveal teeth. There are rather a lot of them, and they look sharp.
Then I realize where I am.
I've never seen one in its natural form, but I know what it is immediately. The hate-filled eyes glare at me. If looks could kill… I'm staring at a Stirrer. And this is the city Devour. I'm in the heartland of Stirrers. I'm a dead man.
The Stirrer sniffs at the air, and takes a step toward me. How the hell do you stall a Stirrer in the Deepest Dark?
It takes another step toward me.
The bicycle shudders between my legs. Flight, it whispers. Haste.
Good idea.
The Stirrer howls. It's a shrill and horrible sound that tightens my skin, and I pedal faster.
Not much time, the bicycle says.
I know what it means. The world closes in as I pedal through the streets, clumsily jumping gutters when I need to. The whole place is lit like the radium dial on an old watch. The sky above here is absent of souls, it's a patch of utter darkness. A wind crashes down from the dark, and it's frigid. I'm really not meant to be here. This place is telling me that in no uncertain terms.
A quick glance over my shoulder reveals a dozen Stirrers loping after me. They're making ground. The under-under world increases its pressure against my flesh. I start pedaling as hard as I can. And then the bike stops, just jolts to a halt. Unfortunately I don't, and I'm flying over the handlebars. I flip in the air, then land on my back. I open my eyes, all my breath gone now.
The Stirrers race toward me, their great mouths widening. I look at all those teeth. They grab my bike first. It lets out a shrill scream. The air closes about me like a vice. The fastest Stirrer grabs my leg and I–I can breathe again.
The Deepest Dark is gone, and I'm… well… I'm in the Underworld again. The familiar smells of rosewater, rot and doughnuts fill my nostrils, the odor overpowering everything else, but for the dim hint of Stirrers. Here I am as deep in the Underworld as I have ever been and it is shockingly familiar.
I'm standing and shivering at the top of Mount Coot-tha-well, the Underworld equivalent. It's actually quite crowded here. But whether these people are dead or, like me, just visiting, I'm not sure. I think about what it takes to reach this place if you're not dead, and I doubt they're like me. But then there are tourists to every realm. Even Everest can be crowded at this time of year. People are gathered at Mount Coot-tha's lookout, built in the gap between two mighty root buttresses, gazing idly down on the city.
A baroque, brass curlicue-covered CityCat-looking like something a cartoonist might draw after a couple of tabs of acid, all flourishes and shadows, everything either sharp-edged or ridged with flowers-piloted no doubt by one of Charon's many employees, is cruising the black coils of the river below. Shadows clamber over it. The Brisbane Riv
er is one of the many tributaries of the Styx, and if you blink you can see, momentarily, the multitude of other rivers intersecting it so that the river below looks less like a cogent single stream and more like the vascular and shifting fingers of a delta or the veins of a lung.
The suburbs below, stretching out to the city and south to the Gold Coast (well, their Underworld equivalents) are, for the same reason as the river, a difficult thing to look upon. Buildings are fused together, different histories fold over each other. If you blink, sometimes the city isn't there at all, just a great forest. Only the sky is a relative constant, and the constellations that mark it are those that I know, though the dark is a little more crowded. Shapes stream through the spaces between the stars-spiraling ropes of birds and bats, or things that look like birds and bats, their cries distant and shrill, and meaningless.
The land of the dead is actually a little more happening than I guessed. We don't see this side of the world from our offices. Absurdly, I wonder, can people have mortgages here? What are the interest rates like? Have those fragments of the living clung onto that much?
But then I stop thinking about that because my left biceps starts to burn with a horrible liquid fire, more than the stinging ache that had bothered me by the tower. I grab it, and the flesh twists beneath my fingers. My tatt is taking a three-dimensional form: a nose and face pushes out from my skin. I try to push it back, and tiny teeth nip my palm. I snatch my hand away with a yelp. The tattoo draws a deep breath. The sensation of air entering my arm isn't pleasant.
Tiny eyes roll up in its cherubic head to meet my gaze.
"Shit." My voice is a whisper.
"You're telling me," the cherub says. It stretches its wings, which is a truly disconcerting feeling, as though someone is moving rods beneath my flesh. "What the-? I'm stuck on your arm. Oh, and where's my body?"
"You're just a symbol," I say, thinking, I've grown a bloody inkling.
The cherub squints at me. "One pissed off symbol. This is Hell."
"I'm sorry, I never thought about giving you a body."
"No, I mean, what are we doing in Hell? You're not dead, yes?"
I shrug. "I guess. It's complicated."
"No, it's not. Don't you sound so damn uncertain. That sort of uncertainty is going to keep you here."
"But here's the thing. I am uncertain. I've got no bloody idea what the fuck it is I'm doing here. Or even how to start getting Lissa back."
"You need a guide. Call me Virgil."
"You worked for Dante, I suppose."
"Ha. Maybe we should get a coffee first." The cherub says, and I don't argue. "The name's Wal."
"I thought your name was Virgil," I say.
"Don't get cute on me, buddy."
"What kind of name is Wal?"
"Better than Stevie wouldn't you say?"
We reach the cafe and I sit in pretty much the same seat that I sat in not so long ago when I was rendezvousing with Morrigan in the living version of this place. A lot's happened since then. The creaking of the tree dominates, louder than I have ever heard it. It's calling me, I realize. This is truly what it must feel like to be dead. There's a mesmeric quality to the sound and it generates a hunger in my chest.
I've pomped all my adult life, but I've never felt this before. This is what I'm going to have to fight against, if I ever want Lissa back.
I run through the coffee choices.
"Sweet Jesus. All I want is coffee. What the hell is a flat white?" Wal peers at the crow growing out of the barista's neck. "What do you recommend?"
The crow cocks its head.
"Just get him something easy," I say.
The barista sniffs. "You saying we're not up to the task? Saying we can't make good coffee?"
"No, I-"
"We'll make you good coffee," the crow says. "You'll like it. Now what do you want?"
"Long black, no milk."
"Ah, typical," the barista sneers. "Fucking tourist."
The tree creaks like it's ready to tumble. Should it fall, the whole weight of it would surely break the thin shell of the earth and drive the city into that chill abyss beneath. I realize I've heard that creaking ever since I sliced open my arteries with the craft knife. It's a background noise that has lifted startlingly in volume, shocking me when I least expect it.
I sip my coffee out of a paper cup. It's cold and tastes burnt and a little ashy, but no matter, I'm still getting over the fact that my money is good here.
I look at my change. The money is subtly, slyly different. The plastic of the notes is a bleached white. The faces printed on it are the same, but the flesh hangs loose, the eye sockets are empty, and the expressions contained within change every time I glance at them. They shift from mute terror to mad laughter in an eye blink. Except for the coins and the five-dollar note-there the Queen's face is serene and motionless. She's still alive, I guess.
The cherub grins at that. "I can't believe that after a century of federation, you're not a bloody republic yet."
Wal grips a chai latte in its wings, taking loud sips every few minutes that disquietingly warms my left biceps. I don't understand why my coffee is so cold.
I'm not terribly comfortable with the whole thing, but he seems to be enjoying his latte. "Haven't had a cup like that since, well, I can't remember. I do remember old Vic was still queen, and it wasn't as milky."
"Nor was it chai, I'd wager. Which hardly makes it coffee."
Wal grunts. "Maybe we need to keep going."
"How familiar are you with the Underworld?"
"I've been here a few times, day trips mostly. Been a long time between visits. So you're a Pomp. It explains a lot. The Underworld's different for you guys. It doesn't like you lot messing around. It gets you out of the way as quickly as possible. You can't change the order of things around here, mate. Your girlfriend will be up in the tree, and if she's been fighting her death like you say, then it may be faster for her."
"What'll be faster?"
"Assimilation. The tree's going to want to absorb her."
I'm looking at him, not comprehending at all.
"By your blank look, it seems to me that you are a pretty typical Pomp." I'm immediately defensive. But Wal doesn't allow me time to respond. "I don't know how you've lasted so long. What do you think a tree does?"
I shrug. "Grow."
"Nah. Well, yes, but how does it grow? It absorbs stuff, and it leaches stuff, too. This tree's just a wooden sieve. It separates the soul, and puts it where it belongs.
"It's the memory of the world, and a reflection, distorted of course, by the memory of it, because memory distorts everything. And it's the resorption of all that psychic energy, all those souls. The tree does that. Without this place, you'd have souls running amok everywhere, and Stirrers. Shit, there'd be so much confusion they could just walk in and take everything. Which is, from what I've heard, exactly what's been going on."
"So Lissa's being absorbed?"
Wal grimaces, his eyes lifting toward me. "Slow on the bloody uptake, aren't you? Yes and, like I said, it's going to be quick. As far as the tree is concerned, Lissa's been dead too long already."
And then I notice the armed Stirrers walking through the crowd in the lower section of the lookout. Stirrers here? How brazen.
I have to get going before they spot me. I know they can't sense me because I'm holding Mr. D's key, but they'll find me soon enough if I stick around here. They approach the barista. Great. He points vaguely in my direction, with an arm and a wing, and the Stirrers head my way.
I move as quickly as I can, hopefully without drawing attention to myself, to the base of the tree trunk. Once there, I can see stairs carved into the wood. The stairs stop at each branch after winding a lazy, but steep, circle around the tree. I start taking the stairs three at a time. It's a long way to the first branch, and even longer to the top.
"Slow and steady, eh," Wal says. "You'll wear yourself out at this rate."
"I don't hav
e time," I gasp at him.
By the third circuit I'm hunched over, my hands gripping the rough bark of the One Tree, and I'm throwing up my coffee.
"You right?" Wal peers up at me.
"Fine, just some bad coffee."
"Just try not to get any of it on me."
Several times I pass dead folk heading where I'm heading, though none of them seem in any hurry. They look at me disinterestedly. There are a few I recognize, like John from the Wesley morgue, who nods at me. The sight of him disturbs me. But we don't talk, there's no time for that. All of us are too focused on our respective destinations. And I'm too out of breath.
There is only one person who passes me.
Mr. D comes silently from behind. He doesn't look at me as he goes, his shoulders hunched, his face set. The RM just walks higher and higher into the tree, and though he hardly seems to be walking at all, he's soon out of sight.
So he's finally gone. I'm seriously without allies.
"There's a place for all the Deaths-for the whole Orcus-high, right at the top of the tree. It's called the Negotiation," Wal says.
"What's up there?"
"Something you don't need to consider right now. One thing at a time."
And that one thing for me is these steps, one after another, over and over. It could be worse. I could be carrying a rock above my head.
As I climb, Hell unfolds beneath me, attended all the while by the creaking branches of the tree and the cold fingers of wind blown in from the sea. It's a beautiful sight, awe-inspiring in its vastness, the colors muted but varied. It's city, forest and sea. It's a sky streaked with blood-orange clouds. It's every sunset I've ever seen, every first glimmering star. I'm determined not to get used to it.
This place is death to me. Beautiful or not, that's all this kingdom is about.
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