“Actually, Logistilla,” I interjected, “you are one of the people I need, you and Ulysses.”
Ulysses sighed, resting his forehead against his staff. “Frankly, I’d rather not go. In fact, given my druthers, I’d prefer to run away entirely. However, I’ve been a coward for a long time now. None of this would have happened, were it not for my foolhardiness. If Father and Erasmus can make such great sacrifices, I can, at least, lend a hand.”
“Good!” I picked up my bag and slung it over my shoulder. “Mab will probably want to come, too.”
Mab dusted off his hat and slid his hand into his pocket, checking his lead pipe. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world, Ma’am.”
“Mutiny! From my own family!” Father exclaimed, but his eyes were shining with pride. “If you must go, Miranda, God go with thee! But, before you depart, take a moment to discuss your plan with Caliban’s club.”
“I already know, and I have anticipated your question.” The voice spoke from the club. “Here is what we shall do…”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SEVEN
The Queen of Air and Darkness
My hands bound behind me, I stumbled across the ice. To my left, Logistilla, Ulysses, and Caliban walked casually. To my right strode my uncle Antonio. His bearers and the rest of the procession surrounded us with their raucous, off-key music.
Somewhere within their midst, Mab lurked, trying to pass himself off as one of the dead.
“A wise decision, bringing your prisoner to me,” my uncle addressed my siblings. “Lilith will make certain your master, Abaddon, knows of your loyalty.”
“It was a natural choice,” Ulysses replied airily, twirling his staff like a baton. Beside him walked Caliban. He had my flute resting on his shoulder next to his club. Despite the cold, he had shed his shirt and hunched his shoulders, deliberately transforming himself into the Caliban of old, a mindless brute. “While it’s true we never met, we are family. Besides, who else could help forward our interests down here?”
“True.” Uncle Antonio nodded. “And there may be things you can do for me, as well. We will talk after the event.”
“We will look forward to it,” Logistilla replied in her huskiest voice. She lowered her lashes and gave Antonio a come-hither smile. To my disgust, he did, or rather he gestured for her to walk on his far side, where she put her arm through his, the material of her enchanted blue gown allowing them to touch. “Miranda has been nothing but a pain in the unmentionable her whole life. I for one shall rejoice to be rid of her!”
“My feelings exactly. How lucky that we find ourselves with a meeting of minds.” Antonio inclined his head so that his lips drew close to Logistilla who blushed prettily.
I wiggled my wrists surreptitiously, making certain that Mephisto’s handcuffs had not mysteriously tightened, but all was well. There was still room to slip my hands free. So far, everything was going according to plan. I just hoped that my siblings did not get so caught up in playing their roles that they forgot our real purpose!
* * *
WE arrived back at the cage where Father had been held. Stands of seats had been erected on three sides. Glancing about, I felt like a star attraction in the Circus Maximus. Here to watch the spectacle of my brother Erasmus’s demise were hordes of demons, demi-goblins, lilim, imps, ouphe, incubi, evil peri and cacodemons, all hooting and beating their leathery wings. Torturers in their brown robes, with their mist-gray sickles, stood to either side of Erasmus’s twisted thorn-cage. The Torturers gave off a strange odor, musty yet sickly sweet.
Within the cage, my brother screamed. He must have been screaming for some time, for his voice was hoarse. Blood ran out of his eyes, blood ran down his face, blood ran from his arms and chest. Seeing him thus, I realized Father must have had supernatural help protecting him from the worst of the thorns, else he would not have been able to talk with us so calmly.
Erasmus, however, had no such help.
Above him and slightly to the right, the beautiful and deadly Queen of Air and Darkness hovered above the stadium that overflowed with her hordes. She rode in her black chariot pulled by skeletal lions. Long, slender bone spikes stuck out from their heads, indicating their missing manes. Lilith herself was a picture of loveliness, crowned in icicles. Her body was as slender and pretty as a girl of sixteen. Her face still bore the charming pout of youth. Her eyes, however, were ancient and old and terrible. No one could mistake them for the eyes of an innocent child.
“Oh, look! A present!” Lilith clapped her hands with glee. “How considerate, Antonio! You will be well rewarded for this!” She stroked a large gray cat that lay curled upon her lap. “Look, my sweet, a present for you! I’ll let you play with her for a time, before I give her to the Tower. But, you must promise to be bad with her!”
The cat raised its head and glanced down. Its eyes were a reddish-orange, like the coat of an Irish setter. A shudder of revulsion shook my body.
Osae the Red!
Was Seir here, too? And, if so, was there any chance that he would rescue me? Not very likely after the last time with the evil bird-things! Still, it embarrassed me that I had to stop myself from scanning the crowds in search of blood red eyes in a sable face. Seir was not Astreus. Astreus was dead—even if my heart, deceived by the dreams the incubus sent me, wished otherwise.
Only, if I had been right about my father, and his love for my mother, could I perhaps trust my judgment after all? If so, what did I really think about the elf I danced with in a dream? Was he Seir or …
“As for Abaddon’s loyal minions…” Lilith regarded Ulysses and Logistilla and giggled. “Eager to see your brother die, are you? I so look forward to your master’s reaction when he learns your brother Gregor still lives. Perhaps, he will allow me to watch while he makes you eat your own eyeballs.”
Logistilla smiled and waved. Under her breath, she huffed, “He cannot make me do anything! I merely swore to keep secrets!” She sighed. “Though even that cost me dearly.”
Ulysses raised his staff as if he were about to disappear. At the last minute, however, he remembered that to do so would kill Erasmus and so he restrained himself.
A frisson of fear cut through me. We had nearly been abandoned. Without Ulysses, we would never escape alive. In retrospect, the choice of Logistilla and Ulysses as companions for this mission seemed like a bad idea. Yet, without them we had no chance at all. Was I throwing my life away attempting to save, of all people, Erasmus?
“And Mab!” Lilith laughed. “How polite of you to come all the way to me. Now, I will not need to call you to Mommur when the time comes to pay the next tithe!”
The dead Milanese parted around Mab, who shook his fist at the flying chariot. “I’m not afraid of you. You murderess!”
“You should be,” replied the Queen of Air and Darkness.
Turning to the Torturers, she pointed at me. “Bind Prospero’s brat! Put her where she can watch our prisoner as he gasps out his last breath!”
One of the brown-robed Torturers glided forward with the noise of many feet tapping against the crusted snow. The musty-sweet odor was overwhelming and evoked memories of my brief dream-stay in the Tower of Pain. Panicking, I bolted, only to be stopped by Antonio, who caught me, either because he could touch my gown or because I was upset enough to be solid to his touch.
He was not strong enough to hold me, but with the help of his bearers, they kept me from fleeing until the Torturers arrived, though two of the bearers cried out, burned by my emerald wings.
The Torturer seized me with many crablike claws that closed around my upper arms like vises, causing numbness. I twisted my shoulders, but my wings did not faze the Torturer. It did not matter now that my handcuffs did not actually bind me; I was trapped.
“Crikey Moses! This is not good!” whispered Ulysses. Logistilla and Caliban looked alarmed as well, so much so that I feared they would betray themselves. Mab’s hand stole into his pocket where he kept his lead pipe, and he eyed
the Torturer carefully, but there was no way for him to get near me undetected.
Instead, Mab stomped forward and threw down his hat. “Queen Maeve … why? Lesser spirits admired you. We looked up to you. Why must you do these terrible things?”
“You do not remember Heaven, Mab Boreal,” replied the Queen of Air and Darkness, “but we do. You do not know what it is like. Men have the blessing of the Lethe. It lets them forget God’s glory, so they can live for a time on earth. We demons have no such blessing. We remember Paradise with crystal clarity, as if we were there yesterday. Nor will this memory ever dim or grow distant.
“Can you imagine what it is like?” Lilith continued. “To remember Paradise, and know you are banned from it forever? No, you could not even begin to envision! We long for it. We remember its beauty and its glory. We are reminded of it every day and of all that we have lost. If we can’t have it, then the mortals shan’t either! We shall all suffer together. God wants us to share. We are sharing!”
“Can’t you drink of the Lethe, too?” Mab asked.
“What?” Lilith cried, horrified. “And forget Paradise! Never!” She spread her slender white arms. “See our plight? We cannot forget, and we cannot bear to forget. Instead, we keep Paradise from the rest of you.”
Mab narrowed his eyes, pulling out his notebook and Space Pen. “What exactly do you do?”
Despite the anxiety that ate at me, I could not help being amused at his audacity. Only Mab would pull out his notebook to interrogate the Queen of Air and Darkness. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that Ulysses had taken advantage of the fact that Lilith was distracted to walk over to Erasmus’s cage and casually tap the butt of his staff against the snow next to the least-warped bar.
“What do we do, Little Wind?” Lilith spread her arms wide. “We breed hatred, conflict, and lies. We weaken men’s morals. This current generation has proven especially prone to our influence, so we have made great strides of late.” She bowed to the gathered hordes, who cheered and hooted. “Of course, the Staff of Persuasion has been a great help to us. We’ve used it surreptitiously for years.” She gestured at Logistilla and Ulysses. “Without Cornelius’s knowledge, we used it to increase his sister’s envy, until it goaded her to consent to serve Abaddon. We did even better with his cowardly brother, Ulysses. When he followed the suggestion that brought him to Hell, Abaddon snared him and turned him into a weapon to destroy the Family Prospero, and, in particular, the members of that family who were the greatest threat to our plans: Gregor the Witchhunter who slew our human servants, and Theophrastus the Demonslayer, who sent in all-consuming fire to the agents whom we sent out upon the earth.
“But this is only a little part of our great overall triumphs! While you Prosperos—Solomon’s so vigilant heirs—have been worrying your little heads over the spirit world, we demons have carried off the souls of humanity. In the last century and a half, we have done more for our cause than in all previous centuries combined. We have banished God from the minds of men, from the schools, from the public places. The great cathedrals of Europe are nearly empty. Russia and China have no religion at all. Even the churches of God-fearing America are often half empty.
“No one of us can take all the credit, mind you. Each of us has done our part. Belphagor has made sloth a favorite pastime—couch potatoes are celebrated instead of scolded, and every day there is another wonder that makes it even less necessary to get up from your chair. Asmodeus has sung his siren song until lust is lauded, and chastity despised. Lewdness is celebrated in art, in song, and upon billboards so large that they can be seen miles away. Beelzebub wins on two fronts: those not bloated from their gluttony obsess over faddish diets—neither the obese nor the skinny giving a single thought to the Will or Works of our Unaccursed Enemy. Also the drugs that decimate today’s youth are his doing. Never has Hell had friends as dear as opium and its many, many imitators.
Around me, Logistilla looked unnerved, and Ulysses’s face had an odd green tinge. I wondered what sin of his the Queen of Demons had just taken credit for. As for myself, I felt strangely disoriented, as if a thousand little things that had always seemed innocent and frivolous to me had suddenly snapped together like puzzle pieces to form an extremely disturbing picture.
“She’s exaggerating, right?” Ulysses whispered as Lilith paused momentarily to answer a question put to her by a flying imp. “The demons are not really responsible for all this. Are they? They can’t be that powerful!”
Mab pulled his hat down very far and lowered his head, so that the demon above him could not see his lips. “I don’t know.”
Ulysses blinked owlishly. “But…”
“She’s a demon. Demons lie. Some of it has to be lies or at least blatant exaggeration,” Mab said, but he looked uncomfortable, as if he feared that the demons’ hold on the daylit world might be far more powerful than he had previously supposed.
Lilith finished speaking to the imp and turned back to Mab. “Where was I? Oh yes. Mammon, my servant, rules the markets and the hearts of men, who strive day and night for ever more trinkets and gadgets, each one more useless than the last. Satan himself rages, encased in ice, but his top minions have enflamed love of wrath, until rudeness rules, while politeness is ridiculed. And Lucifer, my great love and hated enemy, has made pride the glory of the known world.
“As for me, I am personally responsible for the weakening of the sacred rite of marriage, something of which I am rightly proud.” She lowered her eyes demurely and gestured gracefully at herself. The crowds of imps, lilim, and demons went wild, hooting and cawing. “Wedding vows mean so little these days that young maidens are encouraged to eschew chastity, and their loss of virtue is met with celebration. When public figures are caught in the very act of adultery, no one even cares. Every type of carnal excess is applauded, and the perpetrators are urged to greater excess. And every day the Swamp of Uncleanness grows larger!
“But the true marvel, the crowning jewel of our achievements, is Abbadon’s work.” Lilith laughed, a noise that sounded pretty at first but then grew raucous and harsh. “Nothing in our Adversary’s kingdom is more sacred than motherly love—personified by the love of the unaccursed Virgin for her precious Son—and yet, Beelzebub has convinced millions of your innocent young would-be mothers that it’s no sin to slaughter their own children.
“Oh, the numbers of souls we’ve pulled in on that one alone! It’s brilliant! Even more cunning than my previous victory, when I convinced all the known, civilized cultures of the ancient Middle East to practice temple prostitution!
“If we cannot go back to Paradise…” Lilith raised her white arms, haranguing the gathered crowds. Her face shone with such glory and sorrow that, for an instant, I felt as if I had been granted a glimpse of what she might have been like, back when she was an angel. “Then we shall make sure no one goes! We shall not lose our place to clay worms or a one-horned mare! We shall destroy mankind’s champion, the Unicorn, and all that she stands for. Rip the Horn of Life from her head and drag everyone into the darkness, where they can squat in the squalor with us.
“After all, once everyone is in Hell,” the Queen of Air and Darkness said, her voice suddenly breaking. “God will have to lower His impossibly high standards and accept us as we are, won’t He?”
There was a pause, a momentary lull, during which the denizens of Hell ceased their eternal yowling and muttering—as if the curtain had been pulled back upon their pretense of pleasure in debauchery, and they felt exposed.
“I say!” Ulysses murmured under his breath. “That’s rather pathetic, really.”
The Queen of Air and Darkness was all seamless beauty again, as if no crack in her wickedness had appeared. She clapped her hands twice. “It is midnight. The time has come for Erasmus Prospero to die! Antonio, unsheathe the ceremonial knife. Here lies your victim!”
Antonio, who had been gazing worshipfully at Lilith, when he was not exchanging sly, flirtatious glances with Logistilla
, looked toward the cage for the first time and started, appalled.
“My Fair Queen,” my uncle called. “What is the meaning of this? Why is my nephew here? Where is my brother whose life you have promised to me?”
Lilith scowled, gesturing at the incoherent Erasmus. “This whelp stole him from us. We will have to make do with him.”
“No!” cried Antonio. “You promised me my brother Lucretius! I feel no ill will toward my nephew. He once did me a good turn!”
“The great magician Lucretius Prospero has escaped us. Fear not, we will capture him again in time, but for the nonce, here lies your victim. Show us the knife!” She raised her hands, and the crowd responded, hooting and roaring.
“I will not!” Antonio declared. “I have no desire to slay Erasmus! I love my nephew!”
“A pity”—Lilith folded her hands and rested her pretty chin upon them—“for I was so hoping not to have to put you back where I found you. But,” she spread her hands, “you are of no use to me now—since your connection to your nephew will do us no more good. Back to the ice for you.”
“No! Wait! This is unfair! Did I not just bring you Miranda, whom you have yearned to have as your prisoner?”
“That is true.…” Lilith tapped upon her cheek with one slender finger. “Very well, I will allow you to stay by my side and serve me, but you must show your devotion to me by slaying your nephew.”
Antonio moaned and grabbed his head dramatically. Slowly, his hand inched toward the hilt of a cruel knife which he wore on his hip.
“Oh, for Heaven’s sake, Uncle!” I declared. “Show some backbone!”
Antonio backhanded me, but I was calmer now. His hand passed through my face. “How dare you talk to me, wench!”
I lifted my chin and said nothing.
“Don’t you understand? If I do nothing, she’ll put me back in the ice!”
Glaring, I continued to say nothing.
Prospero Regained Page 43