Peter raised his head back into the cavern. His thirst, once a waning thought at the back of his mind, now came to the forefront. By the look on the group’s faces, he was sure the same thought had crossed all their minds. “Why don’t we jump?” he asked to no one in particular.
Licking his lips, Thomas seconded the thought. “We can’t die, right? We just take the book with us—she’d never know.”
Peter pointed in the direction of the remote shoreline. “We can swim—it might be better down there.”
Hannibal chuckled. “Do any of you share in young Peter and Thomas’s sentiment?”
The mercenaries mulled over the question. A few nodded, while others raised their hands in agreement. Giddy chatter broke out amongst the company.
Hannibal looked forlornly at the glimmering water. “I too share in your dream,” he admitted, “but it is a cruel deception.”
The playful banter died down.
“It is the sea of Avernus,” Hannibal said, gesturing to the sea below. “Those shores you speak of, Peter, they are the shores of Hell. Once you have fallen, there is no hope of redemption—none who have ventured there ever return. Neither demons nor humans can cross the boundary again after it has been fully traversed.”
The members of the company sighed and stowed their fading emotions.
“You would be taking the Book of Souls directly to Lucifer himself,” Hannibal said, trying to prop up the morale of the men and women in his charge. “We have the advantage here, and we must use it while we can.”
“Is there any hope?” Peter asked.
“Yes,” Hannibal replied, pointing to the treacherous ledge that circumvented the gaping hole in the cavern. “Our path leads us to the queen’s throne room.”
The group raised their voices in opposition to the route.
“Our only hope is to create a diversion while Peter gives the book to Nicholas,” Hannibal said, quieting the dissent. “The monk dwells in the throne room most days, and he will be lightly guarded.”
“And if the queen is there?” asked Godfrey.
“We will not proceed if demons are present,” Hannibal replied. “We can easily hold the guards at bay for as long as necessary—the book bearer will not fail us,” he assured, looking sternly at Peter.
Peter put on a good face and acknowledged his role, but deep down he was frightened to death.
“Retreat?” asked Guan.
“There is none—we must succeed.”
Chapter 18
Hannibal guided Peter and Thomas up through the interior supporting structure of the queen’s throne room to an access point in the floor between two walls. Before leaving the small void, Hannibal gave them explicit instructions to stand fast until the obvious intervention by the mercenaries had begun. Hannibal had faith in the young men, but nonetheless found himself second-guessing his overall plan. Put simply, the company’s entire effort lay in the hands of their two weakest members.
The cramped space Peter and Thomas crouched in was nothing more than a cavity between old, roughly-made stonework and that of a newer, more elegant finished wall. The area was dark with only a smattering of light entering through small gaps in the stone from the well-lit hall beyond.
Peter and Thomas were on edge and doubting their abilities to fulfill their obligations to Hannibal and the group as a whole. Peter restlessly shifted his position several times, trying not to appear anxious while Thomas fidgeted with his hands, placing them on the stone wall and removing them quickly as if a false start had been announced.
“You’ve probably done plenty of this stuff, huh?” Peter asked.
“Hardly any,” Thomas answered, shaking his head timidly.
Peter’s voice heightened as alarm pervaded his tone. “But you’ve been with Hannibal for a while, right?”
“Some, I guess.”
In his mind, Peter recounted what he knew about Hannibal and the others. They seemed sincere in their quest, but their historical personae were fraught with violence and despair. Peter wondered if he had unknowingly fallen into a trap—if the only reason for his rescue by Hannibal’s group was to deliver the book directly into the waiting arms of the demon queen herself. Suspicious, he asked, “How did you meet Hannibal and the others?”
“Meet?” Thomas asked, surprised at the question. He thought back to the day he entered the Garden. “I was scared, you know?” he said, looking expectantly through the near-total darkness at Peter. “I split as soon as I came through the Gate. I didn’t know what else to do. There was so much going on—so much I didn’t know.”
“You didn’t get caught?”
“Not right away. A couple of guards saw me leave, but they didn’t say anything. They must’ve thought they were going to get in trouble or somethin’.”
“You were lucky.”
“Yeah.” Thomas chuckled quietly, remembering the events. “I wandered around—tried to stay hidden. That’s when I found out I could move the blocks. That was a cool feeling—and scary at the same time.”
“And then you met Hannibal?”
“More than a few years passed before I did,” Thomas answered. “I’d been all over this place. I was doing okay on my own, but one day I got caught.” He took a breath. “The guards were taking me to Asmodeus—that’s when Hannibal rescued me.” Thomas said, poking at the dim beams of light coming through the imperfections in the joints of the wall. “I left with him—I didn’t know what else to do.”
“Did he ever say why he rescued you?”
“They’d been watching me. Hannibal asked how I had managed to never get caught.” Thomas giggled. “They must’ve thought I was some kind of boss warrior or somethin’.” He cast his gaze to the floor and muttered sadly, “But when I moved the stones, they knew why.”
The more Peter listened to the story, the more suspicious he became. “Do you trust Hannibal?”
“I trust him—I trust that he’s true to his cause,” Thomas replied. “The others, I’m not so sure about. It’s been years, right? They hardly talk to me. I’m an outsider to them still—just a tool to help get them around.”
Peter recognized the despondency in Thomas’s voice. “Guan seems to like you.”
“Yeah,” Thomas said, his mood lightening a bit. “Hannibal, I guess; the rest of them—not so much.”
Peter’s apprehension was at an all-time high. The fear that had plagued him since his arrival intensified. He found himself moments from a battle he could not escape with his loyalties on the verge of disintegrating. Part of him wanted to summon what energy he could and run away from the city, hide in the ashen wasteland and never come back, but his braver half wanted to fight, to prove that he was not weak.
Peter’s mind raced. He saw both sides of the dilemma at once. Perhaps Hannibal’s intentions were true—the renowned general only wanted forgiveness—but then again there was no way to know. Thomas had faith in the old general and that was comforting, but Peter needed proof. He felt caught in a tsunami and unable to escape. Powerless, his only recourse was to watch his fate unravel. Peter quieted the negative thoughts, as it was too late to divert from his unfolding path. He mustered what confidence he could and vowed to move forward.
Thomas placed his hands on the roughly yard-square block in front of them. With an acute tenderness, he shrunk the stone so that its edges receded from the wall around it. The gap was no more than an inch, but the fascia stones were relatively thin, making the openings adequate for the young men to surveil the chamber beyond.
The throne room was approximately two-hundred yards long and nearly half that in width. It was ostentatious to say the least. Soaring, buttressed ceilings, complete with mosaics, stone imps, and demonic faces, decorated the interior surfaces. At regular intervals along the high, white-marble walls, sturdy sconces held iron kettles blazing with smokeless fire. Around the perimeter of the black-marble floors was an array of statues. Peter knew from his experiences at Uriel’s Vale that the statues were those of poor
individuals caught by the queen and transformed to stone—forever hardened into a pose befitting their fear.
Peter cast his gaze to the near end of the chamber. An oversized throne rested on a raised platform several feet above the marble floor and sat empty at the focal point of the room. The chair glittered in the firelight. Although it was primarily made of gold, a strange set of silver orbs decorated the chair’s numerous vertical splats. Peter squinted to see the detail more clearly. The spheres were in fact silver-plated skulls staked through with large pikes and integrated into the chair’s back. Their flesh had been removed at some point, but whoever oversaw the gruesome task had left the eyes of each individual in situ. They blinked and moved, tirelessly scanning the area around the throne.
Shocked at the sight, Peter backed away from the small slit between the stones and shook his head, trying to clear the abhorrent image. “Do you think they can see us?”
Thomas spied the throne from his side of the crack between the rocks. “That’s crazy!” he said in an overly enthusiastic whisper. “Can they say anything—alert the guards?”
“I don’t know,” Peter replied, pressing his eye back to the spy hole to renew his scan of the room.
Behind the queen’s throne was the monk Nicholas. The middle-aged man sat at a medieval scriptorium perched upon a long table set against the back wall of the audience chamber. A thick manacle around the monk’s left wrist was chained to the floor just under Nicholas’s wooden bench. The set-up allowed the monk to reach either end of the table, but not much else. Piles of papers, stacked haphazardly on the desk and table, were joined by a supply of quills and clay jars of ink.
Peter sensed Nicholas was being forced to regurgitate a copy of the Book of Souls from memory. In all likelihood, the ancient manuscript was purposefully disjointed in its authorship so as to prevent what the queen was now attempting.
“I see him,” Peter said. “On the far wall.”
“Lots of guards,” Thomas commented as he eyed the chamber’s defenders.
Peter studied the room’s occupants. Gangs of workers toiled on everything from small cleaning chores to moving heavy objects into and out of the hall. Overseers used whips and swords to entice the slave laborers to accomplish their various duties and to keep them in line. Several sentries were stationed at each entrance to the throne room. Wide hallways flanking each side of the hall near the queen’s throne were unguarded, but numerous individuals frequented the passages, leaving Peter to believe they led to a warren of chambers deep inside the building.
Hannibal must have known the layout of the throne room so well that he placed Peter and Thomas in the optimal location to make a break for Nicholas. They were no more than one hundred feet or so to the monk’s table. Peter gauged the security to be much less at the throne-end of the hall than anywhere else in the chamber. He would have to run fast and maneuver around the throne, but otherwise it was a straight shot. The only complication would be the sentries at large or personnel coming from the hallways on either side of the scriptorium table. If he were able to give the book to Nicholas, perhaps the monk would be able to end this world before Peter was even discovered.
“There they are,” Thomas said, gesturing to the opposite end of the hall.
An opulent vestibule provided access to the interior of the throne room. No doors were present in the antechamber that Peter could see, but he guessed more corridors and buildings stood in the way between the city streets and this inner sanctum of the queen.
Hannibal and his mercenaries came in through the vestibule. They wore their cloaks and did their best to blend in as another gang of workers. The gladiator Verus, donning a purple guard’s uniform and holding an unfurled whip, stood over them as their overseer and led the mercenaries deeper into the hall. The company mimicked the work of other laborers within the great throne room by holding cloth rags and diligently scrubbing the already spotless floors.
Peter snickered to himself. The audacity of Hannibal and his friends was unimaginable. They played their part well and did a marvelous job of convincing the other overseers of their legitimacy. Whenever Verus felt the glare of scrutinizing eyes, he cracked his whip and yelled at Hannibal and the others to work harder. Likewise, some of the group purposefully lingered behind, forcing Verus to put on a show of scolding the stray members.
The company had not quite reached the midpoint of the hall when Peter spied a familiar threat. Butch, the tattooed young thug pulled from the stream of incoming souls at the Gate, was leading his own detachment of slave workers in the general area of Verus’s gang. Peter could not tell what the issue was, or even if suspicions had been aroused, but Butch approached the mercenaries nonetheless.
“This is my spot,” Butch told Verus, scrutinizing the gladiator’s face. “I’ve never seen you before.”
Verus smiled. “Is that so?”
“Who gave you orders to be here?”
The members of the group stopped working and listened intently.
“Why, Asmodeus himself,” answered Verus.
The response gave Butch momentary pause, but his suspicions grew. “You and your men, come with me,” he said, motioning for Verus’s laborers to rise. “Master Sitri will need to clear this.”
Behind Verus, the cloaked mercenaries rose to standing. The gladiator peered in the direction of Hannibal and picked up on the subtle head shake the old general was signaling. “Hold!” Verus ordered the company and turned to the young thug. “We do not take orders from you.”
Butch loosened the grip on his whip, letting the coiled leather unfurl to the throne room floor. “I’m just doing my job.”
Verus exhaled deeply and pulled his sword. “So are we.”
Hannibal and the others heeded their cue. The group cast off their cloaks revealing a glittering array of armor and weapons.
“Intruders!” Butch screamed and lashed out at Verus, swinging his whip in an attempt to catch the gladiator in the face, but his attack was too late. Verus sent his sword plunging into Butch’s chest. The thug grasped in agony at the bloodless wound and fell to the marble floor.
Hannibal surveyed the assemblage of guards closing in on their position. He drew his sword and took a defensive position while the others followed suit. “We must delay as long as possible,” he said, slashing the first of the queen’s responding minions and dodging a second.
“That was subtle,” Peter said, trying to calm his paralyzing anxiety while his heart pounded in fear. It took all his resolve to extricate the ancient manuscript from its confines of the shoulder bag and clutch it to his chest. He fidgeted with his glasses and looked expectantly at Thomas. “Should we go?”
Thomas was on edge as well but dealt with his stress in a calmer fashion than Peter. He considered the unfolding situation and replied, “Not yet. We still have guards at this end.”
Peter peered through the small slit in the stone. While some sentries disappeared through the corridors at either side of the hall, others were unable to decide whether to join in the fray or to stay at their given duty stations. Several remained in and around Nicholas’s work area, decreasing Peter’s chances of delivering the book.
A shadow traversed across the gaps in the stone, blocking the limited light entering the cramped space. Thomas pulled back. “Holy shit! It’s Sitri and he’s going ape.”
Peter followed the leathery-winged beast on his flight through the great hall. Sitri rose into the vaulted and airy ceiling of the throne room, took a bearing on Hannibal’s group, and dove headfirst into the battle.
“Demon!” Hannibal shouted over the din and wheeled about to prepare for the new threat.
Sitri’s first thought was to turn Hannibal’s lot into a lump of charred flesh, but his queen’s orders had specifically prohibited any transformations of matter due to the risk of damaging the Book of Souls. Instead, Sitri unleashed his power on the still-injured Butch and his cowering slave laborers.
Bright green energy surrounded Butch and th
e nephesh in his charge. The verdant aura penetrated between the slaves, wrapping each individual in an emerald haze. Butch, lying prone and enduring the painful restorative process to his injuries, was instantly healed. Swirling mist forced the overseer and his workers to their feet. The fog penetrated their bodies and washed over them, obscuring their features. They cried out in pain as the unorganized bank of green brume grew. Pulsing energy surged through the dense cloud, knocking back combatants on every side. The apparition reached its apogee, soaring into the interior spaces of the hall, then without further bluster, quietly dissipated, revealing a giant.
Twisted and grotesque, Butch the Giant stood nearly twice as tall as the demon Sitri. The giant’s massive body was made from the melded remains of slave workers. Headless bodies were fused together from ankles to shoulders to make up the bulk of the giant. Its trunk was two humans in height and several deep. The souls were merged laterally along their individual torsos, giving the giant a solid mass in his chest area. Appendages such as arms and legs were comprised of several slave bodies each. They were joined end-to-end and sprouted from the giant’s main trunk forming working limbs. The worker’s knees and arms served as Butch the Giant’s joints while an opposing set of slave hands on each arm gave the giant a means of clasping objects. The fearsome beast’s feet were little more than a mass of fleshy stumps that were flat on the bottom similar to an elephant’s foot. Fused to the giant’s shoulders and jutting out like a superfluous appendage was Butch. Every movement the thug willed of his new giant body brought a ripple of spasms and twitches from the souls that composed his misshapen being.
“Subdue them!” Sitri ordered to his minions at large while turning to Butch the Giant. “Bring me their leader—spare no souls!”
“Cool,” Butch the Giant acknowledged and hoisted a fallen guard in each of his clasping hands. He used them like truncheons, battering his way into the skirmish, smashing friend and foe alike.
Garden of Salt and Stone Page 18