Several nights later we camped at the outer edge of a great city. It was as completely fallen into ruin as any I’d seen, but it had clearly been a massive thing in its day, larger than Acceptance or Stephensburg. To the northeast, a glow lit the sky.
“That’s where we’re going?” I asked.
Gurath nodded.
“So this is another Hellguard citadel, all the way up here? Why?” It was noticeably colder now. I couldn’t imagine why the demons would establish an outpost in this godforsaken place.
By the firelight I could see Dee’s eyes widen in alarm. “I say. This isn’t -”
“Shh.” The Hellguard held a huge finger in front of the occultist’s lips. “Don’t spoil my surprise. Let him see for himself.”
“I must admit, I’ve always been curious,” Dee went on, “but perhaps it would in this case be more prudent for me to master my curiosity and stay behind. To observe with the greater objectivity of distance, as it were.”
Dee’s attack of cowardice filled me with more dread than I’d experienced yet. His instincts for self-preservation were unsurpassed, but we’d just seen how they existed in constant tension with his insatiable desire to stick his long nose where it didn’t belong. If he didn’t even want to approach our destination, I didn’t either.
“Ah, but you’ve come so far,” Gurath said. “So you’ll come the rest of the way too.” His words were gentle, nothing like the harsh tone he’d used with the occultist days before. But they were just as absolutely final. Dee nodded reluctantly.
I’d been serious when I asked the occultist to get a message back to Our Lady if I didn’t make it. I wondered now if anyone would make it back alive. I lay awake long into the night, after the others had gone to sleep. Could I get my companions away from here?
I couldn’t begin to see how. I felt sure we could overpower the soulless, and probably Legion. But there would be no defeating or escaping Gurath. I had barely managed to slip Yoshana when I’d turned on her. And that had been in the confusion of battle, when I’d commanded the Darkness myself, and didn’t have three other people to worry about. Gurath was centuries older and stronger than his daughter, and we were deep in his territory.
A trembling shiver that had nothing to do with the cold ran up my body as if spiders were crawling on my skin. I’d believed I could at least sense the Darkness, if not turn it. But Gurath had wormed it inside me to heal my leg and I hadn’t noticed. He’d have a web of it wrapped around me now. I stifled the urge to beat wildly at my clothes, or roll into the fire.
I jumped when Tess sat down next to me.
“Hey, it’s okay,” she said. Apparently she couldn’t sleep either.
I wanted to say something reassuring - I owed her that much, at least - but I couldn’t. “I’m not sure it is. Wherever we’re going, it scares Dee. And I’m d-” I stopped and rephrased, considering the circumstances. “I can’t think of a way to get us out of here.”
“It’s okay,” she repeated. “We had a good run. We beat Yoshana. You commanded an army. You had the Darkness in you and threw it out. I had dinner with the Metropolitan of Our Lady. Not bad for a farm girl and a garbage miner from the Flow.”
“I don’t think it’s right for a woman under twenty to be saying ‘I had a good run.’”
“I did what God asked me, Minos, and a lot more besides. Everything of this world passes away. Me, you, even him.” She jerked her thumb at Gurath, apparently asleep. “Our kingdom’s not of this world. But I’ll say it again. We’ve had a pretty good run while we’ve been here.”
“You know, I love you.”
Her eyes widened. “Do you really? Well, that’s something to live for. I love you too.”
She settled her head on my arm and curled up next to me for warmth. And to my surprise, we had no trouble sleeping that night.
We’d been riding the better part of the day through the dead city, our horses’ hooves sending up long echoes in the cold air. We’d seen nothing move except for distant gulls that drifted our way when the wind came from the east, bringing the smell of the sea. I started in my saddle every time one of them called.
Then abruptly we emerged from weed-choked ruins into a devastated no-man’s-land at the edge of a river. Gurath flung his arms wide. “And here we are. As the Prophet Siles said, ‘The bones of the great civilization that went before the Fall lie scattered like the shells left behind by the retreating tide. Or, though the image be not so pretty or so flattering, like the slime left behind after the snail has withdrawn once more into his shell. What remains of that which went before but hollow monuments to vanity, towers so tall that no man would dare now to ascend them? Truly we are but ash and dust.’ Humans, I give you the remains of your world.”
Dee visibly cringed. Legion laughed out loud.
The air was frigid, and small sheets of ice glided by on the river’s sluggish current. That was despite the fire. And the fire was everywhere.
For a hundred yards on our side of the river, nothing grew and no building stood. Tall, dark poles rose in that waste, thick cables trailing from them back toward us. Metal towers loomed at the edge of the devastated strip. Fires burned inside them. Pits and trenches filled with fire dotted the waste. And fire burned in the weapons of the giant figures patrolling it. If that concentration of flame perturbed Legion, the wraith didn’t show it. Something like lust shone in its eyes.
“Cocytus,” Gurath proclaimed. “The largest concentration of Darkness in the world. On this continent, anyway. Trapped between the Ice Fields, the river, and the sea. What’s in here makes the wraiths in the Sorrows look like fluffy kittens.”
One of the patrolling Hellguard approached and saluted Gurath. The demon wore a sword and heavy pistol at his belt, but his principle weapon was something like the naphtha-throwers of Rockwall’s fire wardens. This device was far larger and looked much more sophisticated.
“Anything new, Bal?” Gurath asked.
This demon was smaller, almost compact by the standards of the Hellguard, though he still bulked as large as Seven. He looked even bigger in the heavy parka he wore against the cold. He threw back his hood and answered, “Nossir. Pretty quiet. There was a breach two weeks ago in the northwest quadrant. Tunneled under our sensors and came up behind us. That was entertaining for a while.”
“Serious thrust?”
“Nah, just a probe. Screwing around. Seeing if we were paying attention.”
Gurath turned a mirthless smile on me. “Balmalek here is second in command at Cocytus. It’s a crappy job. I’ve got almost a hundred men keeping that stuff contained. Oh, look. It’s noticed us.”
Among the buildings on the far side of the river, something was growing. A dark cloud boiling up that looked like smoke, but didn’t move with the wind. It swelled huge, larger than the largest building.
“A wraith that size…” I murmured.
“What? Is more intelligent than a human? Yes. Is far too strong for anyone’s mind to resist? Yes. Could suck up the Darkness in the Sorrows into a juggernaut beyond your imagination? Yes. Would roll over your world like the angel of death? Yes.” The demon barked out a laugh. “So, you’re welcome.”
“But you’re not keeping it bottled up as a favor to us, are you?” Tess asked.
Gurath laughed again. “Give the little girl a prize. No. It would come after us, too. Maybe not at first - you’d be easier prey. But eventually, after you were all eaten or controlled, it would come back for us. We’re too much of a threat for it to let us live.”
The dark mass on the other side of the river was roiling, thickening.
“It looks pissed,” Gurath muttered.
“Well, we know it doesn’t like you, boss.” Balmalek tapped the side of his jaw and spoke into the air. “All troops, black alert status. Possible full frontal assault on my position, all reserves deploy. All troops in the field hold current position, repeat alert status black.”
He turned back to Gurath. “My bet is it’s just
a diversion. If it breaks out anywhere, it’ll be somewhere else. Been wrong before, though.”
His eyes went to the cloud. “It definitely looks pissed.”
Dee was staring, unblinking. Cat had grabbed Tess’ hand. It didn’t seem right to call what we were facing a wraith. The word did no justice to its huge, awesome malevolence. If that vast cloud of Darkness came over the river, what could we do? There would be no outrunning it. In my heart, I didn’t believe even Tess could resist it.
Thudding feet were all around us, and dozens of armed Hellguards swarmed the riverbank, flamethrowers aimed at the cloud. A tentacle thicker than my body lashed across the river. At once it was struck by bolts of lightning from the poles, arcs of fire from the towers, more flame from the Hellguards in the waste. And just as quickly it dissipated and retreated, and the huge mass thinned and vanished.
“Guess it was just saying hello,” Balmalek muttered, but his voice was shaky. He tapped his jaw again. “All troops, assault on my position has ended. Reserves to barracks. Other quadrants, watch for another push.”
“Sometimes it waits until the adrenaline has leeched away, then tries again somewhere else,” Gurath said. “But not often. It doesn’t spend its substance lightly.”
I stared across the river. The buildings there were lower than in the rest of the city, but stately. They reminded me of the ruins around the library in the dead city of eternal lights.
“You drove it out of the Darklands to imprison it here?”
“No. What got loose in the Darklands is mostly still there. We don’t have enough manpower to round it all up. That’s why we circumcise the minds of our slaves, so it doesn’t possess them. Well, one of the reasons.” Gurath turned to his lieutenant. “Give me your flamethrower for a minute.”
The smaller Hellguard unstrapped the weapon from his back and passed it over. Gurath turned the bulky device in his hands, studying it. Absently, as if his mind were far away, he went on, “This cloud was already like this when we got here. A huge concentration, even back then. We’re pretty sure it ate some of the locals who didn’t get out. We tried to control it at first, but it was too strong. We lost men in that first fight with it. That’s when we came up with these.”
He patted the flamethrower and continued. “When we couldn’t kill it, we blockaded it. I mean, I suppose we could have nuked it - and that’s still a last option we’ve got. But we’ve learned to live with the stalemate. We set up the defenses you see here. It’s a huge commitment of resources to tie up Hellguards watching this river, so at first we mostly used slaves to patrol. That’s how we found out that when it gets strong enough, it can even possess the circumcised. Turns them into things like Legion, here. Speaking of which…”
The big Hellguard whirled and bathed the wraith in flame. Legion screamed. Tess, Cat, Dee, and I scattered like rabbits to avoid the burning droplets spraying from its flailing limbs. Gurath kept the stream of fire trained on his former ambassador, destroying what tried to come out.
I would swear the screams went on after the blackened host body had stopped moving, as the last of the Darkness burned away.
The demon lord handed the weapon back to Balmalek, who calmly strapped it in place.
“Like I said,” Gurath continued impassively, “You have to be careful with your creations, or they turn on you. We learned how to make those things, and they’ve got their uses. But you can’t trust them.”
Dee was staring in open horror at the charred corpse on the ground. Tess looked physically sick. Only Cat seemed unperturbed. In fact, I thought there was the smallest hint of a smile on her face. But then, the paleo’s morality was uncomplicated, and didn’t include mercy toward people she didn’t like.
I hadn’t liked Legion either, but the wraith had been a thinking, feeling being. Not a cockroach to be crushed because it was inconvenient.
Gurath looked down at the smoldering body, then out over the fire-scarred no-man’s-land between us and the river. His eyes were somewhere far away.
“They used to call me the Flame, back before the Fall. And I have to admit, there’s something satisfying about watching things burning. Certain things, anyway. Things that need to burn.”
Legion’s body twitched, but that was just a reflex in the corpse. I’d seen enough of those not to be surprised.
Gurath went on, “You see, we all have enemies. Yoshana was your enemy, but she stood between you and me. Do you really want to stand against me, when you can stand with me? You think I’m your enemy, but I stand between you and this.”
The demon lord jerked his thumb over his shoulder, at the ruins where a gigantic mass of the Darkness lay waiting. He stepped close, looming over me, transfixing me with those piercing blue eyes. “Now you understand, don’t you?”
10. The Last Choice
I fought hard not to step back. The Hellguard was twice my weight, and one thing I understood very well was that he could split me in half before I had a chance to blink. And for all our philosophical discussion, what Dee had foolishly thought of as a conversation between equals, Gurath wouldn’t hesitate to do just that if it suited him.
I lifted my eyes from the demon’s massive chest to his face. “Understand what, exactly? You think that because the Darkness is worse than you, that what you’re doing to humanity is right?”
The blackened body of Legion’s most recent host twitched once more in mute accusation.
The Hellguard shook with laughter. “Right? ‘You know as well as we do that right is a question that only has meaning in relations between equals in power. In the real world, the strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must.’”
Anger was getting the better of fear. I snapped, “So you decide what needs to be burned because your will is the strongest. Enough Nietzsche.”
He just laughed again. “That wasn’t Nietzsche. That was Thucydides, almost three thousand years ago. He understood the truth, way back then. But humans keep forgetting that truth, or trying to, until it forces its way back into your little worlds. And then you understand reality, and that what you want isn’t the same as what is, and all your prayers to your dead god won’t make it so.”
That bleak vision was hard to argue with in the devastated waste between the Darkness and the Hellguard. I watched the fires burn in the pits scattered through that field of death.
“So let’s say I understand. Why did you bring me here, exactly?”
“Good. Let’s get to the point.” The demon smiled. “The point is that you could be a valuable ally to me, Minos. Or to be just a bit more accurate, a satrap.”
“You want me to be your vassal? What exactly are you saying, Gurath? I don’t rule the Source, and if I did, I sure as hell wouldn’t want to answer to you.”
His grin broadened. “But you could rule the Source. And why shouldn’t you? You wouldn’t be better suited to it than that treacherous, murderous whore, Melaret? If you don’t believe that, then you aren’t the man I think you are.”
It was hard to disagree with that proposition. But I looked over my shoulder at the two remaining soulless. “And in exchange, what? I give you a land full of mentally circumcised slaves?”
Gurath waved his hand dismissively. “No. Rule them as you see fit. Give them whatever freedom makes you happy. You’ve seen that we didn’t burn the will out of the soldiers in the Shield. Our authority doesn’t need to extend to the rest of the world in exactly the same way as it does in the Darklands, as long as it’s not challenged.”
The Hellguard commander’s eyes bored into mine. “We want the same things in the end, Minos. A unified world. Or at least a unified continent. A beginning of a return to the civilization the ancients had. The benefits of peace and commerce. Together, with your forces and mine on two sides of the Green Heart, we can bring them to the negotiating table. Install an allied government there too. Then we can burn the Darkness out of the Sorrows. Imagine one nation from here to the Muddy River. With you administering a quarter of i
t.”
“All this I will give you if you will bow down and worship me,” I said. Gurath’s offers were no more subtle than Legion’s had been.
The demon just chuckled. “Well, sure. Easy to take a pass on what the devil’s offering if you’re the son of God, or you think you are. But you’re not. You’re one more little human that’s going to fade away into dust. But you don’t have to. ‘Those then that do know and apprehend perpetual being as such, desire the same with a natural desire.’ That was your Aquinas, by the way. I can give you perpetual being. Real perpetual being, not the bullshit promise of a nonexistent afterlife.”
“So you’ll fill me with the Darkness again? No thanks. Like I said, I tried that before, and it didn’t go well last time.”
“No, and to be blunt, that’s because my daughter did a lousy job of it. She didn’t train you properly. Seven could have done better. I can certainly do better. Plus she lied to you through the whole process. I think you’ll have to agree that I’ve been painfully honest with you.”
I nodded reluctantly.
“Not to mention that she wanted you to kill your woman. I have no interest in that. You can marry your prophet and set her up as your queen for all I care.” He smiled again. “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
Christ’s words in the demon’s mouth were repellent, but I turned the offer over in my head. I had no desire to serve Gurath. And I’d given up on that particular kind of eternal life when Prophetess cast the Darkness out of me. But the Hellguard’s proposal could prevent a war that would almost certainly kill thousands. And removing Melaret would be doing the Source - and all mankind - a favor.
“Why me?” I demanded.
“Well, for starters, because you’re available. And since I’ve been honest so far, I’ll continue now. You’re ambitious enough to want to be my governor, but smart enough to know you can’t overthrow me and take the top spot for yourself. That was the problem with Yoshana - a little too much ambition, not enough humility or common sense. As a war hero, you’ve got some legitimacy with the people, but as a Select, you’re enough of an outsider that it would be hard for you to rally them against me. We both know you can control the Darkness, but not enough of it to make you a threat to me personally. You’re just about perfect for the job.”
Passing Through Darkness- The Complete Cycle Page 88