“Anything is better than walking the whole way,” Erasmus murmured gratefully.
So all eight of us mounted the magic horse. Mephisto took the reins. I sat behind him, with Theo behind me, then Mab, Gregor, Erasmus, Titus, and finally, upon the haunches, Caliban. None of us knew how Pegasus could bear such a burden; it must have been part of his magic, and we gloried in it.
What a joy to fly, to leave the dust and din of the plain below us and soar through the air. True it was smoggy, sulfurous, and we had to fly quite low to avoid the black boiling clouds, but it was a pleasure to see the ground fly by beneath our feet.
Several times, Mephisto checked on Ulysses in the crystal ball, but Ulysses was always somewhere in the same rugged landscape, running naked along cliffs and rocky ramparts.
We flew on, squished together like living spoons, the ground flashing by beneath us. As I watched it fly by, I was reminded of the Aerie Ones, for whom seeing solid land flash by beneath them was an ordinary occurrence. I thought of Mustardseed and Windflower and the others back at the company and wondered how they were coping without me.
This past month was the longest break I had taken from my corporate duties, since the last time I had left on the year-and-a-day journey to the Well at the World’s End to fetch more Water of Life, sometime back in the 1960s. Back then, my absence had not mattered as much, as Father had still been in charge.
Ah, Prospero, Inc. I chafed to be back at the helm. I missed the office, the buzz of Aerie Ones about their business, the challenges of keeping everything moving smoothly. It was a life I loved, work I understood. I could not wait to get back.
Mentally, I reviewed the Priority contracts soon to come due. Again worry gnawed at my innards. Could Mustardseed handle everything on his own? The Priority contracts seldom came due without some complication that required my direct action. I hoped this time would prove the exception, that they would carry on competently without me.
We flew for hours but eventually our ride came to an end. Our flying steed grew weary and could no longer bear our burden. He landed and trotted for a time. When even that became too much for him, we dismounted, and Mephisto sent him home. Then, he briefly called up his maenad, Queen Agave, and gave her instructions to see that the winged horse was properly curried and fed.
We set out on foot again, sore from our ride but rejoicing at the territory covered. The jagged purple peaks of the Mountains of Misery now loomed above us. Beneath them rolled their foothills, where Ulysses waited, only a few miles away. And, yet, our every footstep still kicked up a cloud of dust that made the already oppressive air even harder to breathe. Some of my brothers began wheezing.
A loud rat-a-tat-tat reverberated across the landscape. Ahead, a group of damned souls manned a machine-gun nest, strafing the countryside.
“How do we get past this?” Titus asked.
“We walk. Aren’t we safe so long as we do not become upset?” asked Erasmus.
“Perhaps, but what about our garments? Will the enchanted cloth resist the spiritual bullets?” Titus fingered the cloth of his ruffled shirt.
“What bullets?” Erasmus scoffed at Titus. “They could not possibly have bullets. Where would they get them?”
“A strange time to quibble with the reality of all this, isn’t it, Brother?” Theo gestured at the tanks, the barbed wire, the broken-down Jeeps. “Where do they get any of these things?”
“That’s different,” Erasmus replied smoothly. “I can imagine being in Hell with barbed wire. I cannot imagine being in Hell and having enough bullets.”
With that, Erasmus walked jauntily across the gunners’ fields of fire. The rest of us watched intently, uncertain how to rescue him if the impact of spiritual bullets upon his garments should fling him to the ground. He strolled across the entire field of fire. The huge guns worked noisily, strafing the area. My brother remained untouched. He moved confidently to the next trench, beyond the range of the gun nest. Turning back toward us, he waved.
Mephisto, who had been gaping in astonishment, pushed his jaw shut with his hand and declared, “I may be insane, but he’s crazy!”
* * *
EVENTUALLY, the rest of us found the courage to walk through the machine-gun fire. On the far side, Caliban stood in the shallow trench and lifted us over, except for Titus whose legs were long enough to step across by himself. Beyond that, more flat, featureless plain stretched toward the rolling foothills, which grew closer as we trekked onward.
“So, I have a question, Brother Gregor,” Erasmus announced as we trudged onward, dust forming little eddies around us. Beside him, Mephisto was walking on his hands. Apparently, merely strolling on flat sandy earth was not difficult enough for him.
“And what is that, Brother Erasmus?” Gregor replied in his low gravelly voice. His crimson robes swished about his long legs.
“How come the Church lied to us about Hell?”
“How is that?”
“You said so. That they knew that people could get out of Hell, from some document purported to have been written by St. Peter, but that they decided to lie to us.” Erasmus cocked his head. “Is that the proper behavior of people who claim to be followers of Our Lord?”
The others, those who had not been there for the original conversation, looked at Gregor with some interest, Theo in particular.
“People can get out of Hell?” he echoed.
“Of course, they can,” Mephisto chirped from where he walked beside us on his hands. “Didn’t Christ himself go down and break some guys out? While he was dead, no less!”
“That was a one-time thing,” Theo argued. “The Harrowing of Hell, when Christ saved the patriarchs and the Virtuous Pagans of Old.”
“Says who?” Mephisto asked. “Angels come down here and Harrow all the time.” He turned his upside-down head toward me. “Ferdie mentioned it, remember?”
“‘Ferdie’ was an incubus,” I drawled. “He was probably lying.”
“It may be that some souls can escape Hell,” Gregor replied carefully, ignoring Mephisto. “With prayer and help. But the Church Fathers were not certain. They had hints that this might be the case but felt it was better to err on the side of caution. So, after much debate, they made the choice to hide these references from their flock.”
“Well that’s…” Theo’s voice trailed off. His face had grown pale, as if he had just had a sudden shock. He pressed a hand against his chest. I touched his arm, concerned. He did not even seem to notice me.
“As to our following the example of Our Savior,” Gregor continued, “He himself hid His meaning a great deal of the time. He taught in parables instead of speaking openly, and He told those healed to tell no one what had occurred. He even said…”
Gregor spoke in Latin. Erasmus merrily repeated the passage in English. “‘Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given … For this people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.’”
“You can quote the Bible?” Caliban asked, surprised. He swung his club as he walked, occasionally striking the ground, where his weapon kicked up a minor dust storm while leaving a shallow trench where it contacted the ground. “I thought you were an agnostic scoffer.”
“Man, no one who works for an angel can doubt their existence. I merely doubt the truth of certain…”—Erasmus gestured with his hands—“metaphysical claims.” He flashed a sudden grin that transformed his face, making him look uncharacteristically handsome. “Besides, I wrote that passage.”
“Blasphemy,” Gregor growled.
Mab took off his hat and straightened the brim, which had gotten bent when it caught on some barbed wire. “I thought those words came from that nice guy you mortals hung up on a tree.”
“He spoke them, true, bu
t I am the one who chose that particular phrasing.” Erasmus waved a hand at himself. “We in the Second Oxford Company were responsible for translating the Four Gospels and Acts and Revelations—the best parts of the New Testament, I’ve always thought. Of course, the Cambridge Company got Psalms, those lucky dogs—though I was able to get Dr. Andrew Bing to use a few of my suggested phrasings.”
“Who-how, now?” Mab scratched his head.
“Translators on the King James Version of the Bible,” Theo explained. His face had recovered its normal color, but a deep furrow still marred his brow. “Erasmus was one of their number.”
“Indeed, I was,” Erasmus stated airily. “Though, of course, Cornelius insisted on having my name removed from the historical records. Actually, only the second half of that quote is mine. Sir Henry Savile and Dr. James Harmar worked out the wording for the first half.”
Titus snorted in disbelief, “After all these years, you still remember who wrote what?”
Erasmus chuckled. “Only passages I worked especially hard on … or in places where we had massive arguments, which I won.”
“Speaking of Cornelius and changing history,” Gregor mused, stroking his beard, “it is interesting that you, of all people, would complain about the caution of the Church. Your Orbis Suleimani has raised hiding evidence to an art form. You fake historical records, forge documents. Hardly the heralds of truth.”
“Ah, but look at the good we have done,” Erasmus countered, spreading his arms. “Before we hid the existence of the Kings of the Elements and their many supernatural servants, humans thought they had to worship these forces. We put an end to all that. Now, we humans are the masters of the natural world. Our work has done wonders for their quality of life, not to mention their souls.
“When men believe in the lesser supernatural, they lose all reason. They either cower with fear, worship the nymphs and satyrs and try to act like them, or try to learn forbidden secrets and use them to gain power over their fellows. And elves and djinn are not like angels. They are perfectly willing to make secret deals, to promote one man above another, to distrpt the balance of power. Technological tyrannies may be bad, but believe me, they are nothing compared to supernatural ones. Weapons may be expensive, but any man can shoot a gun. If your king or dictator makes a deal with a demon, only he can throw fireballs, or read minds, or blow up your head. And, somehow, it always comes down to demons … because they are the ones that try the hardest to reach men. By hiding magic, we have sealed the demons back into Hell—saving countless lives.”
“If you approve of keeping these secrets,” Gregor argued, “how is the decision of the Church Fathers any different?”
“We don’t work for Mr. I-am-the-Way,-the-Truth,-and-the-Life,” Erasmus countered. “We work for an angel. Angels are famous for telling men to keep quiet.”
“Are they?” Gregor frowned.
“Oh yes. Angels are the keepers of the Secrets of Heaven.” Erasmus said, “I think their secretive nature was summed up best by a poet named Peter Atkins in his poem, ‘Expectant Father to His Unborn Son’:
My Jewish friends have told me that a child,
Before it slides its way to being born,
Possesses these: The secret names of God;
The hidden sources of heaven; All the wild
Fulfilling wisdom that its parents mourn
Their foolish loss of. It is not the rod
Of education nor the chains of work
That rob us of the Marvelous, but the spite
Of Angels: For a stroking finger seals
The child’s mouth into silence. Thus some clerk,
Some Bureaucrat of God, denies our right
To Wonder, as around us life congeals.
Sweet child, resist. Deny that curtain’s fall:
Bite the Angel’s finger. Tell me all.”
We all chuckled but none as loud or as long as Theo. His bark of laughter momentarily drowned out the rat-a-tat-tat of machine guns behind us.
“Hear! Hear!” Theo cried. “Good for him!”
“How is that?” Gregor asked gently. “When you know first hand what good the angel’s admonition to secrecy has accomplished. You have worked for Father, helping keep secrets, for centuries.”
“True, and perhaps there is good in it,” Theo replied fiercely, a knightly gleam in his eye. “But that doesn’t mean that I have to like it. I believe in honesty. I believe in Truth. Someday, I would like to live in the world where every child chomped down on his shushing angel and escaped unsilenced into the world.”
* * *
WE left the trench-riddled land behind us, but more wasteland lay ahead. After several hours of trudging through this, we rested. Titus shared the last swallows from his canteen, but the tiny sip only served to turn the grime in my mouth to mud. Sighing, we climbed heavily back to our feet and pushed onward.
“Boy, this place is dusty.” Mab coughed, waving his hand in front of his face. “Reminds me of that time I got stuck in a bag.”
“Wandered in and couldn’t get out, did you?” Erasmus teased Mab.
Mab shook his head. “Nah. Wasn’t that kind of thing. You see, the elves had invited my—well, you’d call ’em brothers—and I to a party. Nice affair. Lots of ambrosia flowing. Some fairies, tiny tykes, started a game of tag. I admit we winds got a little rowdy. Knocked over a few trees, a spire or two, maybe the odd tower, but that was nothing big for us. How were we to know those trees had sprouted during the original creation?”
“So, your punishment was to be stuck in a bag?” I chuckled.
“Nothing so tame, Ma’am! Our punishment would have been much, much worse! Except the boss interceded upon our behalf, played his harp. You see, the Elf King had some kind of ‘in’ with the King of the Gods, and if the matter had been put before Old Sky Beard, we would have been in hot water indeed!”
“The Elf King is the King of the Gods,” I said.
“Really!” Mab asked, flabbergasted. “Well … that explains a lot!”
Erasmus leaned forward. “Interesting! Where did you hear this?”
“From Tybalt,” I replied.
Mab groaned, disappointed. “Aw, Ma’am! You can’t believe everything that furball tells you!”
“I gather this boss of yours played well?” Caliban asked Mab. “Did he charm the Elf King with his song, as Orpheus charmed the King of the Dead?”
Mab walked in silence for a few steps, scratching his eternal stubble. “Er … not exactly. You see, we winds know the secret of music, and we had shared this with our boss. So, as he sat before the court, he began playing faster and faster. Soon, all the court was dancing—well everyone except Fincunir, he’s too clever to get caught by this kind of trick—and, more importantly, they couldn’t stop dancing.”
“A red-shoes moment?” Erasmus asked.
“Exactly!” Mab agreed. “Finally, the queen—the old queen, Titania—begged him to let them go. Well, the boss replied that here was the whole court wildly whirling about, bumping into things and the like, which was all we winds had done. So, it seemed wrong to treat us overly harshly. Queen Titania agreed, and between them, they cooked up this idea of putting us in a bag and giving us to some mortal ship captain.”
“I believe I’ve read that story.” Caliban laughed. “The sailors on that ship opened the bag and let you go, did they?”
“Yeah, only the Greeks didn’t include the part where the boss descended on a black swan in the dead of the night and slipped among the sailors, whispering to them that the bag was filled with treasure.”
“Black swan!” I repeated, startled. I recalled visions of shipwrecks wrought by the winds and their master that I had once seen while falling from just such a bird. “Mab, this boss of yours…”
“Lord Astreus, of course,” Mab replied. “Thought you knew that, Ma’am. That I used to work for him, I mean.”
“I did,” I said slowly. “I just hadn’t put the two together.”
; Stories I had heard over the years drifted back to me: scraps of tales told to me by Tybalt, rumors passed along by Mephisto, or dusty passages I had come upon in Father’s old tomes. Astreus Stormwind, the tricky and clever Lord of the High Counsel who once bested the old lord of the trolls by so beguiling him with music that he forgot to depart at sun up, turning to stone with the first ray of dawn light; or who once stole the sky, rolling it up like a carpet and refusing to return it, until the Lord of Winter let the sun out of a bottle; or who once fenced the Lord of the Doldrums in a great duel that lasted nine days and nine nights and only ended when the Becalmer agreed never again to leave the borders of his sea kingdom.
Somehow, I had forgotten that this trickster figure was my Astreus. Or, rather, the Astreus that I knew. He was not my Astreus. I wanted nothing to do with him! And yet, I could not help admiring him for his loyalty to his people. Few supernatural creatures were like that.
“Ma’am”—Mab broke through my reverie—“if what Tybalt told you about the Sky God is true…”
“It may be,” Erasmus interrupted. “Alastor, the name of the King of the Elves, is an old epithet for Zeus.”
Mab continued, “Well then, if Mr. Prospero’s Eleusinian spell actually worked, and he really did get adopted by the Earth Goddess Demeter … would that make you the Elf King’s grandniece?”
“I have no idea, Mab.” I laughed. “I don’t even know if Father ever cast that spell.”
“What spell was this?” Erasmus’s interest was piqued. He was always interested in sorcery.
“Father was working on a re-creation of the old Eleusinian spell that allowed the Eleusinians to get out of the land of the dead with their memories intact. We think it was part of the process for making his new staff, the Staff of Eternity,” I said.
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