by Cate Rowan
“Trying to turn, damn it! Not as easy as it looks.”
“Tell me about it,” Val groused.
“Yeah?” Darius said. “Well at least you didn’t have to steer backwards!”
“Don’t brag,” Val shot back. “You wouldn’t have to if you hadn’t broken the front steering.”
Jasper realized that not only was the carpet righted at last, but it was now going in reverse. Unfortunately, they were still descending. Quickly. “Why are we still going down? And what happened to the lamplight?”
“I can’t get the carpet to stay level,” Darius said. “But we’re not speeding into the eye of the storm. Small mercies. And I’ve only got two damn hands; the light will have to wait.”
Jasper peered below. The landscape was gray, as if under a dark shadow. They were landing near one of the gates — and a grove of long-dead trees. “Shit, that’s going to hurt.”
“Not if I can help it,” Darius said, and pulled harder on one of the tassels. Jasper winced, waiting for it to tear off again. But it didn’t, and they swerved. A branch jabbed his behind; he yelped and swore. Another swerve and they made it past the remaining trees, which looked as desolate as ancient ghosts. Twelve feet to the ground . . . Six . . . They skidded to a stop, half on a boulder. The carpet caught on a projection of rock and all three of them tumbled from the carpet onto the parched, gray earth.
Lying on his back and panting, Jasper looked up at the dark sky above him and thanked all that was holy he could still see it. See anything. After all, a tree branch could have poked his eyes out, not just punctured his ass. “You two okay?”
“Mostly,” Darius groaned from his right. “Probably nothing a soak in a hot bath wouldn’t fix. Like that’s going to happen anytime soon. Val?”
“I’m here,” Val mumbled from the left. “Give me a moment to collect all my bones, would you?”
Jasper sat up and looked over at him. “Are you really okay?”
Val rolled over. “Yeah, just a little worse for wear. You?”
“I’m alive.” Jasper stood up, giving only a small groan. “Which is better than I thought we’d be when we headed into that.” He looked over at the rug, hanging sadly off the boulder. A foot-long tear displayed the granite beneath.
Jasper pressed his hand to the wound in his backside. Through a rip in his tunic, he felt his skin. His finger came away bleeding, but it felt more superficial than life-threatening. “If that branch had been two inches to the left, I’d have a new asshole.”
“Sorry,” Darius sighed. “Let’s take a look.”
Jasper clapped his hand over his butt. “Thanks, but I’ll survive. No need for Mother to check the ouchie.”
Darius rolled his eyes and walked over to Val. “Want a hand up?”
“Yes, please,” Val said. “If I can find my hand.” But he raised it and got pulled up to standing position. Then he brushed some of the dust off his tunic and looked down at the boulder. “So much for my rug.”
Jasper glanced down and spotted his mirror fractured into three chunks. Shit. “And my mirror.” Its loss hurt more than he cared to admit, so he wrapped his usual demeanor of indifference around him as a shield. “Guess it could be worse.”
Darius picked the lamp off the ground. “It’s a bit dinged up, and the light’s gone out.” He looked up at the ominous sky. “Too bad, looks like we might need it here.”
“Yeah, here,” Jasper said. “Where do you think here is?” He turned to the towering gate beside them, easily thirty feet high. And based on the curvature of the wall, they were within the wall rather than outside. “We’re on the wrong damn side of that, aren’t we?”
“Looks like it.” Darius looked grim again. “I wonder how many we passed.”
“Even one is too many, if that’s one of the seven gates to Hell.”
Val stood, hands on hips, surveying the formidable gate and wall. “Funny there’s no gatekeeper, isn’t it?”
“I doubt they’d be expecting an aerial assault,” Jasper said dryly.
Darius snorted and spoke in his most sarcastic tone. “Yeah, what idiots want to go to Hell?”
“Ones who might have been, just barely,” Val said, waving his finger in the air, “wrapped around a woman’s finger. So that’s the last time I let one seduce me for her own gain.”
Darius leaned back to make room for his guffaw. “Sure, like you’ll ever stop bedding everything that moves.”
“What about you?” Val said. “Last time I checked, you bedded her, too.”
“Bedded, not bonded,” Darius said. “Every time she was around, you looked like her puppy dog, just yearning for a glance and a morsel of affection.” He looked over at Jasper. “You too.”
Jasper shrugged. “She was pretty.”
“Pretty?” Val said, and swung around. “She was gorgeous. Better than anyone you’ve touched in your life. Or any previous lives.”
Jasper smirked and turned to Darius. “What was it he just said? That’s the last time I let a woman . . .” and he mimicked Val perfectly.
“Oh, shut it,” Val said with a scowl, then sighed. “All right, maybe I am susceptible to beautiful women. Fortunately,” and he gave a cheeky smile, “women are susceptible to me, too.”
Val was right, so Jasper merely rolled his eyes.
Darius was staring at the gate. “Since there’s no gatekeeper to stop us from going back through the gate, let’s do it and leave Hell as fast as possible. I want a nice, safe tavern and a beer.”
Val, mournfully now, looked down at the torn rug. “I can’t just leave this here. It was wonderful while it lasted.” He proceeded to roll it up.
“You’re taking it back with you?” Jasper said, surprised, though he knew his baby brother had a sentimental side. “It’s broken, Val. Couldn’t even keep us in the air with Darius steering the back tassels.”
“I know. Just feels like it deserves a proper funeral or something.”
“You gonna build a pyre and give it full funeral rights?” Jasper said as he collected the mirror chunks and brushed dust off them.
“Maybe. What are you going to do with those mirror bits?”
Jasper blinked, and then sighed. “Keep them, for now. I hate it when you’re right.” He slipped the three chunks back into the bronze frame, though there was still a little piece missing.
“Too bad I’m always right.”
Jasper picked up a pebble and threw it at Val just hard enough to elicit an “Ow!” Smiling now, Jasper tucked the mirror gently into his pack. Darius was staring at the non-functioning lamp in his hand.
“You too?” Jasper asked as his gaze skimmed the ground. He couldn’t spot the missing mirror fragment anywhere.
“Me three,” Darius replied. And then grimaced. “Speaking of threes, our transportation decided to have a mind of its own, and then it died on us. Problems come in threes, brothers, just like us. So what’s next?”
Jasper had heard Darius’s hypothesis about problems many times, and he wasn’t sure Dar was wrong. “Let’s get to the other side of the gate and worry about that if it comes.”
“Too late for that, gentleman,” came a deep voice.
Startled, Jasper turned to see a man dressed in a tunic as gray as soot standing by the gate. A baldric crossed his chest, the emblem of an office, and a sizable bejeweled sword hung from a scabbard at his side. “Who are you?”
“I am Neti, the Gatekeeper of the Underworld. Welcome to it. My mistress wants a word with you.”
His mistress — the Queen of Hell.
Once more, Jasper’s balls shrank into his body.
12
It had always been Darius’s job to keep his little brothers out of trouble, whether from watchmen and sentries or from anyone older, meaner, and with a bone to pick.
Ereshkigal was a goddess, so she was certainly older.
If he was remembering the stories correctly, she’d once killed her own sister, Inanna, and hung her body from a hook for three days — so he was pr
etty sure she was meaner.
And given that they had just literally fallen into her kingdom — invaded it, essentially, on behalf of that very sister — he was pretty sure the Queen of Hell would have a very large and very sharp bone to pick with them.
And would possibly use that sharp bone to carve them up until they were as dead as the rest of her charges here in Hell.
They were, in a word, screwed.
He took a few steps toward the Gatekeeper, taking the lead and making sure that his brothers were several feet behind him. The Gatekeeper held still, thirty feet away at the gate. The man’s skin was nearly as gray as his tunic, just like everything else they could see in the Underworld.
“There’s no doubt,” Darius said, “that we would be honored to meet your mistress,” he said to the Gatekeeper who’d appeared out of nowhere. “But if it’s all the same to you, we weren’t intending to come here, and would prefer to make our exit.”
“Well now, that will be difficult, won’t it? You’ve passed the Gates of Hell.”
Val spoke up. “Ah, but we can just pass them going back the other way, can’t we? We’ll be quiet about it.” He gave a charming smile that may have worked on women, but Darius doubted Hell’s Doorman would be so moved.
Neti merely snorted. “There aren’t many alive who have come in, and none who have entered as you did. That makes your visit . . . intriguing to my mistress.”
Darius tried again. “Surely she has more interesting things to ponder than us.”
Behind him, Val added, somewhat unhelpfully: “We’re boring, really. And just very, very lost. We’ll leave quietly.”
Neti shook his head. “You can’t. Those gates will not open for you. And I’m thinking your way in will not be your way out.” He looked pointedly at the torn and rolled-up rug in Val’s hands.
Darius rubbed the side of his nose. “Ah, is there anything we could do to change your mind?” He made a subtle gesture with the golden lamp that was in his hand. He didn’t want to give it up, but if that bought them their freedom . . .
Neti looked both amused and offended. “You think gold would buy me? What would I do with gold in this place?” He laughed aloud.
Darius blinked at the idea that there was a place gold could not do anyone good.
“And why,” the Gatekeeper continued, “would I ever betray my glorious mistress? She is the night, the dark, the earth, the inevitable.”
So loyalty to Ereshkigal was worth more to the man than riches . . . Though calling him a man seemed a stretch, considering the unnaturally gray tone of his face.
Darius had taught his brothers well, and if they hadn’t lost all their senses during their bedplay with a goddess, they each had a dagger somewhere on their bodies. Three to one would be excellent odds. Darius’s dagger was in a shoulder harness just beneath his tunic, and one little pretend itch and scratch would let him reach it. He reached up to do just that.
And froze in place, fingers inches from the dagger handle. He strained for it, but it was as if his muscles refused to obey.
“I didn’t become the Gatekeeper of the Underworld without having certain abilities,” the man said, ever-so-casually.
Darius couldn’t move his eyes, but was able to see Jasper’s form through his peripheral vision. Jas wasn’t moving, either. And though Val was well out of sight, there was no sound coming from him.
Footsteps approached through the grass, and then a gray hand reached out and felt the leather harness under Darius’s tunic. “Hmm, my mistress won’t appreciate that.” The Gatekeeper reached in through the keyhole neckline to retrieve the dagger, and where the unearthly hand brushed Darius’s neck, his skin went numb.
The shadow passed beyond Darius’s shoulder and he heard footsteps moving toward Jasper. That ignited every protective instinct he had, but he was still frozen in place like a hare under a panther’s gaze. He’d stepped in front of his brothers to protect them, and now the danger was behind him and he couldn’t turn toward it. All he could do was listen as the gray man approached his brothers.
“Ah, another blade.” the Gatekeeper said. No doubt he’d found the dagger concealed on Jasper’s forearm. Then the steps moved behind Darius to the other side, toward Val. Probably toward the dagger Val kept in his boots. “And, of course, a third.”
Three brothers, and problems came in threes. It seemed their third problem today, exiting the Underworld, was to be very large indeed.
Then Darius heard the metal blades tapping against each other, the sort of thing he’d sometimes done with his blades at practice, when he was thinking about where to aim. He was all too aware of the sizeable target his back, or those of his brothers, might make to the Gatekeeper.
“Nice daggers,” the Gatekeeper said. “Too bad my mistress doesn’t allow knives in her court.”
Behind him, he heard the thwip of blades sinking into something, and his heart tumbled. The noise had sounded like it had come from daggers diving into the gray dirt, but how could he tell? What if they’d gone into Val or Jas’s flesh? What if his brothers were hurt, bleeding? Dying?
We’re already in the Underworld, came a dark voice inside him. Did you really think any of us would escape? And what good is being alive in Hell?
Darius imagined punching that voice raw and bloody until it whimpered. But the imagined violence was a poor substitute for the real thing, and the voice was his own. He’d failed his brothers and deserved the pummeling.
Quiet footsteps crossed the dirt again, this time toward him.
The man’s weathered face came into his peripheral vision, but he could no more focus on it than move his hand.
“Eldest, are you?” the Gatekeeper said, musing. “Yes, you’ve made a grave mistake coming here.” His dark cloak seemed to shake as if the man — sorcerer? demon? — was laughing. “Grave indeed. As my mistress will soon prove.”
Darius’s shoulder blades were frozen in place, but that didn’t stop ice from sliding between them.
“It is time for you to meet Her,” the Gatekeeper said.
Darius’s invisible bonds instantly disappeared; because he’d been straining against them, he nearly fell. Stumbling, he whirled around and saw his brothers straightening and glancing at each other, and at him. Neither had blood upon them. Darius’s heart eased a notch. “You’re safe?” he blurted out.
“As much as we can be in Hell, brother.” Val sounded (damn him all to, well, Hell) almost cheerful.
Jasper merely nodded.
Darius turned to the Gatekeeper. “What did you do with our blades?”
Jasper turned to Darius and spoke instead. “He tossed them into the ground. They melted into smoke.” His voice was nonchalant, his gaze steely. Jas had stolen his blade from a nobleman who’d pinched the shapely rear of a shy, young tavern-girl as she’d bent to clean the floor. Jas had figured such men didn’t deserve weaponry like that well-balanced blade. His reasoning and theft had made Darius proud.
“Time to march,” the Gatekeeper said, and jerked his chin in the direction they were to go. Away from the gate, toward the goddess of Hell.
Jas and Val looked to Darius. They could have overcome a normal foe in seconds, or ten of them given just a bit longer. But a magical being who could freeze their bodies and destroy their weapons at will was not a normal foe.
Darius gave a slight nod, and they all began walking in the direction the Gatekeeper had indicated. They’d think of something. He hoped.
They found themselves on a dusty road from the gate toward the dark interior. They passed the grove of dead trees that had doomed the flying carpet and then crested a dry hill, much like the rest of the land he could see. This land looked never to have been touched by water. Or life.
And then he spotted the river.
It snaked across the plain below like a giant boa constrictor after a meal — bloated and sluggish, dull in the dreary gray light. He wondered if they’d have to cross it, and what might be lurking in the water. He hoped for
a boat because he wasn’t overly fond of swimming. Growing up as an orphaned urchin hadn’t offered a lot of opportunity to learn how, and as a grown man, pride didn’t allow a do-over.
Could a living man die in Hell? Most men died before they got here.
Something — many somethings, it looked like — moved along the river’s far side. Gray as the dust beneath them and the light around them, he couldn’t tell their form or shape, only that there were many of them, something like a great herd of cattle on the move. And they weren’t drinking the river water. Neither did any plants grow along the river’s shore, unlike any waterway he’d ever seen before.
What was in that water? He shivered, dreading that they would find out.
But the river and the throng of denizens on its far shore slid from Darius’s mind as he spotted something far more worrying across a bend in the river: a palace as imposing as anything he’d ever seen.
He had known that Ina’s palace, shining in the sun, was full of magic, and therefore dangerous even as it was pretty and graceful. This palace by the river, however, was the opposite: a massive ziggurat, heavy and brooding as the terraces of each floor narrowed and climbed darkly into the sky. Dreary solitude spread from it, touching him even across the distance. And he sensed it was every bit as dangerous as Ina’s, for all the differences in lines and form.
Beside him, Val slowed to a stop. “Is that . . .” he began, but seemed to run out of words.
The Gatekeeper nodded. “The Palace Ganzer.” Then he prodded them with a look and a grunt from under his hood.
Down the hill they trudged, dust rising with every step. He and his brothers kept silent. He pondered how to escape the Gatekeeper, but was more than a little concerned that the power Neti had of turning blades to smoke could be used on their flesh. Hopefully something else would present itself.
As they approached the near shore, Darius again wondered at the lack of marsh reeds or plant life, and at the hush that wound itself through every moment. There were no birds or animals living out their lives along the water. Only dust, and silence. Whatever it was that lurked in a herd on the other shore, still far off, was no more visible now than it had been from the hill above. The herd swirled in the crepuscular light, and the sight of it left centipede tracks down Darius’s neck.