Gregor said, “Then, I will put it up briefly every ten minutes, to help wake us up, should we fall prey to something unpleasant. Otherwise, it’s up to each of us to resist.”
* * *
GREGOR was as good as his word, but, in my opinion, the silences did not come often enough. Despite my best attempts at vigilance, I wasted time dwelling on the pleasures of being ground into paste and eaten by ants. Or how good I would feel if only I could impale my stinger in Erasmus and pump poison into his bloodstream—the promised gratification of poison pumping was particularly enticing. I longed to emit sparks that would drink in the essence of my surroundings, consuming the virtue of what they touched and conveying it to me, leaving behind empty and sullied husks.
The fact that I was incapable of doing these last two things did not diminish my desire for them one iota. Nor were my brethren better off. I could not tell what went on in their minds, but from their mingled expressions of longing and disgust, they, too, struggled in the battle against senseless unnatural emotions.
I could defend myself, I discovered, by indulging in some powerful negative emotion. If I concentrated upon a desire for revenge against Erasmus, and how I wanted to torment him with the appendages I did have, that helped keep the alien desires at bay. Yet, I did not particularly care to indulge my hatred. Nor, as I pictured myself strangling Erasmus while simultaneously kneeing him in the groin, his purple face contorted with outrage and pain, could I entirely escape that desire to pump him full of poison. It would make such a fitting end to all his arrogance and abuse.
* * *
TO distract myself, I let my thoughts wander to a subject I had been deliberately skirting: Astreus and Seir.
Why would the incubus risk his life to pop in and visit me? To taunt me? To kiss my neck? Was he spying on us? What could he have possibly learned?
Or was this just the way of incubi, that they acted like outrageous lovers, imitating actions they thought might impress their victims. After all, he had succeeded in hoodwinking me with Ferdinand. Did he think, after my trusting Ferdinand led to my losing everything, that I would turn around and trust him again, if he only made a show of having maintained Astreus’s attentiveness?
It was all nonsense. Astreus never had been as fascinated with me as the incubus pretended. Seir was just saying these things in an attempt to beguile me.
The words Astreus had spoken by the hearth, while in the guise of Ferdinand, echoed in my thoughts. You must excuse me, Miranda. When you have lived above and now must dwell below, and your only crime was the chaste love of a virtuous woman, the affections of that woman take on immense significance.
I had felt in my soul—or what I took at the time for my soul—that he had been sincere. And, as I had just admitted to myself, it was because of my faith in this speech—because of the way it had touched me and stirred something within me—that I had trusted Ferdinand, trusted Seir, and, to my eternal shame, trusted the Ferdinand that turned out to be Osae the Red.
Were these words true, regardless? Had Astreus loved me, too? Or was I merely easily misled?
Of course, I had also believed Astreus’s protestations about hawks and doves. But then, of course I would. The incompatibility of elves and men had been drummed into me since infancy. But did Astreus believe the two were incompatible? Apparently not, if he had a reputation for seducing mortal maids, a fact which suggested he did not love me but had been merely dallying.
Only he had not attempted to press his advantage, which also suggested that he did not love me. Except that he had kissed me—while we were falling from the black swan to his towers in Hyperborea. No, wait, I blushed, embarrassed yet again. That had been my imagination.
Or, had it?
I had no ability to dream waking dreams. Why had I believed his suggestion that I was the one responsible for imagining our kiss? Astreus had kissed me!
I pressed my fingers against my lips and then moved them to wipe away the tear that ran down my cheek. Finally, I admitted the truth to myself. He had kissed me, and he had been speaking of me when he spoke of the “two things he most loved”—those two things had been myself and the sky.
The Elf Lord had loved me!
One kiss. It was not much to hold on to, to carry me forward for the rest of my life, as I slowly grew mortal, old, and weak.
But it was better than no kiss at all.
* * *
MORE than once, Caliban’s club called out a warning, and we hid beneath a cloud of darkness until the sentinel imp flew away. Once, when the darkness cleared, we found Mephisto had pulled up his shirt and surcoat and was, with careful concentration, pushing the tip of a carrot into his belly button. Seeing us watching, he quickly stood, letting his garments fall. “I’ve had the oddest craving to eat things the original way … the way we did in the womb. Do you think if this went in my belly button, it could be digested directly into my bloodstream?”
Erasmus snatched the carrot from his hand. “Adults can’t do that.”
“Oh. Right,” Mephisto said cheerfully, but I caught him eyeing the bag of carrots slyly.
* * *
OF course, I told myself as we continued, Astreus might be alive. After all, what evidence did I have that he would be gone, except his own word? And who could trust the word of an elf?
How did death by sorrow work, anyway? Did losing hope kill an elf instantly? Might not the habit of hope keep him alive a few days? A week? A year? If I had not lost the crown, could I have revived him? What if I tapped on the figurine and asked to borrow Mephisto’s hat?
I reached for the little wooden figure of Astreus, which was still in my bag. That was when my heart broke. Because it did not matter anymore.
Astreus could be alive; he could be within Seir, striving against him right now; he could come walking over the snow and announce that he had defeated Seir and had come to declare his undying love, but it was of no account, because I—who could not tell when my father was lying or whether Ferdinand was a fake—could never afford to believe him … because what looked like Astreus might actually be Seir.
No matter how sincere he seemed; no matter how truthful he sounded; no matter how my heart ached, I could never again trust that any form of Astreus who approached me was not another Ferdinand, a false face put on by Seir in order to deal my family another blow.
True, the worst damage had already been done, but that did not mean there were not still secrets to be wheedled out of us, or staffs to be stolen, or praise to claim from Lilith for delivering me, hog-tied, to be handed over to the Torturers.
The mere thought of my brief stay in the Tower caused spasms of fear to pass through my body. What would become of me were I one of its inhabitants, I dared not surmise! The Elf Lord, and with him any chance I might have had at love, was lost to me forever.
Slowly, my heart as heavy as an anvil, I took the little wooden figurine that my brother Mephisto had made for me so long ago and threw it into the snow.
* * *
AS we drew closer to the Tower of Thorns itself, the unnatural desires grew greater and more disturbing. Nothing outside of us seemed threatening, but the danger that we might be driven to harm ourselves increased. Fear of the approaching tower made me jumpy, which caused me to slip on the ice more than once. One time, I tumbled down an ogive, striking my elbow hard on a protruding rock. It throbbed uncomfortably for about an hour, making my mood even bleaker.
Around me, my siblings, too, struggled with strange impulses. Logistilla beat Ulysses about the head with her staff after she caught him during a brief break trying to gnaw on her leg. A fistfight broke out between, of all people, Theo and Gregor. The two of them rolled about in the snow and pummeled each other for about a minute before Caliban and Titus were able to tear them apart. Then, Mephisto curled up in a ball and crooned mournfully. It took us nearly twenty minutes to uncurl him.
Caliban carried him for part of the time, but even he had trouble moving along the ice holding a full-grown m
an as if he were a bag of groceries. We even argued about trying to use Mephisto’s staff to summon up the cheer weasel. Then, as quick as it had begun, Mephisto snapped out of whatever had been troubling him and continued forward as cheerfully as before. It occurred to me that Father Christmas may have given Mephisto that silly creature for a good reason.
* * *
WE made our way down an icefall, jumping carefully from curving stair to stair, then across a field of glacial suncups, carefully stepping over the bumps and trying to avoid the deeper craters, some of which were filled with slick black ice.
Ahead, one of the thorny cages had a ring of angry wraiths such as we had seen around the cages of ice. Within, a proud man with a hawklike nose was dressed in the rich but tattered garments of a high official of the Church. He glared out while nimbly dodging spears of ice thrust at him by the more solid of his tormentors. I dared not glance at the cage for too long, but in my quick glimpse I saw no sign of wings or horns. Apparently, he had once been human.
“Theo, quick, give me your glasses!” Gregor tore the goggles off Theo’s face. Putting them on, he peered toward the cage and then gasped. “It’s him! The fiend!”
“Him, who?” Logistilla asked.
“Borgia!” Gregor bellowed, his face contorting with wrath. Breaking away from us, he leapt over the bumpy terrain and charged the cage. Seizing an icy javelin from one of the tormenting wraiths, my brother began to jab at the man within the cage, whom I now recognized from my brief, fleeting glances as Pope Alexander VI, the father of Cesare Borgia, whom Mephisto had once bested in a duel.
The prisoner’s nimble movements allowed him to escape the sharp tines of his ethereal oppressors, but Gregor was not so easily dodged. Once and then again, his blows struck home, stabbing the former pope’s shoulder and thigh.
The rest of us chased after him, though we crossed the uneven terrain more cautiously.
“So, this is the same guy Mr. Gregor was complaining about back in the swamp? How weird that we’d just stumble upon him!” Mab whistled.
“Not at all,” Cornelius replied from Caliban’s shoulders. The latter had scooped him up when the terrain had become too uneven. “Mephisto told us that this is where the fallen Orbis Suleimani are held. Roderic Borgia was a member of our great cause.”
“Yeah … I remember the Professor saying something about that,” Mab grunted.
Gregor screamed in rage, his face dark and blotchy with hate. He shouted accusations about how the horrors of the Reformation and the iniquity of today were all the fault of Pope Alexander’s decadent ways. As when he had faced Titus in Infernal Milan, he seemed larger and more brutal, more like the Gregor I had disliked of old, and less like the wiser brother who had returned from Mars. He thrust his bloody javelin into the cage with great accuracy, stabbing Pope Alexander VI again and again. Intellectually, I realized that the man was already dead, but it was still disconcerting to see my brother attack him thus.
“Perhaps, I should…” Logistilla began moving forward.
Titus blocked her way, his Scottish brogue unusually strong. “No good, Woman. In that state, he won’t even know ye.”
“Psst, Mephisto,” I hissed. “What about the cheer weasel?”
Mephisto shook his head. “No good against a really rip-roaring anger. Just helps with depression. Gregor’s gone bye-bye. He’s flipped out like a ninja.”
We had to keep going. We had no time to waste. We did not dare delay, so close to Father, but nor could we continue without Gregor.
One by one, each of my siblings went forward and tried to reason with Gregor. For the most part, he ignored them in his rage. They shook him, shouted at him or, in Mephisto’s case, tried telling jokes. It was not clear if he even heard them. Once or twice, one or another of them got in his way and he pushed them aside without even looking at them. Logistilla got the worst of it, she went flying backward and slid across the uneven ice on her backside. She sat there, weeping bitterly, until Titus went and picked her up, giving her a big bear hug, which she returned grudgingly.
Finally, everyone had tried except Caliban, Mab, and me. I stood thinking carefully: what did I know about Gregor that might help? There must be something that would snap him out of whatever had overcome him. Ah!
I walked up to where Gregor stood, stabbing and shouting. In a gentle but clear voice, I quoted back to Gregor the words he had said to me the morning after Osae’s attack. “‘You think your present sorrow is solid, like a sphere of diamond encasing your soul. But, the nature of sorrow is closer to that of ice. Ice melts when warmth is applied.’”
Gregor turned his head toward me. His eyes were red with hatred.
I met his gaze. “You said that to me. When I was drowning in sorrow after Osae’s attack, you said that to save me.”
Comprehension returned to Gregor’s face. He turned his head slowly, regarding his surroundings. When he saw the javelin in his hand, he threw it from him.
“No!” Gregor cried, looking at his hands, which were raw from the cold and ice. “But, I had forgiven my enemies! I had overcome my hatred!”
Erasmus leaned over so that he stood nose to nose with Gregor. “If you start bemoaning and carrying on, I’m going to join in, and I have so much more to bemoan than you do!”
“We can’t have that,” Gregor answered hoarsely. He managed a weak attempt at a smile.
“Let’s keep going, folks,” called Mephisto. “It’s not long now. Almost there! Just a little bit longer, and it will all be over. We can all go home, soak our feet, and have a long round with the cheer weasel.”
* * *
OUR periods of silence grew longer, though this made things much more difficult for Cornelius. After Caliban fell and injured his knee, Cornelius was forced to walk again. Without the sound cues he was used to, he became disoriented. He slipped once and slid nearly three yards, scraping his cheek and chin. Finally, Gregor objected. He feared relying on the Staff of Silence was not wholesome. For one thing, it tended to make us sleepy. He urged us, instead, to pray, claiming this kept his mind clear.
A few minutes later, Logistilla complained, “Praying is no good. My thoughts keep drifting back to the many joys of sublimation.”
“Sublimation, as in going directly from a solid to a gaseous state?” Erasmus eyed her quizzically.
Logistilla’s eyes flashed. “Oh go ahead and mock me, you arrogant lout! I bet your impulses are so much nobler.”
Erasmus wisely fell silent.
Gregor eyed me speculatively. “Miranda, can you play a hymn on your flute? An ordinary hymn which will not affect the weather?”
“If she can’t, I can make it so she can!” Erasmus sprang forward and put his hand on Cornelius’s arm. When Cornelius raised his staff, Erasmus unwrapped a short length of the black warding cloth surrounding the Staff of Persuasion and cut it with a pocketknife. Then, he tied the piece around the haft of my flute like a black bow. “This will do it!”
Gregor bowed his head. “Then, in the name of all that’s holy, play!”
Raising my instrument to my lips, I chose a selection of hymns I had learned during the reign of Queen Elizabeth the First. I had played them many times in my life, but always upon mundane flutes, never upon the Staff of Winds. I played them cautiously, so as not to accidentally call up a storm.
The sacred music swelled and flowed over the landscape, sweeping before it all wrathful and inhuman thoughts. My fear vanished, replaced by a calm sense of buoyant well-being. So beautiful was the sound that, for an instant, I felt as if I had been transported back to the black swan and lay listening to the Music of the Spheres, or as if I stood before a choir of a thousand angels as they sang a new world out of the Sea of Chaos.
Around me, peace and hope replaced the tense wariness that had been gripping my family. Logistilla gazed about serenely, Cornelius’s slumped shoulders straightened, and Gregor went so far as to smile grimly. He and Theo shook hands, both claiming they could not recall why they
had become angry. Theo hugged Titus, announcing that he forgave him for the incident on the ridge during the fight with Erasmus. Bursting into song, Mab took off his hat and held it over his heart.
Around us, the prisoners also responded. A minotaur’s bellowing fell silent, as did the screams of three dog-faced women. Several large monstrosities hunkered down, cocking their heads to listen. Even the nephilim seemed moved, a touch of something like unto sorrow touching their coldly perfect faces.
There were few humans in this area besides us, but those that were there ceased their contortions. They stood upright in their cages, as men were meant to stand, listening with calm expressions. One bedraggled yet stalwart man, who had been standing upright already, seemed particularly moved. Despite that the warped bars of his thorny cage had collapsed, constricting about him and inhibiting him from moving, he lifted his voice and joined in, singing the words.
I recognized his voice. I knew it as well as my own.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FOUR
Master of a Full Poor Cell
“Father!”
We broke into a run, all shouting at once. As we neared Father’s cage, those in the front began to slide. Logistilla and Cornelius skittered helplessly across the slick snow. Ulysses tumbled onto his bottom, gliding over the glacier toward an incline to the right of the cage. Mephisto called up Kaa and threw Ulysses the comatose snake’s tail. Grabbing the body of the serpent, Theo pulled Ulysses up the slope. The moment he regained his feet, my brother touched the butt of his staff to the snow; if he slipped again, he could teleport back to that spot. Mephisto sent away the hamadryad.
After that, we proceeded with more caution.
The slickness came from water running over the snow. The glacier here was melting, and there was a smell like springtime in the air. Now that I was no longer playing, I could hear the tinkling of tiny streams and the drip-drip of icicles hanging from Father’s cage, though, perhaps cage was no longer the right word.
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