Limbo's Child

by Jonah Hewitt

  The Halls of Death

  Nephys followed the Herald of Death solemnly through the abandoned streets of Limbo. If the streets weren’t abandoned before they arrived, they almost certainly emptied out when they saw the hulking frame of Death’s Herald coming their way. Nephys didn’t see a single other soul the entire time. In fact, all he could see in front of him was the great, hulking mass of the headless warrior. The herald never turned around once to see if Nephys was following. Nephys assumed the monstrous warrior was utterly confident in his ability to intimidate all into compliance.

  They trudged unstopping through the dense landscape of tombs and avenues deeper and deeper into the city. Rarely had Nephys ever come this far. This had once been the very seat of Elysium, Limbo’s only golden age, though it wasn’t terribly golden. It was already ebbing and falling apart by the time Nephys had arrived. Here the tombs and buildings were larger and more magnificent than those towards the edges of the city near the swamps were Nephys lived, but they too were falling into ruin. Everything passes in Limbo, and few held on for as long as he had.

  The long walk through the somber ruins of the once-great city gave Nephys time to reflect. Why was he being selected to see the Great Master? Obviously it had something to do with the stone. To all the other children and scribes it was only one of several identical, glassy pebbles, but Nephys had seen more. He saw it not with the penetrating, crystalline Death Sight, but with his own, natural eyes. He had seen its true color, a color he only faintly remembered from the date palm groves and reed-lined canals of his youth.

  Nephys marveled at the paradox. The Death Sight gave the user unparalleled clarity and reach of vision, penetrating nearly every substance and giving the viewer the power to render the world transparent and open. Virtually nothing could hide its true nature from the Death Sight – it could see right into the very souls of men and see their life fires burning. But it didn’t see everything did it? There were simple things it could not see, simple truths that eluded it; things that any living person took for granted but most in Limbo could no longer see. But Nephys could see it, and somehow that had set him apart. He could see things the other children of Limbo couldn’t anymore. That’s what had brought him to the attention of the Great Master.

  What they wanted from him was another matter altogether. Did they want to punish him for failing to conform and holding on to his natural eyes so long? Or did they want him to use his natural eyes for some unknown purpose? Whether for good or ill – Nephys couldn’t tell – his persistence in keeping his sight had brought him this far. Right now he didn’t much like his chances or the look of the brutish figure leading him.

  The long walk also gave Nephys time to reconsider Falco’s unexpected acts of kindness. Falco’s sudden interest in Nephys’ skills was starting to come into focus. It was Falco’s dearest wish to be elevated someday to the higher echelons of the Great Master’s service, so he had readily accepted the opportunity to assist the Herald in hopes of future promotion. Once he knew that Nephys was the subject of the Herald’s interest, he had set about ingratiating himself to Nephys. That explained the wonderful manuscripts and the sudden praise of Nephys’ skill. “Proper scribe,” sniffed Nephys to himself. He was embarrassed he had been taken in so easily by his own vanity.

  Whether Falco did this to mock him or to obtain a good report to the Great Master, Nephys didn’t know for sure, not that it mattered much. That was what was so infuriating about Falco. The little tyrant’s plans could always be manipulated to benefit himself, no matter the outcome. That was Falco for you, all cynical calculation. Nephys thought about Falco’s life for a moment. Falco had only been eight years old when he died of the plague. He tried to imagine Falco running or playing ball like other eight year olds, but he just couldn’t. Nephys knew Falco’s Father had been a Roman Senator. Falco’s father must have scrupulously ingrained into the little child, through constant repetition, all the vagaries of Roman politics from the time he was an infant. How else could you explain why Falco was such a manipulative political climber by the tender age of eight years? If Falco’s father could see his little boy now, thought Nephys, he would surely be proud.

  Nephys’ walk with the dark Herald had led him to the very heart of the city of Limbo. Here now, towering above him, was the shadowy outline of the crumbling acropolis of Elysium. Limbo was a vast, flat plain, and the ground that the city stood on was scarcely higher than that of the spreading marshes around it. Even that was slowly eroding and sinking into the wetlands, the city disintegrating a little each day. The only high point and distinguishable landmark for leagues in any direction was the acropolis jutting up incongruously in the middle of the ancient city.

  The acropolis was not a natural hill at all. Instead, it was an enormous, artificial mound constructed by the ancient architects and rulers of Elysium. They had piled the detritus of the afterworld up in a great heap, like a pyramid or a ziggurat, and had built their great temples, palaces and cathedrals upon it, reaching higher than anyone had ever reached in Limbo before. It was said that from its heights you could almost tell if the dark, low overhang that covered the land of the dead was the ceiling of a cave, or the underside of a dark, persistent cloudbank. No one went up there anymore now, however.

  The Herald’s path led them around the base of the hill onto a narrow trail that wound through the shadow of the abandoned acropolis. Nephys stepped into it with great trepidation. As the edge of the darkness passed over him, he shuddered. The silhouette of the broken hill cast a pall over this section of the city creating a profound gloom that somehow managed to stand out in a land of nothing but shadow. The acropolis was a great, dark, wretched mass of mismatched architectural styles and crumbling battlements. It was like the carcass of a massive beached whale or the hull of a giant, shipwrecked vessel. Its broken towers and spires were exposed like bleached ribs, broken bones and snapped spars and masts. Gravity was deforming any of its remaining beauty. In a land of decay, its hopelessness and despair was exceptional, perhaps because its light and fire had been greater.

  It wasn’t always like this. It had once been beautiful. Its fabled towers had reached a great height, and its halls were filled with the sound of philosophy and music, but it was not to last. The ground beneath the acropolis, like all the land in Limbo, was swampy, and the foundation ultimately proved too weak and unstable to support such a lofty structure.

  In its last centuries, the architects frantically tried to shore up what remained of the glorious building. Whatever natural grace or rational planning the original acropolis had attained, it was completely overshadowed by the many haphazard accretions, retaining walls, buttresses, additions and other ad hoc preventive measures that had been hastily erected to forestall its imminent collapse. All attempts had failed of course. Even now as they passed beneath the high steep embankment of one side, stray stones periodically fell from the crumbling edifice. The path around its base was strewn with fallen rubble – so much so that Nephys had to be careful where he stepped.

  He knew that the dangerous path around the edge of the massive ruin wasn’t leading to the acropolis but to what was directly beneath it: the courts of the Great Master, the Halls of Death himself. The creators of the acropolis hadn’t been complete fools. They knew that the flat, swampy plain of Limbo was unsuited to any large construction so they built upon the only sure foundation they could find – the imperishable stone walls of Death’s temple. The Halls of Death had become completely incased by the hill of the acropolis and the machinations of its architects. The souls of that time were vain and full of hubris. Some had been in the afterlife so long they even thought themselves gods. In their arrogance they thought they could change Limbo and remake it in their image, so they piled their edifice on top of the only lasting structure in the underworld.

  The Temple of Death preceded all other buildings in Limbo. It had once stood alone on the lone and dreary plain, a vast structure of unadorned, unforgiving, polished black granite
. Unlike the crumbling stone and rotting brick of all the mausoleums and crypts that surrounded it, the Halls of Death were said to be imperishable and unbreakable. This was only spoken in rumor however, as none of the structure could now be seen, but Nephys knew it was true. The large, shallow basin he used as a mirror – that Maggie was now using as her stewpot – had come from there. It had been passed to him by another scribe long ago and was one of his most cherished possessions. In fact, it was his only possession other than his reed pen and palette, frankly. He knew it was special the first time he had dropped it, because it reassembled itself back to its original form the second it had shattered. No matter how many times you tried, no matter how hard you threw it, it always came back together flawlessly. It was as if time rolled backwards and undid whatever harm was done to it. That’s why he wasn’t too put out about Maggie cooking in it. If being smashed to smithereens couldn’t undo it, certainly a batch of bitter soup wasn’t going to harm it. It was like Death himself, everlasting. There was only one thing permanent in life and the afterlife, the certainty of Death, and it was the only thing that could wind back the clock of time.

  Why the Great Master had allowed the architects of Elysium to build on top of his temple in the first place was always something of a mystery, but now that Nephys saw the acropolis up close, it made complete sense to him. What better monument to the futility of their efforts than this gargantuan, heaping ruin that would one day be utterly washed away by the slow tides of Erebus and the Styx? Death was patient and in time destroyed all evidence of resistance, all evidence of existence other than its own emptiness.

  Deep in the shadow of the crumbling hill, the Herald led him further into the rubble. Ahead of them near the very base of the hill were what appeared to be two massive, misshapen boulders. Only as they came closer could Nephys realize that they were two giant heads of bluish stone. One was upside down and badly broken, the other was half submerged in the black sand to its upper lip. They must have fallen from the heights of Elysium and had been left to lie where they landed. They were the heads of goddesses. Only as the massive frame of the Herald approached them did Nephys realize how colossal they really were. The headless Herald could walk comfortably under the first one’s broken nose. The divot between upper lip and nostrils was easily twice the height of the largest man.

  They were magnificent. Nephys gasped as he got closer. He couldn’t make out the features of the one that was upside down, but the other wore a massive crown made to resemble a city wall, complete with towers and crenulations. Nephys knew this goddess. He had seen many similar images in his own country. She was Tyche, the embodiment of the destiny of a city. These were the statues that must have flanked the gates of the acropolis. As Nephys passed underneath them he marveled at their size, beauty and skill. These were not created by a people who ever doubted their own fate, and yet here they were lying broken in the black sand, slowly crumbling into nothingness. Just then Nephys looked down at the sand underneath his sandals and wondered how many statues or great cities was he treading on? Surely these were not the first or the last.

  The Herald disappeared around the cheek of the first head. Nephys turned the corner and saw that the Herald was gone. Ahead of him was only a narrow passage. The two stone heads had fallen in such a way that there was only a small gap between them. It was so narrow that even Nephys had to turn sidewise and duck to get by. He wondered how the large Herald had managed it, but there was nowhere else he could have gone. Nephys quickly squeezed himself between the two heads and emerged into a small, open space. Sure enough, the Herald’s hulking frame was there with his back turned to Nephys, but it was what was in front of the Herald that drew his attention.

  It was a massive door made of polished, featureless black stone. On either side was a giant urn, much like his shallow bowl, only much larger, made of the same black stone. Each contained a raging bonfire of blue flame, but the fires were utterly silent. The door itself was a simple, rectangular opening in the black rock, undifferentiated, without columns or gables or any decoration at all. The only inscription was a single, large triangle over the door, like a pyramid or the Greek letter, Delta. It was identical to the sign on the Herald’s black tabard. Large drifts of sand were banked up on either side of the door with only a narrow trail leading into the gaping maw. This must be the entrance to the Halls of Death.

  The heads had completely concealed the entrance from view, though that seemed impossible to Nephys when he thought about it. The door was so massive you could have easily rolled one of the heads through the gap with plenty of room on either side. A door this large and tall should have been visible in the hillside even with the heads. It must have been concealed magically. None of the light from the non-roaring fires could be seen beyond this small area, as if it was confined to this limited space and none other. No wonder so few people had ever seen the Halls of Death. But that was not the most impressive or frightening thing about the door. The most impressive feature of the door was the implacable blackness of its rectangular opening. At first Nephys had thought the rectangular frame held a solid door made of some black, unreflective material. As he walked closer though, he could tell it was just an open frame of darkness; an empty space that seemed to consume all light. Despite the raging, silent bonfires, which filled the small courtyard in front of the door with bright, blue-white light, Nephys couldn’t see a half-inch into the interior.

  The Herald didn’t hesitate but walked across the small drifts of sand and directly into the door. He disappeared like a stone falling into an inky pond, except there wasn’t even so much as a ripple. Nephys only then realized his feet were rooted firmly on the black sand. He suddenly rushed forward to follow, afraid of what might happen if he didn’t, but he couldn’t help but pause in fright at the threshold. It was like standing a half-inch from living blackness. He willed himself forward a half dozen times but couldn’t budge. After what seemed like an eternity, he finally worked up the nerve to step forward. However, no sooner had he barely begun to shift his weight off one foot to move it forward when the large arm of the Herald reached back through the darkness and pulled him in.

  The passage inside was impossible to explain. There was no feeling of transition or movement like walking through fire or plunging into cold water. If you took all those feelings and imagined the exact opposite of them, that’s more what it felt like. It was more like he had entered a place with no movement at all. It was utter blackness. He couldn’t see anything – not even his own body – he couldn’t even feel his own body anymore. Not the weight of his feet in his sandals, not the clothes on his skin, not even the still and languid movement of Limbo’s normally stagnant air on his face. Nothing! It was like he didn’t exist except as a thought. Nephys realized that he had entered an entirely new place like a separate universe. It felt as far away from Limbo as Limbo felt from earth. He never imagined he could miss the torpid and dull realm of Limbo so much. Whatever its faults, it was better than this.

  Nephys began to panic. He couldn’t feel or see anything! How was he supposed to manage at all?! Was he going to be like this for all eternity – a disembodied thought struggling for existence? How could the heralds and servants of Death manage stumbling around in the darkness like this without even so much as the pain of a stubbed toe to let them know where they were?! How could they see and function in this place at all?! Then he remembered that the Herald didn’t even have the top of his head, let alone eyes, to see with. Of course!! He calmed himself and looked inward. The Death Sight came to him, and the blackness slowly melted away and was replaced by the crystalline world of the Death Sight. A hypostyle hall like a forest of massive, crystalline columns came into view and then a ceiling and a floor. As the darkness continued to fade away, Nephys realized he was surrounded by people – lots of people, a huge crowd of courtiers, clerks and messengers – and they were all staring down at him with dead, sightless eyes like he was a lunatic.

  Nephys looked around with his Dea
th Sight. He was lying on the floor, desperately grasping on to it like someone clinging to a cliff-face for life. He stood up. The Herald was there bending over him ominously and Nephys was certain that if he had eyes, he would be rolling them right now. The brief distraction over, the crowd started to disperse. The Herald turned to go. Nephys thought he heard the Herald huff in frustration as Nephys’ sandals slapped against the hard stone floor catching up to him.

  He felt horribly foolish and silly. Of course you had to use the Death Sight in the Halls of Death! It was obvious now that he thought of it. No one there had any use for eyes anymore. Had Falco, that little tyrant and suck-up, entered the hall with his dead, white, pupil-less, fish eyes he wouldn’t have even noticed the change from outside. Falco always lived in that crystalline world now. He would have walked in like he belonged there and no one would have noticed him. Only a clueless idiot like Nephys who was still sentimental about his eyes would make a stupid mistake like that.

  The Herald and Nephys walked on past featureless, columned halls, each indistinguishable from the next. Along the way, Nephys examined the residents. There were more than he ever could have imagined. They were terrifying. All wore the black and silver robes that marked service in the company of Death, but the fashions of those uniforms were from many different lands and many different ages. All were profoundly blind however. Some had pallid, white orbs like Falco’s, others had removed their eyes altogether and replaced the eyes with bizarre jewelry that looked like elaborate daggers and spear-points embedded into the empty sockets. It was ornamentation designed to draw attention to their lack of sight, as if they were vain about it.

  They all walked about purposefully as if they had urgent business. Their mannerisms were those of bureaucrats and civic officials and had their appearance not been so frightening, they would have seemed completely normal, dull even. They never spoke, but often looked intently at each for moments at a time. Nephys suspected that they must have other ways of talking. If there was a Death Sight, why not a Death Speech?