Hellbound Hearts

by Paul Kane

  The Demon’s eyelids slid back to reveal plump, white eyeballs. In each, the iris was formed from a gold coin. When he rose from the box, the elephant hide restraints around his wrists pulled tight, but they didn’t trouble him. He merely looked Emperor Manuel in the eye. “You are the ruler of this empire?”

  Unflinching, the Emperor met the Demon’s gaze. “I am. What’s more, I have no terror of you.”

  “I’m delighted to hear it.” The grotesque face tightened in a smile. “Seeing as your grunt did such a poor job of introducing me . . . I am the Lord of Quarters.” The smile became pure menace. “It is time we opened negotiations.”

  “Why should I negotiate with you? I have everything. You have nothing.”

  “You tell him!” The Clown brandished his jester’s stick. The keys jingled loudly, until their echoes in the dome above became a peal of bells. “Ha! The Lord of Quarters? He’s nothing more than a pigeon carcass. All bone and bad pennies.”

  “Shush, little fool.” The Demon bared his teeth—coins set edgewise into crimson gums. “Or I’ll tell the Emperor what secret doors those keys on your rod open.”

  This statement worried the Clown. Mouth clamped shut, he sheltered behind his master’s purple robes.

  Still mantled in quiet dignity, the Emperor spoke. “I have seen many a novelty brought to the city. A twin-headed lion, a counting ape, a Persian girl who could float in the air. Nothing interested me. So what do you bring that will?”

  “What you need, of course. What you wish for with all your heart.”

  “I am Emperor. I have everything.”

  “You preside over an empire in decay. It is a withered, little thing in comparison with the Byzantium of two centuries ago. The city is crumbling. Its palaces are propped up with timbers to stop them toppling into the gutter. Sir, this is what you need.” The Lord of Quarters ran his fingers over bright, gleaming coins that sheaved his flesh. “Money. And money is power. I speak the truth, don’t I?” He flashed the gold coins in his eyes. “The treasury is empty. Your knights ride warhorses that are so old they’re not fit to pull garbage carts. Army wages go unpaid. Meager platoons fight with broken swords. Your warriors don’t even have the thread to darn their socks. Am I not right?”

  Instead of replying, the Emperor turned his head slightly as the thud of a rock from an Ottoman catapult echoed inside the church.

  The Lord of Quarters took pleasure in that symphony of destruction. “Constantinople is under siege. Its city walls are rotten. Children could kick holes in its gates. They won’t keep out the invader for long.”

  “I am promised money.”

  “But when will it arrive? Those foreign kings, who once offered you finance, keep it locked away. Instead, they’ll make deals with the Sultan when he is ruler of this noble slum.” The Lord of Quarters’s softly spoken words painted images inside the minds of everyone present. He described the imperial treasury. That apart from dust, ankle-deep in every vault, all that it contained were empty boxes. He restated the Emperor’s poverty. That he lacked the money even to police a fish market, never mind vanquish the Sultan’s army. Or confound the enemy ships that blockaded the port. Soon Byzantium—poor, impoverished, ill-nourished Byzantium—would die. Constantinople, its capital, would be overrun. The once revered imperial dynasty would end.

  Then the Demon spoke of riches that lie in the treasure houses of neighboring realms. How vaults overflowed with coins. Foreign kings complained that the coins cluttering up their palaces were a nuisance. Accountants overseas were at their wits’ end to find storage for their mountain of cash. Blast those infernal coins! Fling them into the river. Use them to repairs holes in the roads. Coins, coins, coins! Bury them. Shovel them into wells. Anything to be rid of them. The whole world outside Constantinople was awash with money. In this city, however, it would be easier for the Emperor to pull stars out of the sky than gather even a handful of change.

  With his picture of the Emperor’s destitution so adroitly accomplished, the Lord of Quarters hissed. “Listen. I can invest in your empire. Albeit in a way that will escape your comprehension for now. However, once your borders are secure, trade will be restored, tax revenues will flow once more. That means you will have enough good, hard cash to restore this decaying city to the glorious capital it once was. You will recapture past splendor. After all, the real power in your world is not an army; it is not a crowned regal head; it is not your God—it is money. The bulging purse is the supreme ruler of all.” The crunch of another catapult missile echoed through the building.

  The Emperor’s shoulders sagged. He knew all would be lost if he didn’t act on the Demon’s offer. “If I agree, what do you require in return?”

  “I am the Lord of Quarters.” Gloating oozed through the voice. “Therefore: I want a quarter of everything.” He licked those cracked lips. “A quarter of your empire. A quarter of your people. The appetites of my Cenobite masters are insatiable.” Dreamily, he added the following, luxuriating in the reward he, himself, would earn. “The Cenobites will be grateful for these gifts I will offer them. They will elevate me to their exalted status. And I will be free to roam the centuries again.”

  “What will happen to that quarter of the population you demand?”

  “Ah, a detail that shouldn’t concern you. Your empire will be restored to the glittering jewel it once was. For you, that’s the matter of supreme importance.”

  “Will the Cenobites harm my people?”

  “You, sir, are hardly the one to be squeamish. Your life is a litany of execution; mass blinding of prisoners. You’ve even castrated your own nephew.”

  “Where is the money?”

  “Lift the lid.” The Lord of Quarters stood aside from the wooden chest as far as the leather restraints would allow. The coins in his flesh chinked as he did so. As did the bloodred chain that trickled delicate links from his heart.

  The Emperor raised the lid. Hanging on to the hem of his cloak, the Clown.

  “Old chicken carcass is tricking you,” sang the Clown. “There’s no gold, only paper to wipe your arse!”

  The Demon shot the Clown a fierce glare. “That is my contract.”

  “The print is awful small.” The Clown pantomimed reading the indenture’s rash of minuscule lettering. “Clause, subclause, penalty clause, warranties, codicils, exclusion notices, terms of payment, terms of forfeit. A contract is a riddle dressed as a puzzle . . .” Crossing his eyes, he scratched his head. “Or is it a puzzle clad as a riddle?”

  The Emperor sighed. “I need time to study it.”

  “Of course.” The Demon smiled. “Your jester speaks the truth. You must read the contract and unravel the complexity of its language. Then, when you have the document all figured out—if you have the wit to do so—sign it.”

  The Emperor frowned. “How will you deliver the money?”

  “There’s no gold involved.”

  “What?”

  “Sign. And the invaders will go.”

  “How will they be compelled?”

  “My Cenobite masters have their ways,” chuckled the Demon.

  “Read the contract, then sign! Once I have delivered the document, bearing your signature, to them they will grant me the power to help you.”

  The Clown opened his mouth to add a vulgar comment.

  “Sign in the fool’s blood.” The Demon toyed with the heartchain. “Oh . . . by the by, you will have a special coin struck to commemorate the breaking of the siege. When you do, add this chain to the coin’s alloy. Let us agree that it will symbolically seal our deal.”

  Understandably aghast at being used as an inkpot, the Clown scrambled under the Emperor’s cloak to hide. The Lord of Quarters enjoyed his fear. “Skewer the infuriating little piglet. Dip your pen in his vein. Sign the contract. Then pull the chain from my heart.”

  The Slave had been watching events closely. It had been disturbingly easy to picture the Demon becoming lord of a quarter of the Byzantine Empire. True,
the Slave knew nothing of these Cenobites, but it wasn’t difficult to imagine the Demon’s masters. Surely the Cenobites would be as malevolent as this creature with its scalelike adornment of coins. Yet they needed the Emperor’s signature on the contract before they could act. Until then, they wielded no power over him or his people. Then, in his mind’s eye, he saw the heartchain being dropped into a pot of molten bronze that would become newly minted coins. The bronze solidus would quickly be in circulation. Virtually everyone would carry such a coin. In exchange for goods and services, it would transit through bakery, tavern, brothel, church, and tax office alike. And in that coin would be a trace of the Demon’s heart-chain. It would spread through the Empire, just as plague spreads through a population. The Slave recalled the corpses filled with live rats that were catapulted into the city. Wasn’t there a similarity? The rats were tiny, yet the disease they spread wreaked huge damage. Might not the Lord of Quarters be infecting the monetary system of Christendom in much the same way as the Ottomans attempted to infect the populace?

  Guards bellowed curses as they endeavored to drag the Clown from the Emperor’s purple robes. The Clown begged his master to save him. Meanwhile, the Emperor wiped away a tear. He was sorry to do this, so very sorry, but sacrifices must be made in order to restore Constantinople to its former glory.

  When the Emperor had second thoughts regarding his beloved Clown, the Demon spoke confidentially. “You know those keys? The ones on the fool’s staff? Well, they open the doors to your concubines’ rooms. Need I say more?” The Lord of Quarters chuckled. The heart-chain quivered to the quick rhythm of his amusement.

  Clearly, it would be calamitous if the Demon’s chain came to be smelted with the alloy for the coin. Just what kind of disaster, the Slave didn’t know, but it would be grave. Instinct told him that, for sure. Just as instinct told him this procurer for the Cenobites had been waiting entombed for centuries. There he’d bided his time for such an opportunity as this. Yet what could the youth do? The Emperor wouldn’t listen to advice offered by a slave.

  The guards had the Clown by the ankles. They tugged. However, for the sheer love of life, he hung on to the imperial robe. The courtiers clamored, either overcome by the turn of events or shouting advice to the guards.

  Now!

  The Slave darted forward. He gripped the heart-chain in both hands.

  “Not you!” the Demon howled. “It’s not supposed to be you!”

  The Chamberlain shouted, “Stop him!”

  The Slave heaved at the chain. He saw the heart pulled forward through the ribs. It peaked into a cone, such as when a thorn is drawn from skin. Another heave—the heart-chain plopped out with a squirt of dark ichors.

  The guards would have easily caught the Slave. However, the Clown’s frantic struggles resulted in a maelstrom of people trying to part jester from Emperor. Men stumbled over one another; feet caught in cloaks; soldiers tripped.

  So the Slave ran free. In his hands, the heart-chain. The bodyguard pursued him. There was one, however, who moved faster. The Demon had snapped the leather restraints.

  “Give it back!” The hurricane force of his shout extinguished the oil lamps. Yet in the gloom of the church, his demonic form glowed bright as a hell-given flame.

  The Slave fled. Never before had he run so fast. His path took him across the deserted square outside St. Sophia. Above him, stars shone hard on the woes of humanity. He leapt over the headless corpse that had spawned rats. Then he ducked into an alleyway. Here, sheets billowed: death shrouds in the darkness. They were ready if once-mighty Constantinople should fall. Though who would bury its dead, let alone grieve?

  Boulders from siege engines rendered houses to dust. But worse, far worse than the thunder of rocks tumbling from the sky . . . the Demon wants me. The Devil ran through those death shrouds. One flapped around his face, white cotton pulling tight, then the Lord of Quarters’s visage burned its impression into the fabric, leaving a permanent shadow.

  The Slave raced on through the labyrinth toward the city’s fortress walls. Their alternating lines of cream and red masonry resembled layers of fat and bloody meat piled high on a butcher’s slab. Atop the wall, the city’s defenders at last deployed their creaking, worn-out, dilapidated engines of war. With a whip-crack the catapults hurled missiles at the Sultan’s warships, where they were tightly packed in the narrow straits of the Hellespont.

  “My chain! Give it back!” The Demon ran so fast he blundered against buildings. Then the coins embedded in his skin would spew torrents of sparks. At that instant, the Slave could have believed he was being pursued by a fiery comet.

  Panting, the young man scrambled up the steps to the battlements. Starlight revealed the enemy fleet; soon they’d land troops where defenses were at their weakest. The heart-chain clinked in his fingers. At times it was cold; other times it was hot as entrails plucked from a pig’s belly. Just its touch conjured images of the Lord of Quarters coercing many a king or pharaoh of a doomed realm into signing his pernicious contract. And perhaps his achievements would eventually earn him promotion to the rank of Cenobite.

  Ahead, on top of the ramparts, Byzantine soldiers loaded throwing pouches with amphorae containing volatile oils. These they ignited before launch. The Slave watched the weapon, known as Greek Fire, arc through the sky; a blazing trail that fell onto ships; inferno upon inferno blossomed; they introduced to the invaders a searing portion of Hell on Earth. Screams of agony shimmered over the face of the water.

  When the Slave reached one such catapult, ready for launch, he stopped dead. There he waited for the Lord of Quarters. The Devil roared down at him, a snarling, spitting cauldron of rage. When he clashed his jaws together, blue sparks jetted from his lips. The soldiers that manned the catapult fled in terror.

  “I’ll take back the chain. Then I will destroy you.”

  “Go on, do it!” The Slave gripped that rat’s tail of a chain. “Lord of Quarters? You won’t capture even a thousandth of my soul.”

  “Oh, a believer?” The creature grinned. “How cute. How naive.”

  “Give up, Demon. You’ve lost.”

  “Oh?”

  “See the invasion fleet? It’s burning. The Ottoman attack has failed. The Emperor won’t sign your contract.”

  “True. But will that save your bonny hide from my attentions?” The Demon advanced. “Do tell me how?”

  “It won’t. I accept this is my final hour.”

  “Good boy. Clever boy. Now give me the chain.”

  The Slave didn’t flinch. “You’ll have to take it back.”

  “Oh, you want to play, do you?” The gold coins in the monster’s eyes flashed. “Why not? You do realize, though, this empire is moribund. Its currency is worthless. Smell the decay. Even the palace timbers are rotting.”

  “Constantinople isn’t dead yet.”

  “Soon though, very soon. So why martyr yourself for a city that isn’t worth dying for?”

  “If, by thwarting you, I’ve given my family a few more decades, then I’m content. My sacrifice will have been worthwhile.”

  “Ah, noble, altruistic fool. And I thought the Clown was the one with the jingling stick. Not the man standing right—no!”

  The Slave thrust the heart-chain through his own lips into his mouth. He didn’t stop there with its metal resting on his tongue. Steeling himself, he forced the chain into his throat with his middle finger. He felt each sharp link scrape down through his gullet. Through his chest. Into his abdomen. There it glided through the snug configuration of pathways that was his gut. One second the links burned hotly, the next they were cold as a corpse inside of him.

  The Demon tut-tutted. “As if that will save you.” The creature flew at the Slave. But didn’t attack. Instead, his body became elongated—as slender as that of an eel. It dived headfirst into his mouth.

  Gagging at the force of that powerful shape driving through his gullet in pursuit of the chain, the Slave stumbled backward, a plan cry
stallizing in his mind. When his body slammed into the catapult, he clambered into the throwing pouch that would normally hurl the Greek Fire. He gasped with pain. The Demon’s body coins rasped the delicate linings of his intestines. Cries spurted from his lips as his gut distended. Inside him, a sensation of most horrendous pressure as the Lord of Quarters swam downward, as a pearl diver plunges down through the ocean in search of treasure.

  The Slave flung himself half out of the pouch so he could punch the lever of the catapult.

  A moment later, the boy was no longer of this Earth. The huge timber arm of the weapon flung him out across the Hellespont. That throw’s brutal fury snapped his spinal cord. All pain left him as the Lord of Quarters clawed and chewed and raged through his inner workings. Soon the heart-chain would be in the Devil’s hands. Not that it mattered anymore.

  The Slave realized that the Demon’s power was limited by the rules of this infernal game: rules that he and his Cenobite overlords must obey. And those rules dictated that the Demon must persuade the Emperor to sign the contract of his own free will. No doubt the monster could fly back to the church in moments; however, by then the Emperor would have gleaned that the Sultan’s battle fleet was ablaze. Consequently, nothing would persuade him to sign away a quarter of his empire in the full knowledge that Constantinople had halted the invasion. The Demon would be compelled to travel the world in search of another victim.

  Calm now. Detached from the sufferings of this world, the young man glided with dreamlike serenity through the night sky. Below him, burning ships. Above him, eternal constellations; the radiant adornment of Heaven. He knew this flight would soon end with lethal finality. And he knew the monster inside of him could not die. Moreover, Byzantium would linger for only a few more years. That didn’t trouble him. He’d given his own brothers and sisters a chance of survival. With his life, he’d bought them time. Furthermore, his sacrifice had frustrated the Demon’s plan to contaminate Byzantium’s currency with the heart-chain. That’s what mattered. Unlike his body, his contentment was indestructible; his death, merely the bridge between worlds.