Ink and Steel pa-3

by Elizabeth Bear

  “You have the look of a man who will be hard to buy, Master Shakespeare”

  “Buy, and not break?”

  “And yet you have an imagination. That is well. I invite you to contemplate that we will be together for eternity. Will you serve willing?”

  “I came willing, Will answered.”

  “No one comes willing” Lucifer said. “They come because they have no other choice. Or because they will accept no other choice presented them. Or rarely, as thy lover Marley learned, because they have come to understand that Hell is all around them, and that they have never been out of it once”

  Will blinked. The sway of the white mare under him was growing comfortable. He forgot himself enough to turn in the saddle and look up at Lucifer’s face. The rebel angel smiled down slantwise.

  “This is Hell? I had expected”

  “Torment.”

  “Aye”

  Lucifer hesitated. Will realized that his black steed wore no reins.

  “What torment, Master Shakespeare, could I heap upon thee worse than that which thou hast chosen for thyself?”

  “Your … Highness?”

  Really, Master Shakespeare. How dost thou think thou can serve us, poet, when thou canst not keep even thy troth to thy wife, or thy Ganymede, or thy mistress? All three at once thou hast betrayed.”

  Stung, Will reined his mount further from the Devil’s side. She protested when he tried to bring her too far, and afraid of being thrown, he desisted.

  “Kit lied.”

  “Nay” Lucifer’s sky-blue regard spurned him. “He told thee whatever truth thou wouldst hear. How darest thou press thy lovers, thy wife to meet a standard thou canst not uphold?”

  Will raised his right hand to his mouth, feeling the moment of realization like a dagger in the breast. This is what Annie felt,he realized. Felt and forgave. And as I cannot love less neither then can she.

  “I have,” he said, the reins tumbling from his fingers. The white mare sidled next to Lucifer’s black stud, rubbing her shoulder against his, brushing Will’s knee against the Devil’s with a tingle Will would have preferred to deny. “I have made mine own Hell. I deserve it.”

  “Every creature does.” the Devil answered, and they rode on in silence for one hour or a thousand, until they passed the low-arched gates of Hell.

  Act III, scene xvii

  My bloodless body waxeth chill and cold,

  And with my blood my life slides through my wound;

  My soul begins to take her flight to hell,

  And summons all my senses to depart.

  CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, Tamburlaine the Great

  The red gelding ran hard. Kit bent low over his neck, mane stinging his face, and did battle with the impulse that would have had him clutch the reins like a fool and kick the willing horse faster. The gelding’s hooves rattled on gravel and then thudded on packed earth; the way grew narrow and dark. Kit hunched closer to his horse and reined the gelding back, swearing, as the long angry claws of leafless oak trees reached across to bar the path and scrape his face, yank at his cloak and hair. This should be the beech wood. I should smell the sea.

  Somewhere ahead, unwavering, growing more distant despite their deliberation and Kit’s weeping haste, he could hear the even pace of hooves laid against stone like church bells. Trees closed across the path. Kit bulled the sorrel through branches; the horse went snorting, plunging, shivering with eagerness to be free of the trees and run. Kit closed his eye against welling tears of frustration, could do nothing for the ones that soaked his eyepatch. He pulled his cloak around his sore bruised body against a chill; Morgan’s patch, and the troll’s. One from the Mebd and one from Will. Cairbre, Geoffrey, Puck….

  The wood was dark as the bottom of a well. Even the sorrel shivered. A good gelding, steady and swift. Kit patted his neck. I wish I had thought to ask your name.

  Low and distant, a croak. “Froggy frogs.”

  Master Troll? How odd, when I was just now thinking of him. Trust the horse.

  The voice came from the left. If it was a voice, and not Kit’s desperation and the wind. He can’t possibly do a worse job of it than I have. Kit swore one more time, for good measure, and let the gelding have his head. He stroked the sorrel’s rough mane and looped the reins around the pommel, then leaned forward to speak into a swiveling ear. “Find him for me. Please.” The red horse snorted, both ears back briefly, then switched his tail and walked boldly forward through the thickest stand of oak. The road lay beyond, broad and shining in the starlight. Kit reached for the reins again, let them fall when the gelding tossed his head.

  “If you know what you re doing He caught the mane in both hands. Well, let us make haste.” The horse struck out at an easy canter, clatter of hooves on stone. Over it Kit heard that pealing, tang tang tang, measured as a pavanne. I don’t pavanne.But he kept up now, never gaining, rising in the saddle to see farther ahead. A glimmer of golden light shone on the pavement: acandleflame.

  A lantern. A crossroads. Bloody Hell. Where went they?

  The sorrel never hesitated. Kit touched the horse with his boots; he sprang past the abandoned light as if it had caught his heels on fire. The way was darker here, tending downward. Relief and horror did battle in Kit, and for a moment he thought he caught the acrid scent of whiskey and char. The trees fell back from the roadside. Alone in the night, Kit heard something huge rustling through leaves. Just the wind. Of course. But there was no breeze on his neck. And now the road descended through nothing at all but blackness to either side.

  By the time he saw the broad-pillared gate, his tears had dried, leaving the taste of salt on his tongue. The sorrel snorted and struck sparks from the roadway, refusing the passage. Kit nodded and checked to make sure the reins were knotted so they wouldn’t foul the horse’s legs. “Brave enough, Kit said, swinging down. He rubbed the sorrel’s nose, turned him back up the road, and slipped his bit. “I could not ask more. Go, get home. There’s a warm stable for thee.” The gelding looked over his shoulder dubiously. Kit raised his left hand over the animal’s lathered flank, trying for menace; the sorrel shrugged and ambled back up the road as if to say, ‘I might have waited a bit. Just to see if you were coming back. But if you insist.’

  Kit squared his shoulders, turned his back on the sorrel, and walked quickly toward the gate. Quickly, because if he let his feet drag he would never pass under that plain black archway, no higher than the overhead reach of his hands. It was as well he’d left the horse behind; within the gate the road turned to a narrow stair, and Kit fumbled down in the chill, over dank, slick stones. He leaned on the wall, sweat freezing in sequins on his skin, and willed his heart to beat. Cold, searing cold, and he chuckled nastily in memory of a scene he’d written so many years before, Mephostophilis warming Faustus frozen blood with a brazier so that it would run through a pen. This place smelled of leaf mold, of earthworms, of fresh-turned earth. Behind Kit, a gray light like morning was growing; he noticed when he glanced over his shoulder to see if the archway was still in sight, and did not look back a second time. He feared if he did turn he would keep turning, and keep walking, and never force himself downward again. He counted as he descended. On the one hundred and thirteenth step he lost the sound of hoofbeats. On the three hundred and eleventh step he lost the light. There was no railing; he leaned on the wall and felt for the edge of the step with his toe. The rattle of the iron nails in his boots gave him hope. My father’s hand.In hope. And then, bitterly, I saw the back side of it often enough.

  He lost count. His left hand fell on something leathery in the darkness; Kit jumped backward, squeaking like a wench who’s brushed up against a rat in the cellar. He would have fallen, Jesu,all the bottomless way, but something moist and strong wrapped his wrist and pulled him hard against the wall. He grunted, scrabbled, found his footing with a twisted ankle that would have been much worse without the bracing of his boots. A cold exhalation pressed his ear. The smell of loam and leaf mold redo
ubled; Kit held his breath until his heart no longer felt fit to leap through hischest. The predatory grip on his wrist never eased. Another exhalation. A slow voice, inflectionless, half rumble and half hiss.

  “Who passes, and on what errand?” The demon’s maw gleamed red when it spoke: the only light in the world, silhouetting serrated teeth as if on coals.

  Kit swallowed. This is real. Now. Marley. The smallness of his own voice angered him. “I come to bargain with your master. Let me pass.”

  “My master?” Silence, that Kit somehow knew was laughter. He wondered if the thing saw his own face lit red when its mouth opened. “My master treats with none that can not pass by me.”

  Kit himself glimpsed nothing but the fangs. It can see in the dark, he realized. “Must I fight you, then?”

  “You must pay the toll,” the demon said, releasing his wrist quite negligently. What will you pay it with? Kit crowded back against the far wall of the narrow stair. He laid a hand onthe hilt of his blade, did not yet dare draw it. Well, I won’t offer you thepound of flesh nearest my heart, and that’s for certain. That depends on thegoing rate. It was eerie speaking so, as if the blackness itself could hear him and answer.

  “Tis easier to buy thy way in to Hell than out,” the demon allowed. “Your remaining eye, perhaps? Your good right hand?”

  Kit blinked, understanding. Just like bargaining in the marketplace. “I’ll not be thee’d down to by demons, either. I’m surprised thou didst not commencewith mine immortal soul.”

  “Ah,” the demon said, casting a glare as it licked its maw with a lingering tongue. Light between its teeth like pipe smoke; Kit caught a swift impression of clawed leathery paws, of scaled masculine tits and paunch over hair-thatched legs. The demon was impressively, unpleasantly male. “No such delicacies for me. But a taste of sweet man flesh…” It shrugged. “Or of a sweet, tight arse…”

  Kit pressed himself against the wall and pulled his sword into his hand, the scrape of metal on scabbard reassuring.

  “My flesh is not for dining on.” Scales rasped on stone; hair rubbed on hair. Kit forced himself to look where the thing’s mouth and, he supposed, its eyes would be, and not strain at the darkness for another glimpse of its talons or its forked, knobby member. It chuckled through its nose, a dying-ember glow limning its nostrils. Kit swallowed hard. “Or any other sport thou mightst desire to make upon it.”

  “Pity,” the thing said, its voice very close, the coals in its belly glaring. Kit tasted its cold breath on his face. “That blade is Faerie silver, mortal man.”

  “Aye.” Kit brandished it at nothing, felt the tip prick nothing and slide through. A heavy slick sound, and he knew the thing had sidestepped upward. Kit turned to cover it with the blade, boots clattering on the steps. He kept his blind eye to the wall, although it restricted his sword arm; he suspected the sword wouldn’t help him much, all in all.

  “The sword will do for payment.” The demon opened its mouth wide, the glow revealing more than Kit desired to see. And when thou hast it? Thou mayst pass freely. And return? That silence that was laughter; the tilt of the scaled, fanged head. Hornsbroad as a bull’s caught the unholy light. That, the thing said, is my master’s to decide. Well enough, Kit said, and reversed the sword in his hand to offer it to the demon. Pass, the thing said, and struck its fist against the wall.

  Pallid and silver, starlight spilled through the opening. A doorway, Kit realized, and started forward, curiously lighter without his rapier. He half expected the demon to snatch him back by the scruff, but he passed through unmolested and the stone of the wall ground closed like a prison door.

  Kit found himself standing in the midst of a vast blank plain, his nailed boots his only security on the slick surface beneath him. He could no longer hear the gay peal of hoofbeats on stone, and an ashen glow like starshine filled the air from no identifiable source, omnidirectional, shadowless. Some distance ahead, he saw the rippling movement of water between smooth, low banks. Styx? he wondered. Acheron? Cocytus or Lethe, perhaps; not Phlegethon. No sign of fire.

  A shadow moved across it; the outline of a ferryman, tall and stooped, bent to the pole. Kit felt for his purse; there was gold in it enough to pay the passage there and back, he hoped. Boots skidding on the glasslike landscape beneath his feet, he struck out cautiously for the water’s edge.

  Whatever river that is, I know I don’t want to fall in.

  Kit watched his feet at first, until he saw vaporous things moving beneath the landscape like drowning men clawing under clear, thick ice. He wrenched his eyes upward; the shadows flinched when he walked across them, and yet they pressed their vaporous hands, their hollow-socketed faces against the barrier. He almost thought he heard them pleading, screaming. They swarmed after him like trout swirling toward crumbs cast on water: arms outreached in supplication, faces averted in pain.

  He slipped sideways, almost went down. Then placed his feet the way Will did when Will was tired and staggering; short steps, straight up and down like walking on icy cobbles. He fixed his eyes on the ferryman poling to meet himand found his lips shaping latin words. Pater noster qui es in c lis, Sanctificetur nomen tuum. Adveniat regnum tuum. Fiat voluntas tua, sicut inc lo, et in terra. He bit his cheek until blood flowed, and couldn’t silence the litany. Panem nostrum quotidiamum da nobis hodie et dimitte nobis debitanostra, sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris. Et ne nos inducas intentationem. Sed libera nos a malo. Oremus.

  Christ on the cross.

  Kit. Ridiculous. Thou’rt in Hell, boy. Here to trade thyself for the freedom of your lewd, your unclean, your bestial and unnatural love. What maketh an abomination like thee to think thou’lt get any good from an Our Father?

  Kit walked, exertion warming his body, failing to numb his thoughts. The words were as unstoppable as the gray water rippling in the haunting light so far ahead. He heard both parts of the litany, prompt and response, as if two voices spoke within. He hadn’t prayed so in Hell, in eleven years and more.

  Domine salvum fac servum tuum qui suam fiduciam in te collocat. Mitte eum Domine angelum de sanctuario tuo. Et potenter defende eum. Nihil pr va-Leatinimicus in eo Et fi lius iniquitatis non noceat ei. Esto ei Domini turrisfortitudinis a facie inimici. Domine exaudi orationem nostram et clamor noster ad te veniat. Oremus. Oremus.

  “Deliver us from evil,” Kit scoffed aloud. “Useless, methinks, when I’m plain walking into it.” And yet he stopped and looked about, there on the barren moor of Hell, the damned writhing under his feet. What, Kit? Art waiting fo ran answer?

  “Oh, Sweet Christofer.” An infinitely welcome voice from over his shoulder, and he closed his eye a moment in joy and relief, unwilling to believe. But the voice continued. “My love, you came.”

  “Will.” He turned, and looked up into his lover’s face. “I can’t believe it. It worked.”

  Will’s smile folded the corners of gray-blue eyes. He raised his arms, and Kit came into them, lifting his mouth for a kiss that was suddenly the only thing in all the world he wanted.

  “Thou hast forgiven me,” Kit said, when the kiss was ended and still his lover held him tight.

  “Thou dost taste of ashes,” Will said, stepping back. “Was the way very long? Thou shouldst drink.”

  “Ashes to ashes,” Kit answered, releasing Will only with reluctance. “Drink of that river? I think not.”

  Kit turned to look upon it, putting Will on his blind side. Kit frowned with cracked lips, scrubbing sore, itching palms. “What river is it?”

  “What does it matter? Thou must drink nay else thou canst not stay here with me.”

  Kit blinked. He tasted blood from his bitten cheek. Deliver us from evil.He rubbed his hand across his lips, startled when red blood streaked his glove. No. Not from his cheek. From his lips, from his tongue. He turned his hand over, gasped when he saw the burned-through palms of hisgloves, the blistered flesh of his palms, the smoldering scorches on his doublet where it showed under the patchwork of his cl
oak. His cloak smoked too, but seemed unharmed, and the flesh beneath it was not burning. Kit raised his eyes; something red and supple as a lizard winked at him with a slitted yellow eye, gleaming in colors like fire. “Salamander.”

  “Ifrit,” it said with a mocking bow, flickering through shapes like a windblown torch: a red-haired woman, a stallion with a mane aflame, a dragon no bigger than a hummingbird. “I am the second guardian. I’ll have your cloak before you pass.

  Kit drew it close about his shoulders with his blistered hand. “This cloak that saved me from you?”

  “Aye, well,” the ifrit answered. “There’s a price for everything. You’ll also need to pay the ferryman.”

  Kit thought of edging past it. Sparks flashed from its eyes; it grew again into the image of Will Shakespeare, but flames flickered at its fingertips. He saw that the damned underfoot squirmed away from its footsteps, huddling behind Kit as if Kit could defend them.”

  “This cloak is valued of me,” Kit said.

  “That’s why it buys you passage.” The ifrit extended an imperious hand. “Tis that, or thy smoking heart. Thou goest before my master clad in thine own power only, and nothing borrowed may come.”

  “Ah,” Kit said, and shrugged the heavy cloth off of his shoulders. He folded it over his arm, twice and then again, running his fingers over scraps of velvet and silk and brocade. Thank you, Morgan. Thank you, Master Troll.“I’ll have it back when I return.”

  “Perhaps,” the ifrit said, and plucked the cloak off Kit’s arm. Both cloak and spirit vanished in a swirl of hot wind and shadows, and Kit swore under his breath.

  Lighter still, he walked to the ferry. It seemed easier now; he closed the distance in the space of a few heartbeats, and stood waiting while the boat grounded on the glassy shore and the ropy, bare-chested figure at the pole beckoned. Kit stepped over the gunnels and found a place near the prow, facing the pilot.