Pira felt ice in her bones. “You’re dead! They told me you fell in the king’s last battle!”
“Slain, slain! Killed by a sorcerous lance in the midst of sins of wrath and hatred—and so I am punished, I find myself here. Help me, Pira!”
“Where are you?”
“Here. Down here.” The voice rang with a hollow timbre from low, near the ground. Parting the leaves of the bushes with her sword, Pira sought it out.
And stopped frozen when she found the source. Aleppa had never been fair. Her features were sharp as the weapon she took as nickname. All her days she had scorned the soft life of a courtesan for that of a warrior, and her skill with a blade had made her a trusted fighter in Athon’s own guard. But now the keen face looked up from the ground, for Aleppa was buried to the neck in soft muck. The Star glittered in twin reflections from her lifted eyes. She seemed at first to be bearded; then Pira realized that Aleppa’s chin had sprouted rootlets that sank to feed in the foulness of the marsh, and the woman’s blackened tongue lolled from her open mouth.
Then, looking more closely at the neighboring clumps, Pira could see that they, too, had once been human heads. Now branches sprouted from eyes, ears, and nostrils; and the tongues, plunging out from the mouths, had become swollen, forked roots: and still the plants stirred with half-sentient life.
“They spare no punishment here,” Aleppa said. “Do you yet live?”
“I do.”
“The battle? How went it after my death?”
“Athon’s arms were victorious.”
The warrior-woman barked out a laugh. “Then I’ve cheated you, Hell!” she cackled. “Now do your worst to me; I care not.” The eyes glittered at Pira again. “Water. From the river.” The eyes shifted, pointing. “That way. I thirst, Pira. Fetch me water—one drink only. When my tongue swells, when I am sealed deaf and blind forever, I will think on that one drink and bless you through all eternity.”
Pira offered her canteen. “One drink only, Aleppa.”
“No mortal water!” hissed the head. “That would be worse torment than you know, to taste again the water of our world. Fetch me river water, Pira!”
“Very well.” Pira retreated to the path, marked the way in her mind, and pushed through to the verge of the river, a thick and sluggish tide, black in the light of the Star, now high up in the eastern sky. Pira removed her helmet and dipped it into the stream, then carefully bore the water back along the path.
“Aleppa?” she called as she neared the spot she remembered.
“Here, Pira, here! Bless you, child!”
Pira had turned from the path too far to the right. She pushed through brush, found Aleppa, and knelt, proffering the helmet. The head craned eagerly. “Closer, child. D’ye think I’ll bite?”
Pira leaned closer. With a sound of a tree root being wrenched from the earth, Aleppa’s arms tore free and grabbed for her, even as the horrid mouth gaped, the black tongue writhing—
And Pira was snatched backward, dropping the helmet. Aleppa howled, beat the mushy earth with frustrated fists, as Pira rolled free of the new attacker, bounded to her feet, drew her blade.
“I won’t hurt you,” said the man.
“Who are you?” Pira demanded.
The man frowned. He was young, perhaps Pira’s age, taller than she by half a head. He wore jerkin and trousers of soft brown leather, and the light of the Star showed him handsome in a way, with tousled brown curls and a face that held the transitory beauty of an adolescent on the very edge of manhood. But now the face reflected wariness. “What do you mean?” he said.
“I mean who are you? I seek no aid from demons!”
“I am no demon, Lady. I am a man, mortal as you.”
Aleppa hissed like a snake. Her arms scrabbled in the mud, flung aside the fallen helmet.
The young man stepped back. “Come away from her. She is mad with lust. No; let the helmet go. Give her no other chance.”
Pira followed him back to the path. “What did she want?”
“Your life, I think. See here?” He lifted the leaves of a bush. At the foot—or the head—stretched a human skeleton, its neck now inextricable from the plant that had been a man’s or woman’s soul. The stranger let the leaves go and straightened as they swished back into place. “I think Aleppa—all these things—could hold onto their mortal form a little longer with a draft of blood.”
Blood. The blood-red Star. Pira glanced at it. It was very near to zenith. “I have to go.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“But I don’t know you!”
“Are formal introductions necessary in Hell? Call me Walker, if you wish. I’ve walked far enough.”
“I am Pira. I seek—”
“I know what you seek. I came the same way you did. Come, let us go. The Star is ever moving.” Seeing her still hesitate, Walker added, “Lady, I will not take the treasure from you. It would do me no good. My quest is different from yours. Let us go.”
“I am good with a sword,” she warned.
The young man smiled. “I am good with no weapons at all,” he said as they began to move.
The river crossing was dreadful. The black water would not hold them up to swim, and so they waded, in stench up to their necks, their feet dragging through slimy, pulped mulch, cold, ankle-deep, rotted. When they staggered onto the far bank, Pira almost wept with relief. It would be long before she would feel clean again. Her companion tugged her arm. “Let us go.”
Ahead bulked the forest, low trees curiously bulbous, as though festooned with bladders. The Star, directly overhead now, cast utter shadow beneath the trees. As the travelers neared, Pira saw that the trees bore a kind of fruit, dangling in grape-like clusters, each fruit the size of a man’s head, green, translucent, and faintly aglow. “These are strange,” Walker said.
“Follow the path,” Pira said. “I was warned.”
The trees closed on either side. The glowing fruits did nothing to light the way; rather, they merely indicated the nearness of the trees, and left a black slash that was the path. Walker reached out curiously and prodded one fruit. “It feels as if it’s full of water,” he said.
“Come on.”
Pira was about to take out tinderbox and torch when the trees finally broke ahead, and once again she saw the countryside lit by the Star. “At last. I was beginning to think we’d never—Walker?”
He did not answer. “Walker? I don’t have time to search for you,” she warned.
What she said was true, but nonetheless, she kindled a light and started back along the path. She found him perhaps a hundred paces back, his eyes locked on one of the green globes, tears glistening on his face. “What’s wrong?” she asked. Walker did not answer. Like a seer with her descrying crystal, he was rapt on something he could see in the green light. Alarmed, Pira seized his shoulder. He tried to shrug her aside. Angry, Pira struck at the hanging fruit with her torch. The globe burst, showered a feculent liquid, and sent forth a pungent, choking stench.
At last Walker moved. He blinked at Pira in the torchlight, his eyes still distant. “What is it?” he asked.
“What is it? You were in a trance! What did you see in that—that thing?”
The man slumped and groaned. “Do not ask, Lady!”
“Was it so horrible? Our future perhaps?”
He shook his head. “My present—as it might have been.”
“I don’t understand.”
Walker shook himself. “Every man’s life takes turns he wishes he could unturn. When he sees the difference between what he might have been and what he is—it is a cruel vision. I won’t look again.”
“Come,” Pira said. “The forest ends just ahead.”
They left the trees behind, and in the center of a broad, bowl-shaped vale, Pira saw her goal: The Scarlet Citadel of Satur.
The structure was like no castle she had seen. Half-round, like a ball buried in the earth, the main keep glowed with a ruby light of its own;
and six surrounding towers, dome-topped, shone with a similar but dimmer light. The whole was smooth, showing no trace of window or door. They approached it silently.
“This is no stone I have ever seen,” Walker said, running his hands over the curving surface. “It’s more like metal, yet not as hard somehow.”
Pira reached to feel the surface herself—and her hand slipped through, as if she had tried the texture of mist. She felt strong fingers close upon her wrist, opened her mouth to cry out, and was dragged through the wall.
The cry half-escaped. She found herself standing inside the Citadel, in a huge domed space, her wrist tight in the grip of a tall, smiling man. She blinked at him, then said, “Doesn’t anyone in Hell wear clothes?”
Her captor threw back his head and laughed. He was tall, strong-featured, his skin the same ruby hue as the dome; and his body was pleasant to look upon. “You are delightful,” he told her in a deep voice. “Most of your kind would scream or swoon. I’m glad to find you so spirited.” He dropped her wrist.
Pira rubbed it and looked around. At the center of the huge room was a throne, and before it an altar-like table surmounted by a small jeweled chest. There were no other furnishings. “I seek—” she began.
“I know what you seek, mortal. I wonder if you shall get it.”
“Where is my companion?”
“The man? See him if you wish.”
The walls of the keep shimmered into transparency, and Pira saw Walker, pacing the outer boundary. “Here I am!” she called.
Once more the keep was solid and opaque. “He cannot see or hear you,” the demon told Pira. “This Citadel, you see, is the product of my thought. I can make it solid—for some—or airy—for others—as I wish. It is a matter of concentration.”
“The Heart of Healing,” Pira said. “Is it here?”
“In the box, there,” her captor said, with a negligent gesture toward the altar. “It is mine. I am Satur.”
“I mean to take it with me,” Pira said.
“If I refuse to give it to you?”
Pira drew her sword. Satur smiled at her. “Such fire! I have not been attacked by a mortal wielding a weapon in a thousand years.” He spread his arms. “Try, woman.”
Pira struck quickly, with a thrust that should have skewered him—but her blade passed through him as through air, meeting no resistance, making no mark. The demon laughed again. “It is hard, you see, to slay one of us on his own ground. However, we might discuss—a trade?”
Pira did not sheathe her sword. “What kind of trade?”
Satur’s smile broadened, and he nodded. Something glimmered in the corner of her eye. She chanced a look. A bed had materialized, as plush as the couch of an Oriental king.
“No,” she said.
“Then go, woman. You bore me. Observe, please, that I take nothing by force—but I yield nothing to those who refuse me.”
Pira backed toward the throne. Before she had neared it, she found her way blocked by a smooth, invisible wall. “You’re doing this.”
“Of course I am. What shall it be, woman? A bit of pleasant dalliance, and my full permission to open the chest and remove the Heart of Healing, or shall I merely throw you out? Choose.”
“If I agreed, you would trick me.”
“By the seven rivers of Hell, I swear that you will not be stopped by me from taking the Heart of Healing,” Satur said. “None of us can break that oath.”
With a furious cry, Pira hurled aside her sword. “Come, then!” She tore at her mail coat, loosened it, let it fall; kicked off her sandals; shrugged out of her soft chamois tunic and leggings, pushed off her loin-wrap; and stood naked. “Come, demon! Quickly!”
Satur was priapic already. At first like dry, hot mist, he came against her; then real, solid, he bore her back to the bed, his skin hot against hers, his muscled thigh parting her own legs. He clamped his hands tight on her buttocks. He burned, burned against her; and yet when he entered her, she felt he was made of ice. She cried between clenched teeth, rode with him, and despite herself felt the dizzy upswing of purely physical excitement. Satur had not breathed before, but now he was ever more real and gasped in passion, his breath hot and scented with ginger. He pushed her up, up, up, to the high peak, and she reeled over the edge at last.
“I think,” he whispered against her throat as her heart thudded hard against her ribs, “I think I shall send you back with a special gift.” He kissed each of her closed eyelids once. “Though some might call it a curse.”
Then he was off her. She sat up, blinking. The walls of the Citadel had gone transparent again, and staring in at her, his arms spread as though he were crucified against the wall—
“No!” she cried.
Satur grinned at her. “I thought he might at least have a look.”
“Damn you.”
The demon’s smile broadened. “It’s much too late to damn me, woman. Oh, you think you can cover shame with a few garments? Yes, clothe yourself, that’s right.”
Eyes averted from the stricken gaze of Walker, Pira dressed. “Now, the Heart,” she snarled.
“Take it.”
She walked unobstructed to the altar, opened the jeweled lid of the chest. Inside, large as a man’s fist, glittered a faceted ruby that had to be her object. She reached to lift it—
And her fingers passed through.
Pira spun in rage. Satur held up an admonishing finger. “I am not stopping you.”
“Who is?”
“The jewel itself, I suppose. It’s not of my making, you know; not of this world at all. I made the chest, and its magic is obedient to me. But the jewel—it is from elsewhere. It has a very pure magic.”
“What do you mean?”
“Only a virgin can remove it from its chest,” Satur laughed.
With an inarticulate cry, Pira lifted the chest and hurled it. Satur tried to raise a warding hand—but the chest struck him low in the belly, and he crumpled, howling. The keep shivered around them.
“You can be hurt!” Pira cried. “Hurt by your own creations!” She cast about for another missile, felt the demon grab her, bit furiously at his claws—and found they were Walker’s hands.
“Come on!” the young man shouted. “Before the walls turn solid!”
Satur, his red face gone deep purple, groaned on the floor. Beyond him even the chest faded to near-invisibility. Walker dragged Pira across the room.
“Listen, demon!” she called back. “You wasted your effort! You hear? Our gardener was there long before you. And he—he was better!”
“Come on!” Walker hurled her through walls as thin as the film of a soap bubble.
They fell together. “I grow tired of your pushing me about, Walker,” Pira growled.
“I’ll try not to do it anymore.” Behind them the Citadel had become as substantial as when they had first glimpsed it.
In a dead voice, Pira murmured, “You—saw?”
“And heard, partly.”
She sighed. “Now I’ve killed the king.”
“No.” Walker reached inside his jerkin. “Here.” He held the Heart.
“You—” Pira stammered. “But only a virgin could—you’re a—” she looked at him, and knowledge came into her eyes. “You’re Festo.”
“Am I myself again?”
“You still look—as you did in the marsh. But I see your self now, in your eyes. What happened? How were you transformed?”
The young man got painfully to his feet. “If you mean, how do I come to be different in your sight, I don’t know. The light of the Star, perhaps. To myself, I seem as I have been since childhood, since the day a playmate gave me a little push. We were exploring a parapet, you see—forbidden play. I fell right off when he shoved. I broke my fall, first, with my legs, by hitting a roof. I broke my legs, too. And the roof. From there I tumbled into the courtyard, where I tried to amuse the crowd with a falling handstand. That proved a second mistake. Shattered legs, shattered arms—I was on
ly twelve then. My limbs healed badly and never kept pace with the rest of me after that.” His smile was bitter. “Of course I’m a virgin. What woman could love a twisted fool?”
“I would kiss you, if you would not feel defiled.”
“Not I, my lady.” He looked to the sky. “But our time is very short. Here.” He placed the jewel in her hand, and this time she felt its cold heaviness.
“I can touch it now.”
“I think the spell worked only inside that place. Satur—he doesn’t care now, you see. That, I think is the worst of Hell. If you felt the whole land hated you, bent itself in malice to your destruction, you could bear up. But this malignant indifference—that is the worst torment of Hell.”
They left the Citadel behind. The Star had slipped far down the western sky. It was more than halfway to its rest when they cleared the forest; had moved a handbreadth closer to the horizon as they forded the river; and rested almost on the jagged western rim as they toiled up the hill to the tunnel. But when Lumiel once again was in sight, they had minutes to spare. “We’ll make it,” Pira said, daring finally to hope.
“Halt, travelers,” came Lumiel’s voice as they came within a few paces of her. “Now you must pay the Toll.” She knocked an arrow. “The coin is mortal blood. Who shall pay?”
They were within sight of the cavern. Pira looked at the standing archer. “Lumiel,” she said softly, with great sorrow. “You would not do this. You are as I am.”
“I was once. Now I am a guardian of Hell. Speak, and let the survivor move quickly, for I feel the Star sinking.”
Pira turned to Festo. “Here, take the Heart,” she said in a level voice. “Though I do not know how to loose its magic—”
“It’s simple enough,” the stony voice of Sha’bbat said. “Place the gem on the chest of the sufferer. It will return home when its healing spell has worked itself.
Pira gave no sign of having heard. “Take it to the king,” she told Festo. Turning, she called, “Now, Lumiel!”
“So be it.” The arm pulled smoothly back, tautening the bowstring. An arrow sang, and Pira felt the jolt, fell to her knees, cried out. But she had been struck from behind. Festo slumped over her, an arrow in his chest.
Handsome Devil: Stories of Sin and Seduction Page 7