by Briana Snow
Verity shot an alarmed look at Penelope, whose hands tightened around the grimoire.
“Ha.” A dry chuckle from Simeon Lighter. “If I was going to betray you two ladies, then believe me I would have done it by now, after all of the trouble that you have given me. Now follow on behind me, and try not to let on to the others just what you are doing!” He led them into the small group of people, who greeted him with pathetically desperate looks of hope and optimism.
Penelope couldn’t bear to watch as they reached after Simeon’s words, their gray and malnourished faces seeming to light up with an inner joy. Even when they heard that their route today was going to be very perilous, and would lead them straight through a Flayer’s nest, they just swallowed their fear and nodded.
“What terrible bravery…” she murmured.
“Or idiocy,” Verity added.
“Everyone, follow me,” the hellish candlemaker said, holding up a small lantern and turning to guide them out of the far end of the abandoned hall, and into the streets of Pandemonium beyond.
Chapter XXXIV
If Penelope had been worried about having to hide their stories from the other glimpsers, then just a few streets in she realized there was nothing to fear. The glimpsers seemed to settle into their own quiet, trance-like daze of thoughts and trudging steps as they walked. Like a pilgrimage, the librarian thought—which was exactly what this was, she realized.
The group of grave-clad souls trudged through the streets of Pandemonium where, amazingly, the other denizens of the infernal city stopped and let them pass, averting their eyes.
Why? Penelope thought. It was like the glimpsers were holy people, or else somehow enjoyed a reserved status among the damned.
“Maybe it all aids the devil’s plans,” Verity hissed at Penelope as she noticed the same thing. “After all, the more spirits get out and start possessing people, or terrifying people, then the weaker the walls between the realms become, right?”
“The busier my brother has to be,” Penelope said, thinking of the acting head of the Knights Templar.
“Yes. Precisely. Divide and conquer.” Verity shook her head. She was not pleased with anything that was happening, or anything that they were involved in. Penelope wondered just what it was that kept her motivated through the long torments of her job, despite all of the pain and suffering, the corruption and the lies that she must have witnessed through the years.
Their marching feet took them out to the deserted edges of the city, from which came the roaring and grinding noise of stone on rock. When Penelope looked up, she could see that the outer wall of the caverns of hell beyond were close, and there were places a few districts away where they even met the moving city, sending shockwaves and rippling tremors through the streets, and ripping buildings and stairs from the city like the seeds from a dandelion head. There were no other remaining denizens of the city out this far, and it was easy to see why, as at any time it seemed that entire neighborhoods could be crushed and collapsed by the walls.
“Now, come close all of you,” Simeon Lighter called his small cadre of glimpsers to him in the last remaining complete stone plaza of Pandemonium. Further beyond, the streets became rucked up like they were untidy blankets, walls leaned haphazardly against each other as they attempted to fall, or entire buildings were just piles of rubble. Simeon’s eyes sought out Penelope and Verity’s as he spoke.
“Now, we will have to be careful in going forward, and you will have to follow my lead precisely. There will come an opening that we can use to head towards our destination, but we will not have much time to get off the city and into the safety of the tunnel before the city grinds again against the walls. Those who miss the opportunity will probably be crushed, or they will be left here, where you will have to remain until—if—I return again. Understand?” The older man’s gaze rested on Verity for a moment, who glared back fiercely.
Simeon didn’t wait for agreement or consensus. Instead, he merely turned and led the way into the ruined streets. All of a sudden, Penelope saw the sudden troubles that she was facing. With at least one arm needed to hold the two large grimoires to her body (and needing two arms to hold them to be comfortable) she was immediately stalled by the rubble and collapsed walls and doorways that stood across her way.
“Here,” Verity was at her side, helping her by steadying her elbows, or back, or allowing the woman to lean against her as she climbed. She was very careful not to touch the grimoires, the librarian noticed. Of all of the alarming rumors and warnings that the other travelers had heard, this was the thing that seemed to cause the stir amongst the other glimpsers, as none of them made any attempt to aid any other.
“Everyone walks alone down here,” Simeon said as he appeared at their side, helping Penelope also. “That is the hellish way. Any sign of compassion or kindness is usually thought of as a weakness down here.”
“Good heavens, that is horrible,” Penelope shivered.
“Yes. You are lucky that you are amongst us, the glimpsers, whom the rest of hell already think of as either mad or brilliant,” Simeon said, just as another rumble shook their feet and they had to wait for a fall of masonry and stone to subside before carrying on.
The grinding walls of the cavern were closer now, Penelope saw. So close, in fact, that if she threw a broken slate then she could probably hit them. The grating of the city and wall gave off a constant fog of stone dust, and shook the floor beneath their feet. But, Penelope could also see that there was not a constant contact between the wall and the city throughout this section. The city wasn’t a uniform shape, and neither were the walls and rocky columns of red-black stone. If one part of the city was tearing itself along the cavern walls, then it was almost certain that another, would either have streets that were too short and did not meet the walls, or else the cavern walls itself might have sudden breaks, voids, and tunnels.
“We’re waiting for a particular one of those,” Simeon nodded as a large tunnel trudged past at a little over walking pace. “The only problem is, that if you miss it…”
There came a thundering sound and a lurch, as the city hit an outcrop of granite and slowed to a crawl as buildings were torn from their roots. Penelope dreaded to think what was happening to the poor souls beneath doing the walking.
“Mangled,” Simeon said, without apparent emotion. “Get a few hundred thousand people going in one direction, and there isn’t really any way that you can stop them.” He shrugged, in what Penelope thought of as a spectacularly cold reaction.
“Here, ready—on me!” Simeon’s eyes were calculating the distances and the exact location of the city as it walked. He stood up when he saw a particular vein of pink-colored crystal slide past, and started hurrying towards the edge of Pandemonium.
“Okay, it’s on!” Verity grabbed Penelope around the waist and almost lifted her over the rubble as they joined the other desperately scrambling souls towards the edge. The noise was deafening, and the ground felt like they were on a ship, it bucked and moved about so much.
“I can’t—I can’t breathe!” Penelope shouted, ripping the hood from her face to try and get some clean air. The stone fragments and dust were everywhere.
“No!” Simeon grabbed the Librarian’s hood and yanked it back down again over the woman’s head, temporarily blinding her.
“Hey!” Verity moved to intercept the candlemaker, certain that he was ambushing them.
“No, breath through the cloth, that’s what they are there for!” Simeon was bellowing, before doing the same with his own hood as another cloud of dust billowed over them. Verity coughed, having to hunker and do the same as the others, and the women found that they could not only breathe a little bit easier through the corpse-shroud, but they could also see through the thin cheesecloth and gauze material—albeit as if looking through a very cloudy pane of glass.
“It’s close, get ready to jump!” the muffled voice of Lighter was saying, and Penelope heard a terrible crack as walls all
about them started to shake themselves apart under the strain. Others of the glimpsers were similarly hunkered down by the ruined walls, or else were choking.
The roaring sound of stone on rock grew to a pitch, and Penelope thought that if it were possible to be driven mad or hurt by noise alone, then this must surely be her time for it.
Suddenly, silence fell amongst them like a wolf in a sheepfold.
“Now! Now! Now!” Simeon started shouting, and Penelope looked up through the gauze to see the ragged form of the candlemaker struggling to his feet and starting to race across the rubble, towards a looming black hole in the slow-moving wall beyond.
All around them, shapes of the other glimpsers were struggling to their own feet to follow the candlemaker towards the edge. It felt unreal to Penelope, a sudden moment of utter quiet amid the noise.
“Verity?” she called in alarm, to find that her accomplice was already beside her, hands steadying her as they reached the last few feet.
The tunnel itself was vast, the size of two or three buildings, and moving past at a steady pace that would have appeared slow to Penelope in her old life, but now appeared terrifyingly quick when she saw what was coming after it—a grinding, crashing, grating, shearing lump of red-black cavern wall, chewing up the buildings towards them. She saw the gray mortuary shadows of other glimpsers all about her flinging themselves into the abyss, and she saw one miss-time the leap and tumble down the side of the city with a short, mangled scream.
If the Special Collections Librarian had been given any time to think about it, then she would have frozen, unable to leap, but Verity was beside her urging her on, and already their guide out of hell had leapt through from the city of the damned, so she really had no time and no choices left.
Penelope saw the darkness appear before her like a cool breeze on an oppressively hot day. She screamed as she pushed out from one of her feet, stretching her legs to vault into blackness.
Chapter XXXV
Ugh. Penelope opened her eyes to find, surprisingly, that she was not dead. Although I sure do feel like it. She felt pain shooting up through her body, and coming from what seemed a hundred different places. “Please don’t let me have broken anything, please…” she mumbled as she blinked weary eyes before looking down.
“Why? It’s not like life can get much worse, can it?” Verity said wearily from beside her.
“Oh. Hi.” Penelope groaned, grateful that her legs were where they should be and were all in the right shape. She pushed herself up on her hands to see the Book Hunter huddled just a little way away, her back to the tunnel wall.
They shared their tunnel with three of the glimpsers who had made it through, and Simeon, of course. He even still had his lantern alight, which Penelope thought was quite a feat. She watched as Simeon moved around the last remaining glimpsers, checking that they were good to travel, before coming to them last.
“Are you ready to get moving? No time like the present,” Simeon said.
“Of course.” Verity creaked and groaned as she stood up.
“So, that is what you do for a living?” Penelope shook her head. “I think I just had a near death experience.”
“Near-life experience,” Simeon corrected, and the librarian couldn’t figure out if he meant that as a joke or in all seriousness as he led the way up the tunnel.
Up the tunnel, the librarian thought. For the first time in their journey through this infernal underworld they were traveling upwards again, which she took to be a hopeful sign.
“How far is it?” she called out to the head of the small gaggle, but the candlemaker shrugged, as if that wasn’t really the important question.
“Distance is strange down here,” he said, trudging, trudging, trudging.
The librarian’s whole world narrowed to just the circle of candlelight flickering on the walls around them, and the sound of their echoing feet. Even Verity appeared more subdued than normal, and Penelope had the strangest sensation that this was all a dream, or a trance. The books in her arms were growing heavy, and she changed the position that she was holding them for the third time since leaving the city behind.
The city… she turned her head to strain her ears back the way that they had come. The city had been a constant roar echoing up the tunnel, but now, after however long it had been, she couldn’t even hear it. A faint hum or a whistle that might be the far-off smashing of streets against stone, or it might be just the wind echoing through the tunnel systems here.
Systems, she thought, as she saw yet another tunnel appear and disappear in the walls around them, this time high up in the walls. She peered into its depths, wondering if she had seen something glinting back there, before shaking her head and hurrying to catch up with the others. It suddenly didn’t seem like a very good idea to be caught straggling behind the others.
Thunk. Thud. Thunk. A small scattering of sounds reached her ears from behind them, back down the tunnel. It sounded like the heavy stamp of feet perhaps, or was it the distant sound of rocks falling, or water dripping?
Nothing. Just nothing, Penelope thought, shaking her head and reaching Verity.
“Hey,” she said, and Verity looked up, looking tired and weary.
“I think we must almost be there,” Verity said, her voice rasping as she spoke. Penelope’s heart almost broke as she realized that the Book Hunter was trying to give her hope.
Penelope nodded.
“Now, before we do this,” Verity Vorja whispered, “we need to think about how you are going to destroy the Luminaire.” She coughed, sounding weak. Penelope wondered if she were ill.
“You don’t sound well,” she said softly. “We can save this discussion for later, when you are feeling stronger.”
“It’s one of the defenses of Hell,” Verity coughed. “Against any living organism. It slowly poisons them.”
“What!?” Penelope almost stopped in her tracks. “But no… That cannot be. Why didn’t you tell me before?” And then, after quickly checking how she herself was feeling, “But I feel fine, you must be wrong.”
“It’s those bloody things,” Verity nodded to the two volumes of the Luminaire minus Clavem that Penelope was holding. “I told you that they would protect themselves, didn’t I? That they wanted to be opened. They’re keeping you alive.”
Penelope shook her head, unwilling to believe what she knew to be true. “If I had known that this would hurt you, I would never have chosen this way. Why did you jump into the portal with me?”
“Because I have a job to do,” Verity said severely, pulling a pained face as she straightened herself up. “As do you, Miss Harp. So, I have a few ideas how we can destroy the Luminaire, but none of them are going to be easy when they are all trying so hard to protect themselves all of the time.”
Penelope sighed, and listened, and nodded to the Book Hunter’s plan. When she had finished, Penelope shrugged a little uselessly. “I can try to do that, but I don’t know whether I can, you know.”
“Just try. That is all that I ask.”
Penelope nodded, just as there was a hissing noise from the front of the column. It was Simeon, flapping his hand back at the two to be quiet.
Chapter XXXVI
“What is it?” Verity whispered to Simeon when they had reached the top of the column of people.
“It’s there. Somewhere.” Simeon pointed out ahead of them, to where the tunnel opened out into a cavern with many, many gigantic stalactites and stalagmites that had grown for so long as to join up together into yellowish pillars. The cavern above was more of a low gallery of rock, barely higher than Verity was tall, and with a floor around the rock formations that appeared glassy and rippled.
“Obsidian.” Simeon gestured to the black waves at their feet. “It’s the natural home of the Flayer.” He gestured across the stalactite field to where they ended, and there was a dull milky glow. “And that, over there, is the Pool of Remembering as they call it around here—although you two ladies might refer to
it as the portal to Paris.” Simeon nodded to himself. He had done a good job leading them here, and he knew it.
“Then what are we waiting for?” Verity hissed back. “Let’s go. Now!”
“Wait!” Simeon reached out to hold onto the Book Hunter’s arm with vice-like claws. “Because we do not know if it is safe yet. If the Flayer is at home, then it will be lying in the darkest shadows, waiting like a spider in its web to pounce. We won’t last a few minutes out there on the obsidian before it catches us.” Simeon licked his lips nervously.
“But how do we know that it is even home?” Penelope whispered to their guide. “What do you suggest we do?”
“We? Nothing.” Simeon turned from his whispering crouch to beckon the last three remaining glimpsers over. The two women watched as he proceeded to explain to them that just over there was their chance at escape, or at perhaps just catching a glimpse of their old world again. But Simeon also said that out there too lived a dangerous, terrible monster that would make them wish that it had killed them.
Penelope saw the look of hope rise like phoenixes in their eyes before being quashed and crushed in an instant. She closed her eyes, waiting for the recriminations, the arguments, the desperate, hare-brained schemes to get them safely across to the other side.
But they never came. Instead, each of the three glimpsers were silent, nodded, looking at each other, looked at the women, before turning and nodding to the candlelighter himself.
“We’ll go,” one of them said. “The chance at life is just too great.” There was no debating, no scheming or plotting or even guilt over the fact that, this close to their goal, some of them would probably die. To Penelope’s amazement they all accepted their fate calmly. “We are all, already damned,” another of the glimpsers said. “And seeing our loved ones again would be worth any price. Any price.”