by Cate Rowan
What lurked in this water that nothing would drink from it, not even plant roots? And as they closed in upon the edge of the river, still the Gatekeeper didn’t slow. Jas looked stoic as usual, but Val had begun to frown.
The Gatekeeper’s high-pitched whistle shattered the silence and echoed through Darius’s head. An answering whistle from the distant shore startled him, and then silence enfolded them once again. They gathered on the shore, and the Gatekeeper stared out over the water.
From far off came the sound of the water’s surface broken by oars. After a while he could see something moving — a gray boat, rowed by another figure in a dark cloak, his back to them, bent over to row. His rowing was eerily steady and efficient, as if he had been crossing this river for millennia.
When the boat was twenty feet from them, the man ceased rowing without looking up, as if he knew the contours of the river so well he had no need to turn and look. The boat glided to the shore and nestled into a small wedge in the shoreline with its prow. The man — the ferryman, Darius supposed — still didn’t turn to see them.
“Get in,” the Gatekeeper said, with a creepy smile that hung in the air like a bitter fog. He flexed his fingers, as if threatening to do to them what he’d done to their blades.
Darius hadn’t been able to think of a plan yet, but maybe whatever that herd was on the other shore could provide a distraction while they made an escape. He sure as Hell didn’t want to get into that water when clearly nothing else would. Nor could he envision escaping during a crossing when he couldn’t even swim.
Unwilling to touch the water, particularly with boots that gaped from broken stitching, Darius gingerly leapt into the prow and moved toward the ferryman to make room for his brothers. Still the ferryman stayed in place, his back to them.
Jasper got in behind, then Val, then the Gatekeeper. The ferryman seemed to know when they were all on board and moved his oars to push against the low river bottom. “They are heavy,” the Ferryman said in a voice as low as distant thunder as he strained to move them.
“That’s because they’re alive,” answered the Gatekeeper.
The Ferryman grunted and shook his head, almost as if wondering at their stupidity.
The boat retreated from the shore, and once it was fully in the water, the ferryman spun it around by rowing with just one oar. Then he dropped the other into the water and they moved steadily toward the far side of the river. Darius watched the shore approach, and again the ferryman seemed to navigate by experience and feel. The oars slid through the water with a steady rhythm as if every trip the boat had taken blended in with every other.
Darius wondered how many times the Ferryman had taken this journey, ferrying souls from one side of the river to the other, to the land of the Dead. And whether any of the other souls might have been in living bodies like theirs.
The boat reached the far shore. Senses on alert, Darius watched Val step past the waiting Gatekeeper and leap to shore, then Jasper. Darius followed and joined them, still wondering what the moving mass at the edges of their sight actually was.
“Welcome to your eternity,” the Ferryman said, still facing away from them toward the previous shore. “There is no return. Once men and women have passed the Seventh Gate as you have just done, they can never leave.”
“N-never?” Val stammered.
Darius felt punched in the gut. “There’s no returning?” Darius turned to the Gatekeeper in alarm. “The river is the seventh gate? I thought we’d passed the seventh already. Val counted —”
“He miscounted,” the Gatekeeper said, and his cold smile split the air again.
Darius had realized escape would be difficult, but he hadn’t lost hope, until now, with the ferryman’s dark words about never being able to leave. A shiver began at the nape of his neck and spread down his spine.
He thought of the sunshine awash over Inanna’s courtyard, the warmth of that sun upon his skin that last time he would ever feel it. He thought of the rhythm of each day as the sun rose from the horizon and set upon it again on the other side of the world.
They would never see the sun again.
Here in Hell, they would live as the dead. They would eat and drink dust. They would remember the Above and never taste it. The grass, the sky, the stars — gone from them forevermore.
Consigned forever to Hell. He and his brothers were thieves, yes, but their own lives had been stolen from them by the goddess of desire and war.
Worst of all, he had failed his brothers.
“Dar,” Jasper said urgently and thumped his arm.
Darius turned to see Jasper staring up the hill. He followed the line of his brother’s gaze and saw that two creatures had broken free of the milling herd and were coming down toward the river. Their outlines were opaque, as if the dim light in this land couldn’t find the edges of what was there. But he shortly realized the creatures were walking on two legs, not four, and were heading directly toward them.
“They come for their own,” the Gatekeeper said. “They sense you.”
It was an utterance that made no sense to Darius — until he remembered that they were in the Land of the Dead.
13
Darius remembered the two of them. Their hands, which they’d used to strike their children. Their faces, both resentful; one easily angered, the other prone to days of acidic sullenness. He’d never thought to see either of them again, but after twenty years, there they were, staring at him through the dust of the Underworld.
He thought he’d distanced himself enough from all they’d done, yet he’d gone straight toward them in Hell.
His father looked older than he remembered; perhaps he’d lived on for more years, once he’d left his wife and three young sons for other women, other pleasures.
Whereas his mother looked the same age she had been when she’d withered away in her bed from bitterness, uncaring what happened to her children.
And even as his parents stood before them, there was no love in their eyes for their children or for each other.
His mother and father stood feet apart, connected in space by some invisible web, but not together. Never together.
Darius recalled dinners at home, his mother with her eyes downcast and her mouth tensed in acrid silence, his father’s expression resolutely blank as he stared past his sons to the mud plaster wall behind them. Sometimes there was a mischievous pinch on his back from toddler Jasper or an ill-timed wail from baby Val in their mother’s slack arms to punctuate the strain. And sometimes he caught the exotic scents of flowers.
It was only years later, in a very different situation, that Darius had realized the scents had been other women’s perfume.
How often had his father strayed? Darius couldn’t remember a time when his parents had been happy together. Both had smiled only rarely. It was as if he and his brothers had grown up with an extra presence, shadowy and mysterious, formed of discontent and blame.
After that, the memories Darius could recall had only his mother in them. His father had left them all, as clearly as a bruise purples the skin. But his father’s absence hadn’t healed the strain in the room; it had sharply deepened it, much like the lines on his mother’s face. She’d gone inward, and left her children to fend for themselves.
Darius had tried to make up the slack. He’d appointed himself the man of the house, kept his brothers in line, and fed them with scraps from the neighbors when his mother had taken to her bed to stare at the ceiling.
Some days, his aunt had fed the children . . . but when her new husband objected, she left them alone. Darius had taken to begging and petty thievery to ensure Jas and Val’s hunger could be staunched each day.
He’d learned by watching others, joined the shadowy world of miscreants, and brought Jasper into it behind him when their mother had slipped into an uncaring, unfeeling stupor. Brought Val into it after she’d died there in the bed, because the web of thieves was the closest thing he’d known to shelter and a clan.
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br /> Though even then, he’d known never to trust anyone but Jas and Val. His parents had taught him that harsh lesson with everything they had done — or not done — for their children. And he’d taught it to Jas and Val.
And now, dead, their mother and father stood before them, gray and silent, in the Underworld.
Not much had changed.
Darius flicked a glance at Jas, who looked only puzzled, and then at Val, who shared Jas’s confusion. “Do you recognize them?”
“They look like you,” Jas said.
“And you,” Darius replied. “And Val. But you were young then, Jas. And Val just a baby.”
Val turned his head toward Darius in surprise, just as Jas blurted out, “That’s Father?”
“And Mother?” Val added.
Their questions were directed at Darius, not at their parents. Something deep within Darius both danced and mourned that it was to him they turned, and not to the silent figures staring at them.
Grief churned and swelled in his soul, thundering into the rage he’d always tried to keep at bay. Twenty years of it.
He took a step toward his father, man to silent shade. “Why?” he bit out. “Why did you leave us?” His teeth snapped at the end of “us” as if to sever any connection his father had once had with him and his brothers. “You had three sons, three children. “ Three, always three. “You brought us into this world and then you abandoned us. One day you were just gone, as if we didn’t even matter.” And then unvoiced and resonating in the silence, the question he didn’t dare ask: We three, did we drive you away?
His father, gray skin, gray tunic, gray expression, only shrugged.
“And you?” he asked his mother, raising a finger in accusation. “You cared so little for us that you left us to starve while you went inward, so absorbed in your own misery. I had to beg on the streets to feed my brothers, to fill their bellies. And then I had to steal when no one would help us. Your own sister sent us away so her husband wouldn’t rage about more mouths to feed. You ignored us and left me — at age eight! — to take charge when you abandoned us. All so you could stare at nothing and do nothing.” We three, did you hate us that much?
She stood, her countenance unchanging, unfazed by his charges or the fact that her three sons stood before her in Hell. Her demeanor in death was much like her demeanor in life — distant, indifferent, detached. She was no source of comfort for three grown sons, nor for the children they had once been.
The wound inside him ached and raged, much like the bruises and cuts from the beatings they’d given him as a boy. Their parents were selfishness personified. How could they do that to his baby brothers? How could they do it to him?
Darius knew only that he hurt, and that here at last were the sources of his pain — just as callous to their children now as they’d ever been twenty years before. Nothing had changed . . . except that their sons had grown up without either of them. Nothing had changed . . . except their eldest was a man now, and he’d been forced far too early into adulthood to compensate for their failures. Nothing had changed . . . except that now Darius knew how to fight and kill — lessons learned the hard way, in a hard world.
Darius charged the remaining steps forward and crashed his right fist into his despicable father’s cheek.
The impact shot up Darius’s arm, rocking him back like he’d punched a boulder. And then, inexplicably, his father’s body exploded into dust.
Seconds went by, a silence like a dark and incoherent scream.
And then the dust swirled up, gyrated into funnel, and poured itself back into the shape of his father . . . as if nothing had changed. Even his father’s expression was unchanged, as if he hadn’t just detonated upon impact.
As if, once again, nothing Darius or his brothers did could touch him. As if they did not matter. Had never mattered.
Darius’s chest heaved in a spasm of pain, and a moan he didn’t recognize escaped his mouth. In the dreary gloom of Hell, he dropped to his knees in the gray land of hopelessness and bowed his head.
Footsteps came up behind him, and then a hand rested on his shoulder. “Dar,” Jasper said quietly. “It’s okay. We survived. Despite them. Because of you.”
More footsteps. Val crouched down and put a hand on Darius’s other shoulder. “You took care of us when they didn’t. Don’t let them get to you. Don’t let them hurt you now, too.”
Darius shook his head, wanting to deny the pain, but of course it was there, deep and remorseless.
“It seems,” drawled the Gatekeeper, “that you have some unfinished business here. That’s too bad. Nothing’s ever solved in the land of the Dead. Now it’s time for you to go before the Queen.”
Darius eyed the man, rage and pain still seething inside him, and his fingers twitched.
But he picked himself up from the ever-present dust of despair and moved determinedly up the hill to meet his fate.
14
Valerian acknowledged, if only to himself, that their climb up the outside stairs of the shadowy and repressive Palace Ganzer was more than a little unsettling — especially when each footstep echoed against the stone walls like a death knell. Who would ever have guessed that a street rat like him and his brothers would set foot in any royal palace, much less a goddess’s? Come to think of it, the palaces of two goddesses, and in a single day, no less. Bravado had always been his natural response, so he started to whistle.
He stopped himself after a baleful glance from the Gatekeeper.
They climbed five sets of stairs under the murky sky, each ending at an empty landing where two fearsome masked warriors guarded a closed door. After a sixth set of stairs, he and his brothers reached the immense and open-roofed top level of Ganzer.
Where another palace might have a garden — he had glimpsed such greenery sometimes, through chinks in a mud-brick wall or from a hill above a wealthy town — atop Ganzer there lay nothing but a smooth and empty expanse, as if nothing would grow here just as nothing had along the river.
Val’s gaze was immediately drawn across the stone floor to an obsidian throne under a dark bower. There he spied a presence that unnerved and fascinated him even more than Inanna had. Upon sighting Ereshkigal, Queen of the Underworld, Valerian was deeply tempted to see if he could sleep with both goddess sisters.
One down, one to go.
The first had been . . . well, divine. A spectacular beauty. Magnificent.
Her sister was every bit Inanna’s equal — eyes like lapis below hair like midnight turned to silk, skin like camel’s milk, with a figure of such exquisite curves as to make a man’s blood ignite.
Taking Ereshkigal to bed certainly felt like a desirable life goal.
However, life was the issue at hand, and his might end up being very short if he attempted to seduce her. Far too short, really, for a stint in her bed. Not to mention that he would probably have to stop his knees from quaking before making any attempt at it.
Thirdly (ahh, his brother Darius was so fond of threes and problems), there was the rather intimidating figure of Ereshkigal’s consort — who, as Neti pointed out with a whisper and an eerie smile, was Nirgal, the horned God of Plague, Pestilence, and Death.
As Ereshkigal sat tall upon on her throne on the dais, Nirgal stood in silence to the side — glowering, seven feet tall, and ever watchful. Most likely not, Val thought after deep consideration, a particularly good man to cross. (Man? God? Creature? Demon? Any of the above, really.)
So it was with deepest regret that Valerian relinquished the goal of sleeping with two goddesses.
He decided, more prudently, that his next goal should be to simply survive the next few minutes.
This was bad, Jasper thought as they approached the throne of the Queen. So bad that it could all end here in the Underworld, either quickly with a snap of Queen Ereshkigal’s exquisite fingers or in an eternity of pain and torture at her whim. Which might the Queen of Hell prefer?
Beautiful she was — he could see the sp
arkle in Val’s eye from here — but a forlornness marked her features. Even so, he found them somehow more honest than Inanna’s.
That was difficult for him to admit, even to himself. Last night — after Inanna had come to his room — he couldn’t have admitted it at all. Distance had helped, and so had the fact that she’d sent him and his brothers into Hell unawares. Being betrayed had a way of souring you.
And what were they going to say now to Ereshkigal? Your sister sent us to kill or capture you; we’re not sure which. But we didn’t realize it at the time, so this is all a big mistake, and could you just let us go now?
“My Queen,” the Gatekeeper said with a bow as they approached the throne, “Here are the three live souls who breached the walls between the Underworld and Out There. I sensed and destroyed their weapons. Their souls are yours.”
Jasper didn’t like that at all.
The Queen eyed them coolly, sizing them up, and he felt as if she’d read their lives. He felt the weight of the dark sky above and the weight of her gaze, and wondered why he hadn’t yet been crushed beneath either of them.
At last she spoke. “There are seven gates around the Underworld. You neither presented yourselves at the gates nor went through them, as would be proper. Gates have a purpose, after all.” Acid laced her words. “Instead, my Gatekeeper found you past all but the last gate. Why? Your behavior is that of miscreants and thieves, not of intended guests.”
We are thieves, Jasper admitted only in his head. As usual, as he’d always done, he waited for Darius to speak first.
“Queen Ereshkigal,” Darius said carefully, “we were told to enter this way, and given the means.”
One of her regal brows rose. “Who told you to, and by what means?”
Darius turned to Val and gave a slight nod. Val swung his pack from his shoulders and pulled the folded rug out of it. He spread it on the stone floor. After flying through a windstorm, hurtling through a lifeless forest of trees, and having Darius yank off a tassel, it was significantly bedraggled. Jasper could understand the skepticism in the Queen’s eyes as she looked upon his baby brother.