Lawyers in Hell

by Morris, Janet

  Now Kur understands what Eshi wants to know: the plight of this single soul, Lysicles, the first whom Eshi had seen judged, has touched his black Kigali boy. Eshi had watched the second of the Seven cut out the soldier’s eyes and tongue and heart.

  “We will see him, Eshi, if Erra allows. And we will see that he has new eyes, a new tongue, a new heart. When a red-tail molts and loses its old tail, a new tail grows to take its place. Erra, will it be so?” Kur asks. “Will Eshi see the Athenian soldier, Lysicles, in Erebos – and see how your judgment plays out?”

  “If it pleases you, Almighty Kur, we will try to arrange it. For your boy’s sake. But these souls in Erebos have free will. It may not be easy to find one damned soldier among so many. His sentence stands. What he does now is up to him. We will see if he can be found. You have asked for nothing else, in all this time.”

  “We thank you, godly Erra,” Kur replies, wishing that he did not need this favor, but knowing that he does. Erra was right: for the boy’s sake; to quiet the uneasy heart that Kur can feel thumping against Eshi’s ribs.

  Now the second of the Seven breaks formation and strides up beside Kur. “Great Kur, if there’s something I can do, just ask me. A weapon is only useful when it is wielded,” and falls back to his place again.

  The second of the Sibitti knows exactly who he is, and what his role is, and what his limits are: he is a weapon in a war he understands. Kur wishes that the second of the Seven understood less well: there was another war here, for Eshi’s heart and Eshi’s soul, that might go on for years.

  Eshi has witnessed things that no child of Ki-gal could understand, and some things that Kur barely understands: the hatred of these gods and men for one another – and themselves; the battles in their hearts and in their souls over who and what they are, and where their trust belongs. Reckless, wild and dangerous, consumed only with destroying one another, they trust no one: they expect the worst and the worst comes unto them, every time.

  Kigali have more faith. When Nature speaks, the children of Ki-gal listen, and learn. It must be that Nature does not speak to gods and men, or that they have grown deaf to Nature’s voice.

  Full of questions, full of doubts, Eshi hadn’t slept all night. Consequently, Kur had not slept. And now they trek into the realm of Hades, gods and weapons and Kigali altogether, to render yet another day of judgment on this ancient road to Erebos.

  Eshi leans his head against Kur’s chest as they walk along and says, “Almighty Kur, the second of the Sibitti will help us. He has never lied to me. Together, we can find the Athenian. It will be as you said: we will see how Erra’s judgment plays out. And then will you tell me, after we see?”

  Kur brought the boy closer, and bent his head close: “Tell you what, Eshi?”

  “If this Erra and his Sibitti are good. Or not. If the second of the Seven is good, or not. If they belong in Ki-gal. If we should be helping them. Or not.”

  Kur shouldn’t have been surprised, but he was: it had been so long since he was young. Eshi’s blood was talking, hot whispers in his young head that were the whispers of a leader, coming to himself. Kur had never been so relieved: Eshi’s sharp, clear mind had seen through all, to the truth. And to the hard questions whose answers no one knew.

  So he said very quietly, bending even lower so his lips were close to Eshi’s ear, “Eshi, we have given our word. How gods and men treat one another is not ours to judge. Nor should it be. You see the ugliness of vengeance. You smell the stench of it when they punish one another. When trust is gone. When hatred reigns. This is not our way. This is their way. And they are welcome to it. They do not ask us to change. We do not ask them to change. We will do as we have promised, and help those sent here from Above to fulfill their mandate. Kigali always keep their word. Always.”

  On the road to the realm of Hades, with Eshi safe under his wing, Kur felt proud. This boy, this precious youth who would steer Ki-gal’s course someday, was learning more than words could say. Eshi was learning how to be a true Kigali: how to hold firm; how to find the proper path and keep to it. As for the questions no one could answer, those would remain unanswered until the great mountain that succored their tribe was no more.

  *

  “Laelaps? Can it be you, hound of Zeus?” Lysicles looked at the brown dog in the woods of Erebos and the hound looked at him, and bayed. “Here, boy.” The soldier squatted down. The dog trotted over to Lysicles and sniffed his extended palm. “So, Zeus didn’t turn you to stone after all.” This could be no other hound: there were no unmagical dogs in Hell. Zeus had given Laelaps, a dog who always caught his quarry, to a woman whose husband used the hound to hunt the Teumessian fox, who could never be caught. Their fates fought, and neither hound nor fox returned from that hunt. “Better here than nowhere, pup. Will you help me? Track my enemies? Find my loved ones?” The lop-eared hound dog reached out and pawed Lysicles’ chest.

  After so much ill fortune, perhaps the Fates were being kind. Lysicles thought he spied a woman’s shape between the light-dappled trees; then it was gone. He rubbed his tender eyes and looked again: no woman, just ash trees and the wine-dark sea and, in the distance, Elysion. His love was there. His life was there. Eternity was there.

  And he was here, on the far shore at Erebos, where the Styx and Oceanus met, hoping for strength to swim across. At the water’s edge, a boatman waited. Lysicles couldn’t chance it: that ferry took too many to dooms he knew too well. He had a second chance now, at everything he’d thought he’d lost: he wouldn’t trust his future to any hands but his own. Win or lose, the result would be of his own making.

  Carefully, slowly, Lysicles rubbed Laelaps behind his ears, and scratched those ears until the hound’s tongue lolled. If it wasn’t Zeus’s Laelaps, it was certainly a dog who hadn’t bitten out his throat yet (though it could) or torn at his hamstrings (though it could) or run off into the woods or the brackish water (though it could). And he was lonely.

  Then he heard wailing, behind him and not so far off, and buried his face in the dog’s loose-skinned neck. Not again. Not here, in Erebos. But his blood chilled and his gut twisted and he knew what lay behind those cries: the terrible auditor and his weapons of destruction. Nothing less could raise such lamentation from the throats of the forgetful dead and the wistful dead of Erebos.

  Laelaps bayed and bayed and bayed again, singing in chorus with the keening souls.

  Then Erra and the Seven came for him. Lysicles stood up straight, and Laelaps was so tall he could put his hand on the hound’s big head as he faced his tormentors.

  Monsters walked with Erra and his Seven: a great red monster, with its bloody wings high and its quills raised all along its tail; a smaller, black-winged monster with eyes aglow and sharp white teeth. Lysicles could feel his heart race, frightened of being ripped from his chest again. But he stood his ground. He was still that much of a soldier.

  On they came, mighty and fearsome, straight for him. The seven sons of heaven and earth were masterfully deployed around the pitiless Erra; the two monsters strode behind Erra, among his terrifying Seven. Any general who’d ever seen heroes fight would have killed to command such as these. The big red monster’s eyes glowed like the moon; the smaller monster lashed its spiky tail and pointed at him, then screeched.

  Lysicles recalled the glowing eyes that had watched him from the shadowed gallery in the Hall of Injustice where he’d stood trial.

  He was naked and suddenly that mattered. He was cold and he was weak. He leaned against Laelaps and the hound bayed as if the world would end. Or as if the hound knew what happened the last time Lysicles faced this god of pestilence and mayhem and his bloodthirsty Sibitti.

  Then a woman emerged from the shadowy grove of ash trees, calling, “Laelaps, good hound. Laelaps, here.” She was as strong and tall as an oak, and mystic-eyed. He remembered her at once. She had brought him the water of Memory to drink. She was Hecate, goddess of the crossroads; today she wore her rayed crown.

 
She stepped between Lysicles and Erra’s party and the hound ran to her, tail wagging, and sat, whimpering softly, brown eyes fixed on Lysicles. “Erra,” she said. “My hound has found your quarry. Be swift, now, with this soul of mine who suffers here. He could have sought my comfort, but he didn’t. He broods here. He recollects all – who you are and what you did and what he did. I will not hold him, or hold you from him. Or hold him for you.” At that, the goddess and the whimpering hound were gone in a clap of thunder.

  Please, O Blessed Hecate, don’t let them take me. But the prayer in his heart came too late: a memory stirred, of lithe Hecate in a fragrant bed of myrtle, of her magic spells in the dark of night and the smell of a goddess. But he had been too consumed with rage to accept her offered comfort…. Absurdly, he mourned the loss of the hound, the company of the dog, the soft tongue upon his palm: Hecate’s hound had tracked him down for these avengers, nothing more. Were they here to take yet another pound of his flesh?

  Terror overwhelmed Lysicles, worse than in any battle gone awry he’d ever fought. Had Erra and his Seven and his two monsters come to eat his eyes again, his tongue again, his heart again? To take away his sweet hope of Elysion? The terrible Erra and his monsters and his seven personified weapons stared at him bleak-eyed, like men choosing a bull for slaughter.

  He couldn’t let that happen. His pride fell from him, and his anger dropped away, leaving only his loneliness and his hope of redemption.

  Lysicles turned on his heel and ran. With strength he didn’t know he had, with a determination he had always had, he sprinted: away from Erra and his Seven, away from the red monster and the black. Toward the shore and into the briny water.

  His lungs burned. His eyes stung as he splashed into the tide where the river met the sea. He no longer cared if he ever found Chares, foul betrayer; he no longer cared to tear Alexander the Macedonian limb from limb; he no longer cared about his bumbling counsels, who had led him to this fate.

  He didn’t even care that he fled, as he had never fled in life, desperately, in cowardly rout, as no general ever should flee. Up to his waist, he plunged deeper into the water and stroked for Elysion with every bit of strength he possessed.

  He swam. And swam on, deeper and deeper, leaving the shore of Erebos behind. He swam toward the gleaming light in the wine-dark sea, making for Elysion. He swam for salvation. He swam with his ravaged heart pounding and his blurry eyes stinging and with brackish water burning his tongue. It was a long swim. And if he could not make it, then at least his wife and his sons and his eromenoi would know that when he died again, he died trying to get to them.

  *

  “So, young Kigali, what do you think of your brave Athenian general now?” Erra asked as they watched the horizon until the soul of Lysicles disappeared from view.

  “He is brave, godly Erra,” the son of Ki-gal said. “He is full of love for his family. He wants to go home. Will he make it to the farther shore – see his wife again, his children, his friends?”

  Erra saw the second of the Seven smile as all the Sibitti sheathed their swords. “What do you think, son of Ki-gal? Has he overcome his fury, his lust for vengeance, his rashness? He goes to his fate. As do we all.”

  The Kigali boy did not reply, only looked away toward far Elysion.

  Making good on his word, Erra and his retinue traveled the length and breadth of Erebos all that day with the witch Hecate by his side and her hound beside her, spreading fear and misery among the innocent and guilty alike. But seldom in Erebos did they find injustice meted out unfairly; for Erebos does not lie in the depths of Hades’ realm where venal souls abide, but only at the crossroads on its outskirts.

  When the day was done, Hecate offered them a night in Erebos, a feast by the pool of Memory, and all pleasures from the realm of Hades. Erra declined: “We shall come back another time to visit Asphodel and its blood-drinking heroes, but not tomorrow. Now Duty calls my name.”

  So they took their leave under a roiling sky, but not to return to Ki-gal. Erra’s heart was restless. Satan’s threat still rankled: We shall see whose word reigns supreme.

  “We will fly now, Sibitti, over Gehenna and to Lost Angeles.” Erra would show Satan whose word reigned in the latter-day hells. “You, Kigali, take hold of the ropes that the second of my Seven will give you. Once we are in the air, fold your wings, for we’ll spread out a hundred leagues and fly faster than Kigali can.”

  “If you do not hold fast to my ropes, you will be left behind,” warned the second of Erra’s Seven, pulling loops of bright blue lightning from the palms of his hands. “So take care, sons of Ki-gal, how you go. I will be with thee, watching over thee.”

  Almighty Kur and young Eshi grasped the glowing ropes and held on tight, their wings high and beating, and took flight with Erra and his Seven.

  They all rose high, in concert, aloft on Erra’s wind of retribution, and spread out through the air. Wherever their shadows fell, across a hundred leagues of Gehenna’s putrid ground, blight bloomed before them and behind and on either side, striking crops and slaves and fruit and vine and city and town. Where the shadows of Erra and the Seven and the sons of Ki-gal fell over Christians and Israelites and Canaanites fighting on foot and with chariotry, the soil turned to quicksand and sucked the combatants down – all but their hell-spawned steeds, who ran away, neighing and snorting fire, to find new battles to join.

  Over the deepest recesses of Sheol they flew, striking blind the souls below, bringing to the prideful and the learned dead a darkness that would not lift; setting fire to their books as they copied them.

  Both the righteous and unrighteous flesh in Sheol, long removed from the light of god, now suffer Erra’s havoc. Shadows of the passing auditors touch all the pedagogues of Sheol with forgetfulness: words, once spoken, are immediately forgot. Those proclaiming innocence and those bemoaning guilt are equally chastened.

  From on high comes a just reward to those who’d lorded holiness and rectitude over lesser men, and filled peasants with shame, and castigated the ignorant, and made the common people pay to fund their studies. Politicians and poets and philosophers and physicians are struck deaf with the passing of Erra and his Seven and the Kigali: none can hear a word, not a single well-turned phrase nor clever argument; nor can they read or write or count or know any of mankind’s hard-won wisdom ever again. These will always remember that once they had the keys of knowledge in their hands. But no more. The dead in Sheol’s dank depths are brought low, every damned soul in its cities and its towns, in its streets and its assemblies, sunk into stupidity and hopelessness.

  Onward flies the wrath from Above, into the latter-day hells of mankind’s dark heart. On the wings of Erra and his Seven it comes, with the Kigali witnesses towed on ropes of flashing lightning that slit the sky.

  Black shadows, beating wings, and torment fit for each benighted soul: they set afire every plain; they ignite every mountaintop for thousands of leagues, before and behind. Storm blows behind the wildfires, putting out the flames with raging torrents, flooding Purgatory and washing all artifice away. The earth cracks open here and there.

  There is no forgiveness. There is no absolution for criminals who sin knowingly and cunningly and think they can merely ask for heavenly forbearance: this is hell in its horrible glory and all sinners here, no matter how adroit, will pay this day for every crime against the heavens.

  Erra’s wings bore him straight and strong, with his vengeful weapons beside him, until they reached Lost Angeles, swathed in its pall of vainglorious excess that turned the air stinking and yellow.

  There they alighted on black-paved ground, between buildings high and long and gleaming with glass and sinners festooned with every sort of bauble: painted and perfumed and covered in silk and furs: men and women, clutching at each other lewdly, entwining and kissing and sucking on each other’s bodies, copulating in the middle of the street. Erra waved his own mighty hand and the paint on each face puckered into running sores; silk t
urned wormy; furs came alive and sank toothy jaws into their wearers, tearing out throats and hearts before scampering up the blazing sky to heaven. Men ejaculated scorpions and spiders who ate their screaming partners from the inside out. Women selling sex sold torture now, and ground the members of their partners in gnashing teeth amid their nether parts.

  Down Hellywood Boulevard did Erra and Seven drive their judgment: pointing here and there and everywhere; bringing first fire and ice and lightning, then pestilence and tempest and quake and disease. Erra raged on, with his terrifying weapons, carving up the very belly of this Satanic beast, Lost Angeles.

  Whimpering sinners stumbled and ran. The Seven cut down soul after soul, broiled them, boiled them, shattered them where they fled, and opened the ground to receive the detritus. Meanwhile, behind them on either side, buildings tottered and toppled, showering glass and mortar and stone upon the fleeing hordes.

  Then Erra heard sounds he’d never heard before: deep roaring; booming in the sky so that the vault above seemed to shake; deafening thunder from the middle of the air: the sound of Satan’s forces, come to meet him in battle at last.

  The seventh and the second of the Seven looked up and raised their arms. Huge metal darts swooped at them: some with souls inside, some not. Erra’s two Sibitti spat lightning and incandescent plumes, and caught the flying machines and piloted contraptions hurtling down and dragged them from the air. These crashed amid the tenements and high-rising buildings with an awful banging noise.

  Then the third of the seven looks at Erra and smiles his icy smile. Erra nods, and freezing cold quenches the fires where the metal birds and darts have crashed, and all the mechanisms of modern man’s destruction fall away to glittering powder.

  Satan, where art thou? Come face me.

  But Satan does not come. Instead, a deep growl wells up: the tramp of marching men; the thrum of great wheels turning. Now come the tanks and the soldiers of the new dead, a vast army marching down the wide roads of Lost Angeles, crushing trees and people underfoot.