by Eric Nylund
Fiona turned, the color rising in her cheeks. “We’re done,” she said to Eliot. “This mission to get Jezebel, I’m calling it. We’re down two people. I don’t care if Uncle Kino pounds us flat”-she nodded at the cliff and the lava fields beyond-“there’s no way we’re crossing that.”
“But we haven’t even tried.”
Eliot hated this: him pleading like he was her “little” brother. Like she was in charge of everything all the time. Why couldn’t she just believe in him?
Fiona pulled the rubber band off her wrist. She stretched it into a line, staring at it until it was so slender that it flickered, half invisible. She let go. The stretched band stayed elongated and she held it like a rapier.
She plunged it into the gate.
Bronze sparked and squealed, protesting. Fiona pushed all the way in, grunting from the effort. With both hands, she dragged her edge in a large circle, slicing the metal.
The bronze heated, became molten. . and sealed behind her cut.
Fiona withdrew and stared as the last bit repaired itself. “Huh,” she said.
“You can’t force the Gates of Perdition open,” Mr. Welmann told her. “No one ever has, not even the Titans.”
“We’ll just see about that.” Fiona rummaged in her book bag and took out the silver bracelet Louis had given her. It lengthened and its links swelled to the size of her fist. She narrowed her gaze, focusing. The edges of the rusty metal tapered and sharpened to glistening razors.
She swung it at the gate.
The bronze shrieked and sparks fountained like fireworks. Fiona became a blurry outline against the light.
Eliot had to look away and blink furiously.
The light faded and he looked back.
Fiona stood there, chain in hand. . a slender bracelet once more.
She sighed at this failure and scrutinized the fence on either side of the gate. The bones and concertina wire curved along the edge of the land-and then over-spines and rib bones sticking out from the cliff.
“Wouldn’t try that either,” Mr. Welmann remarked. “Those bones are some of the exposed bits of the World Serpent. Start messing with that. . it might wake up.”61
They’d learned about the world serpent in Miss Westin’s Mythology 101 class. That thing was supposedly strong and venomous enough to kill even gods.
Fiona chewed her lower lip. She turned to Eliot. “I know you think you need to do this,” she whispered, “but it’s crazy. I’m not helping anymore.” She glanced at Amanda. “I’m hoping you’re not going to force us to come along.”
Eliot couldn’t look her in the eye.
How could she even think that? Sure, he may have not told them the entire truth to get them to come. . but he wasn’t going to make any of them risk their lives.
“You know what I’m asking you to do,” she murmured.
“Yeah,” Eliot said. “I know. I’ll do it.”
He wasn’t sure what hurt more: Fiona’s accusation. . or the fact that she was abandoning him when he needed her the most.
He unslung Lady Dawn and stepped toward the gate.
How to charm open something that looked like it could withstand a nuclear blast? Not with head-on force. The gate had shrugged off Fiona’s attempt.
This required subtlety.
Eliot strummed Lady Dawn and picked out the notes of the “Mortal’s Coil” nursery rhyme. He let the notes wander as he found his way to a new tune: a precise clockwork song with a metronome steady heartbeat. This was the song of the gate. Eliot heard the echo of the song in the gears and cogs, the wound springs, in every rivet and bolt. He picked his way over the notes, and felt blocks and tumblers-and with the tiniest of flourishes, he tickled one of those tumblers into place.
He smiled. This would be easier than he thought.
The gate, however, vibrated of its own accord-the barest rumble that flipped the tumbler back into place.
“It’s fighting me,” he whispered to Fiona.
“Then play harder-or faster-or louder,” she said. “Whatever it takes.”
Robert walked back from the edge of the cliff, his face drawn tight with worry. “Eliot, I wouldn’t play any louder, if I were you. Look.”
Eliot stopped playing. He put on his glasses and then he, Fiona, Mr. Welmann, and Amanda followed Robert back the edge.
The cliff dropped a mile straight down. Switchbacks started from the top and descended into smog. Rivers of lava snaked around mesas of black basalt-their bases eroded by the molten stone. Meteors streaked across the sky, so did the occasional on-fire, out-of-control airline jet.
Eliot winced as one plane crashed and burst into a fireball.
He’d gotten a glimpse of the Blasted Lands at the beginning of the school year. It’d scared him then. . still did. But something was different.
Fiona said, “It’s quieter.”
Eliot knew there were damned souls here-dozens had rushed the gate and tried to escape last time-but Eliot hadn’t expected to see thousands of them down there. . and all of them quiet.
They formed lines that stretched to the horizon. Each person carried a large stone that, when they got to the end of the line, they dropped into the lava below. . and then went back for more. The stones disappeared in flame, but elsewhere, they’d actually started to pile up, making jumbled shorelines, and in some places damming the lava altogether.
“What are they doing?” Eliot whispered.
Mr. Welmann wiped the sweat off his face with a red handkerchief. “Something, that’s for sure. Since Beelzebub died, the Blasted Lands were taken over by a new Infernal boss. Looks like he’s put everyone to work.”
Eliot remembered with Louis had told him: “We are monarchs of the domains of Hell, the benevolent kings and queens over the countless souls who are drawn there to worship us.”
But not everything was different under the new management. In some areas, people fought one another, full-scale wars waged atop a few mesas, the losers tossed over the side into the fire.
“You see them now?” Robert asked Eliot. “The crazy ones? I don’t think we want them hearing you playing and coming up here.”
Eliot imagined tens of thousands rushing the gates. . and him and the others fighting, trapped with their backs against the wall.
He turned to Amanda, worried she might freak out.
But she wasn’t; instead, she stared with open fascination at the lakes of lava and burning mountains. She took a step closer-and Eliot set a hand on her arm, pulling her back from the edge.
“Hey,” he told her.
She blinked, breaking whatever weird trance she’d fallen into, and nodded at him. Amanda’s eyes, though, still glimmered as if they’d absorbed the heat of this place.
Mr. Welmann dug into the pack that Aunt Dallas had given them. He took out a pair of binoculars and gazed through them. “Hmm.” He handed them to Eliot and pointed between two mesas.
Eliot squinted into the binoculars, his gaze traveling over jagged obsidian, and smoldering fissures, and then saw what Mr. Welmann had: A simple suspension bridge swayed across the chasm. It was made of rusted cables and black metal. . an arc a half-mile long that swung in the heat.
It looked amazingly untrustworthy.
He moved his view left and right, and spotted more of these bridges. They linked one mesa to another, and then to fields beyond the lava. The Blasted Lands leveled out there into plains of ash.
Eliot then spotted a fine straight black line-no, two parallel lines-that ran over the plain and vanished in the distance.
“The Night Train’s railroad tracks.” Eliot handed the binoculars to Fiona. “That’s how we’ll get out. We can use those bridges to cross, and then follow the tracks right into the Poppy Lands.”
She looked and snorted and said, “The Poppy Lands are not the way out.”
“They’re our only way now,” Eliot said. “I’ve been on those tracks. Nothing touches them-not people, flaming meteors, falling planes-even the ash stays off them. They�
��re protected somehow.”
Mr. Welmann nodded, believing him. The others, though, looked unconvinced.
“And they run straight to the Poppy Lands,” he said. “Even if you don’t want to help me with Jezebel, there’s a station house there with a private train. I’m sure it’ll take you guys back.”
“You’re sure, huh?” Fiona crossed her arms. “More likely we’ll have to steal it.”
“You have a better idea?”
She looked back at the shut Gates of Perdition and pursed her lips. “No. . I don’t.” She thought for a moment, and then asked, “Can you play a few notes and clean up the air like you did in the gym match? We don’t want to choke along the way.”
Eliot nodded. He took a deep breath and plucked a few Spanish flamenco notes on Lady Dawn, imagining a coastal breeze. The temperature dropped twenty degrees, and the air sweetened.
“Then okay,” Fiona told him. “We’ll give it a try. Robert, take point. Eliot after him-Amanda and me. Mr. Welmann, bring up the rear, please.”
She was using her “team leader” commanding voice that was really getting on Eliot’s nerves.
Robert must have felt the same way, because he hesitated and looked like he wanted to give Fiona his own version of vocabulary insult. Eliot gave him a slight nod. Robert nodded back and headed down the switchbacks.
Fiona pulled Eliot aside. “We’ll catch up in a second,” she told Mr. Welmann and Amanda.
She whispered to Eliot, “Are you sure about this? I mean, I’m your sister. . I’ve got to help you, no matter what.” She looked extremely awkward saying this. “I think I know what Jezebel means you. . but it’s not just you and me at risk. Robert, he can take care of himself. And Mr. Welmann, well, he’s already dead, but if his soul gets trapped in Hell. .” She hesitated and swallowed. “But Amanda. . I wish I could leave her somewhere safe. She has no idea what she’s gotten into.”
Eliot understood her frustration. Fiona was taking all the responsibility for this onto her shoulders-like she really was captain and this was another match. The responsibility must be driving her crazy.
“This isn’t turning out like I thought,” Eliot told her. “But it’s still my plan-not yours. Whatever happens out there, I know you’re doing your best to protect everyone, but it’s my responsibility, and my fault, if anything goes wrong.”
She stared at him, confused, as if it were an alien concept that Eliot could take leadership and responsibility for something, but then she nodded.
They tromped down the switchbacks, catching up with the others.
“Hey, cool air is back.” Mr. Welmann turned as Eliot got close. “That’s nice.” He sweated profusely, which was weird, considering he was dead.
Eliot kept playing quietly as they walked. He didn’t look back.
It took a while to get to the bottom of the switchbacks. How long, Eliot wasn’t sure. Time felt “slippery,” as if no time had passed, but simultaneously, it felt like it took forever, too.
No one spoke, heeding Robert’s warning not to attract any undue attention.
That was a good thing, too. On a nearby mesa, a battle raged as hundreds of people screamed and hurled rocks at one another, clawing, biting, and punching. There weren’t two sides; it was everyone against everyone else. It was like they had all lost their minds.
The trail ended. Here the first simple suspension bridge arced to an adjacent plateau (one with no obvious war waging upon it). The bridge dangled a half mile above a raging river of molten stone.
Eliot felt his resolve evaporate.
Robert leaned over the cliff’s edge and spit. It sizzled into vapor the instant it was outside Eliot’s protective musical bubble. “Whoa,” he said, impressed.
But Robert, being Robert, stepped onto the bridge without another thought. . and Eliot had to keep up with him or his friend would fry. The really strange thing was that Amanda, who had always been scared, walked right onto the bridge after Eliot.
The heat was terrific and the smell of sulfur and copper overwhelming. Eliot held his breath and played faster and louder so they wouldn’t die from the fumes.
He didn’t want to look down, but he had to see where he set his feet.
Far below, orange and red liquid boiled and churned and popped. Drifting by were tiny dots of smoldering solid stone crust.
They passed the low midpoint of the bridge and started climbing back up. Eliot spied the top of the plateau again. There were people there-not the crazy fighting ones, but the working ones.
The damned formed a line, shuffled along with rocks, dragging, rolling, and shoving them along until they got to the edge. . where they pushed the stones into the river.
Then they turned back, presumably to get another rock.
And much to his relief, not one of them gave Eliot or the others a second glance; in fact, they seemed to be going out of their way not to look at them.
Some wore rags, but most wore nothing. Their nude bodies were gaunt and reddened from the heat. They were bruised and scraped, and they all had burns-mostly on their hands and bare feet, but a few of them were completely covered in burn scars.
It reminded Eliot of Perry Millhouse, whom he and Fiona had killed in their second heroic trial. Perry Millhouse, who Eliot knew had actually been the Titan Prometheus, long fallen from power.
That’s where they’d met Amanda. Perry had kidnapped her and used her as bait.
He glanced back at Amanda. Her hair was plastered to her forehead and her cheeks flushed.
Funny, you’d think that someone who’d been the prisoner of a homicidal maniac whose preferred method of killing enemies was burning them alive would look a little less fascinated with fire.
They trod up the rest of bridge and stepped onto the plateau. From here, two bridges led to other mesa tops-both, more or less, getting them closer to the plains of the Blasted Lands.
“Which way?” Fiona asked.
Eliot stood on his tiptoes for a better look, which was when he saw the top of the adjacent plateau.
A thousand people crowded its edge-pushing and shoving to get onto the suspension bridge-running across, screaming and snarling. . straight toward them.
61. An intriguing Chimera Heresy penned by Sildas Pious in the thirteen century pertains to Jörmungandr (aka the World Serpent). In Norse mythology, the giant snake is prophesied to emerge from the ocean, poison the sky, and then battle Thor (the god and the monster slay each other). This event supposedly occurs at end of the world, Ragnarök. In the Pious’s legend, however, valkyries with flaming swords and Christian angels fight the beast, chain it, and bury it under the earth. One of the chain links was forged into the Gates of Perdition. Centuries later, when Jesus Christ is said to have arisen and opened the gates of Hell, Pious explains these were the Dolorous Gates, not the Gates of Perdition. He claims that on the day the Gates of Perdition are destroyed, the Beast will rise, and it will signal both Ragnarök and the Christian Judgment Day, when the dead will be released from Hell. Gods of the First and Twenty-first Century, Volume 5, Core Myths (Part 2). Zypheron Press Ltd., Eighth Edition.
71 THE HEROIC STAND OF AMANDA LANE
Eliot didn’t understand why there were so many people-all angry at him.
What had he done?
Thousands crowded along the edge of the distant plateau. They raised fists, threw rocks, and hurled insults in a dozen languages.
Was it because he was alive? Or because he’d willingly entered Hell, and they’d all probably wanted out? Or maybe like Robert said: they were crazy.
Eliot faced the bridge connecting the two plateaus and turned up the gain on Lady Dawn to the halfway point.
Mr. Welmann’s eyes widened, and he reached to stop him.
Eliot couldn’t waste time talking. Mr. Welmann didn’t know what he was capable of. In fact, it’d be simple to stop them. If anything, that was the scary thing: how easy it’d be. . and how much Eliot had enjoyed the destruction before in Costa Esmeralda.
The other bridge wobbled and the slack stretched taut from the onslaught of sound. The damned on the bridge held up their hands to protect themselves-but were flung off like rag dolls.
Eliot belted out three more chords, and that felt good.
The rusty iron of the bridge heated and twisted like taffy. . stretched apart and fell into the chasm.
Mr. Welmann clamped a hand on Eliot’s arm over and pulled it away from the guitar.
“Let go,” Eliot told him, annoyed. “I got rid-”
But Mr. Welmann wasn’t even looking at Eliot; instead, he scanned the horizons. He lifted a finger indicating silence, and cocked his head, straining to hear.
“No,” Mr. Welmann whispered. “Listen.”
The sound was, at first, barely audible over the rumble of the distant volcanoes. Eliot heard one cry, then a shout of discovery, and then a combined wail of rage that spread over the land.
From the cliffs they’d traversed, the damned poured out of caves and crannies. Thousands and thousands of torches flared to life upon the slopes. And from every plateau and mesa, the shouts of not thousands-but tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of angry souls combined into a thunderous roar.
Eliot let the magnitude of his mistake sink in. He’d messed up in a big, big way.
“Nice,” Fiona muttered, shaking her head.
“What’d you want me to do?” he asked. “Let them get to us? Fight them all? Don’t you think that would’ve made a little noise, too?”
He started coughing, the air once again hot and reeking of metal. His hand drifted back to Lady Dawn’s strings, instinctively plunking the notes that cleared the atmosphere.
Fiona started to say something, but her mouth stayed open, gaping, as she stared past Eliot.
He turned and saw what had shut his sister up.
Where the bridge he’d just destroyed had been, a thin line appeared in the chasm. It was spiderweb fine, but it thickened and buds appeared that turned into chain links-then another line stretched next to it, and strands of metal wove between them.
Like the Gates of Perdition that had sealed after Fiona had cut into them, this bridge was growing back.