He smiled, “What? Were you expecting someone else? It can’t be it’s me you’re all hot for, can it?”
Silence.
The bishop brushed the scars on his cheek. “What, you don’t want to talk? Are you sure? No one else is coming to help you, and even God can only save your soul.”
“I don’t want God to save my soul.”
“No? Well, he’s not going to anyway. You’re going to burn.”
“Good,” Jezebel answered. She let her arms by her sides and held her head high. She refused to play his games, to let him control her. “Anything is better than looking at your disgusting face.”
“Is it now? Mayhap for you. But what about the boys here? Is it better that they burn too? Huh? No, I didn’t think so. God, look at your face. That shame.”
“Is that why you came down here? To taunt us?”
The clergyman approached, cautiously, within an inch of the chains of Jezebel’s fetters. Then he whispered to her no louder than the wings of a fly, the humor suddenly gone from his face. “I am here to make you an offer. You see, in just a few moments the saint and his retinue are going to march into this Hellhole and take you and the Imp and the boy and put you all to the stake. Mayhap David’s son gets let off. Maybe not. But you can be damned sure that you half-breeds are going to burn. We’ve already got half the nobility making camp out there. It’ll be quite the show.”
“And?” pressed Jezebel, trying her best to hide her desperation.
The bishop bent closer—craning his neck, exposing his scars—tempting her. “And all that can be avoided if you play along with me. Are you ready? That’s judgement coming now.”
He did not lie. Footfalls sounded softly from the corridor through the dungeon door and into their cell. Two men by Jezebel’s ear, boots brisk against the packed dirt floor. The clergyman stepped back. The door swung open. She winced as lamp light flooded the chamber, followed by a priest and two armoured men. At once, the bishop took to his knee.
“Your Holiness,” he said.
The priest advanced with a royal arrogance and held his hand to his clergyman’s face. They were wrinkled fingers, long and thick like their master’s neck, and hard as his jaw, square and naked. His other hand kept busy smoothing his cassock: red watered-silk and a sash of gold with red leather sandals. On his crown a half-wreath of snowy hair. A deep creased scowl. A column backbone. His expression was stone as the bishop muttered, “Worthy,” “Glory,” “Mercy,” and “Praise,” between kissing the images embossed on the rings on those wrinkled fingers.
“Rise,” spoke the priest.
The clergyman rose.
“So these are the pagans of whom I’ve been informed? Sir Holland, bring the light closer.”
One of the armoured men, he in maille and crimson surcoat, brought his lamp to Adam and Adnihilo. His nostrils flared at the ragged sight them: Adnihilo, soiled and shirtless, his red-brown curls like matted rats’ nests; and Adam, he was nothing but bones. He had refused to eat after that night, or even to talk. His soul was broken and it showed.
From his black tusks of nose hair to the ruddy flush in his cheeks, Jezebel could see that the knight wanted nothing more than to go. The other fellow, however, seemed almost concerned. His green eyes squinted in a sad grimace as if he was looking on a fallen friend, yet it was Adnihilo at whom he stared. He sighed inside his enameled breastplate while the half-blood glared, bitter and hateful.
“Yes,” the bishop answered, “these are the ones we captured fleeing from the parish. The boy is Pastor David’s son. Unfortunately, his father got trapped inside during the raid. I tried to warn the man, but he wouldn’t abandon his flock—God rest his soul. The half-breed is one of David’s converts, but the woman—” he paused and glanced toward her “—she’s our wolf-in-the-pasture. You’ll recall her from the early mission reports, Your Holiness; the ones which make mention of the Pale Witch of Babylon.”
The gruff knight turned his lamp from the tattered young men to Jezebel. Her eyes fluttered shut in the yellow glow, but she could feel their disgust for her threadbare frock, her unkempt hair, her filthy skin; and the wound on her arm was still pussing. Could they smell it, her fear, her insecurity? What was it the bishop had said? She, the Witch of Babylon? All these questions flickered with the lantern light as she tried to predict what they would ask her.
“Does she speak Messaii?” queried the priest, to which the bishop glanced, his beetley eyes suggesting that it was time.
“I do,” said the singer. “Everyone in Eemah speaks the Messah tongue. We—”
The gruff knight stepped forward and cut her words short, forcing the wind from her lips with a fist to the belly. Jezebel doubled over, and Adnihilo’s voice rose, and the knight put him down as well—a clout to the ear and a boot on his back to keep him docile.
“Quiet! Saint Paul wasn’t speaking to you, half-bred whore. And you,” he continued, digging his heel into Adnihilo’s hide, “move a hand and I’ll have it off.” The knight reached for the sword at his hip, but the priest reached him first and grasped him by the wrist.
“Sir Holland.”
The knight fell silent, and a chill settled in the air as the high-priest, the arch-bishop, the great saint of holy Messai stared bedeviling into the small, dark eyes of the Temple Guardsman. Sir Holland’s face grew heavy with humiliation, weighing towards the floor as he spake, “Forgive me, Saint Paul. Your Holiness, I let this witch get to my temper.”
“Leave us. Go and ensure the preparations are underway. I’ll be inspecting them myself shortly. I expect the baptismal fonts to be full by my arrival.”
The knight took his foot from the half-blood and knelt, then stood again and vacated the chamber, muttering obscenities as he passed the bishop and glaring at the enameled knight as he vanished into the corridor. The sounds of his boots echoed angrily from afar.
The saint sighed. He looked more tired than annoyed, weary from the weight of his thick, broad shoulders, large even for a laborer half his age. He turned to the bishop, the slightest cave shaping his back. “At last, that ass is gone. I should have listened to you all those years ago. Holland was a mistake. Hell, I’d trade any of those useless fools for your Gildmane. Three captives by himself—my guards would have butchered them. Then what would I have to show for the Purge?” He paused and examined the singer more closely. “And what is it that I have, exactly? You were saying, Ba’al?”
The clergyman’s neck contorted on his shoulders, popping and snapping, relaxing his jaw and his lips and his tongue. “The Witch of Babylon, that’s what you’re looking at. Tricked old David into letting her enter his flock pretending to be an Impii convert. She would have turned the whole assembly against God had we not come down on her. She’s confessed as much to me already, though I’m sure you’d like to hear it for yourself.” He waited for the saint to look away, winked at the singer, then at the enameled knight.
This was it, the moment of life or death decided by strangers in a strange land. Adnihilo’s life dangled in her hands. She had already dropped Adam’s, and she would not see him suffer again like on the ship. The horrors of that cabin and the demon within—grinning, perverse and jaundiced—haunted her still. Not again, she thought. She would play her part and seduce these men just as she had intended for the idiot jailor. Men are all the same, willing to believe the stupidest things. She was thinking of Cain and how he sacrificed himself for nothing. Not nothing. For me, for Adnihilo. He’s still breathing. I can give him this one son. It was that which Jezebel carried in her heart as she gazed long into her inquisitor’s eyes—dark, hard, and incredulous.
“It’s true,” she admitted. “I am the most desired singer in all of Eemah. Men bow their heads at the mention of my name, and it is me they come to see during the sacrifices. And it’s true that I fooled your Messah pastor. I stole into his parish by enticing his son, and I even brought my lover with me. He might have killed David that night if your soldiers hadn’t come.”
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Saint Paul didn’t blink. “Yes, so you have confessed. Yet I see no penitence in you. Only regret and anger.”
“And why should I repent? We both know my soul is damned.”
Ba’al stepped in. “Yes,” he said, “but what about the pastor’s son? And the half-breed? Why don’t you tell His Holiness the rest—how you possessed them, made them do your bidding.”
Jezebel glanced left to right at the rock-faced saint, the quiet knight, and the demon-clergyman, trying with all her might to recall that evening spent bowed before the witch during her initiation. The Final Moontide, Bianca had called it. At once, the witch’s words flooded her consciousness with images of Cain, bloody and erect. Her breath quickened and deepened, her heart leaping in her chest as she said, “You want to know about the old tongue? About the songs sung since a time long gone? It’s true. The words work like magic; our singing moves the muscles of men, and they fight and die in our honour. They die as offerings to the gods of the Old One.”
The saint balked at that. “Devils, you mean. Dull. You pagans are all the same, servants to false idols. Why the pastor had not rooted you out is beyond me. And that the Impii would return to worshipping such rot after Lucius’s mercy.”
“What’s hard to believe?” Jezebel interjected, her voice rising with an angry tide. “Our gods have real power. Their promises come true. But what prayer has your Lord ever answered? How many orphaned little girls hear nothing but silence when they ask him for answers? How many wives does he leave widowed and destitute?”
“Real power, you say?” Paul chuckled toward Ba’al with curious eyes.
The bishop smiled and lied through his teeth, “It’s true, Paul. Gildmane saw it himself. Tell him, Captain. Was the witch not singing when you found them fleeing the parish?”
All eyes fell upon the knight.
“Trey?”
There was quiet for a time, everyone staring expectantly at the young, armoured man who himself had attention only for one—for Adnihilo. The half-blood was staring back, but his face had changed over the course of the exchange. His hollow cheeks seemed softer now, wet with tears and filled with a shame that he was desperate to yet dared not speak of. And so they remained silent, each chewing his tongue or gnawing his lips or dipping his eyes to the floor and up again until finally the knight answered. It was a stiff, strained, “Yes… Your Grace.”
And that was it for their visit with the saint. He prattled on about confession to God while Ba’al put on a smile wider than the Walls of Barzakh. Jezebel took little in. Her head was reeling trying to understand the subtle discomforts surfacing on the knight’s face. The lie had left a sour taste in his mouth, she could tell, but he let the deceit carry on to its conclusion: the pastor’s son and even the Impii half-breed could be saved, though the witch was beyond grace. It would be the stake for her, determined Saint Paul on Ba’al’s recommendation. The bishop would hear the pagan’s final words while Trey escorted Paul to arrange the preparations.
The two men were gone when the bishop addressed her again. “Did you get all that?” he said. He waited for Jezebel to nod before continuing, “Good. Congratulations witch. You’re the first sinner to be baptized by fire since Gracious banned the practice two thousand years ago—damn milksop wasn’t man enough to handle burning his brother’s family. So, how does it feel to be the whore who allured our saint into breaking his holy oath? I hope it feels good. People are going to be flogged in the streets for missing this, you know.”
“What’s going to happen to Adnihilo and Adam?”
Ba’al rolled his eyes, reached into robes, then scowled at the packed earth. “I thought you were listening. They’re going with me on mission to Gautama.”
“What is that?”
“Not ‘what,’ you dumb whore. ‘Where.’” He dug further into the folds of his cassock, pulled out a smoky flask, and said, “You should be more worried about yourself. Where we’re going is a lot better than Hell.” Then he smirked and bit the cork from the bottle. It was clear glass filled with a black, viscous fluid that sloshed unnaturally as he took a swig. His lips were left blue, his teeth the shade of ink, and his tongue like a slug—slothful and slimy. “Drink up. Burning is an awful way to go.”
Jezebel stuck her nose over the bottle and recoiled, the stench of spoiled eggs lingering like flames, her face wrinkled at the flask as asked him, “What is it? Will it help with the pain?”
Ba’al grinned bigger. His tone became serious but his lips playful. “Are you sure you want to know?” He did not wait for an answer. “It’s the same stuff souls are made from.”
She stared at him, incredulous.
“So, do you want some or not?”
It’s poison, she thought, resting her bottom lip on the glass rim while the bishop poured. Slowly, angrily, the fluid oozed into her mouth and down her throat. Its texture was fire, its odor smoke, and its taste a strange, smoldered flesh. She wanted to retch, yet instead she suckled the ichor like a woman possessed until the flask ran empty and she found herself hacking black phlegm onto the floor.
“Do you have any last words?” the bishop asked her.
She tried to look up, but her head would only hang from her shoulders. Her tongue was numb, as were her cheeks and her throat—the sensation spreading fast into the depths of her lungs. “Adnihilo…Adam…I’m sorry.”
Those were her final words, the last sounds she’d heard that weren’t drown out by her heart’s pounding—so loud, it was deafening. And her head was throbbing. With each beat, black fog formed until everything was shadow. She batted her eyes; her sight returned, then echoes. Thunder. A thousand slamming doors. Booming, membranous drums. She blinked again then awoke alone in the dungeon. Only she was not alone. The clambering of chains warned her of others fast approaching. From the corridor, a dim, orange glow poured into the chamber. Then the door flew open, and in came a pair of snickering demons, swart-furred and ebon-skinned with tusks and talons and the seeming of dead men—of Cain and David.
Jezebel trembled as they entered the chamber. It was all she could do: shake and beg and pray for her body to move as the creatures loosened her fetters and fit her with new chains. She strained against them in vain, her arms like dead weights, her legs taking course on their own toward the corridor. And every step of the way she felt the claws of her escorts tickle her back, her thighs, her shoulders, her neck; all the while they laughed with familiar voices. But it was not long before they were through the door where the orange light burned brighter—blinded her—yet Jezebel could not stop for fear of the demons’ harry. Even as the floor morphed from cold dirt to hot sand, and as its climb soared higher, she dared not turn back. Yet there was no looking ahead, so intense was the light and the heat so torrid. Sweat sizzled where it dripped. Her feet seared and blistered. And the air lay thick, stinking of flowers and bodies and animals.
“Blood! Blood! Blood!” called out a thousand fervent voices.
Jezebel recoiled, but there was nowhere to run.
“Blood! Blood! Blood!” they wailed again with a sweltering wind, like the breath of a dragon.
Then suddenly, the singer’s strength returned to her, and she spun on her heels, ready to flee from the screaming choir and the black pastor and the sacrificial demon—yet they were gone, vanished—and standing in their place was a wall of gnashing jaws, the maw of a serpentine beast creeping closer by the moment, yawning wide with rows of dagger-long teeth. Slowly, they encroached. The mouth closed. And her clothes caught on the slender stone fangs as she lurched away, tearing her linens so that her naked skin scalded pink and her toes black as they sank through the floor as the corridor gave way to flames.
It was cold as the grave when Jezebel woke. She was bound and chained to a wooden stake in the shape of a cross, hanging by her wrists, her legs dangling over a bar of red and black sand. Beyond that lay naught but darkness: a black sky, an empty horizon, and a shallow sea still as ice—atop from which rose frozen fire—st
ygian stone surrounding the islet like the walls of the altars of towering Barzakh. And she was not alone.
For on those walls stood ten chimeric demons bearing seven bronze cups, a brass trumpet, an unfinished tapestry.
Brr-UMM! blasted the horn of a sickly, horse-headed thing as it ushered forth a beaked and gaunt grotesquery.
“Blood,” the demon crowed, swooping low on raven wings and emptying its chalice on the singer’s naked body.
Brr-UMM! she heard again, and, “Blood,” in another voice, but she hardly saw the vulture. Her eyes were aflutter in hot fluid running thick and sticky down her face and her neck and steaming on contact, so frigid was her skin when the vulture dumped its own cup.
Brr-UMM! then “Blood,” then thrice more again: a lion-breasted eagle, an owl-headed cavalryman. Next a lancer riding on his own four horse-legs. And last, a goat scholar and a charred-skinned seraphim whose molten eyes lingered longest; longing, sad and eager as he trickled the contents of his chalice onto Jezebel’s forehead.
He whispered to her, “Yes, your flesh will befit a queen.”
Then all was silence, and the very air became cold with an odor of iron and myrrh until at last a meticulous, elephantine spider finished spinning its tapestry. In the same breath, a phoenix-downed creature, bound and shackled, held high its lantern. No light shone from the candle—its flame was black as the obsidian walls—regardless, it alighted that devil among them as he rose from his throne of old, yellowed bones.
“Xanthos King,” they hailed with terror in their voices, in fear of the odious, cadaverous being: a thing of contorted, missorted skeletons tied with torn tendons and draped in sable wings. Its face and horns were those of a ram; its snout, a boar’s; and its eyes were like a goat’s, only deeper, darker, like tendrils winding around Jezebel’s neck—her breasts and her shoulders, her waist, then lower around her thighs and her ankles. Lastly, he gazed upon her face: her pale, quivering lips; her sniveling, running nose; her high, gaunt cheeks, and those eyes like black pearls in the foam of the ocean.
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